[wos] Re: cultural projects to be included in wos4

[cornelia sollfrank]

dear saul and all,

many thanks for sharing your insights and experiences reg. OM as well 
as your overwhelming list of other, mainly uk(london)based projects. 
they all seem to be very interesting for our context. one thing we 
should keep in mind is what kind of formats we should choose for 
bringing people together, sharing experiences and taking the practial 
projects as well the theoretical debate further.

my suggestion at the moment would be to have a separate day for a 
workshop the day before wos starts [the dates of wos are:september 
14-16, 2006] to have enough time together and to create a working 
situation more than a presenting situation. then we could think of 
having a panel during wos which relates to the workshop, but of course 
must be limited regarding the number of participating people. we could 
already now think of different positions, theoretical figures or core 
questions which should be addressed on such a panel. at the same time 
we should also think of a possible outcome of such a workshop which 
would make it easier to structure the dabate in this complex field.

enclosed you find a first discussion paper which I have put together 
after conversations I had about the issue with inke arns, florian 
cramer and felix stalder.
[those of you who did not yet subscribe to wos list should do so, so 
that we can have the common discussion there -
https://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wos]


"flickr cant be the answer"

OR

"giving what you dont have to somebody who doesn't want it."

WORKSHOP - wednesday 13th of september

- terminology
what are we talking about when we use the term 'open cultures'? we 
should come up with a term which is more precise.
(culture from/for the commons, non-commodified culture)

the following was inspired by felix stalder's text: "On the Differences 
between Open Source and Open Culture [1]",
[http://publication.nodel.org/On-the-Differences]. In this text Felix 
names the three principles of the FOSS movement, which I try to use to 
structure our debate: 1. Collaborative creation  2. free access  3.open 
adaptability. I would find it useful to analyse these paradigms and see 
if these are really what constitutes free software and what happens if 
one would transfer them to culture.


FRAGMENTS:

1. **the mode of production
authorship/ subjectivism/ anti-subjectivism/ open cultures
- functions and models of authorship have been changing since copyright 
has been invented in the 18th century, predominant was the romantic 
model of the individual, ingenious author. what is the relation between 
the individual author and the subjectivism which constitutes 
capitalism?
- how can feminist critique on the theory of authorship be included or 
applied to open cultures? the paradigm of the author as male still 
seems to be quite lively in free software.
- how can post-structuralist theory (death of the author/ the author 
function) serve to deal with the omnipresent image of the artist as the 
genius which earns a fortune on the art market. this image is more 
lively as role modell than ever before (and is also responsible for the 
crisis in 'media art' education).
- on the other hand: is there any sexy role models in 'open cultures' 
which go beyond "being good" and "sharing"? do we need them or would 
they be in contradiction to (what?)?
- Most of the work which is currently produced in the cultural field 
stems from individual authors. how relevant is the paradigm of a 
collaborative practice for open cultues? what does collaboration mean 
exactly? free software is not per se collaborative, it just enables 
collaboration by applying copyleft (cramer). is the implementation of 
new forms of collaboration by the use of digital media and electronic 
networks only a myth?
- do we only have the alternatives individual OR collective as mode of 
production? how do models look like which bring both alternatives 
together? or, what are the modells of new collaborative practices and 
the common-based peer production?
- what are the ideologies and promises behind the different modelsof 
authorship?


2. **free access
copyright & licenses, economy

to be continued


3. **open adaptability
art & appropriation

to be continued



Basically, I find the approach to look at the FOSS movement and try to 
adapt it for cultural production limited. maybe this is the reason that 
the debate is going in circles for a few years now.
why not starting from culture and thinking about what utopian modells 
we want there, independenly from FOSS?

WHAT DO WE/ DO YOU ACTUALLY WANT?

what are the utopian models of the "Culture from and for the Commons"?

the - more or less successful - examples for cultural commons felix 
mentions in his text are wikipedia and flickr. both are resource pools, 
which contain 'material', mainly individually produced, mainly by 
'amateurs'. what do these examples stand for? and in what respect might 
they be of relevance for a 'professional' cultural producer? I am 
sorry, but in this accumulation of digital material (flickr) I cannot 
discover much utopian potential. what else is it but a searchable 
database? (yes, I know lev manovich suggested  the database to be the 
new form of cultural expression after the novel and cinema. but no, he 
did not convince me yet.)

definitely there is a lot of OPEN questions out there. we should 
collect the most important ones and work on them - together.

what else we can do in adavnce is to put together a list of texts and 
links we consider as relevant for the dabate.

c.

fyi: I'll be offline for the next 2 weeks. would be nice to see a lot 
of reactions when I come back.



Am 27.05.2006 um 13:36 schrieb Saul Albert:

> On Fri, May 26, 2006 at 09:57:08PM +0200, cornelia sollfrank wrote:
>> And I would also love to get your opinion on the specific position
>> openmute holds in the landscape of 'open cultures' in gb.
>
> hi Cornelia, Kapi,
>
> Just to add another 2c to this...
>
> OpenMute is probably the first port of call for most art/cultural 
> workers
> exploring FLOSS for the first time and wanting to get their hands 
> dirty.
> They've provided an invaluable service to many with scant resources and
> time who want to try and infuse and inform their practices with some of
> the ideas and tools they've been reading about in theory...
>
> In this sense OM has been a real facilitator - and the hundreds of 
> sites
> people have started are testament to that.
>
> The only problem is that their development process is a bit too slow.
> Due to lack of resources and time I think they don't get a lot of help 
> or
> contribution from their user community - which has little money and few
> relevant skills... There is a trickle-back of funding reciprocity (mute
> offer a platform, people use it to bolster their projects, they get
> funded, a little comes back to OpenMute) but I worry that it's not
> financially sustainable.
>
> Their publishing platform is a very promising way of changing that
> equasion: Mute's Print on Demand system has been used really 
> effectively
> by a few different projects to publish exhibition-related readers etc..
> and I think that's a bit more profitable - if the book becomes popular,
> possibly even more so.
>
> Tying in content production and distributing authorship through their
> network is also just now being experimented with (after about 10 years
> of planning!) with the re-launch of metamute.org.
>
> I think it would be really interesting to hear Simon talk about these
> aspects of the business as well as the range of services and plans they
> have for the future.
>
> As to their 'position', I'd say that along with Resonance FM, Mute are
> probably one of the key platforms for open culture and production in 
> the
> UK.. even if their scale and capacity remains quite small, the tools
> they're using and the networks they maintain are invaluable..
>
> Cheers,
>
> Saul.
>
>
>
> -- 
> Wos mailing list
> Wos at post.openoffice.de
> http://212.42.230.8/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wos
>
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