From mathieu.oneil at anu.edu.au  Thu Feb  9 10:01:08 2017
From: mathieu.oneil at anu.edu.au (Mathieu ONeil)
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2017 09:01:08 +0000
Subject: ::fibreculture:: CFP + Practitioner Commentaries JoPP #12: Shared
 Machine Shop Institutionalization
Message-ID: <MEXPR01MB16378A75CCFBDAE01E5C2793C6450@MEXPR01MB1637.ausprd01.prod.outlook.com>

Re: [JoPP-Editorial] JoPP Special Issue #12
KB
Kat Braybrooke <K.Braybrooke at sussex.ac.uk>


Reply all|
Today, 3:00
Mathieu ONeil;
+3 more
You replied on 09-Feb-17 12:40.
Action Items
<Apologies for cross-posting>

============================================

///////////////////// Call for Papers + Practitioner Commentaries
Journal of Peer Production #12: Shared Machine Shop Institutionalization
URL: http://bit.ly/SharedMachineInst
Editors: Kat Braybrooke, Adrian Smith
Contact: sharedmachines at peerproduction.net<mailto:sharedmachines at peerproduction.net>

////// ABSTRACTS + PROPOSALS DUE 30 MAR, 2017

Two years ago, a special issue of the Journal of Peer Production on shared machine shops described them as the "occupied factories of peer production theory". The authors of that issue compiled an empirically informed analysis of member-owned spaces like hacklabs, hackerspaces and makerspaces -- spaces that first appeared to be signalling the power of an emerging democratic revolution in community-based design and manufacturing, but which on closer look also revealed the many contradictions of peer production movements themselves.

This special issue builds on these efforts by taking a deeper look into the complex contradictions and possibilities of making, hacking, fabrication and commons-based practices -- practices that are themselves increasingly characterised by institutional interventions. The dilemmas of institutionalisation (regarding both the formalization of practices and the fact that many practice-based spaces are now being embedded within larger organizations like museums, municipalities and businesses) provide us with an opportunity to critically examine networks, spaces and futures that may be assembling in this new phase.

We invite papers that provide theoretically-informed empirical research aimed at advancing our understanding of dilemmas and contradictions in institutionalisation of shared machine shops. Contributions are particularly encouraged that examine what has changed regarding the practices, user experiences and regional networks that surround these sites of institutionalisation -- not only in the last few years, but also across shared community histories around the world, drawing upon stories of similar digital spaces, like art-based media labs, that have preceded today?s shared machine shops. Contradictions between the so-called agencies and revolutions introduced by digital design and fabrication tools within these sites will be explored along with the structures of control and power that surround them. What do these continued contradictions and struggles tell us about the promised futures of peer production?

Because this issue looks not only at theory but also at practice, we also invite practitioner commentaries and/or photo series from key makers and thinkers working in the field, reflecting on what happens when communities of peer-based making and production attract increased attention from mainstreamed entities, including schools, galleries, tech companies, local authorities, and agencies promoting entrepreneurship. Such attention brings with it ambivalent and complicated opportunities linked to outside agendas. These institutional encounters additionally bring to the surface multiple political dilemmas regarding digital fabrication itself. After all, these are technologies whose computer numerically-controlled histories include the displacement of skilled workers and the undermining of historic manufacturing communities. Are practices in maker communities today actually transforming development processes, or are they simply refreshing new inputs for business as usual? Educational institutions seek ways of building public understanding about technosciences and job opportunities. Local governments get excited about entrepreneurial possibilities. Corporations see easy design prototypes offered up by the free labour of skilled fans. How are economies of labour redefined? How transformational, precisely, are these new peer productions?

This being said, it would be much too easy (and, we argue, lazy) to simply critique and dismiss. Instead, this special issue aspires to constructively scrutinize practices through critical, hands-on analyses of both discourses and practices. What remains of the original transformational aims of a digitally empowered peer production-based revolution when some of the core practices are embraced by the very powers that the revolutionary theory set itself up originally to confront? What new antitheses and innovative reactions are arising today from recent disappointments? What kinds of challenges, transformations and opportunities does institutionalization engender for a new generation?s coming of age? Most importantly, whose revolution will it now be? The papers and commentaries of this issue will aim to move beyond condemnation and/or adulation into deliberately complex and multifaceted understandings of transformation, collaboration and revolution.

