Spring 2014 I was invited to talk on a panel organized in Hito Steyerl's exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. Theme of the panel was 'circulationism', a term Steyerl uses for the online distribution of images. I was asked to speak about alternative networks, or rather, about the possibility for the creation of alternative networks after the revelations made by Snowden showed the Internet is heavily surveilled by the NSA. In my talk I try to show alternative networks already exist, and will be very hard to erase or control completely by authorities.

“The location of power - and the site of resistance - rest in an ambiguous zone without borders.” Critical Art Ensemble, The Electronic Disturbance,1994.

published: October, 2013

This essay was written for the Post-Digital research conference in the Kunsthal Aarhus, which was a collaboration between Aarhus University and the Transmediale festival in Berlin.

published: May, 2002

In 2002 I was invited to speak at the Reality Check for Cyber Utopias conference in Zagreb, organized by MAMA, the Croatian media lab. I decided to talk about the way art is approached in many media art contexts, something I elaborate on almost ten years later in my book Nettitudes. I make a plea for a different view of both net art and media art, and defend the legitimacy of all contemporary art practices that involve the Internet.

Outdoor installation at the Technorganic festival organized by Cary Peppermint and Leila Christine Nadir in 2005.

published: October, 2001

In 2001 I was asked to give a talk at NCC48, a rather curious 48 hour nonstop congress in a cave in Graz, Austria. I decided to present my very own thoughts on net art, after I felt many words had been put in my mouth by others. The hype and noise around net art had produced an almost impossible climate to discuss this new art context seriously. Needless to say my words hardly impressed anyone. Today it turns out I was right: more 'users' creates more mainstream art behavior; artists have started to explore the broader virtual field of the network (which is translated in 'new' theories from post-Internet to New Aesthetic);  and art institutions are very, very slowly exploring their new expanded field of influence. For your information: the open letter by Jon Ippolito I am referring to here criticized the possibility for art institutions to be able to get a .museum domain (instead of a .org or .com suffix), posted on the nettime mailing list in December 2000.

Today I would have to add some words to the last paragraph though, to be clear. I am NOT saying the Internet is a conceptual space, but I am saying that to think about art and the internet it is necessary to let go of simplistic and outdated notions of the Internet as a purely technological, singular medium. Quote: "So the 'web of possibilities', which is in the expanded virtual space of the combination of technology and humans is the true basis of net art. One could say the ability to see beyond the purely technical environment produces a new kind of abstraction in art."

published: April, 2012

Lezing gegeven in Januari 2000 in SubK te Utrecht, ter gelegenheid van een avond over 'digipersonae'. 

   De kunstenaar achter antiorp, Gheorghe Dan.

published: March, 1997

Wiretap 3.02 was a weeklong workshop organised by V2_Organisation in cooperation with IKON Radio and Press Now. It was supposed to investigate the relationship and interaction between radio and Internet. The public event of Wiretap 3.02 took place on Sunday, February 23rd, with a live radio programme from 14.00 till 17.00, broadcast on the internet and partly through the national ether. The RealAudio signal was picked up and rebroadcast live by local ether stations in Amsterdam and Ljubljana. Radio B92 from Belgrade was so kind to let us use their RealAudio server at xs4all. You can find the recording of the event in RealAudio format at: http://www.v2.nl/wiretap_radio

These were the participants of the workshop:

Drazen Pantic from Radio B92, Belgrado Bojan Azman from Radio Student, Ljubljana Edin Karamehmedovic from Radio 101, Zagreb Andor Fabian from Radio TTT, Zagreb Vuk Cosic and Luka Frelih from Ljudmila, Ljubljana Dr. Beeldplaatje from Radio 100, Amsterdam Josephine Bosma from Radio Patapoe, Amsterdam Reni Hofmueller from Radio Helsinki, Graz Martin Schitter from Uni-computerlab, Graz Ludwig Zeiniger from ORF Kunstradio, Vienna

published: April, 2011

After having my work published in various catalogues and essay collections, this is the first book under my own name. It was written for the Institute for Network Cultures in Amsterdam, and published by NAi publishers. The latter is the main publisher on new media art in the Netherlands.The Mondriaan Foundation and the BKVB both supported us making this book.

Nettitudes contains five essays about art and new media, and consists of two parts. The first focusses on 'net art' in the broadest sense of the word, and aims to refute persisting false definitions of this emerging art field. In the second part of the book net art is approached from three very different angles: the history of net.art (with dot), a contemplation on the digital archive, and last but not least a text on music and sound art in the context of new media.

Nettitudes can be ordered through NAi Publishers http://www.naipublishers.nl/art/nettitudes_e.html

published:June, 2000

Musaic was originally written for the music and new media festival Futuresonic. There it was noticed by Kathleen Forde of the SFMoma who asked whether it could be included in the online sound art exhibition Crossfade, which was a collaboration of three art institutions: ZKM, Walker Art Institute and the SFMoma. Musaic also appeared in Sandbox magazine in New York.

