Theory on Demand

The multilingual Theory on Demand (ToD) book series was initiated by our Amsterdam-based research centre, the Institute of Network Cultures (INC), back in 2009, five years after its founding. The main reason for this were the increased costs to publish paper books with established publishers in the Netherlands, like NAi and Valiz, that have demanded in the past up to 20.000 euro per title in subsidies in order to make it economically viable to edit/translate, design, print and distribute a book, including the overhead of the publishing house with paid staff, rent, etc.—money to be organized by the authors, together with the INC. After the right-wing Rutte government implemented a budget cut of 50% in culture and arts during the post-2008 austerity wave, it became all but impossible for an applied science institution like the Hogeschool of Amsterdam (where INC is based) to apply for cultural grants. From now on funding in arts and education were firmly separated by an apartheid wall, aimed at ‘separate development’ of the two, once close sectors. In the cultural sector, even more than in the past, it’s state-controlled funds that decide which books are going to be published in the Netherlands. INC was thus forced to investigate ‘free’ digital publishing formats as ‘academic’ research grants were unwilling to finance free-floating theory publications. The other implication of this model is the increased dependency of the entire sector on free or cheap interns.

The philosophy of the ToD series was—and still is—relatively simple. Instead of pretending to be a full-fledged publishing house, the INC was going to do publishing experiments in a serialized form. In this way, technical knowledge could be transferred from one generation of staff and students to the next, which is all but impossible with on-off publications. Initially Margreet Riphagen set up the series, working together with the designer Katja van Stiphout, who is still designing the ToD book covers. Miriam Rasch also considerably contributed to the further development of the series, as have Sepp Eckenhaussen and Tommaso Campagna lately. Initially, the series offered a pdf version, a print-on-demand option to purchase a paper copy via lulu and the dispersion of the content via a variety of so-called web readers (such as Issuu). The rise of e-readers and smartphones urged us to start to experiment with the e-pub format (which was later on dissolved and integrated into the HTML5 standard). In the early years of the e-book separate version had to be made—and tested—for readers such as Kindle (Amazon), Kobo and others.

The experiences of staff, designers, programmers, writers and interns are stored in an internal manual plus a separate one for authors. Over the years, three generations have worked to refine the ‘markdown’ workflow. Sometimes, ToD titles are printed in small quantities, like 200 or 500, when funding for this has been available. In such a case, the INC would distribute these paper books for free, worldwide, via the postal service, much like is still happening in the case of its oldest series, the INC readers. Different from most others, the INC is not collecting data about downloads, views, likes on social media etc. As one of the first research centres in the world, INC declared itself data-free. Publications are gifts to the universe, in the spirit of Adilkno’s description of sovereign media that have emancipated itself of any possible audience (and its deadly boring statistics). The impact and ranking logic in academia has all but destroyed stylistic diversity and literary experimentation and led to a bureaucratic monoculture, aimed at eliminating all modes of critical and speculative thinking.

Three Dutch applied sciences grants have so far helped to finance the further development of the Theory on Demand series: the Hybrid Publishing Toolkit (2013-2014), which resulted in the e-pub manual with the same name, Making Public, which produced the Urgent Publishing Toolkit (2018-2020) and Going Hybrid (2022-23), which introduced a broader multi-media ‘expanded publishing’ approach, including online video and podcasting as grown-up, stand-alone publishing practices. In all these projects, the collaboration with the Rotterdam art academy Willem de Kooning, has been intense, in particular with Florian Cramer, Aymeric Mansoux, Michael Murtaugh and their Experimental Publishing (XPUB) master degree.

Editor:Geert Lovink

Now showing 1 - 20 of 46

+KAOS. Ten Years of Hacking and Media Activism
Autistici/Inventati (2017)
At the end of the 20th century, hacking was bleeding edge. When the ideas, practices and pranks of this experimental niche of technophiles attracted the attention of a handful of activists in Italy, they understood that information and communication were what would give shape and voice to social, political, and cultural processes in the near future. +KAOS is a cut and paste of interviews, like a documentary film transposed on paper. It describes the peculiar relationship between hacktivism and activism, in Italy and beyond, highlighting the importance of maintaining digital infrastructures. While this may not sound as glamorous as sneaking into a server and leaking data, it is a fundamental topic: not even the most emblematic group of hacktivists can operate without the services of radical server collectives.
