Eric Kluitenberg

Can You See What I Know? - Designing collaborative spaces for discourse

Independent Writer, Theorist and Organizer on Culture, Media, and Technology - Head of the media program at De Balie - Centre for Culture and Politics in Amsterdam

Abstract:
In most people's minds De Balie, the centre for culture and politics in Amsterdam is a centre for debate, despite in-numerous other activities. reflecting on how such a centre could work with on-line extensions of such debates it was one of the very first to start up a regular program of live streams, which are regularly conducted from the main space since 1999. In recent years our research has focused on how to create interaction around such debates, discussions and experimental projects as they are already streamed live on the internet. The Cool Media Hot Talk Show series on art & media, a project-series conceived by Tatiana Goryucheva, was one of the main trajectories where this research has been put in practice. The software architecture behind it is currently redeveloped into a generic and embeddable interactive discussion platform that is operated independently by the new Cool Mediators Foundation. The next step in our thinking is related to the question how to bring people from multiple locations together in such a shared discussion environment, and how to make such a distributed discussion a feasible, worthwhile, and sufficiently rich experience.

About Eric Kluitenberg:
Theorist, writer, and organiser on culture, media and technology. He is head of the media program at De Balie - Centre for Culture and Politics in Amsterdam. He lectures and publishes regularly on culture, new media, and cultural politics throughout Europe and beyond.

Previously, he taught courses on "Culture and New Media" at the Institute for Interactive Media, Hogeschool van Amsterdam, and at the University of Amsterdam, "Media Theory" for the post-graduate education programs in art & design and new media at Media-GN / Frank Mohr Institute and Academy Minerva in Groningen, the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in The Hague, and worked on the scientific staff of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

Since 1988 he has been involved as an organiser in important media culture events such as the First and Second International Symposium on Electronic Art (SISEA), Interstanding I, II, & III (Tallinn, Estonia), The P2P - New Media Culture in Europe conference (Amsterdam / Rotterdam), the third and fourth edition of "The Next 5 Minutes", international festival of tactical media (1999 / 2003), "Tulipomania DotCom - A Critique of the New Economy", "net.congestion - International Festival of Streaming Media" (2000), and more recently the Dutch / Russian project "Debates & Credits - Media Art in the Public Domain" in Moscow, Amsterdam and Ekaterinburg (2002), the Amsterdam edition of World-Information.Org (2002), the mini-festival "An Archaeology of Imaginary Media" (2004), and most recently the "Economies of the Commons" conference (2008)

Publications:

Delusive Spaces - Essays on Culture, Media, and Tecnology, Studies in Network Cultures, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam / NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, 2008.

(ed.) Book of Imaginary Media - Excavating the dream of the ultimate communication medium, (Book & DVD) De Balie, Amsterdam / NAi Publishers Rotterdam, 2006.

Guest editor theme issue, Open #11 - Hybrid Space, Journal about art and the public domain, SKOR, Amsterdam / NAi Publishers Rotterdam, 2006.

ed. with Tatiana Goryucheva, Debates & Credits, Media / Art / Public Domain, (Book & DVD) De Balie, Amsterdam, 2003.

Texts:

  • Connection Machines(2005)
  • Connection in Visibility (2004)
  • Web dossier Media Archaeology (2004)
  • Constructing the Digital Commons - A venture into Hybridisation (2003)
  • Transfiguration of the Avant-Garde / The Negative Dialectics of the Net (2001)
  • Media without an Audience (2000)
  • Smash the Surface / Break Open the Box / Disrupt the Code (2000)
  • The Politics of Cultural Memory (1999)
  • Frequently Asked Questions about the Public Domain (1998)
  • Connectivity, New Freedom, New Marginality (1998)

Projects:

  • CultureBase / The Living Archive (2004 - 2007) Web publishing and streaming media open source / open content R&D project
  • An Archaeology of Imaginary Media (2004)
  • Debates and Credits - Media Art in the Public Domain, A Dutch - Russian Media / Art / Project (2002)
  • Next 5 Minutes 4 - Int. Festival of Tactical Media (2003)
  • Web Journal Tactical Media Labs (2002 - 2003)
  • World-Information.Org Amsterdam (2002)
  • net.congestion - International Festival of Streaming Media (2000)
  • Tulipomania DotCom - A Critique of the New Economy (2000)
  • We Want Bandwidth Campaign - Hybrid Workspace, documenta X (1997)
  • Next 5 Minutes 3 - Int. Festival of Tactical Media (1999)
  • Towards a New Media Culture in Europe - From Practice to Policy (1997) (Off-line since the demise of the Digital City Amsterdam)

Eric Kluitenberg
epk@xs4all.nl
www.debalie.nl/persoon.jsp?personid=920

Contact information

  • Eric Kluitenberg