The project is much more than a straightforward art+games exhibition: it is also configured as an entertainment arcade for the kids in the neighbourhood (who were spending most of their afternoons using the web-connected computers to play online games anyway), and it plans to encompass other game-related activities, some of them regarding videogames (like OpenArsGames), some of them regarding real-life games with no interposed computers.
Estación Futuro operates from a geodesic dome in a repurposed abbatoir.
If you don’t know Kenta Cho, now’s your opportunity. Of late he has been working in flash, so you can just head over to the page for his gaming alter ego ABA Games and start playing, or download windows versions of the games we are showcasing at Estacion Futuro. Some of his games can also be found on Xbox and iPhone (that’s one of the advantages of free licenses: other people port your stuff for you).
If you are using a modern free software distro, you could be playing the exhibition’s selection and several other games in a matter of seconds, all thanks to your friendly package manager. And to your friendly packager, which in my case means this is the third post in a row that I have to mention Miriam Ruiz.
Or you could come over and play with us at Estacion Futuro. The Kenta Cho selection will be up until September.
Prolific Debian packager Miriam Ruiz is my friend and mentor (she is the person who first taught me how to make a Debian package). She has just told me on IRC that she is now putting the finishing touches on the Debian package for Structure Synth. If I hurry up I might be able to finish this post before the package hits NEW, but just barely.
Structure Synth is a sort of Context Free for 3D shapes, and though it’s still in Beta, stuff made with it already looks scary awesome:
I have nightmares about crosswords that are just like this.
Julian Oliver’s levelHead is an Augmented Reality videogame in which players help a silhouette navigate a nondescript building by direct manipulation of fiducial cubes that represent the avatar’s environments. A webcam extracts special marks on the cubes and Oliver’s software projects the game as though the cubes were hollow and their faces transparent.
It’s a remarkable work, and doubly so because the code has been released to the public under the GPLv3, with art assets under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 license. There are even quite clear (if somewhat daunting) instructions on for making levelHead work. Other developers would be keeping their code under wraps while talking to Sony about a less saccharine Playstation3 Augmented Reality game (or whichever other “various parties” he is talking to according to his website), but not Oliver. Release early, walk the walk. Kudos.
I have been playing with machine vision and ARtoolkit recently, but I still have to get levelHead to work (I can’t even get it to compile properly). I did see an early non-playable prototype (Unprepared Architecture, with Simone Jones) at Medialab Madrid in 2007, and friends who’ve played with the finished game at its various showings around the world report great excitement and joy. Miriam, if you are reading this, could you please get a package going?
In 48 hours I will be landing in Linz to attend Ars Electronica. It’s been a last minute decision, but how could I miss it on the year when the topic is A New Cultural Economy: The limits of Intellectual Property? It will be lovely to hang out with old friends and also make new ones. Feel free to approach for a chat, especially about Free Software Art. I look like this.
Second Nature explores the distinctive particulars of and interconnections between textual, visual, aural and interactive creative research and practices. Three thematic online issues per year are planned from which will be selected content for an annual printed publication. Second Nature will also publish a range of creative projects to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by Internet publication (non-linear, interactive, multiple media, etc).
One of the aspects that most interest me about this journal is that not only calls for papers, but for projects as well. Theorists are welcome, but practitioners can also submit projects that showcase their ideas and reflections on the topics of the Journal. Lester Bangs said it best. He loved writing, but sometimes he found that:
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
The official deadline for the first issue was August 30 2008, but papers and projects arriving no later than the 12th of September can still make the cut.
Next Sunday (31 Sept) I will be presenting freesoftwareart.org at Dorkbot Melbourne. The time and place are as usual: Level 1, 124a Johnston St, Fitzroy. Narinda Reeders will also talk about her Help Your Self (an ATM-alike that dispenses life advice). After the session some of us will go for drinks, join us if you want.
A couple of days ago, Ollie Bown commented over coffee that “all art is about politics”. At the time it seemed to me a nice parallel to Von Clausevitz’s much misunderstood maxim that “war is a continuation of politics by other means”, but I was not sure whether Ollie’s line was pithy or merely witty. Today it’s occurred to me that, if it were true, then Free and Open Source Art would be largely about Political Economy. We know that “Free” means “as in speech” and not “as in beer”, but nevertheless broad permissions to copy and disseminate cultural artifacts produce shockwaves in the economic processes around cultural practices.
Freedom to copy, modify and disseminate alters the exchange ratios of many intangible values: the balances of attention to talent, of exclusivity to cachet, of geographic centrality to prestige, of availability to value, and many other social and psychological factors that influence appreciation of artworks. In the lightcone of the Free Software event, nobody can escape this transformation, and curators, critics and art historians are no exception.
As a working statement, I would propose that “all Free Artforms are about the Political Economy of Status”, and leave it at that, at least for now.
The thesis of the paper is that works of Software Art face the challenges of production, distribution and especially conservation, and that Free and Open Source licenses can help artists, curators, institutions, historians and archivers tackle these problems in a timely, efficient and affordable way.
Three years later, I realise that my paper was directly addressed to practitioners of Software Art, and almost exclusively concerned with explaining to them the consequences of the Free Software development model. However Free Software Art can be examined from the points of view of at least two more audiences:
Free Software developers, who may wonder what Software Art is about, and why it might be of interest to them.
Cultural Workers in academia, galleries and institutions, whose fields of work are being subverted by the new structures of production, authorship, curation and appreciation of Software Art, particularly those works distributed under Free licenses.
The writings in this site are a breadcrumb trail of my efforts to understand and explain the practice, the aesthetics, and the political economy of Free Software Art from the perspective of artists, Free Software hackers, the artistic establishment and the audience at large.
