Diego de la Vega cooperative media conglomerate invites you to its Experimental Economics + Finance research group Facilitated by Eyebeam Fellow Fran Ilich and scholar / curator Jennifer Flores Sternad. With a special guest from Brazil: Felipe Altenfelder Silva, founder of Fora do Eixo <http://foradoeixo.org.br> Circuito Fora do Eixo (Out of the Axis Circuit) is a network created in the end of 2005 by cultural producers from the north, south and west regions of Brazil. It started with the collaboration between producers from Cuiaba (Mato Grosso), Rio Branco (Acre), Uberlandia (Minas Gerais) and Londrina (Paraná), aiming at stimulating the circulation of musical projects, production technology exchange and the trade of products. The network grew and the market relations became even more favorable for small music related initiatives. Introduced by the ever-growing access to information, the musical industry's new challenges, laid fertile ground for small initiatives to grow, especially those that had collaborative structures. Initiatives like the Cubo Card from Cuiaba - a system of complementary currency revolving around cultural services - , or the grand number of music festivals produced by the members of the network have shown that it is possible to produce in a sustainable scale, emphasizing the direct contact between producers from all brazilian states, through a network of information and under the logic that together we can achieve more. Nowadays, Circuito Fora do Eixo is present on 25 out of the 27 states of Brazil. All brazilian regions are integrated in this network, making it's action visible nationwide. From this structure certain initiatives have come up, such as the Grito Rock América do Sul - an independently organized event from Circuito Fora do Eixo that happened in 74 different cities (out of which 4 where in Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay) - and the Fora do Eixo Festival, that happened in São Paulo in 2010. Finally, the Fora do Eixo Portal - the network's website - managed to gather all these producers in a social network, open to public, where all the information from Circuito Fora do Eixo can be found and downloaded, allowing a greater amount of information a social technology to be traded. Friday December 9, 2011. 18:30 hrs Eyebeam Art + Technology center Conference room http://eyebeam.org 212.937.6580 540 W 21st St. New York, NY 10011