FUTURE WIRELESS:practical.discourse.creative
DAY & NIGHT: DEBATE, GUERILLA ART AND WIRELESS ACTIONS

Wireless utopia or dysfunctional dystopia?

Wireless technologies have changed the world and continue to do so at an unprecedented rate. But as we embrace these technologies, we also need to ask how they are changing our personal and social spaces? Do we really want mobile phone calls on commercial flights – or is 'always-on' culture making us wireless wage slaves?

Who owns the wireless world and how can we truly realise its creative potential beyond the realms of corporate culture? Has wireless technology liberated communication or has it simply revealed a darker, more dysfunctional side to our natures? What can users and practitioners do to take control of the airwaves and shape and colour their own future? These are just some of the global issues which Future Wireless will address - not just through live debate - but also through practical demonstration, workshops and unique artist interventions.

Cybersalon, working in partnership with the Science Museum, Open Spectrum UK and NODE.London, has commissioned a day of debate, guerrilla art and wireless workshops, and assembled an international group of cultural commentators, researchers and artists alongside free wireless network activists and commercial developers to probe the nature, impact and potential of the wireless internet, mobile telecommunications and other radio based technologies.

Other events in the NODE.London Autumn 05 season:

Monday, 26th - Fri 31st September:
World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures Workshops (www.wsfii.org) workshops at Limehouse Town Hall: a week of informal gathering, discussion and workshops amongst free infrastructures pragmatists, leading up to the summit. During this week, Limehouse will become the focus for production of free geodata, free networks, open publishing materials and other experiments in peer-communications systems.

Saturday, 1st - Sunday, 2nd October - WSFII:
The World Summit will be based at Limehouse, where test cases of free infrastructures will have been set up over the last week. The format is simple: a rolling programme of stories being told by WSFII delegates, personal 'tales from the front' as it were. At the same time, Free Infrastructures groups will be attending a programme of workshops scattered all over the building, where the public can get a direct experience of using, contributing to and participating in peer communications techniques and technologies.

Friday, 7th - Saturday, 8th October 2005:
Open Congress (http://opencongress.omweb.org/modules/wakka/HomePage) - a group of artists, researchers and academics - some of whom are based at Chelsea College of Art and Design - who are working towards an Open Congress that seeks to understand how methodologies derived from Free/Libre and Open Source Software [FLOSS] production can be deployed by those working in the area of art, visual culture and cultural production in general. The events aims to explore how FLOSS inspired practices challenge the ruling paradigms of production and knowledge; particularly conventional practices of authorship, ownership and distribution.We aim to address these questions through an innovative form of ‘congress’ - which will itself be ‘open source’ in its form and structure. Open Congress will be held at Tate Britain, Millbank, London.