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Locale: Zine Process & Final

The second part of this project is to create a zine.

After my visual presentation, I received positive feedback about my site’s unique feature :

The only colonial estate in Singapore that has an art community living amongst a residential and not for commercial purposes.

THOUGHT PROCESS

Initially, I had difficulties coming up with a concept that will have enough content to spread across an eight-page zine. I was worried that my concept will be too simple, too predictable or nothing special.

concept

Based on my experience at Wessex estate and what I’ve gathered about the community, I really think that the community is special because of elements such as the B&W colonial buildings, the friendly people, the growing art community and the serenity of the entire estate.

 

flow of zine

The zine sort of takes readers into the estate and view the different elements that make the community in Wessex and then takes them out of it but now taking away a little something knowing that it is a estate that is still growing.

mark-making

In addition to my concept explained above, I also wanted to include mark-making or items from the wessex into my zine. Mark-making will sort of allow a co-creation between the the physical site, the humans at the estate and myself. This further highlights the creative community of Wessex.

For my mark-making, I was thought that using leaves will be a good way to represent the estate as some interviewees said that the trees and the greenery is what makes the estate special to them (and they can also be found easily hahaha).

According to the flow of the zine state above, my zine is almost split into 3 sections. Thus, I will be treating the leaves that I have picked from the floor at Wessex Estate in 3 different ways – each way to reflect the same meaning as the page it is on.

I wanted this mark-making to reflect the the constant and thus, what I initially wanted was the get the skeleton of the leaves. However, that didn’t work out despite soaking the leaves in washing soda for more than 2 hours. But it did still make the leaves more translucent. So to get a more x-ray effect on these leaves, I placed them on a lamp so that light will can be seen through it.

Afterwards, I added a B&W filter to make it go more in line with the colour of the colonial buildings.

The second mark-making is supposed to reflect the art and creative community of Wessex. I picked fallen leaves from around the estate and walked around and approached people to help me imprint the leaves wherever they like on a piece of A3 size paper. Some things I asked them to think about when imprinting are the community, the environment in wessex and how it makes them feel.

This was honestly such a tough task as I was afraid of being rejected by people. This definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone as I did get rejected a few times and I’m definitely not the most extroverted person. However, I’m glad I plucked up my courage and did this because it also helped me realise how those that helped me also had a thing for arts and they were more than happy to help me with this. Some even commented that they like doing arts and crafts at home too! This just shows how this estate is really growing into a creative community 🙂

For the third mark-making, I gathered the leaves used to imprint and took photos of them so that I can crop them out digitally. These painted leaves also became an art piece on their own. I also picked up the some painted colour that I found in one of the artist studio that I visited. I hoped for these leaves to reflect the future of the estate and how vibrant the estate is with its growing arts enclave within a residential area. There is so much room for this estate to grow despite the long history it already has.

process

I started with the inside spreads before designing the covers. These pages went through many rounds of shifting and amendments before finally reaching the final outcome.

*Incorporated mark-making 1.

I wanted the inside front cover to sort of illustrate how I felt when I travel to Wessex. A long road is covered in abundance of leaves and you suddenly realise there are much tall buildings around you unlike other parts of SG. After a few bus stops, a few colonial buildings start to appear, their iconic B&W really catching your eyes and attention. For me the 3 most iconic elements of the colonial buildings at Wessex are the B&W blinds, the round windows and the doors of the apartment blocks. I figured that I will use this three elements as motifs to represent the three main points in my zine.

Thus, I placed them amongst the leaves in this page showing how the trail of leaves reveal the colonial houses at Wessex estate.

*Incorporated mark-making 1.

For the page next to the inside front cover, I decided to share about “the constant” here. “The Constant” (represented by the blinds) of Wessex is really the buildings as they haven’t changed. This is probably one of the reasons why this place has a charm and its because it has houses that most other parts of Singapore doesn’t. This is an element that contributes to its unique feature. For the pages in my zine, I’ve decided to go with a mixed collage and line drawing with the pictures taken by me. In this page I’ve also included the “x-ray” leaves to convey the roots of this estate.

Every section also has an extract from the interviews I had with some people at the estate and this one reads, “Nothing much has changed. The blocks and apartments look pretty much the same. The trees are more taken care of now.”

*Incorporated mark-making 2.

