Extreme Computing 2002
Events
In early 2002, a bright spark at tech newsletter NTK (and maybe a bright spark at Mute, we can't remember) struck up the idea to create a summer festival celebrating technology. No bones were made about influence: this was to be a pretty direct copy of the Expo-Destructo 'trade fair' format that had worked so well to launch the Nettime anthology ReadMe! in 1999. More conspicuously this time, the event's purpose would be the forced collision of the otherwise estranged 'creative' cultures of geeks and artists. As organisers and merely occasional conversation partners, NTK and Mute also gained a perverse enjoyment out of performing a cohabitation experiment on themselves and their readerships. The result surprised everyone: nearly 1000 attendants, queues round the block, and the great, enthused atmosphere borne of chance meetings.
Website of XCOM2002 (featuring speakers, talks, the stallholders, photos)
The original press release.
