“Decentralised computer infrastructure does not necessarily mean decentralised power” *
Announcing a new film and groundbreaking collaboration
The Blockchain: Change everything forever WATCH HERE
This new film released online on 3 October 2016 by Furtherfield in collaboration with Digital Catapult broadens the current debate about the impact of emerging blockchain technologies.
The underpinning technology of Bitcoin digital currency, the Blockchain is reshaping concepts of value, trust, law and governance. This film sets out to diversify the people involved in its future by bringing together leading thinkers, computer scientists, entrepreneurs, artists and activists who discuss:
What can a blockchain do?
Who builds this new reality?
How will we rule ourselves?
How will the future be different because of the Blockchain?
This is a unique collaboration between Furtherfield, dedicated to new forms of cooperation in arts, technology and society and Digital Catapult, an organisation dedicated to growing the UK digital economy.
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PRESS RELEASE (.pdf)
TRANSCRIPT (.pdf)
Directed by Pete Gomes
Concept, research and development by Ruth Catlow, Furtherfield, Co-founder and Co-director.
Contributors: Dr Anat Elhalal, Digital Catapult; Ben Vickers, Co-founder unMonastery and Curator of Digital, Serpentine Galleries; Dr Catherine Mulligan, Research Fellow, Associate Director – Centre for Cryptocurrency Research, Imperial College; Elias Haase, Developer, Thinker, Beekeeper, Founder of B9lab; Irra Ariella Khi, Co-founder and CEO Vchain Technology; Jaime Sevilla, developer, researcher, GHAYA , #hackforgood; Jaya Klara Brekke, digital strategy, design, research and curating, Durham University; Kei Kreutler, Independent Researcher, Co-founder unMonastery; Pavlo Tanasyuk, CEO BlockVerify; Rhea Myers, artist, writer, hacker; Sam Davies, Lead Technologist – Creative Programmes, Digital Catapult; Vinay Gupta, resilience guru, Hexayurt
Pixelache Festival 2016, Helsinki, Finland. 22-25 September 2016
BLOCKCHAIN MEETUP, London Digital Catapult Centre, London, UK. 27 October 2016
INAUGURAL BRISBANE BLOCKCHAIN SYMPOSIUM 2016, Brisbane, Australia. 3 November 2016
The Blockchain – Change everything forever has been made as part of Furtherfield’s Art Data Money programme which seeks to build a commons for the arts in the network age. A book, Artists Re:Thinking The Blockchain in partnership with itinerant publisher and arts organisation Torque will be published in Spring 2017 with the prequel due out November 2016.
Furtherfield is an international hub for arts, technology and social change. Since 1997, Furtherfield has created online platforms and physical places for exhibitions, labs and debates where different types of people explore today’s important questions. Furtherfield is an Arts Council England ‘National Portfolio’ organisation with a Gallery and Lab in London’s Finsbury Park http://furtherfield.org/
Digital Catapult works with SMEs to help them grow and scale faster. It helps larger corporates in their digital transformation. It does this through programmes of collaboration and open innovation, by bringing academic leading edge expertise into the mix combined with the organisation’s own business and technological expertise. https://digital.catapult.org.uk
For any additional materials and interviews
Please contact Ruth Catlow
ruth.catlow@furtherfield.org
@furtherfield
A Furtherfield film made in collaboration with Digital Catapult, with support from Arts Council England and Southbank Centre.
Blockchain: Change everything forever
What is the Blockchain?
The Blockchain is the underpinning technology for Bitcoin digital currency, and is said to be at the same stage of development as the World Wide Web in the late 1980s. Its promoters claim that the global deployment of smart contracts via this new decentralised protocol will change everything forever.
The Blockchain in Context
In 2008 Bitcoin, the first global digital currency was described in a white paper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. While the WWW facilitated a worldwide (economic and social) revolution in the global distribution of information, the Blockchain, would facilitate secure, decentralised record-keeping, exchange of digital assets and the mining and exchange of computationally secured value.
Since 2013 blockchains have become a focus for investment by world banks, FinTechs and corporations who predict a fourth industrial revolution of super-automation and hyperconnectivity. This is also accompanied by predictions from the World Economic Forum of increased global inequity.
In this version of the future, code replaces legislation. “Code becomes law”. Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) route around systems of regulation and taxation via immutable smart contracts, globally deployed across the Blockchain.
The film The Blockchain: Change everything forever proposes that people from diverse disciplines and backgrounds should be involved to work out how Blockchain technologies can be shaped for more decentralised power, diverse needs and interests into the future.
*Jaya Klara Brekke, Digital strategy, design, research and curating, Durham University
Furtherfield in partnership with the antiuniversity and Radical Think Tank are proud to present this new 6-part course.
Aimed at people with an interest in radical social change, the course will apply concepts from complex systems theory to understanding (and creating) revolutions and social movements.
The course is directed at a general rather than academic audience, although a desire for radical social change will be assumed.
6.30 – 8.30pm at Furtherfield Commons, inside the park near Finsbury Gate
Booking essential – Please book here
Tue 27 Sept – Introduction to Complex Systems
Tue 4 Oct – Smash the System – Creating and Harnessing chaos
Tue 11 Oct – Erode the System – Building the New World in the Shell of the Old
Tue 18 Oct – Escape the System – Bodily Affect and Surviving Oppression
Tue 25 Oct – Tame the System – Reforms without Reformism
Tue 1 Nov – Bringing it All Together – A Trajectory for Revolution
Sessions will involves a mix of speaker presentation and participatory discussions/activities, covering subjects such as ecology, network theory and new materialist philosophy.
Other familiar concepts will be re-examined through this framework, including the commons, chaos, structural oppression and reform.
The ultimate goal is for this knowledge to be put into practice to create more effective activism, to contribute to better understanding the workings of contemporary society and to help inspire projects for building future utopian alternatives.
Graham Jones is an activist based in East London, working with groups such as Radical Assembly, Radical Housing Network and Radical Think Tank.
For those unwaged or on low income the course is free (or donate what you can). Choose either the Free Ticket or Donation ticket in the links above.
For everyone else, individual sessions are £5 + booking fee. A prebooking of all 6 sessions is available for £25 + booking fee.
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