UserLand is a project initiated by Mute in response to user experiences of its software/services project, OpenMute. Soon after the launch of OpenMute, it became clear that we had made certain assumptions about users' levels of internet experience that had to be addressed: even with OpenMute's explicit emphasis on accessibility, ease of use and user education, for many the platform was still too complicated, containing specialist language, as well as many illogical technical sequences associated with the underlying software which became an obstacle to people getting further than the initial sign-up stage.

In the summer of 2004, contributing editor Jamie King took part in the Werkleitz Biennale on behalf of the magazine. The festival's format loosely followed that of a summer school, and its theme was Common Property (with the definition foregrounding a movement towards informatisation, digitisation and connectedness). Together with other writers who'd engaged critically with the IP debate (e.g. Alan Toner whose Mute article 'Dissembly Language: Unzipping the World Summit on the Information Society' has catalysed much discussion), Jamie set up a series of informal scenarios where visitors could engage with the public domain in theory and practice. Think filesharing and long conversations!

Digital media and art festival held at Limehouse Town Hall, London, and developed by a core group of Arts Council funded cultural organisations working under the umbrella of Developing Digital Media London – DDML. Due to its complex status as a collaborative event cum showcase cum piece of funding advocacy, DMZ was never going to be simply a festival. There is ample documentation in several core sites though, meaning you can make up your own mind!

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.

In 2002, Mute attempted to run regular bi-weekly socials at the famous toilet-turned-events space Public Life, opposite London's Spitalfields Market. Our tacit premise was that, under pressure from intense forces of stratification, the new media community was atomising to the point of irrelevance and a regular dose of face2face wouldn't go amiss. We were soon trumped by the logistical imperative (the sheer amount of time and energy required to organise regular events has made us fawning admirers of anyone who can), but made a stab at it with evenings of performance (John Paul Bichard does live art at Habbo Hotel), talks by net.artists (Vuk Cosic in conversation with Armin Medosch), and straight forward chatting and drinking.

V2_ Organisatie, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 18th May 2001

An informal evening talk on gentrification, the urban fabric, the malleability of the term freedom. This event was put in motion by Nat Muller, then events coordinator (and probably other things) at V2_. Mute compiled the group of speakers, responding to the idea of giving a London perspective on the topic. The aim was to look at theory and practice, hence later collaborators in The London Particular: David Panos and Benedict Seymour were accompanied by free wireless pioneer James Stevens of Consume.net. Mute’s Pauline van Mourik Broekman and Josephine Berry also too part.

Short lived series of themed seminars, programmed and coordinated by Mute, hosted and webcast by the Tate.

Read the invite for Mute at the Tate # 1, Spacings, 19-11-00

Media, activism and debate platform running concurrent to Documenta X. Utterly new to the complex logistical dictats associated with events production, in 1997 Mute enthusiastically agreed to take part in Hybrid Workspace, a gigantic event-athon running alongside Documenta X and spanning so many weeks it felt more like the whole year than the whole summer. Mute’s theme was Technoscience and in spite of our inexperience we managed to collate some relevant material. Core to this was the Direct Biocracy Questionnairee, which questioned medical authority in everyday life, and compiled hundreds of answer sheets passed back by visitors. Mute friends, including John Hutnyk and Armin Medosch together with Manu Luksch, also contributed their work. The project fed into Mute issue 9, whose theme was also Technoscience.