NODE.London - Networked, Open, Distributed, Events. London was a "season of media arts" held first in small scale in beginning of October 2005 and then throughout March 2006 as a distributed festival by a number of individuals and groups in London, England. In March, there were around 150 media art projects organized in over 40 locations ranging from exhibitions, screenings installations, participatory events, performance-based work, to other forms. This document examines various aspects of preparation of the season which may be interesting for other event-aimed openly organized groups around the world.
 
content
i. theory - aims and objectives
ii. timeline
iii. budget
iv. organizational structure
v. communication tools
vi. cooperation vocabulary
vii. geography
viii. production categories
ix. findings
x. additional questions
xi. resources and links
xii. comments

• Saul Albert's dissatisfaction with DMZ media art festival in 2003 in which he participated: non engagement of project managers in the fields of media art neither free networking; lack of accountability structures; wobbling bwn slickly produced curated event and ad-hoc informal event; inadequately distributed rewards; too short (two days) - involvement of visitors limited to spectatorship and no time to meet, relax and develop conversations and relationships; no workshops. [source]
• existence of Wireless London network and willingness to organize The Wireless Event in London. [source]

• consensus decision-making: "talking till you agree" [link].
• Jo Freeman's essay Tyrranny of Structurelessness written in the context of the 1970s feminist consciousness-raising meetings, quoted as an insight into some of the limitations of undifferentiated lateral structures in organisations. [link]
• "One of the most important aspects of NODE.London is that it is not curated. We have no team of 'experts' deciding that some events are more important/worthy of public interest than others. As long as an event has a media arts connection, and is happening in London (or online) during March, we will support it. ... For instance we have a press pack that we produced which shows a range of events - these were selected not as highlights, but to convey an understanding of the variety of work, organisations and the geographical spread of NODE.London." Tim Jones, project co-ordinator. [source]

• To build on physical and social infrastructure for media arts in London.
• To raise the visibility of media arts in London.
• To work in an open, cooperative and collaborative environment.

[source]

• bgn 2004 - idea to make a media art festival in London in 2005, ACE addressed with a proposal to make a season "inclusive in opt-in way" and based upon consensual decision-making about core issues
• 12/2004 - setup wiki
• 12/2004 - won grant from ACE (£70,000)
• 2/2005 - after DMZ meeting
• 2/2005 - *VOs monthly meetings (in various locations, since 10/2005 in SPACE)
• 5/2005 - 1/2006 - *SMAL subscribers monthly public meetings
• *VOs subgroups
• 6/2005 - change title from SMAL -> NODE.London
• 7/2005 - hired co-ordinator (Tim Jones) via Guardian ad
• 8/2005 - reconstruction of tools development plan
• 10/2005 - Open Season 10-day of 3 events in collaboration with a range of partners: The World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures, Open Congress, and Future Wireless
• 2/2006 - setup nodel.org public website
• 3/2006 - NODE.London march'06 - 150 media art events in 15 venues across London
• 3/2006 - Media Mutandis, NODE.London Reader published
• 7/2006 - evaluation text published

Total funding = £70,000 (100,000 Euro), raised as a grant from Arts Council England.
Total budget = £71,157 (overspend covered by sales of NODE.London Reader).
Each of 15 original (seed) nodes received an average of £1,200 (twds activity supporting their long-term development as agencies supporting media arts); other organisations joined the node network at a later date but did not receive funding as this aspect of the budget had been fully allocated.
 
Media Mutandis, NODE.London Reader was funded from separate £20,000 ACE grant.
 
Individually raised project money for the projects reached £230,000 (35% ACE, 31% local authorities, 17% Lottery Funding, 8% corporate and private sponsorship, 7% Higher Education institutions, 1% venues and other arts organisations).
 
Originally planned budget:
 

[source]
 
 
Final real budget:
 

[source]

 
Decision-making was based on consensus. VOs subgroups were set up to distribute responsibilities. However some of them were almost not functioning, for example Education and Partnerships groups.

Original plan of tools development included building free geodata map, public repository for geo-referenced content about venues, resource sharing system, compatibility of calendar with EVNT.org event database, wiki print-on-demand, and distributed RDF aggregator. [source] However it was visibly changed in August 2005. [source]
 
New persons (VOs, subscribers, volunteers, artists, curators, producers, seed nodes) were invitated to participate via online calls, mailing lists and advert in Art Monthly.
 

