Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
income supplements other kinds of work, but begs profound questions for the economic system more broadly. Dmytri in an earlier post makes a related point that in the end for such endeavours as peer-to-peer production to expand beyond fringe or sub-cultural practices more profound social change is needed. Here we would need, at the very least, a general minimum income and the attendant upheavals that would entail. For me this is a fine objective, but returns us to the sticky need for a broader revolutionary movement and the question of just how likely that is, and I suspect I've now talked myself into a corner so will leave it there. Cheers, Joss From: empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of marc garrett [marc.garr...@furtherfield.org] Sent: 25 January 2012 14:06 To: soft_skinned_space Subject: Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network Hi Davin, Joss all, Intrigued by your comments below... Critical thinking does require time to read, think, communicate. It does require the existence of a community capable of supporting and sustaining this activity. Yes, an active intelligence requires 'time to read, think, communicate'. And critical thinking by artists is as challenging as academic thinking. It is interesting that there exists a general acceptance in the Media Art field, that artists must take on and acknowledge the ideas proposed by academia. Yet, many Media Artists spend their time within list environments discussing with theorists an abundance of different subjects relating to their practice, involving discussion on social, technical, political, historical and philosophical matters. This form of open exchange is an encouraging situation. To be an artist is to contend with the present, and there are not many other careers that afford the freedom to radically examine life and society. To put it bluntly, if artists are studying and writing more about politics, culture, and education, it's probably a reflection of the unprecedented dysfunctionality of the societies in which they live.(Andy Deck 2005) We already have networks of critical exchange, through various lists, blogs and platforms, where the Internet has allowed us to explore dynamically and mutually different ideas together. Because much of the posts are public (they are on Netbehaviour anyway) or archived - it's a kind of publishing. Some have published discussions on chosen themes from lists such as DEEP_EUROPE, from the Syndicate list, featuring selected email discussions between 96-97. This is the only edition I possess in book form. Publishing extracts from conversations which have originally taken place in email lists reaches a wider audience outside of the list environment itself. (As an aside, if wanting to create a community in which people can read, think, communicate, create is elitist, then what would an anti-elitist community look like?). Interesting proposition - I think we need to define elitism here. In the Oxford Dictionary it says Elite is a group of people considered to be superior in a particular society or organization: the country's educated elite. Elitism The belief that a society or system should be led by an elite - The dominance of a society or system by an elite - The superior attitude or behaviour associated with an elite etc... I suppose, some may feel here that elism (like a weapon) is not necessary a bad thing unless it's in the wrong hands. To answer your question what would an anti-elitist community look like? I'd say it would look messy, consisting of hierarchies, heterarchies, consensus behaviours - it may not exist or be able to exist as a 'pure' concept. And this may not matter, but what does matter are the values that these communities share. Traditionally, most utopias, theories and revolutions are caused by desire and necessity. Murray Bookchin's take on it is Marxists could hope to administer necessity by means of a state, and the anarchists, to deal with it through free communities. (Post-Sarcity Anarchism). Free communities in a technological world do exist now and elitism within these structures do vary. Michel Bauwens last year wrote in an interview with Lawrence Bird Peer production is based on the abundance logic of digital reproduction, and what is abundant lies outside the market mechanism. It is based on free contributions that lie outside of the labour-capital relationship. It creates a commons that is outside commodification and is based on sharing practices that contradict the neoliberal and neoclassical view of human anthropology. Peer production creates use value directly, which can only be partially monetized in its periphery, contradicting the basic mechanism of capitalism, which is production for exchange value. http://www.furtherfield.org/interviews/interview-michel-bauwens
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
out the things we like? That’s fine for academics like myself whose basic income supplements other kinds of work, but begs profound questions for the economic system more broadly. Dmytri in an earlier post makes a related point that in the end for such endeavours as peer-to-peer production to expand beyond fringe or sub-cultural practices more profound social change is needed. Here we would need, at the very least, a general minimum income and the attendant upheavals that would entail. For me this is a fine objective, but returns us to the sticky need for a broader revolutionary movement and the question of just how likely that is, and I suspect I've now talked myself into a corner so will leave it there. Cheers, Joss From: empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of marc garrett [marc.garr...@furtherfield.org] Sent: 25 January 2012 14:06 To: soft_skinned_space Subject: Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network Hi Davin, Joss all, Intrigued by your comments below... Critical thinking does require time to read, think, communicate. It does require the existence of a community capable of supporting and sustaining this activity. Yes, an active intelligence requires 'time to read, think, communicate'. And critical thinking by artists is as challenging as academic thinking. It is interesting that there exists a general acceptance in the Media Art field, that artists must take on and acknowledge the ideas proposed by academia. Yet, many Media Artists spend their time within list environments discussing with theorists an abundance of different subjects relating to their practice, involving discussion on social, technical, political, historical and philosophical matters. This form of open exchange is an encouraging situation. To be an artist is to contend with the present, and there are not many other careers that afford the freedom to radically examine life and society. To put it bluntly, if artists are studying and writing more about politics, culture, and education, it's probably a reflection of the unprecedented dysfunctionality of the societies in which they live.(Andy Deck 2005) We already have networks of critical exchange, through various lists, blogs and platforms, where the Internet has allowed us to explore dynamically and mutually different ideas together. Because much of the posts are public (they are on Netbehaviour anyway) or archived - it's a kind of publishing. Some have published discussions on chosen themes from lists such as DEEP_EUROPE, from the Syndicate list, featuring selected email discussions between 96-97. This is the only edition I possess in book form. Publishing extracts from conversations which have originally taken place in email lists reaches a wider audience outside of the list environment itself. (As an aside, if wanting to create a community in which people can read, think, communicate, create is elitist, then what would an anti-elitist community look like?). Interesting proposition - I think we need to define elitism here. In the Oxford Dictionary it says Elite is a group of people considered to be superior in a particular society or organization: the country's educated elite. Elitism The belief that a society or system should be led by an elite - The dominance of a society or system by an elite - The superior attitude or behaviour associated with an elite etc... I suppose, some may feel here that elism (like a weapon) is not necessary a bad thing unless it's in the wrong hands. To answer your question what would an anti-elitist community look like? I'd say it would look messy, consisting of hierarchies, heterarchies, consensus behaviours - it may not exist or be able to exist as a 'pure' concept. And this may not matter, but what does matter are the values that these communities share. Traditionally, most utopias, theories and revolutions are caused by desire and necessity. Murray Bookchin's take on it is Marxists could hope to administer necessity by means of a state, and the anarchists, to deal with it through free communities. (Post-Sarcity Anarchism). Free communities in a technological world do exist now and elitism within these structures do vary. Michel Bauwens last year wrote in an interview with Lawrence Bird Peer production is based on the abundance logic of digital reproduction, and what is abundant lies outside the market mechanism. It is based on free contributions that lie outside of the labour-capital relationship. It creates a commons that is outside commodification and is based on sharing practices that contradict the neoliberal and neoclassical view of human anthropology. Peer production creates use value directly, which can only be partially monetized in its periphery, contradicting the basic mechanism of capitalism, which is production for exchange value. http://www.furtherfield.org/interviews/interview-michel-bauwens
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
To: soft_skinned_space Subject: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network Hello everyone! A warm welcome to this week’s guests: Marc Garrett and Joss Hands. Thanks to Simon, Penny, Tiziana, Dmitry, Salvatore and Adam as well all other discussion contributors for their thought-provoking comments in the last two weeks. I have, as a lurker, really enjoyed the comments, examples and references. My research interests are in exploring and investigating artists’ and users’ perspectives on creation, dissemination and exploitation of new forms of content and their relationship with authorship and copyright. I’d like to focus this week’s discussion on intellectual property, economics and open models of writing and publishing. Collaborative authorship does not sit very well within the copyright framework (Seville 2006) and open-source models focus on sustaining collaborative production within the boundaries of existing IP regimes (Biagioli 2011). It’d be interesting to explore thoughts (and experiences) on IP and development of open models of writing and publishing; how does it hinder and can it help, ever?; the motivations behind the use/development of open-models and the value attributed to such use; role and meaning of collaborative authorship for the participants. While several points in relation to these have come up in a number of posts in the last two weeks, it’d be great to develop them a bit further! Best, Smita On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 10:31 PM, Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.ukmailto:si...@littlepig.org.uk wrote: Welcome to the third and last week of this discussion about open source writing and publishing on empyre. Firstly I would like to thank Adam Hyde, Salvatore Ianconesi, Penny Travlou, Tiziana Terranov and Dmytri Kleiner for the dynamic discussion they have established over the past two weeks, as well as all empyre members who have posted emails to the thread. I hope everyone can remain engaged as we move into the third week. To recap the theme: in a globalised and highly mediated context we wish to focus empyre discussion on how writing and publishing are currently evolving in the context of global networks. We hope to engage a debate about open models of writing and publishing and gain insight into how changes in notions and practices of authorship, media, form, dissemination, intellectual property and economics affect writing and publishing as well as the formation of the reader/writerships, communities and the social engagement that must flow from that activity. Specifically, we wish to look at examples of open publishing, whether they be FLOSS manuals, copyLeft or CopyFarLeft or other publication models, in order to look at new methods for knowledge making and distribution. We also wish to consider how communities of shared-value emerge through such initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others. This week's facilitator is Smita Kheria and our guests are Joss Hands and Marc Garrett. Marc Garrett is an activist, artist, writer and co-director/founder (with artist Ruth Catlow) of internet arts collective http://www.furtherfield.org (since 96) and the Furtherfield Gallery social space in London. Through these platforms various contemporary media arts exhibitions and projects are presented nationally and internationally. Marc also hosts a weekly media arts radio programme on Resonance FM, co-edited the publication Artists Re: thinking games and is editing a new publication Conversations As We Leave The 21st Century. He is currently undertaking a PhD at Birkbeck University, London. Joss Hands is a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University where he is Director of the Anglia Research Centre in Digital Culture (ARCDigital). His research interests are at the intersection of technology, new media, politics and critical theory. His focus has been in two main areas. The role of technology in providing an arena for the expression of dissent and the organisation of resistance movements and the role of technology in more formal democratic procedures, specifically the role of the Internet in contributing towards the development of deliberative democracy. He has recently completed a book on digital activism, @ is for Activism: Dissent, Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture, published by Pluto Press. Smita Kheria is a lawyer and lecturer in law at the University of Edinburgh. Her focus of interest is intellectual property law and issues around authorship, especially concerning artists' practices with new media. Smita is an associate of SCRIPT: the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology and is Supervising editor (Intellectual Property) for SCRIPT-ed, the journal of Law, Technology Society. best Simon Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.ukmailto:si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Joss, You raise some very good points, points which highlight the truly profound nature of digital communication technologies. Such a policing is indeed necessary to justify the very existence of pubic life as a distinct arena that ‘represents’ us, and in that sense is the essence of the democratic life of the bourgeois state. However, as the cost of publishing has been reduced to something close to zero for a good number of individuals and organizations, capital, and its concomitant bourgeois state, have significantly diminished in their ability to filter and legitimate the work of a professional class of public intellectuals and cultural critics. In my own study of electronic literature, I find that many of our attitudes towards the literary are shaped by accidents of history. Fortunately, we have found a good medium for storing and transmitting human expression in the book, itself, prefigured by an oral language which was similarly crystallized in the creation of alphabetic writing but over time, we have become habituated to seeing human thought represented and archived in this format, so many believe that this quality is intrinsic to the literary. Ignoring the possibility that these are specific incarnations of an impulse that precedes it and ignoring the possibility that this impulse will continue to be carried forward in continuity with the present. Now, without getting into semantic quibbling over whether or not we want to provide a strict prescription for literature, I think it is interesting that we depend upon the limiting effects of the material object to accomplish what it is that we desire from literature: Meaning over meaninglessness, virtuosity over thoughtless crap, quality that stands out against quantity. In other words, we still prefer to spend our time using it in ways that reflect our interests, thus some would rather read Literature instead of crap or, in the case you describe, reliable publications over unreliable ones. At the same time, we are keenly aware of marketing, pr, and consumerism in the 21st century so we know that many operators will exploit the logic of scarcity to present unreliable or crappy texts as though they are worth the paper they are printed on. It costs a lot to print a book. People have to buy a lot of copies to make the bestseller list. Glenn Beck's latest book must be AWESOME! In other words, we know by now that the material limitations of print publishing are no longer a reliable indicator of a book's aesthetic merit, moral quality, truth value, scientific significance, etc. Now, often times when I say that I think we need to have some sort of reliable means to sort useful information from crap, people suggest that there is some elitism there. And certainly, when print was the only game in town, such statements were directly tied to an implied economic threshold, which kept some out and some in. But when, as you note, many people can publish many things online with no filtering it is a mistake to assume that the process of conscious human discernment means we privilege the haves against the have-nots. It could be. In the case of commercial content and professionally marketed materials, it is. But this, too, is an accident of history, rather than something essential to the act of critical thinking. Critical thinking does require time to read, think, communicate. It does require the existence of a community capable of supporting and sustaining this activity. (As an aside, if wanting to create a community in which people can read, think, communicate, create is elitist, then what would an anti-elitist community look like?). To get back around to my comment I think that you hit the nail on the head when you point out the need for critical structures and practices that are capable of looking at the broad field of cultural information we swim in, and to filter those results in accordance with values negotiated by a community. Once you take heavy hand of material scarcity off the scales of publication, we have an opportunity to think about what ought to be published without worrying about the dynamics that made many of the hard decisions on our behalf. We now have to decide how to prioritize information, because the price of paper isn't doing it for us. And we need to think about how search engines, social media, and government institutions are actively trying to perform this role on our behalf. If you look out there, and empyre as a community, has been very good at trying to explore the potential of the new environment (and has given a lot of similar projects, artists, critics, and activists, the space to share other models for sharing work), there are groups of people working on exploring the new models. And, as these little perturbations in art and academic culture go, so there are wild vortexes of widespread social change that are being negotiated. We have to figure out how to articulate community in a
