PROPOSAL FOR A MESHWORK OF R4WB1T5 MICRO.FESTS — Amanda Gutierrez, jon.satrom and jonCates (2006)

PROPOSAL FOR A MESHWORK OF R4WB1T5 MICRO.FESTS
by Amanda Gutierrez, jon.satrom and jonCates (2006)

Experimenta
MESH Journal
Global/Regional Perspectives edition
North and South America

r4WB1t5 (pronounced “raw bits”) festival is an international, open, decentralised, distributed, conversational and collaborative event forsharing raw bits of Digital Art and dirty New Media. (A) r4WB1t5 fest instigates temporary platforms for discussing, developing and exchanging projects, resisting traditional art exhibition or performance situations. (A) r4WB1t5micro festival encourages digital punk DIY (Do It Yourself) strategies and collective DIT (Do It Together) artistic collaborations. Mobilising a decentralised Situationist festival that provokes a Revolution of Everyday Life (in the Raoul Vaneigem sense), (A) r4WB1t5 is microrevolutionary (in the Felix Guattari sense). The r4WB1t5 micro.Fest confronts contemporary for-profit models of New Media and Digital Art development, distribution, curation, organisation, exhibition and events. The micro-sizing of r4WB1t5 critiques the urban sprawl of increasingly bloated and brittle art markets and multimedia festivals in Chicago. Smaller scale international social networks and models such as Dorkbot have inspired r4WB1t5, however, r4WB1t5 seeks to function as an open framework rather than…