A day-long series of informal talks to celebrate the launch of a new book - 'README! ascii culture and the revenge of knowledge' - a major compilation of writings on critical net culture filtered by the mailing list Nettime. This element of the Expo also ties in with the Next Five Minutes tactical media conference in Amsterdam the weekend before.

Speakers include:


Tetsuo Kogawa (Tokyo) - FM transmitter performance
Tetsuo Kogawa's interests range over a variety of disciplines and critical approaches. After studying philosophy at Sophia and Waseda universities, he taught at Wako University for 17 years. He is currently Professor of Communication Studies at Tokyo Keizai University's Department of Communications. Kogawa introduced free radio to Japan, and is widely known for his blend of criticism, performance and activism. He has written over 30 books on media culture, film, city and urban space, and micro politics. Most recently he has combined the experimental and pirate aesthetics of the Mini-FM movement with internet streamed media.


Critical Art Ensemble (USA) - biotech / infotech
CAE is a collective of four artists working at the intersection of politics, culture and technology. They are the authors of 'The Electronic Disturbance', 'Electronic Civil Disobedience' and 'Flesh Machine' and contributors of several texts to README!(all published by Autonomedia).


Geert Lovink (Amsterdam) - ADILKNO
ADILKNO is the Foundation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge a cabal of vengeful RSI sufferers dedicated to speculative media-theory. They are the authors of Cracking the Movement: squatting beyond the media a 'movement history' of the Amsterdam squatter movement and The Media Archivean extraodinary volume of Unidentified Theoretical Objects.


Josselien Janssens (NL)
- worked as media researcher for Greenpeace Communications, helped research "Green Backlash, the global subversion of environmental activists" by Andrew Rowell (Routledge 1996); which outlines global political and corporate counter strategies against campaigns. Put together several internal campaign communications strategies for Greenpeace. Currently studying communications and involved in the Next 5 Minutes 3 Tactical Media conference, 'corporate backlash' issues as well as working part time on the development of an Internet-based know-how and network exchange system for an environmental/nature management organisation.


Florian Schneider (Munich) - Cross the Border
Remarkable direct action, information and media campaign for the repeal of immigration controls and borders. Co-organisers of the "No-one is Illegal" summercamps.


Volker Grassmuck (Berlin) - operating systems history
Media researcher & freelance writer. Did research on artificial intelligence, garbage, otaku, the Turing Galaxy and on the history of media and identity discourse in Japan. Currently at the Institute for Computer Science in Education and Society of Humboldt University Berlin doing research on the "Knowledge Order of Digital Media". He also works with mikro a Berlin initiative for the advancement of media cultures, a catalyst and an open and independent platform for projects, discussions and events. They are organisers of the forthcoming 'Wizards of OS' conference which will examine structures and tendencies of operating systems as the foundational layer of the computerized society.


Josephine Starrs (Sydney)- "the thousand pixel stare"
Josephine Starrs is an Australian artist whose installation and internet work made in collaboration with Leon Cmielewski, include "User Unfriendly Interface", "Paranoid Interface", "Fuzzy Love Data Dating Service" and "Diagnostic Tools for the New Millenium". She was a member of the cyberfeminist artist collective, VNS Matrix, whose early performance work in virtual communities used irony and humour to reveal the gendered biases hard wired into computer culture. Recently she has completed artist residencies at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Xerox PARC and Banff Centre for the Arts.


Marko Peljhan (Ljubljana) - Insular Technologies
Marko Peljhan, founder of the Project ATOL Communications Technologies Lab and artist working with satellite communications, stray signals and the waste products of military research, will present their proposal for 'Insular Technologies' - a system for creating an autonomous, encrypted Short Wave radio-based backbone for data transmission between media labs worldwide, set up with the aim of becoming less dependant on the current proprietary infrastructure. He will discuss topics like wireless data communication (Internet-technique, Packet Radio, Satellite Burst Communication), encryption, legal possibilities, political and organisational aspects of the Insular Technologies system.