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:

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.

• involved courses and teachers

SLC – Nanna van Heest
Graphic Design – Renate Boere , Marjolein Vermeulen, Roger Teeuwen
Typography – Jan Willem Stas
Crosslab – Jannetje in 't Veld, Gabriëlle Marks
Text – Bart Siebelink
Design Research – Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, Lauran Schijvens, Amy Wu
Alg.Theorie – Mariet Bakker
Hoofddocent: Aymeric Mansoux

• possible topics

– FLOSS in graphic design: tools and platforms, alternative workflows, prototyping, pipelining, release early release often, hacking, command line interfaces, scripting, programming.
This group could explore graphic design through novel software and methodologies.

– Facets of free culture: remix culture (http://www.everythingisaremix.info), copypasta culture (http://www.tedxamsterdam.com/2011/close-up-on-culture-copy-paste-culture), Creative Commons, Open Knowledge Foundation, Freedom defined, template culture, free content, open access, piracy, freemium, participatory culture (amateur vs professional).
This group could explore and try to make sense of the different meaning and implication of a free culture.

– The WdKA graphic design open library: free content, free culture licenses, communities, appropriation, networked platforms.
This group could kickstart a public repository of digital assets for other students to re-use, as part of this project but also hopefully as repository that will live after the project as well.

• possible outcomes

wiki, mapping, several versions, remixes, branches and forks of visual identity, manifesto, tool, a free culture license, exhibition/presention/publication

• 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 and Gabrielle?)
• mapping of the ecology of free culture specifically in the context of the (graphic) design field – tools, platforms and resources, licenses, notions of value? (Design Research)
• several versions, remixes, branches and forks of visual identity for the event, manifested in various media and channels : print, digital, audio-visual, spatial (Graphic Design, Typography)
–note from Aymeric: ...students should not independently reinvent the wheel and start from scratch but use each others work to build their own and inject the outcome back of into the work of other students. • manifesto for instance on participatory culture (Text) – zie: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_culture
• a tool (could be instructions, guide, system) that enables the realisation of a visual genealogy of the whole project showing up which element was taken from who and used for what, etc.(Crosslab)
• everything created during the project is released under a free culture license so that it can be reused by others • an exhibition/presention/publication at the end of the quarter - also (like Worm in oct/nov)a warm-up to the event? • students and staff present the project during the final event in December 2013

• possible guests

http://lgru.net/
Femke Snelting (Constant)
http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/about
OSP (Open Source Publishing) is a graphic design collective that uses only Free, Libre and Open Source Software. Closely affiliated with the Brussels based foundation for art and media Constant, OSP aims to test the possibilities and realities of doing design, illustration, cartography and typography using a range of F/LOSS tools.

LAFKON
suggestion: for a lecture, showcase of tools and methodology

MANUFACTURA INDEPENDENTE (PT)
http://blog.manufacturaindependente.org/about/
suggestion: for a workshop

restruct
Timo Klok en Michael van Schaik
http://www.restruct-web.nl/

• manifestos

http://opendesignnow.org/index.php/visual_index/manifestos/ (Text)
http://www.designwritingresearch.org/free_fonts.html (Typography)

• 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

FLOSSOFIA
http://vimeo.com/33207474

LIWOLI 09 report
http://www.servus.at/liwoli09/video-doku/liwoli09_doku-640x480.ogv

Video archives of make art 2010 “in between design” Some cherry picking on some topics could be relevant:
http://makeart.goto10.org/2010/?page=video&lang=en

• some texts

The Meme Hustler, Evgeny Morozov
http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler/print
(...) "it’s easy to forget this today, but there was no such idea as open source software before 1998; the concept’s seeming contemporary coherence is the result of clever manipulation and marketing. Open source software was born out of an ideological cleavage between two groups that, at least before 1998, had been traditionally lumped together."

Tools to fight boredom (On creativity and FLOSS)
http://pi.kuri.mu/tools-to-fight-boredom/

Rock, Paper, Scissors and Floppy Disks (On FLOSS and archiving)
http://pi.kuri.mu/rock/

Chapter: Appropriation and Type
Chapter: The Shrink-Wrapped Design Process
in FLOSS+Art http://flossart.randomlab.net/pdf/FLOSS%2BArt.pdf

My Lawyer is an Artist(Free culture licenses as art manifestos)
http://su.kuri.mu/2011/my-lawyer-is-an-artist/

Art Beyond Free Culture (Classification of free cultural expressions + Check book project called Fibre Libre)
http://dpi.studioxx.org/demo/?q=fr/node/304

