All the Other Directions We Can Go

Alternative Media Networks and their Infrastructures

No cover

Carolina Valente Pinto: All the Other Directions We Can Go (EBook, 2023, Institute of Network Cultures)

PDF, 86 pages

Published Aug. 5, 2023 by Institute of Network Cultures.

ISBN:
978-90-833282-3-2
Copied ISBN!
3 stars (1 review)

This book analyses the values and processes that characterise DIY (do it yourself) digital infrastructure, relating networked initiatives to broader tensions in contemporary alternative media production, namely between ideology and practice in cultural and artistic networked initiatives. Adopting immersive and direct engagement methods, focusing specifcially on the case of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers, this book shows that contemporary alternative media projects are defined mainly by the people and the networks they build — alternative infrastructures are about the process driving them, more so than the content produced. Small or local organisations intervene in infrastructures by building responses to extractivist platform models, but can be exclusive to the communities already involved in the process. Nevertheless, alternative media initiatives are culturally and socially significant, as they produce critical media discourses and network imaginaries that signify a call for better digital and technical literacy in society.

1 edition

Documenting a Feminist Server

3 stars

This book explains at the beginning that it is the conversion of a Master's Thesis into a publication, and that is exactly how it reads. It's a good documentation of the project 'A Transversal Network of Feminist Servers' (ATNOFS), which was an EU-wide project where different organisations set up data servers under feminist principles. The documentation goes into detail on how this works, and focuses on how sharing and making space is central to the servers.

It does feel a little light on critique and future considerations, but again this is not unsurprising given its origins.

Subjects

  • networks
  • digital infrastructures