“The Current” (represented by the round windows) conveys the arts enclave that Wessex currently has. There are a few art studios amongst the houses in the Estate and the idea of some artists leaving within their own space is really special and interesting. These artists live simply and conduct workshops from time to time right at their houses. The imprinted mar-making leaves are put into two circles that are actually in the shape of the round windows. The staircase at the side is unique to me as even though the buildings are B&W, there is suddenly this painted red walkway that sort of brings out that artsy side of the whole building.

The extract here reads, “You get various kind of people here but of late you see this place becoming more popular amongst artists. They come here for workshops.”

*Incorporated mark-making 3.

“The Future” (represented by the doors) conveys the future of Wessex and what community it will grow and blossom into. With the arts enclave and creative community even amongst residents, this place has so much potential to grow despite its already rich history. The painted leaves are placed in this page as they represent the fruit of the mark-making made in the last page. This page is a little more colourful than the others as I wanted to bring out the colour in this estate. That despite it being mostly B&W, its community is colourful and its definitely still growing. Some kine drawings of the bikes and the table and chairs are some things that I found interesting while walking around the estate.

The extract here reads, “It is an unique space and there is room for progress definitely not removing the heritage of it but adding on to it.”

 

*Incorporated mark-making 3.

The inside back cover is actually the same as the inside front cover except that it is now filled with outlined leaves and the leaves are now colourful. This is to portray how this place is still growing and not filled up yet. The community is colourful and always opens its doors to the public to visit.

The covers are a zoomed in picture I took of the apartment buildings in Wessex. The number 13 is replicated from the block numbers on every apartment building and I chose the number 13 because in that area all the postal codes start with 13. Usually the sign “WESSEX” will be the name of the block. However, there was no block called wessex and thus, I took the various letters from the different blocks and put them together to form “WESSEX”. The window in the picture is replaced with a snippet of either the IFC or IBC which is what readers will see when they flip to the next page.

The front cover is B&W because the zine still hasn’t shared about the art community. However, the back cover because coloured because now readers know that the community of Wessex is colourful and alive!

When you open the booklet, the covers align up to each other showcasing a full apartment building at Wessex Estate!

final

rEFLECTION

I really enjoyed this project even though it really pushed me out of my comfort zone especially when I had to interview people and ask them to use leaves and paint to create marks. It has opened my eyes to an estate in SG that I didn’t know about until I had to work on this project. I struggled with the concept of the zine at the beginning and the arrangement of my marks, pictures and words. I was afraid that everything won’t be abstract enough.

Thankfully, my zine was well-received in the end and it all came together. I’ve gotten to meet new people along the way and made friends with the workers at the cafe in Wessex Estate! I hope that my friends and classmates have also learnt more about this estate in Singapore and will check the place out on their own 🙂

Thanks for reading!

Read my research and view my visual presentation as well!
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Locale: Research

For this project, we were tasked to pick an area/estate in Singapore and uncover an unique characteristic or feature about it.

After much research and thought, I settled on Wessex Estate along Portsdown Road!Prior to choosing Wessex Estate, I also considered other locations such as Balestier and Whampoa as they had unique characteristics. However after much field research, I decided to go with Wessex Estate due to where its located, the people I met there and the serenity of the whole estate itself – unlike many other estates in Singapore. 

RESEARCH

SECONDARY through online, websites, books

PRIMARY through field research, interviews

 

From both Secondary and Primary research I have gathered qualitative and quantitative data about Wessex Estate.

comparison

Since there are plenty of other colonial estates in Singapore, What makes Wessex estate so different from the rest?

Out of the many colonial estates, I picked out a few of the most known and popular ones amongst Singaporeans and did a comparison between them.

 | Wessex is the only colonial estate in Singapore that has an art community within a residential, and is not focused on profits for their work |
fIRST VISIT

second visit

Decided to take some pictures with my film camera 🙂

THIRD VISIT

Wessex Carnival –

art community in wessex

As mentioned, there are art studios in Wessex Estate that open their doors to public annually or twice a year for “Artwalk@Wessex“.

This gives the public an opportunity to see the artist’s beautiful work and understand a little more about the culture and life in Wessex. This also gives the artists a great opportunity to showcase their hard work. And this walk is completely FOC!! It truly is a place that promotes creativity and the arts in Singapore without much thought of profit in mind.

