Hit the Forum Recordings page and listen away!

Search for anatflickr1@yahoo.com to remember the laughs, lessons and open sourced theories!

The Australian Copyright Council is an independent non-profit organisation widely respected for its copyright expertise.

In 2007, we are running sessions on:

* Copyright essentials
* Moral rights
* Recent developments in copyright
* Websites
* Managing digital licences.

We are also running copyright training for people working in:

* Museums, galleries & archives
* Governments (State/Commonwealth/Territory)
* Libraries
* Educational institutions

Where & when
======================================
Adelaide Mon 26 to Fri 30 Nov 2007

Art Gallery of South Australia, North Terrace

See http://www.copyright.org.au/training2007.htm for more information.

copyright, delivered as part of the networked media course, media department, rmit university, august 6, 2007. Copyright shaun miller. licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 australia license.

thanks seth ^_^

Applications are now open for submissions by visual artists, performers, writers, musicians and film-makers.
Art projects that comment on this year’s festival, theme: ‘Sustainability – make it your sport’ will be given preference in the selection process.

Deadline for Submissions: 31 October 2007

Submit your applications online:
www.slf.org.au/festival/participate/artists

You received 7 different varieties of cottonseeds:

1) Sicot 75
2) Sicot 71
3) Sicot 81
4) Siokra 24
5) Siokra V-18
6) Sipima 280
7) Pima A8

At this point we don’t know which variety will work best for our ozone sensing purposes. This is a true experiment!

All seed varieties can go directly into the ground and don’t need any special starter procedures. However, you might want to start your seedlings in small containers (like yoghourt jars for example) before you replant them into bigger pots.

1) Plant at least 2 different plants of each variety (you might want to use a few seeds per location/pot).

2) Label each pot/location with the name of the variety you planted.

3) Water regularly and make sure they get plenty of sun exposure.

4) Take pictures of your plants/leaves once a week and email them to:
beatrizdacosta@earthlink.net

Make sure to include a date of the picture taken and clearly indicate which plant variety is depicted on your photograph. Take the first photographs on the day you planted the seeds. From there on take pictures every week on the same day for a period of 4 months.

For any questions/concerns/problems please email me.

I will collect photographs from all participation volunteers (Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane). At the end of the 4 months period (or maybe even earlier) I will post all the pictures with description of the experiment (as well as problems encountered etc…) online. These experiments are part of a larger plant/ozone sensing initiative I am about to embark on for next 9 months or so…. More info on that coming soon!

All the best and thanks for volunteering your time,
Beatriz

-snip-

STILL OPEN - BRISBANE

I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the country where we are gathering. The Jagera and Turrbul people’s have occupied the area we know as the greater Brisbane area and beyond for many thousands of years.

We are here tonight to talk about the rich opportunities availed by Open Source. For those who have been keeping up with the Still Open blog, Eliot Bledsoe of Creative Commons discussed how copyright is being reborn and remixed. Evolving and mutating publishing, creative, production and sharing environments require new and diverse ways of handling intellectual property. These questions of weighing up owning and sharing are at the core of Open Source, Creative Commons, Free Software, Copyleft and related licensing and distribution practices. Thanks to the enhanced content capabilities of Web 2.0, we are now seeing the unprecedented sharing of everything on the internet! We not only really want to share, we also want access to alternatives for expensive proprietary software and free of corporate controlled spaces. Trebor Sholz describes this as ‚Äòextreme sharing’.

Open Source is more than a licensing and distribution model. It also involves tools and processes. It involves information and knowledge. It involves social, cultural and ethical interactions. We can confidently talk of an Open Source Culture that is infiltrating the spectrum of creative fields including art, design, architecture and science. For example, the open science movement encourages a collaborative environment in which “science can be pursued by anyone who is inspired to discover something new about the natural world”. The same can said of some open design and architecture networks.

What is the work of a word like ‘open’? What does it do and how does it do it?

When we think about the world’s current obsession about borders, ownership, protection and security, open is not a concept that sits comfortably within dominant politics and economics. So this small and seemingly innocuous word represents a dangerous idea for some. For others, it presents potent opportunities for connection and change, especially when coupled with other words like mind, heart, hand …

In The Open Work by Umberto Eco, the idea of openness is thoroughly examined. He addresses openness as “the artist’s decision to leave arrangements of some constituents of a work to the public or chance”. While Eco is specifically addressing openness in our reception and interaction with a work of art, he does talk about the idea of openness as plurality and multiplicity. And so, I think, it is similar with Open Source and this will be borne out in the work of tonight’s presenters.

Open is also a verb, not just an endgame or a description. It is an action - something we can do. Openness also does something and we should, from time to time, turn our attention to how and what it does. It carries a sense of release, or rather, of not being constrained or closed. So in considering Open Source, we may consider that we are releasing ourselves from some of the constraints and histories that contain or restrain our engagements with and ideas about science, technology and art. We may consider that those histories are themselves open. We are also releasing things into the world, hopefully to assume a life of their own. This is, while very serious work, also very joyful. Given this joyousness, it’s worrying that people in power are running scared from openness.

In statements from two iconic 20th century thinkers, there is some resonance. Speaking decades ago, they seem to encapsulate and communicate the need and potential for openness.

The first was said by the inventor and designer Richard Buckminster Fuller:

We have reached the point where we are now possessed of sufficient information for each individual human to dare to exercise the option to “make it” rather than having to depend on the decisions of an educated elite.

The second was spoken by the astronomer Carl Sagan:

We have … arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

Unknowingly, Sagan and Buckminster Fuller presented compelling cases for Open Source approaches. They are saying knowledge and change-making need to be in the hands of the many. They identify the need for more of us to be participant in knowledge, creativity and know-how in these realms of science, technology and discovery. Open Source and the idea of the ‘commons’ are ways in which we can cleave the anxieties Sagan evokes, and realise the potential that Buckminster Fuller projects. Knowledge, as Armin Medosch claims, should be in the public realm. Where there is Open Source there is a niggle in the social fabric and a thorn in the polity whispering about the future of an ‘open society’.

Following Alex’s lead, I am going to introduce the projects I am involved in and I encourage people to contact me if interested.

Firstly, have recently joined Federation Square as the Curator for Multimedia Programs. In addition to developing the screen program for the square, I am also interested in projects that fall into the category of urban media. I encourage artists to keep me informed about the projects they’re involved in and will help to facilitate these where possible. Please email Kerrie-Dee.Johns at Fedsquare.com
Secondly, I have just released a call out (below) for the Next Wave project I am curating, called Stranger of the Month. Hope its to your interest

Wow, those workshops were great! They really motivated me to do more in open source art projects. I have also valued the connections I made with the others doing and hosting the workshops.

It would be great to have some ongoing affiliation with the workshop members and use the open source network to create greater dissemination and knowledge transfer. I have a number of opportunities available for Still Open members that I would like to offer, and am interested in hearing what opportunities others could offer me.

• I am the events curator at Loop (23 Meyers Place, Melbourne). It is a new media space and bar. I would love to hear from anyone from Still Open if they would like to show work there.
• I am the administrator for Polyopticon.org, an open sourced community of artists who collaborate, network and present process work online. Feel free to get involved in any way. I am also interested in developing the site with others if they are interested.
• Also, I would like to have ongoing discussions about still open on this blog and perhaps setup a mailing list… I am not sure if thats something Sasha wants to do??

My email address is: polyopticon AT gmail.com

I will not explain it too much as it is pretty self explanatory however if there are any questions please hit the comments.