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Code Exhibit
To see a dynamic remix of this blogs content:
Blog Remixed by Maerd
Flash 7 plug-in, hi-speed line and Firefox browser recommended. Contribute to this blog and receive source code for maerd on July 30.
ARTISTS
Amy Alexander
Olly
b-l-u-e-s-c-r-e-e-n.net
Fiction Cellulaire
David Bouchard
Auto Portrait
Martin Howse
ap0204
Stanza
Time Code
for the curious photo seeker the 700+ photos which constitute the imagistic food of maerd.ca are now stashed on flickr at original resolution and available for download under Creative Commons Canada Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhave2/show/
enjoy!
jhave on 08.29.05 @ 06:16 PM CST [link]
as whomever is watching this blog might have noticed, the remix has become mildly obsessed by 3 symbolic activities: grafitti, locks and insects.
this may seem like an unconventional approach to an examination of open source initiatives, but the symbolic linkage is as follows:
graffitti is as ephermeal as breath (walls breath paint, cans litter abandoned lots, admission is zero, stray random retinas pass by and occasionally ingest the symbolic info)
locks are ubiquitious. tonite after typing this note, i will exit the building thru 2 locks, unlock my bike, pass thru several traffic lights (motion locks), stop, relock bike, unlock 3 more doors and fall asleep...such is life...can life exist without membranes?
insects are the original bugs, their activity is both communal and deterministically beautifully and abysmally selfish. i believe humans are not qualitatively different. what is considered to be the emergent behavior of ego-based consciousness continues to be impacted by the lovely reptilean cortex with all its sinewy demands for get and keep and keep more.... 
jhave on 08.08.05 @ 01:12 AM CST [link]
an excerpt from http://www.elaborate.ca/tml/evictions.html
The contestatory potential of language is stripped; users are expected to use language, not transform, reflect or argue through it. The standardization of language is particularly preoccupying when it comes to “voice-activated software” (Dor 114). Determinism is enclosed in the private source code, not in the user’s agency. Corporate intellectual property and patents achieved an unprecedented situation in which the average user is prevented from owning, knowing, customizing and controlling indispensable tools which we can’t live without. More than ever, the worker does not own the tools of production.
In a post-capitalist society where the illusion of individuality is necessary to maintain the system, only rethoric options are available. Polls are an instance of limited, preselected choices standing for a democratic illusion, while in reality the user’s potential as a broadcaster is diminished.
jhave on 08.02.05 @ 12:36 AM CST [link]
When man tries to enlarge the notion of free software above the software context we often remember the given of a production to a community and the possibility given to this community to reuse or to modify this creation. Even if this ideal looks nice, I don't trust that there is any interest to try to re-import this reductive vision into the art context.
The concept of inspiration, the reuse and the modification of an existing work, has existed since art began. The reuse approach is even more present since the modern age with a fantastic increasing of the number of homage works or works based on a reference. And the ready-made didn't wait that artists discover the open software world.
To reduce the concept of open source at a practical or legal reuse of an achieved production is to forget one crucial point at the base of the free software: the notion of source. What is mainly different between a free software and a proprietary software is not the freedom to use (and/or reuse) the software but the freedom to access to the source of the software. What the author of a free software give is not the software added to a free license, but the foundation of the software: what have allowed the existence of the software and what have now the potential to take place in a new creation. However one only source code can take place in an infinite number of various works. This source don't necessarily reflect the identity of the artist. It's often only a motor under the work, that’s why the reuse of this kind of underground motor is not for me incompatible with the production of works based around a clear identity. The question of open source in not to recycle one identified work but to reuse common foundations (sometimes imperceptible for the viewers) in various, and often individual, productions.
