Lawrence Lessig provides in the presentation ‘Free Culture: What we need from you’ an excellent insight into his concept of “free culture.” He argues that audio and video offer in the digital realm and within the Internet environment a new platform of “speech”: (21.00-22.00)
This is read-write culture. This is digital creativity. It’s the creativity these technologies beg for, creativity that of course it is not new when you think of film and television for the last 60 years, what is new is that this capacity has been democratised. Anyone with a 1500 dollar computer can take images and sounds from the culture around us and remix them in a way to express either political ideas or cultural criticism, in the most powerful way any of us know how to speak. Through video and music, these tools of creativity are now tools of speech producing a new potential to speak, a new potential to learn, this is the literacy of the 21st Century and its capacity is to revive this read-write culture.
‘Free Culture: What we need from you’, by Lawrence Lessig, Linux World, Recorded August 15, 2006
In the still/open workshop we are getting into the following open source apps:
arduino - The open-source Arduino environment makes it easy to write code and upload it to the i/o board. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The environment is written in Java and based on Processing, avr-gcc, and other open source software.
processing - Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions.
Following is a summary I drafted in the //non-video/new-video/net-video post for the still/open workshop and blog:
My interest in the still/open workshop is motivated by both my teaching and PhD research, with particular focus on a couple of projects that I am currently developing. The first is the Video Vortex conference that I have been working on as a principal researcher with the Institute of Network Cultures (INC) in Amsterdam. Video Vortex focuses on how video is potentially being used on the Internet and critically analyses from an alternative perspective social media websites like YouTube and video blogs. The second project is videodefunct which is an experimental work that explores a hybrid form of video blog. Currently, as a work-in-progress, a number of prototypes are being developed in the open source blog publishing system WordPress. In a broader context this critical analysis of online video practice supports my teaching in the Internet based subjects Networked Media and Integrated Media, in the Media department at RMIT.
Open source as a concept in these activities extends beyond the area of software with important connections into ideologies being explored around copyright as part of ‘free culture’ initiatives and peer-to-peer alternatives. I am interested in examining the notion of what it means to operate, produce and share in an ‘open’ process, through a critical analysis that investigates these “modes of thinking” from varying perspectives.
I located the open mute website through Andrew Murphie’s blog Adventures in Jutland. The about on open mute:
OpenMute is a web resource project aiming to support cultural practice in the information age. Through the provision of server space, tools, practical guidance and critical contextualisation, we seek to develop open and collaborative ways of working, and contribute to the kind of public knowledge architectures that will serve practitioners’ needs over the long term.
The organisation recieves public funds and acknowledges the england arts council. They provided some interesting book references produced through their (pod) print on demand initiative :
The Class of the New Netizens, elancers, cognitarians, swarm-capitalists, hackers, produsumers, knowledge workers, pro-ams… these are just a few of the monikers that have been applied to the new social class emerging from the networked workplace.Media Mutandis: a NODE.London Reader It engages debates in FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software), media arts and activism, collaborative practices and the political economy of cultural production in the present day.DiY Survival diy survival DiY survival is a collection of essays, tips and case studies collated from an online call for participation by the maverick art group C6.
They are also involved in the open organisation project.
Good news!I made it into the still/open workshops being run by ANAT. A open/still group blog has been set up for the project. From the about:
Still Open will be as a series of free two-day workshops in Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane, each accompanied by a public evening forum. Facilitators will work with 15 artists, scientists, writers and developers in each city to introduce open source modes of thinking and resources for collaborative and distributed development; to provide hands on experience; and to initiate local networks and projects.
Still Open focuses on both the practice and theory of open source which can be applied through networked art and software development, print and online publishing, and in the scientific arena where the open science movement encourages a collaborative environment in which science can be pursued by anyone who is inspired to discover something new about the natural world.
The facilitators who will help run the workshops are:
Alessandro Ludovico (Italy) editor in chief Neural
Andy Nicholson (Australia) new media activist Engage Media
Beatriz da Costa (USA) interdisciplinary artist/researcher, open science