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

[andreas broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

From: "Gerbrand Oudenaarden" <gerbrand@oudenaarden.nl>
Organization: The Next 5 Minutes - http://www.n5m.org
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 21:48:06 +0100


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

The Next 5 Minutes 3 Conference (Amsterdam, 12-14 March
1999) is an international working conference and festival
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 February 3!

*** 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?


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Ciao,
Gerbrand