This panel discussion with international activists and broadcasting experts addresses the ongoing role of radio as a key communication tool for global political action.

Produced by Sourcefabric.

With software processes entering broadcasting culture, a young generation of hands-on thinkers and producers has become attracted to radio as a medium for community projects and artistic endeavours alike. This global panel of broadcast pioneers and radio artists looks at the unique qualities of radiophonic practice and explores the future of experimental transmission.

Produced by Sourcefabric.

Nominated for the transmediale Award 2011, this interactive sound installation by Christopher Warnow and Daniel Franke is more than just an interpretation of a composition by Rutger Zuydervelt. An interface, which reacts to the audiences' body movements, this work immerses the viewer by superimposing digital and architectural spaces. For each one of us a different, individual and fluid visualisation appears onscreen. This event is one of three occasions when the artists will be present for a show and tell of the work.

In this Focus Discussion (Track 1) Salvatore Iaconesi, Derrick de Kerckhove, Ursula Endlicher, Heath Bunting and Alessandro Ludovico discuss artworks and artistic forms of practice that explore newer, fluid identity configurations characterised by physical and intangible aspects and the spaces between them.

Kicking off the Herbert Marshall McLuhan Centennial year, this discussion will separate the aphorism from the cliché in one of McLuhan's most radical yet relatively under-explored works, COUNTERBLAST, which the panelists will use to discuss McLuhans transition from English professor to timeless media guru.
The event will launch a special hardcover 'limited edition' facsimile of the original COUNTERBLAST 1954, published by the Gingko Press exclusively for transmediale on the event of the McLuhan anniversary!

Democratic processes have been quite ineffective recently. So it's time to change to One Click-Democracy. With Repetitionr.com activism can now be carried out comfortably from your armchair!
Franco Berardi (BIFO) will introduce a critique of emergent online forms of democracy and explore the fantasies of political involvement.
Case studies will help us to take a closer look at Repetitionr itself, a service offering the most advanced web 2.0 technologies to make participatory democracy a truly user-centered experience.

Jordan Crandall gives a performative lecture of his essay GATHERINGS 1: EVENT, AGENCY, AND PROGRAM, which is nominated for this year's Vilém Flusser Theory Award.

Hacks, flash mobs, online petitions: never have there been so many opportunities for free expression and social participation as there are today. Media activists join forces worldwide and communally create platforms for themes and people that to date had no support. We present a number of projects and people working with the activist potential of the Internet and other technologies – thereby developing radically new policy approaches in terms of self-determination, participation and integration.

Interface Criticism is not another design manual but a critical investigation for readers interested in the aesthetic, cultural and political dimensions of interfaces. With contributions from leading researchers within the field, the book covers a wide range of aesthetic expressions and critically investigates the aesthetics of interfaces in ways that transcend the iconic surface of the graphical user interface and goes beyond the buttons.

Nominated for the transmediale Award 2011, this interactive sound installation by Christopher Warnow and Daniel Franke is more than just an interpretation of a composition by Rutger Zuydervelt. An interface, which reacts to the audiences' body movements, this work immerses the viewer by superimposing digital and architectural spaces. For each one of us a different, individual and fluid visualisation appears onscreen. This event is one of three occasions when the artists will be present for a show and tell of the work.

The supposedly infinite freedom of the Net is a permanent online participation, communication and live switching between real and virtual life. The resulting unspoken fear of turning away from the Network has led to increasingly loud calls for a way out. The focus panel Exit Lab discusses and provides perspectives on the ‘right to exit’, which is not only an absolute rejection but a reversal of the Net’s power structures and scaffolding.

In recent years, the free culture movement has been very much focused on the development of alternative rights and licensing systems. Appropriate economic benchmarks outside traditional business models are only now starting to gain traction: crowdsourcing, micro-funding and shared economy – new watchwords of a society that no longer wants to rely solely on capitalist principles. Nevertheless, there are many questions – how to convert ‘free’ cultural services into an economic currency, for example, or how a long-term culture of worth that is based on free access rather than supply and demand can be achieved.

In this presentation Tobias Leingruber presents the experimental and artistic Facebook hack concepts to festival visitors before turning these concepts into a real software that users worldwide can download and share.

For more information view the Facebook Resistance Artist Workshop.

Observer Talk of the Day 4
with Elizabeth Stark (us)

5 Feb, 20:00 - 21:00

Open Zone, Lost in the Open - Workstation

In From Image to Interaction, Arjen Mulder traces evolutionary lines in the fine art of the past five hundred years that have led directly to the interactive art of today. He investigates the origins of modern art from Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to Kandinsky, Mondrian and Paul Klee, whom he regards not only as great artists but above all as great media theorists. Step by step, Mulder develops a surprising perspective on the genealogy of art from 1910 to 2010 and the role and value of visual culture and design in the present.