Kunstfreiheit.ch

Perhaps the term author was the one to be re-contextualised the most yesterday. As we know free and open licenses are based upon copyright/author right. It therefore means that even in a free culture, the notion of author plays a key-role. As Laurence Rassel put it, it is a location from where we can strategically operate. Eberhard Ortland listed four reasons why he thought the author would not die, in his opinion. The first reason is economic. As long as artists make money with copyright. The second is political. Attributing a creation to an individual makes him/her responsible for this creation. The third is erotic. Authorship may give to anyone its fifteen minutes of sexyness. The fourth is a semantic reason. By attributing a same author to different creations we can trace an evolution, a genealogy. Wether these reasons are still valid in the present context was one of the main issue discussed. Gregers Petersens emphasized the difference between object-based and flow-based value systems. The latter tending to valuable relationships in a network. If the concept of authorship applies easily to the ownership of an object, it tends to be more difficult to apply to a set of relationships. Saul Albert gave an overview of how it might be possible to make a living without making property and achieving some form of independence from that network by doing away with copyright/copyleft and diversifying service-based markets for cultural practices.

Starting from her personal experience, Inke Arms proposed a reality-check. What happens when reapropriation comes from above? When institutions hack artists or curators? Can you afford to use the law against the institution with which you will have to work later? Can you sue the gallery on which you depend? Byte the hand that feed you? How useful is the system of author's right if you depend so strictly to one source of revenue?

Artists need free tools said Gisle FrOysland and Malte Steiner: to shape the tools they need, to avoid the homogeneisation of the artistic production, artists need to take part in their conception, testing, development. If Jacob Lillemose tried to emphasize that tools were also more than device to assist the production of an artwork, it looked yesterday that it was the primary need to be fulfilled. Harrisson and Pierre Huyghebaert, later in the day, reinforced this line of thought showing how the relationship between tools and the political context(the monopoly of Adobe over the graphic designer's toolbox) created the necessity for the creators to reharness their means of production.

Licenses are not enough to provide the conditions for a free culture. They rely on contexts and practices. Olivier Schulbaum and Ignacio Garcia explained how they used free licenses in their projects as a moment of self-reflection that helps the participants understand the collective organisation of a project. Most participants in the workshop yesterday considered licenses as ethic statements, an invitation, « this what I would like you to do with my work », rather than legal documents they didn't want to use in court. It was, indeed, reassuring to see that cultural and artistic projects wouldn't behave like little nation states using the threat of litigation to enforce their social agreements. But on the other hand, then, why to use a license to express such ethical values?

The discussion took a very depressive turn while coming to the subject of the collecting societies and the thousands ways artists can be sued for borrowing, using, sampling materials. Once again the question wasn't: is the law fair enough? But,well, who can afford a lawyer? Olivier Schulbaum stated that the free licenses were busy solving only the last bit of the problem: the consumption part. From her experience with the selection of movies released under Creative Commons, Meike Richter explained ways film-makers found money to support the creation of their movies. Via advertising, fund-raising, pre-orders. If these attempts were still exceptions, they suggest that new models for funding may arise. Simon Worthington's presentation of Mute's print-based publication service reinforced this idea. Mute's Print On Demand goes towards a network of collaborating re-mixers and spinners, augmented by smart open source software tools. In case of success, their business model would be some kind of proof of concept on a larger-than-subsistence scale.

Regularily during the discussions, the model of free and open source software and collaboration-based art production have been compared. Felix Stalder stressed the point that in free software projects, we could see hierarchies arise. They are accepted by developers since the quality of code and of coders is not too difficult to asssert. In the case of artists, it is nearly impossible to agree on what is the quality of a good artist or a good art project. This makes it difficult for art project to function similarily to collaborative projects in software. It favours nevertheless free transformative projects where each transformation leads to a new piece. The fear of artists of being lost in a collaborative project has been often evoked, Simon Yuill remarked, on the contrary, that in the free software world, participating to a project was a way to be visible, to put one's code in circulation under his/her own name rather than under the name of one's agency or corporation.

From these discussions, it is difficult to extract a list of recommendations, a blueprint or a clear conclusion. One must nevertheless recognise the extraordinary activity of people active in the field controversially called free culture and accept that for some time we will still have to live in the company of questions rather than certainties. This is why as the next step of the workshop, a Manifesto of open questions is proposed to all people interested in joigning the debate. To share your favourite questions about free and open licenses, join us on the mailing-list wos-workshop@soundwarez.org. Yesterday, an international group of artists, programmers and theoreticians met for a concentrated exchange of experiences within a workshop situation. The program of the day included a general discussion about terminology (esp. in regard to openness and freedom as derived from open source and free software and applied to arts and culture); it addressed questions of authorship (collaboration and distibutive practices as challenges for the art world); it discussed the role of free tools as better instruments for artistic creations and as mediators between the public and an esthetic experience; it tried to understand how the practices and the licenses mutually influenced one another, and finally demonstrated a new model of open publishing (print on demand) as well as an exploration of free tools in design and publishing during a final "printing party".

