Disrupting Business: art and activism in times of financial crisis

Disruptive Business explores some of the interconnections between art, activism and the business concept of disruptive innovation. With a backdrop of the crisis of financial capitalism, austerity cuts in the cultural sphere, the idea is to focuson potential art strategies in relation to a broken economy. In a perverse way, we ask whether this presents new opportunities for cultural producers to achieve more autonomy over their production process. If it is indeed possible, or desirable, whatalternative business models emerge? The book is concerned broadly with businessas material for reinvention, including critical writing and examples of art/activist projects. Contributions from: Saul Albert, Christian Ulrik Andersen & Søren Bro Pold, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Heath Bunting, Paolo Cirio, Brian Holmes, Geert Lovink & Nathaniel Tkacz, Dmytri Kleiner & Baruch Gottlieb, Georgios Papadopolous, Oliver Ressler, Kate Rich, Renée Ridgway, Guido Segni, Stevphen Shukaitis, Marina Vishmidt

Environmental monitoring of an urban railway.

The environmental impact of a rail infrastructure during its operating is often very strong, especially in urban environments where the structure of land is more complex. The present paper deals with the use of the environmental monitoring as a control tool able to act on the significant parameters linked to environmental impacts. By means of a set of standardised monitoring activities, to be carried out on the basis of space and time representing criteria, can be followed the development of the parameters during the whole life of the infrastructure and the results can be compared with the wished standards. The following monitoring activities have been planned with reference only to the selected primary factors, acting directly on the environment, to which is possible to report the impacts of every other derived impacts factor. The effectiveness of a monitoring depends on the possibility to relate directly the values of the parameters with the measure to be adopted in order to modify these values. The present paper deals in particular with the noise and vibration impact caused by an urban section of the new Roma- Napoli railway

Democratizing production through open source knowledge: from open software to open hardware

The commercial success of open source software, along with a broader socio-cultural shift towards participation in media and cultural production, have inspired attempts to extend and expand open source practices. These include expansions from software into general culture through 'Free Culture' movements and, more recently, expansions from software into hardware and design. This article provides a critical perspective on the democratic potential of these broader 'open' contribution structures by examining how open source contributions to both software and hardware increase the opportunities for democratic participation in production, governance and knowledge exchange. By analysing attempts to 'open source' the sharing of hardware designs, it also notes the limitations of this democratization. The insights developed in the article nuance the relationship between open source cultures and commercial and market structures, identifying how the generative opportunities created by certain aspects of open source contribution structures increase the potential for democratizing production of communication tools, but also how incongruities across different open-source cultures and communities of practice limit the democratic potential of these processes

Disrupting Business: art and activism in times of financial crisis

The book explores some of the interconnections between art, activism and the business concept of disruptive innovation. With a backdrop of the crisis of financial capitalism, austerity cuts in the cultural sphere, the idea is to focus on potential art strategies in relation to a broken economy. In a perverse way, we ask whether this presents new opportunities for cultural producers to achieve more autonomy over their production process? If it is indeed possible or desirable, what alternative business models emerge? The book is concerned broadly with business as (artistic) material for reinvention, including critical writing and examples of art/activist projects