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Net Community Hacks Cultural Funding System
Vienna, 2 May 2006
“Our much-discussed, game-theory-oriented approach to
cultural funding represents a clear rejection of all the
Austrian cultural industry’s hegemonic tendencies,” states MANA
coordinator Stefan Lutschinger: “This hack of the outmoded jury and
committee system opposes every rationalistic funding cut with pure
difference, contingency coping and the fruitful development of
paradox.”
Software-based Funding Distribution
Last week, a participatory cultural support budget of
125,000 euros was distributed to artists and cultural producers in
Vienna using the MANA Community Game – an innovative software-supported
selection process. The decision regarding the distribution of
funding was not made by curators, juries or committees, but by the
submitters themselves. Twelve people will receive project grants
between 5,000 and 15,000 euros, whereby 42% of the recipients are
women.
“Old” Concepts and “New Thinking”
The Community Game is one of the most innovative
distribution systems for cultural funding worldwide. It is based on “old”
concepts of the avant-garde – auto-curating and self-organization
–
and the “new thinking” of second-order cybernetics. MANA’s
great
advantage is its capacity for self-correction and adaptation to
intelligent system environments: errors and irregularities can be
recognized and corrected immediately by the net community, which
emerges strengthened from this process. Here 120 submitters
agreed to a complex set of rules.
A Self-managed Cultural Funding Budget
Since the autumn of 2004, the open net community
“netznetz.net” has grown out of the numerous digital cultural
initiatives
that have developed in Vienna in recent years. In order to do
justice to these diverse cultural and artistic modes of expression, an
application has been made to the City of Vienna’s Department of
Cultural Affairs (Net Culture Unit) for a self-managed cultural funding
budget to support this very active scene with around 500,000 euros
yearly. The heart of this funding model is the software-based selection
process MANA. After a two-month evaluation phase in early summer,
the net community will decide on its specific adaptation and further
development.
Inquiries:
Stefan Lutschinger, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Hans
Bernhard
Email: s.lutschinger@digitaldrafts.at
+43 660 6538616
http://mana.netznetz.net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netznetz
http://www.parliaments-of-art.net
--
Hans Bernhard
UBERMORGEN.COM / etoy.holding
Skype Hans_Bernhard
Studio +43 1 236 19 85
Mobile +43 650 930 00 61
Email hans@ubermorgen.com
http://www.ubermorgen.com
http://www.gwei.org
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