Multiplace is network of people and organisations interested in interaction between media, technologies, art, culture and society. Network activities culminate every year into the festival, that is happening parallely at several locations in the world. Its program is open to workshops, installations, discussions, concerts, performances, exhibitions, presentations, screenings and especially new forms of creativity. Original focus on the new media culture has been evolving since 2002 and besides the technological aspect of digital media in art, the focus shifted also to questions related to its aesthetical, social, cultural, legal and political issues. The aim of the festival-network Multiplace is to create the fertile ground for media art, to support the creativity in an open and collaborative environment and to encourage critical reflection on the life in the culture shaped by technologies. Multiplace emphasizes the experimentation with the possibilities of collaboration and networking among particular nodes in the network.

Multiplace started as a coordinated event organised by people who had common interest in presenting new forms of creativity. In April 2002 Buryzone, Jan Koniarek Gallery, Space Gallery, Atrakt Art association, Rokast, Subterra, Czech Centre, Austrian Cultural Forum joint efforts and during five days organised at 7 locations (in Bratislava, Trnava, Nitra) presentations and performances by software engineers, media artists, digital filmmakers, video artists and musicians from Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austira and Finland. In the context of so called new media it was variety of professional backgrounds of participants and organisers that was very interesting. Today, around the Slovak and Czech hills, groves and uplands, Multiplace became a synonym of “new media”, including its vague nature. In 2006 thirty organisers at the 17 locations in 11 cities joint the festival with more than 100 events spanning from showing video art works to the Prague-Bratislava bus passengers, or the sound performance created with sounds produced during rice and veggies public cooking, and also recruitment for new Mars inhabitants, up to private flat theatre performance inspired by the lives of its hosts. Now we decided to make the rich program even richer by providing it with a conceptual framework.

The term new media arts (digital, electronic, media arts, art and new technologies, etc.) is useful and used for projects bringing up the technological, aesthetical, social, cultural, legal and political issues that come along with the emergence of new media. Since 1990s the new media have included internet, web, mobiles, wireless, GPS, and others. Media culture in this regard uses and is used by new media.

Arts and culture related to these media are a follow-up to traditional contexts, but they are overlapping with them at the same time. They connect various, previously separated areas of creativity (fine arts, music, literature, programming, design, science and research, politics) and create their social networks (net.artists, electronic musicians, free software movement, socio-political activists etc) and institutions (festivals, media labs, syllabus). Despite the fact, that all mentioned terms are of vague boundaries, they reflect changes the technologically driven society and arts are going through. More and more we are experiencing feedback among these areas. Thus we could also speak about postdigital arts, which rather reflects the current technological and artistic reality, but their media does not need to be of a new (electronic, digital, ..) form.

Traditional division between praxis and theory today is less and less relevant today. In the time when making “art work” respects the tools of project management and when artists are doing curators, critics exhibit and curators write about artists, it is ok to be versatile. It is allowed to consider the occupations (painter, designer, theoretician, curator) as the roles in the project team. Success is less dependent on the approval by the critics than on the participation of the community. The critique is more valued within the project itself than outside of it.

Participation, connecting and being involved are becoming the heart of cultural production. Technological tools (web, mailing lists, discussion and community servers, mobile communication, web 2.0) contribute to social networking. The networks are of an open, participative, collaborative and sharing nature. That is why we are increasingly interested in the phenomena of identity (online identity and trust, personal data protection, bio-art), public domain (open source and open content), realtime net-based activities (online performances, broadcasting, streaming), mass amateurization (the difference between experts and amateurs is becoming thinner and there is a new category of professional amateurs emerging) and networking (file sharing, social software, collaborative projects).

Networked character of Multiplace organisers contributes to their activities on a practical side (collective promotion, program exchange, coordination of logistics etc) and on a creative side in opening new artistic projects. Multiplace is a platform for creative experimentation with potential of networks, exploration of its possiblities. Although distributed organisation is not news (neither in Slovakia), decentralised activities and particularly initiation and support of collaboration between particular organisers internationally open up new possibilites.

Multiplace gradually identified its main focus on the role of new media and technologies in contemporary art and culture. Today it is becoming more and more obvious that besides the annual festival event there is a yearlong cooperation needed. As a more accurate label than a “festival” for Multiplace we see now a “network”, or a “festival-network”. Multiplace is therefore not an umbrella organisation, but to a certain degree informal network developing the possibilities for activities in the field of interaction between technologies and culture, and mainly art projects culminating each year into a festival. Its aims can be summarized as follows:

• to create background for the support of new media arts and culture and achieve its acceptance and support by public institutions (syllabus, grant support, media artist status)

• to encourage the critical reflection on the life in media culture, including its social, artistic, technological and political aspects

• to work, create and share in an open and collaborative environment

To achieve our aims the longterm effort is necessary. That is why Multiplace supports organisational and theoretical activities related to media art and culture both on the local level and of a network character:

Local activities

• Multiplace supports organisation of presentational and educational events concentrating on local media art production (concerts, exhibitions, workshops, seminars, lectures) and especially new forms of interdisciplinary collaboration

• supports reflection, critique and theoretization of history and contemporary activities in media art and culture (debates, panels, conferences, critical and theoretical texts)

Network activities

• supports the confronation of local activities with mobile and international participants (guests, residencies, cooperation)

• supports new forms of cooperation and networking between particular locations of network (streaming, synchronized events) and effective sharing of resources (ideas, tools, material)

Multiplace is coordinated throughout the year by working groups, responsible for particular areas. For the most time of the year it is concentrated on the communication between organisers and for the festival on program synchronization and promotion:

• during the whole year Multiplace initiates and supports communication and development and implementation of networking tools between organisers and between festival participants and public (annual meetings in autumn, backstage project management system, mailing lists, social software, websites, webhosting), and also provides and mediates consultations, know-how and contacts to the organisers

• for the festival it provides program coordination, production of conceptual and visual identity, promotion, website

Participation in Multiplace is open to artists, producers, organisers, students, theoreticians, scientists, engineers and others. This document summarizes overall concept, you can find more on how to join in a separate document. Research of network culture is being done at http://kyberia.sk/net-cultures and on the mailing list http://multiplace.org/mailman/listinfo/mtp-teoria