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 <div id="section05"> = Abstracts = **Geoff Cox**, Chair, Session 1: Curating, Immateriality, Systems - critical context **Josephine Berry Slater**, Chair, Session 2: Curatorial Practices and Strategies **Joasia Krysa**, [Introduction to the conference] **Grzesiek Sedek**, Introduction to KURATOR software **Inke Arns - Tricky Affinities: Notes on the relation between early computer art of the 1960s and current software art** The presentation explores the relationship between early computer art of the 1960s and today's software and generative art. While some scholars and protagonists of early computer art have lately suggested that computer art might be considered the direct predecessor of current software and generative art, this paper puts this view into question. The intention is to emphasise the deep-seated conceptual and contextual differences between computer and software art. This is in recognition of the historical fact that software in the computer art of the 1960s - even if programmed by artists - was considered a (functional) tool in order to create autonomous works of art as final products, executed on screens or plotters and dot matrix printers. Software art, in contrast, focuses on software that is considered a work of art in itself without necessarily resulting in an artwork external to the code itself. Software art could thus be considered 'more conceptual' than the computer art of the 1960s. Furthermore, we could say that today's software art addresses and critically questions the performativity of code - which could be seen as its deeply political dimension. **Olga Goriunova and Alexei Shulgin - From Art on Networks to Art on Platforms** In our talk we would like to discuss a new method of generation and management of cultural content. The basis of such a method is an online resource created for work with specific cultural or artistic material, which manages to accumulate a number of artifacts and generates or contributes to generation of a discourse around artistic activity. Such resources execute their ideology through their mechanisms of administration, filtering and distinction. They work with folk cultures of the digital era, fostering creativity and contribute to the formation of artistic movements in unprecedented ways. Our presentation will discuss such systems of cultural content management and generation to focus on the analysis of their specific features, both ideological and technical, which enable their success or contribute to their failure. The talk will be based on our experience with the Runme.org software art repository and will make references to other examples such as Micromusic.net and Udaff.org. **Eva Grubinger -'C@C - Computer Aided Curating' revisited** C@C - Computer Aided Curating (1993-95) was a prototype program for the production, presentation, documentation, discussion and distribution of art on the Web. Designed by artist Eva Grubinger in collaboration with the software developer Thomas Kaulmann and supported by Kunst-Werke Berlin, C@C explored the possibilities at that time of this new sphere for the traditional link between art and the public. The initial idea was to foster an access to conceptual electronic art, to reinforce the power of the individual artists to create the context of presentation for his/her work, to direct the art audience towards the technological aspects of artistic production, and finally to establish a market for media-based art, which until today strongly depends on public funding. C@C provided each participating artist with a password-protected editing system containing automated tools for creating digital artworks without any knowledge of programming. Additionally, each artist was invited to curate three artists of his/her choice. In this way the system remained virtually open but at the same time provided works of high quality. Navigating through the C@C interface, visitors could experience the social network of artists, discuss the works and acquire an artwork online. In retrospect the visual possibilities of C@C appear limited: the almost romantic notion of the independent computer-literate artist connected to C@C seems idealised, and in view of neoliberal technologies of the self, problematic. However C@C's system-oriented structure and its inherent critique of the 'operating system of art' still seems up to date. **Piotr Krajewski - Media Art Festivals: changing categories, submission formats, definitions** The subject of my presentation will be new media art festivals. Looking at festival names and the periods in which such festivals originated, I will examine the dynamics of the development and evolution of media art as well as its critical discourse. Festivals have been vitally important to art involving electronic and (later) digital technology due to their role in recognising, naming and conceptualising dominant artistic practices as they have developed. Festivals came into being in response to a need for a means of presenting and disseminating art forms arising from the development of new tools and technologies, and as a result of a long-term lack of interest in media art forms on the part of most exhibiting institutions in the realm of fine arts. The oldest media festival still in existence was launched in Linz in 1979, and is called Ars Electronica. But it was the 1980s that saw a real proliferation of new festivals, mostly including the word 'video'. Towards the end of the 1980s, we see that word usurped by terms like 'media art', 'multimedia' and 'digital'; in this same timeframe, names that emphasise the audio-visual aspect of new media also start to appear. Festivals that originated after 2000 are most often devoted to 'software art' or 'software-based art'. The presentation will also examine the evolution of festival categories, from the lack of categories in the 1970s, through the proliferation of ever-more elaborate categorisations and