With a semester’s worth of net research under our belts, and with an abundance of media recording and communication devices at our disposal, with vast potential audiences and collaborators within reach, how might we re-frame our use of the web? To help answer that question, or at least provoke some ideas about how we create, this week we are going to look at art and technology manifestos over the last century.
Four of the major art movements from last century – Futurist / Fluxus / Dada / Surrealist – resonated at the time because their manifestoes managed to articulate dissatisfaction with the status quo, while offering some ideas about how we could move forward from the past (within creative disciplines as well as within society in general ).
“The Futurist Manifesto, written by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, was published in French as “Manifeste du futurisme” in Le Figaro on 20 February 1909. It launched an art movement, futurism, that rejected the past; celebrated speed, machinery, violence, youth and industry; and sought the modernisation and cultural rejuvenation of Italy. The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism allows a sharper comprehension of a cultural evolution in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century, meant as an intellectual avant-garde.”
via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_Manifesto
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The Futurist Manifesto for Cinema ( 1916? ) : “the universe will be our vocabulary.. Cinematic simultaneity and interpenetration of different times and places. We shall project two or three different visual episodes at the same time, one next to the other.
Cinematic musical researches (dissonances, harmonies, symphonies of gestures, events, colors, lines, etc.). Daily exercises in freeing ourselves from mere photographed logic ..etc etc
The Futurist Manifesto for Music (Balila Pratella, 1912) “…The liberation of individual musical sensibility from all imitation or influence of the past, feeling and singing with the spirit open to the future, drawing inspiration and aesthetics from nature, through all the human and extra-human phenomena present in it.”
[Task : Break into groups to quickly research and summarise essence of the other above art movements ]
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And in 2010?
Now that we’ve had more than 100 years of Design manifestos, this has naturally included aPost-Futurist Manifesto ( Franco Berardi, 2009 ), and many, many more. Below are a few that deal with the intersection of art and technology in various ways. What are some principles / ideas that might help provide a useful framework for future media production, research, collaboration and distribution? What relevant points / ideas can be adapted usefully from the manifestoes below?
[ TASK : Try and find a minimum of 5 points from within these, that seem relevant to how you view your practice in 2010. ( Include this in a blog post, along with reference links, and rationale. ]
1000 Words: A Manifesto for Sustainability in Design By Allan Chochinov
The Experience Design Manifesto ( 2009 )
A Design Manifesto ( design or De$$ign? )
The GNU Operating System Manifesto ( Why free software systems? )
A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention, Michael Erard ( ‘Cognitive investment’, anyone? )
Information Visualization Manifesto by Manuel Lima
An Owner’s Manifesto by Mister Jalopy. ( “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it: A Maker’s Bill of Rights to accessible, extensive and repairable hardware.” )
An Agile Web Design Manifesto
An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth by Bruce Mau.
Manifesto for cheap art ( 1984 )
Bruce Sterling’s Viridian Manifesto
Internet Manifesto : How journalism works today. Seventeen declarations.
The Mozilla Manifesto ( 10 principles by the makers of the free Firefox browser )
The Indie-Web Manifesto
The Assembled Web: Notes Toward a Manifesto ( Success on the web is no longer .. about driving traffic to your site, or keeping eyeballs there once they arrive.)
The League of Movable Type’s Open Source Font Manifesto..
The Anti-Web Manifesto ( Or a Rejection of the modern Web and its Technology. )
The Anti Web 2.0 Manifesto ( Andrew Keen )
“1. The cult of the amateur is digital utopianism’s most seductive delusion. This cult promises that the latest media technology — in the form of blogs, wikis and podcasts — will enable everyone to become widely read writers, journalists, movie directors and music artists. It suggests, mistakenly, that everyone has something interesting to say.”
The Longer Web Manifesto ( David Govoni )
The New Media Manifesto ( a marketing blog points to principles for technology to serve.. )
Manifesto of Virtual Art 2010 by Adam Nash, Justin Clemens and Christopher Dodds.
Transhumanist Art Manifesto Natasha Vita-More (written 1982, revised 2003)
Julian Bleecker‘s “Manifesto for Networked Objects” – living “in” rather than “on” the internet.
Rmitmusic Blog 
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