Syndicate: Next 5 Minutes 3 Challenge: How Low Can You Go?

[Inke Arns <inke@berlin.snafu.de>]

Subject: BOUNCE syndicate: Non-member submission from ["Gerbrand
Oudenaarden" <gerbrand@oudenaarden.nl>]
Organization: The Next 5 Minutes - http://www.dds.nl/n5m
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 11:37:32 +0100
Subject: Next 5 Minutes 3 Challenge: How Low Can You Go?


*** Challenge: How Low Can You Go? ***
*** call for participation in the show ***

The Next 5 Minutes 3 Conference (De Balie and Paradiso, Amsterdam, 
12-14 March 1999) is an international working conference on tactical 
media. One of the four main themes is The Tactical and the Technical.

The core of this theme will be the grand "How Low Can You
Go?" show on Friday night. The show will bring together a host of
ironic, artistic, subversive attempts to ditch the tech barrier.
The show will present work of international groups who explore
the aesthetics and charm of low-tech, and the amazing power of
forgotten media. The large theatre of Paradiso will for one night offer 
space for installations. Every half an hour or so, time and space will be 
taken for a visual presentation or a performance.

*** CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ***

We call on you to submit your ideas for participating in the "How Low 
Can You Go Show". We welcome ideas for presentations, installations 
and performances. 

Get in touch with the show organiser, gerbrand@waag.org, if you feel 
challenged and inspired. Deadline for submissions is January 25!

*** Technology in The Next 5 Minutes ***

Next 5 Minutes 3 will counter the obsession with high technology
that has been fashionable in media circles for quite some years.
Instead of glitching the high-tech fantasies of many of the
international art&tech events, N5M3 will make a vigorous effort
to go low-tech. 

Most media, and certainly common media, heavily depend on
technology. "Media", actually is a term which is very hard to
define; in many meanings of the word "media", technology is
already implied. N5M3 will focus not only on the tactical
potential of (new) media, it also wishes to reflect on the
developments of media and media technology. The choice of media
that we use, and the way we use these media is not completely
self-evident or coincidental. Nor is it fully our own conscious
decision. The construction of media technology instead is deeply
political and political-economical. 

The current technohype, propagating the consumption of computer
technology with increasing speed, is an example of technology
development that is hardly questioned. Even in 'leftist'
environments it is taken for granted that every few years all
computers must be replaced by brand new ones in order to be able
to run the latest Windows or Mac version. 

Showing long-forgotten media, redundant computers or
provocatively silly machines, N5M3 will ironically glamorise
obsolete technology, and thus create some historic awareness and
maybe form some kind of antidote to the hype. We will attempt to
rewrite media history, perhaps to learn that the technology that
survives is not necessarily the best. 

Our high-tech hype is not just temporarily bound, but also
spatially. What can high-tech computers do in countries where
villages hardly have water or food, let alone electricity and
phone connections? Which media are most effective in rural mainly
illiterate areas in India? How to develop media strategies if
high-tech is for economic or political reasons completely absent?

------------------------------


| The Next 5 Minutes 3 - Conference & Festival on Tactical Media
| New address: Kleine Gartmanplatsoen 10, 1017 RR Amsterdam, NL
| phone: +31-20-5535188, fax +31-20-5535194, http://www.dds.nl/n5m