Furtherfield has worked with decentralised arts and technology practices since 1996 inspired by free and open source cultures, and before the great centralisation of the web.
Visit DECAL website
10 years ago, blockchain technologies blew apart the idea of money and value as resources to be determined from the centre. This came with a promise, yet to be realised, to empower self-organised collectives of people through more distributed forms of governance and infrastructure. Now the distributed web movement is focusing on peer-to-peer connectivity and coordination with the aim of freeing us from the great commercial behemoths of the web.
There is an awkward relationship between the felt value of the arts to the majority and the financial value of arts to a minority. The arts garner great wealth, while it is harder than ever to sustain arts practice in even the world’s richest cities.
In 2015 we launched the Art Data Money programme of labs, exhibitions and debates to explore how blockchain technologies and new uses of data might enable a new commons for the arts in the age of networks. This was followed by a range of critical art and blockchain research programming:
Building on this and our award winning DAOWO lab and summit series, we have developed DECAL – our Decentralised Arts Lab and research hub.
Working with leading visionary artists and thinkers, DECAL opens up new channels between artworld stakeholders, blockchain and web3.0 businesses. Through the lab we will mobilise research and development by leading artists, using blockchain and web 3.0 technologies to experiment in transnational cooperative infrastructures, decentralised artforms and practices, and improved systems literacy for arts and technology spaces. Our goal is to develop fairer, more dynamic and connected cultural ecologies and economies.
For more see our Art and Blockchain resource page.
LAB #4 in the Art Data Money series
Venue:Furtherfield Commons
BOOKING INFO: This event is for an invited group of participants. If you are interested in attending, please contact Furtherfield telling us about your interest in this area: ruth.catlow [at] furtherfield.org
A day-long workshop, led by independent curators and researchers Dani Admiss and Cecilia Wee, looking at how we are locked-into contemporary conditions that bring migration into being.
This workshop challenges participants to expand and rethink what potential responses to migration could be, creatively and beyond. How can we work with the technologies associated with migration (and their social effects) to inform and enact virtual mobility and cultural activism?
Thinking through ideas of art and social change, the day aims to unpick the abstract forces, the limited means we have to communicate them, and the dependency on automation, simulation, and capture to tell us the ‘truth’, but which escapes the importance of lived experience.
Over the course of a day we will produce a collaborative map that creatively challenges and proposes new ways of thinking about experiences of migration. We will physically engage with technologies associated with migration, this will be followed by discussions about migration using the ‘social technology’ of the World Cafe method. The day will end with a collaborative mapping exercise harvesting ideas and narratives from the day, which will be turned into a mini-publication to be publicly distributed, a record of collectively working together over a day.
As we come closer to COP21 in Paris, and in light of the recent media attention depicting an exodus of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants into Europe, we see that complex flows of power interlink fields of life like security, finance, health, climate and governance in contemporary globalisation, producing barriers to all forms of mobility. We propose that ‘technologies of migration’ instantiate themselves a new type of border, often geographically displaced and abstracted from our physical experiences of mobility. These technologies are subjects of social engineering, residing in websites and interview rooms, as well as more immediately perceivable ‘arrival infrastructures’ of e-border and immigration detention centres. Governments continue to seek ways to measure the political into policy. Expert devices, such as civic integration examinations, speech recognition technology, or European databanks of asylum seekers’ biometric data, map the phenomena of migration and mobility into knowledge practices, incorporating them into risk profiles and evidence-based strategies. For better of worse, the current migration controversy highlights the fundamentally problematic challenges to a humanist relationship to data and information.
‘The Migrant Machine’ is part of a broader research project, Ground Truth: an investigation into changing relations of how we come to see, sense and survey our world. Based on groundtruthing, the calibration process used by scientists and cartographers to anchor the map or model to the data collected from the reality of lived-experience, the project aims to think beyond mapping as a responsive but singular tool of resistance and collaboration and towards being-in-the-world as a continual form of responsibility and entanglement.
LAB #2 in the Art Data Money series
A weekend workshop, led by Dan Hassan of the Robin Hood Cooperative, focusing on the political/social relevance of Bitcoin, blockchains, and finance. All participants will be given some Bitcoin.
ADMISSION FEE: £10 for one day or £15 for the weekend*
The weekend workshop will take a historical look at the political / social relevance of Bitcoin (“Breaking the Taboo on Money”) by looking at the history of technical and social inventions the came before it. I’ll then futurecast what this could mean for the future of p2p finance (blockchains, new social architectures and peer owned platforms with a mix of synthetic finance, peer-owned-banks) and place Robin Hood Coop within this future (“Breaking the Taboo of Financial Markets”).
It will include hands on activities on covering topics such as blockchains (actually running them and understanding them) as well as dissecting financial instruments – such as Robin Hood Cooperative has been doing.
