Category: Research

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Are We in LOVE with the Connectedness?

What is love? What makes you fall in love? A lot of people tell me that love is the connection. Having the connection gives the feeling of belonging to a particular person or group. Communication is probably the key to create the connection. Our ancestors created languages for better communication and invented methods and tools to help with communication including, pigeon post, letter, telegraph, satellite technology, and the Internet.

Hole in Space by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz  https://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/archive/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_participation/04_holeinspace.jpg

In 1980, memorable moments were made through satellite technologies. Two big screens were set up on the two sides the United States. People at New York and Los Angeles had their live broadcasting for the first time with strangers, friends, and the loved ones. There were several emotional connections between people who were 2789 miles apart. I realized how beautiful connection is when I did the research at the beginning of the experimental interaction class on this piece of performance art, Hole in Space by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz. I named it The Mother of Facetime.

According to John Durham Peters, broadcasting is a tool used for dissemination, which the main source is spread to one large audience without the exchange of dialogue in between. The audience only has the choices to listen, analyze or just ignore the information. Over time, the centralized one-to-many broadcasting seems to be replaced by the peer-to-peer interactions that join the artist and audiences in the third space.

For instance, the online Symposium, collaboration of the School of Art, Design & Media at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), LASALLE College of the Arts (Singapore), and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Performance (US). The three-day event from 29th to 31st March 2018, gathered international artists to share their artwork, thoughts and answered questions from the audience on Adobe Connect.

Thursday, Day 1 of the Symposium https://connect.ntu.edu.sg/p2hoimc6en3/

On the first day, Annie Abrahams, the Scienartist I researched on in my previous short essay, created a performance during the online Symposium. The performance connected a group of international artists who stay in different countries. It started with them reading their latencies with the black screen and the blue frame flashing. Annie Abrahams mentioned that she gave freedom to the performer, as she only gives rules and there is no directing. Annie Abrahams also commented that we know that the performers are not in the same space and time, yet we can still make something with entanglement between machine and people. In the following scene, artists showed different objects in the similar framing on their screen. We can see the connection and similarity in framing although those items were actually far apart in different countries.

Meanwhile, the conversation carried on in the chat room. Some were the clarifications of the performance from the hosts, some were questions, and some were just sharing thoughts. It seems to be outside of the performance but it somehow complimented it as the audience was able to connect and got to know others’ opinions. The decentralized and non-hierarchical modes of interaction gave the audience equal chance to connect with the artists and the other audience over the world.

Further, I had a mini experiment on the first day of the online Symposium. I decided not to join the chat room in the online Symposium, as I participated in Annie Abrahams’s online performance in my Experimental Interaction class organized by my professor Randall Packer. I would like to see the difference without participation. In the end, I found that I lost my interests and I actually felt excluded. My personal experience might not be enough to prove anything, but interaction is probably one of the keys to creating the connection in the “alternative social world”.

Day 2 of the Symposium https://connect.ntu.edu.sg/p64havp11a9/

Another example that created the connection is the game Uncle Roy All Around You by Blast Theory in 2003. During that period, online games were developed in new genres like social games, mobile games and etc. In this game, the online and street players collaborated to find Uncle Roy before being invited to make a commitment to a stranger. The street player held a mobile device that shows the real-time location and the online play could be able to see the street player and guide him or her to find uncle Roy. They communicated with each other via online text and audio messages. At the end of the game over 500 players out of 723 total players made a commitment to be there for another player for the next 12 months. Matt Adams shared with us on the second day of the online Symposium that this game gave people opportunity to play with the relationship that they might create. Some people treated it as a game while some think it was real and actually had commitments for over 12 months. How interesting that people could be connected easily in the third space.

https://assets.atlasobscura.com/media/W1siZiIsInVwbG9hZHMvYXNzZXRzLzk4YWMwYjkwMGZkYzM5NTI1YV8xNi4gTWVkaWEgQnVybiwgcGhvdG8gSm9obiBGLiBUdXJuZXIuSlBHIl0sWyJwIiwiY29udmVydCIsIi1xdWFsaXR5IDgxIC1hdXRvLW9yaWVudCJdLFsicCIsInRodW1iIiwiMTI4MHg-Il1d/16.%20Media%20Burn%2C%20photo%20John%20F.%20Turner.JPG

