<div dir="ltr"><div><div>Hi everyone<br></div>This is Ergin Bulut. Let me briefly introduce myself.<br><br></div>I recently finished my PhD at the University of Illinois and took a position at the Department of Media and Visual Arts at Koc University, Istanbul. <br>
<br>I wrote my dissertation on the labor process and spatialization in the video game industry. For the conference, I will present on the relationship between financialization and subjectivity of immaterial laborers in the industry. I am really looking forward to the conference, the first of which I attended as part of audience and learned a lot. Best wishes to all<br>
Ergin<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 3:00 PM, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:idc-request@mailman.thing.net" target="_blank">idc-request@mailman.thing.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Send iDC mailing list submissions to<br>
<a href="mailto:idc@mailman.thing.net">idc@mailman.thing.net</a><br>
<br>
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit<br>
<a href="https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc" target="_blank">https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc</a><br>
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to<br>
<a href="mailto:idc-request@mailman.thing.net">idc-request@mailman.thing.net</a><br>
<br>
You can reach the person managing the list at<br>
<a href="mailto:idc-owner@mailman.thing.net">idc-owner@mailman.thing.net</a><br>
<br>
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific<br>
than "Re: Contents of iDC digest..."<br>
<br>
<br>
Today's Topics:<br>
<br>
1. Re: Instagram & Introductions (Nathan Schneider)<br>
<br>
<br>
----------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
Message: 1<br>
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 10:01:54 -0500<br>
From: Nathan Schneider <<a href="mailto:nathan@therowboat.com">nathan@therowboat.com</a>><br>
To: <a href="mailto:idc@mailman.thing.net">idc@mailman.thing.net</a><br>
Subject: Re: [iDC] Instagram & Introductions<br>
Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:538F34E2.3080704@therowboat.com">538F34E2.3080704@therowboat.com</a>><br>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; Format="flowed"<br>
<br>
Thanks for this vigorous start to what I know will be a rich discussion.<br>
<br>
I'll be somewhat briefer. Greetings from Quito, Ecuador, where I've just<br>
finished a round of reporting on the FLOK Society project, which held a<br>
summit to design open-knowledge policies for the country. I'm a<br>
journalist currently in the midst of a series of magazine stories (for<br>
The Nation, Vice, Chronicle of Higher Ed, Hemispheres, etc.) about<br>
struggles over digital and material commonses. Before that, I wrote a<br>
book each about God <<a href="http://www.therowboat.com/books/god-in-proof/" target="_blank">http://www.therowboat.com/books/god-in-proof/</a>> and<br>
Occupy Wall Street <<a href="http://www.therowboat.com/books/thank-you-anarchy/" target="_blank">http://www.therowboat.com/books/thank-you-anarchy/</a>>.<br>
I am also working with the Social Science Research Council on a project<br>
about digital culture and religion, which will result in several<br>
meetings and a book.<br>
<br>
I'll be speaking at the conference about the commons of time, and the<br>
ways in which digital capitalism continues to roll back what historian<br>
Benjamin Hunnicut calls "the lost American dream" of leisure time.<br>
<br>
I'm really looking forward to the conference, and to meeting you. In the<br>
meantime, please feel free to let me know about any tips related to:<br>
<br>
* organizing digital labor<br>
* the politics of scholarly publishing<br>
* communities that digital culture leaves out<br>
* discourses of the commons<br>
* overlaps between online and offline political struggle<br>
* innovations in cooperative financing<br>
<br>
Nathan<br>
<br>
?<br>
Nathan Schneider / <a href="http://therowboat.com" target="_blank">therowboat.com</a><br>
/God in Proof <<a href="http://www.therowboat.com/books/god-in-proof/" target="_blank">http://www.therowboat.com/books/god-in-proof/</a>>/ / /Thank<br>
You, Anarchy <<a href="http://www.therowboat.com/books/thank-you-anarchy" target="_blank">http://www.therowboat.com/books/thank-you-anarchy</a>>/<br>
<br>
On 06/03/2014 02:19 PM, Samuel Tannert wrote:<br>
> Cross-pollination is the key to life. In the abstract, I mean.<br>
> Communication, the process of producing difference, et cetera.<br>
><br>
> I took on the Instagram feed for #DL14, but I am yet to figure out how<br>
> exactly to take photos of digital labor. I have never been a photo<br>
> archivist in any meaningful way. The whole act seems too much effort<br>
> -- take out the camera, lens-cap off / camera-app on,<br>
> frame-focus-shoot -- and so none of my Facebook photos are my own. And<br>
> I have never been good with aesthetics in any meaningful way. Possibly<br>
> a fear of taste? I desired white jeans one winter, but mostly a<br>
> top-of-the-pile heuristic has helped me through the daily fashion<br>
> requirement. Despite my own inadequacies, however, the Instagram must<br>
> go on/line!<br>
><br>
> Initially I wanted it stylish/-ized with a particular form, e.g.<br>
> always the hands or just handwritten words. Repetition is<br>
