Kia ora All, The following is the low down on the ANAT “still/open” artists workshop held in Melbourne on Thursday 5– Friday 6 Sept last week; my participation was well timed as we think about planning our programme for the next ADA symposium in February next year in Christchurch…
ANAT (“Australia’s national network and advocacy body for artists working at the intersection of art, science and technology”) was established 20 years ago and they now have great funding and regularly organise skills and ideas workshops for artists working with science and technology. In free packs at the workshop, the 16 participants also received ANAT’s glossy print magazine called “Filter” which comes out 3 times a year. The topic of “Open Source culture”* at the workshop was approached from conceptually diverse perspectives. Alessandro Ludovico (part of the group responsible for the “Amazon Noir” and “Google will eat itself” projects) ran a workshop on the concept of Open Source publishing. Beatriz da Costa, (who is one of my artist heroines for her pigeon-blog project; (http://www.beatrizdacosta.net/ ) ran a workshop where we made the electronics and coding for mobile air pollution monitoring system. Elliot Bledsloe from Creative Commons Australia gave a workshop on the licences that informed us on how we could use to allow open access to our work -- with some rights reserved. Andy Nicholson, from EngageMedia Collective (http//www.engagemedia.org/, a free software hacker and new media activist) demonstrated the Open Source video sharing software “Plumi” and taught us how to hack GoogleMaps to make interactive blog tags. * “Open Source culture is the growing global phenomenon of creative practices of sharing content for others to rework, reuse and redistribute.” (ANAT Media release) Here is a bit more on the individual sessions: (if anyone is interested in a specific topic in any of these I can also send you further notes…) << Open source publishing workshop, with Alessandro Ludovico>> Alessandro gave an introductory paper on “Open source publishing: a history” as a background for his workshop. His experience pf publishing comes from his editorship of <http//wwww.neural.it>, an online magazine that has been around since 1993. He gave an historical overview from of independent “zinesters” from Thomas Paine; Dada and Surrealists in the 20s; mimeograph carbon copies of Science Fiction zines in the 50s; political zines in Eastern Europe in the 60s; the 70s-80s Xerox machine zines, including the advent of the “per-zine” (personal zine); to the shift online in the late 90s. He argues that the most dramatic shift in personal /activist independent publications in the last century is the shift online, eg the advent of blogger.com in 1999. --The persistence of paper-- Unexpectedly, Alessandro’s key “digital soapbox” platform, was the importance of print as an historical record of online activity. He made many binary contrasts between the processes of online vs print publication. For example, an advantage of print media is the fixing of an historical aesthetic is by graphic design and typography, while media content in online magazines can be graphically reframed each year -- so a sense of their historical development is lost. He deconstructed “the paperless office” as an advertising myth to sell computers. He also critiqued the paradox of the much-promoted ability to store excessive amounts of digital information, to “save” physical space, while actually losing the memory paths to find the information again. He developed his argument to draw together the two poles by arguing for the importance of a symbiotic relationship between print and online publications by ensuring that there is an historical archive of digital material on paper to compliment the more interactive, responsive online content. He advocated the “print on demand’ model using “Lightning Source” printers to allow cheap limited runs of PDF versions of online magazine content. A similar model to “Natural Selection” I guess. * Alessandro asked me what ADA are doing to make sure that there is also a hard copy record of our activity and I was happy to be able to tell him about the ADA New Media Reader (forthcoming…) But I guess we could also be doing more to archive hard copies of ADA exhibition catalogues, invitations and publications. Maybe we could discuss the institutional alliances available to us to archive this kind of material in our next symposium? Alessandro also mentioned a European phenomena called the “Agents Network”, an idea to move artists materials across continents by using other media arts people as couriers to deliver media. People who are travelling a lot can use the opportunity to distribute artists materials globally. This concept could be useful within Aotearoa and Australia as well. We could have an ANAT/ADA Agents Network for artists media to move (as long as it isn’t too big) to see who is driving/ flying to take material to its destination… put the word out on the list! --a model for a hypothetical Open Source magazine-- The creative part of Alessandro’s workshop at “still/open” involved brainstorming ideas to develop a model for an Open Source magazine - which any participant in the workshop, or beyond, may turn into a real project. We divided into three groups: the concept group, the production group and the network group. The results of the Open Source magazine that we developed are to be given back to the Open Source Community to be taken up freely -- so here goes: The first group came up with a concept for an online magazine that is a live posting board for Open Source Events and culture in a local community. The idea is to forge connections for a localised network of open source advocates who can also meet in person. The root page would have a drop down menu where you can select your location in the world, ie “St Kilda, Melbourne” and any open source related events, groups and contacts will pop up on the page. The root page would then lead on to wider open source events in the surrounding regions > VICTORIA > AUSTRALIA > ASIA PACIFIC > SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. One suggested title for this magazine was “Open Sauciness” Or “Open Sourciness” (I am not sure?) My group was the “production” steam for the hypothetical magazine. We decided that it would have a calendar content that could be printed out by individual users on home printers. There would also be an interactive part of the site for forum discussion sessions along the lines of CRUMB with user contributions. Invited guests could lead self-reflexive discussion topics about the philosophy of open source culture. A moderated version of these discussions could be made available in the form of a “print on demand” publication where users can select from the most relevant discussions/nodes to customize a print version to buy. We discovered there is a “print on demand” printer in Fremantle – but it may still be easier to go to London from NZ. We also agreed to use a ‘share alike” Creative Commons Licence for the magazine to