Re-hacking your World

12.01.2009

Re-hacking your World

Thur 29 Jan, Digital Greenhouse

Re-hacking your World examines issues of crisis and possibility by intervening in the relationships between environment, industry and culture. Has our cultural hardware and software become useless and unserviceable faced with the complex challenges that confront us? In order to prevent a complete takeover of commercial interests in the development of digital cultures in Africa, Asia and Latin America, it becomes essential to promote and strengthen the vocabulary of open source systems and develop fair use mechanisms.

Re-hacking your World examines issues of crisis and possibility by intervening in the relationships between environment, industry and culture. Has our cultural hardware and software become useless and unserviceable faced with the complex challenges that confront us? In order to prevent a complete takeover of commercial interests in the development of digital cultures in Africa, Asia and Latin America, it becomes essential to promote and strengthen the vocabulary of open source systems and develop fair use mechanisms.

12:00 - Sensible Software
Hosted by: Andrea Goetzke, with
Dominique Malaquais
, Geraldine de Bastion, Alex Gakuru (Kenya), Evans Ikua (Kenya), James Wire Lunghabo (Uganda), Nhlanhla Mabaso (South Africa), Aslam Raffee (South Africa)

With the worldwide largest mobile growth rates and promises of being connected to the global fibreoptic network soon, new possibilities are dawning on Africa's horizon. Digital cultures in African countries are developing now. How do today's digital developments impact on every-day life? Has the course been set by foreign companies' emerging commercial interests and are donors' preferences leading the way? Or are African countries creating their own visions and realities of digital cultures and societies? Digital islands are emerging, offering innovative, adapted solutions to specific local needs as alternatives to the mainstream. The session will explore some of these initiatives working towards self-determined, relevant, economically sustainable, and change-making paths into Africa's digital future.

15:30 - Fair Trade Hardware
Hosted by: Aymeric Mansoux, with
Gisle Frøysland (Piksel), Massimo Banzi (tinker.it), Martin Howse (XXXXX), Juha Huuskonen (pixelache), Adam Somlai-Fischer (kitchen budapest)

While FLOSS is still keeping artists and curators busy with ways that digital art can be produced and distributed in a connected society, a new artistic and conceptual challenge has recently surfaced: open source hardware. What is open about open source hardware? In much the same way as open licenses define the freedom of FLOSS software, open source hardware will need to be defined, and this definition needs to be developed further at an industrial and economic level. Many artists embraced FLOSS for political reasons, and are beginning to do the same now with open source hardware. But is it that simple? It is time to shed some light on the dark side of open source hardware.

19:00 - I Saw Disaster
Vera Tollmann, with Birgit Richard and Timothy Druckrey

Youtube-Videos are society's mirror and vox populi within the climate change discourse. On Youtube you find numerous amateur videos showing catastrophes like Katrina or earthquakes in Sichuan and their impact. Tourists are booking trips to the arctic glaciers filming the elapsing ice and creating documents like 'Hubbard Glacier Alaska Sightseeing' and 'Glacier falls on tourists'. Natur becomes Hollywood becomes spectacle. I Saw Disaster examines the sites of fracture between amateur clips, footage and documentary by analyzing, commenting and discussing content and aesthetic of these clips.

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