ANAT’s still/open emerging technology labs recently travelled across Australia in pursuit of open access to knowledge. The thinkers driving the quest were Alessandro Ludovico (Italy), Beatriz da Costa (USA), Andy Nicholson and Elliot Bledsoe (Aust).
Melbourne Workshop, image by ANAT
Stopping in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth (where it kicked off the BEAP festival), each visit began with a free public forum initiating dialogue that was developed in the following two-day workshop.
All presenters reflected on open source ideology in respect to their specialised fields. Under the banner of Andre Breton’s famous words, ‘one publishes to find comrades’, Alessandro Lucovico introduced participants to modes of collaboration and networking in respect to independent and online publishing. Alessandro drew on his invaluable experience of 14 years independent publishing of Neural: hactivism, digital culture and media arts. Encouraging participants to workshop an open source magazine, including questioning production models and distribution; Alessandro also delved into the printed verses online publication debate.
From pollution sensors to RFID (radio frequency ID) tagged cockroaches, Beatriz da Costa is best known for her work with groups Preemptive media and Critical Art Ensemble. Beatriz invited still/open workshop participants to take part in AIR (a preemptive media project), building pollution sensing devices that interact with online mapping programs to detail pollution levels in respect to time and place. Beatriz is well known for enlisting the assistance of plants and animals in environmental feedback systems, recently pigeon blog fitted pigeons with pollution sensors, blogging in real-time the readings of pollution from their environment. In a pilot for a new work, Beatriz enlisted still/open participants to grow and document ozone sensitive crops.
Brisbane workshop participants
Andy Nicholson, one of the architects behind the open source programming supporting the global active.org independent media network, spoke about his use of open source software to provide and open platform for political discussion and documentation. Andy introduced workshop participants to the newly developed www.plumi.org user generated content sharing site software and spoke about his involvement with the EngageMedia Collective.
The ARC Centre of Excellence for the creative industries and innovation and the Queensland University of Technology in conjunction with Creative Commons Australia were major partners of the still/open program. Elliot Bledsoe toured with the program, explaining the Creative Commons Australia licensing models and facilitating discussion around the uses and pitfalls of copyright in relation to creative objects.
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