Chicago based artist-hacker Jake Elliott (who is also my close friend, colleague + collaborator) recently gave a talk entitled "Dirty New Media: Art, Activism and Computer Counter Cultures" @ HOPE, the Hackers on Planet Earth conference in NYC, NY .US

Elliott's presentation focused on artists using software + "other systems in a qualified/complicated/dirty way... and in doing so brings together the not-so-separate categories of artist/hacker/activist." Elliott interweaves a vasty tingleTangle of projects + concepts while {describing|defining} the phrase "dirty new media". a short enumerated list of these projects + concepts in chronological order of Elliott's talk would incl:

0. realtime audio-video noise performance by Morgan Higby-Flowers and Brenden Pete as a "built-broken system"
1. Matthew Fuller on sociopolitical + cultural assumptions as encoded in User Interface Design
2. binary gender options in Social Software VS Throbbing Gristle
3. Colin Moneymaker shocking a video monitor with a taser until it breaks in Lightning Time
3. image processing from Sans Soleil by Chris Marker to live coding in General Motors by Phil Morton
4. the readymades + prepared desktop's of: JODI, jon.satrom + I LOVE PRESETS

etc...

in order to navigate these hyperthreaded histories in a playful + horizontal manner, Elliott mobilizes an "poetically broadened" understanding or expanded/exploded view of software as containing any systems-based materials or approaches

the context of the presentation, this year's HOPE conference, was called "The Last Hope" + was said to be the last. HOPE is organized by 2600: The Hacker Quarterly + features talks on a wide range of subjects to those in the Hacker communities. Elliott has been working on the intersections of the hacker/cracker, hactavist, activist communities, Noise musics, New Media Art + Media Art Histories w/various projects + initiatives ++ this talk traces those intersections by means of "cutting across layers" + cracking open black boxes

the video of Jake Elliott's "Dirty New Media" presentation is here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2318751622760957382

+ The Last Hope www site is here:

http://thelasthope.org