Hi Rob, Rob Myers said : > > To embrace FLOSS, artists must be able to see what is has to > > offer that is not available elsewhere (from practical issues, to > > social aspects and knowledge sharing) and this only needs curiosity > > and a good dose of self motivation. > > Do you think that artists should extend the freedom of free software > into their artistic work? Is there an obligation or inspiration from > free software for artists to embrace copyleft? Or is it only the case > that artists should use and contribute to software freely?
Well, artists are quite known to do whatever they want to do with whatever comes around, so this won't change :) (and it's a good thing!) So I think at the moment most artists are using and contributing to software freely, which as a consequence leads very often to paradoxes such as "I use free software to make art, but I won't release the patch/code of my installation/performance". There is still this idea, that giving away the technology/software of the artwork, is giving away the income (maybe the soul too?). This is not true, as we know, media artists incomes are mostly coming from teaching, residency, comissions and manifestations of their art, whether it is performances or installations, certainly not selling software or registering patents (and we also know what this thinking brought us so far in other fields). But I have good hope, or said differently, I'm looking forward to the day where critical mass of artists making free software art will be reached, and hopefully will start to generate interesting things. Free software art is not making software art a better Art, but it will certainly allow it to develop itself in ways we can only speculate about right now, based on how it affected other domains until now. Also, just like the rest, the freedom of free software is a quite powerful virus, not just for the viral licensing aspect, but also for the mind. Artists who are operating for a while in its presence, very often start to introduce it in their work and their research, as an inspiration and method. a. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
