The Fibreculture Journal ends 2009 on a high note. The launch of FCJ-Issue 15: What Now? : The Imprecise and Disagreeable Aesthetics of Remix edited by Darren Tofts (Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne) and Christian McCrea (Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne) makes a fitting finale for the original Fibreculture Journal website. The Journal’s next issue will launch on this new publishing system on a new url: fibreculturejournal.org.
Issue 15 is a dynamic issue requiring an attention to detail in terms of layout, and an ability to mix media, that would have provided a challenge in the most agile of content management systems. On that note FCJ owes Lisa Gye, the person responsible for nearly single-handedly ‘hand-coding’ the site and managing the Fibreculture Journal for so many years (not to mention contributing content), much more than the simple gratitude we have to offer. The epic task of transferring over a 100 peer reviewed papers to the new system demonstrated the amount of work that has been involved in keeping the site up and running and looking as good as it did.
In building the new site we’ve been able to preserve and adapt much of this work while moving to a publishing platform more capable of managing and extending what is now a large and dynamic dataset and community of editors and contributors. It is an intriguing coincidence that Issue 14, the Web2.0 issue and Issue 15, the Remix issue—an issue filled with embedded media and intricate markup—coincided with a move from publishing in raw html, to an open source content management system. The immediate future promises a rapidly changing digital publishing landscape. FCJ is well placed for both a critical engagement and playful exploration of and within that developing field.
One of the great things about moving to a database driven system is that the site can continue to morph and develop. We see the new site as very much a work in progress – a space for continuing experimentation and development.
We have big plans for the Fibreculture Journal. In the immediate future we will see the launch of Issue 16: Counterplay edited by Michael Dieter and Tom Apperley [AUS]. This will be followed by a mid year launch of Issue 17: Media Ecologies edited by Jussi Parikka [UK/Finland] and Michael Goddard [UK]. There is a current Call For Papers (closes March 31) for Issue 18: The ‘Trans’ Issue (edited by Andrew Murphie [AUS], Mitchell Whitelaw [AUS] and Adrian Mackenzie [UK]. ‘Trans’ will be followed by possible issues on Utopia, Post-Network Politics, Embodied Interaction, and, of course, contemporary electronic publishing. There is much more in the works.
Without further ado the Fibreculture Journal is pleased to announce the launch of;
Issue 15: What Now? : The Imprecise and Disagreeable Aesthetics of Remix
Issue Editors: Darren Tofts (Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne) and Christian McCrea (Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne)
Articles:
FCJ-099 The Renewable Tradition (Extended Play Remix)
Mark Amerika
FCJ-100 Cultural Modulation and The Zero Originality Clause of Remix Culture in Australian Contemporary Art
Ross Rudesch Harley
FCJ-101 How can you be found when no-one knows that you are missing?
Lisa Gye
FCJ-102 Sputnik Baby
Ian Haig
FCJ-103 James Brown, Sample Culture and the Permanent Distance of Glory
Dr Steve Jones
FCJ-104 Materialities of Law: Celebrity Production and the Public Domain
Dr Esther Milne
FCJ-105 Materiality of a Simulation: Scratch Reading Machine, 1931
Craig Saper
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An excerpt from the editorial; (https://fifteen.fibreculturejournal.org/):
…The domestication of audio-visual literacies in the digital age has meant that the processes of sampling, editing and compositing – once the province of dedicated adepts – have become second nature for a generation weaned on computers and digital technology. Audio-visual remix attests to a utilitarian competence in ‘writing’ for the communications paradigm of the internet and networked conditions that Gregory L. Ulmer famously termed ‘electracy’; a concept that prioritises the notion of the ‘remake’ and the use of found material (Ulmer, 1989, 1994, 2005, Tofts, 1996). …
About the Fibreculture Journal:
The Fibreculture Journal is affiliated with the Open Humanities Press—https://openhumanitiespress.org/
The Fibreculture Journal is a peer reviewed international journal that encourages critical and speculative interventions in the debate and discussions concerning information and communication technologies and their policy frameworks, network cultures and their informational logic, new media forms and their deployment, and the possibilities of socio-technical invention and sustainability. The Fibreculture Journal encourages submissions that extend research into critical and investigative networked theories, knowledges and practices.