(This image was borrowed from the website visualcomplexity.com, purely for illustration purposes. It shows a screenshot of a software tool "The World of Music, by researchers at Standford, MIT and Yahoo!," which "intends to render the music space in an unprecedented way. This visualization shows 9,276 artists and how they are related to each other.")

published: September, 1999

Experimental text. Rewrite of an essay/lecture by the Dutch poet Komrij, originally: how to read poetry. Everywhere where Komrij wrote ‘poetry’ I replaced it by ‘net.art’, and where he wrote ‘poem’ I changed it to net.artwork. The text was and is meant to make people see net artworks individually rather than from general assumptions about what net art is. Like Komrij's text, this re-write has no paragraphs. The picture with the quote by Vuk Cosic does not belong to this text, but seems to breath the same spirit.

published: January, 1998

The Mr Net.Art contest was a tongue in cheeck comment on the social environment of net.art in the mid nineties. The idea was to create a competition in which the true focus really was the all female jury. The title Mr Net.Art was ultimately won, after much debate in the jury, by a piece of software, namely Webstalker by the artist group I/O/D.

Lecture written for the Electrohype conference 2002, in Malmo Sweden. In this text I present a new work by Graham Harwood, a piece of software that is based on a poem written by William Blake. The software can be used to calculate the total amount of last breaths of people dying in a inhumane situation over a specific period of time, in order to then use the outcome of this calculation to determine the length of time a horn or siren should be played throughout a city. The last breaths play the horn.

published: May, 2000

This is an early attempt of me to develop my view on net art discourse. The title reveals how I saw (and mostly still see) art discourse as popular in its approach of net art. What happens in most art discourse relating to net art barely scratches the surface of what is going on, and this was definitely the case in 2000, when this was written. However, much of what is said in here I would say different today, at the very least.The lecture is a bit 'incrowd'.

published: July, 1997

Transcription of informal discussion and semi-interview between Alexei Shulgin, Joan Heemskerk, Dirk Paesmans and me, made one evening after the Beauty and the East Nettime conference in 1997. It focuses on the need for independent servers and artist domains online.

published: December, 1998

Short review of a work by Russian artist Olia Lialina, written for a special work in her online art gallery.

published: May, 1997

Radio on the Internet did not start with the immersion of RealAudio. It was there long before. To make a good judgement of what radio is in the age of digital media, the traditional concept of radio has to be overthrown completely.

Where in the beginning of this century the communicative possibilities of radio were diminished in favor of control over the airwaves for reasons of censorship and security, today the system of cables, airwaves and satelites that shape the internet needs first of all no strong security measures for the sake of basic services like ambulance and airplane traffic control, and secondly, censorship seems a lot less easy task to perform. Radio no longer needs to be a single stream of sound that is transmitted from a central point to its listeners. Trying to make this type of radio in the net in fact seems contradictive to the qualities the net adds to communication technologies. Considering the way a lot of people use media at present, zapping through channels and constructing a private program using different media combined often, seeking alternatives for centralized broadcasting seems apropriate. It will not replace broadcasting as it is, but create possibilities and more freedom within the making of radio and also within the making of other massmedia. Even the type of net.radio that serves as an extension of the "mother station's" transmitters reach is no longer the single soundstream classic radio produces. This too needs a different approach then cable and ether radio, as its impact is not the same as of 'normal' transmissions.

published: July, 1998

The most annoying discussion surrounding net art is the one that questions whether or not net art is truly a new artform. Some critics still deny the existence of this new art form within the communication networks. Net art should be given some definition and positioned in relation to offline culture.

published: February, 1998

Rr:radio conversation

Someone forwarded an email of mine to Tetsuo Kogawa, here is an edit of our email exchange that followed.

Josephine: >Tetsuo Kogawa got the excellent idea to build chains of these small transmitters, to still be able to broadcast in the entire city. These transmitters do not reach further then about 100 meters, so global domination with a single mini fm station in large areas is rather difficult.<

Tetsuo: This situation was about the first stage of Mini FM in the early 80s in Japan. At that time, we had not so much knowledge on transmitter technology and, at the same time, the authority was nervous about our 'unexpected' trick (micro politics). As late as 1986, we started to use more powerful (but it is only one watt) transmitter that could cover at least 1-2 mile radius. The point, however, is not the stronger power of transmitter. As long as it is alternative (later + native), it must be different from usual broadcasting. Forgetting 'broad'-casting, we insisted 'narrow'-casting.

Josephine: you know that narrow casting is a term that is also used for webcasting? (because the broadcasts on the net can only follow the path of the net, and not fill the entire ether)

Tetsuo: In my understanding, the more creative or positive function of the Web is to be not 'casting'. Unfortunately, the Internet is used as a new type of casting, though.

published:December,2006

Slightly refined version of the thoughts expressed in No Ego. This essay appeared in the book Network Art, ed. Tom Corby, Routledge, 2006. Second part.

published:December,2006

Slightly refined version of the thoughts expressed in No Ego. This essay appeared in the book Network Art, ed. Tom Corby, Routledge, 2006. First part.

published: June, 2006

This text was presented as a paper at ISEA06, San Jose CA. It appeared in the ISEA issue of Intelligent Agent. It is a thought experiment about the connection between human voice and computer code.

Lungs (2005) by Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji (YoHa)