permit remix or appropriation, but with the stipulation that new works must be able to be re-mixed in turn. Open Source software tools for designing an open source website include: Scribus, Ink scape, font forge, Open Office… << DIY AIR device workshop with Beatriz Da Costa: a "social experiment">> Beatriz, a former member of the Critical Art Ensemble, is now a part of the Pre-emptive Media collective. Recent projects include the “Free Range Grain” project, a mobile testing station for transgenic organisms and “Zapped”, a surveillance piece with radio frequency identification technology (RFIT). RFIT tags are replacing barcodes to track products and are now being used to track school children in the States. She worked with the kids to hack the tags that were being used by their parents to track their whereabouts. As an LA resident, unsafe levels of air pollutnd now, a key concern in her practice. She had trialled a project called AIR earlier in the year with more expensive components than we were using. In the “still/open” workshop we made a second version of the device out of cheap electronic hobby kit materials. (http://www.beatrizdacosta.net/stillopen/) -- all the parts for this device are summarised on her website. We were the Guinea pigs for the new kit. In the “pigeon-blog” project pigeons had similar devices in miniature forms, which transmitted air pollution data via SMS technology. Her workshop was technically challenging. She motored through a set of instructions for building the personal air pollution monitors. The plan was for us to collect samples of Ozone or Carbon Monoxide or Nitrogen Oxide levels during a walk around our local area (we became "carriers"). The monitor included GPS so we could locate the site of a specific reading and later graph it onto Google Earth. Beatrix designed the code and electronics for the air pollution monitor. Following complex electronic diagrams (well, complex for me anyway), we wired up several components for the air pollution monitor: the Arduino MICROCONTROLLER, the EEPROM, (erasable memory) the SENSOR, to collect ozone or for carbon monoxide data and the GPS to send location data to the mircocontroller. The GPS sends GPRSE data to the EEPROM for storage and we could select whether it is on read mode or write mode to collect the data. LED pins lit up on the bread board to indicate space on the E-PROM and second set of the LEDs also indicated the level of the pollution readings. Each group took home one air pollution monitor and walked around polluted areas of our local environment. When we carried our electronic box close to the city traffic the red light LED “high level!” indicator began flaring. I travelled along the tram with Michael Dieter, trying to help him put back the wires that fell out along the way. Unfortunately, when he stepped off the tram, the monitor ceased to function altogether, but up until that point we got some good readings. We then uploaded the collected data from the EPROM back to the computer to graph the location readings onto Google Earth. Jamie from Pre-emptive media wrote the KLM software (also on BEatriz's website) for graphing the results onto Google Earth. The reading levels for different sites were graphically represented as tall blocks in different colours, like skyscrapers protruding out of the Melbourne map. It was "empowering" to be able to retrace our steps and take readings of the invisible ozone levels that are harmful to respiratory systems. Although I wondered what I could actually do with this knowledge now that I KNOW. << Creative Commons Clinic with Elliot Bledsloe…>> If you are interested in allowing more open access to your work, while still retaining some rights, a Creative Commons Licence structure is a good thing to look into. While the traditional “C” or copyright means that ALL rights are reserved on your work for your lifetime and beyond, (“you can’t touch this”), the Creative Commons licence, or “CC” means that only SOME rights are reserved. This is distinct from the Copy-Left movement or Public Domain material where NO rights are reserved. Elliot argues that the “C”, copyright legislation is restrictive for creativity in digital environment, of course allowing someone to remix electronic music under Creative Commons is the classic example. It appealed to me that I could choose to licence for a particular work under Creative Commons, and retain copyright on the rest. Those with APRA be warned, there are many restrictions on copyright that make it hard to allow music for example to be used for charitable purposes. The following types of Creative Commons Licences allow artists to use your work with some restrictions: (BY) Attribution: acknowledge the creator (most flexible, any form of reuse) (NC) ( $ ) Non commercial: no commercial use (ND) ( = ) No Derivatives: no remixind, but new works must be able to be re-mixed For more info go to: http//www.creativecommons.org.au *Creative Commons Licencing is an International phenomena but the heart of our region is at QUT in Queensland. << EngageMedia collective workshop>>, EngageMedia collective have a great website that allows the publication of activist videos online – (an activist u-tube) it already also includes some New Zealand work, and I advise having a look: <http://www.engagemedia.org/> This site allows you to publish your video and choose whichever kind of Creative Commons licence you want to use. EngageMedia emerged out of the “plateau-ing out” of the indy-media movement in 2002-3. Andy Nicholson hosted the workshop; he describes his role as a “mediator between geeks and activists.” He released the software called “Active” in late 1999 that was widely use to organise WTO protests as a pioneer of user generated software. The task for the last session was to start our own video sharing site. Engage have created “Plumi”, an open source software programme for this purpose. See <http//www.plumi.org/> To run “Plumi” you also have to install “Plone 2.5.3” for mac or PC version. This software gives users the ability to: - post videos on the site and use it for viewing work by others - select by video genres (eg experimental, documentary) - use an RSS Feed to syndicate the media to another site (eg your website or a google home page) - collaborative file share , for example there is space for collaborative script writing For the last part of the workshop Andy Nicholson showed us how to hack google maps using the Django Web Application Builder (python scripting language based, model view controller, object orientated) and the interactive scripting language “Bash”. Unfortunately this is the point on Friday late afternoon where my poor brain had reached saturation point for absorbing new information. So I can’t tell you much more about how we hacked google maps and added an interactive scripting tag… except that we used the tools just mentioned. Let me know if you want any further info cheers Janine _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [email protected] http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