> advantageously reductionist in that the pattern has certain<br>
> intertextual demands which can substitute for nuanced critique,<br>
> passing the buck from artist to audience; a cabinet of curiosities<br>
> speaks in a way a baseball-card collection cannot.. "I think." Digital<br>
> labor seems to me more than a series of instances to be cataloged.<br>
> Digital technologies are so pervasively immanent, "at once everywhere<br>
> and soon to come everywhere else," and the more I think about what to<br>
> photogram the more it seems I would have to capture the world itself.<br>
> Labor_Digital14 sits empty. Much/All of my time has been spent<br>
> thinking about what is possible:<br>
><br>
> A photo of hands typing on a keyboard is a necessity. & texting. If<br>
> you crunch the numbers we spend something like 60% of our waking day<br>
> doing this and I think omission would be deceit, here. The salient bit<br>
> is that digital labor can be captured at the point of human action on<br>
> the interface -- a kind of straightforward realist framing which blurs<br>
> the difference between perception by the tool & that of the human.<br>
> This conflation demands a search for all sorts of interesting<br>
> interactions with different digital technologies, looking with the eye<br>
> and capturing with the camera: e.g. programming the VCR<br>
> #throwbackthursday, gaming keyboards #MoreButtonsThanGod, or an<br>
> 11-hour time-lapse of a keyboard in use #2real.<br>
><br>
> Then there's the tension between the screen and the camera -- that<br>
> strange distance provoked by a photo of a monitor or someone<br>
> videotaping the TV. It doesn't really work, right? The extra agential<br>
> layer puts the user at such a level of abstraction from the object<br>
> that the role the representing apparatus plays becomes frustratingly<br>
> apparent -- 'learn to take a screenshot, buddy!' And that's it: the<br>
> screenshot understands the digital environment without the additional<br>
> abstraction in a kind of Bogost/alien-phenomenology, 'what does the<br>
> object see?' I keep wanting to use the word 'hyperreal' for semantic<br>
> integrity, but the baggage would suggest that the objects captured are<br>
> somehow merely symbolic which I don't mean at all.. Either way, the<br>
> capturing of the digital environment still demands a searching, but<br>
> within hyperspace and with hyperspatial vision.<br>
><br>
> And that all is just the first-order stuff! Then you've got the<br>
> innumerable material and ideal abstractions of digital labor,<br>
> reductively defined: industry and theory & art. On one hand I could<br>
> seek out that activity which our digital activities are predicated<br>
> upon, e.g. the ConEd guy out front of the apartment with a jackhammer<br>
> at 2 AM or, taken far more seriously, the now infamous 'FoxConn girl'<br>
> selfie. On the other hand I could go PostSecret and photograph the<br>
> symbolic abstraction, e.g. whiteboard sketch-ups, highlighted<br>
> quotations in worn books, art & more art in its broadest sense. If you<br>
> allow some kind of abstraction everything becomes associated with<br>
> digital labor, ~'no outside to capitalism.'<br>
><br>
> Digital Labor: DIGITAL LABOR. BIG. To really understand it you have to<br>
> come from all these different angles.. and that's been Hollywood's<br>
> problem all along, no? You can capture the person using the interface,<br>
> but it's someone just someone tak-a-taking away; or you can capture<br>
> the on-screen image, but it's just a bunch of boring input boxes. The<br>
> synthetic experience of using a computer is really difficult to<br>
> capture from outside, and also in our real lives -- watching someone<br>
> use a computer is painfully alienating.<br>
><br>
> So the film industry's first instinct was to only engage with digital<br>
> technologies through science fiction and I think this worked pretty<br>
> well. Either interfaces were made gesture/voice controlled so that<br>
> action & intent were apparent, or hyperspace was made material through<br>
> Hackers-esque VR goggles and graphical user interfaces (e.g., [HACK<br>
> MAINFRAME] [CANCEL]). Then for a while they settled on a 3-quarters<br>
> over-the-shoulder shot in a kind of defeatist realism, but now that's<br>
> changing! Shows are using overlays with the screen display stuck on<br>
> top of the picture, a kind of hyper-/material collage: House of Cards,<br>
> Sherlock, used often with texting. It's all very stylish and I can<br>
> only imagine that there was extensive audience testing done --<br>
> kidding.. maybe? It really is a significant advance in capturing our<br>
> experience of digital technologies, affect of a higher fidelity. We<br>
> have realized that one part of the act simply won't do.<br>
><br>
> So why Instagram at all? Is it necessary? Useful? I think it has to<br>
> be, because we live in a world of digital labor. The 'experience' of<br>
> digital technologies extends beyond the productive sphere and has<br>
> wormed its way into life itself. It is grafted to our collective<br>
> being. & Instagram is set up for this capturing of instances, not in<br>
> the sense of a Google Image Search ontology, but a Web-2.0 stream<br>
> epistemology. Instagram is useful in that it allows the crowd-sourcing<br>