Numerous interesting artworks were made with the revolution of communication. Many memorable moments were captured. However, some said love without hate is not true love. Back in 1975, artists from Ant Farm expressed their attitude towards the mass media through Media Burn, a performance art that a Cadillac drove through a mountain of television. My research on that artwork made me questioned: Haven’t you ever wanted to put your foot through your mobile phone? Since our daily life seems to be dominated by our phone and the internet. We are so attracted to the connections and interactions we can easily make in the third space. Everything seems so lively yet not seems 100% real, as some treats it as games while some actually make commitments just like how people view the game Roy All Around You.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller

All in all, It is hard not to fall in love with someone or something you can connect with. It is hard to deny that the connection that interaction creates is beautiful and attractive. It is hard to change the reality that the third space is dominating our daily life. Many are obsessed with it, while some are against it. After going through the journey in Experimental Interaction class. I think the best solution so far of my own question “Haven’t you ever wanted to put your foot through your mobile phone?” is probably to build a new perspective to see the art of social practice. To see the beauty of connectedness we can build through those great human inventions.

References 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcasting

Gene Youngblood and the Unfinished Communications Revolution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_game#History

https://connect.ntu.edu.sg/p2hoimc6en3/

https://connect.ntu.edu.sg/p64havp11a9/

Live Art and Telematics: The Promise of Internationalism

Uncle Roy All Around You

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Research on the Scienartist’s Scienart Experiment

Abstract

This is a research on the Scienartist Annie Abrahams and one example of her scienartistic experiment called Angry Women. Scienartist (probably created by me) here refers to people who work with science and art. The experiment was set in the ‘third space’ and conducted with a group of female participates. I concluded my research with open questions. 

Research

We, human rely on tools and technology since the beginning of the humanity. We created the technology, technology also created our new identity. Sometimes, we tend to play the roles in our social media groups. For instance, when all your friends posting fancy food photos. Would you be tempted to go to an ‘instaworthy’ restaurant instead of street food that you are actually craving for?

Annie Abrahams, a Dutch performance artist. I will call her a scienartist in my research. Her artwork is focusing on video installations and internet-based performances. One of her work, Angry Women, gathered a group of women to express their true frustrations via webcam. Like a scientist, Annie Abrahams set up the ‘online lab’, listed down the ‘variables’, sat back and observe the changes of the of the ‘variables’. 

“When studying biology I had to observe a colony of monkeys in a zoo. I found this very interesting because I learned something about human communities by watching the apes. In a certain way I watch the internet with the same appetite and interest. I consider it to be a universe where I can observe some aspects of human attitudes and behaviour without interfering.” – Annie Abrahams 

The participants were screaming and probably complaining as I do not understand French. However, we can observe from their facial expressions that they are not showing the most representable sides of them. There is no fancy outfit, no camera filter, and no post-production because it is on the live broadcast.

Conclusion?

The participants were put in the #angrywoman community, where they unconsciously reveal their inner messy and vulnerable side. Those angry women are the performers of this live performance. Why is this performance seems to more realistic that our ‘daily social media life’. Who is performing? Those angry women or us? 

Bibliography
“Research Catalogue.” Research Catalogue – an International Database for Artistic Research. Accessed March 21, 2018. https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/18236/1823.

 

Abrahams, Annie. “Please Smile on Your Neighbour in the Morning.” Bio of Annie Abrahams. Accessed March 21, 2018. http://bram.org/info/aa.htm.

 

“ANGRY WOMEN.” Angry Women. Accessed March 21, 2018. http://www.bram.org/angry/women/.

 

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#life

Hasan Elahi, a Bangladeshi-born American interdisciplinary media artist born in 1972. He is currently working as an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland. His artworks focus on technology, media, issues of surveillance and etc. In 2002, he was added to the US government’s watch list, after The September 11 attacks. He flew back from the exhibition overseas and taken by the FBI at Detroit airport. The FBI went through six months of his calendar and asked every single detail of his life. Then he spent another 6 months being investigated by FBI. He called and emailed FBI to report all his trips. Eventually, it became his website created in 2003, called “Tracking Transience”.

On the website, there are collages of the food he cooked at home, flight records, the things he bought, cheap or expensive. and even the toilet bowl he used. The website also tracks his location. He uploads his life on his website every few moments. However, those images seem to be empty, for example, the empty airport, gas station and train station. He is showing us everything in his life yet not telling us who he really is. The information he shared on his website is real but somehow filtered according to what he wants us to see. Such as, the photos of the beds taken by him but we have no idea what exactly happened on those beds, or if he was there by himself or with someone else. It seems like he is still living an anomalous life.