Algorithmic Anxiety in Contemporary Art. A Kierkegaardian Inquiry intothe Imaginary of Possibility
de Vries, Patricia (2019)
Over the past decade, a growing number of artists and critical practitioners have become engaged with algorithms. This artistic engagement has resulted in algorithmic theatre, bot art, and algorithmic media and performance art of various kinds that thematise the dissemination and deployment of algorithms in everyday life. Especially striking is the high volume of artistic engagements with facial recognition algorithms, trading algorithms and search engine algorithms over the past few years. The fact that these three types of algorithms have garnered more responses than other types of algorithms suggests that they form a popular subject of artistic critique. This critique addresses several significant, supra-individual anxieties of our decade: socio- political uncertainty and polarisation, the global economic crisis and cycles of recession, and the centralisation and corporatisation of access to online information. However, the constituents of these anxieties — which seem to be central to our experience of algorithmic culture — are rarely interrogated. They, therefore, merit closer attention. This book uses prominent artistic representations of facial recognition algorithms, trading algorithms, and search algorithms as the entry point into an exploration of the constituents of the anxieties braided around these algorithms. It proposes that the work of Søren Kierkegaard—one of the first theorists of anxiety—helps us to investigate and critically analyse the constituents of ‘algorithmic anxiety’.
Beyond ICT4D. New Media Research in Uganda
Balunywa, Ali; van Diepen, Guido; Dijkstra, Wouter; Henriquez, Kai; White, Ben; Lovink, Geert (2011)
Beyond ICT4D: New Media Research in Uganda is a collection of ethnographic reports from diverse perspectives of those living at the other end of the African ICT pyramid. Crucially, these texts refocus on the so-called “ICT4D” debate away from the standard western lens, which depicts users in the developing world as passive receivers of Western technological development, towards Ugandans whose use and production of technologies entail innovations from the ground up. It is this ‘other’ everyday point of view that is too often missing in the ICT4D debate: valuable voices that put technologies, projects and organizations into their proper context. Conducted in 2009 by a group of five Masters in New Media (humanities) students from the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Geert Lovink the research examines both the role and implementation of ICTs in Uganda, covering a wide range of subcultures and projects, including internet cafe usage, print media, NGOs and communities, software subcultures and civic new media. The book argues that now is the time to look beyond the technology layer and instead focus on the social implications and local consequences of digital media’s widespread use. By recognizing the impact that ICTs have on society and identifying what functions currently and what needs to be improved, we can more effectively understand and develop these technologies in the future.
Bilwet Fascismemap (1983-1994)
Bilwet; Lovink, Geert; Mulder, Arjen; van Stam, Bas-Jan; Wouterloot, Lex (2019)
Dit boek is een brede collectie teksten over eigentijds fascisme, geschreven door het Nederlandse theoriecollectief Bilwet in de periode 1983-1994. De map bevat onder andere een lezing over wolven, zes kleurplaten met Kuifje en Hitler, een analyse van getuigenissen van SS’ers, mijmeringen in Berlijn en een ambulant-wetenschappelijk artikel over filosofenmode. De Bilwet fascismemap, indertijd gemaakt voor scholingsdoeleinden in de kraakbeweging, werd niet eerder uitgegeven. Waarom dan nu toch wel? Vijfendertig jaar oude fascismeanalyses zijn niet zomaar toepasbaar op de huidige maatschappij. Maar in de antifascistische discussies, die in links-progressieve kringen nog niet zo lang geleden gemeengoed waren, liggen belangrijke lessen voor het heden. Hoe zag dat antifascistisch discours eruit? Wat was de relatie tussen klasse- en seksestrijd? Hoe vond de kennisoverdracht tussen de generaties toen plaats en hoe verloopt die nu? De Bilwet fascismemap geeft inzicht in deze vragen en daarmee een inkijk in de geschiedenis van wat ook wel de niet-fascistische, feministische mannenbeweging genoemd kan worden.
