Contents Open 13 The Rise of the Informal Media

Open 13
The Rise of the Informal Media
How Search Engines, Weblogs and YouTube Change Public Opinion.

The media through which news and information are gathered and exchanged have expanded significantly in the last several years. Weblogs, advanced search engines, virtual environments like Second Life, and phenomena such as MySpace, Hyves, Flickr and YouTube are offering new tools, communication opportunities, social networks and platforms for public debate. These are informal media, largely programmed, supplied and broadcast by the user – in contrast to conventional macromedia like television and the printed press, which are more institutionally determined. This issue examines what the implications of this are for the public sphere. Questions are raised, among other things, about how news and information are handled on the internet, about the conditions of our everyday media practices and about the opportunities for artists to work in a culture in which the lines between maker and user, between amateur and professional, are being blurred.

Jorinde Seijdel
Editorial
Online article

Oliver Marchart
The People and the Public
Radical Democracy and the Role of Public Media

According to political, cultural and media theorist Oliver Marchart, the degree to which public media are actually public depends on the political significance invested in the concept of democracy. He believes the main prerequisite for achieving a democratic media is the creation of an absolute democratic hegemony.

Martijn de Waal
From Media Landscape to Media Ecology
The Cultural Implications of Web 2.0
Online article

In this essay, media philosopher Martijn de Waal examines the implications of the rise of Web 2.0 for the public sphere and its democratic content. Who decides what is of value in the new media ecosystem and how do important processes take place?

Geert Lovink
Nihilism and the News
Blogging as a mental condition
Online article

In a recently published book, Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture, Geert Lovink analyses the impact of blogging on the public sphere. This essay is an updated version of one chapter of his book, ‘Blogging: The Nihilist Impulse’, in which Lovink sees blogging as an attitude aimed at undermining ‘the mighty and seductive power of the broadcast media’.

Richard Grusin
Publicity, Pornography, or Everyday Media Practice
On the Abu Ghraib Photographs

According to Richard Grusin, the reason that the photographs from Abu Ghraib triggered such a commotion is not that they cross the ethical boundaries of media practice. He believes that their similarity to everyday media practices of producing and circulating digital images is the cause.

Albert Benschop
Another Life in Cyberspace
The Peculiarities of Second Life

The rise of virtual worlds and the 3D web is accompanied by great transformations in the way in which we communicate and interact, publish and learn, meet people and have fun, do business and are involved in politics. The best-known and most flexible virtual world is Second Life (SL). Web sociologist Albert Benschop explores this digital world and compares the structure of the 3D web with the structure of the old, flat web.

David García
The Politics of Making
Effective Artistic Tools

Media researcher and artist David Garcia is dedicated to achieving effective media tactics by artists and internet activists. Despite the dominance of the commercial, absorbing services industry in which media are pervasive, Garcia believes that they are nonetheless able to offer ethical and critical services by developing tools. He discusses projects by Bricolabs and Mongrel, among others.

Column

Henry Jenkins
Nine Propositions towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube

Interview

Willem van Weelden
Wading in the Info Sea
An Interview with Richard Rogers

How can the web be understood as both a symptom and an expression of a public practice? According to what logic do search engines work and how do they influence the way we deal with knowledge, news and information? Web epistemology is a new research practice that regards the web as a separate knowledge culture and advocates giving an ear to what lies beyond all the din. An interview with Richard Rogers, web epistemologist at the University of Amsterdam, author of Information Politics on the Web, founder of the Govcom.org Foundation and developer of the Issue Crawler, an ‘info-political tool’.

Geert van de Wetering
Hot Spot
Impetus Towards Innovation of Public Broadcasting
Online article

Hot Spot is an initiative of the VPRO media provider to examine how an innovative programme can be developed within the Dutch public broadcasting system. The editors of Open asked Geert van de Wetering, one of the programmers of Hot Spot, to put together a supplement about this initiative. He invited several authors to contribute outlooks on public broadcasting based on their individual perspectives against the backdrop of the experience society and new digital techniques.

Jorinde Seijdel
The Subversive Effect of the Shadow Archive
On Florian Göttke’s Toppled
Online article

Florian Göttke collected hundreds of press and amateur photographs of the toppling of statues of Saddam Hussein from the internet. He used this digital archive to create the iconographic project Toppled, as well as a special contribution to this issue of Open.1 Toppled raises urgent questions about contemporary forms of iconoclasm and iconolatry, about the aesthetic and political effect of images in the contemporary public domain and about the potential of subversive shadow archives.

Artists contributions

Florian Göttke
Toppled

Artist Florian Göttke has contributed a submission on his Toppled-project, created especially for Open 13, in collaboration with German graphic designer Felix Wiegand. Its pages are distributed throughout the issue. Jorinde Seijdel wrote an essay about the project.

TEAM TCHM
Hollow Model

Art historian Kirsten Algera and designer Felix Janssens, of the design agency TEAM TCHM, have launched the project PRaudioGuide, in which they reflect on the ‘hybrid city’ and the role the mass media play in it. In connection with the radio documentary ‘De Nieuwste Buzz: op zoek naar échte media’ (The Latest Buzz: In Search of Real Media), the editors of Open asked them to submit a contribution. Hollow Model features templates of the quasi-public in political communications.

Bookreviews

Omar Muñoz Cremer
Joke Brouwer and Arjen Mulder (eds.), Interact or Die!, NAi Publishers and V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media.

Arie Altena
Three Blogs Devoted to Contemporary Art
http://www.ctrlaltdelete.org
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com
http://www.trendbeheer.com

Eric Kluitenberg
Ned Rossiter, Organized Networks: Media Theory, Creative Labour, New Institutions, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, in association with the Institute of Network Cultures, Hogeschool van Amsterdam.

Pascal Gielen
Lex ter Braak, Gitta Luiten, Taco de Neef and Steven van Teeseling (eds.), Second Opinion. Over beeldende kunstsubsidie in Nederland, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, 2007.