Moreover, when I first visit the website, I was criticizing the accessibility of this website. In my opinion, it is a user-unfriendly website, and I was expecting a better website from an artist. Later, I found out that he actually did it on purpose. Everything is there but the viewers have to work through it. He is having the control of his own digital identity, controlling what we can see and how we are going to discover the information.

“The meaning of our lives is up to us to create!”  – D.E. WITTKOWER

Hasan Elahi’s website was created earlier than the launch of Facebook. On Facebook, to the certain extent, we are able to create our own digital identity. Our name, age, hometown, gender, and etc. We can choose to shows those information or not. Our digital friends might not be able to tell if the information one provides is real. We can choose what we want people to see. Similar to Hasan Elahi’s website, we are actually tracking ourselves on Facebook. Photos and texts of the things we did, our mood, our location, our digital social circle, and our responses to friends comments. If I ever happen to be investigated, I will probably say “JUST CHECK MY FACEBOOK” (Also because I have pretty bad memory).

“The things that happen on Facebook are really pretty meaningless. Not that they can’t have meaning, but simply that they don’t. Or, at least, they don’t until we get our collective hands on them.” – D.E. WITTKOWER

Furthermore, Facebook is meaningless without people, a lot of people. For instance, my own Facebook feed, full of different contents which are not created not only by myself but with friends. Does that sound like DIWO? It does, to me. Facebook started as a platform to communicate with friends, family and the loved ones. Eventually, it went beyond the boundary and transforming into a community with different kinds of small communities within. Nowadays, those are probably the communities that we are living at using our digital identities for the most of the time.

All in all, Hasan Elahi created his digital identity because of the incident. Today, we are creating our digital identities as we are living half of our lives in the digital world. Are our digital identities real? Does it really matter if it is real or fake? Well, leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

REFERENCES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan_M._Elahi#Faculty_positions

http://elahi.umd.edu/

http://elahi.umd.edu/track/

I share everything. Or do I?

 

* I cannot add any photo because of the HTTP error.

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Parodical or Commentary?

Media Burn https://assets.atlasobscura.com/media/W1siZiIsInVwbG9hZHMvYXNzZXRzLzk4YWMwYjkwMGZkYzM5NTI1YV8xNi4gTWVkaWEgQnVybiwgcGhvdG8gSm9obiBGLiBUdXJuZXIuSlBHIl0sWyJwIiwiY29udmVydCIsIi1xdWFsaXR5IDgxIC1hdXRvLW9yaWVudCJdLFsicCIsInRodW1iIiwiMTI4MHg-Il1d/16.%20Media%20Burn%2C%20photo%20John%20F.%20Turner.JPG

Ant Farm (1968-1078) was founded as an architecture, graphic arts, and environmental design company by Chip Lord and Doug Michels (1943-2003) in 1968. The group of adventurous artists and architects based in San Francisco identified themselves as part of the underground culture in the late sixties and seventies. That how the company name was made.

We wanted to be an architecture group that was more like a rock band. We were telling Sharon [a friend] that we would be doing underground architecture, like underground newspapers and underground movies, and she said, ‘Oh, you mean like an Ant Farm?’ and that’s all it took. It was very Ant Farm. The founding of the name was indicative of how Ant Farm worked: the right idea comes, everybody acknowledges it is the right idea and instantly adopts it.

— Doug Michels

 

http://img.over-blog.com/500×352/1/96/04/42/Perf.-2/Ant-Farm-Media-Burn-1975-1.jpg

Ant Farm’s artworks were experimental and against the existing system. In the 1960s, the society was transforming into the era of collectivism, connectivism and DIY culture, where sexual liberation, mind-altering drugs, and utopian ideals were embraced. Also, they were not only focusing on single discipline, and crossed the conventional boundary of art with the rise of new media and technologies in the 1960s.

 

 

Our professor Randall Packer hosted an interview in the third space with the co-founder of Ant Farm, Chip Lord. Media Burn is one of the examples that he shared during the interview. It is an exciting performance documented in the videotape, that consist the two American icons. One is the customizes 1959 Cadillac El Dorado Biarritz, and another is the television. This public performance was widely spread on news, and there was live audience, camera crew involved which was ‘using TV to destroy TV’, said that by Doug Michels. On July 4, 1975, Schreier and Michels, drove the Cadillac through the set of televisions at its full speed, ended with the flaming televisions.