> of a particular aspect of the whole which is most descriptive in<br>
> combination with other methods of knowing.<br>
><br>
> Turn left and I'm sure you could see this move coming, but I mean to<br>
> be very sincere: I really think that #DL14 will succeed in this way,<br>
> in the sense of a more complete picture than we have ever had before.<br>
> The Instagram aside, I have had the pleasure of reading innumerable<br>
> abstracts for projects of all kinds coming at the problem of digital<br>
> labor from so many angles (3 x BIG) -- a proper attempt at mapping the<br>
> kosmos. More subdued: we are all in for a treat.<br>
><br>
> A number of presentations tackle the problem of digital labor with a<br>
> very realist edge, from the panel of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers<br>
> which will provide a first-hand account of the emerging crowd-sourcing<br>
> industry to Henry Warwick's solo-performance of Terry Riley's "In C,"<br>
> written for 11 to 35 performers, which will make visible the<br>
> 'redundancies' in the labor market caused by digital technologies.<br>
> Others will engage with the hypermaterial, from Karin Hansson's<br>
> social-networking platform AffectMachine which attempts to commodify<br>
> human interaction to Carl DiSalvo and his team's reconfiguration of<br>
> civil society as something which can be 'hacked' through the<br>
> development of grassroots digital infrastructure. Others will be<br>
> slightly abstracted: Miriam Cherry will be giving an account of the<br>
> legal framework through which minimum wage could be extended to<br>
> crowd-workers, Gavin Mueller will be giving a history of the<br>
> piracy/'warez' scene, Frank Pasquale will work through the question of<br>
> whether we might someday "automate the automators" by replacing the<br>
> managerial class with algorithmic processes. There will even be a<br>
> stand-up comedy routine by Benj Gerdes, which I hope will let us laugh<br>
> despite the often overwhelming confrontation which is the conference's<br>
> focus. There are so many fantastic projects that I do not have the<br>
> space to list here, and I am awestruck, really, at just how unique<br>
> each submission was.<br>
><br>
> I have incredibly high hopes for #DL14 as an opportunity for a<br>
> meaningful advance of the whole field of digital labor studies.<br>
> Youthful idealism included, I feel like we live in a period of<br>
> particular import as both departure and genesis, situated as we are at<br>
> the turn of the millennium. There could not be an assembly more<br>
> capable of shouldering that responsibility than all of you.<br>
><br>
> Please introduce yourselves.<br>
><br>
> H M Theinert<br>
><br>
><br>
> tl;dr<br>
><br>
> Instagram is hard<br>
> Digital Labor is everywhere<br>
> Hollywood is OK, sometimes, I guess<br>
> #DL14<br>
><br>
><br>
><br>
> _______________________________________________<br>
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (<a href="http://distributedcreativity.org" target="_blank">distributedcreativity.org</a>)<br>
> <a href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">iDC@mailman.thing.net</a><br>
> <a href="https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc" target="_blank">https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc</a><br>
><br>
> List Archive:<br>
> <a href="http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/" target="_blank">http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/</a><br>
><br>
> iDC Photo Stream:<br>
> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/</a><br>
><br>
> RSS feed:<br>
> <a href="http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc" target="_blank">http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc</a><br>
><br>
> iDC Chat on Facebook:<br>
> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647</a><br>
><br>
> Share relevant URLs on <a href="http://Del.icio.us" target="_blank">Del.icio.us</a> by adding the tag iDCref<br>
<br>
-------------- next part --------------<br>
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<br>
URL: <<a href="https://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/attachments/20140604/79906ed4/attachment-0001.html" target="_blank">https://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/attachments/20140604/79906ed4/attachment-0001.html</a>><br>
<br>
------------------------------<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
iDC mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">iDC@mailman.thing.net</a><br>
<a href="https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc" target="_blank">https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc</a><br>
_______________________________________________<br>
Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC)<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
<a href="http://www.distributedcreativity.org" target="_blank">www.distributedcreativity.org</a><br>
_______________________________________________<br>
The research of the Institute for Distributed Creativity<br>
(iDC) focuses on collaboration in media art, technology,<br>
and theory with an emphasis on social contexts.<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
<br>
<br>
End of iDC Digest, Vol 91, Issue 3<br>
**********************************<br>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Ergin
</div>