I managed to visit two art studios during my trips to the estate.

reflections

I’ve really learnt and opened my eyes so much just from walking around this estate, talking to people and taking pictures of little things that I find interesting. I really enjoy my trips down to the estate even though I can only take one bus “191” in and it has bus intervals of 15mins. Nonetheless, I’m grateful for the existence of an estate like this in Singapore because I know that if I ever need a breather from the hustle and bustle, I can take a little breather and chill at Wessex. This has made it a lot more easier for me to work on the two parts of this project.

For part 1 of this project, we were required to give a visual presentation that brings out the unique feature of this site and what makes it different from other estates in Singapore. We had to include Secondary and Primary research as well as sort our data into Qualitative and Quantitative data.

For my Visual Presentation, I wanted to create something more interactive but did not want to limit myself to the normal presentation slides. Thus, I decided to explore interactive PDF  done in indesign and so even if you are a Mac or Windows user, one can still view the animations or interactivity of the presentation without the PPT or Keynote application.

See my next post for my Visual Presentation! 
View my Zine!

 

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Type as Image: Process & Final

After much research and scrolling through Pinterest for inspiration. I took those inspiration and channeled it towards my thought process for my concept and ideas.

For this project, we were tasked to create a type-image based on our ideal occupations or rather just any occupations that resonate in some way to ourselves. They can even be abstract, unrealistic and imaginative.

Honestly, that got me excited because I knew I didn’t have to stick to the ordinary thought of, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

concept

With that, I thought along the lines of occupation and my attitudes towards it. It was then when I realised that I feel more than a certain way about occupations and work in general. & that is because I have experienced jobs that made me laugh and also jobs that made me cry.

That being said, I concluded that I feel an array of emotions when it comes to working.

CHOSEN OCCUPATIONS

The occupations I’ve chosen are, Pastry Chef, Disneyland Dancer, Event Coordinator and Entrepreneur.

I’ve chosen these occupations as it reflects my mood towards work life and occupations while growing up – from a teenager to a full-grown working adult.

Process

As stated in my research post, my art direction for this project will be illustrations. I decided to go for a single subject in a composition to show how a few alphabets can form a “city” or “life” of its own.

The letters that I have chosen for all 4 of my compositions are, “D, I, N”, spelling DIN.

The reason why I chose DIN is because some of my closest friends and family call me Din and I feel comfortable with that nickname. I feel that if I had to choose alphabets that best resonates with me and my life, it would be DIN.

The colours I decided to go with for all 4 compositions are more pastel light colours. The colours I have chosen are also chosen according to the emotion I have towards the occupation during that period of time.

pastry chef

The letter D.

Pastry Chef reflects my excitement towards growing up and getting my first job. The reason why I chose Pastry Chef is because I always loved the pastries these chefs produced – they are so meticulous and they are basically edible art. If I weren’t in ADM I will probably struggling in the kitchen trying to whip up some pretty desserts. Since the idea of this job gets me all excited (:>) I decided to use it to reflect my excitement towards occupations. The letter D is manipulated to become the pastry, the palette knife i and an egg splatter n.

I picked warm colours and chose pink as my background as pink reminds me of being young and innocent.

disneyland dancer

The letter I.

The idea of being a Disneyland Dancer feels far yet it seems like such a fun and happy job. I chose Disneyland Dancer to reflect my determination and positive attitude towards working as it feels like a job that will require substantial amount of commitment yet inspire me everyday. It also feels far away because there is no Disneyland in Singapore which sort of reflects my thoughts about being a full time working adult, “aiya, still got a few more years to go”. The letter I manipulated to represent the Disney castle, a twirled branch d and ribbons and ballet shoes n.

I chose colours that will pop a little more and will be a little contrasting yet complementary to each other. Pink is used for the castle as mentioned pink just reminds me of childhood and playtime just like Disneyland does. The brighter pink stands out in contrast to the lime green background.

event coordinator

The letter N.

As you get over your first job, you start to think about a job that will give you a more stable income so that you can support yourself. As such, an Event coordinator reflects a stable income job that is essential and necessary for survival. The letter N manipulated to represent the tent of an event set-up, in this case a Coachella inspired set-up. Manipulated palm tress for d and strings and cloth for i.

As the years go by, I foresee myself getting tired and bored of the working life. Thus, the colours I picked for the composition are more dull and earth tone. This also goes in line with dessert feels that events can take place at.

entrepreneur

The letters D, I, N.