 

However, the performance did not end with the burning televisions. Doug Hall, an American artist, presented as President John F. Kennedy, had a speech, addressed the issues with mass media.

 

“‘What has gone wrong with America is not a random visitation of fate. It is the result of forces that have assumed control of the American system…These forces are: militarism, monopoly, and the mass media…Mass media monopolies control people by their control of information… And who can deny that we are nation addicted to television and the constant flow of media? And not a few of us are frustrated by this addiction. Now I ask you, my fellow Americans: Haven’t you ever wanted to put your foot through your television screen?’”   

 

All in all, Media Burn was a piece that addressed the social issue using the most recognizable cultural icons: Cadillac and television. As the majority was addicted to television, and the mass media was having control over the audience. It seems to be the mobile phone and social media we have now. Media Burn, the “reality” that the artist create also brought up the question for us today: Haven’t you ever wanted to put your foot through your mobile phone?

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DArtWO – Make the World a Better Place

https://www.furtherfield.org/about-us/

Furtherfield is a non-profit organization and community that was found by Ruth Carlow and Marc Garrett in 1996. It was created to reach out a wider audience without the constraints of the physical gallery spaces at London. Furtherfield was a small website where the artist, technologist, and academics have the freedom to DIWO (DO IT WITH OTHERS) to share the resources and contribute to the human knowledge through the integration of first, second, third or multiple spaces. It was expanded around the world later on. Furtherfield also has physical space, the Gallery, and Lab in the London’s Finsbury Park. It is a platform in the urban park where people can explore the network culture.

Screenshot of the Adobe Connect Lecture With Marc Garrett

We had Marc Garrett to be our guest speaker on Adobe Connect lecture with our professor Randall Packer on 16th February 2018. Marc Garrett gave us a better insight of Furtherfield, Maker Culture, and shared with us some projects that are supported by Furtherfield. The major idea of Furtherfield is making art for a better society.

For example, an ongoing project supported by Furtherfield, called ‘Seeds From Elsewhere’ by They Are Here which gathering young asylum seekers and refugees, and others. Each of them has a piece of land to grow plants or food from their own homeland. This project is creating an environment that embraces, maintains and produce the diversity of the residency status in the current society. Further, this project started less than a month after Brexit, when the majorities are against migrants in the UK. ‘Seeds From Elsewhere’ is demonstrating that the DIWO culture should not just exist in the small garden community, yet it applies to all scales of activities even beyond the scale of the government. The garden itself has multiple functions. Firstly, it could be a comfortable place for the young refugees to hang out. Secondly, it might provide job opportunities in the future. Lastly, it could be used to address anti-immigration.

“The parallels in the rhetoric surrounding foreign plants and those of foreign peoples are striking … The first parallel is that aliens are ‘other’ … Second is the idea that aliens / exotic plants are everywhere, taking over everything … The third parallel is the suggestion that they are growing in strength and number … The fourth parallel is that aliens are difficult to destroy and will persist because they can withstand extreme situations … The fifth parallel is that aliens are ‘aggressive predators and pests and are prolific in nature, reproducing rapidly’ … Finally, like human immigrants, the greatest focus is on their economic costs because it is believed that they consume resources and return nothing.”  – The latter quotes biologist Banu Subramniam, noting that these criteria ‘resonate unfortunately with xenophobic anti-immigration language in the United States and Europe’

 

HARVEST by Julian Oliver https://julianoliver.com/output/harvest

Moreover, another artwork that Marc Garrett shared with us is HARVEST by Julian Oliver, a work of critical engineering and computational climate art. The two-meter high wind turbine transforms wind energy into the electricity required to meet the demanding task of Zcash, A decentralized and open-source digital currency. All the profits the HARVEST earned goes to the non-profit climate change research organizations to support the studies. In 2017, HARVEST was exhibited for two months in the museum. It supported three non-profit climate change research organizations at the end of the exhibition.