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
also include ‘open’ publishing given that publishing itself is a concept that still contains a trace of the process of a filtered ‘making public’ and perhaps is becoming an oxymoron . Though at this point I’m a bit too tired to think this through properly. But I do also think this in itself requires a re-engagement with the key question of subjectivity, political subjectivity in particular, again an issue raised by Tiziana. What can it mean to express political agency, to ‘act’ or to make oneself present in the sense that Hannah Arendt uses it, in this context? One to sleep on I suspect. Apologies for a rather incoherent post but hopefully I can pick up some more of these points, and some more developed reflections on previous posts, in the next day or two. Cheers, Joss From:*empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of SK Edinburgh [skheriae...@gmail.com] *Sent:*23 January 2012 09:39 *To:*soft_skinned_space *Subject:*[-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network Hello everyone! A warm welcome to this week’s guests: Marc Garrett and Joss Hands. Thanks to Simon, Penny, Tiziana, Dmitry, Salvatore and Adam as well all other discussion contributors for their thought-provoking comments in the last two weeks. I have, as a lurker, really enjoyed the comments, examples and references. My research interests are in exploring and investigating artists’ and users’ perspectives on creation, dissemination and exploitation of new forms of content and their relationship with authorship and copyright. I’d like to focus this week’s discussion on intellectual property, economics and open models of writing and publishing. Collaborative authorship does not sit very well within the copyright framework (Seville 2006) and open-source models focus on sustaining collaborative production within the boundaries of existing IP regimes (Biagioli 2011). It’d be interesting to explore thoughts (and experiences) on IP and development of open models of writing and publishing; how does it hinder and can it help, ever?; the motivations behind the use/development of open-models and the value attributed to such use; role and meaning of collaborative authorship for the participants. While several points in relation to these have come up in a number of posts in the last two weeks, it’d be great to develop them a bit further! Best, Smita On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 10:31 PM, Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk mailto:si...@littlepig.org.uk wrote: Welcome to the third and last week of this discussion about open source writing and publishing on empyre. Firstly I would like to thank Adam Hyde, Salvatore Ianconesi, Penny Travlou, Tiziana Terranov and Dmytri Kleiner for the dynamic discussion they have established over the past two weeks, as well as all empyre members who have posted emails to the thread. I hope everyone can remain engaged as we move into the third week. To recap the theme: in a globalised and highly mediated context we wish to focus empyre discussion on how writing and publishing are currently evolving in the context of global networks. We hope to engage a debate about open models of writing and publishing and gain insight into how changes in notions and practices of authorship, media, form, dissemination, intellectual property and economics affect writing and publishing as well as the formation of the reader/writerships, communities and the social engagement that must flow from that activity. Specifically, we wish to look at examples of open publishing, whether they be FLOSS manuals, copyLeft or CopyFarLeft or other publication models, in order to look at new methods for knowledge making and distribution. We also wish to consider how communities of shared-value emerge through such initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others. This week's facilitator is Smita Kheria and our guests are Joss Hands and Marc Garrett. Marc Garrett is an activist, artist, writer and co-director/founder (with artist Ruth Catlow) of internet arts collective http://www.furtherfield.org (since 96) and the Furtherfield Gallery social space in London. Through these platforms various contemporary media arts exhibitions and projects are presented nationally and internationally. Marc also hosts a weekly media arts radio programme on Resonance FM, co-edited the publication Artists Re: thinking games and is editing a new publication Conversations As We Leave The 21st Century. He is currently undertaking a PhD at Birkbeck University, London. Joss Hands is a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University where he is Director of the Anglia Research Centre in Digital Culture (ARCDigital). His research interests are at the intersection of technology, new media, politics and critical theory. His focus has been in two main areas. The role of technology in providing an arena for the expression
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
thanks for inviting me to join this fascinating, rich and varied debate - I must confess so much so that frankly I'm not sure where to start. I am not an expert, or anything like it, on IP or collaborative authorship or open models but the context in which these issues have come up certainly raises questions close to my own research interests, which I guess is where I might be the best placed to offer a couple of initial thoughts that I don’t think have been directly addressed so far. One area which I have reflected on in some of my writing is the character of publicness in a digital and networked environment. It strikes me that the move into collaborative approaches that aim to overcome the notion of a single author (and all the baggage that entails) and ownership as a meaningful and useful legal concept (whatever the broader implication for subjectivity, economics, and society) raises real questions with regard to politics, as a process of making public. To publish, as a process of crossing a clear boundary between a private and public forum, that is to ‘make public’ assumes a distinct arena into which one can place private thoughts. This borderline has up until ubiquitous distributed computing rested with formal or quasi formal intermediary institutions that act as filters or gatekeepers - or in other words, publishers. Such a policing is indeed necessary to justify the very existence of pubic life as a distinct arena that ‘represents’ us, and in that sense is the essence of the democratic life of the bourgeois state. However, as the cost of publishing has been reduced to something close to zero for a good number of individuals and organizations, capital, and its concomitant bourgeois state, have significantly diminished in their ability to filter and legitimate the work of a professional class of public intellectuals and cultural critics. The presence of such gatekeepers is also needed to enable the creation of value sufficient that a class of public intellectuals can a) make a living and b) make themselves distinct from everybody else for whom public life only exists to the extent that they are consumers and/or processors of public knowledge or public reason. Yet now this process seems largely reversed, in that the filtering process takes place after ‘publication’.One clicks though to a recommended blog post as readily as story in /The Guardian/ if it comes well recommended. One of the implications of the ‘massification’ of the Internet as discussed by Tiziana in an earlier post, is precisely the generalization of this post-public filtering. On the surface this suggests a form democratization, open publishing platforms, or even Twitter and such like, enabling anybody to chip in, in that sense I wonder to what extent this erosion - if developed far enough, can become a real radical and challenging political moment, simply in its undermining of a privileged realm of ‘representation’? However, I also wonder just as FLOSS in the realm of economics, as Dimit and others have argued in earlier posts, can readily be recuperated by capital, so - perhaps - new forms of what might be referred to a distributed publicness, can be readily recuperated by the ‘post-publication’ filtering mechanisms put in place to enable them to be manageable and shared, given the broader context of neo-liberal definitions of choice as little more than a market of ideas. In particular automated reputation systems that contribute towards power-law distributions in scale-free networks, clustering around ever more dominant hubs. In that regard for me the compelling question that this raises is whether the shift from an official policing of the boundary of publicness, towards an algorithmic cybernetic policing, indeed the disappearance of the notion of ‘public’ as meaningful term at all, requires a recalibration of thinking about publishing? Or its value as a term at all. This must also include ‘open’ publishing given that publishing itself is a concept that still contains a trace of the process of a filtered ‘making public’ and perhaps is becoming an oxymoron . Though at this point I’m a bit too tired to think this through properly. But I do also think this in itself requires a re-engagement with the key question of subjectivity, political subjectivity in particular, again an issue raised by Tiziana. What can it mean to express political agency, to ‘act’ or to make oneself present in the sense that Hannah Arendt uses it, in this context? One to sleep on I suspect. Apologies for a rather incoherent post but hopefully I can pick up some more of these points, and some more developed reflections on previous posts, in the next day or two. Cheers, Joss From:*empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of SK Edinburgh [skheriae...@gmail.com] *Sent:*23 January 2012 09:39 *To:*soft_skinned_space *Subject:*[-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network Hello everyone! A warm welcome
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hi Smita all, I want to try and respond clearly to some of the questions you pose below... It’d be interesting to explore thoughts (and experiences) on IP and development of open models of writing and publishing; how does it hinder and can it help, ever?; the motivations behind the use/development of open-models and the value attributed to such use; role and meaning of collaborative authorship for the participants. While several points in relation to these have come up in a number of posts in the last two weeks, it’d be great to develop them a bit further! Firstly, anyone and group or institution who decides to close down possibilities of shared distribution, whether this be publishing, an on-line community/platform, or shared files; are proposing a power shift based on principles. This communicates to its users/community, its consumers we are not open we are closed. The idea that this action creates quality due to proposed ideas in accordance to curation or similar conceptions, are either not acknowledging, not listening or are not aware or do not actually care; of the social disconnect and its consequences when closing down a 'culturally free-zone'. If we are discussing traditional journalism in the UK, most of the individuals writing in these columns are either celebrities or ex oxford and Cambridge students. This declares that class distinction, status and privilege is the deciding factor in respect of who is worthy of 'official' respect and support amongst the ranks of news related 'printed on-line media'. This spurious notion that (quality) selection is objective and in the end creates a higher quality press is a myth, it has more to do with upholding positions of power over others. If we are to evolve beyond the limitations and the tyranny over consciousness, it begins with suborning law or bending it in accordance to our needs at the time. Because, as usual the elites are never ready to accept the needs of others, only their own immediate needs. Hence the constant building of stronger established frameworks and protocols in order to make their positions less vulnerable, by only letting in particular individuals into their fold that accept or become complicit with 'upper' peer agreements which, strengthening the infrastructures of these pantheons - in the Max Weber sense of the word. This is why a blurring of what is deemed as 'legitimate' publishing has to happen, so that we can all re-asses these matters on a more level field, with the inclusion of publicly shared distribution models. Which is why discussions such as this on Empyre are important. In my next post to you and all, I will offer actual examples referring some of the experiences and projects I have been involved in, as well as sharing comparisons that aim to highlight hermetically sealed cultures that act to close things of, relating to the very issues discussed above. Wishing you well. marc Hello everyone! A warm welcome to this week’s guests: Marc Garrett and Joss Hands. Thanks to Simon, Penny, Tiziana, Dmitry, Salvatore and Adam as well all other discussion contributors for their thought-provoking comments in the last two weeks. I have, as a lurker, really enjoyed the comments, examples and references. My research interests are in exploring and investigating artists’ and users’ perspectives on creation, dissemination and exploitation of new forms of content and their relationship with authorship and copyright. I’d like to focus this week’s discussion on intellectual property, economics and open models of writing and publishing. Collaborative authorship does not sit very well within the copyright framework (Seville 2006) and open-source models focus on sustaining collaborative production within the boundaries of existing IP regimes (Biagioli 2011). It’d be interesting to explore thoughts (and experiences) on IP and development of open models of writing and publishing; how does it hinder and can it help, ever?; the motivations behind the use/development of open-models and the value attributed to such use; role and meaning of collaborative authorship for the participants. While several points in relation to these have come up in a number of posts in the last two weeks, it’d be great to develop them a bit further! Best, Smita On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 10:31 PM, Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk mailto:si...@littlepig.org.uk wrote: Welcome to the third and last week of this discussion about open source writing and publishing on empyre. Firstly I would like to thank Adam Hyde, Salvatore Ianconesi, Penny Travlou, Tiziana Terranov and Dmytri Kleiner for the dynamic discussion they have established over the past two weeks, as well as all empyre members who have posted emails to the thread. I hope everyone can remain engaged as we move into the third week. To recap the theme: in a globalised and highly mediated context we wish to focus empyre discussion