Communities at a Crossroads. Material Semiotics for Online Sociability in the Fade of Cyberculture
Pelizza, Annalisa (2018)
How to conceptualize online sociability in the 21st century? To answer this question, Communities at a Crossroads looks back at the mid-2000s. With the burst of the creative-entrepreneur alliance, the territorialisation of the internet and the commercialization of interpersonal ties, that period constituted a turning point for digital communitarian cultures. Many of the techno-libertarian culture’s utopias underpinning the ideas for online sociability faced systematic counter evidence. This change in paradigm has still consequences today. Avoiding both empty invocations of community and swift conclusions of doom, Annalisa Pelizza investigates the theories of actions that have underpinned the development of techno-social digital assemblages after the ‘golden age’ of online communities. Communities at a Crossroads draws upon the analysis of Ars Electronica’s Digital Communities archive, which is the largest of its kind worldwide, and in doing so presents a multi-faceted picture of internet sociability between the two centuries. Privileging an anti-essentialist, performative approach over sociological understandings of online communities, Communities at a Crossroads proposes a radical epistemological turn. It argues that in order to conceptualize contemporary online sociability, we need first to abandon the techno-libertarian communalist rhetoric. Then, it is necessary to move beyond the foundational distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and adopt a material semiotic approach. In the end, we might have to relinquish the effort to define online or digital communities and engage in more meaningful mapping exercises.
COVID-19 from the Margins. Pandemic Invisibilities, Policies and Resistance in the Datafied Society
; Milan, Stefania; Treré, Emiliano; Masiero, Silvia (2021)
In the first pandemic of the datafied society, the disempowered were denied a voice in the heavily quantified mainstream narrative. Featuring stories of invisibility, injustice, hope and resistance, this book gives voice to communities at the margins in the Global South and beyond. The multilingual, polycentric and pluriversal narration invites the reader to enact and experience “Big Data from the South(s)” as a decolonial lens to read the pandemic.
Creative Networks, in the Rearview Mirror of Eastern European History
Smite, Rasa (2012)
Creative Networks explores the dawn of the Internet culture in the age of network society from the perspective of Eastern Europe. From a theoretical angle the networks are introduced and interpreted as complex socio-technical systems. The author analyzes the development of these networked self-organized formations starting off with ‘virtual communities’ of ‘creative networks’, which emerged during the early phase of the Internet, up to the phenomena of today’s online ‘social networks’. Along with the translocal case studies of Nettime, Syndicate, Faces and Xchange networks (as well as with the other important facets of the 1990s network culture in Europe), the author studies also local community networking case of alternative and digital culture that evolved around E-Lab in the 1990s in Latvia. By focusing primarily on the network culture of 1990s, this study reflects those changes in the social structure of today’s society that are occurring under the process of socio-technical transformation.
Culture of the Selfie. Self-Representation in Contemporary Visual Culture
Peraica, Ana (2017)
Culture of the Selfie is an in-depth art-historical overview of self-portraiture, using a set of theories from visual studies, narratology, media studies, psychotherapy, and political principles. Collecting information from various fields, juxtaposing them on the historical time-line of artworks, the book focuses on space in self-portraits, shared between the person self-portraying and the viewer. What is the missing information of the transparent relationship to the self and what kind of world appears behind each selfie? As the ‘world behind one’s back’ is gradually taking larger place in the visual field, the book dwells on a capacity of selfies to master reality, the inter-mediate way and, in a measure, oneself.