re-categorisations in later years, to the retreat from strict category divisions that we see nowadays. Ars Electronica has introduced the category 'freestyle computing' to avoid imposing defined categories that could restrict the creativity of young artists; and since 2001 and 2005 respectively, the WRO Biennale and the Berlin Transmediale Festival have dispensed with submission categories, leaving all the works entered in their competitions to be assessed in one pool rather than in separate categories. **Jacob Lillemose - Conceptual Transformations of Art: from the dematerialisation of objects to immaterial systems** What was the significance of the aesthetic transformations generated by the so-called dematerialisation of the art object within conceptual art and how can we relate this notion to the practices and discourses of contemporary art that deals with digital media such as the Internet? These two questions constitute the points of departure for this paper, which attempts to revisit the notion of 'dematerialisation' in a theoretical and historical context. Furthermore the paper posits these ideas in relation to the predominant aesthetics of �immateriality� in relation to computer-based arts and draws on examples of works such as life_sharing, Minds of Concern: Breaking News, Injunction Generator, biennale_py, tracenoizer, TXTmob, BorderXing, RTMark, and AntiMafia. Central to this re-interpretation of the notion of dematerialisation will be the conceptual and structural role of cybernetics/digital systems in computer-based art works from the mid �90s to the present. The focus will be on questions of information and communication in digitalised networks as artistic material and on critical context of art production within a wider social, cultural and economic context. **Franziska Nori - Annotations on the work of digitalcraft.org** The paper considers the necessity for a re-definition of curatorial practice in the context of digital culture. It extensively draws on the curatorial work of digitalcraft, a collaborative project experimenting with and exploring the potential of 'exhibition' as a medium, and makes particular reference to the I love you exhibition that engaged with viruses and hacker culture (2002). While discussing some of the strategies employed, this presentation makes a case for a potential 'bridging' role that curators might play as moderators between experts from various disciplines in order to generate knowledge and cultural meaning in ever more fragmented systems of information. As digital technologies and media-enhanced communication play a prevailing role in all aspects of contemporary societies - be it political, economical, social or cultural - there is at the same time a growing gap between the class of so-called 'computer literates' and mere users; between experts and a broad public; between people who have access to knowledge and information and those who do not. Moreover, as the technological revolution modifies the complexity and causal relationships at such a speed, it seems even more important to find 'intermediaries'. **Christiane Paul - Flexible Contexts, Democratic Filtering, and Computer Aided Curating: Models for Online Curatorial Practice** Internet art has inspired a variety of dreams about the future of artistic and curatorial practice, among them the dream of a more or less radical reconfiguration of traditional models and 'spaces' for accessing art. Net art has been created to be seen by anyone, anywhere, anytime (provided one has access to the network). It exists within a (virtual) public space, and does not necessarily need the physical space of an art institution to be presented or introduced to the public. Net art seems to call for a 'museum without walls', a parallel, distributed, living information space that is open to interferences by artists, audiences, and curators - a space for exchange, collaborative creation, and presentation that is transparent and flexible. Curatorial practice in the online world has been unfolding both in an institutional context - through websites affiliated with museums, such as the Walker Art Center's Gallery 9, SF MOMA's e-space and the Whitney Museum's artport; and independent of institutions - through Web projects created by independent curators and (artist) collaboratives. These different curatorial projects differ substantially in their respective interpretation of selection, filtering, and 'gate-keeping' as fundamental aspects of the curatorial process. With its inherent flexibility and possibilities for customisation and indexing, the digital medium potentially allows for an involvement of the audience in the curatorial process - a 'public curation' that promises to construct more �democratic� forms of filtering. This paper provides a survey of the different models for online curatorial practice, ranging from the more traditional model of a single curatorial �filter� to multiple curatorial perspectives (for example, low-fi.org) and forms of automated curating that integrate technology in the curatorial process (for example, runme.org or C@C). Among the issues that will be discussed are the politics of selection and the degrees of agency of the curator/public/software in the filtering process. **Tiziana Terranova - Immateriality and Cultural Production** This talk summarises the main components of the concept of immaterial labour in key authors such as Maurizio Lazzarato, Paolo Virno, Jean Paul Vincent, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. In particular, it follows the relation established in such work between the dynamics of networks and flows and that of the organisation and phenomenology of immaterial work. It looks at ways to conceive of the relationship between the immaterial and the material in cultural production through notions of linearity, nonlinearity and superlinearity. Finally it draws conclusions about the politics of immaterial labour in cultural production. </div>