“Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge”

Here the resultant “Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge” of the First Internacional Forum on Free culture and access to knowledge (Oct 29 to Nov 1 2009). A large coalition of organizations and individuals met at Barcelona and wrote the Charter.

A broad coalition from over 20 countries, of hundreds of thousands of citizens, users, consumers, organizations, artists, hackers, members of the free culture movement, economists, lawyers, teachers, students, researchers, scientists, activists, workers, unemployed, entrepreneurs, creators… has come together to campaign and organise for respect and the fullfilling of the rights of citizens and artists in the digital era.

See the Charter at:

Download the Charter at:

Signature of consciousness captured in brain scans

“A telltale signature of consciousness has been detected that takes us a step closer to disentangling the brain activity underlying conscious and unconscious brain processes.

It turns out that there is a similar pattern of neural activity each time we become conscious of the same picture, but not if we process information from the image unconsciously. These contrasting patterns of activity can now be detected via brain scans, and could one day help determine if patients with brain damage are conscious. They might even be used to probe consciousness in animals.”

from Rui Guerra (V2)

Call for participation: unCraftivism

unCraftivism is an open event where you can present your own work and organise your own event. unCraftivism is uncurated: your work will not be judged, or restricted by a theme, neither it has to be finalised. unCraftivism is self-organised: you organise and promote your own event, whether a performance, a talk, a workshop, a meal, a song, a party or other as-yet-undefined events.

How to participate in 3 steps:
1. Add your event to the programme (http://www.craftivism.net/wiki/Programme
2. Subscribe to the mailinglist and stay tuned to the latest news.
3. Invite your friends and show up in person or avatar from 12th to
13th of December.

Saturday 12th + Sunday 13th of December
Arnolfini (contemporary arts centre)
16 Narrow Quay, Bristol BS1 4QA
UK
http://www.craftivism.net
http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/

Starhawk on Climate Change

” October 24, is a global day of action around climate change, organized by the folks at 350.org. Why 350? That’s the parts per million of carbon that scientists think is the safe level that will keep the planet at least somewhat recognizable as the one we’ve grown to know and depend on for our lives. What are we at currently? Something like 390, and climbing! So time is short. With a new round of global negotiations scheduled for Copenhagen in early December, tomorrow’s actions will help build popular pressure on all those politicians to do something real.

We still have a chance to turn the looming disaster into a chance for transformation and balance. We can still build a world that offers abundance, hope, lives of beauty and health and freedom for those who come after us.

But not for much longer. The window is closing. So, wiggle those fingers, press those keys and go to 350.org to find an action near you. Then get out of your armchairs, off the internet, and into the streets!

Climate change is often framed as your personal problem you should drive less, consume less, change your lightbulbs. Yeah, you should, all those things are important. But nothing we do individually will solve the problem. We need to work together, to influence policy, not just perfect our own personal eco-karma.

When we take action, we need to know what we want, not just what we don’t want. Confronting climate change can drive people into into despair and apathy. Never just say no without also saying yes because solutions are out there. We have the means we need to solve the problems, and heal other major wounds in the process. We just need to do it.”

-
Listening to Buffalo Ballet in version of Walkabouts. How brilliant!

“Sleeping in the midday sun.

We all joined in
We all joined hands
We all joined in
to help run this land

then the soldiers came
long long ago
rode through the town
and ran down those
sleeping in the midday sun.”

That was then, this is now
if soldiers come
it will be in a different iteration
and we will catch them
catch them cold
sleeping in the midday sun.

John Hopkins on IDC list saying

“What else is history than the cumulative distortions of flows that Life has imposed on the localized system we call Terra? In that sense, Life is trans-historical, and each individual, as an temporalized expression of that ongoing phenomena IS trans-historical at the same time as they are contributing to the accumulative of distortions (or if you want a more neutral framing, accumulation of difference).”

jh
__

listening to Lord I feel like going Home by the Walkabouts, still imagining some repository of place where I’d be moving my current iteration into feeling (going home), then I realize that the key is ‘ going’,
man I feel like going home
all the time
at the end of the bar longing to go home!

hmm getting wiser

Thinktank for the Internet of Things: Council: launches

Council, a thinktank for the Internet of Things

is launching in Brussel on december 4, 2009, Imal.

The Internet of Things (IOT) is a vision. Yet it is being build today. The stakeholders are known, the debate has yet to start. The European Commission published its action plan for IOT in june of this year. In hundreds of years our real needs have not changed. We want to be loved feel safe, have fun, be relevant in work and friendship, be able to support our families and somehow play a role – however small – in the larger scheme of things.

So what will really happen when things, homes and cities become smart? The result will probably be an avalange of what at first looks like very small steps, small changes.