After life takes me on a few different jobs, I would think I would have gathered skills through my experience and know what I like and dislike. To represent my future and wanting to eventually settle down, I thought of an Entrepreneur. I feel that an Entrepreneur has the freedom to do what she wants and that reflects exactly my sentiments about finally doing something I will want to do for the rest of my life. Thus, this is combination of my previous three combinations as I will definitely be using what I’ve learnt from my past occupations to help me in becoming a successful Entrepreneur. D represents Pastry Chef, I represents Disneyland Dancer and N represents Event Coordinator. However, in each of the these letters, I tweaked it a little to add more home elements as I have settled down and could be working from home.

The colours used here are not as bright to represent settling down but also includes colours from the previous three compositions.

FINAL COMPOSITIONS

REFLECTIONS

Read about my research here.

Thanks for reading!

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Sousveillance

Sousveillance

“Sousveillance” is a response to the word surveillance. While many of us may be more familiar with the word surveillance, sousveillance is almost similar just sort of putting it in a different context.

The term “sousveillance”, is coined by Steve Mann. The word “sous” in the term comes from french and it means “below”. This responds to the word “sur” in surveillance which means “on” in french. The difference between Sousveillance and Surveillance is simply one is sousveillance denotes bring the camera down to human level instead of having other elements or higher authorities doing the watching.

Sousveillance has become increasingly popular and is rising in trend. People are more susceptible to the idea of “watching from below”. This has been fuelled by miniature digital technologies.  In one of Steve Mann’s paired essays, he states, “We now live in a society in which we have both “the few watching the many” (surveillance), AND “the many watching the few” (sousveillance)” 

Though I agree that Sousveillance is beneficial to society, I do believe it should be practiced with certain boundaries and precaution. It definitely helps one protect themselves and hold power accountable. However, it can also be misused and taken advantage of. Thus, I believe it should only be used as a response to surveillance. With the prevalance of smart phone technology and social media applications sousveillance is fully accessible and always in use. As such, we should also take into precaution how much we should support the act of sousveillance and how far is too far?

 

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MIDTERMS: Experimental Agar Piano and Boids display

Midterm Project: Get into groups of not more than 4 to 
create anything related to softwares we have learnt 
- Processing, Arduino, Adafruit - 
or anything related to experimental interaction.

My group mates and I brainstormed and eventually decided to use the Circuit Playground express to create an interactive agar piano using capacitive touch. From there, we built on the idea and wanted to our final product to produce something with visuals.

With that thought in mind, we decided to expand our initial idea into:

An interactive agar piano causing a visual to appear when a key on our “piano” is pressed.  

inspiration
Use fruit to play sounds
Visual produced with each sound made
division of work

Since our project consists of different components – Circuit Playground, Making of Agar and buying of fruits to experiment with, Processing – we decided to split our work into these categories as well. At the same time, we still all did research on ways to improve our project.

Processing — Claire

Ada Fruit — Dominique

Agar Agar fruit experimentation with Circuit Express— Jamie & Dinis

This way we could all work on our individual parts at our own time and put everything together at our group meetings.

Process

Our first group meeting was mainly to test out if capacitive touch really works with the fruits. Jamie and I prepared boxes of Agar and Jello to see the difference and brought whole pieces of fruits to test out as well.

Prepared a variety of materials to experiment for capacitive touch
Circuit express programming

Unfortunately, our agars and jello did not work, instead we only managed to get the capacitive touch to work with the vegetable our fruit slice.

This method of poking crocodile clips into fruits worked and allowed us to play sounds by just touching the fruits. As a result, we decided to go back and try again as it should work with the Agar and at the same time, Claire could still work out the visuals through Processing.

Difficulties

During our consult on recess week, our group’s main problem was to link Adafruit to Processing so that one key on the “piano”  is pressed, it will create a reaction in Processing, then forming a visual on screen because of the key pressed. However, there were several port issues and the adafruit code would not link. We first tried the method of connecting adafruit to arduino first as it may be easier to connect it bit by bit this way. BUT! It also didn’t work! Dominique and I realised that the computer port may not be recognised and tried to troubleshoot it through the control panel on her windows laptop.

Finally!!! We managed to fix it and the port connection was still successful so we eventually managed to transfer the code over. From there we worked out the connection to processing as well.

Claire was also struggling with the visuals as she wasn’t sure how to make the visuals come out and how to make it sync with the sound/key pressed. Thankfully she managed to clear her doubts and eventually coded boids that looked amazing 🙂 We all owe it to her for the coding on Processing.

