[-empyre-] seeing yourself a prototype - the limits of open source

[Cynthia Beth Rubin]

Wow - I love the concept that we are all changing and that each of us  
an ongoing prototype for the next generation of ourselves

At the CAA session on Open Source (chaired by Patrick Lichty),   
Michael Mandiberg gave a presentation arguing for giving away Design  
ideas, for making practical design concepts  "Open Source," patent  
free ideas to be shared among the industrious.  In his talk he  
presented some Open Source Design ideas developed at Eyebeam.

A member of the audience who identified herself as a graduate student  
in Fine Arts at the Chicago Art Institute asked the question about  
what it the equilivant of "Open Source Design" in the Fine Arts, and  
how could Fine Arts students establish a Fine Arts Open Source  
practice.   She left before I could respond with the thought that as  
Fine Arts faculty members in art schools and art departments we are  
always giving away our ideas, our sense of how art works, what it can  
do, or what it might be in a certain situation. The very act of  
engaging in a critique session is an "Open Source" exchange of ideas.  
When students leave the room after a crit, they have no obligation to  
cite their professors as the source of their ideas, they simply take  
them and go.

Of course in an academic setting Ideas are not completely free,  
because students are paying tuition, and faculty members are being  
paid.  We have a contractual agreement to share ideas, to be (nearly)  
Open Source Fine Artists.

If we are all prototypes, then as individuals outside of the academic  
world,  we can share our Ideas as artists, as thinkers, as critics  
without a contractual agreement.  But isn't that what we are doing  
already in spaces such as this one - in discussion lists, in artist  
meetings, even when we show work in progress to friends and colleagues?

Now the question of second order prototyping as turning to others --  
not sure that I am ready for that!  It sort of reminds me of my  
teenage years going shopping for clothes with my mother, who somehow  
poured me into dresses and pulled on one corner or another to make  
them look like they fit, even when they remained uncomfortable.


Cynthia

Cynthia Beth Rubin
http://CBRubin.net



On Mar 18, 2010, at 11:50 AM, Julian Oliver wrote:

> ..on Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 03:10:01PM -0000, Johannes Birringer wrote:
>>>> Davin wrote:>> At one point in time, discrete objects were  
>>>> things that were considered prototypes that could be thrown into  
>>>> an existing system and tested. Increasingly, it seems like the  
>>>> prototypes are geared to test individual and collective  
>>>> consciousness.  In other words, maybe we are the  prototypes?   
>>>> Being tested so that we can be effectively processed, shrink- 
>>>> wrapped, labeled, bought and sold>>
>
> Hmm, This statement from Davin confused me also. I thought it was  
> fairly clear
> that any act of learning - or any 'attempt', which all action is at  
> it's root -
> simultaneously produces the self as a prototype, even if only for  
> the duration
> of that act. The very notion of a prototype assumes a platonic and  
> eventuating
> objecthood, a finished thing. When are people ever so singularly  
> resolved?
>
> Second order prototyping is the work of other people, especially  
> aquaintances,
> marketeers and those that resource people.
>
> Beast,
>
> -- 
> Julian Oliver
> home: New Zealand
> based: Berlin, Germany
> currently: Berlin, Germany
> about: http://julianoliver.com
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