Untitled(Mornington Crescent)

Untitled(Mornington Crescent) from sam hipwell on Vimeo.

Or on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhCczbEN8Rw

Untitled(Mornington Crescent, 2011, Video, 2:31

This video is a tribute to several television and radio programs from British and American culture, which have played a part in the development of the artist through his life. The main part of the video revolves around the act of making and drinking tea, with this act being carried out by the objects themselves. The use of stop-motion animation has several links with in the cultural context from old television shows like Bagpuss and Clanger's which where children animation show, which even with their short run; have become part of the building block of kids entertainment within Britain. Stop-motion allows the personification of object's, this act of personification only happens to this level within the realm of stop-motion, as other forms of animation use replica or generated objects. In stop-motion thought it is the real objects and in so creates a deeper link with the audience and a stronger sense of reality and the looking into the secret world of objects. This looking into the secret would of objects happens with in a lot of Jan Svankmajer's work mainly in the short video called “A Quiet Week in the House”(1969), in his work he uses a lot of stop-motion animation to give life to objects which allows him to have a greater connection with the audiences and the delivery of his idea's.

Another strong aspect of the video is the stereotype of BBC Radio 4 listeners, who are heavy tea and coffee drinkers and well educated. The video seeks to honour the BBC radio 4 show called “I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue”, which is a panel show were the main goal is to have fun and a laugh by weird comments and taking the mickey out of other shows. As this show has been running since the 70's there is a large level of alienation on newer viewers due to the use of running jokes and rounds that may be a comment on a show that isn't broadcast any more. This alienation has been incorporated into this video, by the use of some of the jokes from the self-deprecating humour to the use of the swanee whistle and kazoo for the sound track.

The sound track is a mix of a British music and comedy tradition and an American horror and television show tradition. The sound track is the Gonk by H. Chappel, but using the swanee whistle and kazoo to preform it. This song is used in some point (usually in the end credits) in most zombie and at the end of 'Robot Chicken', it has the connotation of a dystopia future where an event has happened that dramatically changed the courses of human progression. This song can be seen as the removal of humanity where the objects and nature is left and they take over. With both playing large roles in popular culture at the moment. This idea of a dystopia dark future also occurs in the Timothy & Stephen Quay short film called “Streets of Crocodiles” (1986), where the whole action is played out by dolls in a dark and dusty area.

Our cultures and the Remix

These 2 videos are from the TED website, they both take a look at the world's government and organizations view on copyright in light of the fair use and creativity. Both people talk about the Creative Commons as an example of how we can deal with modern creativity and the role of the author or creator of the content.

In our current world the music and film industry are trying to destroy or at least control the copying or remixing of their item's (which they distribute and hold the rights to) These action goes agents the digital world and the younger generations as they have been bought up in the environment and learning the skills which allow them to remix the materials. This fair use and remixing has happened all through our culture at different times, from Disney to present day political campaigns. We live in a world which is interlinked with pop culture and historic culture, which allows symbolism of all different mediums to occur; this has increased to a point where people understand and engage with society only through this symbolism, such as the internet with meme's.

So this cracking down on the out dated ideas of copyright maybe destroying our future ability to understand the world around us and to preform creative acts.

Granville Internet Connection

To download file click here

This work is a collection of different sound clips that have been recorded from everyday life. The composition of the clips have been arranged in a very choppy short similar to that of flicking through tv channels or browsing the internet, where the user quickly goes from one place to another and only focusing on a particular item for only a few moments. The track also transfers between the left and right speaker, which has a felling of a conversation between the sounds or the movement of one's place in a particular area. With this movement the audience is able to explore the space in a different way.