Currently IOT applications, demos and infrastructure are rolled out from negative arguments only. For logistics, it is anti-theft. For ehealth it is the lack of human personnel that requires the building of smart houses. From a policy view it is the ensuring of safety, control and surveillance at item level and in public space. For retail it is shelf space management.

Council thinktank aims to grow into a positively critical counterpart to these negativities in focusing on the quality of interaction and potentialities of IOT for social, communicative and economic (personal fabrication, participatory budgetting, alternative currencies) connectivity between humans and other humans, human and things and humans and their surroundings.

The wrestling with ambient technologies – the noise – is rapidly going out of corporate memory. A new young generation growing up at ease with ‘total’ connectivity, will enter IOT territory as simply another layer, another iteration of something they are comfortable in.

Therefore the launch of Council will highlight a personal history of locative media & hybrid spaces, by professionals of the i3 (Intelligent Information Interfaces) days, as well as the latest tools and applications, workshops on key issues short keynotes and time for debate and discussion.

Where: Imal, Brussels
When: December 4 2009 0930:2200 (public evening from 20:00)
Workshop 185 (including lunch and dinner)
Register

Asia-Europe Cultural Partnership Initiatives: New Media

Asia-Europe Cultural Partnership Initiatives: New Media

The Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) presents its new scheme, the Asia-Europe Cultural Partnership Initiative: New Media (AECPI: New Media) as part of its plans to further enhance multilateral connections between Asia and Europe by developing and stimulating strategic initiatives with partners from the new media sector. ASEF will offer support ranging from 5,000EUR to 15,000EUR to organisations such as festivals, research institutes, associations for partnership initiatives occurring from 1 Jan to 31 Dec 2010, with a clear Asia-Europe focus. ASEF aims to support partnership initiatives which will bring about more opportunities for networking, understanding and cooperation between the two regions amidst new challenges that the sector faces today. This will help further ASEF’s role as a key advocate for Asia-Europe dialogueand collaboration in the field of new media.

Applications now open
Deadline for application submission: 30 Oct 2009

From Jerneja Rebernak : EMYAN Festival

The *Euro-Med Young Artist Network* (EMYAN) is launching the call for entries for the second edition of the *Online Arts Festival* taking place between the 20th and the 30th of October 2009. The Festival wants to stimulate young artists from the Euro-Mediterranean region. EMYAN also
stands for artistic collaboration across regions and the Online Arts Festival wants to highlight creativity using innovative tools for expression and sharing of ideas. Art is shared virtually among peers throughout the Online Arts Festival and defines new methodologies of artistic exchange. For this second edition, the Online Arts Festival will strengthen its goals by reflecting the diversity of artistic expression across several regions hoping to stimulate ways of narrative and visual artifices. The The festival will keep the multidisciplinary of its categories for this prolific 2.0 presentation and the artist works will not only aspire to showcase artistic expression but the entries will need to engage and focus towards the context of the art creation. The theme a r t i f i c e aims to spotlight artists ingenuity and cleverness by use of diverse methods of define a more engaged art practice.

Artists are invited to read the regulations and to submit their work through an online art form on this website. The deadline for applications is *1. October 2009*

Online Arts Festival coordinator
Jerneja Rebernak, jerneja@emyan.org
Euro-Med Young Artists Network

Gurgaon Workers News – Newsletter 20 (September 2009)

Gurgaon Workers News – Newsletter 20 (September 2009)

through caravan99@lists.riseup.net

“Gurgaon in Haryana is presented as the shining India, a symbol of capitalist success promising a better life for everyone behind the gateway of development. At a first glance the office towers and shopping malls reflectthis chimera and even the facades of the garment factories look like three star hotels. Behind the facade, behind the factory walls and in the side streets of the industrial areas thousands of workers keep the rat-race going, producing cars and scooters for the middle-classes which end up in the traffic jam on the new highway between Delhi and Gurgaon. Thousands of young middle class people lose time, energy and academic aspirations on night-shifts in call centres, selling loan schemes to working-class peoplein the US or pre-paid electricity schemes to the poor in the UK. Next door, thousands of rural-migrant workers uprooted by the agrarian crisis stitch and sew for export, competing with their angry brothers and sisters in Bangladesh or Vietnam. And the rat -race will not stop; on the outskirts of Gurgaon, Asia’s biggest Special Economic Zone is in the making.”

another what if on a midnight voyage that has no ending

What if through The Internet of Things we can create a layer of data, open to all, through which individuals can decide for themselves what they are willing to pay for, to get direct feedback from their voluntary donations, to coordinate community spending that has a direct bearing to their needs, to negotiate with other people in other parts of the world how to use their money?

talking at an IMphd seminar in October