THE INTERNET came with a promise that "everybody can be a publisher". Although not everybody wants to be a publisher, those who actually do, find it hard to make it work. As it turns out, this promise is only true in an extremely limited, technical sense.
Yes, I can set up a website, or put my song on the Net, but what next? The problem becomes not so much technical as social -- there is a lot of sharing, but little in terms of making a living. Money remains squarely in the hands of the old industry.
The issue of distribution is not just an economic question. It's also a political one. At stake is the 'semiotic democracy', that is the ability of the largest number of people to create and share culture freely. It is about making sure that despite of heavy-hitting marketing machines, new, independent content can still fill its audience.
In short, the question is how do innovative production and distribution come together to support each other. Free Software seems to have found a way to do just that, but what about the rest of cultural production? How do we get from technological visions to actual cultures that are open yet sustainable in a climate where funding runs short?
FreeBitflows will bring together artists, researchers, activists, and hackers from Europe and beyond to investigate current strategies to build sustainable, open and experimental cultures through electronic media. A conference, workshops, performances and an exhibition will examine cultures of access and the politics of dissemination from a broad range of perspectives.
S P E A K E R S
Ian Clarke (IE/US) architect and coordinator of the Freenet project http://www.freenetproject.org
Marco Deserlis (IT) freelance journalist, Internet critic and media activist http://www.thething.it http://www.d-i-n-a.net
Volker Grassmuck (DE) researcher at the Humbold University Berlin and initiator of the Wizards of OS conference. http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/Grassmuck/
Menno Grootveld (NL) co-founder of the former pirate TV channel Robotnik TV and co-founder of the festival for tactical media, Next 5 Minutes. http://www.next5minutes.org
Bjoern Hartmann (DE/FR) conceived the Net label textone.org http://www.textone.org http://www.bjoern.org
Reni Hofmueller (AT) media artist and activist http://helsinki.at http://www.mur.at
Brewster Kahle (US) founder and digital librarian for the Internat Archive (IA) http://www.archive.org
Paula Le Dieu (UK) project director of the Creative Archive, a BBC initiative to distribute its audio and video archival content in ways that allows the UK public to use it to fuel their own creative endeavours http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/03_march/02/on_d...
Pauline van Mourik Broekman (UK) founding co-editor and co-publisher of the techno culture magazine Mute, co-founded as "the Arts and Technology Newspaper" in 1994. http://www.metamute.com/ http://www.openmute.org
Sjoera Nas (NL) works with Bits of Freedom, a not-for-profit privacy and civil rights organisation http://www.edri.org or http://www.bof.nl
Istvan Rev (HU) professor of History and Political Science, Central European University, Budapest http://www.osa.ceu.hu
Janko Roettgers (DE/US) writes for on- and offline-media about net culture, net policy and music on the Internet. http://www.mixburnrip.de http://www.lowpass.de
Thorsten Schilling (DE) founder and president of mikro.org also http://www.bpb.de
Pit Schultz (DE) author, artist and computer professional. Co-founder of Bootlab, Berlin and before that the mailing list Nettime. Currently, project manager for reboot.fm, a Berlin-based open radio http://www.Bootlab.org or http://www.reboot.fm
Wendy Selzer (US) staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she focusses on intellectual property an dfree speech issues. http://www.eff.org http://cyber.law.havard.edu/seltzer.html
Kristin Thomas (US) research director and organizer with The Future of Music Coalition and works for a DC-based PR firm. http://www.futureofmusic.org
Exhibitions run from June 3 to 17, 2004. Locations: Semperdepot, K-Hause, Temporary locations: Karlsplatz, Vienna.
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Frederick Noronha (FN)