Syndicate: ARS Electronica Festival 98

[ARS Electronica Festival <ars@aec.at> (by way of Andreas Broeckmann)]

ARS Electronica Festival 98
September 7 - 12,  1998
Linz, Austria

check: http://www.aec.at/


In 1998, under the banner of "INFOWAR", the Ars Electronica Festival
of Art, Technology and Society, is appealing to artists, theoreticians
and technologists for contributions relating to the social and
political definition of the information society. The emphasis here
will lie not on technological flights of fancy, but on the fronts
drawn up in a society that is in a process of fundamental and violent
upheaval.


INFOWAR - information.macht.krieg

The information society - no longer a vague promise of a better
future, but a reality and a central challenge of the here-and-now - is
founded upon the three key technologies of electricity,
telecommunications and computers: Technologies developed for the
purposes, and out of the logic, of war, technologies of simultaneity
and coherence, keeping our civilian society in a state of permanent
mobilisation driven by the battle for markets, resources and spheres
of influence. A battle for supremacy in processes of economic
concentration, in which the fronts, no longer drawn up along national
boundaries and between political systems, are defined by technical
standards. A battle in which the power of knowledge is managed as a
profitable monopoly of its distribution and dissemination.
The latest stock market upheavals have laid bare the power of a global
market, such as only the digital revolution could have fathered, and
which must be counted as the latter's most widely-felt direct outcome.
The digitally-networked market of today wields more power than the
politicians. Governments are losing their say in the international
value of their currencies; they can no longer control, but only react.
The massive expansion of freely-accessible communication networks,
itself a global economic necessity, imposes severe constraints on the
arbitrary restriction of information flows.

Any transgression of critical control functions into the
cybertechnologies' sphere of responsibility and influence puts central
power wielders in a previously unheard-of position of vulnerability
and openness to attack. The geographic frontiers of the industrial age
are increasingly losing their former significance in global politics,
and giving way to vertical fronts along social stratifications.

Whereas, in the past, war was concerned with the conquering of
territory, and later with the control of production capacities, war in
the 21st century is entirely concerned with the acquisition and
exercise of power over knowledge. The three fronts of land, sea and
air battles have been joined by a fourth, being set up within the
global information systems.
Spurred on by the "successes" of the Gulf war, the development of
information warfare is running at full speed. Increasingly, the
attention of the military strategists is turning away from
computer-aided warfare - from potentiation of the destructive
efficiency of military operations through the application of
information technology, virtual reality and high-tech weaponry - to
cyberwar, whose ultimate target is nothing less than the global
information infrastructure itself: annihilation of the
enemy's computer and communication systems, obliteration of his
databases, destruction of his command and control systems. Yet
increasingly the vital significance of the global information
infrastructure for the functioning of the international finance
markets compels the establishment of new strategic objectives: not
obliteration, but manipulation, not destruction, but infiltration and
assimilation. "Netwar"  as the tactical deployment of information and
disinformation, targeted at the human mind.
These new forms of post-territorial conflicts, however, have for some
time now ceased to be preserve of governments and their ministers of
war. NGOs, hackers, computer freaks in the service of organised crime,
and terrorist organisations with high-tech expertise are now the chief
actors in the cyberguerilla nightmares of national security services
and defence ministries.

In 1998, under the banner of "INFOWAR", the Ars Electronica Festival
of Art, Technology and Society, is appealing to artists, theoreticians
and technologists for contributions relating to the social and
political definition of the information society. The emphasis here
will lie not on technological flights of fancy, but on the fronts
drawn up in a society that is in a process of fundamental and violent
upheaval.

Gerfried Stocker/
Christine Schoepf
Ars Electronica Festival

http://www.aec.at/infowar



For any additional information please contact:

Ars Electronica Festival
Jutta Schmiederer
Hauptstrasse 2
A-4040 Linz
Austria


+43-732-72 72 - 0
+43.732.72 72 - 77 fax
info@aec.at
http://www.aec.at



======

PRIX Ars Electronica 98
http://prixars.orf.at

prize for artistic creativity and pioneering work in the field of
digital media.

total prize money: US$ 105,058

entry deadline: april 30, 1998