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hi Simon all, A warm thanks to Simon for the introduction, and also thanks for inviting me to share a dialogue with others on the Empyre list. The discussions have been excellent. Even though I had written various responses during the last few weeks, in the end I did not post them. One reason was because I wanted to rethink some of the ideas (I originally) proposed in response to some of the discussions taking place. The other, is because we have just been far too busy. This has either involved editing a large backlog of reviews, articles and interviews for Furtherfield - getting particular projects and new publications off the ground, dealing with immediate tech needs on the server, as well as working at things for the new Gallery social space (http://www.furtherfield.org/gallery). A jam packed month already, it feels like four months worth all rolled into one. So here I am, wondering how the hell I can explain, as Simon says how communities of shared-value emerge through such initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others. An important ingredient is the blurring of (and critiquing of) mechanistic structures and bringing about the facilitation and chaotic nuances of imaginative experiences that feelings and ideas around 'free will' gives us, in actions which (hopefully) relate contextually to the practice or field you are part of. The Culture(s) I am part of, are not necessarily kept alive through the means of efficiency and canons alone (it really isn't). It is kept alive through the sharing of mutually beneficial ecologies, which harbour a healthy understanding and respect towards self and collective autonomy. Distance, is only an occasional option - for it involves total immersion if one is to appreciate the 'raw' grass roots context of a community's subtle nuances and everyday needs. This is where the nourishment is, where the heart of things are. A constantly 'lived' process of 'being' in touch with the fluxuation of emerging ideas and initiatives - they formulate and grow as we breath. Engagement in individual explorations and antics, with peer production consisting of 'conscious' reflection - and a respect for sharing knowledge with others goes both ways. It is the idiosyncratic nature of the human imagination and its uncontrollable spirit against all odds of oppression and top-down standardization which attracts us (in Furtherfield), we learn much about ourselves and others when playing with and working with others beyond our own 'singular' and centralized mind-hubs. A culture that does not appreciate the character of anything eccentric to its model tends to homogenize and standardize its definition of the good citizen. James Hillman. Out of these frameworks of creative production emerges various forms of creative endeavours. Whether they be from individuals, groups or the collective itself. From our own perspective, we hope to share and support a wide spectrum that can allow across the board an engaged art which explores technology, ecology and social change. Through this process of constant change and discovery we ask, in what ways can art be critically minded and progressive, in order to contribute, reclaim and (potentially) build productive actions and routes that point towards social and cultural strategies opposed to the dominant paradigm of neo-liberalism? A large part of Furtherfield's focus, has been to question contemporary art's reliance on market driven ideology. We experienced as artists in the early 80s, and well into the 90s, a UK art culture mainly dominated by the marketing strategies of Saatchi and Saatchi. The same company was responsible for the successful promotion of the Conservative Party (and conservative culture) that had led to the election of the Thatcher government in 1979. We felt that it was time to make a stance against such corporations controlling the art scene. Where many equally interesting artists and their ideas were being pushed aside, whilst the overpowering corporate needs of Saatchi and Saatchi, exploited their connections with art education institutions, galleries and press, promoting just a few individuals over others, based on their personalities alongside their depoliticized artworks. We live in an age where the very technology and systems that have supported progress, through its worldwide channels of production and prosperity; are now the very same tools threatening the survival of our species, contributing to climate change and 'of course', the emergence of the global economic crisis. Neo-liberalist strategies have successfully dismantled collective institutions who were once able to challenge the effects of its global dominance; especially the organisations sharing values associated with social needs in the public realm. This “is the imposition everywhere, in the upper spheres of the economy and the state as at the heart
[-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hello everyone! A warm welcome to this week’s guests: Marc Garrett and Joss Hands. Thanks to Simon, Penny, Tiziana, Dmitry, Salvatore and Adam as well all other discussion contributors for their thought-provoking comments in the last two weeks. I have, as a lurker, really enjoyed the comments, examples and references. My research interests are in exploring and investigating artists’ and users’ perspectives on creation, dissemination and exploitation of new forms of content and their relationship with authorship and copyright. I’d like to focus this week’s discussion on intellectual property, economics and open models of writing and publishing. Collaborative authorship does not sit very well within the copyright framework (Seville 2006) and open-source models focus on sustaining collaborative production within the boundaries of existing IP regimes (Biagioli 2011). It’d be interesting to explore thoughts (and experiences) on IP and development of open models of writing and publishing; how does it hinder and can it help, ever?; the motivations behind the use/development of open-models and the value attributed to such use; role and meaning of collaborative authorship for the participants. While several points in relation to these have come up in a number of posts in the last two weeks, it’d be great to develop them a bit further! Best, Smita On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 10:31 PM, Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk wrote: Welcome to the third and last week of this discussion about open source writing and publishing on empyre. Firstly I would like to thank Adam Hyde, Salvatore Ianconesi, Penny Travlou, Tiziana Terranov and Dmytri Kleiner for the dynamic discussion they have established over the past two weeks, as well as all empyre members who have posted emails to the thread. I hope everyone can remain engaged as we move into the third week. To recap the theme: in a globalised and highly mediated context we wish to focus empyre discussion on how writing and publishing are currently evolving in the context of global networks. We hope to engage a debate about open models of writing and publishing and gain insight into how changes in notions and practices of authorship, media, form, dissemination, intellectual property and economics affect writing and publishing as well as the formation of the reader/writerships, communities and the social engagement that must flow from that activity. Specifically, we wish to look at examples of open publishing, whether they be FLOSS manuals, copyLeft or CopyFarLeft or other publication models, in order to look at new methods for knowledge making and distribution. We also wish to consider how communities of shared-value emerge through such initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others. This week's facilitator is Smita Kheria and our guests are Joss Hands and Marc Garrett. Marc Garrett is an activist, artist, writer and co-director/founder (with artist Ruth Catlow) of internet arts collective http://www.furtherfield.org(since 96) and the Furtherfield Gallery social space in London. Through these platforms various contemporary media arts exhibitions and projects are presented nationally and internationally. Marc also hosts a weekly media arts radio programme on Resonance FM, co-edited the publication Artists Re: thinking games and is editing a new publication Conversations As We Leave The 21st Century. He is currently undertaking a PhD at Birkbeck University, London. Joss Hands is a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University where he is Director of the Anglia Research Centre in Digital Culture (ARCDigital). His research interests are at the intersection of technology, new media, politics and critical theory. His focus has been in two main areas. The role of technology in providing an arena for the expression of dissent and the organisation of resistance movements and the role of technology in more formal democratic procedures, specifically the role of the Internet in contributing towards the development of deliberative democracy. He has recently completed a book on digital activism, @ is for Activism: Dissent, Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture, published by Pluto Press. Smita Kheria is a lawyer and lecturer in law at the University of Edinburgh. Her focus of interest is intellectual property law and issues around authorship, especially concerning artists' practices with new media. Smita is an associate of SCRIPT: the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology and is Supervising editor (Intellectual Property) for SCRIPT-ed, the journal of Law, Technology Society. best Simon Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk s.bi...@ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/ ___
[-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hello everyone! A warm welcome to this week’s guests: Marc Garrett and Joss Hands. Thanks to Simon, Penny, Tiziana, Dmitry, Salvatore and Adam as well all other discussion contributors for their thought-provoking comments in the last two weeks. I have, as a lurker, really enjoyed the comments, examples and references. My research interests are in exploring and investigating artists’ and users’ perspectives on creation, dissemination and exploitation of new forms of content and their relationship with authorship and copyright. I’d like to focus this week’s discussion on intellectual property, economics and open models of writing and publishing. Collaborative authorship does not sit very well within the copyright framework (Seville 2006) and open-source models focus on sustaining collaborative production within the boundaries of existing IP regimes (Biagioli 2011). It’d be interesting to explore thoughts (and experiences) on IP and development of open models of writing and publishing; how does it hinder and can it help, ever?; the motivations behind the use/development of open-models and the value attributed to such use; role and meaning of collaborative authorship for the participants. While several points in relation to these have come up in a number of posts in the last two weeks, it’d be great to develop them a bit further! Best, Smita On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 10:31 PM, Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk wrote: Welcome to the third and last week of this discussion about open source writing and publishing on empyre. Firstly I would like to thank Adam Hyde, Salvatore Ianconesi, Penny Travlou, Tiziana Terranov and Dmytri Kleiner for the dynamic discussion they have established over the past two weeks, as well as all empyre members who have posted emails to the thread. I hope everyone can remain engaged as we move into the third week. To recap the theme: in a globalised and highly mediated context we wish to focus empyre discussion on how writing and publishing are currently evolving in the context of global networks. We hope to engage a debate about open models of writing and publishing and gain insight into how changes in notions and practices of authorship, media, form, dissemination, intellectual property and economics affect writing and publishing as well as the formation of the reader/writerships, communities and the social engagement that must flow from that activity. Specifically, we wish to look at examples of open publishing, whether they be FLOSS manuals, copyLeft or CopyFarLeft or other publication models, in order to look at new methods for knowledge making and distribution. We also wish to consider how communities of shared-value emerge through such initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others. This week's facilitator is Smita Kheria and our guests are Joss Hands and Marc Garrett. Marc Garrett is an activist, artist, writer and co-director/founder (with artist Ruth Catlow) of internet arts collective http://www.furtherfield.org(since 96) and the Furtherfield Gallery social space in London. Through these platforms various contemporary media arts exhibitions and projects are presented nationally and internationally. Marc also hosts a weekly media arts radio programme on Resonance FM, co-edited the publication Artists Re: thinking games and is editing a new publication Conversations As We Leave The 21st Century. He is currently undertaking a PhD at Birkbeck University, London. Joss Hands is a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University where he is Director of the Anglia Research Centre in Digital Culture (ARCDigital). His research interests are at the intersection of technology, new media, politics and critical theory. His focus has been in two main areas. The role of technology in providing an arena for the expression of dissent and the organisation of resistance movements and the role of technology in more formal democratic procedures, specifically the role of the Internet in contributing towards the development of deliberative democracy. He has recently completed a book on digital activism, @ is for Activism: Dissent, Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture, published by Pluto Press. Smita Kheria is a lawyer and lecturer in law at the University of Edinburgh. Her focus of interest is intellectual property law and issues around authorship, especially concerning artists' practices with new media. Smita is an associate of SCRIPT: the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology and is Supervising editor (Intellectual Property) for SCRIPT-ed, the journal of Law, Technology Society. best Simon Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk s.bi...@ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/ ___
[-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Welcome to the third and last week of this discussion about open source writing and publishing on empyre. Firstly I would like to thank Adam Hyde, Salvatore Ianconesi, Penny Travlou, Tiziana Terranov and Dmytri Kleiner for the dynamic discussion they have established over the past two weeks, as well as all empyre members who have posted emails to the thread. I hope everyone can remain engaged as we move into the third week. To recap the theme: in a globalised and highly mediated context we wish to focus empyre discussion on how writing and publishing are currently evolving in the context of global networks. We hope to engage a debate about open models of writing and publishing and gain insight into how changes in notions and practices of authorship, media, form, dissemination, intellectual property and economics affect writing and publishing as well as the formation of the reader/writerships, communities and the social engagement that must flow from that activity. Specifically, we wish to look at examples of open publishing, whether they be FLOSS manuals, copyLeft or CopyFarLeft or other publication models, in order to look at new methods for knowledge making and distribution. We also wish to consider how communities of shared-value emerge through such initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others. This week's facilitator is Smita Kheria and our guests are Joss Hands and Marc Garrett. Marc Garrett is an activist, artist, writer and co-director/founder (with artist Ruth Catlow) of internet arts collective http://www.furtherfield.org (since 96) and the Furtherfield Gallery social space in London. Through these platforms various contemporary media arts exhibitions and projects are presented nationally and internationally. Marc also hosts a weekly media arts radio programme on Resonance FM, co-edited the publication Artists Re: thinking games and is editing a new publication Conversations As We Leave The 21st Century. He is currently undertaking a PhD at Birkbeck University, London. Joss Hands is a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University where he is Director of the Anglia Research Centre in Digital Culture (ARCDigital). His research interests are at the intersection of technology, new media, politics and critical theory. His focus has been in two main areas. The role of technology in providing an arena for the expression of dissent and the organisation of resistance movements and the role of technology in more formal democratic procedures, specifically the role of the Internet in contributing towards the development of deliberative democracy. He has recently completed a book on digital activism, @ is for Activism: Dissent, Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture, published by Pluto Press. Smita Kheria is a lawyer and lecturer in law at the University of Edinburgh. Her focus of interest is intellectual property law and issues around authorship, especially concerning artists' practices with new media. Smita is an associate of SCRIPT: the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology and is Supervising editor (Intellectual Property) for SCRIPT-ed, the journal of Law, Technology Society. best Simon Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk s.bi...@ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Occupy and the rest 0% http://occupyeverything.org/2012/zero-percent/ Sent from my eXtended BodY AA http://burgerwaanzin.nl On 20 jan. 2012, at 12:13, davin heckman davinheck...@gmail.com wrote: You wrote: We don't need to 'change the world', we have to change ourselves. do things differently. make something work and then, as soon as you have it, spread and communicate o other people. a TAZ with legs, a 1-meter revolution, and an intense communication phase after it. and this is exactly what we do: invent new spaces and new sustainable practices stratified on top of the existing world. and as soon as they're there, explain to people how we did it, give them the tools and support, and proceed in doing the next step. I wish I had read this before writing that long message I send just a minute ago. This really strikes me as a great practice. Do you have any video of the iSee app in action? I don't have a mobile phone, smart or otherwise. But if I did, I would want to try this app. Davin ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
