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ENGINEERING CULTURE: On The Author as (Digital) Producer
Edited by Geoff Cox & Joasia Krysa
Published by Autonomedia
CC 2005 (all texts released under a Creative Commons License)
ISBN 1-57027-170-4
Paper perfectbound, 210x148 mm
240 pages
Outline:
Social change does not simply result from resistance to the existing set of conditions but from adapting and transforming the technical apparatus itself. Walter Benjamin in his essay 'The Author as Producer', written in 1934, recommends that the 'cultural producer' intervene in the production process in the manner of an engineer. The term 'engineer' is to be taken broadly to refer to technical and cultural activity, through the application of knowledge for the management, control and use of power. To act as an engineer in this sense, is to use power productively to bring about change and for public utility. This collection of essays and examples of contemporary cultural practices asks if this general line of thinking retains relevance for cultural production at this point in time - when activities of production, consumption and circulation operate through complex global networks served by information technologies.
Contents:
Introduction to The Author as (Digital) Producer
Geoff Cox & Joasia Krysa
Configuring The Future of Digital Art
etoy
The Macintosh Computer: Archetypal Capitalist Machine?
William Bowles
BIT Plane
Bureau of Inverse Technology
Cognitive Capitalism and the Contested Campus
Nick Dyer-Witheford
Engaging Ambivalence
The Institute for Applied Autonomy
Appropriated Technology Wiki
George Grinsted
The Producer as Power User
Pit Schultz
The Process is the Product
Redundant Technology Initiative
Bare Code: Net Art and the Free Software Movement
Josephine Berry Slater
London.pl
Harwood
Freaks of Number
Matthew Fuller
Roots Culture: Free Software Vibrations Inna Babylon
Armin Medosch
Rasta Software
Jaromil
X Notes on Practice
Raqs Media Collective
Notes on Contributors
Produced in association with Arts Council England and University of Plymouth.