Open Source Collaborative Art Process
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Open Source Collaborative Art Process
The text below was posted to the Rhizome_Raw mailing list this evening. Donna and Joseph McElroy (aka Electric Hands, aka Corporate Performance Artists) are initiating some radical cooperative social, creative, business projects in the Bronx NY. Drawing on their previous experience of corporate business they collaborate and experiment with a hybrid of social and technical sciences, business know-how and shamanistic performance art.
'Art is a service not a product'- www.electrichands.com/artstatement.pdf
Marc and I met the 'Corporate Performance Artists' in New York in March this year. I recognised a project with ambitions to increase the agency of not only the initiating artists but of every person that received one of their 'services'. Their strategies appear not only to be imaginative and truly (r)evolutionary but informed by and connected to an experience and understanding of life greater than the sum of its parts.
This post articulates (very usefully for me) some of the elementary thoughts I've been having about the contexts and systems through which 'Rethinking Wargames' could work.
'Finally our emotional need is for community. To build neighbours both on and offline who interact, share, converse and play with each other and us.'
www.electrichands.com/artstatement.pdf
electrichands.com Subject:RHIZOME_RAW: Open Source Collaborative Art Process
Date:Thu, 31 Jul 2003 15:40:37 +0000
From:joseph the barbarian
To:list@rhizome.org, thingist@bbs.thing.net
Open Source Collaborative Art Process structured along Open Source lessons described by Eric S. Raymond in his landmark essay “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.”
1."Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch."
Every good work of art starts by scratching an artist’s personal itch.
2."Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)."
Good artists borrow, great artists steal. Or rather, good artists work alone, great artists work with others.
3."Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow."
The first sketch is not the best artwork. Encourage artists to rework based upon input from others.
4."If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you"
If you work without ego, the right work to do will find you.
5."When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off
to a competent successor."
When the artists tires of the artwork, pass it on to collaborators to finish within the context of the greater work.
6."Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging."
Treating the audience as co-participants in the artistic experience is your best route to engaging work. Interactive participation creates a live and always contemporary experience.
7."Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers."
Prototype and show often, engage audience and listen, improve based upon audience evaluations. Document and present on Internet for almost constant feedback from collaborators.
8."Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone."
Given a large enough audience participants and collaborator base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.
9."Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around."
Good concept and poor craftsmanship works a lot better than the other way around. However good execution and poor idea are better than the other way around.
10."If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource"
If you treat your audience participants as if they’re your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.
11."The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better"
The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your audience and collaborators. Sometimes the latter is better.
12."Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong."
Often, the most striking and innovative work comes from realizing that your original concept needs modification and adaptation in response to outside influences.
13."Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away."
True for the work of an individual, however multiple voices can make a statement from different perspectives and create a closer approximation of reality.
14."Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected"
Nuff said.
15."When writing gateway software of any kind, take pains to disturb the data
stream as little as possible - and *never* throw away information unless the recipient forces you to!"
The transitions between collaborators works in a greater work should be
transparent and neither add/subtract from either work. If one work causes a “clash” with another, sometimes the transition can be used to screen one from the other, but only should be done a limited basis.
16."When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend."
Artwork only approaches its perfect form; supplemental information is sometimes necessary to bring it closer to completion.
17."A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo- secrets."
An enlightened work is only as enlightened as its mystic. Beware of pseudo- mystics.
18."To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you."
Nuff said.
19."Provided the development coordinator has a medium at least as good as the Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one."
Artists must participate as ego-less members of a collaborative, and allow one
artist to coordinate the best final product. The one chose to lead the coordination must lead without coercion, must not assume sole authorship or individual acclaim, and have a medium of communication as least as good as the Internet. Such approach will inevitably lead to better work.
joseph the barbarian
joseph and donna
www.electrichands.com
+ ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup
-> post: list@rhizome.org
-> questions: info@rhizome.org
-> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
-> give: http://rhizome.org/support
+
Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
The text below was posted to the Rhizome_Raw mailing list this evening. Donna and Joseph McElroy (aka Electric Hands, aka Corporate Performance Artists) are initiating some radical cooperative social, creative, business projects in the Bronx NY. Drawing on their previous experience of corporate business they collaborate and experiment with a hybrid of social and technical sciences, business know-how and shamanistic performance art.
