reSync visited Video Vortex 10. “Video Vortex is a travelling conference series concerned with online video. Established in 2007 by Amsterdam based Institute for Network Cultures, the conference since then took place in Brussels, Amsterdam, Ankara, Split, Yogyakarta and Lüneburg.”  (Video Vortex 2014)

The Spectacular & The Power of Images with Oliver Lerone Schultz, Adnan Hadzi, Ersan Ocak, Paola Barreto, Facilitator: Ebru Yetiskin
Spectrals of the Spectacular
We know by now, that the social is also visually constructed, that there is a struggle for ‚The Right to look‘ and that social visions are projective, contested as well as fractal. We want to present the outcome of the ‘Spectrals of the Spectacular’ workshop, held at the Brazilian BTS (http://www.bts.re) conference, discussing how centralized visual event streams and orchestrations are producing alternative visual splinters, fractions and specters that also travel in fragmentary ways across the globe, making visible new landscapes and hidden horizons of meaning, i.e. ‚specters‘ to the current system and ‚mode of projection‘.
While we are interested in the geopolitical aesthetic of a (to be) pirated reality of the ‘non-territories’ which resist the address of the ‚national (interest)‘ and subsumption to the current globalized society of control and spectacle, we present some results from the ‘Spectrals of the Spectacular’ workshop, reviewing in an exemplary fashion the particular resistancies to the FIFA World Cup 2014, how they travel around and haunt the global imaginary and feed from and back to the non-aligned social intellect.
In this presentation/talk we aim at introducing some conceptual entry points into this longer term project, which in future engagements also wants to engage with the topic of pirating and (broken) projections around the New Global Spectacle and their relevance to a contemporary theory of the ‘moving image’.
Part of the reflection will be a discussion around reasons to organize this theoretical engagement by building a trans-local repository around ‚Spectrals of the Spectacle‘. We hold that a theoretical reflection of these spectralities is itself to take on the form of a decentral project, engaging with fleeting images and spectralities. (Oliver Lerone Schultz & Adnan Hadzi)

reSync set out on an ambitious programme of activity to mark it’s establishment as a startup company, picking up where deckspace.tv rounded off it’s research phase in Leuneburg.

To begin we formed a collaboration with the Freifunk Leuneburg group and invited them to join us for a few days preparation and two days of festivities on the Leuphana University campus.

Lunatic festival is held each year and operated by students of all faculties in the University as part of an enlightened in-house work experience period for second and third years. We first met with previous years chief co-ordinators at sessions in Freiraum during 2012 where we first proposed our involvement and set up the process for the following years festival. They estimated 2000 visitors a day would attend to share the love of summer and end of term!

With our invitation in hand we promoted Freifunk Leuneburg as wireless infrastructure providers at the festival an ambitious but achievable prospect and one which drew in some great characters from the local group all of whom chose to work above and beyond the call to put in place the physical and radio interlinks as well as install and test the dozen wireless access points required to put a universal access network into place for everyone to use.

To reSync Lunatic, we set up an array of pre-configured Bit Torrent Sync secrets to facilitate file synchronising between attendees at the festival via qrcode graphics printed on a series of custom button badge artwork sheets. Each Lunatic (festival visitor) claimed a badge from us and pressed it together in our workshop, along with it’s write access ‘secret’ enabling them to present sounds texts and images from their smartphone to anyone willing to scan their badge and at any location in the festival area.

We all then setup camp in a quiet corner of the spielwiese and proceeded to monitor the useage of the wireless network and respond to the increasingly engaged festival goers requesting a reSync badge and support to get their smartphones sync ready and activated.

reSync besucht analog III: “Verlagsbranche im Wandel”

“Haben die gedruckte Zeitung und das gedruckte Buch eine Zukunft? Wie gehen Verlage und Redaktionen mit dem digitalen Wandel um? Fragen, über die rund 60 Teilnehmer und Teilnehmerinnen aus der Region Niedersachsen im Rahmen der Veranstaltungsreihe ANALOG im Stadtarchiv Lüneburg diskutierten. Auf Einladung des Innovations-Inkubator Forschungsprojekts Hybrid Publishing Lab am Centre for Digital Cultures trafen sich Fachleute aus allen Bereichen der Medienbranche sowie interessierte Bürgerinnen und Bürger, um sich über die Digitalisierung der Medien auszutauschen, Erfahrungen zu teilen und den Blick für aktuelle Herausforderungen zu schärfen.” (CDC 2014)

Sieh auch video editing server & WikiTV

Latest apps for Android and iOS include long overdue ifttt automation suite which will extend the scope for syncronising and managing publicity during the events we have scheduled. So far I can’t see a btsync channel, perhaps we will get one added.

