FREE CULTURE & THE CULTURE OF "FREE"

A 4th Quarter Project – 2nd Year Graphic Design Department, Willem de Kooning Academy, 2013

introduction

In order to explore ways of organising projectbased education, and defining roles therein for ourselves and eachother as teachers and projectleaders, the assignments given in Q4 will all revolve around a common theme: Free Culture.

This theme has been suggested to the Graphic Design Department by Aymeric Mansoux, currently hoofddocent, and co-organiser of an international public event on free culture that will take place in December 2013:

The event is produced within the framework of a European and public project and organized by Kennisland in collaboration with various local and international partners. It is an extensive public program for various audiences around the topic of Free Culture, that is a culture which principle is based on the freely sharing and reuse of cultural expressions in all artistic and design disciplines and genres.

The main program is happening early December 2013 across the whole Tolhuistuin, a brand new cultural venue in Amsterdam which operates itself as a platform for several creative disciplines and as a structure to connect local and international cultural activities.

Aymerics' direct and concrete request is for the Graphic Design students to develop a visual identity and communication strategy for this event. It would be however too narrow an approach to the topic to limit ourselves only to this task. Therefor I suggest the following project title:

Free Culture & the Culture of "Free"

The questions that the term Free Culture raise bear relevance to the current and future practice of a young designer. This quarter can be used to explore methods and meaning of remixing and copying, using open source tools and free content, mapping the ecology of "free" and sharing (including copyright and copyleft), and reflecting on the notion of value in other than monetary terms

possible topics

• remix culture – rip mix burn
http://www.everythingisaremix.info/
• copy(paste)culture
http://www.tedxamsterdam.com/2011/close-up-on-culture-copy-paste-culture/
• creative commons/copyleft
• "amateur" culture vs "professional"
(democratization of tools and media > effects the role of the professional designer)
• open source tools and platforms (F/LOSS)
• template culture
• free content : archives – video, image, texts / data / essays, academic articles, news, literature,
• …

possible outcomes

• wiki containing documentation of process and outcomes various assignments, and including reflections on free culture and the culture of free (edited and maintained by Text)
• mapping of free culture tools, platforms and resources for the graphic designer – possibly in relation to the non-free culture designer tools (Design Research)
• x-amount of versions of visual identity for event, manifested in various media and channels : print, digital, audio-visual, spatial (Graphic Design, Typography)
• designing a value currency for "free" applying only free culture tools in the design process – and yes I get the irony of using a currency for "free" (Crosslab)
• remixes
• …

stuff to watch

Copy (right and left)
http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/
http://www.ted.com/talks/lessig_nyed.html?quote=736

A Fair(y) Use Tale:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

http://oliverlaric.com/vvversions.htm
http://oliverlaric.com/versions2012.htm

Oliver Laric’s ongoing Versions (2009-2012) reflects the conditions of our digital world: how original and copy, thing and thought, event and document, are collapsed in a flattened information space where everything is a click away from everything else. Laric’s sculptural and online-based practice—including the website VVork—addresses how information networks afford new logical, epistemic, and affective patterns of experience and understanding. Described by the artist as "a series of sculptures, airbrushed images of missiles, a talk, a PDF, a song, a novel, a recipe, a play, a dance routine, a feature film and merchandise," Versions confronts the mutability and variation of images.

Laric’s work evinces how images and objects are continually modified to represent something new, from Roman copies of Greek sculptures, to doctored and augmented images, remixes, and gifs. The differing versions of Versions themselves address this ongoing history of iconoclasm and copyright. Laric’s exploration of the nature of images and objects in digital space reveals the internet as not merely a space of representation, but of direct experience, as the real world is increasingly mediated by screens, and knowledge is replaced by searching.

remix
http://www.ted.com/talks/kirby_ferguson_embrace_the_remix.html
http://ripremix.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/video/2012/07/31/opinion/100000001695225/allergy-to-originality.html