Jamie suggested to use real piano audio notes instead of the adafruit sound, so that we can make it louder and also it is clearer that we are trying to mimic a original Piano.

On the day of the presentation itself, we realised that we were not able to carry out capacitive touch as processing reads pure touch and not different pressures. Because of that, we weren’t able to clip the crocodile clips as the boids will appear non stop because of the constant pressure and crash the code.

FINAL

I was in charge of creating the looks of the agar agar piano and testing out with the circuit express if the capacitive touch works with it, and it did! 🙂

Final Agar Piano Keys Look
Final Set Up
Final Boids Look: More swimming colourful triangles will appear everytime you touch the adafruit. They can swim in different patterns such as disperse, avoid and gather. They can also grow or shrink in size with different keys pressed.
Reflection

Overall, this project was enjoyable even though we met a lot of difficulties. I do think that it has taught us a lot and we have managed to find out more about these various softwares. Creating the Agar was fun but I hope to be able to do more coding for my future projects.

Thanks for reading 🙂

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Do It With Others | DIWO |

Do It With Others or DIWO for short, is a term that was created back in 2006. The term DIWO, means what it stands for, of which is collaboration. With the world slowly revolving and advancing, individualism may not be the best way to progress because collaboration allows more than just working with possibly smarter people. Collaboration creates a community where everyone can share openly with one another.

Adobe Connect Screen Recording of Marc Garret with ADM students

After reading the article and watching  the video of Marc Garret, I realised that DIWO is necessarily not limited strictly to art cultures. It can go beyond that and combine different fields together for example, art and science.  By having such combinations, outcomes will be more effective and creative.

Here are some points that I have picked out after reading the article,

History of DIWO

Unexpectedly, DIWO did not start out in a pure art space, instead it started with experimental music sound and music in the late 80s and 90s. A music scene that speaks the same values as DIWO is the contemporary indie scene. Indie music scene is a independent music scene, most likely creating music that is in opposition to mainstream music. Like Indie, DIWO is also independent and self-governed due to its practice of grounded ideas and relational connections with others. DIWO most closely associated to Media Art, till today, is still struggling to find its place in the world. Media art depends largely on technology together with sound recordings and visual images to create art works. DIWO also has cultural and historical links with Net Art and Technical Media.

Roles between artists and curators

Practicing DIWO challenges the roles between artists and curators. With DIWO, there is no one strict role, an artist can become a co-curator and a curator can become a co-creator. This collaboration in a sense allows roles to be mixed around and opportunities for fresh ideas/opinions to grow. Like others say, sometimes it’s good to have a pair of fresh eyes. As such, DIWO promotes a more unique collaboration and sharing experience.

DIWO and Maker Culture

Maker culture is a phenomenon leaning heavily towards the idea of constructivism. Do-It-Yourself (DIY) methods are part of the Maker Culture as they promote hands-on learning. DIWO itself also expanded from the term DIY but instead of doing hands-on learning yourself, you now should share your experiences and learning with others. DIWO compared to DIY “is more representative of contemporary, collaborative – art practice which explores through the creative process of using networks, in a collective manner.”

Article Reflections

I resonate and agree with the practice of DIWO. As mentioned in the article, artists actively urge to introduce themselves as ‘new’ and ‘exciting’. Because of that, we don’t learn to move forward and create opportunities to receive greater, wider creative dialogue, we may forever be stuck in a cycle. The art of working with others, sharing information with others has definitely more pros and cons. DIWO is slowly getting recognition from the world.

A rising trend that is has values of DIWO is Crowd-sourcing where anyone and everyone can help contribute to a project whether it is sharing of ideas of helping monetarily. Because of crowd-sourcing, many projects that were once deemed impossible to create has now been completed and that is only possible because of collaboration.

I am excited to see the practice DIWO grow and impact the way the world does art or anything else for that matter!

References:

DIWO (Do-It-With-Others): Artistic Co-Creation as a Decentralized Method of Peer Empowerment in Today’s Multitude.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamcraig/2015/02/27/what-is-maker-culture-and-how-can-you-put-it-to-work/#66008fd5540b

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2012/06/12/do-it-with-others-maker-community-manifesto/#31430d407151

image from: http://mattblease.tumblr.com/post/137349721656

 

 

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Type as Image: Research

I started this project with a little difficulty as I had no idea what direction I should take. After looking through some of previous semester’s students’ work, I realised that this project was tricky as it was not solely typography, but rather creating type as an image.

