3. Background

The immediate background of Tech_nicks was a project in July 1999, organised by Lina Dzuverovic-Russell, then Education Manager at the Lux Centre, "Lux Squat". This is was a one-week residency by Heath Bunting and Rachel Baker from the irational group in which the artists' own production was combined with contact with a broader audience through small-scale presentations and skill-sharing workshops by the group and some invited colleagues. (see www.irational.org/luxsquat for programme and www.nettime.org/nettime.w3archive/199908/msg00021.html for report and interview)

In the bigger picture, the past six or seven years has seen the development of an international network of people working outside the commercial sector, actively experimenting with new media creating new forms and uses as well as content, and who are interested in the social and cultural impact of new media technologies. This network includes many artists, but also technical specialists, researchers and writers, media producers, social and political activists, and many individuals who cross over and between these categories.

Particularly in Europe, North America and Australia, individual artists and cultural institutions have taken an active role in these developments and discussions that surround them. The constituency has been diverse and multi-disciplinary in approach, and has often made useful discursive or practical relationships with other sectors, from science and engineering to philosophy and cultural studies. The role of cultural institutions and cultural funding has been to enable project production, discussions, meetings, exhibitions and, to a minor extent in the UK, some kind of permanent infrastructure to support production. Influential meeting points have been facilitated by large-scale festivals, conference and exhibtion projects such as the ISEA events (http://www.isea.qc.ca/) and Ars Electronica (http://www.aec.at/), which have positioned themselves quite firmly within the arts sector, and the Next Five Minutes (www.n5m.org/) events in Amsterdam, which have also encompassed social and politically concerned practice and the politics of the technologies themselves. While offering a meeting place and exhibition opportunity for the more outcome orientated sectors of artistic practice - large scale and higher-tech installation and performance projects, these gatherings began to feel increasingly unsatisfactory for supporting and expanding a network of practitioners whose work is more geared towards lower-tech solutions and address communication needs that are not exclusively artistic. Arguably also, these events have operated too much within an artistic frame of reference to be useful, interesting and accessible to a broader constituency, for instance those working within more technical areas, or with primarily social, educational, political or humanitarian objectives. The big festival events have been even less able to accommodate those who for various cultural and social reasons, do not feel interested or able to participate in or contribute to this form of institutionalised, artistic culture. Its worth noting that this state of affairs arises despite the fact that practice and everyday contacts of individuals very often take in this range.

A series of projects in Europe which loosely fit under the banner of "temporary media labs" have done much to address many of these problems of large-scale media arts festivals. These have focussed on enabling existing or emerging networks of practitioners to meet and produce work, either together of individually. Initiatives in this category include: Hybrid Workspace at Documenta X in 1997 (programme information still available on the "stolen" documenta X website: http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/dx/workspac/index.htm and documentation available on the Hybrid Media Lounge CD-ROM http://www.medialounge.net) Revolting in Manchester in 1998 (http://www.yourserver.co.uk/revolting/), Temp at Kiasma Gallery, Helsinki in 1999 (http://www.kiasma.fi/temp) and the series of workshops "Crossing Over" held in Sofia, Bulgaria, Novi Sad, F.R. Yugoslavia and Ljubljana, Slovenia from 1997 to 1999. (see The Importance of Meetspace: The Polar Circuit workshops in Finland the Virtual Revolutions workshops and several smaller-scale residency schemes could also fall into this category. For a summary and commentary on these project see: A Manual for Temporary Media Labs By Geert Lovink www.nettime.org/nettime.w3archive/200001/msg00041.html.

These projects have facilitated an extraordinary focussing of energy and intensification of relationships that has speeded and contributed crucially to the international networks, and the debate the generate. However, they have also been plagued by difficulties in how to address, interest and involve people outside of these networks - who could be termed "general public", or even more specifically, people persuing lines of work that are connected, but which do not sit easily with the frames of reference of european art and culture in its institutionalised and state-supported forms.

During this period in the UK, in many ways because of a situation of scarcity in permanent infrastructure, an active but fragile network of individuals and small groups have been most busy locally and most visible internationally in pushing forward and expanding the notion of an independent new media culture. London in particular is home to a paradox in which this network has been both informally supported but also weakened, by the growth of a commercial sector endlessly hungry for its ideas and expertise. While work in this sector has provided and still provides a livlihood for many people who are also active in various non-profit activities, the e-commerce sector has also played a major role in creating an inflated economy in wages and property which has near-fatally damaged the possibilities for independent meeting spaces and absorbs effort, knowledge, time and motivation on the part of individuals. The rise and fall of London's now-defunct independent media lab Backspace is indicative of the contradictory effect of this context (see: CRASH MEDIA : Concentrate Hard - the Cultural Industry and Divisive Funding Policies www.yourserver.co.uk/crashmedia/cc/27.htm). Some already-established cultural organisations, coming mostly from either the photography, film and video or community arts sector have been trying to address the gaps in provision, and along the way have been coming up against problems of knowledge, expertise, resources and, perhaps most important, insitutional and artistic culture.

Tech_nicks grew out of a response to a number of these problems; it tried to create a temporary and mobile space for meeting, information sharing and development of skills that would be cross-disciplinary, and that could be both an internal meeting point for practitioners and also provide a structured gateway for people who are not already part of these cultural networks. It attempted to provide added visibility to promote cultural activity which takes a pragmatic, inventive, and problem-solving approach to media and communication technologies. In utilising the resources of existing insitutions it was an attempt to address some gaps in culture, expertise and awareness between those institutions and the individuals, groups and networks with whom they aspire to collaborate. It attempted to provide a purposeful meeting point for a normally fragmented constituency, to assess and survey its range, population and achievements and to address, involve and learn from other people who are active in related but normally separate areas of work.

No claim here is made for success in all of these areas, but to a greater or lesser extent, the project tested and investigated all of these areas

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