The work has elements of UVA's (united visual artists) work called "Speed of Light" which was an installation using record sounds from different sources and the movement of lights. Part of the work has elements of the light searching around part of the installation, picking up different sounds and noises. The sounds jump quickly over and around the different noises appears to be a constantly evolving element as new sounds from the audience are being added every time it goes over the area. The location where the work has been positioned has elements of the work called "Lament for a Drowned Love" by the artist Susan Philipsz, this work is a sound recording of a story underneath "George V Bridge" in Glasgow. The two locations are both underneath a means of connecting to area's together, it is also an area where members of the public can walk and contemplate at any time with out restrictions.

Walking Thought

Walking the cities

Link to the album

To download the Google Earth tour file click here

To download the Google Earth kml file click here.


Walking Thought is a virtual map that documents a walk preformed on the 6th of March 2011 in response to the Tate Britain to Tate Modern walk in London, UK.

“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking” is a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, in this piece the premiss of the work is to engage in this idea by walking to think. With this practise rooted into Situationist International, Dérive work. As an element of the Dérive, the Situationist used to take a map from one city or location and traverse a different city with this map trying to get to a location on the map. This comparing of the two cities in this way creates a connection between them, which is only discovered when acting the route. Part of the Dérive was walking and drop people's usual motives for movement and actions in the city, in the hope of changing their relations to the terrain and the encounters they find there. When seeing this piece in this context you understand that the combination of the two city images and the text it in an attempt to generate new way of thinking about the environment and how we engage with it.

The way this piece is set out and presented has elements of Sol LeWitt's 'Certificate for Wall Drawing' series, as the work sets out instructions on how to recreate and preform the work, it also shows the route and images of the way points. With the work giving out suggestions of thoughts through the text, could be seen to lead the participant in how they relate to the juxtaposing of the images. With the text being a poetic or quotation response to the images, hopefully this literature use is widely known in culture so it will allow the participants to engage fully with the work.

Review Of There/Here

In the art work called “There/here” by the artist Germaine Koh and Gordon Hicks, physically there is only two doors which have been linked together using technology. A door is an object that allows people to enter or exit when open, and denies enter or exit when closed while it is closed the door gives a sense of security and safety. While in this work these functions of the doors have been warped, as these doors are in the centre of the room with no connections to the wall or objects, they just stand there in their frames. This removes all their functions and leaves them as basic levers. This doors have a digital element to them as both doors have become synchronised with each other, through the internet, this means what ever you do to one door occurs to the other and vice versa. This arrangement creates a heterotopia with in the digital aspect, a heterotopia is a concept of space that function in non-hegemonic conditions. Which means there physical location does not change or effect the space, in this work the space is with in the digital dimension. With this in mind these door do act as door with the user allowed to open and close the door into the heterotopia.

This situation the doors synchronising makes the user when opening one door to feel a presents on the other door. This interaction with the doors seem to be an act of play as people could take it in turn to open and close the door, and play with the situation of trying to see if the door will always open for them when they touch one. This notion of play will be a instant reaction to the work, once this notion has been pasted the audience can fully interact with the piece. This type of learning curve is similar to what happens in technology, when a person first gets something new they play with it and try to work out what happens when they do something. It is a bottom to top action of learning, when you try something out and hope it works. When they have pasted this stage then the audience knows the relationship between the actions and use them to accomplish the tasks. This work is sited completely in new technology habits, with each part of the relationship engaging with the new ideas of the time. With the act of synchronising between the doors, makes the physical actions of the audience converted from a physical action to a cloud basted process which is then used on the door.

The cloud is when a computer system as been places on a web server so can be accessed anywhere in the world it is a heterotopia personal computer, where someone can place their work privately and hopefully securely. This notion of the cloud has become an important aspect of technology in the last few months. Specially with the wikileaks controversy, the idea that anything can be places on the internet and be displayed and used either privately or publicly depending on how it is setup is now in doubt as anything in the cloud removes the original authors permissions and protection of it. This makes any private information public without restrictions. This idea that the private actions of the audience's body movements in opening the door is changed into a public action as the other door is opened and it has become recorded in the cloud. This relationship can allow multiple members of the audience to interaction with each other and create a relationship between each other as their actions become a subject of public pleasure watching each the people interaction and preform for them and the computer.