You wrote: We don't need to 'change the world', we have to change ourselves. do things differently. make something work and then, as soon as you have it, spread and communicate o other people. a TAZ with legs, a 1-meter revolution, and an intense communication phase after it. and this is exactly what we do: invent new spaces and new sustainable practices stratified on top of the existing world. and as soon as they're there, explain to people how we did it, give them the tools and support, and proceed in doing the next step. I wish I had read this before writing that long message I send just a minute ago. This really strikes me as a great practice. Do you have any video of the iSee app in action? I don't have a mobile phone, smart or otherwise. But if I did, I would want to try this app. Davin ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
hi Penny On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 5:28 PM, Penny travlou sp.trav...@gmail.com wrote: Your response to my post has raised some of the issues I am dealing with as a cultural geographer and ethnographer. It is of great interest to see that while my questions focus on open source writing and publishing initiatives, your examples are strongly linked to the appropriation of public space. yes, definitely so. And, in a stronger sense, all our projects are dedicated to the invention of *new* public and private spaces. this mostly because we don't believe in the conflict, in whichever form, between power structures and alternatives. We really believe in the next steps which can be taken. we live in times which represent a deep transformation. and from what we have been able to see from history, these kinds of times have always been characterized by the dialogue (conflict) between power and alternative. we simply don't conform to this, as this has produced confrontation, transformation and then the emergence of new power schemes. what we want is to step-aside and promote autonomy. now we have the chance to promote autonomy, to invent new spaces, new processes, new expressions. For example we find truly interesting the research produced by Matthew Zook and Mark Graham ( http://www.zook.info/ ) which represent insightful suggestions on the ways in which we, as human beings in the contemporary world, are already defining new experiences of spaces and processes which fill our daily lives, using digital information and networks to redefine and completely re-program our spaces. technology has been going in this direction for years now. There is this wonderful book http://books.google.it/books?id=-Kq2IAAJ by Paul Du Gay in which the story of the design of the Sony Walkman is described from the point of view of cultural studies. Great emphasis is dedicated to the personalization of space, as a fundamental issue in the ways in which technologies change our perception of the world, the ways we learn, relate, work, communicate. This trend has been rising at impressive speed during the last few years, and now we constantly have our offices, libraries, sounds, visions, relationships, work, todo list, geographical points of interest, knowledge sources about the environment all constantly with us, in our pockets or backpacks. from the book of Paul Du Gay: Also, more metaphorically, the very modern practice of being in two places at once, or doing two different things at once: being in a typically crowded, noisy, urban space while also being tuned in, through your headphones, to the very different, imaginary space or soundscape in your head which develops in conjunction with the music you are listening to [...] By situating the Walkman in these different practices we appropriate it into our culture and expand its cultural meaning or value. and, a bit after, This twentieth-century soundscape is composed of actual sounds. But there is also a 'soundscape of the mind' in which music plays a key role. Music, like reading (another private pleasure which can be done in public, on trains or buses), has often offered a sort of inner landscape feelings, emotions and associations to which we can retreat from the bustle and hassle of the 'real world', a sort of 'second world', adjacent to but separate from the everyday one. This can get really radical if re-interpreted in terms of the technologies and networks which we have available right now, allowing to design and enact entire new spaces, spaces for communication and relationship, services, new spaces for commerce, for knowledge, for action. basically, we can stratify multiple autonomous, emergent versions of the world on top of the ordinary one, and act there. In this, among the most interesting things which we find in this set of opportunities, is the fact that we actually don't need a revolution, meaning that we don't need the revolts, and the ideals, and the violence (be it verbal or physical) and, then, after it all, the emergence of new power schemes. we just need to research, design, make it sustainable, and liberate ourselves. We don't need to change the world, we have to change ourselves. do things differently. make something work and then, as soon as you have it, spread and communicate o other people. a TAZ with legs, a 1-meter revolution, and an intense communication phase after it. and this is exactly what we do: invent new spaces and new sustainable practices stratified on top of the existing world. and as soon as they're there, explain to people how we did it, give them the tools and support, and proceed in doing the next step. I was intrigued by your reference to skateboarding as a publishing form that re-programmes the city and directly writes on the world creating new spaces for action. This reminds me of Henri Lefebvre’s Writings on the Cities but mostly Michel de Certeau’s ‘strategies’ and ‘tactics’ where the city of urban planners
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
please can i be removed from this mailing list. cheers emily Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:30:33 +0100 From: xdxd.vs.x...@gmail.com To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Subject: Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network hi Penny On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 5:28 PM, Penny travlou sp.trav...@gmail.com wrote: Your response to my post has raised some of the issues I am dealing with as a cultural geographer and ethnographer. It is of great interest to see that while my questions focus on open source writing and publishing initiatives, your examples are strongly linked to the appropriation of public space. yes, definitely so. And, in a stronger sense, all our projects are dedicated to the invention of *new* public and private spaces. this mostly because we don't believe in the conflict, in whichever form, between power structures and alternatives. We really believe in the next steps which can be taken. we live in times which represent a deep transformation. and from what we have been able to see from history, these kinds of times have always been characterized by the dialogue (conflict) between power and alternative. we simply don't conform to this, as this has produced confrontation, transformation and then the emergence of new power schemes. what we want is to step-aside and promote autonomy. now we have the chance to promote autonomy, to invent new spaces, new processes, new expressions. For example we find truly interesting the research produced by Matthew Zook and Mark Graham ( http://www.zook.info/ ) which represent insightful suggestions on the ways in which we, as human beings in the contemporary world, are already defining new experiences of spaces and processes which fill our daily lives, using digital information and networks to redefine and completely re-program our spaces. technology has been going in this direction for years now. There is this wonderful book http://books.google.it/books?id=-Kq2IAAJ by Paul Du Gay in which the story of the design of the Sony Walkman is described from the point of view of cultural studies. Great emphasis is dedicated to the personalization of space, as a fundamental issue in the ways in which technologies change our perception of the world, the ways we learn, relate, work, communicate. This trend has been rising at impressive speed during the last few years, and now we constantly have our offices, libraries, sounds, visions, relationships, work, todo list, geographical points of interest, knowledge sources about the environment all constantly with us, in our pockets or backpacks. from the book of Paul Du Gay: Also, more metaphorically, the very modern practice of being in two places at once, or doing two different things at once: being in a typically crowded, noisy, urban space while also being tuned in, through your headphones, to the very different, imaginary space or soundscape in your head which develops in conjunction with the music you are listening to [...] By situating the Walkman in these different practices we appropriate it into our culture and expand its cultural meaning or value. and, a bit after, This twentieth-century soundscape is composed of actual sounds. But there is also a 'soundscape of the mind' in which music plays a key role. Music, like reading (another private pleasure which can be done in public, on trains or buses), has often offered a sort of inner landscape feelings, emotions and associations to which we can retreat from the bustle and hassle of the 'real world', a sort of 'second world', adjacent to but separate from the everyday one. This can get really radical if re-interpreted in terms of the technologies and networks which we have available right now, allowing to design and enact entire new spaces, spaces for communication and relationship, services, new spaces for commerce, for knowledge, for action. basically, we can stratify multiple autonomous, emergent versions of the world on top of the ordinary one, and act there. In this, among the most interesting things which we find in this set of opportunities, is the fact that we actually don't need a revolution, meaning that we don't need the revolts, and the ideals, and the violence (be it verbal or physical) and, then, after it all, the emergence of new power schemes. we just need to research, design, make it sustainable, and liberate ourselves. We don't need to change the world, we have to change ourselves. do things differently. make something work and then, as soon as you have it, spread and communicate o other people. a TAZ with legs, a 1-meter revolution, and an intense communication phase after it. and this is exactly what we do: invent new spaces and new sustainable practices stratified on top of the existing world. and as soon as they're there, explain to people how we did it, give them the tools and support, and proceed in doing the next step. I was intrigued by your reference to skateboarding
[-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Welcome to the second week of this discussion about open source writing and publishing on empyre. Firstly I would like to thank Tiziana Terranova and Dmytri Kleiner for the dynamic discussion they have established, as well as all those who also posted emails to the thread. I hope they can remain engaged as we move into our second week. To recap the theme: in a globalised and highly mediated context we wish to focus empyre discussion on how writing and publishing are currently evolving in the context of global networks. We wish to engage a debate about open models of writing and publishing. We hope to gain some insight into how changes in notions and practices of authorship, media, form, dissemination, intellectual property and economics affect writing and publishing as well as the formation of the reader/writerships, communities and social engagement that must flow from that activity. Specifically, we wish to look at examples of open publishing, whether they be FLOSS manuals, copyLeft or CopyFarLeft or other publication models, in order to look at new methods for knowledge making and distribution. We also wish to consider how communities of shared-value emerge through such initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others. This week's facilitator is Penny Travlou and our guests are Adam Hyde and Salvatore Ianconesi. Adam Hyde lives in Berlin. In 2007 Adam started FLOSS Manuals, a community for producing free manuals for free software. Through this work he also started Booki (a book production platform) and has been pioneering Book Sprints - a methodology for collaboratively producing books in 5 days or less. Previously, as an artist, he was 1/2 of r a d i o q u a l i a, Simpel and other artistic projects engaging open source and free media. Salvatore Iaconesi teaches cross media design at “La Sapienza” University of Rome, at Rome University of Fine Arts and at ISIA Design in Florence. He is the founder of Art is Open Source and of FakePress Publishing, focusing on the human beings' mutations through ubiquitous technologies and networks. Penny Travlou is a cultural geographer and ethnographer lecturing in the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh. Her research currently focuses on studying emergent network-based creative communities. She is Co-Investigator on the ELMCIP project (www.elmcip.net). best Simon Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk s.bi...@ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hi All, I would like to thank Simon Biggs, Tiziana Terranova, Dmitry Kleiner and all the rest of you who have posted such provocative thoughts on last week’s discussion on open source writing in the network on empyre. I found really interesting and stimulating your thoughts and positions on the topic. Thanks for sharing! I would like to welcome this week’s guests: Adam Hyde and Salvatore Iaconesi. As my current research focuses on emergent network-based creative communities, I would like to focus this week’s discussion on “how communities of shared-value emerge through open source writing and publishing initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others.” It would be also interesting to explore ideas and views on the relationship between use of open source and changing notions of authorship, control and power looking at the role and meaning of collaborative authorship for the participants and how they communicate within and beyond their community through a multi-voiced publication. Best Penny ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hi All, I would like to thank Simon Biggs, Tiziana Terranova, Dmitry Kleiner and all the rest of you who have posted such provocative thoughts on last week’s discussion on open source writing in the network on empyre. I found really interesting and stimulating your thoughts and positions on the topic. Thanks for sharing! I would like to welcome this week’s guests: Adam Hyde and Salvatore Iaconesi. As my current research focuses on emergent network-based creative communities, I would like to focus this week’s discussion on “how communities of shared-value emerge through open source writing and publishing initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others.” It would be also interesting to explore ideas and views on the relationship between use of open source and changing notions of authorship, control and power looking at the role and meaning of collaborative authorship for the participants and how they communicate within and beyond their community through a multi-voiced publication. Best, Penny Travlou ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
The same way they do now, largely unsupported by capital. And what of all the workers who currently are supported by capital? Assuming we are talking about the few cultural producers for whom this support is material, their social capital has been shown to be transferrable to new business models very effectively. Unemployment? Pretty harsh outcome for the vast majority of employed cultural workers if capitalism remains, and thus unemployment is a gateway to destitution. Most cultural workers are under-employed and under-paid. Economic studies of musicians and artists demonstrate this. To gain more of them employment and to improve the pay of those who are employed requires strategies that do not benefit capital via big culture directly. Is that what we want? Fewer people to be paid for cultural production? If we want *more* people paid for cultural production then letting go of the illusions of the culture industry and understanding how artists actually make a living rather than berating free culture for failing to reproduce those illusions is a good first step. - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