Contributions will address this new phase of contradictions and possibilities through three organisational themes which view shared machine shop innovations and experiences through their tensions, contradictions and possibilities. First, we will explore whether reconfigurations of new locations and sites change conceptions and understandings of making and fabrication within them, a phenomenon we refer to as ?new spaces in new places?. Second, we will ask what new practices are being introduced by (and in reaction to) increased institutional advances. And thirdly, we will examine what happens when shared machine shops are situated within new urban and regional matrices and processes which bring their own expectations about how machine shops should perform.

Together, papers and contributions will be organized around these thematic areas:
Theme One: New kinds of spaces in new kinds of places
Theme Two: New kinds of practices and experiences in new places and spaces.
Theme Three: New kinds of places in (outer) spaces, from urban to regional.

/////// Important dates and deadlines /////////

5 Feb 2017: Open call goes out.
30 March 2017: Paper abstracts + proposals for alternative pieces due.
30 April 2017: Confirmed paper authors and practitioners notified.
30 July 2017: Full papers + alternative pieces due.
30 October 2017: Peer review process ends, papers returned.
30 December 2017: Revised papers due.
28 February 2018: Final acceptance / rejection of papers.
1st March 2018 - 1st April 2018: Group intros, texts + alternative pieces finalized.
April 2018: JoPP Issue #12 published!

/////// Submission guidelines ///////

Extended paper abstracts of up to 750 words + alternative practitioner pieces are due to the editors at sharedmachines at peerproduction.net<mailto:sharedmachines at peerproduction.net> by /// 30 March, 2018 ///. Peer reviewed papers should be no more than 8,000 words. At this time we also welcome experimental, alternative contributions from practitioners + makers, in the form of 500 word commentaries or photo series that provide reflections from the field on transformations, changes and impacts with regards to shared machine shops today. The format of these thought pieces will be discussed on a case by case basis. All peer reviewed papers will be reviewed according to Journal of Peer Production guidelines. See http://peerproduction.net/peer-review/process for details. Full papers for peer review and alternative pieces will be due by 30 July, 2017.

***** This special issue has been initiated thanks to the ideas and collaborations of the talented thinkers and makers who participated in the 4S/EASST 2016 panel ?Digital fabrications amongst hackers, makers and manufacturers: whose ?industrial revolution??? this summer in Barcelona.
============================================
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/fibreculture_listcultures.org/attachments/20170209/f07abd62/attachment.html>

From ned at nedrossiter.org  Tue Feb 28 06:26:41 2017
From: ned at nedrossiter.org (Ned Rossiter)
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2017 16:26:41 +1100
Subject: ::fibreculture:: =?utf-8?q?Technology=E2=80=99s_Limits=3A_Automat?=
 =?utf-8?q?ion=2C_Invention=2C_Labour=2C_and_the_Exhausted_Environment?=
Message-ID: <9edbf49e-3dda-f639-05a7-84c31d7eaff3@nedrossiter.org>

[see ICS url for links to readings]

Workshop ? Digital Life Research Program
Institute for Culture and Society
Western Sydney University

Date: Friday March 10, 2017
Time: 10am ? 4.30pm
Venue: EB.G.21, Parramatta South campus

Technology?s Limits: Automation, Invention, Labour, and the Exhausted
Environment
https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/events/technologys_limits

Among its many political preoccupations, 2016 was marked by an obsessive
concern with the new powers of the machine to erase human labour and
employment. Science fiction dystopias ? among them, the French Trepalium
and the Brazilian 3% ? saddled older anxieties about a world without
work to a more novel recognition of resource depletion and scarcity.
Academic publishing houses, conference organisers, funding agencies and
the press have responded with a deluge of content covering algorithms,
automation and the Anthropocene. Meanwhile, a less conspicuous narrative
about the decline of innovation has resurfaced with claims that the rate
of fundamental new technology inventions is slowing and jeopardising
long term global productivity returns. What happens when technology hits
its limits? Velocity and volume excite machinic economies, but do little
to confront some of the core problems and challenges facing planetary
labour and life today.

This workshop brings together leading Australian scholars of technology
and society with contemporary German and French reflections on the
prevailing discourses of technology?s limits. Since the 1990s, Bernard
Stiegler has been a leading philosopher and critic of technology, and in
his recent book Automatic Society he directly tackles problems of
automation and algorithms for the distribution of financial and social
resources to populations increasingly bereft of economic capital and
political agency. Building upon Frankfurt School critical theory and
Kittlerian media theory, contemporary German critique intersects with
similar questions by combining investigations of epistemology, history
and the technical. The Australian take on these European developments is
simultaneously appreciative and critical, though often oriented toward
more regional conditions that arise in part due to different economic,
cultural and political relations with Asia.

