Notices

Every issue of Postmodern Culture carries notices of events, calls for papers, and other announcements, free of charge. If you respond to one of the ads or announcements below, please mention that you saw the notice in PMC.

Publication Announcements

Web Guide to Complex Systems

An introduction to complex systems thinking and its applications. Complex systems concepts provide a new unity of approach to many different problems. These concepts originate from efforts to understand physical, biological and social systems. Examples of applications can be found in all fields and professions including science, medicine, engineering, management and educaton. The new web guide explains basic concepts, describes a variety of examples and applications, and illustrates various methods. It is available through the New England Complex Systems Institute web site at <http://necsi.org/guide/>. This resource will be expanded over the upcoming months. Your comments and feedback are welcome.

The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet

Edited by Ken Goldberg

The Robot in the Garden initiates a critical theory of telerobotics and introduces telepistemology, the study of knowledge acquired at a distance. Many of our most influential technologies, the telescope, telephone, and television, were developed to provide knowledge at a distance. Telerobots, remotely controlled robots, facilitate action at a distance. Specialists use telerobots to explore environments such as Mars, the Titanic, and Chernobyl. Military personnel increasingly employ reconnaissance drones and telerobotic missiles. At home, we have remote controls for the garage door, car alarm, and television (the latter a remote for the remote).

The Internet dramatically extends our scope and reach. Thousands of cameras and robots are now accessible online. Although the role of technical mediation has been of interest to philosophers since the seventeenth century, the Internet forces a reconsideration. As the public gains access to telerobotic instruments previously restricted to scientists and soldiers, questions of mediation, knowledge, and trust take on new significance for everyday life.

Telerobotics is a mode of representation. But representations can misrepresent. If Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds was the defining moment for radio, what will be the defining moment for the Internet? As artists have always been concerned with how representations provide us with knowledge, the book also looks at telerobotics’ potential as an artistic medium. The seventeen essays are organized into three sections: Philosophy; Art, History, and Critical Theory; and Engineering, Interface, and System Design.

Ken Goldberg is Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering and founder of the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium at the University of California, Berkeley. His Net art installations include “Dislocation of Intimacy,” “Memento Mori,” and the “Telegarden.”

7 × 9, 330 pp., 49 illus., cloth ISBN 0-262-07203-3
A Leonardo Book

TAM Monitor, Vol. II

Alternative Museum Launches Volume II Of TAM Monitor <http://alternativemuseum.org/tam_monitor>

Cyberspace offers a new frontier for activists trying to make their point, and many have flocked to the World Wide Web.

Featuring:

(Netcast Radio)
“Studio B11”, Bauhaus University (Weimar) Experimental Radio
“Dialtone” Teleinteractive Net Audio Experiment by Tamas Szakal

(Interviews)
“Noisegate Talks”: Granular Synthesis in conversation with Mark Dery; video documentary by Lee Songe
“ArtDirt”: GH Hovagimyan talks to Ricardo Dominguez about new forms of positive social resistance

(Reviews)
“Maximal Minimal at Feigan Contemporary” by Lee Klein
“Susan L. Yung at Tribes Gallery” by Jim Feast
“Three Degrees of Separation” Cohen-Frank-Ippolito at Sandra Gering

(Audio)
Mark Amerika: “phon:e:me”
Meiko + Ryu: “Artland”
Raster-Noton: “20 to 2000”

(Performative Work)
Electronic Disturbance Theater
Irational.org: “How to be a Radio Pirate”
Cary Peppermint: “Info for the Other Sides of Here”

(Video)
RTMark “Bringing it to You!”

(Web-Based)
Daniel Garcia Andujar: “Technologies to the People”
Joy Garnett: “The Bomb Project”
Tina LaPorta: “Shifting”
Diane Ludin/Ricardo Dominguez: “Viroids”

(Web Interface)
Jodi: “Map”
Mark Napier: “Shredder”
Mark Tribe/Alex Galloway: “Starry Night”

(News/Essays/Announcements)
“Newsgrist” by Joy Garnett
“Monsanto” by Decepticons
“Internet and Xenophobia” Marc Chemillier/Sans Papiers by Geert Lovink

TAM Monitor is an affiliate site of
<http://www.mediachannel.org>.

Organdi Revue

Organdi is an international journal of social sciences and contemporary issues published quarterly in English and French including articles, thematic dossiers, cultural reviews and letters to...