Depletion Design. A Glossary of Network Ecologies
Wiedemann, Carolin; Zehle, Soenke (2012)
Depletion Design suggests that ideas of exhaustion cut across cultural, environmentalist, and political idioms and offers ways to explore the emergence of new material assemblages. We, or so we are told, are running out of time, of time to develop alternatives to a new politics of emergency, as constant crisis has exhausted the means of a politics of representation too slow for the state of exception, too ignorant of the distribution of political agency, too focused on the governability of financial architectures. But new forms of individual and collective agency already emerge, as we learn to live, love, work within the horizon of depletion, to ask what it means to sustain ourselves, each other, again. Of these and other knowledges so created, there can no longer be an encyclopedia; a glossary, perhaps.
Dispatches from Ukraine. Tactical Media Reflections and Responses
van der Togt, Maria; 11111 &23%#719 (2022)
This publication marks the first results of the Tactical Media Room Ukraine project, launched in February 2022 in Amsterdam after the shocking Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Tactical Media Room is a network of activists, journalists, scholars, and artists linked by the exchange of ideas and practices—all aimed at supporting Ukrainian media and confronting Russian state propaganda. Together, the network of experts initiated a screening and a series of meetings that took place mainly in Amsterdam. Based on these meetings, Dispatches from Ukraine: Tactical Media Reflections and Responses showcases initiatives, critique, and essays that provide insights into the ways information circulates in time of war. This edition also aims at overcoming the Eurocentric approach through inviting Ukrainian journalists, artists, and thinkers to share their observations and personal experience of living through war in the digital age. It allows the collected reflections to be grounded and situated within the certain context of Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian long-lasting conflicts. While on the one hand, perspectives on info-war and the array of urgents matters at a distance are presented, on the other hand, this publication also focuses on what is missing from outside of the war-zones.
Dynamics of Critical Internet Culture (1994-2001)
Lovink, Geert (2009)
This study examines the dynamics of critical Internet culture after the medium opened to a broad er audience in the mid 1990s. The core of the research consists of four case studies of non profit networks: the Amsterdam community provider, The Digital City (DDS); the early years of the nettime mailinglist community; a history of the European new media arts network Syndicate; and an analysis of the streaming media network Xchange. The research describes the search for sustainable community network models in a climate of hyper growth and increased tensions and conflict concerning moderation and ownership of online communities.
Economies of Virtue – The Circulation of 'Ethics' in AI
https://mediarep.org/bitstream/handle/doc/20441/TOD_46_Phan_2022_Economies-of-Virtue_.pdf#page=8'>Thao Phan, Jake Goldenfein, Declan Kuch, and Monique Mann: Introduction: Economies of Virtue; Phan, Thao; Goldenfein, Jake; Kuch, Declan; Mann, Monique (2022)
AI ethics has never been far from the industries it sought to critique. While originally designed to bring values such as fairness, accountability and transparency to Big Tech and its products, the lines between Big Tech’s PR initiatives and AI ethics funding has never been clear. In practice, AI ethics now operates as a means for the co-option of critics and to enable regulatory capture. It is used by corporations to create legitimacy and to further accumulate value. The result is that ‘ethics’ has now become a high-valued industrial commodity, and AI ethics its foundry. This anthology is a collective response to the reification of ethics into commodity forms. It explores how industry participation in ‘ethical AI’ research has created a new ‘economy of virtue’—a massive network of actors variously situated across industry, civil society, and universities, producing and circulating ethics as a service and a product. The contributors present both critical perspectives and first-hand experiences of this economy. They address a wide range of topics including: the contradictions and personal dilemmas of working in industry-funded spaces; case studies of AI ethics in domains such as defence, facial recognition, and standards setting; critical assessments of techniques like green-washing and the manufacture of trust; and the risks and practicalities of direct action such as speaking up, organizing against and dropping out. Together, these contributions give voice to the intractable problems of co-option, capture, and complicity that plague AI ethics, and give shape to the networks and circulations defining the field.