Day 1 – Breaking the Taboo on Money (focus on Bitcoin and blockchain):
11.00 Group introductions
11.30 Bitcoin, blockchains, finance – a series of quick 5 minute 101 introductions
11.30 – 13.00 Using Bitcoins whilst expanding our understanding of why this is so groundbreaking
13.00 – 13.30 Lunch
13.30 – 14.00 Recap
14.00 – 17.00 (with tea breaks) tbc
Day 2 – Breaking the Taboo on Financial Markets (focus on Robin Hood’s activities on Wall Street):
11.00 Group introductions
11.30 Bitcoin, blockchains, finance – a series of quick 5 minute one-to-one introductions (+ quick recap from the previous days session).
11.30 – 13.00 Emergent workshop from constellation of interests of those who turn up
13.00 – 13.30 Lunch
13.30 – 14.00 Recap
14.00 – 17.00 (with tea breaks) tbc
Part of Furtherfield’s Art Data Money programme.
– If you can’t afford the entry price, get in touch anyway and we can figure something out.
– All participants will be given some Bitcoin
– The workshop runs across two days. Both days will be complementary, but will also be standalone. there won’t be too much duplication for those who attend both, but you won’t be left behind if you only attend one.
Pre-reading / listening: Listen to as much of this talk by Vinay Gupta as you can.
Robin Hood Asset Management Cooperative is a cooperative owned and run by its members. At the moment we have over 500 members from 15 different countries and together we manage assets of about half a million euros. In the two years we have been active, we have created over 100,000 euros to our members and to our common pool. We disrupt the ordinary flows of money, share the loot, and invest the profits in the production and protection of commons.
More info: http://robinhoodcoop.org/
Dan Hassan (UK) is a computer engineer active in autonomous co-operatives over the last decade; in areas of economics (Robin Hood), housing (Radical Routes), migration (No Borders) and labour (Footprint Workers). He tweets as @dan_mi_sun
LAB #3 in the Art Data Money series
A weekend workshop, led by Brett Scott and The London School of Financial Arts, exploring different approaches to unveiling the financial sector – from open data mapping and photography to computer games and digital art installation pieces.
The financial sector is notoriously opaque and alienating to many people. It is cloaked in different forms of invisibility – either through secrecy and concealment, or through complexity, jargon and obscurity – and we often struggle to conceptualise how it works and how money moves.
Making the invisible world of global finance visible is a highly important task and there are a range of exciting projects attempting to do just that. In this two day workshop, we will explore different approaches to unveiling the financial sector, from open data mapping and photography to computer games and digital art installation pieces. We will look at new attempts at visualisation and sonification, and consider how money might be accurately represented in an era of digital payment via offshore tax havens.
Day 1 will be focused on explore, mapping and demystify the existing financial sector.
Day 2 we will work towards building an ‘Activist Bloomberg’. The Bloomberg Terminal is an expensive system that major banks use to get raw data and financial information. The Terminal is out of reach to most ordinary people, but can we create an open-source and open-access alternative Bloomberg to collect and distribute critical data on high finance? Let’s try!
Part of Furtherfield’s Art Data Money programme.
Finance is viewed as a niche area characterised by numbers, complex graphs, and professionals wielding obscure techniques, but the sector is in fact underpinned by human relationships, power dynamics and philosophical concepts that we all intuitively understand. Realising this is a great step towards keeping the financial commons open. At its core The London School of Financial Arts is about experiential learning, offering fun, adventurous, and experimental courses that immerse campaigners within the financial dark arts.
More info: http://lsfa-hackspace.cc/
Brett Scott (UK) is campaigner, former broker, and the author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money (Pluto Press). He blogs at suitpossum.blogspot.com and tweets as @suitpossum
LAB #1 in the Art Data Money series
Walkshop and Commodity Consultation
Come for one or both sessions, or just drop in for a chat about MoCC over tea and cake.
For both the morning and afternoon session please BOOK HERE.
10:30am – 1:30pm Walkshop – BOOK HERE.
Join us for a walkshop exploring places, moments and technologies of trade and exchange in the Finsbury Park retail area. We will be out and about for around 90 minutes followed by a group conversation on relations between data, trade and values and how they are affecting our daily lives and spaces. Please dress for the weather and bring a smart phone/camera and means to download images. Coffee and cake provided.
2.00-4:30pm Commodity Consultation – BOOK HERE.
Use LEGO re-creations and animated gifs to explore the values held in your own experiences of trade and exchange. Our Commodity Consultant will be available throughout the afternoon to research your commodity questions, helping you add your own things of value to the Museum of Contemporary Commodities.
Part of Furtherfield’s Art Data Money programme.
The Museum of Contemporary Commodities (MoCC) is neither a building nor a permanent collection of stuff – it’s an invitation. To consider every shop, online store and warehouse full of stuff as if it were a museum, and all the things in it part of our collective future heritage.
MoCC is an art-social science project led by artist Paula Crutchlow (Blind Ditch) and cultural geographer Ian Cook (University of Exeter) in collaboration with Furtherfield.
The project is supported by the Economic and Social Science Research Council, Islington Council, All Change Arts, Exeter City Council and University of Exeter.
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