I think you are making some huge assumptions about the economics of book production. First - the vast majority of authors under the current dominant model of publishing *dont* make any money. Authors do it for the chance to make money, and they do it for the profile. So there is no monster financial industry that is pouring money into culture workers, they are pouring money into book production and distribution. Secondly, it is reported that ebook sales are going through the roof. Amazon has reported that ebooks are the most popular book format (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060p=irol-newsArticleID=1565581highlight). Ebooks have lower costs for production, infact you can more or less say that producing an EPUB (a very popular and open 'almost standard' for ebooks) costs nothing. Find the right software and its done in minutes. This puts *very* profitable publishing in the path of open publishing. Lastly models for becoming profitable are changing. The biggest shift I see is to put the money at the front of the production cycle instead of at the end. There are platforms like Unbound (http://www.unbound.co.uk/) that are giving this a go, and many successful examples in Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robinsloan/robin-writes-a-book-and-you-get-a-copy The above example is a fiction being funded at $14,000 before it was produced. In a blog post on Creative Commons the author states: I think the most important thing about a book is not actually the book. Instead, it’s the people who have assembled around it. It’s everyone who’s ever read it, and everyone who’s ever re- or misappropriated it. It’s everyone who’s ever pressed it into someone else’s hands [...] it’s that group of people that makes a book viable, both commercially and culturally. And without them — all alone, with only its author behind it — a book is D.O.A. http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/23876 Thats a pretty good argument from the inside of fringe cultural production that it *doesnt need* the publishing industry. He also goes on to explain secondary economies he is trying to generate from the book. Also you may wish to look here at more funded projects: http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/publishing/most-funded?ref=more The above is a list of very well funded books (85,000 USD being the top earner) that demonstrate a model we can all participate in as cultural workers. Kickstarter approaches have their issues, but I think there are many people, orgs, and companies that want books produced and have the $ and motivation to pay for them to be produced. adam On 01/12/2012 06:40 PM, Dmytri Kleiner wrote: Definitely Simon. But as mentioned, this is only a tiny fringe. A small percentage of the total number of cultural workers, who are are currently working for the capitalist cultural industry. Thus, within Capitalism, our social capacity for the production of open works will always be tiny in comparison to our social capacity for closed works. Is this what we mean by There is no disconnect?... that out of the entire body of our cultural productive forces, a small minority is able to exist as open producers on the fringes of capitalism? If this is the limit of our ambition, than Free Cultural is nothing more than a sort of lumpen proletariat in the cultural field. And end even within this meagre ambition of maintaing an open subcultural fringe, there is still a disconnect with capitalism since not only will capital not fund open works, but the logic of capital conflicts with open practice in the space of what they perceive as their rightful consumer market, as we have seen in the persecution of artists such as John Oswald, Negitvland, DJ Dangermouse, and many others, not to mention the war on file sharing, etc. Is Free Culture content to be a beleaguered, insular, fringe? Or is Free Culture meant to be a critique of our curent cultural industries? Does it aim only for it's own meagre existence? Or does it aim for the transformation of cultural production? If the answer is the later, than this ambition can not be reconciled with capitalism. Or is Free Culture simply proposing the elimination of the popular cultural industries and a massive descaling of cultural production and employment? Even this is jousting a windmills. Capitalism will not accept the argument that they should just chill out and abandoned copyright because the culture they make sucks anyway, and that we can make better works with the free time of dilettantes, studends and hobyists. If this our position? Scrap big culture? Personally, like I suspect many on list, I generally prefer more experimental and independent cultural works and wouldn't really mis Hollywood and friends. But make no mistake, understand that in taking such a position we are operating without the solidarity of the vast majority of cultural consumers and against the interests of the vast majority of people
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hi Tiziana Thanks for your thoughtful post, responding to Dmytri's and Adam's provocative texts. Interesting you ask whether the internet will have an impact on the current crisis in the world economy? Perhaps the internet is part of the reason for the crisis? The world is going through a period of fundamental geo-political change driven by globalisation. I wonder if it isn't a crisis in capitalism (that might be wishful thinking) but another stage in its evolution. This means a shift away from state to corporate power. Many countries appear unable to adapt. Some can as they mimic corporate structures (the state as corporation). Singapore is an exemplar here. China also has these characteristics (perhaps a Confucian outlook is appropriate in this new world?). Globalisation itself is driven by changes in global infrastructure. The emergence of the internet as key to both our communications and logistical systems is undoubtedly intrinsic to these changes. Horrible as it might sound, many of the liberties and opportunities we have taken for granted in Western liberal democracies will probably not be sustainable in the new world order. The rights we assume we have, to personal property, a job, a private identity, education, healthcare, pensions, etc, are likely to be wiped away. Most people on this planet can only dream of having these things and as the West collapses this short period of history, when a privileged population living in the colonial and post-colonial bubble that is Europe and its progressively exhausted empires/diasporas, will become a murky memory. In many ways the Western way of life our governments have indulged us in has been unsustainable all along and now we are waking up from our comfortable sleep to realise the nightmare our lives really are. Perhaps this is a dark vision of the world but I see little reason to be optimistic. I agree that something must be done and that open source and alternate models of production need to be part of any effective strategy of resistance - but I fear that this is what it will amount to, heroic but futile resistance to inevitable change. best Simon On 12 Jan 2012, at 20:40, tterranova wrote: I think that this touches on the problem I've been thinking about. The big issue right now is whether networked and personal media with all the range of applications and platforms running on the Internet are really going to have an impact on the outcome of this latest and rather big crisis of capitalism. I think we do need to locate 'open content and software' in this situation. The Internet has been 'massified' over the past ten years or so. Obviously 'massified' for networked personal media cannot mean the same thing as with broadcasting, industrial media, but there are undeniable processes of centralization and homogenization going on. It is also a corporate economy, thoroughly embedded in financial capital and business. All I'm saying is that I think this changes the questions asked to open strategies of production and distribution. I think that we might agree with Dmytri when he says that they have been mostly incorporated or marginalized (with the possible exception of file sharing, torrent etc, whose inventor not by chance is the only Internet innovator of the year 2000s not to have become a billionaire with it). At the same time those researchers I mentioned in my first post are bringing back mixed news from ethnografic and critical research on the corporate web's communication cultures and subjectivity (which is a shorthand of course for ways of feeling, sensing, understanding and living the world and relating to others). Users of corporate networked, personal media are experiencing a kind of communication that is compulsive, addictive but also deeply unsatisfying at many levels. Let's take writing and publishing in the world of the corporate web. Access and content is free but the influence of marketing and business with their need to harvest personal data, their impact on the design of the software which must maximize capabilities targeted at income generation is felt at the level of the interface and also the larger culture I would say. People are publishing content, writing comments on corporate platform but this is producing mostly an endless circulation and clashes of opinions (the 'revolutionary' and 'militant' use of social networks is still the exception not the rule) So free culture cannot be simply about copyright. It should be about the invention or even reinvention of tools which help to produce different ways of communicating through the Internet. The battle against the corporate giants must involve some imagination, the exercise of cultural sensitivity towards technological and economic innovation. Sensing the ways for example in which many users have become involuntary locked in certain ways of writing and publishing and imagining
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
On 11/01/12 14:55, Simon Biggs wrote: One of the first things that strikes me as particular about open source authoring and publishing systems, in relation to the attention economy, is that OS authorship is effectively a model of co-creation, engaging users as producers. If we compare open source (free culture or massively collaborative projects) with proprietary culture is this *statistically* true? I mean will there be more authors in free culture than in proprietary culture all else being equal? It is potentially true, and I think that is enough, but I am curious about the numbers. This could seem to feed directly into the mechanisms that underpin the attention economy model, where active users (prosumers, co-creators, whatever you want to call them) are a requirement of the system. Capital loves volunteers. Totalising schemes hate activity that they have to work to recuperate. Capital is a totalising scheme that loves free research. Oh, I don't know. But I'm not going to cut off my nose to spite capital's face. At the very least this implies that OS authorship is not unproblematic for those who might fear their contribution to something is being made for somebody else's profit. The Anarchists and socialists have not historically picketed copy shops despite the profits that these made from the production of radical literature and flyers. question then is how, in practical terms, you deal with that situation? We deal with this by keeping moving. And by making it only part of a more general project. I know there are licensing and other legal mechanisms for dealing with this - but the law has its limits. I think it's vital to keep the reformist free speech element of Open Source licences separate from the transformative recognition that new organizational and economic forms are urgent. Trying to instrumentalize the former to the latter will not work for reasons that the margins of this book are too narrow to contain. The law has its limits but copyleft ironises the law. While the rule of law applies (applied?), this is useful. - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hi all I don't post here at all (I mostly lurk), so I apologise for my silence and hope that the community finds this valuable. In one of the specialisations offered at the campus I coordinate, namely games, there is a serious set of questions beginning to develop around precisely the co-creation issues that Simon notes. For academics like myself, this has required an abandonment of support for auteur models that have tend to permeate the professional practice. These questions turn on how game designers might account for the creative input of committed player communities in games that involve constructive player activity. I'd include a range of practices, from community-based real time storytelling, as in the complex social narratives generated within EVE Online, to pragmatic level design contributions in Little Big Planet's editing community, to collaborative development practices such as Legend of Robot, where developers worked with a player forum in a participatory design process. Considering these issues, I am finding that game design should be looking through interaction design lenses now, as a means for cracking the problem apart - we need to become more ethnographic, more anthropological, more collaborative, more iterative in our design practices. This has run headlong into the structural issues that Simon notes - traditional developers and publishers have serious problems integrating these approaches into a business model predicated on secrecy, distrust of players and the absolute control of intellectual property rights. I can also offer what I suspect might be a lead towards finding solutions. A student of mine investigated von Hippel's open source innovation frameworks last year as an undergrad lit review project. There may be some benefit in von Hippel's work; while for me it's too early to say, for those readers who have looked at his work (and similar) as well as game design practices there may be strong and informative connections between game community development practices and those social structures found in open source software development. Cheers, Adam -- Adam Parker Campus Academic Coordinator Qantm Melbourne Qantm College Melbourne Campus 235 Normanby Rd South Melbourne VIC 3205 Australia +61 (0) 3 8632 3400 | Phone +61 (0) 3 8632 3401 | Fax www.sae.edu | Web www.qantm.com.au | Web www.saeshortcourses.com | Web SAE National Provider Code: 0273. SAE CRICOS Provider Codes: NSW 00312F. SAE Institute Pty Ltd, ABN: 21 093 057 973 This email (including all attachments) is confidential and may be subject to legal privilege and/or copyright. The information contained within this email (including all attachments) should only be viewed if you are the intended recipient. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this email from your system along with any copies that have been made. Any unauthorised use, which includes saving, printing, copying, disseminating or forwarding is prohibited and may result in breach of confidentiality, privilege or copyright. If you wish to unsubscribe or choose not to receive further commercial electronic messages from SAE Institute or any grouped/associated entities please send an email this address with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hey Tiziana, Simon and the others. First of all thanks for having me here. This conversation touches of a few of the central premises of my work, I'll avoid discussing topics like the production of subjectivity, etc, as I'm out of my depth on the more humanistic/philosophical dimensions of the discussion, and focus on my main area of interest, the political economy of networks and information, especially from the point of view of an artist and software developer. In trying to keep things brief, I'll just make some initial comments on two points, the first is my understanding of what open could mean, and t he second, the economic differences between the production of cultural works and te production of software, such as an OS. I'll start with the later. The well known success of Free Software has created a kind of delusion among cultural producers, which has lead to the phenomena often referred to as Free Culture. Yet, software and culture, for the most part, are at fundamentally different end of the productive process and thus share little in common. Software is capital, a producer's good or an input to production, Capitalists require software, among other forms of capital, in order to produce consumer's goods, it is by controlling the circulation of consumer's goods that Capitalists make a profit. The Capitalist system can not exist if it can not capture profits on consumer's goods. However, except for he small number of companies who product's are consumer goods, capital goods are a cost to most producers, thus profit on capital goods is not a required component of a capitalist economy. Under Capitalism, only Capital can be free. Companies for whom software is a necessary capital input are happy to support free software, because doing so is most often more beneficial to them then either paying for proprietary software, or developing their own systems from scratch. They make their profit from the goods and services which they produce, not from the software they employ in their production. Cultural Works, especially popular ones, such as book, movies, music, etc, are not usually producer's goods. In a capitalism economy these are generally Consumer's goods, and thus the publishers of such works must capture profit on their circulation. Thus capital will not finance free culture in the same way it has financed free software. Historically, Free Culture has always been a radical fringe, usually anti-capitalism and well as anti-copyright, and the idea that Free Culture could follow in the footsteps of Free Software and create a massive commons of cultural works is a delusion. Unless, that is, such a movement succeeds in transcending Capitalism first. So what is Open Publishing? This question intests me in two ways, but seeing as my first statement has already made me into a liar for saying I was going to keep this short, I'll just pose them and let them serve as a point of departure for respsones. In the first way, I understand open publishing as the unbundling and disintermediation of the publishing process, the elimination of a system of gatekeepers guarding the cultural cannon. The internet has created platforms that allow circumvention of the gatekeepers, and has thus widened the breath of the discussion. Yet, the early Internet was an anomaly, as Capital is no more interested in financing an free network (at least for consumers) than it in financing free culture, so the distributed free for all Internet is now being centralized under the control of private social platforms, who may allow you to publish there, but ultimately are reintermediating the net, your privilege of using the platform is maintained so long as the platforms owners feel your usage is of benefit to them. The as disintermediation is being reveresed, can this sort of publishing be called open anymore, and of finance capital is not available for truly open platforms what source of funds are there for supporting alternatives? Second, culture work is a form of production, and as such, it must, at minimum, provide the subsistence of their culture workers. As capital will not finance open works, how are the creators of such works to sustain themselves? We'll leave it at that for now. Best, On 11.01.2012 15:55, Simon Biggs wrote: One of the first things that strikes me as particular about open source authoring and publishing systems, in relation to the attention economy, is that OS authorship is effectively a model of co-creation, engaging users as producers. This could seem to feed directly into the mechanisms that underpin the attention economy model, where active users (prosumers, co-creators, whatever you want to call them) are a requirement of the system. At the very least this implies that OS authorship is not unproblematic for those who might fear their contribution to something is being made for somebody else's profit. The question then is how, in