Freedom and Privacy

Eben Moglen could be seen as one of the most important individuals in the FLOSS/foss community. He is currently a Professor of Law at "Columbia University", also the Director-Counsel and Chairman of "Software Freedom Law Center". Up until recently he has been a board member and general counsel for the "Free Software Foundation", in this role he helped develop the "GNU General Public License version 3". On the 5th of February 2011 he founded the "Freedom Box Foundation". This foundation is to prevent the centralization of personal information into large organisations like Facebook and other organizations, but instead to allow people to hold onto their private information and control it.
The youtube video below is from his talk at ISOC-NY on the 5th of Feburary 2010. This video discusses his idea's and concerns of our privacy and freedoms on the internet.

Diva 200 - UoQR Final

“UoQR” 2011, Vinyl Cut.
This compares the difference between a educational system similar to what was descriped in Sir Thomas More's Utopia with an actual institution. University of Openness (Uo) is an online social organized ideal university, that is based on an utopian ideal of “All Students are Teachers and vice versa” (UoCharter 2), with this university only having an online presents, it allows it to be structured in the relevant way. The placing of this banner is within the grounds of another institution, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, which is based at a physical location. As Uo has been displayed with in the Emily Carr premiss it give Uo a fake tangible like between the real and virtual education system, while giving it authority and statues in both worlds. This tangible bridge between the real and virtual world is created by the use of a QR-code, which is part of the banner's design. With in the book “Utopia” by Sir Thomas Moore, it describes a process of constant education for all citizens of “Utopia” through their entire life, with an emphasise on a free and open exchange of idea; as long as no one is forcing there idea's onto another person . Uo in some was can achieve this ideal, due to it's campus on the internet which does allow this ideal of “Utopia” education to be accomplished. Compared to the current educational system which is implemented around there world, with this being structured around hierarchies of knowledge.

These differences between the two structures change once the Uo has a physical place within the world. Uo will now have physical limitations, which previously it didn't have like the restriction of space and members. While Uo has a forged campus it displaces the actual institution by removing part of it's physical location. This act of overwriting something physical by the virtual can be see to be an element of the future, if you buy into science fiction's predictions. Utopia also plays a large role in depicting the future, as it is the place of perfection which does not existence. The artist want to bring these utopian idealism in to this area, as these idealism are used there is the idea of a marxism that can be constructed because the original utopian system has properties of marxism. This bringing of a marxist idea in to an increasingly hegemonic capitalist structure brings out some of the problems which are being encouraged by government change of position on the importance of higher education in our society. These problems include the funding of higher education and it's social standing.

Moot Creator of the DarkSide of Social Media

Christopher "moot" Poole: The case for anonymity online | Video on TED.com

Moot "Christopher Poole" was the creator and founder of 4chan. 4chan is a anonymous community who have show what the true power of the internet can be if people work together for a common idea. 4chan has also be criticized as being the cesspool of the internet as anything goes and anything is created. It has also been one of the main area's where internet meme's have been created.

FLOSS other than Software,

The Floss/foss ethics have been used in other area's other than software, Open Organization is a good example of this. Open Organization is a framework set-up by a group of individuals that set out rules and guide lines on how an organization can function. With the goal to have this organization to be open and transparent at all levels and also be accountable for it's actions. This idea of how an organization can run goes agents the original idea on how an organization works, with it's decision-making are closed, with individuals are unaccountable, and abuses of power are hard to prevent with the knowledge used and produced are hoarded.

