Converge
Now deal with it!
by Adnan Hadzi
Collaborative projects are co-shaped by all the people taking part in them in terms of not only expertise and fields of interest, but also cultural back-grounds, viewpoints, personalities and temperaments. This research in converging forms of media distribution at the Media and Communication Department at Goldsmiths College, University of London focuses on video distribution online.
The converge project generates an online public space where contributors can discuss the the tools, technologies and experiences gained through the workshops held during spring, summer 2007. This online public space exists as a wiki on the website http://www.converge.org.uk.
- In relation to the use of online (found) footage the term ‘collective docu- mentary’ becomes highly relevant, on the one hand emphasizing the in- tention of telling something significant about real life events, on the other hand telling that the work is made as a result of several people working together, not as an organized team defined by a given task, but rather as a small community with shared interests. (Hoem, 2004:6)
Hoem goes on to argue that blogs provide “an individual base for entering a community” (2004:7): on the one hand maintaining a blog is an individual activity, whereas on the other hand the process of blogging often becomes part of a collaborative effort where diverse people contribute different types of content in multiple ways and on different levels. According to Hoem blogs are blurring “the boundaries between production, distribution and consumption” (2004:7), whereas they necessarily redefine notions of media literacy so as to “reflect(s) an awareness of both the consuming and the producing aspects of media technology.” (2004:7)
- The most successful online environments seem to be those which are de- signed in order to make it possible to post information at different levels, socializing new users into the systems publishing-culture. Blogs provide some of these socializing effects providing an individual base for entering a community, blurring the boundaries between production, distribution and consumption. [...]
- It is important that our notion of media literacy reflects an aware-
- When making video online the most important aspect of collective
The converge project requires that each individual contributor undertake part of the responsibility. This means that ‘amateurs’ are taking control of domains that were strictly reserved for the professional ‘classes’ of media-producers. “Whether in music file-sharing, radio broadcasting or the writing of fanzines, the amateur media producer is intimately involved in dominant cultural practices, at the same time as they transform those practices through their own ‘autonomous’ media.” (Atton 2005: 15)
Society got familiar with mass media as a one-way channel of communication. Nevertheless radio, the first mass medium, originally was a two-way communication channel. In the early 1920s Berthold Brecht saw the potential of radio as a medium that could support a two-way political discussion program format. Brecht believed that the collective approach to production could be applied to both radio and film.
Berthold Brecht was enthusiastic about the potential of radio as a liberating medium when this was first invented in the early 20th century. For Brecht radio was a two-way communication device: a receiver as well as a transmitter. The first radio sets were indeed designed as both receivers and transmitters. In his letter to the German Director of Radio Broadcasting in 1927 Brecht wrote:
- In my view you should try to make radio broadcasting into a really demo- cratic thing. To this end you would already achieve much, for example, if you were to cease production only on your own for this wonderful distribution apparatus you have at your disposal and instead allow it to make productive topical events simply by setting up and in special cases perhaps by managing it in a skillful, time-saving way. [...] In other words I believe that you must move with the apparatuses closer to the real events and not simply limit yourself to reproducing or reporting. You must go to the parliamentary sessions of the Reichstag and especially to the major court trials. Since this would be a great step forward, there will certainly be a series of laws that try to prevent that. You must turn to the public in order to eliminate these laws. (Silberman 2001: 35)
Brecht wrote the radio play Lindberg’s Flight for an interactive many-to-many radio event, which opened at the Festival for German Chamber Music in Baden-Baden on 27 July 1929. The play’s subject was the first flight over the Atlantic Ocean by pilot Charles Lindberg, in May 1927. Lindberg’s Flight pictured the flight as a struggle of technology against nature, and as an achievement of a collective rather than an individual. The audience was participating in the role of Lindberg. Brecht was showcasing “how the medium itself can transform social communication through its technological advantage: the ear is to become a voice.” (Silberman 2001: 41)
- Brecht’s vision never materialized. Instead, radio became a one-to-many medium, distributing content controlled by centralised radio stations to the masses of audiences.
Today, digital networks provide new possibilities for liberated media practices through the use of Free Software. Since art and ideas never develop within an art-historical vacuum but always feed on the past, free culture ideals promise to make our cultural heritage accessible to everybody to re-read, re-use and re-mix as they like. According to Armin Medosch: “Without open access to the achievements of the past there would be no culture at all.” (2003: 15) His project Kingdom of Piracy, a book and a CD software package, was released under Open Content licenses and it was free to use, share and edit. One of the softwares found on the CD is the Dyne:Bolic, a Linux distribution used for the Deptford. TV project, as discussed later on in this chapter. An ever increasing amount of recent and current art projects require that artists work collaboratively with programmers in order to create such projects. They also often require the use of controversial technologies such as file-sharing or concepts of computer viruses. Such projects are of course, more often than not, criticised by the media industry as giving ground to piracy.