Making a summary of a day so full of ideas is a difficult task. It will be therefore partial and subjective. I must thank Saul Albert to have taken the time to help me doing it.

Cornelia introduced the workshop insisting on the fact that all the terminology we were using to speak about open and free culture was unstable and needed permanent redefinition. Perhaps the term author was the one to be re-contextualised the most yesterday.

As we know free and open licenses are based upon copyright/author right. It therefore means that even in a free culture, the notion of author plays a key-role. As Laurence Rassel put it, it is a location from where we can strategically operate. Eberhard Ortland listed four reasons why he thought the author would not die, in his opinion. The first reason is economic. As long as artists make money with copyright. The second is political. Attributing a creation to an individual makes him/her responsible for this creation. The third is erotic. Authorship may give to anyone its fifteen minutes of sexyness. The fourth is a semantic reason. By attributing a same author to different creations we can trace an evolution, a genealogy. Wether these reasons are still valid in the present context was one of the main issue discussed.

Gregers Petersens emphasized the difference between object-based and flow-based value systems. The latter tending to valuable relationships in a network. If the concept of authorship applies easily to the ownership of an object, it tends to be more difficult to apply to a set of relationships. Saul Albert gave an overview of how it might be possible to make a living without making property and achieving some form of independence from that network by doing away with copyright/copyleft and diversifying service-based markets for cultural practices.

Starting from her personal experience, Inke Arms proposed a reality-check. What happens when reapropriation comes from above? When institutions hack artists or curators? Can you afford to use the law against the institution with which you will have to work later? Can you sue the gallery on which you depend? Byte the hand that feed you? How useful is the system of author's right if you depend so strictly to one source of revenue?

Artists need free tools said Gisle FrOysland and Malte Steiner: to shape the tools they need, to avoid the homogeneisation of the artistic production, artists need to take part in their conception, testing, development. If Jacob Lillemose tried to emphasize that tools were also more than device to assist the production of an artwork, it looked yesterday that it was the primary need to be fulfilled. Harrisson and Pierre Huyghebaert, later in the day, reinforced this line of thought showing how the relationship between tools and the political context(the monopoly of Adobe over the graphic designer's toolbox) created the necessity for the creators to reharness their means of production.

Licenses are not enough to provide the conditions for a free culture. They rely on contexts and practices. Olivier Schulbaum and Ignacio Garcia explained how they used free licenses in their projects as a moment of self-reflection that helps the participants understand the collective organisation of a project. Most participants in the workshop yesterday considered licenses as ethic statements, an invitation, « this what I would like you to do with my work », rather than legal documents they didn't want to use in court. It was, indeed, reassuring to see that cultural and artistic projects wouldn't behave like little nation states using the threat of litigation to enforce their social agreements. But on the other hand, then, why to use a license to express such ethical values? The discussion took a very depressive turn while coming to the subject of the collecting societies and the thousands ways artists can be sued for borrowing, using, sampling materials. Once again the question wasn't: is the law fair enough? But,well, who can afford a lawyer? Olivier Schulbaum stated that the free licenses were busy solving only the last bit of the problem: the consumption part. From her experience with the selection of movies released under Creative Commons, Meike Richter explained ways film-makers found money to support the creation of their movies. Via advertising, fund-raising, pre-orders. If these attempts were still exceptions, they suggest that new models for funding may arise. Simon Worthington's presentation of Mute's print-based publication service reinforced this idea. Mute's Print On Demand goes towards a network of collaborating re-mixers and spinners, augmented by smart open source software tools. In case of success, their business model would be some kind of proof of concept on a larger-than-subsistence scale.
Regularily during the discussions, the model of free and open source software and collaboration-based art production have been compared. Felix Stalder stressed the point that in free software projects, we could see hierarchies arise. They are accepted by developers since the quality of code and of coders is not too difficult to asssert. In the case of artists, it is nearly impossible to agree on what is the quality of a good artist or a good art project. This makes it difficult for art project to function similarily to collaborative projects in software. It favours nevertheless free transformative projects where each transformation leads to a new piece. The fear of artists of being lost in a collaborative project has been often evoked, Simon Yuill remarked, on the contrary, that in the free software world, participating to a project was a way to be visible, to put one's code in circulation under his/her own name rather than under the name of one's agency or corporation.

From these discussions, it is difficult to extract a list of recommendations, a blueprint or a clear conclusion. One must nevertheless recognise the extraordinary activity of people active in the field controversially called free culture and accept that for some time we will still have to live in the company of questions rather than certainties. This is why as the next step of the workshop, a Manifesto of open questions is proposed to all people interested in joigning the debate. To share your favourite questions about free and open licenses, join us on the mailing-list wos-workshop@soundwarez.org.

text published under the free art license.