I started the ball rolling by reading up and doing research 
on typography as well as searching for examples and 
inspiration online - from Instagram and Pinterest.
RESEARCH

John Foster – Dirty Fingernails

“We can all choose the same font for a project, but we could never draw identical typography”

Keeping a Diary by Sagmeister Inc. 

  • Instalment series are called, ” Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far”
  • Sagmeister adapted what had been a still photography exercise into a short movie

Having Guts Always Works Out For Me by Sagmeister Inc.

  • “This time we built the typography in wildly different ways and locations”
  • Showed the before and after effect in photos
  • Explored various mediums and were experimental

Temporary Type by Oded Ezer

  • Used industrial conditional air fillers
  • Looks as if they were made out of ashes or dust
  • “I’m testing the intersection between typography and art” – they have the same meaning but not a medium for direct communication

Flight of the Conchords by Subpop Records

  • Pop Art 1970s style
  • Hand drawn illustrations
  • A surreal landscape of shapes and colours
Ina Saltz – Typography Essentials (design principles when working with typography)

– some points that I felt were interesting and have not never really thought about before –

1) Using Letter as Form

  • each letter is a shape unto itself
  • series as an illustration
  • can be expressive when used alone

2) Emphasis using weight

  • when you stay within the same type family and vary the weight of the family member
  • it can create contrast and more emphasis on certain alphabets
  • can signal shift in hierarchy
Wired

3) High Contrast in Reverse

  • reversing or “dropping out” may be a good effect but it must be done with care and at small sizes
  • those that have at least a moderate stroke weight, with little or medium contrast between thicks and thins – work best with reversed-out type

4) Deconstructed Type

  • can be used as an ornament, as navigation on devices and as pattern
inspiration

I mostly draw my inspiration from Instagram accounts and Pinterest. Here are some accounts and artists that I’ve come across.

I’ve always been a fan of @artsyalexx. Although her typography works are simple, the colours that she use are very eye catching and easy to relate to. Her works are trendy and very attractive with the younger crowd. I really like the way her fonts always vary in terms of style as well as size in the alphabets. She digitally draws these artworks.

I’ve been following @stefankunz for a while. He turns encouraging words and phrases into typography art pieces. He doesn’t just draw these words on regular paper, but instead he draws them on shoes and even laptops. Any surface can be his canvas!

I chanced upon @goodtype while researching for inspiration. This Instagram account consists of so many great typography examples and has allowed me to look at the variety of letter forms and ways to play around with form and style.

Jing Zhang is an illustrator who has done an alphabet series. She takes a single alphabet and manipulates it. Its almost as if she creates a world out of one alphabet.

Raganath Krishnamani is an illustrator that also occasionally plays with alphabets. Similar to Jing Zhang, he also manipulates letters, adding elements to them so they look like they are a world/building of their own. His other illustrations are also usually quite dark with lots of shadows.

thoughts

After doing research and looking at many different artworks, I was more certain of the art direction that I wanted to follow. I decided to go with illustrations as I thought that illustrations will be the best way to portray my ideas and thought process across.

See my next post for my process and final compositions!
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Experimental Interaction: “Open Source as Culture/ Culture as Open Source” reading

Open Source as Culture/ Culture as Open Source by siva vaidhyanathan

“Open source” had always been the less preferred choice known to be the insurgent model to proprietary models to the general public . However, this was because humans have been so accustomed and influenced by proprietary information. Little do they know that the “open source” way is closer to how human creativity usually works.

Nearer to date, the advantages of the “open source” model of creativity and commerce have become clearer, revealing flaws and faults of the chief regulatory system such as copyright.

Copyright aims to protect media and its creativity but also limits the improvement of softwares, devices and bans the sharing of techniques and tools with others. Richard Stallman, a computing scientist, was “offended that openness was being criminalised”.

Of late, more countries such as South Africa, Brazil and China have realised the practicality of “open source” models and are now encouraging the dissemination of these softwares. In fact, “open source” is now advancing past software and into licenses. Common “open source” sites are also commonly used by the general public such as Wikipedia.

Copyright can no longer work the same way it used to due to the changes in practices. With “open source” models, copyright is no longer a a single right bestowed on a single author but is now a group of rights that the author may license to others.

“Open source” was something that was unfamiliar to many and difficult to advocate. However, it is now more and more accepted, proving it’s brilliant success and positive habits on the world.