Towards a Free/Libre and Open Source University (General overview of FLOSS in art and design academies)
http://www.furtherfield.org/features/articles/towards-free-libre-open-source-university

Collaborative development (A bit dated but still good overview of collaborative practices within FLOSS)
http://www.digitalartistshandbook.org/?q=node/9#note_55

Preface that Aymeric and Marloes de Valk co-wrote for the FLOSS+Art book that they co-edited in 2008:
http://web.archive.org/web/20121108083958/http://people.makeart.goto10.org/preface.html

From: Free Culture HOW BIG MEDIA USES TECHNOLOGY AND THE LAW TO LOCK DOWN CULTURE AND CONTROL CREATIVITY, Lawrence Lessig, The Penguin Press, 2004
A free culture supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by granting intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limiting the reach of those rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain as free as possible from the control of the past. A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a “permission culture”—a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past.
– http://www.free-culture.cc/

Free. Hoe het nieuwe Gratis de markt radicaal verandert, Chris Anderson, 2009
Gratis betekent niet altijd ‘voor niets’. Soms is het een derde partij die de rekening betaalt, zoals de talloze websites op het internet die van reclame leven terwijl de bezoeker geen factuur krijgt voorgeschoteld. Verder wordt de kostprijs van digitale activiteiten steeds goedkoper. Free gaat ook in op de gift economy, een model waarbij mensen bereid zijn gratis een bijdrage te leveren in ruil voor reputatie, zelfexpressie en naamsbekendheid, zoals Wikipedia.
Gratis te downloaden hier http://lifehacking.nl/gratis-downloads/?did=6].

Guide to open content licenses - Lawrence Liang, 2004
This is the first systematic survey of the major open content licenses. Presented in a handy pocket-format it is designed both for non-specialists want to choose an appropriate use of copyright and for people who want solid background information. Whether you are an artist, a peer-to-peer file sharer, or author of scientific papers the Guide to Open Content Licenses will provide you with an invaluable oversight and a how-to guide.
_ http://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CD8QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdigital-rights.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fbooks%2Focl_v1.2.pdf&ei=QzhfUeS6JIWB4gS4u4GQBg&usg=AFQjCNF9rUreOQBpyUlY8E8PZkJKtmgIIg&sig2=95_nkbO5BkOkqGDaZEOQRg&bvm=bv.44770516,d.bGE

From: In praise of Copying, Marcus Boon, Harvard University Press, 2010
In his recent book Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig writes a manifesto for a free culture that seems strangely divergent from the practice of freedom as we know it on the Internet today. This divergence occurs because, when we use the term “free culture,” we are doing more than merely trying to define a space in which certain creative uses of intellectual property are legitimated. The free culture that really interests us is the one described by a character in the remarkable science-fiction novel Roadside Picnic, by the Russian Communist-era writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: “Happiness for everybody! . . .Free! As much as you want! . . . Everybody come here! . . . There’s enough for everybody! . . .Nobody will leave unsatisfied! . . . Free! . . .Happiness! . . . Free!”3 What appears to be on offer on the Internet, what fuels its imaginal space, is the utopia of an infinite amount of stuff, material or not, all to be had for the sharing, downloading, and enjoying. For free. And this too is Copia’s domain, which can still be accessed today through “copying.”
– http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/boon/In-Praise-of-Copying-by-Marcus-Boon-HUP-free-full-text.pdf

From: The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap, Seth Godins' blog – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/06/discovery-free-145.html
There's a growing disconnect between making something worthwhile and getting paid for it. The digital artifact is heading toward free faster and faster, and the inevitable leap to a paid version of the same item is going to get more difficult. Creators don't have to like it, but free culture is here and it's getting more pervasive. The brutal economics of discovery combined with no marginal cost create a relentless path toward free, which deepens the gap. Going forward, many things that can be free, will be.

• planning

	activity	whom
week 14	start-up tekst eerste brainstorm & planning 4 april	Gabrielle Renate, Marjolein, Gabrielle
week 15	communique naar alle deelnemende docenten	Renate, Marjolein, Gabrielle
week 16
week 17
week 18
week 19	kick-off kwartaal: maandag 6 mei?	Renate, Marjolein, Gabrielle, Roger, JW, ?
week 20
week 21	tussenpresentatie: dinsdag 21 mei?	Renate, Marjolein, Gabrielle, Roger, Bart, ?
week 22
week 23
week 24
week 25	eindpresentatie: vrijdag 21 juni?	allen