'Art is a service not a product'- www.electrichands.com/artstatement.pdf
Marc and I met the 'Corporate Performance Artists' in New York in March this year. I recognised a project with ambitions to increase the agency of not only the initiating artists but of every person that received one of their 'services'. Their strategies appear not only to be imaginative and truly (r)evolutionary but informed by and connected to an experience and understanding of life greater than the sum of its parts.
This post articulates (very usefully for me) some of the elementary thoughts I've been having about the contexts and systems through which 'Rethinking Wargames' could work.
'Finally our emotional need is for community. To build neighbours both on and offline who interact, share, converse and play with each other and us.'
www.electrichands.com/artstatement.pdf
electrichands.com Subject:RHIZOME_RAW: Open Source Collaborative Art Process
Date:Thu, 31 Jul 2003 15:40:37 +0000
From:joseph the barbarian
To:list@rhizome.org, thingist@bbs.thing.net
Open Source Collaborative Art Process structured along Open Source lessons described by Eric S. Raymond in his landmark essay “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.”
1."Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch."
Every good work of art starts by scratching an artist’s personal itch.
2."Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)."
Good artists borrow, great artists steal. Or rather, good artists work alone, great artists work with others.
3."Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow."
The first sketch is not the best artwork. Encourage artists to rework based upon input from others.
4."If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you"
If you work without ego, the right work to do will find you.
5."When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off
to a competent successor."
When the artists tires of the artwork, pass it on to collaborators to finish within the context of the greater work.
6."Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging."
Treating the audience as co-participants in the artistic experience is your best route to engaging work. Interactive participation creates a live and always contemporary experience.
7."Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers."
Prototype and show often, engage audience and listen, improve based upon audience evaluations. Document and present on Internet for almost constant feedback from collaborators.
8."Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone."
Given a large enough audience participants and collaborator base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.
9."Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around."
Good concept and poor craftsmanship works a lot better than the other way around. However good execution and poor idea are better than the other way around.
10."If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource"
If you treat your audience participants as if they’re your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.
11."The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better"
The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your audience and collaborators. Sometimes the latter is better.
12."Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong."
Often, the most striking and innovative work comes from realizing that your original concept needs modification and adaptation in response to outside influences.
13."Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away."
True for the work of an individual, however multiple voices can make a statement from different perspectives and create a closer approximation of reality.
14."Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected"
Nuff said.
15."When writing gateway software of any kind, take pains to disturb the data
stream as little as possible - and *never* throw away information unless the recipient forces you to!"
The transitions between collaborators works in a greater work should be
transparent and neither add/subtract from either work. If one work causes a “clash” with another, sometimes the transition can be used to screen one from the other, but only should be done a limited basis.
16."When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend."
Artwork only approaches its perfect form; supplemental information is sometimes necessary to bring it closer to completion.
17."A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo- secrets."
An enlightened work is only as enlightened as its mystic. Beware of pseudo- mystics.
18."To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you."
Nuff said.
19."Provided the development coordinator has a medium at least as good as the Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one."
Artists must participate as ego-less members of a collaborative, and allow one
artist to coordinate the best final product. The one chose to lead the coordination must lead without coercion, must not assume sole authorship or individual acclaim, and have a medium of communication as least as good as the Internet. Such approach will inevitably lead to better work.
joseph the barbarian
joseph and donna
www.electrichands.com
+ ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup
-> post: list@rhizome.org
-> questions: info@rhizome.org
-> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
-> give: http://rhizome.org/support
+
Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
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