World of Free and Open Source Art
* Book: Collaboration and Freedom – The World of Free and Open Source Art. By guest curators, Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, Furtherfield
Description
"Each element in this collection connects with some aspect of freedom and openness in the arts, in the age of the Internet. Freedom to collaborate – to use, modify and redistribute ideas, artworks, experiences, media and tools. Openness to the ideas and contributions of others, and new ways of organising and making decisions together.
Artistic practices inevitably develop in parallel with global technological cultures. Stimulated by philosophical, social and ethical debates, contemporary art workers – artists performers, curators, directors, organisers – adopt the digital tools as well as the processes and metaphors that enable and inspire our networked age.
* Intersecting Artistic and Technical Cultures
Free and Open Source production methods emerged within software development communities as a way to work better, smarter and freer. As the Internet connected engineers and their computers wih each other they developed peer-to-peer working methods to learn, create and share knowledge and code with each other, fast, and across, social and geographical distances. The fact that software could be developed and tested in a modular way (in very small chunks) meant that lots of programmers could collaborate fluidly on large and complex projects. Retaining the freedom to use the software they produced collectively was crucial. Productivity and technical innovation increased exponentially. And today we see Free and Open Source software adopted en mass around the world by individuals, communities and governments alike.
Many art workers have experimented with (and developed) digital processes and tools for production and distribution. They have explored new avenues of imaginative expression: incorporating complex interactivity, proliferating sumptuous software-generated forms and sophisticated and dazzling audiovisual effects. They have also challenged the hype surrounding digital technologies, working with the content, protocols and tools of mass networked media and communication to question utopian propositions, drawing attention to the darker side of our technologically mediated world – where 'friends' are accepted and rejected at a click of a button, mass surveillance becomes the norm as does runaway consumption. They offer new perspectives on emerging social relations and in so doing, start to transform the role that the arts play in the world.
Questions of ownership, control, gate-keeping and value have come to the fore. In the visual arts, an emerging digital culture – of copying, remixing and redistributing – collides with more established notions of the unique art object (or commodity) produced by someone of rare talent and insight. In technical cultures 'copyleft' licensing assures the principles of free use and distribution are always retained while 'permissive' licensing allows limits to be placed on how code may be used by people in the future. Artists and technologists alike are asserting alternatives to the prevailing economic models – privileging collaboration and free expression over traditional copyright and intellectual property. New forms of licenses and high-profile court cases proliferate surrounded by heated debate.
Intersecting art and technical cultures is not without its challenges. And the concepts and processes of engineers do not map directly or neatly onto artistic production. Coders know when something has worked – they use the same tools to test the product as they do to create it and distribute it. The economic contexts and market operations are different for engineers than for artists. The needs and expectations of their customers, clients, audiences, participants have little in common.
Yet work continues in this field and indeed encounters strong historical precedents. Audiences and participants will find the most engaging work in this area resonates with a variety of artistic developments through history, generating innovative and compelling visions of the contemporary condition. Bertolt Brecht's contribution to theatre and redefinition of art as a hammer to shape the world rather than mirror to reflect it, inform contemporary community-based collaborative theatre and artistic tactical media alike. Artists appropriate, remix and hack consumer technologies and popular media in a way that harks back to the anti-art and institutional critiques of Dada and to anti-spectacular Situationist antics. Fluxus develops playful Intermedia practices and the Conceptual art movement turns the artwork into sets of instructions or relational experiences. Joseph Beuys expanded the notion of the artist, saying that “everyone is an artist”, indicating an emergent understanding of distributed human creativity and the increasingly participative nature of works that succeed in bringing the audience ever closer or involving them in their production. Today's artworks can surprise audiences by intervening in their everyday online spaces, making them at times either conscious agents or unwitting participants and performers of the work.
The shift in the conditions of the working/playing artist are hard to overstate. The Free and Open Source revolution has massively increased the potential sociality of the artwork and its artists/participants/audience. Online images, video and sound materials are available for all – to draw on and contribute to. These range from archives of film that have been lovingly preserved, digitised, categorised and contextualised by experts in large public institutions, to fast-growing banks of photographs, video and sound uploaded by diverse individuals from around the world. Content is findable via tags (user-generated keywords) and searchable descriptions. Not only this but the emergence of digital communities and social networks create a conversation around and through the work. Once you have familiarised yourself with how different licenses work (see the section on licenses) you will be ready to share, remix, reuse, transform and re-share the content you find- Legally!
* What You will Find in this Collection
We present essays, artworks, projects, podcasts, free media resources, tools, guides to tools and licences as well as case studies showing you just what can be achieved by working in this way. All have collaboration and Free and Open Source culture at their heart.
Essays, opinion pieces and introductory articles by leading contemporary thinkers and practitioners offer insight into key areas of theory, practice and production. Radio interviews with artists, musicians, technologists, community-builders and educators are available as podcasts. The accompanying glossary of terms is intended to ease access for everyone, from the curious novice to the committed enthusiast.
Amongst the collection of artworks and projects, a number are intended to be explored online – some seek your participation – others document projects that take place in community workshops or in physical public space. This way of working also typically challenges the traditional idea of the artist as lone-genius.
This non exhaustive collection is intended to inspire, inform and enable people to apply peer-to-peer principles for making things and getting organised together.
We hope that all art lovers, makers, thinkers, organisers and strategists will find something for them from this set of imaginative, communitarian and dynamic contemporary practices."
More Information
About Furtherfield
Furtherfield is a dynamic, creative and social nerve centre where since 1997 upwards of 26,000 contributors worldwide have built a visionary culture around collaboration – swapping and sharing code, music, images, video and ideas.
They believe that through creative and critical engagement with practices in art and technology people are inspired and enabled to become active co-creators of their cultures and societies. They co-create extraordinary art that connects with contemporary audiences providing innovative, engaging and inclusive digital and physical spaces for appreciating and participating in practices in art, technology and social change.