Freire and the Perseverance of Hope. Exploring Communication and Social Change
Suzina, Ana Cristina; Tufte, Thomas (2022)
The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1921-1997) is one of the most important thinkers of the 21st Century, figuring among the most quoted authors in the fields of Education and Social Sciences all over the world. He is also a core reference to an infinite number of grassroots and activist initiatives globally. This book celebrates his birth centennial with a collection of 19 contributions from both experienced and young media and communication scholars and activists working in 11 countries. They reflect and debate Freire’s principles and ideas, revisiting their origins and interrogating their relevance to current challenges and struggles. The result can be summarized as a claim for affect as the core feature of social change and a tool for yielding resistance.
From Opinions to Images. Essays Towards a Sociology of Affects
Baker, Ulus S. (2020)
Ulus Baker (1960 – 2007) was a Turkish-Cypriot sociologist, philosopher, and public intellectual. He was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1960. He studied Sociology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, where he taught as a lecturer until 2004. Baker wrote prolifically in influential Turkish journals and made some of the first Turkish translations of various works of Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri, and other contemporary political philosophers. His profuse and accessible work and the novelty of the issues he enthusiastically introduced to Turkish-speaking intellectual circles, earned him a widely spread positive reputation in early age. He died in 2007 in Istanbul. The text in this edition is edited from essays and notes Ulus Baker wrote between 1995 and 2002. In these essays, Baker criticizes the sociological research turning into an analysis of people’s opinions. He explores with an exciting clarity the notion of ‘opinion’ as a specific form of apprehension between knowledge and point of view, then looks into ‘social types’ as an analytical device deployed by early sociologists. He associates the form of ‘comprehension’ the ‘social types’ postulate with Spinoza’s notion of ‘affections’ (as a dynamic, non-linguistic form of the relation between entities). He finally discusses the possibilities of reintroducing this device for understanding our contemporary world through cinema and documentary filmmaking, by reinstating images in general as ‘affective thought processes’. Baker’s first extensive translation to English provides us with a much-needed intervention for re-imagining social thought and visual media, at a time when sociology tends to be reduced to an analysis of ‘big data’, and the pedagogical powers of the image are reduced to data visualization and infographics.
Gaming Rhythms. Play and Counterplay from the Situated to the Global
Apperley, Tom (2010)
General Theory of the Precariat
Foti, Alex (2017)
From the fast-food industry to the sharing economy, precarious work has become the norm in contemporary capitalism, like the anti-globalization movement predicted it would. This book describes how the precariat came into being under neoliberalism and how it has radicalized in response to crisis and austerity. It investigates the political economy of precarity and the historical sociology of the precariat, and discusses movements of precarious youth against oligopoly and oligarchy in Europe, America, and East Asia. Foti covers the three fundamental dates of recent history: the financial crisis of 2008, the political revolutions of 2011, and the national-populist backlash of 2016, to present his class theory of the precariat and the ideology of left-populist movements. Building a theory of capitalist crisis to understand the aftermath of the Great Recession, he outlines political scenarios where the precariat can successfully fight for emancipation, and reverse inequality and environmental destruction. Written by the activist who put precarity on the map of radical thinking, this is the first work proposing a complete theory of the precariat in its actuality and potentiality.
Geoblocking and Global Video Culture
Lobato, Ramon; Meese, James (2016)
How do global audiences use streaming platforms like YouTube, Netflix and iPlayer? How does the experience of digital video change according to location? What strategies do people use to access out-of-region content? What are the commercial and governmental motivations behind geoblocking? Geoblocking and Global Video Culture explores the cultural implications of access control and circumvention in an age of VPNs. Featuring seventeen chapters from diverse critical positions and locations – including China, Iran, Malaysia, Turkey, Cuba, Brazil, USA, Sweden and Australia.
Good Data
Daly, Angela; Devitt, S. Kate; Mann, Monique (2019)
Image, Time and Motion. New Media Critique from Turkey
Treske, Andreas; Onen, Ufuk; Büyüm, Bestem; Degim, I. Alev (2011)
Imagine There Is No Copyright and No Cultural Conglomorates Too…
Smiers, Joost; van Schijndel, Marieke (2009)

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