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hello again, Adam was saying: It seems to me that there are some wonderful opportunities to transform the texture of books even within a linear container because of open production models enabled by the web. Yet there are many, academics being near the top of the list, that shoot down the idea of open book production. i find it really interesting to approach this from the point of view of investigating onto the texture of books, where this term might benefit from a series of different definitions/interpretations. A wide array of examples are available in history about collaborative writing, emergent narratives, remixing, mashing-up, multi-authorship etc. What really changes is the feeling of it, the process, the life-cycle, the life of it, as the process of writing/discussing/communicating/disseminating/reading/writing becomes a new process, more complex and more simple at the same time, transforming the book (let's still call it that way) into a (realtime, continuous) live space. Salvatore http://www.artisopensource.net http://www.fakepress.it ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
On 12/01/12 15:04, Dmytri Kleiner wrote: I'll start with the later. The well known success of Free Software has created a kind of delusion among cultural producers, which has lead to the phenomena often referred to as Free Culture. Yet, software and culture, for the most part, are at fundamentally different end of the productive process and thus share little in common. I think I understand and to quite some extent agree - probably because I am familiar with Dmytri's work - but this distinction is a bit confusing to me. I understand software as part of culture. I wonder if the term art is more appropriate here? But then again, art is very much a commodity, like software. You can find people who write code as art and you can find people who write code as commodity - as you can find people who do art for, well art's sake, and you can find people who do art to make cash, lots of cash, and those buying it are rich people with capital at hand, because owning it is cultural capital - nice to show off - and because it is a way of investing. The art business is basically a Ponzi scheme, isn't it? m -- http://commoning.wordpress.com ...I thought we were an autonomous collective... ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hello everyone, Dmytri was saying: Is Free Culture content to be a beleaguered, insular, fringe? Or is Free Culture meant to be a critique of our curent cultural industries? Does it aim only for it's own meagre existence? Or does it aim for the transformation of cultural production? If the answer is the later, than this ambition can not be reconciled with capitalism. Free Culture/Capitalism is a conversation. Differences make transformation: you change the situation and you change yourself, as well; few minutes after the transformation the conversation goes on, along slightly (or drastically, in some cases) different lines. Yet the conversation remains: both (or multiple) parties changed, new differences emerge, conversation goes on. revolution never existed. obviously, visions (is it maybe what you call ambitions?) are needed, to choose directions. But there are many more layers below this level of the discussion, having to do with the lifestyle of people, with the ways in which they perceive their world and their daily routines, what they are aware of, what they are not aware of and what they don't care about, for whatever reason it is. Speaking about publishing, and openness, i see it as one of the most powerful opportunities to promote visions, in performative ways. Publications can take many different forms, arriving at ubiquity, creating the possibility for different forms of awareness, and for the creation of the opportunities to become more informed, active, interconnected presences on the planet and in societies. This possibly fosters a more active conversation and, thus, a stronger process for transformation. Thence, my previous question about the definition of successful projects. How do you measure it? Is it possible? Is it interesting? How do you define the success of an open publishing project/process, for example? By number of participants? By the structure of its process? (how do you measure/qualify it?) By number of readers? (?!?!?) By the times it is has been invited to festivals and conferences? (who? the project? one of its authors? participants? theorists? users? ) By the number of people who can make a living out of it? (what does it mean? how?) By the number of people who changed their minds about something? (how do you measure it?) By what? these are smaller questions. yet they describe the scenario in possibly more usable forms, letting people understand what/how/where/when/why can be changed, and to what result. possibly the most revolutionary action that you perform today is to create something that works, answer these (or other like these) questions, share knowledge and answers with other people and move onto something else. and this is an open publishing process. all the best! Salvatore http://www.artisopensource.net http://www.fakepress.it ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
On 12/01/12 16:02, Simon Biggs wrote: I'm an academic and an artist and totally champion the open book. Knowledge is made best when it is made shared. Knowledge, as language, is always shared, always public and can never be private, but it can be conjured up in a private setting by an individual. To my mind it is perfectly fine to conjure up knowledge on your own - for some particular project and purpose. Rather the problem I see in this context is when such a knowledge-conjuring individual is not actually embedded in a collectivity (which wage slavery is not) to which s/he can return and from and for which the conjuring unfolds. Academics pretend to be in networks and clusters and so on, but pretend is the key word here: primarily, academics dabble in production to produce their own careers. Maybe things used to be different, I don't know, but as universities have become sausage factories they mainly attract, retain and produce competitive individuals. In such an environment the open and collaborative memes appear to become substitutes, - displacements even, hiding the nature of the underlying business. I'm not sure what you mean by texture Adam, but the open source ethic certainly gives life a different texture than a capitalist model. The open source ethic *is* a capitalist model. It was extracted from the Free Software model for the purpose of presenting to capitalists an engineering methodology that would appeal and that would take advantage of the networking potential of the interweb. It might give a different texture - a virtual one at that - but this is precisely where Tiziana's point of the alienated, disconnected, virtual/disembodied (if I understood it right) subject becomes crucial. It is here tempting to ask: Once we are all connected to everyone else through this environmentally destructive (mining, electricity etc.) thing called the net, then what will we realise? Probably that it is time to log off and knock on our neighbour's door and get a community assembly together. It might well be that we need to go that far to get to that - but that just goes to show that we have come nowhere: destroying the (global) village in order to save it is still the order of the day. -m -- http://commoning.wordpress.com ...I thought we were an autonomous collective... ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
On 12.01.2012 21:58, Rob Myers wrote: On 12/01/12 15:04, Dmytri Kleiner wrote: Second, culture work is a form of production, and as such, it must, at minimum, provide the subsistence of their culture workers. As capital will not finance open works, how are the creators of such works to sustain themselves? The same way they do now, largely unsupported by capital. And what of all the workers who currently are supported by capital? Unemployment? Pretty harsh outcome for the vast majority of employed cultural workers if capitalism remains, and thus unemployment is a gateway to destitution. Is that what we want? Fewer people to be paid for cultural production? So there is no reason why free culture should be mostly funded by the culture industry. With large corporate clients, I've had more luck with the non-cultural than the cultural ones in getting free culture projects completed. Here comes that scale issue again. Sure some us can do as say, most workers can't. The fact remains that capital is for the most part a consumer of software, and a producer of capital. Thus capital will not support free culture on the same scale it supports free software. Depending on the non-cultural capitalist sector to become the primary financer of culture implies a massive descaling. This is very different from software, where the non-software-licence-selling sector has always been the largest user of software and the largest employer of software developers. There are plenty of exceptions, but in most cases, software is an input to capital, while culture is an output. The price of inputs reduces the profits of Capital, while control of the output generates the profits. Best, -- Dmytri Kleiner http://www.trick.ca ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
On 13.01.2012 14:48, adam wrote: Regardless, the opportunity is to take this moment and these opportunities and make it work for us on scale. 2012 more than any other year opens up publishing and if we miss this window we can only blame ourselves. If we wait for the moment capitalism is abolished then publishing will stay as it is for a very long time and then we also only have ourselves to blame. I highly doubt that penguin classics is particular profitable. The series is simply just another way for a existing large publisher to maximize it's utilizing of productive and distributive capacity. Penguins productive and distributive capacities which where not built on the earnings of this series. I can guarantee that if you approached a venture capitalist and proposed they fund the creation of such productive capacity for the purpose of selling trade paperback versions of public domain works it would be a short meeting. You can only do this once you already have such capacity. And I'm not proposing we wait for the moment when capitalism is abolished, rather that we actively work towards abolishing it by creating the social forms that could replace it. Which is what you are looking to do, wether you address your concerns specially at Capitalism or not, what you seek presumes it's eventual abolition. -- Dmytri Kleiner http://www.trick.ca ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
On 13.01.2012 14:47, Dmytri Kleiner wrote: The fact remains that capital is for the most part a consumer of software, and a producer of capital. This is meant to say producer of culture. That's it for me today. Best, -- Dmytri Kleiner http://www.trick.ca ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hello everyone Adam was saying: Considering these issues, I am finding that game design should be looking through interaction design lenses now, as a means for cracking the problem apart - we need to become more ethnographic, more anthropological, more collaborative, more iterative in our design practices. This has run headlong into the structural issues that Simon notes - traditional developers and publishers have serious problems integrating these approaches into a business model predicated on secrecy, distrust of players and the absolute control of intellectual property rights. this is one focal point, as the well-being of people *now* is tightly connected to finding ways for sustainability and, in that, largely economic sustainability. One of the ways is to use alternative definitions for value, in which several other parameters go hand-in-hand with money, referring to culture, emotions, environment and general well-being, according to its possible definitions (btw: there is a general raise in interest in the definition of well-being, even at the level of organizations such as the EU or of massive corporations such as General Electric) Nancy Baym, Kate Crawford, and Mary L. Gray have just been hired by Microsoft Research labs, who are investing in postdocs, PhD internships, and visitors with the hope of supporting social scientists who are asking critical socio-technical questions about the rise of new technologies. change is everywhere, and it is pushed forward by the continuous conversation (however conflictual) between all parties involved. ciao! Salvatore http://www.artisopensource.net http://www.fakepress.it ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
hi, A happy new year to all :) On 01/11/2012 10:44 AM, tterranova wrote: I'm not saying that I agree with all these different perspectives, but my questions to the list would be: in which ways do open practices of publishing, writing and reading interact with the general attention economy of networked media, where attention is defined as a 'scarce commodity'? How can they be used to counteract some of the compulsive/destructive dynamics of Internet readership? What do your experiences tell us of the difference between social interaction on corporate media platforms and social interaction on alternative, open platforms? What is it that in your opinion ultimately defines the quality and affective texture of communication on succesful open platforms? What defines the quality and affective texture of books on open and closed platforms? - is there anyone that can comment on the differences between books produced by open and closed platforms? It seems to me that there are some wonderful opportunities to transform the texture of books even within a linear container because of open production models enabled by the web. Yet there are many, academics being near the top of the list, that shoot down the idea of open book production. adam looking forward to the rest of the discussion tiziana terranova Il 09/01/12 12.07, Simon Biggs ha scritto: Welcome to all empyre subscribers and, especially, this months moderators and discussants, Penny Travlou, Smita Kheria, Tiziana Terranova, Dmytri Kleiner, Adam Hyde, Salvatore Iaconesi, Joss Hands and Marc Garrett. We have the collective responsibility of welcoming in 2012, during the year's first monthly theme. For much of the world 2011 was, at best, a challenging year, and 2012 looks like more of the same. This appears to be a period of socio-economic change as the shifting tectonic plates of geo-political power grind against one another. I've never been keen on futurology or fortune-telling but am confident 2012 will be another year of turbulent events that will have us end up in a different place to where we started. In this globalised and highly mediated context, during the month of January, we wish to focus empyre discussion on how writing and publishing are currently evolving in the context of global networks. We wish to engage a debate about open models of writing and publishing. We hope to gain some insight into how changes in notions and practices of authorship, media, form, dissemination, intellectual property and economics affect writing and publishing as well as the formation of the reader/writerships, communities and social engagement that must flow from that activity. Specifically, we wish to look at examples of open publishing, whether they be FLOSS manuals, copyLeft or CopyFarLeft or other publication models, in order to look at new methods for knowledge making and distribution. We also wish to consider how communities of shared-value emerge through such initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others. As usual, the month (the next three weeks) will be structured into weekly bite sized chunks, each led by a moderator and involving two discussants. Participants can choose to post to the list at any time but the discussants for each week will have the opportunity to focus the debate for that period. We hope that as many empyre subscribers as possible will feel engaged and contribute to the discussion. Our guests are, in the order of the weeks they will participate: Tiziana Terranova lectures and researches cultural studies and new media at the Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L'Orientale'. She is the author of Network Culture (Pluto Press, 2004) and has recently co-edited, with Couze Venn, a special issue of Theory, Culture and Society on Michel Foucault's recently published courses. She is currently working on a book about neoliberalism and digital social media. Dmytri Kleiner describes himself as a Venture Communist. He creates miscommunication technologies, including deadSwap, Thimbl and R15N and is the author of the Telekommunist Manifesto. He lives in Berlin and his url is http://dmytri.info Simon Biggs is an artist, writer and curator. His work focuses on interactive systems, new media and digital poetics (http://www.littlepig.org.uk). He is involved in a number of research projects, including the EU funded project Developing a Network-Based Creative Community: Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (http://www.elmcip.net). He is Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts, directing the MSc by Research in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices, at the University of Edinburgh. Adam Hyde lives in Berlin. In 2007 Adam started FLOSS Manuals, a community for producing free manuals for free software. Through this work he also started Booki (a book production platform) and has been pioneering Book Sprints - a methodology for collaboratively producing books in
