Tag: reading assignment

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EXP.INT | reading assignment

Open source used to be the default way of doing things. However through most of human history all information technologies and almost all technologies were “open source”. (Page 24 of reading) This shows that the usage of open source was adopted ages ago, when technology was just starting to become advanced. However, it was not as largely practiced as now.

Open source started when Richard Stallman, a computer scientist, wanted to be able to improve the softwares and devices he was working with, but was denied the chance to. He wanted to let everyone have a chance of creating tools, and sharing them; therefore he established the Free Software Foundation. During the late 1990s, a growing team of hackers built an operating system kernel that would allow an array of programs to work in coordination – Linux. Open source is a platform for peer production, where users can share and revise each other’s work, making improvements together.

Having peer-to-peer social interaction contradicts the copyright system, as peer-produced information gains no benefit from strong intellectual property rights. Strong intellectual property rights inefficiently shrink the universe of existing information, and owned inputs will be limited to human capital with which the owner of the input has a contractual relationship.

Reflection
Based on the reading, I feel that Open source is a very good learning platform, especially for students. On one hand, professionals are able to help improve operating systems of software, and on the other hand, students are able to use the software for free. Technological advancement should be a benefit for everyone, and not be used just as a money making tool. This allows users that are unable to afford, still try out the software.

Till then,
Flazéda!
jamz
x

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4D | sound art reading assignment

What is sound?

Sound is vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person’s or animal’s air. It is produced by continuous and regular vibrations, as opposed to noise. Sound is an aural component in almost every activity in the world. It is anything that makes sound, or noise. They include: music, kinetic sculpture, instruments activated by wind or played by the public, conceptual art, sound effects, recorded readings of prose or poetry, visual artworks that makes sounds, and basically anything that can produce sound. Each sound, as it is created, propagates amongst the hard Newtonian billiard balls of matter, adding to an eternal din from which the cosmic maker, at the end of his creation, can discern every act, word and deed.

How has it been use in culture and society?

Ever since the early 1980s, there have been an increasing number of exhibitions at visual art institutions that focused on sound. From the article, sound has been captured with the use of phonograph, which has been used in the culture and society. The invention of the phonograph presented a different set of observations – from the multiplying of sounds.

What makes it an art?

Sound art is not art in the sense of crafts, but fine art. According to Neuhaus, a number of things has little do with art. It’s as if perfectly capable curators in the visual arts suddenly lose their equilibrium at the mention of the word sound. A new art form will be created, say ‘Steel Art’, which was compromised of steel sculpture combined with steel guitar music with anything that has steel in it, somehow have no trouble at all swallowing ‘Sound Art’. In art, the medium is not often the message. However, anything can be art.

How does advancement in audio technology affect our sense?

With the advancement in audio technology, there are interactive computer programs which can produce sound. Popular music continued compressing, normalizing and filling every moment and crevice of the groove with sound, perhaps in order to suppress a feared existential confrontation with the surface noise. Musicians are also able to explore more options to sound, making use of silence, surface noise, channel noise and etc, to create an audio visual.