Creative Networks in the Rear- View Mirror of Eastern European History
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RASA SMITE CREATIVE NETWORKS IN THE REAR- VIEW MIRROR OF EASTERN EUROPEAN HISTORY A SERIES OF READERS PUBLISHED BY THE INSTITUTE OF NETWORK CULTURES ISSUE NO.: 11 RASA SMITE CREATIVE NETWORKS IN THE REAR- VIEW MIRROR OF EASTERN EUROPEAN HISTORY Theory on Demand #11 Creative Networks, in the Rearview Mirror of Eastern European History Author: Rasa Smite Translation (in English): Linda Vebere Copy editing: Miriam Rasch Design: Katja van Stiphout DTP: Margreet Riphagen Printer: ‘Print on Demand’ Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2012 ISBN: 978-90-818575-0-5 The book is based on a dissertation by Rasa Smite, with the title “Creative Network Communities” and was defended in Riga Stradins University, February 2011. The book was first published in Latvian in Riga: RIXC and Liepaja: LiepU MPLab, 2011 (ISBN 978-9934-8229-0-2) Contact Institute of Network Cultures phone: +3120 5951866 email: [email protected] web: http://www.networkcultures.org This publication is available through various print on demand services. For more information, and a freely downloadable pdf: http://networkcultures.org/theoryondemand. This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works 3.0 Netherlands License. No article in this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from the author. CREATIVE NETWORKS 3 Contents Abstract 6 Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7 Network Theories and Context Interpretations 15 Castells’s ‘Space of Flows’ and Other ‘Free-Flowing’ Network Concepts Actor-Network Theory The Rhizomatic Network Conceptions Mobile Network Paradigm and New Network Theories The Usage of ‘Network’ as a Term Basis Principles of Network 23 Interconnectedness Openness and Decentralized Access Simultaneity, Real-time and the Online Presence Network Topology 31 The Technical Level: Internet – the network of networks The Level of Political Economy and ‘New Economy’ The Social Level The ‘Social Logic’ of Networks 45 The Issue of Technological Determinism The Conceptual Space of Digital Networks Digital Network and Social Process Interaction Network Community: Terminology Issues 51 Translocal Network Communities and Local Community Networks Creative Network Communities Social Networks Network Mapping – The Issue of Methodology 57 Why a Map? The Networked ‘Invisibility’ and Social Network Analysis What and How to Map? ‘Instruments’ and Methods for Network Visualization The Qualitative Research and Other Applied Methods 4 THEORY ON DEMAND Translocal Creative Networks and the Rise of the Network Culture 69 Nettime Mailing List and the Critical Discourse of the ‘Net’ Faces – the Cyberfeminist Community and the Issue of Women’s ‘Cybervisibility’ Syndicate – Collaboration Network for Eastern and Western European Media Art 7-11 – Net.Art Mailing List The Social Organization Forms of Creative Networks 87 Festivals – the Meeting Places for Creative Network Communities Media Centers – The Nodes of Network Culture Art Servers – The Virtual Home of Network Communities Local Community Networking in the Beginnings of the Internet in Latvia 95 The Pre-History of Xchange – the Creative Internet Radio Network Collaborative Streaming and Social Dynamics of the ‘Acoustic Cyberspace’ Mapping the Xchange Network and Mailing List Dynamics Global Network as an Extension of a Local Community – The Case of Xchange 115 Nettime Mailing List and the Critical Discourse of the ‘Net’ Faces – the Cyberfeminist Community and the Issue of Women’s ‘Cybervisibility’ Syndicate – Collaboration Network for Eastern and Western European Media Art 7-11 – Net.Art Mailing List From Virtual to Locative and Hybrid Network Communities 127 Acoustic Space Lab – Collaborative Experiments in Outer Space Locative Media Network and Milk Project Hybrid Networks and Artist Communities in the Quest for a Sustainable Future Conclusions 137 Bibliography 147 CREATIVE NETWORKS 5 6 THEORY ON DEMAND Abstract Creative Networks explores the dawn of the Internet culture in the age of network society from the perspective of Eastern Europe. From a theoretical angle the networks are introduced and interpreted as complex socio-technical systems. The author analyzes the development of these networked self-organized formations, starting off with ‘virtual communities’ of ‘creative networks’, which emerged during the early phase of the Internet, up to the phenomenon of today’s on- line ‘social networks’. Along with the translocal case studies of Nettime, Syndicate, Faces and Xchange networks (as well as with the other important facets of the 1990s network culture in Europe), the author also studies local community networking cases of alternative and digital culture that evolved around E-Lab in the 1990s in Latvia. By focusing primarily on the network culture of 1990s, this study reflects those changes in the social structure of today’s society that are occurring under the process of socio-technical transformation. Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Ilva Skulte, the supervisor of my dissertation, and to Riga Stradins University for the doctoral programme in the social sciences and for the financial sup- port of the European Social Foundation, which allowed me to complete my thesis. I would also like to give thanks to Inta Rozenvalde and Ritma Rungule for the intellectual and editorial advice, to Valdis Krebs (orgnet.com) and the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Latvia for their help and permission to use their software developed for social net- work analysis and to the team of RIXC Centre for New Media Culture – Daina Silina for the as- sistance in editing the Latvian text, Linda Vebere for the English translation and Martins Ratniks for the design of the Latvian issue. I am very grateful to my colleagues from local and translocal new media collaboration networks, most of whom were also respondents in this inquiry – Eric Kluitenberg, Geert Lovink, Armin Medosch, Pit Schultz, Andreas Broeckmann, Heath Bunting, Raitis Smits, Jaanis Garancs – to name just a few, as their ideas and contributions in network culture development during these past fifteen years have been very important for me. Special thanks go to Irisa Celma for her consulting and advice, and to all who have helped me during the research process. And last but not least, I would like to thank my family – my husband Raitis Smits and our parents for their invaluable support during the writing and defending of this thesis. I dedicate this book with love to my children – Lauris Daaris and Anna Marija. CREATIVE NETWORKS 7 INTRODUCTION Society can be viewed from different standpoints, using different approaches and building upon different concepts. Network is considered to be one of them. Network as a structure for char- acterizing society (for instance, trade networks, family trees) has been known for a very long time. This also applies to sociology, where network has been used as a metaphor for more than a century to reflect the complicated relations existing on many different levels between partici- pants of the social system – personal, local, international and other. Still, only at the end of the 20th century and with new information and communication network technologies entering our lives (first and foremost, the Internet), not only has the concept of network gained a new mean- ing but also a somewhat dualistic nature. On one hand, network has ‘materialized’ in a form of global networks; on the other, it has become a ‘virtual’ social space. Hence today, networks have become sophisticated socio-technical systems. The complex relationships that emerge in the re- sult of interaction between social action and information technologies are called socio-technical formations. Such formations are network communities which have emerged on the Internet in a process of self-organization and which have been chosen as the object of this study. In my study, I have made a distinction between two types of network communities – creative networks and their communities that emerged mostly in the early stages of the Internet, namely, in the beginnings of the network culture when it was still a marginal, alternative phenomenon, and social networks that have emerged on today’s Web 2.0 social media platforms, that is, in a time when networking can already be considered part of popular culture. In this study, I have focused primarily on carrying out research on creative network cases, as well as providing comparison between those two – creative and social networks. Network as a Fundamental Element of Society Today In 1996, when Manuel Castells proposed the idea of ‘network society’1, a principally new type of modern society had risen where all the significant social functions and processes more and more started to organize around electronically processed information networks. Castells also states that ‘the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis for its pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure’ (Castells 2000 [1996], 500) suggesting it to be the dominating factor far into the future as well. Network, as Castells emphasizes, has become a basic element of the modern society. Another important aspect along Castells’s global construct of ‘space of flows’ is the global distribution of digital networks and public accessibility in the 1990s, which created a niche for new social activities that ‘were self-organizing in various virtual communities by communicating via the Internet’.