- This is not piracy, as industry associations want us to believe, but the creation of open spaces in a number of different ways; they facilitate freedom of expression, collective action in creation and political expres- sion and the notion of a public interest in networked communications. (Medosch 2003: 18) The Internet is not simply a more efficient way of maintaining subcultural activity, it is potentially a space for its creation and recreation on a global scale: it remains an invitation to a new imaginary. (Atton 2005: 8)
Over the last few years “Free Libre and Open Source Software” (FLOSS), a form of collaborative software development, has grown rapidly over the digital networks. “Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech”, not as in “free beer”. The users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and im- prove the software. Linux is one of the most famous FLOSS developments. Linux is a computer operating system which can be installed for free on any computer without having to pay for it, unlike the commercial mainstream operating systems like Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS. All its source code is available to the public and anyone can freely use, modify, and redistribute it.
- The Open Source and Free Software movements share the source code of their programs under a copyleft license. In the same way, collective film-making web interfaces will share the film ‘source code’, that is, the rough material plus the meta-data created by logging and editing this material. Such web-interfaces and technologies like File-sharing challenge the notion of traditional broadcasting: on the one hand the production and distribution processes merge together; on the other hand the audiences can participate actively by undertaking a role that has always, within the frame of traditional media production, been exclusively reserved to producers. These changes challenge expectations of the film as a finished, linear product, and of the audiences as passive consumers of culture and/or entertainment.
- File-sharing is thus seen as controversial because of its key role in this blurring of old concepts; what was earlier seen as stable commodity forms and circuits of distribution are now turned upside down, what was once seen as a delineation of stable roles for the human actors involved is now severely called into question. (Andresson, 2006)
Why would mp3 files necessarily replace retail CDs, for example? Wouldn’t they rather replace radio? Why would avi files replace retail DVDs? Wouldn’t they rather replace a visit to the video rental shop, or two hours of Sky Movies, or — for that sake — the free DVD that came with Sunday’s newspaper? Why shouldn't the public broadcasting services not be fileshareres, as the tax payer already payd
The end of this text is a remix out of the collectively written reader “Deptford.TV diaries”, the original text can be found on http://Deptford.TV with many thanks to Jonas Andersson, Maria X, Andrea Rota, James Steven and all the collaborators:
Nowadays, everyone knows that anyone could copy that file, yet the industry persists with even more vitriolic rhetoric. The genie is doubtlessly out of the bottle, and we are faced with a public which is more aware than ever of the controversies at hand, whilst being increasingly skilled in getting what they want — for free.
Communality, collaboration and public sharing here constitute a living, long-established, interesting challenge to the conventional financial system — and a sphere which can still promise profit and growth. The Asian counterfeit economy (real piracy!) is a thriving, semi-hidden counterpart to the corporate economy — and the gains from this pirate economy are often more beneficial to the world’s poor. When it comes to copying of so-called ‘immaterial’ produce, the collective gain is so high that also those with modest margins of sustenance can afford to share that which is only multiplied and never reducible: culture, ideas, knowledge, information, software.
It is, however, illusory to believe file-sharing is entirely altruistic. It is highly motivated by personal gratification and notions of comfort and instantaneity. Scratching the veneer of most human behaviour this is of course a far from unexpected finding. Still, most people would argue, through the simple physical phenomenon of aggregation sharing generates something which could certainly be described as a ‘greater good,’ something which the agents involved can make continuous use of and take pride in — in fact, they often even describe it as altruism.
- When we freely share content on the Internet, we are currently bypassing the established forms of the market place — generating, in effect, new systems of exchange. Appropriation and consumption are just that; it is all about the uses of media content; turning it into something else, or using it beyond the means dictated by the producer. We could therefore ask ourselves: is cultural appropriation piracy? Rasmus Fleischer and Palle Torsson — the authors behind the influential ‘grey commons’ speech — insist on talking about file-sharing as a horizontal activity;
- Digital technology is built on copying bits, and internet is built on file- sharing. Copying is always already there. The only thing copyright can do is to impose a moral differentiation between so-called normal workings and immoral. (Fleischer and Torsson 2006)
To put it bluntly: People collaborate, copy and share because they can. Now deal with it.
Bibliography
Andersson, Jonas (2006) “The Pirate Bay and the ethos of sharing” in Deptford.TV diaries. London: Openmute Atton, Chris. (2005) Alternative Internet. Edinburgh: University Press. Critical Arts Ensemble. (1996) The electronic disobedience. New York: Autonomedia Hoem, Jon. (2004) Videoblogs as “Collective Documentary”. Vienna: Blog Talk conference. Medosch, Armin. (2003) Piratology. In Kingdom of Piracy (ed). Dive. Liverpool: Fact. pp. 8-19. Rasmus Fleischer and Palle Torsson. (2005) ‘grey commons’ speech at Chaos Communication Congress 22C3 in Berlin. Silberman, Marc. (2001) Brecht on Film. London: methuen.