Hi Rob, I'm a big fan of OSS/Libre/Free/Gnu/Linux so I feel compelled to comment, not attack, or anything, just voicing my ideas about it and asking a few questions. And of course I'm kind of stuck in my thinking about it and just think it is about software.
On 28/3/2007, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> ? Why are more and more artists turning to open source strategies? >The phrase "Open Source" is a deliberately meaningless term. Only when it's used by artists/curators to describe the process of creating art? >Time and again I see artists decide that Open Source is 1337 cool and they >want to apply Open Source principles to their work. They then spend ages >trying to work out what Open Source principles are. Can you give any examples of these artists? I can't see how it can take a long time to work out. Open source (as you no doubt know) basically means the source of the work is open to anybody to make use of without the threat of court action provided claims of authorship are not abused. (Just don't go making automatic drawings/writings open source otherwise you've open sourced your unconscious). >The lucky ones get fed up at this point. The unlucky ones discover Eric >Raymond I've heard he's the butt of many jokes in some circles. >and decide that Open Source is a more efficient means of production. Which >is an empty and exploitative "set of principles" on which to base art, >unless you're going to ironise it. How does this compare with, for instance, the DIWO project? Although DIWO was not specifically Open Source, it was collaborative which is a atleast half of what Open Source is about. >They then spend some more time trying to understand how they can apply this >to their work. The lucky ones decide that they cannot, and get on with their >art while volunteering for community projects where they can help out. The >unlucky ones try to keep their authorial oversight while getting some of >that Open Source secret sauce, and end up as robber barons creating toy >"Open" projects that read much better in conference notes than they look to >the free labour that doesn't get to share in the value. Perhaps you could say more specifically about which sorts of artwork you're thinking about. >If more and more artists could turn to Free Software strategies, that is to >a language of rights and freedoms rather than to the fetishisation of >downstream economic effects of those rights and freedoms, we might get >somewhere. But it's also the institutions promoting it. Free Software strategies are of little use to the capitalists, they'd rather hide that aspect and that funny looking Richard Stallman. James. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