With the open organization being set-up differently from the usual. With the ideal use of this new structure being used at every level from government and corporations to activist and volunteer groups. This old system usually have a small group of people with control and power over everyone else with the other members just doing what they are told. Open Organization on the other hand want to remove at some level the small group of people with all the controls and give it to the majority specially in decision-making and how the people use there time. With the decision-making being done by group consensus, so that everyone has a chance of speaking and participating in the discussion. Open Organization also promotes the idea of a charter or something similar, this is a documents that lays out the organizations goals and ideas. This allows any one at any point to challenge the organization and make sure that it is true to it original goals. Through group discussions the charter maybe changed or a smaller group with it's own charter be formed to deal with a certain idea or problem. This allows the organization to constantly change and advance to it's goals. ( Open Organization Decision-making guide)

Open Organization also promotes that the organization to publish in some form all of it's documents and discussions in away that anyone can have access to them and view them. This idea of being transparent is a fundamental part of the organization of this group. It allows group members to be aware of what has been done or going to be done. It also allows the group to be accountable for it's action by the group or anyone out side the group.

Another way of using Open Organization is to use it as a referees when looking at other organizational structures. This way of using Open Organization allows the user to critique the other and hopefully find improvements in the original structure or Open Organization itself. As Open Organization run by it's own guide lines, anyone can make suggestions to framework and discuss them with the group.

Home page for Open Organization.

Diva 200 - Urban Intervention Mockup

This is the location with the work places, it is a computer mock-up made on GIMP.



This is a copy of what the intervention will say and be like. This design was made using Inkscape.

This banner is a physical link to an online organization called University of Openness (Uo). The QRcode on the banner is a tinyurl link to the Uo about page with their charter link on this page as well. This organization has not had much activities in the recent years, but I believe that in our current situation with student finances and the question on what education should achieve. This organization should have greater interest.

Diva 200 - Parama Final

“Limbo”, 2011, Digital Photography
This work is trying to represent ideas of limbo and uncertainties with in the artist's current situation. This situation in which the artist has found himself in, has comes from the fact that he has been take out of a familiar location and educational system; then places into a new one. This miss placement has caused this uncertainty while he is settling into this new environment. This situation has been made more complicated as there are still important attachments which places him in his previous location and time, through friends, family and institutional commitments.

In the work the placing of the character twist adds a tension to the piece, with this tension showing the passage of time and situation. The work called “Picture for Women” by Jeff Wall in 1979, has a similar tension. With the method of capture describes a passage of time by the use of the mirror. The composition of the two images have several similarities, they both show two bodies at the same distance from the centre. The space in both of these images are spars area's which have clear lines breaking the whole shape, in “limbo” the hand rails create a different structure and method or exploring the image, while “Picture for Women” has the lights and the suggestion of a non-rectangular room gives a different dimension to the pieces.

Picture for Women by Jeff Wall 1979
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/jeffwall/image/roomguide/rm1_picture_for_woman_lrg.jpg

Why Floss/foss

I though it would be best if I go through why I believe floss/foss ethics are important. Technology is ubiquitous in our world, where every part of our life has been digitised or implanted with technology to some degree. These technologies are usually under strong restrictions by their original manufactures by the us of warranties, patents and bespoke software and hardware controls. These features are in the technology to stop the user from having full control over their technology, with the user eventually being controlled by the device or being a controlled aspect of the design.

Proprietary software have been copyrighted and patented so that if you like a piece of software and you know someone could benefit from it, you aren't allowed to give them a copy. This idea of protection of the software for the sack of the corporation goes against an important aspect of computers, of the copy. The copy was one of the most important feature in which it allowing us to develop better technologies and to spread of knowledge. Proprietary software also denies you access to the source code so you can't fix problems and modify it to suit your needs better, it becomes a point of making do with what is given to you. Richard Stallman (rms) found this a problem in 1980 when he had problems with a printer which always jammed and he wasn't able to fix it due to the closed source. In 1985 rms produced the GNU manifesto (http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html) in response to this problem of proprietary software. GNU is based around the idea of the golden rule, which is “that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it”.

In creating the GNU the “Free Software Foundation” was also formed to advocates for free software ideals as outlined in the Free Software Definition. Which is Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms:
Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
Freedom 1:The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.
Freedom 3: The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.
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.