 
 
Screenshot of calendar of events at the "public" web:

 
 
Screenshot of internal admin web:

Media art: This is work that, in production process, presentation and/or distribution engages with electronic or digital technologies: audiovisual, computerised, networked, mobile or telematic.
NODE.London [Networked, Open, Distributed, Events. London] will also include projects which are:
* Networked: using or critiquing networks which could be technological, communications or social networks.
* Open: using systems which are participatory and mutable and/or investigating models and infrastructures.
* Distributed: projects which are decentralised, sometimes intervening in mediation and distribution systems. [source]
 
(Seed) Nodes: By March '06 any publicly accessible premises that was offering at least one event at that location was considered a "node" by the software tools and was presented as such on "public" web. [source]
 
SMAL: Season of Media Arts in London; later changed to NODE.London.
 
Subscribers: VOs and others who wished to be considered part of the network, but not organisers. Monthly 'subscriber' meetings offered an opportunity for media artists to present their project ideas in development and to gain constructive feedback from other NODE.London 'subscribers'.
 
VOs: Voluntary organisers of the NODE.London season.
As of July 2006 there are over 80 of these - media arts practitioners, curators, media activists, venue representatives, producers, academic figures, writers, and others supportive of NODE.London's aims. Anyone is able to become a VO over by attending VO meetings and subscribing to the VO email list. Contributions from VOs were range from a 'core' group of 15-20 VOs donating a substantial amount of voluntary time, to others whose VO status simply recognises their subscription to the VO email list. [source]
 

Map of (seed) nodes:

[source]

activist animation architecture art and science artwork audio audio walk broadband TV co-operative collaborative collective commons computer art history cyber-wrestling data visualisation discussion distributed DJ documentary documentation early computer animation education electronics exhibition film cinema moving image film-screening free software gaming gender generative hypertext improvised music infrastructure installation interactive art live cinema performance live music living sculpture locative mapping media theory meeting narrative netart network online online forum open Open Process open social network open source participatory peak oil performance photo series, maps podcast Processing psycho-geographic public art Q&A real-time screening show and tell showcase software software art sound art sound visualisation soundscapes surveillance symposium talk video video installation visual cultural anthropology VJ webcam webcast wireless worksession workshop
[source]

• problematic issues included:
  * Problems of apportioning credit or remuneration for a few, very dedicated VOs and conversely, vulnerability to the behaviour of some participants who may consistently take more out of the system than they put back in.
  * Comparative inefficiency of the consensual management process makes meaningful engagement impossible for some interested parties.
  * Some of the more established institutions have difficulty with NODE.L timelines in the context of their own management systems.
  * Participants need to have a realistic sense of their own capacity or else there needs to be a strong (and uncommonly rigorous) culture of peer assessment and critique in place, when particular tasks are to be accomplished.
  * Much work needs to be done to establish and prove common vocabularies between workers in different fields such as artists and programmers.
  Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow, 29 jan 06. [source]
   
• "I think it became clear through the process of node.london that the category of 'media art' in the early 21st Century in London was mostly (and, as it turned out, irretrievably) a funding category, and was not in any way sufficient to describe the projects, organisations, artists, audiences and interests that involved themselves in node.london."
  Saul Albert, 4 nov 06. [source]
   
• original aim:
  > To re-route or reconfigure the ways in which cultural funding enter
  > and shape the fragile, hybrid economies of their networks that sit
  > between disciplines and categories and barely subsist through
  > volunteerism, the public sector, institutional and commercial markets.
  findings:
  "In terms of the re-routing and reconfiguration of cultural funding, I think it was as impossible and contradictory an aim as that of it's 'upstream provider'. Gate-keeping cultural funds can only really lead to smaller-scale gate-keeping. Concentrating on publicity and infrastructure was an attempt at side-stepping the obvious problem of 'who gets the money', but then providing accountable, clear and testable guidelines and evidence for the rationale and detail of resource distribution and use becomes an onerous (and futile) task.
  I think we were able to confirm our fears that rules and policies for equitable distribution of resources in mixed economies, however carefully formulated, don't work in this context, and that cultural funding always brings its baggage along with it."
  Saul Albert, 4 nov 06. [source]
   
