workshop cluster C
Ways of Doing.
Approaches, Manuals, Tactics, Strategies and the Operational Art

In this workshop cluster we will explore different approaches to the question of how we can make a cultural project like a media lab possible. We will discuss with James Wallbank about how valuable experiences like Access Space (Shefield) can be transfered to other contexts.
We will defend the importance of the FLOSS approach as a good basis for a free media lab, through the actual collaborative production of a new FLOSS Manual with the coordination of Adam Hyde.
On a more theoretical approach, Jordi Claramonte proposes to analyse different cultural projects through the operational approach, that connects the tactical and the strategical ways of doing.
This cluster is organised by Medialab Prado, Madrid http://medialab-prado.es

Each workshop node is limited to 10 places, so please pre-register! (see below)

Workshop nodes:

1] A Media Lab in Berlin (Keeping It Real) with James Wallbank
An opportunity to discuss and analyse the social, cultural and practical situation in Berlin, and make some plans (or at least, plan some approaches) to building an inclusive, open, free and fun media lab where cool stuff happens. What can stop a media lab from starting and from working? How can these problems be avoided? How can a media lab keep going, even when times are hard or crises hit? How can a lab have a strong sense of identity and community, but still be open to new people and new ideas? James Wallbank will start the workshop with the presentation:

The Tao of Media Labs
What’s so good about a free media lab? Sure, you can get people together with some old PCs, build a lab, learn new skills, build creativity, confidence and community, but how (how, exactly?) does this make things better?
Over nine years in Sheffield (UK) Access Space has developed some successful approaches to mobilising a play online casino games local community to build and sustain its own DIY digital culture centre. Last year they published “Grow your Own Media Lab”, summarising their ideas, and inviting other communities to share their knowhow and do what the title says.
This year (for the first time) Access Space engaged with academics and researchers to discuss and understand the theory behind their practice. The insights revealed suggest that the group may have stumbled upon radical new ways to re-understand “value” that could have widespread implications for future culture.
http://access-space.org/

2] Culture Wars and viceversa with Jordi Claramonte
In military terms, traditionally, there has been a sharp distinction between strategy and tactics. Tactics were concerned with the closest means and the inmediate and direct arenas of conflict. Strategy would imply the overall organization and determination of general goals. Such a distinction has been quite useful till the moment in which a growing social and material complexity has made the scale of the operations so huge that a new level of consideration had to be specified, where both political and cultural conflicts would require of a more complex web of manouvers and interventions.
Soviet thinkers in the 30’s and 40’s came across the concept of “operational art” to think about the mediations required between tactics and strategy, art and life, high brow and low brow.
In this workshop we shall deal with these categories and check their potential at the time of discussing cultural politics and diferent possibilities of aesthetic intervention and direct action. This is a call for projects to be discussed and analyzed under this triple tactic-strategic-operational view, paying special atention to the project of a new media lab as a case of study.
http://www.sccpp.org/

3] FLOSS Manuals. Ogg Theora Book Sprint with Adam Hyde
FLOSS Manuals is a collection of manuals that explain how to install and use a range of free and open source software. The manuals are friendly and simple, and they are intended to encourage people to explore the wide range of free, open source alternatives to expensive and restrictively licensed software. At FLOSS Manuals you can find manuals for free and open source software like office applications, as well as web editing and browsing, and tools for playing, making, streaming and sharing audio and video.
In this workshop we will make an Ogg Theora Book Sprint. As a result, a book will be published under a free license (GPL).
Ogg Theora is a free and open source video format, used mostly for the delivery of live content. FLOSS Manuals will convene a Book Sprint to document the use of Ogg Theora in Firefox 3.5, Ogg Tools, Streaming with VLC, Basic Icecast configuration, FFmpeg2Theora conversion, pivitvand the hardware set-up for streaming live Ogg Theora
During the workshop we will celebrate some open debates on how the FLOSS Manuals phylosophie can be applied to other kind of projects like How To Grow A Media Lab.
http://en.flossmanuals.net/

The following WIKI page gives more useful information about the workshop location, dates, hours etc and will be updated constantly: http://www.dock-berlin.de/wiki/doku.php?id=start

Each workshop node is limited to 10 places, so please pre-register! This registration is a first indication or preference, cross-talk and collaboration between these nodes is encouraged.
The workshop fee for 1] and 2] is 50 Euro for the week, workshop 3] is free.