Speculative mechanisms of conspiracy theories have fuelled global events at all times. Much like our yearnings for desire, mystery and unpredictability, conspiracy is a human condition used to decipher the way in which we read an increasingly chaotic world of manipulated disinformation. The Internet and its associated Web 2.0 counterpart have begun to move beyond communal and user driven realms of information exchange towards mechanisms fuelling and fanning all forms of popular speculation.
The transmediale.08 conference will discuss the notions behind conspiratorial acts, structures and speculation, and consider the mechanisms therein as new forms of cultural, technological or political strategy. The conference is funded and organised in collaboration with the German Federal Agency for Civic Education. The panels and keynote events take place at the House of World Cultures (Auditorium). For the first time all panels will be accessible world-wide in real time through live streams and live chats.
In five panels these topics will be discussed at transmediale.08: “The Chilean Network Experiment: From Poetics To Systemics” (30.1. 14 hrs) clarifies the significance of September 11th – 1973! How identity and culture are corrupted when freedom of access and communication become entangled in an ill-defined international ‘war on terror’ will be discussed in “Embedding Fear. The Internet And The Spectacle Of Heightened Alert” (31.1. 13 hrs). The widening gap between regulatory regimes and the everyday practices of millions of people concerning Intellectual Property are topics in “The Greying Of The Commons: IP, The Law And The Street” (1.2. 13 hrs). How both, politics and technology mingle the unexplainable with, and apply the fictionalisation of information to achieve narrative goals is a central theme in “Techno-Historical Collusions: The Making Of A Trojan Horse” (2.2. 13 hrs). Alternative models and strategies for a Web 3.0 will be formulated in “Conspiring To Keep The Net Public” (3.2. 13 hrs).
The keynote events und lectures of transmediale.08 take on a variety of forms. The spectrum ranges from a philosophical lecture on “real” conspiracy by Timothy Druckrey (30.1. 18.30 hrs), to a keynote by Prof. Dr. Otto E. Rossler on the simulated creation of micro black holes planned at the CERN in Geneva, Switzerland for May 2008 (”The Paradox of the Big Bang: Reducing Fear by Accelerating Danger“, 31.1. 18 hrs), to a performative lecture by the Icelandic artist and architect Einar Thorsteinn (”Alchemy Of Objects”, 2.2. 17 hrs), and a “Ciruclo reflexivo“, A collaborative conversation between the Chilean neurobiologist and philosopher Humberto Maturana and his collegue Ximena Davila on “co(i)nspiration as the biological basis for human existence” (1.2. 19 hrs).
