ncc03 - net community congress

The “ncc03” will be an internationally oriented 25-hour non-stop event staged by the mur.at community on site and online in the Dom im Berg in Graz. A team made up of mur.at members will program the course of the conference in hour units.

During theese 25 hours, there will be 24 theme units (+ 1 concluding round-up) devoted to various thematic focuses, covering current developments and debates surrounding Net Art and production strategies on the Internet from a range of perspectives. Networks, communities, literature, software, art, communication models and much more will come under topical analysis: how are the relevant modes of production changing under Net conditions? What new concepts are being created? How are cultural exchange processes changing in general? What does ‘neighbourhood’ mean under Net conditions? Which links with everyday culture are emerging? Theese and other questions will be discussed in situ and remotely via the Internet by inter/national participants, including some internationally renowned artists and experts.

The whole conference will be broadcasted live on the Internet for 25 hours, offering a huge number of “visitors” the opportunity to follow the agenda. The audience will however also be actively involved in the conference, which will be accompanied by an online chat throughout, giving attending or globally dispersed users the chance to provide commentaries and interventions or to join in the discussion with the conference participants.

“ncc03” will not, however, follow the pattern of a conventional conference: the conference itself will be an experimental stage for the discussion and presentation of a range of themes. There will not be the traditional relationship between presentation and reception. The Dom im Berg will be transformed into a complex network accessible to visitors in situ or on the Internet via a large number of interfaces. The 25-hour agenda also means that there will be 25 hours of documentation by video teams on site, 25 hours of reflections in meetings, discussions, presentations, statements and chats, 25 hours of online streaming, 25 hours of information compression. Hence in its very conception the conference represents a response to those production relationships that are themselves the subject of the event. The event will take place in a showcase setting drawn from the “localtask” Net art exhibition and which will be tried out in this form in Graz once more. The ncc03 will therefore not only tie in with the 2001 ncc48, but also with the long tradition of experimental and trend-setting media work in Graz.

The ncc03 is not only geared up for the Internet art public. The media, and above all “the Net”, is also always has a lot to do with politics. The “netz.konsortium.at” interest group will be meeting within the context of the ncc03. The group was founded at the ncc48 as a fusion of all of the major Austrian Internet/cultural initiatives in order to keep on gaining new members and to represent the interests of cultural initiatives that – mostly without proper funding – are active with and on the Internet, and which are working against attempts at restriction and comprehensive control mechanisms in order to help set up open and public access to the Internet.

Hence this meeting is also important because the networks have an undeniable social dimension; the tendency is towards mutual support, exchange and forming decentralised alliances and technical coalitions in order to create a context without which the structuring of “content” would be impossible. Precisely within the realm of this “content” however there are such “cells” as mur.at that address crucial issues and present a critical reflection on general developments at both national and international levels.