check: http://www.aec.at/
In 1998, under the banner of "INFOWAR", the Ars Electronica Festival of
Art, Technology and Society, is appealing to artists, theoreticians and
technologists for contributions relating to the social and political
definition of the information society. The emphasis here will lie not on
technological flights of fancy, but on the fronts drawn up in a society
that is in a process of fundamental and violent upheaval.
INFOWAR - information.macht.krieg
The information society - no longer a vague promise of a better future,
but
a reality and a central challenge of the here-and-now - is founded upon
the
three key technologies of electricity, telecommunications and computers:
Technologies developed for the purposes, and out of the logic, of war,
technologies of simultaneity and coherence, keeping our civilian society
in
a state of permanent mobilisation driven by the battle for markets,
resources and spheres of influence. A battle for supremacy in processes
of
economic concentration, in which the fronts, no longer drawn up along
national boundaries and between political systems, are defined by
technical
standards. A battle in which the power of knowledge is managed as a
profitable monopoly of its distribution and dissemination. The latest
stock market upheavals have laid bare the power of a global market, such
as
only the digital revolution could have fathered, and which must be
counted
as the latter's most widely-felt direct outcome. The
digitally-networked
market of today wields more power than the politicians. Governments are
losing their say in the international value of their currencies; they
can
no longer control, but only react. The massive expansion of
freely-accessible communication networks, itself a global economic
necessity, imposes severe constraints on the arbitrary restriction of
information flows.
Any transgression of critical control functions into the
cybertechnologies'
sphere of responsibility and influence puts central power wielders in a
previously unheard-of position of vulnerability and openness to attack.
The
geographic frontiers of the industrial age are increasingly losing their
former significance in global politics, and giving way to vertical
fronts
along social stratifications.
Whereas, in the past, war was concerned with the conquering of
territory,
and later with the control of production capacities, war in the 21st
century is entirely concerned with the acquisition and exercise of power
over knowledge. The three fronts of land, sea and air battles have been
joined by a fourth, being set up within the global information systems.
Spurred on by the "successes" of the Gulf war, the development of
information warfare is running at full speed. Increasingly, the
attention
of the military strategists is turning away from computer-aided warfare
-
from potentiation of the destructive efficiency of military operations
through the application of information technology, virtual reality and
high-tech weaponry - to cyberwar, whose ultimate target is nothing less
than the global information infrastructure itself: annihilation of the
enemy's computer and communication systems, obliteration of his
databases,
destruction of his command and control systems. Yet increasingly the
vital
significance of the global information infrastructure for the
functioning
of the international finance markets compels the establishment of new st
rategic objectives: not obliteration, but manipulation, not destruction,
but infiltration and assimilation. "Netwar" as the tactical deployment
of
information and disinformation, targeted at the human mind.
These new forms of post-territorial conflicts, however, have for some
time
now ceased to be preserve of governments and their ministers of war.
NGOs,
hackers, computer freaks in the service of organised crime, and
terrorist
organisations with high-tech expertise are now the chief actors in the
cyberguerilla nightmares of national security services and defence
ministries.
In 1998, under the banner of "INFOWAR", the Ars Electronica Festival of
Art, Technology and Society, is appealing to artists, theoreticians and
technologists for contributions relating to the social and political
definition of the information society. The emphasis here will lie not on
technological flights of fancy, but on the fronts drawn up in a society
that is in a process of fundamental and violent upheaval.
Gerfried Stocker/
Christine Schoepf
Ars Electronica Festival
For any additional information please contact:
Ars Electronica Festival
Jutta Schmiederer
Hauptstrasse 2
A-4040 Linz
Austria
+43-732-72 72 - 0
+43.732.72 72 - 77 fax
info@aec.at
http://www.aec.at
======
PRIX Ars Electronica 98
http://prixars.orf.at
prize for artistic creativity and pioneering work in the field of
digital
media.
total prize money: US$ 105,058
entry deadline: april 30, 1998