[ox-en] Re: Report on KLab9 workshop
- From: colourschool <kristina colourschool.org>
- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 08:58:59 -0700
Dear Stefan and Co,
Many thanks for the note.
Just wanted to respond to your summary of the workshop and provide
some more information if it is at all helpful.
I do hope so.
RHIZOMES
I realize that your group has come up with this model of the onion
skin, but I would like to propose that you think about another, very
well established model of cultural, social, political, and economic
formation in the information age, which is the rhizome (or root
vegetable such as a potato). This form is theorized by the
psychoanalytical/philosophical theorists Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari in the book *A Thousand Plateaus* written in 1980.
I propose this text to you because in the context of critical theory,
which is really what I would like to see the open software movement
read (rather than about art per se). This work is a foundational
text in thinking about the organization of the world in an age of
information technology and globalization, which is the era in which
we all live and must contend with if we are to situate our work
properly. The book itself I would argue is an "artwork" in that it
rejects traditional forms of knowledge transmission (in the form and
organization of the book) in order to communicate the idea of the
rhizome. It seems to anticipate in some ways the language of
hypertext and of nonlinear narrative and communication in a way that
is not literature, but philosophy. I will warn you that this is a
very difficult text for some (It took me a few years and couple of
tried to really get it, but once I did, I think it blew my mind).
Perhaps reading materials about this book would be more helpful to
you in order to get a summary of what these men were saying -- Here
is the wiki link, but it has very limited info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thousand_Plateaus
Here is a summary about the rhizome:
http://www.ensemble.va.com.au/enslogic/text/smn_lct08.htm
and another:
http://thetransitioner.org/wen/tiki-index.php?page=Rhizome
If you do a search on the concept of the rhizome online you will find
a lot of information.
Interestingly, there is a website called http://rhizome.org/
which looks at the relationships between art and technology.
I think would be a good place to start developing a common language,
which I suggested at KLab9.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES
Most importantly though, I think that what every person working in
science and technology needs to know is how they belong to history.
There have been technological and informational revolutions in the
past and they have reflected and catalyzed certain changes.
I want to make it clear though that there is not necessarily a simple
cause and effect situation between science/technology and culture,
but rather a more complicated relationship between segments and
phenomena in society (all of them). In the US, there is an academic
field called Science and Technology Studies or the History of Science
that studies these relationships and that helps scientists and
technologists to understand that what they study, how they study, and
what is then done with their research is all conditioned by their
moment in history -- we are all part of intersecting interests,
structures, ideas, politics, etc... and we must understand them so as
not to become instruments toward certain ends that we never wished to
see realized. This would have been the case for those working on
nuclear physics (such as the Chicago group[171 scientists] of the
Manhattan Project) who regretted their whole lives how their work
aided the destruction of Japanese citizens via nuclear bombs in WW2.
OPEN COURSEWARE
I thought I'd share a good place to get such information, which is
MIT's open courseware classroom, which provides all the readings
their students are doing. Here is a link to their courses on Science
and Technology Studies;
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/
index.htm#ScienceTechnologyandSociety
ETHICS/POLITICS
Finally, I'd like to say that the reason I brought up form versus
content as something to think about is because mostly what open
software does is to build a form (of software) collectively. How
that form gets used is not necessarily your concern it seems, but I
ask you to think about what that means in terms of ethics. If your
collectively constructed form of software is used for building
weapons or for spying on people or who knows what else, then it seems
to me that you need to have a discussion on how ethically you want to
make this work available -- what kinds of limitations should you
place and what kind of use can these forms have? I don't think
personally it is a good idea to release the form you created for any
use. History shows us that inventions have been an accessory to all
kinds of nefarious activities in addition to activities that are
useful or beneficial. I just want you to know that with each
technological invention capitalism has not been overcome as you may
hope this new stage will do -- but rather it becomes subject to many
uses not all of them beneficial, and more often than not new
technologies often allow for different kinds of accumulation of
capital that did not exist before -- meaning new kinds of imbalances
in resources too where some will have more and more and other less
and less.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have written 2 books on our age and
politics and capitalism. These are theoretical texts that you may
find interesting --
*Empire* and *Multitude*
And also Alexander Galloway's *Protocol: How Control Exists After
Decentralization* should also be helpful in terms of thinking about
how control can work in today's world.
Well, that's my long winded response for now.
Thanks,
Kristina
On Oct 7, 2007, at 12:07 PM, Stefan Merten wrote:
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Hi Oekonuxis!
I'm just returning home from Lancaster and thought I'd tell you a bit
about the workshop
Free Software and art - Similarities and differences
Raoul and I did on the KLab9 event yesterday.
The workshop went very well and after our presentation we had an
interesting discussions among all participants. Though the slides
[http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/StefanMerten/KLab9Worksheet/Slides] were
packed with information I had the impression we were able to give at
least an idea of what Oekonux is about and raised quite a lot of
interest. May be some of the participants will show up here on the
list - which I'd welcome very much.
We were also able to pose a lot of questions which most of them are on
the slides. We got little answers during the workshop but after
thinking again it would probably have been expected too much to get
substantial results in this rather ad-hoc setting.
However, we have the Internet and especially this mailing list here to
continue what seems to me like an interesting research project for
Oekonux. Indeed I think there are some interesting links between Free
Software and art and if in Oekonux some think culture is the next
onionskin in the onionskin model it certainly makes sense to look at
these links - and also at the differences. If we do well we may end up
in better explanations why some things work and others don't.
That's also the reason why I'm cross-posting this to Kristina (a
participant) and Amy and Ana (the organizers). @Amy / Ana: Feel free
to forward this to you mailing list (though further discussion should
be done on the Oekonux mailing list).
In particular Kristina made a couple of interesting remarks which I
think could help research. For instance she remarked that there are
different intellectual histories in the art scene and the Free
Software (also political?) scene. Probably true but I'd really like to
learn more about this.
She also said that it would be useful to try to develop some common
language so artists and engineers / political people at least know
what each other is talking about. Certainly something useful because
for instance the distinction between form and content as Kristina used
it seemed rather different to my understanding of this distinction.
Finally she suggested to agree on a list of ten books about art to
suggest to interested persons to read. Well, I'd probably have a hard
time reading even one ;-) so I'd prefer id such a list should probably
prioritized or at least commented. @Kristina: Can you produce such a
list?
In any case I'm ready to document results of such research in the
section of the Oekonux Wiki under
http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/Research/FreeSoftwareAndArt
I started by posing all the questions there.
Grüße
Stefan
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