Armin Medosch

Born 1962 in Graz. London based writer, artist and curator. Associate senior lecturer at Ravensbourne College's postgraduate MA course on Interactive Digital Media.

1980-84 germanistik and philosophy at Graz University. 1982-85 theatre direction at Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst. In 1985 moved to Vienna. 1986 founded Subcom art group and 1989-92 participated at art festivals (Ars Electronica), warehouse-parties, VJing. Was a journalist for ORF, Radio Ö1.

1992-94 co-founded STUBNITZ Kunst-Raum-Schiff, Rostock. Curated and organised exhibitions and symposia in Rostock, Hamburg, Malmö and St.Petersburg. 1995 with Stefan Iglhaut and Florian Rotzer co-curated Telepolis, exhibiton and symposium about interactive city.

From 1996 to 2002 he was co-editor of Telepolis 'magazine of net-culture'. With Telepolis he won the European Online Journalism Award 2000 for investigative reporting and the Grimme Online Award 2002 for media journalism. Since 1997 based in London. Co-initiated the monthly Cybersalon events. With Manu Luksch organised Art Servers Unlimited conference (London, 1998). Member of University of Openess, a self-learning institution. In 2002 he co-organised "BerLon" - Berlin/London wireless community networking workshop in bootlab Berlin (Oct 02). In 2004 held a NinePin research residency by Scan Network in the South West of England, investigating real and virtual ports and their role as cultural socio-economic hubs of transmission, gatekeeping and control with the Ports project. In 2006 curated Waves exhibition (Riga).

In 2003 he edited "DIVE - collaborative tools for online communities" a printed catalogue and cd rom with texts, art projects and software. DIVE is a project by Kingdom of Piracy <KOP> which he co-initiated in 2001. DIVE was co-produced by FACT, Liverpool, commissioned by Virtual Media Center and launched at Ars Electronica 2003. <KOP> is jointly curated by Armin Medosch, Yukiko Shikata and Shu Lea Cheang. In 2006 with Kingdom of Piracy and xxxxx he organised Plenum as a novel event format.

He is a regular speaker at international conferences on digital culture and frequently involved in organising and curating conferences. He presented a paper at the conference Open Cultures (Vienna, 2003), at Transmediale 04 (Berlin), at 'Crosstalks' (Brussels), among many other places. He has contributed articles and essays to many books, catalogues, magazines and newspapers.

Publications

Books, catalogues

• editor, with Janko Röttgers, Netzpiraten. Die Kultur des elektronischen Verbrechens, Hannover: Heinz Heise, 2001, 192 pp. [1] (German)
• editor, DMZ Media Arts Festival, London, 2003. Catalogue.
• editor, DIVE - collaborative tools for online communities, 2003.
• Freie Netze. Geschichte, Politik und Kultur offener WLAN-Netze, Hannover: Heinz Heise, 2004. On the politics, history and culture of (wireless) community networks. (German)

Theses

• Technological Determinism in Media Art, Ravensbourne College / Sussex University, 2005, 57 pp. Master's thesis.
• Automation, Cybernation and the Art of New Tendencies, 1961-1973, London: Goldsmiths, 2012, 369 pp. Ph.D. dissertation.

Articles

• "Wireless Utopia - developing the social protocols of free networking", 2004.
• "HiveNetworks: Meshing in the Future - The free configuration of everything and everyone with Hive Networks", 2005.
• "On Free Wavelength: wireless networks as techno-social models", 2006.
• "The Next Layer or: The Emergence of Open Source Culture", 2007.
• "45 RPM / Revolutions Per Minute - Radio Art Histories Remixed, Maxi Single Version", 2007. Subjective and abbreviated history of radio told from the angle of radio art as an emancipatory project with a 100 year life-span so far, including remarks covering Brecht, Benjamin, Subcom, Dyne, Pure Data and others.

Interviews

• Geert Lovink, "Interview with Armin Medosch", 1997.

Links

• http://theoriebild.ung.at/view
• TheNextLayer, a research project investigating the culture of open sources.