1 www.PrintablePaper.net R E A D E R 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 0. Introduction ........................................................................................ 5 1. Architecture of NODE.London NODE.London: Getting Organised Openly? ..................................... 9 by Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett A Few Lessons Learnt From a Crash Course ................................. 25 by Anna Colin Mmmmm. Momentum, Motivation, Money ...................................... 33 by Julie Freeman 2. Economies of openness After the Crash .................................................................................. 43 by Jamie King Paid In Full: The Remix ..................................................................... 49 by Armin Medosch and Jonas Andersson The ‘Elephant In the Room’ of Open Organisations ...................... 63 by Critical Practice 3. Exposing the public domain Deleted Swedish Stories, Part 1....................................................... 75 by Petra Bauer Situating Nodes and Narratives: Hidden Histories/Street Radio .. 95 by Armin Medosch Deptford.TV and the Data Sphere .................................................. 107 by Adnan Hadzi Why Open And Not Free? ............................................................... 117 by Toni Prug 4. Further views on NODE.London Urban Versioning System 1.0.1 ...................................................... 137 by Matthew Fuller and Usman Haque Further views on NODE.London ’08: 1. The Next Layer by Lindsay Brown ............................................... 145 2. The Open Knowledge Conference by the arrangers.................. 147 3. Area10 Medialab by the arrangers ............................................... 148 4. The Brentford Biopsy by Christian Nold ..................................... 149 5. Hurry Up Please It’s TIME by Alex Haw ...................................... 153 6. FILMOBILE by Max Schleser ....................................................... 155 Bibliography ........................................................................................... 159 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 3 2 101 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 101 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 www.PrintablePaper.net The NODE.London Reader II projects a critical context around the Season of Media Arts in London, March 2008. NODE.London (Networked, Open, Distributed, Events. London) is a voluntary network of people, organisations and projects sharing and developing the infrastructure for media arts and related activities in London and beyond. NODE.London’s founding aim was to be uniquely organised from the ground up – all activities organised via open meetings, both online and face to face. Each individual project in this season of events was initiated independently; the NODE.London season of 2008 clustered these activities, in a process that aimed to facilitate the further involvement and the changing dynamics of a larger community. NODE.London is a group of people exploring and developing media art. Its website is http://nodel.org. This reader revisits debates on media arts and activism, collaborative practices and organisation, and the political economy of media economics. It includes contributions from Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Anna Colin, Julie Freeman, Matthew Fuller, Usman Haque, Jamie King, Armin Medosch, Jonas Andersson, Toni Prug, Adnan Hadzi, Cinzia Cremona and Petra Bauer. Edited by Anna Colin, Mia Jankowicz, Adnan Hadzi and Jonas Andersson. Published by NODE.London, under a Creatvie Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 England & Wales Licence, unless otherwise stated. Main Supporters: LCACE Arts Council Media Partner: Mute POD Consultation: OpenMute Template and Design Production (cover and interior): Jonas Andersson 4 0. INTRODUCTION Edited by writer and PhD researcher Marina Vishmidt, NODE. London’s first reader, titledMedia Mutandis and published in 2006, rounded up the first season of media art in London which was marked by three main manifestations: The World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures (held at Limehouse Townhall), Open Congress (hosted by Tate Britain) and Future Wireless (held at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre)1. Three years and a season later, NODE.London’s second reader begins with an update on the status of NODE.London under the heading Architecture of NODE.London. Three voices involved at different moments and on various levels, namely Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, Anna Colin and Julie Freeman, provide their accounts of NODE.London’s internal dynamics and make organisational recommendations for the future of the network. Like Media Mutandis, the present reader further chooses to focus on particular themes and projects. Economies of Openness, the second section of the book, brings together texts and transcripts produced in part for the Open Media Economics Panel, which took place during the second Open Knowledge Conference (OKCON 2008) and for Disclosures, also in 2008. Jamie King suggests that P2P networks may be the most efficient means of diffusion – especially so in times of economic crisis – and that values such as “success” or “making money” have become relative and/or redundant. Meanwhile, Armin Medosch and his respondent Jonas Andersson protest against the precariousness cultural producers are the subjects of, and which Open Source models of licensing and diffusion sustain. Their text launches an attack on Creative Commons, which they see as a passport for underpaying producers of culture. In the transcript of the ResourceCamp which it organised over an afternoon in March 2008, Critical Practice further addresses the absence of reference to money and to finance management in the guidelines put forward by open-organizations.org2. Exposing the Public Domain, the third part of the reader, is a compilation of four texts which contribute to putting the public domain at stake whether through un-digging forgotten or deliberately hidden historical events and facts, or through reassessing its adaptability to newer modes of diffusion of knowledge and skills. Petra Bauer takes a critical route with Deleted Swedish Stories, the script of a once performed lecture which addressed issues of censorship in Swedish media and how the government used to select the kind of information that would go public. Meanwhile, Armin Medosch’s text is a self-evaluation of a project involving the release of forgotten historical events linked to the city and port of Southampton into the public domain, via FM and mobile technology. 1 NODE.London´s first reader can be accessed at http://publication.nodel.org/ 5 2 http://www.open-organizations.org/. Using Deptford.TV as a case study, Adnan Hadzi acknowledges the need for a social contract which can uphold an ethical viability for the ‘data spheres’ that have already emerged, but are currently branded illegitimate or at least non- sanctioned. The question of Why Open and Not Free? in Toni Prug’s text is a means to take Open Source debates to their key Marxian concerns; their dependence on the fundamental resources of space and time. His contribution mobilises Lacan, Žižek and Negri in a discussion asking if there is anything in the notion of “free” for those who dream of a new egalitarian social order. The fourth and last section, Further Views on NODE.London, brings together documentation from a selection of one off as well as long-term projects which took place or started during NODE.London Spring ’08. These are Urban Versioning System 1.0.1 (by Matthew Fuller and Usman Haque),The Next Layer (by Armin Medosch), OKCON 2008 (by the Open Knowledge Foundation), ()re|boot; (by Area 10), The Brentford Biopsy (by Ilze Black for Watermans Arts Centre), Hurry Up Please It’s TIME (by Alex Haw) and Filmobile (by Max Schleser). The editorial team would like to thank all the Volunteers of the NODE.London network and the authors for contributing. This reader was made possible through the support of the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Exchange and Arts Council England, London. The editors, April 2009 6 1. ARCHITECTURE OF NODE.LONDON www.PrintablePaper.net 7 Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow are artists, writers and educators. In 1996 they co-founded Furtherfield.org, a net art and media art platform for creating, viewing, discussing and learning about experimental practices at the intersections of art, technology and social change. By both initiating and contributing to the development of art software platforms and spaces for experimentation and debate on and offline, such as HTTP Gallery, VisitorsStudio and NODE.London, they have worked to develop infrastructure and raise the visibility of media art practice. 8 NODE.London: Getting Organised Openly? by Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow,1 Furtherfield.org2 The first NODE.London Season of Media Arts in 2006 was conceived as an experiment in tools and structures of cooperation as invented or adapted by artists, technologists, and activists, many (but not all) of whom were committed to ideas of social change through their practice3. It was to be an experiment in radical openness, not just to be confined to participatory artistic processes and events but also applied to the method of organisation. We believe that through creative and critical engagement with media art, people can be inspired and enabled to become active co-creators of their cultures and societies. So it was an enchanting notion: any self-selecting practitioner (artist, software developer, curator, free data or IP activist) might become an equal co-producer in the meaning and value of a media arts festival for London. It promised