The morning session of the workshop will introduce current theoretical
European work on technology. Daniel Ross will develop a critical
introduction to Bernard Stiegler, whose recent work in Automatic Society
and In the Disruption continues to mount a wide-ranging and provocative
critique of technology. Armin Beverungen will then offer an overview of
his research on algorithmic management and high-frequency trading, with
Ned Rossiter introducing logistical media as technologies of automation
and labour control. In the afternoon, Gay Hawkins will outline her
theoretical interest in nonhuman and technical objects and their
irreducible role in making humans and ecologies. A key empirical example
will be the history of plastic and the emergence of its technical agency
and capacity to reconfigure life. Nicholas Carah will follow with a
discussion of his latest work on algorithms, brand management and media
engineering. The workshop will close with an audience-driven panel
session and discussion. These interventions will be held in conjunction
with a close reading of the key texts below.

Attendance numbers will be limited so please register in advance. No
registration fee required.

RSVP by 7 March: https://tinyurl.com/h8xhxwd

Speakers
Armin Beverungen
Junior Director at the Digital Cultures Research Lab (DCRL) at Leuphana
Universit?t L?neburg & Visiting Fellow, Institute for Culture and
Society, Western Sydney University.

Nicholas Carah
Author of Brand Machines, Sensory Media and Calculative Culture (2016).

Gay Hawkins
Author of Plastic Water: The Social and Material Life of Bottled Water
(2015).

Liam Magee
Author of Interwoven Cities (2016).

Nicole Pepperell
Author of Dissembling Capital (forthcoming, 2017).

Daniel Ross
Translator of Bernard Stiegler?s Automatic Society (2016), and numerous
other works.

Ned Rossiter
Author of Software, Infrastructure, Labor: A Media Theory of Logistical
Nightmares (2016).

Co-chairs: Liam Magee and Ned Rossiter
Co-convenors of the Institute for Culture and Society?s Digital Life
research program.

Recommended Readings
Frank Pasquale (2017), Duped by the Automated Public Sphere
Lee Rainer and Janna Anderson [Pew Research Center] (2017),
Code-Dependent: Pros and Cons of the Algorithm Age
Bernard Stiegler (2012), Die Aufkl?rung in the Age of Philosophical
Engineering
Bernard Stiegler (2015), Escaping the Anthroposcene
Bernard Stiegler (2015), On Automatic Society
Sonia Sodha [The Guardian] (2017), Is Finland?s basic universal income a
solution to automation, fewer jobs and lower wages?

Related Readings
Bruce Braun (2014), A New Urban Dispositif? Governing Life in an Age of
Climate Change
Nick Dyer-Witheford (2013), Contemporary Schools of Thought and the
Problem of Labour Algorithms
Victor Galaz (2015), A Manifesto for Algorithms in the Environment
Victor Galaz et al. (2017), The Biosphere Code
Orit Halpern (2015), Cloudy Architectures
Erich H?rl (2014), Prostheses of Desire: On Bernard Stiegler?s New
Critique of Projection
Yuk Hui (2015), Algorithmic Catastrophe: The Revenge of Contingency
International Labour Organisation (2016), ASEAN in Transformation
Lilly Irani (2015), The Cultural Work of Microwork
MIT Technology Review (2012), The Future of Work
Cathy O?Neill (2016), How algorithms rule our working lives
Elaine Ou (2017), Working for an Algorithm Might Be an Improvement
The Guardian (2016), Robot factories could threaten jobs of millions of
garment workers
Tommaso Venturini, Pablo Jensen, Bruno Latour (2015), Fill in the Gap. A
New Alliance for Social and Natural Sciences

Agenda
10:00? 10:10: Liam Magee, Ned Rossiter: Welcome and Introduction
10:10 ? 11:10: Daniel Ross
11:10 ? 11:30: Q&A
11:30 ? 11:45: Coffee
11:45 ? 1:00: Armin Beverungen, Ned Rossiter
1:00 ? 2:00: Lunch
2:00 ? 3:15: Gay Hawkins, Nicholas Carah
3:15 ? 4:15: Panel discussion responding to automation: Dan / Gay /
Nicholas / Armin / Nicole ? Liam & Ned to chair
4:15 ? 4:30: Closing thoughts, future actions