Upgrade! New York

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Tag Archives: activism

events

Crowdsourcing Labor – Distributed Democracy or Centralized Sweatshop?

November 11, 2009; 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm.
The Change You Want To See - 84 Havemeyer Street, Brooklyn
Stephanie Rothenberg & Jeff Crouse - Invisible Threads

Stephanie Rothenberg & Jeff Crouse - Invisible Threads

Upgrade! NY continues its series on open source as it relates to activism and creative practice.

Within activist and creative practice there is a range of models for mobilizing the labor and creativity of the crowd (aka “crowdsourcing”). Both practices experiment with a spectrum of autonomy and control within those models. From distributed design to distributed fundraising, MoveOn to Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcer issues a call and creates structure for participation.

What role do individual motivations and collective goals play within these structures? What are the ethical, social and political implications of distributed labor?

Panelists include xtine, artist, educator and creator of the Mechanical Olympics; Jeff Crouse, Eyebeam senior fellow, artist, technologist and co-creator (with Stephanie Rothenberg) of the Invisible Threads virtual jeans factory; and Beka Economopoulos, online organizer, consultant and curator at The Change You Want To See Gallery.

This event will take place at The Change You Want to See, 84 Havemeyer Street, Brooklyn.

Go here to view the live stream and participate in the conversation!

Upgrade! NY is co-produced by Eyebeam and Not An Alternative.

This is a prelude event to the conference, The Internet as Playground and Factory: a conference on digital labor at the Eugene Lang College, The New School, New York, NY, November 12-14.

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events

Free as in what? A debate on open source vs. free software

October 29, 2009; 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.
Eyebeam - 540 W21st Street, New York

What do we mean by ‘freedom’? Should Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) necessarily be powered by radical politics of ownership and collaboration? Or is the latching of “Free Software” ideological baggage limiting the full transformative power of “Open Source”. How are these questions informed by licenses? Are some licenses more open than others? More ethical than others? This emotional debate has been in the heart of FLOSS from its early days and has created camps and animosities within the community.

Upgrade! NY continues its program series on open source as it relates to activism and creative practice. Join us for a discussion and debate on what constitutes freedom within the Open Source and Free Culture movements. We will examine the strong ideological differences through a provocative panel discussion with Gabriella Coleman and Zachary Lieberman.

Biella Coleman

Gabriella Coleman

Gabriella Coleman is an anthropologist who examines ethics and online collaboration as well as the role of the law and new media technologies in extending and critiquing liberal values and sustaining new forms of political activism. Between 2001-2003 she conducted ethnographic research on computer hackers primarily in San Francisco, the Netherlands, as well as those hackers who work on the largest free software project, Debian. She is completing a book manuscript “Coding Freedom: Hacker Pleasure and the Ethics of Free and Open Source Software” (under contract with Princeton University Press) and is starting a new project on peer to peer patient activism on the Internet. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including ones from the National Science Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council.

Zach Lieberman

Zach Lieberman

Zachary Lieberman’s work uses technology in a playful way to explore the nature of communication and the delicate boundary between the visible and the invisible. He creates performances, installations and on-line works that investigate gestural input, augmentation of the body and kinetic response. Recently, he helped create visuals for the facade of the new Ars Electronica Museum, wrote software for an augmented reality card trick, and helped develop an open source eye tracker to help a paralyzed graffiti artist draw again. In addition to making artistic work, Lieberman is a co-creator of openframeworks, a toolkit for creative coding and teaches at Parsons School of Design.

Upgrade! NY is co-produced by Eyebeam and Not An Alternative.

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events

How To How To

July 23, 2009; 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm.
Eyebeam - 540 W21st Street, New York
Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray - Window Farm

Britta Riley & Rebecca Bray

Upgrade! NY
July 23, 2009

At the previous Upgrade! New York gathering, writer/theorist Clay Shirky suggested that the most successful open source collaborations are those that use recipe-like methods to share information. In order to explore this idea further, this month’s discussion examined recipes, instructions, and open source collaboration. Participants included Eyebeam residents Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley, artist/writer/activist Marisa Jahn, and Instructables community manager Billy Gordon. Presentations by all participants were followed by a discussion and Q&A.

About the Participants
Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray are artists working to create crowdsourced R&D solutions for environmental issues. Their current project, Window Farms, seeks to create a new Research & Development model which puts the awesome power of discovery and creation into the hands of the masses, and then spread the know-how to every participant. windowfarms.org/

Marisa Jahn is an artist/writer/activist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes systems. In 2009, she co-founded /REV/-, a non-profit organization that fosters socially-engaged art, design, and pedagogy. Jahn is also the co-editor of ‘Recipes for an Encounter’ (Western Front, 2009). Through an interdisciplinary lens that brings together art, architecture, literature, and political science, “Recipes for an Encounter” explores the anticipatory nature of recipes together with their promise of what will unfold, take place, be consumed.
www.marisajahn.com

As a former community manager and content producer for Instructables.com, Billy Gordon worked on various projects, such as building a giant 8 foot scale replica of a kitchen match and branding himself with an industrial cutting/engraving laser. His projects have been published in Make Magazine and PC Magazine.com, which named his Lego USB charger one of “The 10 Coolest Lego Inspired Gadgets”. www.instructables.com/member/Tetranitrate/

events

Talk by Clay Shirky: Forking, Failing, and Open Source

June 18, 2009; 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm.
The Change You Want To See Gallery - 84 Havemeyer Street, Brooklyn

Upgrade! NY
June 18, 2009

As an introduction to this season’s theme for Upgrade! New York, Clay Shirky discussed the concepts of forking and failure in the open source process, and its value to the context of activism and the creative process.