Last but not least, the Adobe Connect lecture ended with the Q&A session with Marc Garrett. As an art student living in the 21st century, I was not sure if my role is simply creating the painting, sculpture, and objects that are aesthetically appealing to the viewers or there are more responsibilities on my shoulders. Therefore, I asked the following question:

Marc Garrett answered that the consciousness of the environment is essential for artists. Technology is deeply influencing people’s behaviour nowadays, yet we must be aware of nature. As technology cannot survive without the survival of nature. Randall Packer added on that artist should be engaged with the society, connect with the issue, and invest in the process of working with others like what Furtherfield had done. Such as the ‘Seeds From Elsewhere’ project mentioned earlier. All in all, the role of artists is not just making this world more beautiful tangibly but probably a place where we can live with others peacefully.

 

REFERENCES

https://julianoliver.com/output/harvest

Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, Do It With Others (DIWO): Participatory Media in the Furtherfield Neighbourhood

 

 

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The World’s First Collaborative Sentence 1994 – Pioneer of The Multiple Authorship

These screenshots show the historic version of the Sentence viewed through an early version of the Netscape browser http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/Artport/DouglasDavis#206-11

Douglas Davis, the creator of one of the earliest artwork on the world wide web, The World’s First Collaborative Sentence 1994. It allows everyone to contribute words, video, photographs, sounds and etc. to this long sentence in the collective third space. It was commissioned by the Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, N.Y. and The City University of New York, with the assistance of Gary Welz, Robert Schneider, and Susan Hoeltzel. Up to date, there are two versions of the sentence. One is the historical version and another is open to new contributions.

Screenshot of the website when I was contributing to the sentence http://artport.whitney.org/collection/DouglasDavis/live/writesentence.html#contribute

The sentences added are various, as it had been edited for a lot of time by Anonym. I contributed to the new version of the sentence that came to my mind when I was doing the research (screenshots above). I am now part of this collective artwork. So there is the question, who is the author of this online artwork? According to the essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (An Evolving Thesis: 1991-1995) by Douglas Davis, this is the first artwork that is multiple in authorship. It also has unconventional time-scales, since it can be edited anytime.

The free language learning platform
https://cdn.makeuseof.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Duolingo-logo-994×400.jpg

Another example of online collaboration project is called Duolingo, a free language learning platform with 200 million users. It seems to be an ordinary language learning app. However, collaboration is happening seamlessly. The users are actually translating the web while simultaneously learning a language. It extremely costly to employ professionals to translate the webpage, and computer translation is not accurate sometimes. Duolingo collects and combines the different versions of the translations to obtain the most accurate result. Translating English Wikipedia to Spanish would take only 80 hours with 1 million users. Moreover, this platform is free for both the users and web translation. Thus, this online collaboration seems to form a common thread among peers.

In reviewing the histories of artists and technologists engaged in open source ways of working and thinking in the digital age—despite the corporate influence of technology companies, social media, and big data—it appears there is a compelling path toward open, non-hierarchical approaches to peer-to-peer cultural production.

                                                                                                               – Randall Packer

All in all, The World’s First Collaborative Sentence and Duolingo do have something in common that they gathered the “puzzles” around the world to create the piece of work, which is probably impossible to achieve by an individual. It seems that the online collaborations are efficiently creating incredible artwork, and contributing to the human knowledge.

 

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Davis_(artist)

http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/Artport/DouglasDavis

https://cdn.makeuseof.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Duolingo-logo-994×400.jpg

https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/17s2-dn1010-tut-g05/wp-content/uploads/sites/2251/2018/01/Open-Source-Studio_Randall-Packer.pdf

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The Mother of Facetime

On a November evening in 1980, a remarkable performance art, Hole in Space was held on the two sides the United States. Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz had their two life-sized screens installed at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City and the department store at the open-air Shopping Center in Los Angeles. The audience at Los Angeles and New York City could see and speak to each other through satellite technologies. The audience was extremely excited to interact with people across the state. As it was not easy to travel 2789 miles (est. from east to west in the United States around the 1980s. Even now, it will take estimated 5 hours to travel from Los Angeles to New York City by air. Also, video call was only common for consumers in the early 2000s.