In our connective world, we need to set up standards and rules that allow us to communicate between different area's of the world. Like http and tcp, these protocols allow the internet to work. This standards need to be open and freely available so that people on the networks are able to communicate with one another easily and with no problem of miscommunication. If these standards where proprietary then there would be strong restrictions over how and who can use them, it would also lead to communication problems. When you use a document format like doc or pdf you expect to be able to use the file on any computer with out a problem. If these formats where not open standards then you would have problems or even not be able to access these file's data from different computers, specially if they don't have the same system set.

Our ubiquitous world relies and has been created around the Floss/Foss ethics even before they where defined. So the idea of restricting our access to how these technologies work at any level could damage our relationship with these technologies. The art group “Critical Art Ensemble”(CAE) describes this act of restriction in one of their essays, they said “The corporate futurologists talk of evolution, revolution, new horizons and global vision. Well, their global vision is blinding me. My computer has a program that counts my keystrokes. It watches me all the time, and tells me when I am not working hard enough. It's like the computer is my boss. Every time I leave my computer, I return to find a message “insufficient data entry” posted on the screen. What's really frightening is that I've actually begun to care. I hesitate to leave my workstation for any reason. I question, and even ignore, my own needs and desires, and instead concern myself with the demands of my computer.”

GNU Manifesto http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html

Free Software Definition http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Free Software Foundation http://www.fsf.org/

Critical Art Ensemble, 1996. Tactical Media. In: Alberro, A., 2009. Institutional Critique : an anthology of artists' writings, Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press. Pp 432-439

Intrinsic Motivation

All aspects of the Internet and the modern world is in a process of changing it's motivational. This motivational is in the process of change from a monetary motivation to intrinsic motivation. The original idea of how to motivate people was you increase the incentives and rewards and it will produce a greater out come and a more desirable out come. The idea of the carrot and the donkey, where the donkey only does something when it is bated. Through research at several respected universities e.g. MIT, have found that is doesn't always happen the way expected.

In a test where they got a group of people to preform a high cognitive task and give 1/3 of the group a small monetary incentive the next 1/3 a medium monetary incentive and the last 1/3 a large monetary incentive. They found that the group who had the smallest incentive produced the best out come and the group of people who had the greatest incentive produced the worse outcome. In further research they found out that if a task is above a low cognitive task the motivation of the person is different, the persons motivation is driven by autonomy, mastery and purpose.

The communities based around the Internet and Floss/foss are all based around intrinsic motivation. For where the individuals goal is to master new skill or to help out other people. A project which shows this is the openstreetmap. This is a global map which is completely generated by user's uploading and drawing the map features onto the system. During the Haiti disaster this community map was the most accurate map available which developed and changed as the situation changed on the ground, all because of the community around the world wanted to help. This helping was only possible because of different companies releasing data they had, on an open license. This data involved real time satellite images to up-to date disaster information. These factors made the openstreetmap of the country the most accurate map Haiti has ever had and is still being use by the country as their main map source. In the disaster it was also used by all the aid works on the ground because of the same reasons.

This is a video of the reaction on openstreetmap after the Haiti disaster, with every flash being the creation of a map object.

OpenStreetMap - Project Haiti from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

Pink, D,. 2010. RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watchv=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=youtube_gdata_player [Accessed November 15, 2010]

Tim Berners-Lee: The year open data went worldwide|Video on TED.com. Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/tim_berners_lee_the_year_open_data_ went_worldwide.html [Accessed November 15, 2010].

Social Sphere DIVA200

After the lesson I saw this on TEDtalks. It covers some of the idea's that where talked about during the lesson where interesting specially about our public space, social sphere area.

This is Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now TEDtalk goo.gl/H8Ejg 

Welcome

Welcome this is a blog dedicated to FLOSS/FOSS ethics within the culture. With special interest on how these idea’s can shape the art’s and other areas of our world.

This blog will be looking at all aspects of the Floss/Foss world from programs to theory and history. With all content created for this blog being licensed under the Creative Common Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0.