Expose and Repurpose: Opposing Self-Commodification

Moderator: Ben Vickers With Erica Scourti, Sebastian Schmieg

A discussion on how artistic practices outplay or disrupt processes of self-commodification.

At Haus der Kulturen der Welt Friday, 30 Jan 2015

Conference Stream: Work

Son of a barge man, Michel Serres joined the Ecole Navale in 1949 and the Ecole Normale supérieure in 1952 where he obtained the aggregation of philosophy in 1955. From 1956 to 1958, he served as an officer of the navy: squadron of the Atlantic, reopening of the Suez Canal, Algeria, and squadron of the Mediterranean Sea.   Michel Serres defended his thesis in 1968 and taught philosophy in Clermont-Ferrand, Vincennes (Paris I) and at Standford University. In his books, he focuses, among other themes, on the history of sciences (“Hermes”, 1969-1980). His philosophy, concerning as much sensibility as conceptual intelligence, searches for the possible junctions between exact sciences and social sciences.    He has been appointed to the Académie Française in 1990 and became commandeur of the Légion d’honneur.   Rigorous epistemologist, he is also concerned by education and diffusion of knowledge. 

What is it about a particular media that makes it successful? Drawing a mini history from printing-press smudges to digital compression artefacts this lecture considers the value of error, chance and adaptation in contemporary media. Biological evolution unfolds through error, noise and mistake. Perhaps if we want to maximise the potential of media, of digital text and compressed file formats, we first need to determine their inherent redundancy. Or, more profoundly, to devise ways to maximise or even increase that redundancy. This presentation was designed and delivered as part of Coventry University, Media and Communication Department’s ‘Open Media‘ lecture series. Please browse the Open-Media /stream and related tags (in left column) for more material

(Audio recording of talk coming very soon)

Many thanks to Janneke Adema for inviting me to present this talk and for all her hard work with the series and podcast.

The concept of openness is often employed as part of a radical critique of the closed-off worlds of what might be called ‘traditional media’. It is variously used to urge for the right to transparency, the ethics of sharing, the value of re-use and the benefits of connecting.

This series of research seminars will explore various aspects of openness. Special attention will be given to the benefits and drawbacks of openness, and to the many possibilities openness offers for the future of media production, use and critique.

The question is pretty simple: in the not-too-distant future you and I will have had our entire genomes sequenced (except perhaps those of you in California) - so how much hard drive space will our genomes take up?

Andrew calculates that a genome will take up about two CDs worth of data, but that's only if it's stored in one possible format (a text file storing one copy of each and every DNA letter in your sequence). There are other ways you might want to keep your genome depending on what your purpose is.

The executive summary For those who don't want to read through the tedious details that follow, here's the take-home message: if you want to store the data in a raw format for later re-analysis, you're looking at between 2 and 30 terabytes (one terabyte = 1,000 gigabytes). A much more user-friendly format, though, would be as a file containing each and every DNA letter in your genome, which would take up around 1.5 gigabytes (small enough for three genomes to fit on a standard data

The author of Grown Up Digital, Don Tapscott, refutes the belief that the internet is turning today's youth into "the dumbest generation". Tapscott illustrates how the net has changed the way people learn and offers suggestions on how to tap into the expertise that the Net Generation possesses.

TED has earned a lot of attention over the years for many reasons, including the nature and quality of its short-form conference presentations. All presenters lucky enough to be asked to speak at TED are given 18-minute slots maximum (some are for even less time such as 3- and 6-minute slots). Some who present at TED are not used to speaking on a large stage, or are at least not used to speaking on their topic with strict time restraints. TED does not make a big deal publicly out of the TED Commandments, but many TED presenters have referenced the speaking guidelines in their talks and in their blogs over the years (e.g., Ben Saunders).