bluescreen dot net on 07.31.05 @ 02:31 PM CST [link]
The question of open source is often linked to the idea of " costing nothing ", in fact the open source approach is more based on the concept of sharing. It's not because your creation (software, art,... ...) is " free " in the meaning of open source that you can't sell it or ask money for it. I bought in a shop the Linux distribution (Linux operating system + a bunch of free software) that I am using to type these lines, but I am free to give you a copy of this distribution and even to sell you these Cds if I want. All the source codes of the works we can see in this virtual exhibition are free, it mean that everybody can use their source according to a specific license, but I remember that it didn't avoid the invited artists to receive money for this exhibition... I don't think that opening our creation can make the living as an artist harder. The opposite is perhaps true, by sharing the source of our work into a community of others creators, we make the development of new works more easy and more fast for all of us. So it gives us free time that we can use to find money... or to go to beach ;-)
bluescreen dot net on 07.31.05 @ 02:21 PM CST [link]
Most of us would agree that it's hard to make a living as an artist. How many of would really like to open source all our art? ( What? give it away? )
Yet in essence the open source model suggests that giving it away is good. (Giving good? How so? Is this some sort of sentimental pitch? ) The existence of open source communities suggest a vision of the world where the distiinction between self and other has a different meaning: ecological ontology, where receiving is reciprocal, cyclical and not necessarily profit-based. from an economic perspective, a quasi-marxist idealism marginalized in a capitalist world. Or perhaps the motivation for open source can be traced to residue within each individuated consciousness of the awareness that life is a continuum.
Today's questions to ponder: how to reconcile survival (which implictly involves selling work based around an identity: art brand style-zone 2005 presents...) with the notion of free art (which is to say art that emerges from a collective source within life itself and must implicitly simply be recycled, returned to the earth of the mind, the noosphere of imaginative continuity.)
Resolution of these issues probably involves thinking about exchange in a wider sense than is conventional. It suggests that the human animal is a tricky paradoxical swarm of conflicting impulses: parameters for selfishness and altruism co-existing.
jhave on 07.24.05 @ 10:19 PM CST [link]
Sex and death industries are often at the forefront of technical innovation. (Think Darpa meets TUI cyber-sex-toys; neither industry being renowned for its openness) Now google earth has come forward to represent Taxes (in the holy trinity of sex,death and taxes). Taxes? This sort of app will inevitably become a universal commerce, viewing, navigational system, modulating consciousness by both giving perspectives never seen before and removing privacy.
How does open-source activism balance the paradox of openness with the innate need for privacy?
jhave on 07.20.05 @ 04:08 PM CST [link]
It's summer here in Montreal, the weather is hot, most folks are more concerned with swimming than with the metaphysics of open-source systems....thus the code blog advances slowly like a snail drenched in sweat...
But, since water is in the soothing swimming pools, and is also the root chemical underlying organic lifeforms (here in Montreal at least), I find myself pondering some huge simple fundamental questions: what is the source of life itself? what is open?
My pesky mind keeps thinking: How many humans actually have access to the souce of life? Who doesn't?
Is the source of life analogous to a code? Maybe its a fluid, how do you open a fluid?
Is it possible that the source could be both open and immanent and yet somehow normally (for most of us) inaccessible?
jhave on 07.15.05 @ 02:48 PM CST [link]
Open-source has changed our link to how we are linked.
These new digital paths desire to generate identity and propose....
For you, what are the central implications of the open-source movement ?
l'Open source a changé notre lien à la pratique du lien.
Ces nouveaux chemins numériques désirent genérer de l'identité et proposer.
Pour vous, qu'est-ce que l'Open source propose ?
pascale on 07.03.05 @ 05:31 PM CST [link]
Post comments or send us files :: .jpg (500x375), .mov (320x240), or .mp3 (preferably less than a minute in length) that express your views on open source art. These files will be used in the maerd remix module. Contributors will be added to the code blog mailing list.
Envoyez-nous vos commentaires en quelques mots , images ou sons :: .jpg (500x375), .mov (320x240), ou .mp3 ( 1 minute maximum) qui expriment votre position face au mouvement Open source. Ces données iront rejoindre les voix et les images du maerd remix module de départ. Les noms des participants seront ajoutés à la liste déjà disponible.
jhave on 07.02.05 @ 07:02 PM CST [link]
