Press Release for print (pdf 1.6 Mb)
This Summer you are invited to gather your friends, give us a call and drop by to HTTP where you can browse, borrow and organise books and journals from ThE DiStRiBuTeD LiBrArY whilst savouring delicious Iranian sweets and a cup of El Salvadorian coffee brought to us by Feral Trade.
We’d also like visitors of all backgrounds and experiences to suggest, demonstrate and implement their ideas for displaying, categorising and borrowing books from the library in the hope that by the end of the Summer we’ll have an expanded philosophy of knowledge sharing. All participants’ contributions will be documented and made accessible online, as well as in the space for others to observe. For more information about this please email info@http.uk.net
The ThE DiStRiBuTeD LiBrArY also provides the context for an informal season of associated events including meetings of other distributed librarians and introductions to semantic web by experienced categorizors of networked digital data.
The first of these events is ’48 hour wake’ which begins at 12 midnight Friday 21st July ending at Midnight Sunday 23rd July.
The 48 hour wake with David Goldenberg and guests, uses participatory practices to examine how it is possible to disengage from the principle model of Euro centric Modern art tradition, including any mindset that one inherits before going onto develop new ways of thinking, and from there new ways of acting.
This event will be webcast for simultaneous viewing at East Open International and provides the opportunity for a wide range of persons to take part IP.
HTTP has free wireless access to the Internet so bring your laptops.
Feral Trade
Feral Trade is an initiative to develop new trade relations along social networks. Whilst never actually calling itself art, this project reveals the social-context, texture and aesthetics of this venture in ‘new international trade relations’, with coffee and sweets as its medium.
The use of the word ‘feral’ denotes a process which is wilfully wild (as in pigeon) as opposed to romantically or nature-wild (wolf). The passage of goods can open up wormholes between diverse social settings, routes along which other information, techniques or individuals can potentially travel.
Ruth Catlow’s review of Feral Trade Coffee.
ThE DiStRiBuTeD LiBrArY provides a resource for creative research that encourages a re-evaluation of where one stands in the world beyond the established canons, structures, processes and mediation.
Expect to find amongst the 250 books, fact, fiction and theory surrounding Net Art, New Media, Activism, Art & Technology, Wireless technology, Locative Media, Critical Thinking, Anarchism, Feminism, Marxism, Cyber culture and theory, Programming, Psychology, Complexity Theory, Pirate Broadcasting, Politics, Philosophy, Post-modernism, Gay and Lesbian writings, Underground Film and more.
Ron Briefel, an active Situationist, has distributed is personal library among a number of venues, people’s private homes, community centres, squats and galleries for public reading and lending.
HTTP also welcomes a recent loan of historic DIY journals and zines from the 90s from Media Arts Projects.
MAP’s most recent projects have been a series of workshops and events that emphasise skill-sharing, promoting the visibility of non-commercial uses of new technologies, and building local networks.
Physical Folksonomy
Whilst recent technological developments in semantic web and folksonomy allow digital files to appear in more than one category at once, the books in ThE DiStRiBuTeD LiBrArY exist in physical space. Develop a ‘Couple’s Catalogue’ to represent a mutual understanding or perhaps a a group of three would create a ‘Tripart Taxonomy’. Any structural additions to the fabric of the building to accommodate a reflection of your thinking will be considered. We hope to develop a range of strategies of specific relevance and use for the individuals and groups who visit HTTP.
References for Physical Folksonomy at HTTP:
The Faculty of Taxonomy at the University of Openness Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags by Clay Shirky.
David Goldenberg and guests will take part in a continous 48 hour wake at HTTP gallery. During this time they will stay awake while on-site inside HTTP gallery to dream, relax, take part in discussions and share ideas with a community who enter into the project.
The 48 hour wake examines how it is possible to disengage from any mindset that one inherits before going onto develop new ways of thinking, and from there, new ways of acting. The event is to be web cast so that it will be seen simultaneously at a venue in Norwich gallery as part of the East Open International – along with facilities that will allow the opportunity for a wide range of persons to take part in the discussions via Voice-Over IP.
The project develops a work staged last year for the STRUKTUR show at artist: network in New York.
1st – 27th March 2005
This warm and evocative cyber domestic work is a convergence of personal and political aesthetics that is reflective and declares a conscious subjectivity. Loseby’s internationally recognised net artworks demonstrate keen alertness to her’s and her viewers’ positioning in physical, virtual and political space.
In this exhibition, visitors are offered another experience of these relational dynamics. A bank of newspaper-covered TVs loop 10 video loops using a touch screen to display a large scale digital painting over-layed with headlines streamed live from online news networks.
Loseby’s internationally recognised net artworks always demonstrate keen alertness to her’s and her viewers’ positioning in physical, virtual and political space. In this exhibition, visitors are offered another experience of these relational dynamics.
A bank of newspaper-covered TVs loop 10 video clips of meal-times in the artist’s house. Viewers are invited to interact with the same video loops using a touch screen to display a large scale digital painting overlayed with headlines streamed live from online news networks.
We invite you to the opening of the exhibition to view the work and to meet the artist in person. 7 pm Tuesday 1st March 2005.
Images from the exhibition.
Eating Canvas is supported by the Arts Council of England.
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