theme: Dot Org Boom

The years around the turn of the millennium were the glory days of the dot coms. New media industry promised a shiny future and acted as a platform for a great gamble which involved fantastic sums of real and virtual money. These days seem like a distant past when one listens to the news today - reports of downsizing and fear of economic depression have replaced the once optimistic views of the future.

Hidden from the radar of the mainstream media, another boom has been silently growing and gaining a stronger position in the development of media, technology and culture. Dot Org Boom is the non-profit, cultural version of the dot com boom. It brings together voluntary efforts of a massive amount of individual people and is based on the ideology of sharing instead of the ideology of owning.

WHAT IS DOT ORG BOOM? Here are some examples:

OPEN CONTENT - Indymedia activist media network was initiated in 1999. The goal was to offer people an open platform for publishing independent reports and articles about political events. Today the indymedia sites are just islands in the huge ocean of personal weblogs. Do-it-yourself journalism has established itself as a media domain which the mainstream media loves and hates.

OPEN TOOLS - Linux operating system and many other open source software projects have become more popular than the commercial alternative in many areas. In addition to the fact that these software tools are freely available, they have turned out to be often more efficient and reliable. There is also grassroot software development where the aims are quite different - software art is considered as a serious form of art and around one hundred audiovisual performance tools have been released during the past few years.

OPEN ORGANISATION AND EDUCATION - Everyone can participate! The Dot Org Boom is based on a constantly changing organic structure of groups, collectives, discussion forums, websites, workshops, gatherings and festivals. The free availability of tools, instructions and guidance makes it possible (at least in theory) for anyone to participate and develop oneself into an expert respected by the community.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF DOT ORG BOOM? PixelACHE 2005 festival will provide some possible answers to this question and will also deal with some currently important issues. We will explore the structure of grassroot networks, trying to find the key elements for successfully starting and maintaining initiatives. We will also explore the effects that Dot Org Boom has for democratic processes, intellectual property rights and cross-disciplinary education.

PixelACHE Festival will also aim to create situations where the Dot Org Boom theme can merge with the subthemes of the festival: Experimental sound, interaction and electronics + VJ culture + Interactive and participatory cinema + Grassroot networks and politics of media / technology.

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