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Hey Tiziana, Simon and the others. First of all thanks for having me here. This conversation touches of a few of the central premises of my work, I'll avoid discussing topics like the production of subjectivity, etc, as I'm out of my depth on the more humanistic/philosophical dimensions of the discussion, and focus on my main area of interest, the political economy of networks and information, especially from the point of view of an artist and software developer. In trying to keep things brief, I'll just make some initial comments on two points, the first is my understanding of what open could mean, and t he second, the economic differences between the production of cultural works and te production of software, such as an OS. I'll start with the later. The well known success of Free Software has created a kind of delusion among cultural producers, which has lead to the phenomena often referred to as Free Culture. Yet, software and culture, for the most part, are at fundamentally different end of the productive process and thus share little in common. Software is capital, a producer's good or an input to production, Capitalists require software, among other forms of capital, in order to produce consumer's goods, it is by controlling the circulation of consumer's goods that Capitalists make a profit. The Capitalist system can not exist if it can not capture profits on consumer's goods. However, except for he small number of companies who product's are consumer goods, capital goods are a cost to most producers, thus profit on capital goods is not a required component of a capitalist economy. Under Capitalism, only Capital can be free. Companies for whom software is a necessary capital input are happy to support free software, because doing so is most often more beneficial to them then either paying for proprietary software, or developing their own systems from scratch. They make their profit from the goods and services which they produce, not from the software they employ in their production. Cultural Works, especially popular ones, such as book, movies, music, etc, are not usually producer's goods. In a capitalism economy these are generally Consumer's goods, and thus the publishers of such works must capture profit on their circulation. Thus capital will not finance free culture in the same way it has financed free software. Historically, Free Culture has always been a radical fringe, usually anti-capitalism and well as anti-copyright, and the idea that Free Culture could follow in the footsteps of Free Software and create a massive commons of cultural works is a delusion. Unless, that is, such a movement succeeds in transcending Capitalism first. So what is Open Publishing? This question intests me in two ways, but seeing as my first statement has already made me into a liar for saying I was going to keep this short, I'll just pose them and let them serve as a point of departure for respsones. In the first way, I understand open publishing as the unbundling and disintermediation of the publishing process, the elimination of a system of gatekeepers guarding the cultural cannon. The internet has created platforms that allow circumvention of the gatekeepers, and has thus widened the breath of the discussion. Yet, the early Internet was an anomaly, as Capital is no more interested in financing an free network (at least for consumers) than it in financing free culture, so the distributed free for all Internet is now being centralized under the control of private social platforms, who may allow you to publish there, but ultimately are reintermediating the net, your privilege of using the platform is maintained so long as the platforms owners feel your usage is of benefit to them. The as disintermediation is being reveresed, can this sort of publishing be called open anymore, and of finance capital is not available for truly open platforms what source of funds are there for supporting alternatives? Second, culture work is a form of production, and as such, it must, at minimum, provide the subsistence of their culture workers. As capital will not finance open works, how are the creators of such works to sustain themselves? We'll leave it at that for now. Best, On 11.01.2012 15:55, Simon Biggs wrote: One of the first things that strikes me as particular about open source authoring and publishing systems, in relation to the attention economy, is that OS authorship is effectively a model of co-creation, engaging users as producers. This could seem to feed directly into the mechanisms that underpin the attention economy model, where active users (prosumers, co-creators, whatever you want to call them) are a requirement of the system. At the very least this implies that OS authorship is not unproblematic for those who might fear their contribution to something is being made for somebody else's profit. The question then is how, in
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
I'm an academic and an artist and totally champion the open book. Knowledge is made best when it is made shared. I'm not sure what you mean by texture Adam, but the open source ethic certainly gives life a different texture than a capitalist model. best Simon On 12 Jan 2012, at 13:42, adam wrote: hi, A happy new year to all :) On 01/11/2012 10:44 AM, tterranova wrote: I'm not saying that I agree with all these different perspectives, but my questions to the list would be: in which ways do open practices of publishing, writing and reading interact with the general attention economy of networked media, where attention is defined as a 'scarce commodity'? How can they be used to counteract some of the compulsive/destructive dynamics of Internet readership? What do your experiences tell us of the difference between social interaction on corporate media platforms and social interaction on alternative, open platforms? What is it that in your opinion ultimately defines the quality and affective texture of communication on succesful open platforms? What defines the quality and affective texture of books on open and closed platforms? - is there anyone that can comment on the differences between books produced by open and closed platforms? It seems to me that there are some wonderful opportunities to transform the texture of books even within a linear container because of open production models enabled by the web. Yet there are many, academics being near the top of the list, that shoot down the idea of open book production. adam looking forward to the rest of the discussion tiziana terranova Il 09/01/12 12.07, Simon Biggs ha scritto: Welcome to all empyre subscribers and, especially, this months moderators and discussants, Penny Travlou, Smita Kheria, Tiziana Terranova, Dmytri Kleiner, Adam Hyde, Salvatore Iaconesi, Joss Hands and Marc Garrett. We have the collective responsibility of welcoming in 2012, during the year's first monthly theme. For much of the world 2011 was, at best, a challenging year, and 2012 looks like more of the same. This appears to be a period of socio-economic change as the shifting tectonic plates of geo-political power grind against one another. I've never been keen on futurology or fortune-telling but am confident 2012 will be another year of turbulent events that will have us end up in a different place to where we started. In this globalised and highly mediated context, during the month of January, we wish to focus empyre discussion on how writing and publishing are currently evolving in the context of global networks. We wish to engage a debate about open models of writing and publishing. We hope to gain some insight into how changes in notions and practices of authorship, media, form, dissemination, intellectual property and economics affect writing and publishing as well as the formation of the reader/writerships, communities and social engagement that must flow from that activity. Specifically, we wish to look at examples of open publishing, whether they be FLOSS manuals, copyLeft or CopyFarLeft or other publication models, in order to look at new methods for knowledge making and distribution. We also wish to consider how communities of shared-value emerge through such initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others. As usual, the month (the next three weeks) will be structured into weekly bite sized chunks, each led by a moderator and involving two discussants. Participants can choose to post to the list at any time but the discussants for each week will have the opportunity to focus the debate for that period. We hope that as many empyre subscribers as possible will feel engaged and contribute to the discussion. Our guests are, in the order of the weeks they will participate: Tiziana Terranova lectures and researches cultural studies and new media at the Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L'Orientale'. She is the author of Network Culture (Pluto Press, 2004) and has recently co-edited, with Couze Venn, a special issue of Theory, Culture and Society on Michel Foucault's recently published courses. She is currently working on a book about neoliberalism and digital social media. Dmytri Kleiner describes himself as a Venture Communist. He creates miscommunication technologies, including deadSwap, Thimbl and R15N and is the author of the Telekommunist Manifesto. He lives in Berlin and his url is http://dmytri.info Simon Biggs is an artist, writer and curator. His work focuses on interactive systems, new media and digital poetics (http://www.littlepig.org.uk). He is involved in a number of research projects, including the EU funded project Developing a Network-Based Creative Community: Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (http://www.elmcip.net). He is Professor of
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Perhaps we are confusing authorship and publishing (Dmytri's distinction between production and consumer good could also be understood as a similar distinction). OS software is as much about writing software as distributing it, with people having the right to re-write, re-purpose or add to code. OS publishing could be seen in this model as a Wiki-like conflation of writing and distributing the artefact. Alternatively, we can consider the artefact as something authored conventionally but released under an open license. But these are not the same thing. Which model are we discussing - or are we discussing both (my preferred option)? best Simon On 12 Jan 2012, at 16:26, adam wrote: On 01/12/2012 05:02 PM, Simon Biggs wrote: I'm an academic and an artist and totally champion the open book. Knowledge is made best when it is made shared. There is a conflation often between open books as a product and open production as a process. It seems to be that Open in the field of publishing usually refers to distribution - the book has an open license that enables it to be distributed. More often than not however the books are not available to be altered and changed (ie the digital source is either PDF or not made available at all). In software circles the differences in these kinds of freedoms has been spelled out: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html 1. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). 2. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. 3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). 4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. Open publishing largely doesnt seem to abide by these kinds of freedoms. Especially with regard to making the source available for change which is stated as a precondition for two of the above ie. Access to the source code is a precondition. I have the feeling that Open mostly means free to distribute in the open publishing world. It does not mean or imply the right to have access to the editable sources, nor does it mean the right to fork. It seems to me the reluctance to embrace these freedoms is closely related to the fear of losing control of a book and the fear of 'poor quality' creeping in. Hence open production seems pretty untenable for the majority of the academic world as far as I can see. I'm not sure what you mean by texture Adam, but the open source ethic certainly gives life a different texture than a capitalist model. Well I think the open source ethic is well aligned with capitalism. There is no disconnect there. Apache, Mozilla, Ubuntu, Blender...all seem to function pretty well within capitalism. The question for open source or open publishing is not it vs capitalism but more how open collaboration can effect the texture of production. Do books read differently and 'become different' in open models against the dominant paradigm which has been closed single authorship within proprietary publishing. adam best Simon On 12 Jan 2012, at 13:42, adam wrote: hi, A happy new year to all :) On 01/11/2012 10:44 AM, tterranova wrote: I'm not saying that I agree with all these different perspectives, but my questions to the list would be: in which ways do open practices of publishing, writing and reading interact with the general attention economy of networked media, where attention is defined as a 'scarce commodity'? How can they be used to counteract some of the compulsive/destructive dynamics of Internet readership? What do your experiences tell us of the difference between social interaction on corporate media platforms and social interaction on alternative, open platforms? What is it that in your opinion ultimately defines the quality and affective texture of communication on succesful open platforms? What defines the quality and affective texture of books on open and closed platforms? - is there anyone that can comment on the differences between books produced by open and closed platforms? It seems to me that there are some wonderful opportunities to transform the texture of books even within a linear container because of open production models enabled by the web. Yet there are many, academics being near the top of the list, that shoot down the idea of open book production. adam looking forward to the rest of the discussion tiziana terranova Il 09/01/12 12.07, Simon Biggs ha scritto: Welcome to all empyre subscribers and, especially, this months moderators and discussants, Penny Travlou, Smita Kheria, Tiziana Terranova, Dmytri
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