The travel distance between Los Angeles and New York City https://www.google.com.sg/maps/dir/New+York,+NY,+USA/Los+Angeles,+CA,+USA/@36.349707,-114.2788323,4z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c24fa5d33f083b:0xc80b8f06e177fe62!2m2!1d-74.0059728!2d40.7127753!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2c75ddc27da13:0xe22fdf6f254608f4!2m2!1d-118.2436849!2d34.0522342

On the first day of the performance, the audience was unsure about what was going on with no instruction or signs were provided. They started to interact with strangers on the screen to clarify their thoughts. Interestingly, from 04:50 in the video above. We can see the change in audience’s body language that they moved closer to the screen. They were trying to imitate the physical interaction, and chatting casually with each other, although they might be complete strangers. A middle age male audience even questioned the interviewer if the people he saw on the screen are actors.

On the second day, the audience went to the installation to participate in the performance through the word of mouth. A male audience wearing sunglasses declared that he heard it from his friend. I think this performance art had encouraged the interaction beyond the performance to the certain extent. On the last day, most people decided to come after mass media announcement to meet their friends, family and loved ones, just like how we Facetime our friends nowadays. The reaction of the audience likely reached the climax of the whole performance. They were laughing, screaming, and shouting at each other. You can see the audience jumping and kneeling on the floor to express their excitement near the end of the video attached.

In my opinion, this performance art is a success, as it encouraged audience engagement. Where the audience were fully involved in this piece. The setting of the performance is the key to encourage people to be interested in participating.

“The sculpture gives form to a social space that is at once displaced and intimate. People are enthusiastic to make contact with others in a much more uninhibited manner than could be found in the normal urban environs of New York or LA.”

Firstly, there is no description and instruction which created curiosity among the audience. Secondly, the performance was held in the public space with its life-sized scale screen to attract attention. Lastly, it was able to create emotions, such as happiness and excitement when the parents saw their daughter on the screen (from 10:25 in the video). The artist’s’ role here is to create the space for the audience to participate in the performance instead of letting the audience watching the artists chatting using satellite technologies. Last but not least, this performance was probably erasing the geographical boundaries, and pulling people closer, even strangers through the “third place”.

References 

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/hole-in-space/

http://www.ecafe.com/museum/history/ksoverview2.html

The Third Space

Foth, Marcus. 2012. From Social Butterfly To Engaged Citizen. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

 

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WEEK 1 ASSIGNMENT – LETTUCE DO IT TOGETHER

ASSIGNMENT 

Read this essay and reference in the writing assignment below:

(1) Vaidhyanathan, Sida (2005) “Open Source as Culture-Culture as Open Source,” The Social Media Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2012

(2) Packer, Randall, Open Source Studio, IEEE Spectrum, 2015

SUMMARY 

PHYSICAL SOURCES VS. ONLINE SOURCES
http://www.smead.com/images/product/n400/64096_W5.jpg
http://campbellpropertymanagement.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Cloud.png

The tradition creation and production of art had transformed from physical space to cyberspace. The world we are living today is connected to the internet, and our lives are involved with all kinds of social interaction including art and education. This phenomenon could probably be traced back to the 1960s and 1970s when personal computers, networked computing and graphical user interface (GUI) were invented. The boundaries between art and science started blurring, due to the rapid development of the Internet. Artists and designers were able to artists and designers to collaborate globally. In the mid-1990s, open source studio (OSS) was first used cooperatively with browsers that are non-profited or with limited profit sharing.

NTU School of Art, Design, and Media Open Source Studio

Further, OSS has been used at NTU School of Art, Design, and Media after professor Randall Packer joined. This platform allows ADM students to share ideas, techniques, and aspirations. Students are no longer constrained by the physical arrangement of the classes. A project is not a singular task of individuals. Instead, this network encourages collaboration (DIWO) and experimentation. Students are free to appreciate, comment and share each other’s works.

However, OSS is facing the challenge of the current situation where some artworks are only exhibited with profit-driven organizations. Therefore, some artworks are only able to reach a limited amount of audience which is probably restricting the creativity and productivity. In addition, there is conflict between OSS and proprietary model. According to Richard Adkisson, the belief in high levels of intellectual-property might control over the creative process, as creator might not allow accessing certain sources legitimately for innovation.

All in all, open source studio is beneficial for the art and education. It is because it allows artist, student, and educators to share information and create collaboration opportunities in the cyberspace. However, the profit-driven market and proprietary model seem to go against OSS, as the result of limiting the creative process.

 

REFERENCE 

Vaidhyanathan, Sida (2005) “Open Source as Culture-Culture as Open Source,” The Social Media Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2012

Packer, Randall, Open Source Studio, IEEE Spectrum, 2015