Upgrade NY: Clay Shirky on Forking, Failure, and Open Source (Part 1) from Not An Alternative on Vimeo.

Upgrade NY: Clay Shirky on Forking, Failure, and Open Source (Part 2) from Not An Alternative on Vimeo.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky is a writer, educator, and consultant on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. He is an adjunct professor at New York University (NYU) in their graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he teaches courses on the interrelationships of social and technological networks, particularly how they shape culture and vice-versa. He consults to a variety of organizations on network technologies, and is an acknowledged expert on collaboration tools, social networks, peer-to-peer sharing, collaborative filtering, and Open Source development. Clay has spoken and written extensively on the Internet since 1996, with regular columns in Business 2.0, FEED, OpenP2P.com and his own shirky.com blogsite. He has appeared in The New York Times, Time, The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and others. In his new book, “Here Comes Everybody”, Clay explores how organizations and industries are being upended by open networks, collaboration, and user appropriation of content production and dissemination.

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events

Subversive Tech and Burma’s Struggle for Democracy

April 27, 2009; 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm.
The Change You Want To See Gallery - 84 Havemeyer Street, Brooklyn

burma_march22

Upgrade! NY
April 27, 2009

We are pleased to announce that Upgrade! New York is now co-produced in collaboration with Brooklyn-based activist organization Not An Alternative, and will focus on topics related to open source activist and creative practices for the upcoming year.

This gathering took place at Not An Alternative’s storefront gallery space, The Change You Want To See, and featured a talk and video screening from the September 2007 Monk protests, known as the Saffron Revolution, in which mobile phones and the internet allowed protesters to coordinate and publicize the largest protests seen in a generation.

Co-presented by Not An Alternative and Digital Democracy

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events

Partnering with the 2008 World Science Festival

May 29, 2008; 7:00 pm;
Eyebeam - 540 W21st Street, New York
Bio-Terrorism or Art?   

Upgrade! NY
May 29, 2008

Art in the Age of Terrorism

Dr. Steven Kurtz, the artist accused by the US Department of Justice of “bioterrorism” stemming from his use of scientific materials in his award-winning art practice, and science writer Carl Zimmer for a panel discussion on the ethics of scientific and creative research and freedom of speech. Read On »

events

Eco-Vis Challenge Critique

November 8, 2007; 7:00 pm;
Eyebeam - 540 W21st Street, New York

eco-vis

Upgrade! NY
November 8, 2007

Eyebeam hosted a public critique for the Eco-Vis Challenge submissions as part of the Upgrade! series of public programming.

A distinguished panel of New York-based artists and designers discussed what role an art and technology center can play in raising public awareness on environmental issues, and how visualizing environmental data can address the crisis. The guest critics not only dicussed their criteria for a useful, engaging, and successful visualization project, but were available to give in-depth feedback to the Eco-Vis Challenge participants. Read On »

events

“Blank Spots on a Map: State Secrecy and the Geography of Nowhere” with Trevor Paglen

October 4, 2007; 7:30 pm;
Eyebeam - 540 W21st Street, New York
Trevor Paglen

Upgrade! NY
October 4, 2007

Trevor Paglen presented his projects and collaborations, which included his current Eyebeam commission. Joined by the Eyebeam Production Fellows, Jeff Crouse, Evan Harper, Geraldine Juárez and Chris Sugrue, his collaborators on his commissioned piece with Eyebeam, Paglen detailed the project and progress to date.

Read On »

events

“Real Costs” with Michael Mandiberg

May 10, 2007; 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm.
Eyebeam - 540 W21st Street, New York
real cost

Upgrade! NY
May 10, 2007

Eyebeam Resident Michael Mandiberg presented a talk and workshop about his new project Real Costs. Attendees were encouraged to bring a laptop to play along. Programming knowledge was useful.

This hybrid talk/workshop included a 30 minute presentation of the project, and how it related to Michael’s previous work, followed by guided modding of the script. Michael provided a focused walk through of the code, and then set everyone free to make some modifications and provided feedback for the project.

Read On »

events

“The Call to Duty in the 21st Century” with Leon Reid

March 29, 2007; 8:30 pm to 10:00 pm.
Eyebeam - 540 W21st Street, New York
leon reid

Upgrade! NY
March 29, 2007

Presenting a discussion and critique with Open City artist Leon Reid IV.

Reid presented his talk “The Call to Duty in the 21st Century”. How has the practice of street art redeemed the position of the Artist in contemporary society? Take a ride through history with street artist Leon Reid (Darius Jones) and explore what art has meant to civilizations of the past, where it got lost in contemporary Western society, and how the street artist is redefining what it means to be an “Artist”.