Hi Marc, hi everyone, Thanks everyone for the welcome and interest in pure:dyne. That question is interesting because Aymeric and I will have two different perspectives, him as an artist and co-founder of the project, and me as a curator/producer and newer to the project. Aymeric is actually teaching a pure:dyne workshop this week with some of the other developers at Goldsmiths, through Graham Harwood, so he might be popping in and out of discussion in the evenings as he can.
I joined the pure:dyne team about a year and a half ago though have been near the project for about three. The team has grown quite organically and socially – it was founded by members of the GOTO10 collective (http://www.goto10.org) who themselves met through workshops and events around London and Europe. When I first started working at Space Media Arts (http://www.spacemedia.org.uk) in London I was looking for someone to teach a workshop on Pure Data to some artists there and when asking around, the names of two GOTO10 members, Antonios Galanopoulos and Chun Lee, kept coming up. I booked them to teach the workshop and when we were communicating about system requirements in advance, we had to run through a checklist of externals and settings to make sure all our OSX Apple machines were going to work and be compatible with what they were teaching. It took a bit of time to get all the machines running in the same way and Antonios told me about this project they were working on that would eliminate a lot of that work. And, interestingly, it could also run on a LiveCD where people could take the software and system home with them to continue their work – a big bonus for us as we wanted to see our participants, often from very different backgrounds, continue their learning so the workshops would have legacy for them. That wasn’t always possible if they had to buy proprietary software or get a full Linux system working at home. An increased, meaningful uptake in technology tools by wider groups of people was where I saw the culture meaning in this project. My imagination was captured by the idea of an operating system by media artists for media artists. Artists all work in different ways of course, but there were (and are) definitely a set of tools that many of the artists I knew were using in common (Pure Data being a big one at the time). I was interested in something that could draw together those tools in a way that was optimized for the way artists work, and also saw an opportunity for media labs like the ones I’d worked in to input into the development of a system that was close to their needs as well. So although the FLOSS ideology is a big part of the pure:dyne project, I was initially more interested in it from a functional, not political, point of view. Also a community-building point of view – I imagined a network of media labs (like the ones I worked in) and artists taking collective ownership over a system that was optimized for the way they work, learning from one another and creating a common platform. That was where I saw the meaning for my field of work. In terms of my own involvement: I hadn’t seen a group of artists who were working so closely with the mainstream/wider FLOSS communities before to create something that was ‘up to speed’ with wider technical communities – i.e. ‘not just art’. pure:dyne isn’t an artwork, it’s a tool, and I was interested in how a bunch of artists had the technical capacity to make something that functioned as such. Real h4x0r stuff, but also interesting to watch them develop the system as a bona fida FLOSS project and not an artwork inspired by FLOSS. I learned about the day-to-day, boring parts of how FLOSS projects work. It’s an elaborate, structured, disciplined, interesting working system – not just all love and openness. But what it seemed like is that when the pure:dyne team would get together they would have fun joking around about the things they were working on and *making* things. The developer team all became friends and the work was not always fun but doing it together, especially crammed in a small room and sharing links and snacks, looked like it would be. So I basically just wanted to get in on the party and they graciously took me on as a developer. :) Aymeric will have more, from the artist perspective and the longer history... H marc garrett wrote: > Hi Heather Corcoran & Aymeric Mansoux - a warm welcome to the > Netbehaviour list, > > I know that there are few on this list who are interested in > pure:dyne. Some have already used it and others are playing with the > idea of usiing it. It would be great to hear from them as well, > regarding their thoughts and experiences with pure:dyne, as the > interview progresses. Anyone can take part in this discussion, but it > is good to remember that it will end up on the front page of > furtherfield for others outside of the Netbehaviour list to read. It > will be edited, but not heavily. The interview starts today 16th Oct > and ends the 23rd Oct 08. > > > So, I would like to kick off this discussion by asking Heather > Corcoran or Aymeric Mansoux why they decided to get involved with > pure:dyne and what it means to them, as practitioners in their own > field, and what it means to them culturally? > > marc > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > -- Heather Corcoran Curator FACT 88 Wood Street Liverpool, L1 4DQ t: + 44 (0)151 707 4425 f: + 44 (0)151 707 4445 http://www.fact.co.uk Bookings: +44 (0)8707 583217 Information: +44 (0)151 707 4450 FACT is proud to be in LIVERPOOL, EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2008 _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
