Artists and Activists involved in the Event:
Agnese Trocchi/Candida TV, Fabrizio Manizza/Disco Volante TV, Giacomo Verde/Minimal TV, New Global Vision, Matteo Pasquinelli/Rekombinant, Enrico Bisenzi/infoAccessibile, P2P-FightSharing.

Agnese Trocchi/Candida TV
Candida TV is a small size media cooperative based in Rome and founded in 2001 with a focus on creative audio and video production. It was born from merging different activities: underground cinema, video production, rave parties, street theatre, independent radio, subversive computing and countercultural pop magazines. Activities of Candida include organization of events on communication technologies. Candida is also involved in running laboratories and workshops with young people to make them literate in contemporary audiovisual languages.
Agnese Trocchi was born as 'macchina', a digital entity, in AVaNA BBS (Bullettin Board System), and settled in Rome. She grew-up in techno organized disorder and she created a Web site focused on the illegal rave scene in Italy. She has developed counter-networks in Rome including www.thething.it. She is a co-editor of Torazine Magazine: Pills of Pop Counterculture. She is also co-founder of Candida TV, a video project for the infestation of mainstream television channels. Since 1999, she has been collaborating with Diane Ludin and Francesca Da Rimini in the net project Identity_Runners (www.idrunners.net).
www.candidatv.tv

Fabrizio Manizza/ Disco Volante TV
The Telestreet Flying Saucer TV (Disco volante TV) was born in Senigallia (Italy), inside a particular pre-existent structure: it is a studio-laboratory named Studio Zelig composed of a group of disabled persons whose goal is to provide a number of tools for expression and artistic creation to disabled people. Various tools enabled them to create and communicate their own meaning, ideas, fantasies.
To extend the means of expression of Studio Zelig workgroup, a micro-television/ Telestreet, named Flying Saucer TV (Disco volante TV) was created. Subjects included the issue of architectural barriers, problems of immigrants, to the questions about the quality of life in Flying Saucer TV’s hometown and experience of senior workers. Flying Saucer TV started its transmissions in July 2003 covering the area of a quarter (Holy Mary of Port). Three months later, representative of the Ministry of Telecommunications came with a order to shut down the Telestreet because it didn’t have a broadcasting permit: the group nevertheless continued producing videos, sending them to other Telestreets for broadcasting.
RAI, the Italian national public broadcasting network, took attention of this case and dedicated a report to it. In June 2004, the Ilaria Alpi award for outstanding TV journalism was given to Disco volante Telestreet.
Telestreet Network: www.telestreet.it
Studio Zelig: www.studiozelig.it

Giacomo Verde/Minimal TV
Minimal TV (by Quinta Parete Network) is the smallest television network of the world: it broadcasts its programmes via cable on TV sets placed 'on the road'. Minimal TV means to make television with the bare minimum, almost from zero. According to Minimal TV, 'television does not exist: it is only picture trading cards'. The project made its debut in Vinci in July 1996 and was staged again in several short-term public events. Minimal TV is characterized by its creative and amusing use of home technology. The purpose is to play down television, making it 'handy'. Programming, subjects and broadcasting hours can be adapted to any kind of necessity: from serious to comic, from business to political, from artistic experimentalism to educational. With Minimal TV anybody, at least for one day, can have their own private network.
Giacomo Verde, one of the founders of Minimal TV, was born in the province of Naples in 1956. Since 1973 he has dedicated himself to theatre and the arts as an author, actor, musician, director. His video productions date back to 1983 and combine attention to 'poor' media and materials and the theatrical tradition with an experimentalism that is both eclectic and critical of new electronic technology. He is currently preparing an interactive theatre performance called "Mandala Stories". He defines himself as a 'teknoartist' and he's engaged in interactive art. Since 1998 he lives in Lucca (Italy). Web site: www.verdegiac.org.
www.minimaltv.cjb.net

N.N./New Global Vision
New Global Vision is a digital video archive project. The goal is to build up a network of dedicated ftp servers and a peer-to-peer file sharing system able to overcome the bandwidth problems related to the size of video files. It is based on a crew that works together in a network and from that starts to structure the project, share knowledge, experiences, resources and develop communication. Videos are downloadable in VHS quality (compressed with Mpeg1 or Divx codec) and express issues raised by the global movement against corporate capitalism, a critical glance on reality, providing a free speech & independent information product.
www.ngvision.org

Enrico Bisenzi/infoAccessibile
Enrico Bisenzi (Italy, 1967) lives in Prato (Tuscany). He carried out many workshops for private and public insitutions concerning web accessibility and he participated at several conference about this topic. He collaborated with many public and private web sites for the improvement of accessibility features also by means of usability tests. He was co-author of a book on search engine studies: "Search engines within the Net Chaos" published by Shake edizioni (Milan). Web site: http://strano.net/chaos.
For the convention MediaDemocracy and Telestreet he proposes this topic: Is there an Italian way to accessibility? A look at the state of the art of accessibility in Italy, the power of images as regards to accessibility policy and relationships with media activism.
Important items: overview of European legislation on accessibility with particular attention to Italian laws; the real characteristics of so-called Italian Public Adminstration accessible sites: an Italian way to accessibility?; a policy of public relation vs. a policy of concrete initiatives; the impact of image on our society.
www.infoaccessibile.com
Prospects www.infoaccessibile.com/Iway2web

Matteo Pasquinelli/Rekombinant
Matteo Pasquinelli (Italy, 1974) is a media activist and critic based in Bologna, Italy. He worked as a journalist for the Italian public TV (RAI) and has been involved in several projects of media activism (from Luther Blissett to Indymedia to Telestreet). He is editor of Rekombinant (www.rekombinant.org), an influent Italian-speaking weblog focusing on media culture, geopolitics, immaterial labour, creative avantgardes. Rekombinant is connected to other international internet-based critical-thought communities such as Nettime and Multitudes. About 1000 subscribers discuss daily on the Rekombinant mailing list: mainly from Italy, about 20% from North Europe and from North and South America.
www.rekombinant.org

DVD P2P Fight-Sharing
Candida TV and Greenpepper magazine have produced a DVD for the World Summit on Information Society, P2P-FightSharing. This DVD shows the possibilities of transeuropean cooperation and networking on metropolitan strikes, forms of direct action and social disobedience, media activism, information guerrilla and image sabotage, all geared to connect radical political and communication struggles.
Contenuts: Reality Hacking, Mediactivism and Street TV, Common Knowledge, Hack the Border.
www.candidatv.tv
www.geneva03.org


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