AFTER THE NET (3.0)
3-5 March 2010, Tecnologico de Monterrey Toluca
part of the programme of the 1st International Congress on Web Studies
http://webstudies.info/
Talks
Linda Hilfling, Gate Peepin'
ABSTRACT: Through an introduction to the critical design intervention, Gate Peepin', this paper aims to open up for a discussion on means of regulation and the user's position within Web 2.0 service platforms. The paper argues that examining Terms of Service documents is an important part of understanding key elements of the online servicescape, which increasingly is becoming an integrated part of our everyday life. The countless click-and-agree contracts populating the Web are veritable gate keepers of the communities making up todays net culture, such regulations are, although materially detached from the structures that they govern, powerful means of controlling content on the Net. Gate Peepin' aims at bringing back the performativity of the regulations of the services within their own execution. Not as an instrumental tool, but as an artistic intervention altering the browsing experience of different social network platforms according to their Terms of Service, and thus turning both the user generated content and the Terms of Services upside down.
Geoff Cox, Antisocial Notworking
ABSTRACT: Antisocial Notworking refers to a repository of projects that explore the pseudo-agency of online social platforms. The paper takes a number of recent software projects as its inspiration to reflect upon the fashion for 'participation' within the arts sector and culture in general. The concern is how the Internet is increasingly characterized as a 'platform' (or collective machine) for 'social' uses, but to question what is meant by such descriptions. Although social networking platforms rely on user-generated content, what is the nature of this participation? What alternatives can be identified? Emergent forms are undoubtedly dissimilar to the ways in which social relations have been traditionally organized, but in general, appear to reinforce existing power structures. The suggestion of the paper is that without the identification of antagonisms that underpin sociality, politics simply cannot be engaged.
Alejandro García, The three face mirror
ABSTRACT to follow.
Arcángel Constantini, Nanodrizas
ABSTRACT to follow.