We are using a recipe to trigger a tweet to be displayed whenever a new lunatic makes a badge which displays their resync qrcode. If it works like this I shall be amazed

reSync besuchte die Analog II Veranstaltung um das Thema “Kontrolle politischer Macht durch Medien muss sein”. “21. März 2014 Lüneburg. Von prekären Arbeitsbedingungen für hochqualifizierte Journalisten bis zur Verantwortung der EU für die Vielfalt der Lokalzeitungen – auf der Medientagung ANALOG der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg diskutierten rund 100 Medienvertreter und Journalisten am 20. März die Zukunft des Qualitätsjournalismus. Prof. Dr. Däubler-Gmelin sprach sich für die Kontrolle politischer Macht durch die Medien aus.” (CDC 2014)

reSync visited on the 14th of March 2014 d-cent: “D-CENT is a Europe-wide project creating privacy-aware tools and applications for direct democracy and economic empowerment. Together with the citizens and developers, we are creating a decentralised social networking platform for large-scale collaboration and decision-making.” (D-cent 2014)

Nesta announced that: “on March 14th we will host the D-CENT launch event in London at Nesta and we would like to invite you to attend the event and participate in the working group sessions. The event will draw a number of high-level policy makers, academics, activists, civic society organisations, and hackers from the field. Together we will dive into new ways of strengthening citizens’ participation and deliberation in the political process presenting already existing digital tools for open democracy, new frameworks for institutional innovation, and alternative economic models based on complementary currencies and digital crypto currencies.”

Uncovering new truths and making them public as a disruption and criticism of the dominant system has consequences.

Threat scenarios of the digital surveillance state inevitably have palpable effects on our lives and actions. Access to information, infrastructure and technology, which is especially important for activists in repressive regimes up to the present, has become a widely discussed issue since Snowden’s disclosures at the latest, because now a broad mass of people in democratically governed states see their “privacy” endangered. Independence, confidence and freedom are massively put to the test.

Artists, hacktivists, cultural producers, journalists, software developers and idealists, in short creative actors with a desire for change increasingly find themselves in uncertain territory. Which methods and alternative tools can be used to generate new views of everyday life, work, money, politics and the environment, and to instigate a new cultural practice, to impel civil society processes, without them being nipped in the bud?

How do creative actors contribute to the process of change and which new forms of cooperation do they enter into?
# Program # AMRO Showcase # Speakers

Contributers:
Klau Kinki/ES; !Mediengruppe Bitnik/CH; Adnan Hadzi/CH/UK; Aleš Hieng, SLO; André Castro/ES; Andreas Zingerle/A; Anne Roth/DE; Dennis de Bel/NL; Roelof Roscam Abbing/NL; Dominik Leitner/A; Donna Metzlar/NL; Femke Snelting/NL; Franz Xaver/A; Heath Bunting/UK; Inari Wishiki/UK; Jakub Pišek/CZ; James Bridle/UK; James Stevens/UK; Jonathan Kemp/UK; Karlessi/IT; Konrad Becker/A; Larisa Blazic/SRB/UK; Linda Kronman/FIN/A; Lizvlx/A; Lonneke van der Velden/NL; Marc Garrett/UK; Marek Tuszynski/ Margarita Köhl/A; Martino Morandi/IT; Marie Polakova/CZ/A; Michael Schweiger/A; Nathaniel Tkacz; Niek Hilkmann/NL; Renfah/A; Robertina Šebjanič/SLO; Roelof Roscam Abbing/NL; Selena Savić/CH; Taro the cook/A; Tatiana Bazzichelli/IT; Valie Djordjevic/DE; Veronika Krenn/A; Vesela Mihaylova; Victor Diaz/ES; waiwai; Wolfgang Spahn/DE; Yoana Buzova/NL; Reni Hofmüller/A, Jogi Hofmüller/A; u.v.a

reSync visited transmediale 14: afterglow’s art hack day: “Afterglow” is a collaboration between Art Hack Day, LEAP Berlin and transmediale. As coders we fear the ‘legacy’ system, a piece of old junk we haven’t yet figured out how to throw away. As artists, we’re tempted by prolific outbursts of freshness and novelty; more art of less value. Businesses and government crave more data, more connections, more context. By embracing these impulses without contemplation we perpetuate the technological hype cycle and unintentionally shorten the half-life of our artefacts. Technology has become akin to a natural resource, generating physical and immaterial waste that is appropriated in such diverse contexts as e-garbage dumps, big data businesses and mass surveillance schemes. As such, trash is no longer what is just left behind but is central to our post-digital lives. When digital detritus piles up it decomposes, giving rise to a post-digital afterglow with the potential for new expression and new enterprise. Can we make peace with our excessive data flows and their inevitable obsolescence? Can we find nourishment in waste, overflow and excess? Can the afterglow of perpetual decay illuminate us?” (Art Hack Day 2014)