On 12.01.2012 17:26, adam wrote: Well I think the open source ethic is well aligned with capitalism. There is no disconnect there. Yet, software has different economics than cultural works. Open Source developers are paid by organisations that employ such software in production, and thus the availability of open source packages reduces their production costs, allowing them to retain more earnings. The same situation occurs only infrequently when it comes to books, there may be situations where it does, i.e. reference books or documentation. I can see these being supported by organisations that are consumers of such works, but not much else. So, if capital will not pay creators of open works. Who will? No doubt, some fringe can be maintained by cultural grants and simular social funds, and a wider fringe can maintain itself by working for free and earning subsistence elsewhere (or simply being rich to begin with), yet this says nothing of the great majority of books, read by millions, produced today by the capitalist industry, which offers no way to make these open books. Best, -- Dmytri Kleiner ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Definitely Simon. But as mentioned, this is only a tiny fringe. A small percentage of the total number of cultural workers, who are are currently working for the capitalist cultural industry. Thus, within Capitalism, our social capacity for the production of open works will always be tiny in comparison to our social capacity for closed works. Is this what we mean by There is no disconnect?... that out of the entire body of our cultural productive forces, a small minority is able to exist as open producers on the fringes of capitalism? If this is the limit of our ambition, than Free Cultural is nothing more than a sort of lumpen proletariat in the cultural field. And end even within this meagre ambition of maintaing an open subcultural fringe, there is still a disconnect with capitalism since not only will capital not fund open works, but the logic of capital conflicts with open practice in the space of what they perceive as their rightful consumer market, as we have seen in the persecution of artists such as John Oswald, Negitvland, DJ Dangermouse, and many others, not to mention the war on file sharing, etc. Is Free Culture content to be a beleaguered, insular, fringe? Or is Free Culture meant to be a critique of our curent cultural industries? Does it aim only for it's own meagre existence? Or does it aim for the transformation of cultural production? If the answer is the later, than this ambition can not be reconciled with capitalism. Or is Free Culture simply proposing the elimination of the popular cultural industries and a massive descaling of cultural production and employment? Even this is jousting a windmills. Capitalism will not accept the argument that they should just chill out and abandoned copyright because the culture they make sucks anyway, and that we can make better works with the free time of dilettantes, studends and hobyists. If this our position? Scrap big culture? Personally, like I suspect many on list, I generally prefer more experimental and independent cultural works and wouldn't really mis Hollywood and friends. But make no mistake, understand that in taking such a position we are operating without the solidarity of the vast majority of cultural consumers and against the interests of the vast majority of people employed in the cultural industries. Which means such a position has no social power, no political power and no relevancy what so ever. Best, On 12.01.2012 18:12, Simon Biggs wrote: This question of who pays for the writers to write isn't very different as to who pays for artists. Many net artists receive no payment for their work but they put their work in the public realm for nothing anyway. Some artists in other media also work this way. Many such artists do not look to their work to generate income directly but indirectly - eg: having work in the public realm raises their profile and they get museum shows and fees for that. Then they get tenured academic positions in art schools because of their shows, etc... This economic model has something in common with the software developer model you mentioned Dmytri. best Simon On 12 Jan 2012, at 16:56, Dmytri Kleiner wrote: On 12.01.2012 17:26, adam wrote: Well I think the open source ethic is well aligned with capitalism. There is no disconnect there. Yet, software has different economics than cultural works. Open Source developers are paid by organisations that employ such software in production, and thus the availability of open source packages reduces their production costs, allowing them to retain more earnings. The same situation occurs only infrequently when it comes to books, there may be situations where it does, i.e. reference books or documentation. I can see these being supported by organisations that are consumers of such works, but not much else. So, if capital will not pay creators of open works. Who will? No doubt, some fringe can be maintained by cultural grants and simular social funds, and a wider fringe can maintain itself by working for free and earning subsistence elsewhere (or simply being rich to begin with), yet this says nothing of the great majority of books, read by millions, produced today by the capitalist industry, which offers no way to make these open books. Best, -- Dmytri Kleiner ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk s.bi...@ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre -- Dmytri Kleiner http://www.trick.ca ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Dear all first of all I think best wishes for 2012 are in order for everybody on the list. Secondly I would like to see whether I can start the discussion by referring to some issues which I am currently thinking about and which might be relevant to a debate on open models of publishing and writings and the formation of communities around such efforts. I have been struck that is by a theme that is emerging in analyses of the Internet, and social networks in particular, which are focused on the question of subjectivity, such as writings by Jodi Dean, Sherry Turkle, Bernard Stiegler, Franco Berardi, Steven Shaviro etc. All these authors, in different way, seem to underline the fact that networked digital media are not simply technologies of communication, but technologies involved in the production of subjectivity. Jodi Dean in particular seem to be starting from her experience of writing a blog to articulate a damning critique of the whole mechanism of writing/reading/commenting text on the Internet, which she sees as relying on the mobilization of compulsive drives (little bits of pleasure inherent in the accumulation of small bits of 'new' information) which ultimately leads to recuperation under the logic of communicative capitalism. Sherry Turkle's latest book is also a quite damning ethnography of what social and personal media are doing to a new generation which is both tethered to their machines and scared of intimacy. Franco Berardi has been warning us for over a decade about the process of 'cognitive proletarianization' inherent in the speed of new media. I'm not saying that I agree with all these different perspectives, but my questions to the list would be: in which ways do open practices of publishing, writing and reading interact with the general attention economy of networked media, where attention is defined as a 'scarce commodity'? How can they be used to counteract some of the compulsive/destructive dynamics of Internet readership? What do your experiences tell us of the difference between social interaction on corporate media platforms and social interaction on alternative, open platforms? What is it that in your opinion ultimately defines the quality and affective texture of communication on succesful open platforms? looking forward to the rest of the discussion tiziana terranova Il 09/01/12 12.07, Simon Biggs ha scritto: Welcome to all empyre subscribers and, especially, this months moderators and discussants, Penny Travlou, Smita Kheria, Tiziana Terranova, Dmytri Kleiner, Adam Hyde, Salvatore Iaconesi, Joss Hands and Marc Garrett. We have the collective responsibility of welcoming in 2012, during the year's first monthly theme. For much of the world 2011 was, at best, a challenging year, and 2012 looks like more of the same. This appears to be a period of socio-economic change as the shifting tectonic plates of geo-political power grind against one another. I've never been keen on futurology or fortune-telling but am confident 2012 will be another year of turbulent events that will have us end up in a different place to where we started. In this globalised and highly mediated context, during the month of January, we wish to focus empyre discussion on how writing and publishing are currently evolving in the context of global networks. We wish to engage a debate about open models of writing and publishing. We hope to gain some insight into how changes in notions and practices of authorship, media, form, dissemination, intellectual property and economics affect writing and publishing as well as the formation of the reader/writerships, communities and social engagement that must flow from that activity. Specifically, we wish to look at examples of open publishing, whether they be FLOSS manuals, copyLeft or CopyFarLeft or other publication models, in order to look at new methods for knowledge making and distribution. We also wish to consider how communities of shared-value emerge through such initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others. As usual, the month (the next three weeks) will be structured into weekly bite sized chunks, each led by a moderator and involving two discussants. Participants can choose to post to the list at any time but the discussants for each week will have the opportunity to focus the debate for that period. We hope that as many empyre subscribers as possible will feel engaged and contribute to the discussion. Our guests are, in the order of the weeks they will participate: Tiziana Terranova lectures and researches cultural studies and new media at the Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L'Orientale'. She is the author of Network Culture (Pluto Press, 2004) and has recently co-edited, with Couze Venn, a special issue of Theory, Culture and Society on Michel Foucault's recently published courses. She is currently working on a book about
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
One of the first things that strikes me as particular about open source authoring and publishing systems, in relation to the attention economy, is that OS authorship is effectively a model of co-creation, engaging users as producers. This could seem to feed directly into the mechanisms that underpin the attention economy model, where active users (prosumers, co-creators, whatever you want to call them) are a requirement of the system. At the very least this implies that OS authorship is not unproblematic for those who might fear their contribution to something is being made for somebody else's profit. The question then is how, in practical terms, you deal with that situation? I know there are licensing and other legal mechanisms for dealing with this - but the law has its limits. best Simon On 11 Jan 2012, at 09:44, tterranova wrote: Dear all first of all I think best wishes for 2012 are in order for everybody on the list. Secondly I would like to see whether I can start the discussion by referring to some issues which I am currently thinking about and which might be relevant to a debate on open models of publishing and writings and the formation of communities around such efforts. I have been struck that is by a theme that is emerging in analyses of the Internet, and social networks in particular, which are focused on the question of subjectivity, such as writings by Jodi Dean, Sherry Turkle, Bernard Stiegler, Franco Berardi, Steven Shaviro etc. All these authors, in different way, seem to underline the fact that networked digital media are not simply technologies of communication, but technologies involved in the production of subjectivity. Jodi Dean in particular seem to be starting from her experience of writing a blog to articulate a damning critique of the whole mechanism of writing/reading/commenting text on the Internet, which she sees as relying on the mobilization of compulsive drives (little bits of pleasure inherent in the accumulation of small bits of 'new' information) which ultimately leads to recuperation under the logic of communicative capitalism. Sherry Turkle's latest book is also a quite damning ethnography of what social and personal media are doing to a new generation which is both tethered to their machines and scared of intimacy. Franco Berardi has been warning us for over a decade about the process of 'cognitive proletarianization' inherent in the speed of new media. I'm not saying that I agree with all these different perspectives, but my questions to the list would be: in which ways do open practices of publishing, writing and reading interact with the general attention economy of networked media, where attention is defined as a 'scarce commodity'? How can they be used to counteract some of the compulsive/destructive dynamics of Internet readership? What do your experiences tell us of the difference between social interaction on corporate media platforms and social interaction on alternative, open platforms? What is it that in your opinion ultimately defines the quality and affective texture of communication on succesful open platforms? looking forward to the rest of the discussion tiziana terranova Il 09/01/12 12.07, Simon Biggs ha scritto: Welcome to all empyre subscribers and, especially, this months moderators and discussants, Penny Travlou, Smita Kheria, Tiziana Terranova, Dmytri Kleiner, Adam Hyde, Salvatore Iaconesi, Joss Hands and Marc Garrett. We have the collective responsibility of welcoming in 2012, during the year's first monthly theme. For much of the world 2011 was, at best, a challenging year, and 2012 looks like more of the same. This appears to be a period of socio-economic change as the shifting tectonic plates of geo-political power grind against one another. I've never been keen on futurology or fortune-telling but am confident 2012 will be another year of turbulent events that will have us end up in a different place to where we started. In this globalised and highly mediated context, during the month of January, we wish to focus empyre discussion on how writing and publishing are currently evolving in the context of global networks. We wish to engage a debate about open models of writing and publishing. We hope to gain some insight into how changes in notions and practices of authorship, media, form, dissemination, intellectual property and economics affect writing and publishing as well as the formation of the reader/writerships, communities and social engagement that must flow from that activity. Specifically, we wish to look at examples of open publishing, whether they be FLOSS manuals, copyLeft or CopyFarLeft or other publication models, in order to look at new methods for knowledge making and distribution. We also wish to consider how communities of shared-value emerge through such initiatives and how their
[-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
Welcome to all empyre subscribers and, especially, this months moderators and discussants, Penny Travlou, Smita Kheria, Tiziana Terranova, Dmytri Kleiner, Adam Hyde, Salvatore Iaconesi, Joss Hands and Marc Garrett. We have the collective responsibility of welcoming in 2012, during the year's first monthly theme. For much of the world 2011 was, at best, a challenging year, and 2012 looks like more of the same. This appears to be a period of socio-economic change as the shifting tectonic plates of geo-political power grind against one another. I've never been keen on futurology or fortune-telling but am confident 2012 will be another year of turbulent events that will have us end up in a different place to where we started. In this globalised and highly mediated context, during the month of January, we wish to focus empyre discussion on how writing and publishing are currently evolving in the context of global networks. We wish to engage a debate about open models of writing and publishing. We hope to gain some insight into how changes in notions and practices of authorship, media, form, dissemination, intellectual property and economics affect writing and publishing as well as the formation of the reader/writerships, communities and social engagement that must flow from that activity. Specifically, we wish to look at examples of open publishing, whether they be FLOSS manuals, copyLeft or CopyFarLeft or other publication models, in order to look at new methods for knowledge making and distribution. We also wish to consider how communities of shared-value emerge through such initiatives and how their members are able to identify themselves to one another and others. As usual, the month (the next three weeks) will be structured into weekly bite sized chunks, each led by a moderator and involving two discussants. Participants can choose to post to the list at any time but the discussants for each week will have the opportunity to focus the debate for that period. We hope that as many empyre subscribers as possible will feel engaged and contribute to the discussion. Our guests are, in the order of the weeks they will participate: Tiziana Terranova lectures and researches cultural studies and new media at the Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L'Orientale'. She is the author of Network Culture (Pluto Press, 2004) and has recently co-edited, with Couze Venn, a special issue of Theory, Culture and Society on Michel Foucault's recently published courses. She is currently working on a book about neoliberalism and digital social media. Dmytri Kleiner describes himself as a Venture Communist. He creates miscommunication technologies, including deadSwap, Thimbl and R15N and is the author of the Telekommunist Manifesto. He lives in Berlin and his url is http://dmytri.info Simon Biggs is an artist, writer and curator. His work focuses on interactive systems, new media and digital poetics (http://www.littlepig.org.uk). He is involved in a number of research projects, including the EU funded project Developing a Network-Based Creative Community: Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (http://www.elmcip.net). He is Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts, directing the MSc by Research in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices, at the University of Edinburgh. Adam Hyde lives in Berlin. In 2007 Adam started FLOSS Manuals, a community for producing free manuals for free software. Through this work he also started Booki (a book production platform) and has been pioneering Book Sprints - a methodology for collaboratively producing books in 5 days or less. Previously, as an artist, he was 1/2 of r a d i o q u a l i a, Simpel and other artistic projects engaging open source and free media. Salvatore Iaconesi teaches cross media design at “La Sapienza” University of Rome, at Rome University of Fine Arts and at ISIA Design in Florence. He is the founder of Art is Open Source and of FakePress Publishing, focusing on the human beings' mutations through ubiquitous technologies and networks. Penny Travlou is a social geographer and ethnographer lecturing in the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh. Her research currently focuses on studying emergent network-based creative communities. She is Co-Investigator on the ELMCIP project. Marc Garrett is an activist, artist, writer and co-director/founder (with artist Ruth Catlow) of internet arts collective http://www.furtherfield.org (since 96) and the Furtherfield Gallery social space in London. Through these platforms various contemporary media arts exhibitions and projects are presented nationally and internationally. Marc also hosts a weekly media arts radio programme on Resonance FM, co-edited the publication Artists Re: thinking games and is editing a new publication Conversations As We Leave The 21st Century. He is currently undertaking