• original aim:
  > To find out if strategies and technologies for decision making,
  > resource allocation, information sharing and collective representation
  > could be adapted from the worlds of activism and free software into this
  > area of cultural production.
  findings:
  "To paint a crude picture of how this looked to me, the development methodologies of Free Software, which have inspired many cultural practices in the last few years simply cannot be applied to an art economy. There are many reasons for this - to do with the incompatibility of reputation systems and false scarcity in parts of the 'art market', but node.london wasn't dealing with just one market. The main problem was more basic than that. Artists are not remunerated as well as programmers for their work. They can't (in general) earn a sufficient surplus in their daily remunerated work to have enough free time to invest in the gift-economics of collaborative, unfunded practices unless they're willing to endure relative financial hardship. For many artists this mode of production is a high risk investment strategy, relying on eventual remuneration through speculation on their future celebrity, which is hardly a basis for a healthy collaborative economy."
  Saul Albert, 4 nov 06. [source]
   
• original aim:
  > To provoke a group of groups to share resources, ideas and effort
  > to bring together a 'season of media art' without it becoming
  > definitive or representative of any specific 'scene' or style.
  findings:
  "I think this really worked, although maybe it can only work once. I can't say how much, who, why, or provide any objective assessment, but I saw a lot of groups, working really hard on very very little investment producing a staggering amount of work. The work was varied, often incongruous and many institutions, organisations and practices sat very uncomfortably together as part of node.london.
  Although the term 'media art' didn't come out of node.london any more useful than it was when it was shoved in, the constant breakdown of node.london's 'identity' as a brand or a specific set of requirements for participation was really interesting.
  This is one of the reasons it failed completely as a 'mainstream' marketing strategy. Hardly a word in the UK general or art press (although it was relatively well covered abroad), very little in institutional publications and journals, hardly anything on radio/TV, and almost no paid advertising. And yet it was all over the Internet."
  Saul Albert, 4 nov 06. [source]

• Who and how really initatied the project? are stated starting points correct?
• How was conflict of interests prevented? (esp. in budget distribution issues)
• Context of the season seem very apolitical. Was it on purpose?
• Was there any participation from outside of usual media art public?
• What were the professional backgrounds of VOs?

project websites

• NODE.London "public" web: The Season of Media Arts, March 2006, www.nodel.org
• Open Season, October 2005, www.nodel.org/october.php
• NODE.London wiki, smal.omweb.org
• NODE.London VO mailing list, one.server1.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/news-l
• NODE.London VO mailing list, one.server1.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vo_news-l
• NODE.London forums, smal.omweb.org/modules/newbb/
• NODE.London evaluation, eval.nodel.org
• NODE.London tools report, 20 May 2006, smal.omweb.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=154&forum=27
• Media Mutandis, NODE.London publication, publication.nodel.org

• DMZ media art festival London. 14-15 November 2003.
  web.archive.org/web/20031119050748/http://dmz.spc.org/ (archived)
• Julian Priest: The Wireless Event. 31 March 2004.
  informal.org.uk/people/julian/publications/the_wireless_event/
• Jo Freeman: The Tyrrany of Structurelessness. 1970-73.
  www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
• Seeds for Change: Consensus Decision Making.
  seedsforchange.org.uk/free/consens

• Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett: States of Interdependence. January 2006.
  publication.nodel.org/States-of-Interdependence
• Discussion about NODE.London on the New Media Curating List. February 2006.
  www.mazine.ws/NodeL_NMC
• Alf Altendorf: Calling Time Out. Malmoe.org, 30 October 2006. Translation by Aileen Derieg.
  altendorf.enemy.org/works/texts---english/calling-time-out.html
• Lauren Wright: Outside In: Organising NODE.London Editorial content. 2 November 2006.
  www.metamute.org/en/Outside-in-Organising-NODE.London
• Saul Albert: Re: [vo_news-l] NODE.London in Malmoe - Misrepresentation? 4 November 2006.
  altendorf.enemy.org/works/texts---english/calling-time-out_2.html

• January 2009: This research is now featured on the LabForCulture website.

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