Edited by: Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes de Valk
November 2008
Pages: 320
ISBN-10: 1906496188
ISBN-13: 978-1906496180
Publisher: Mute Publishing Ltd
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Description
FLOSS+Art critically reflects on the growing relationship between Free Software ideology, open content and digital art. It provides a view onto the social, political and economic myths and realities linked to this phenomenon.
With contributions by: Fabianne Balvedi, Florian Cramer, Sher Doruff, Nancy Mauro Flude, Olga Goriunova, Dave Griffiths, Ross Harley, Martin Howse, Shahee Ilyas, Ricardo Lafuente, Ivan Monroy Lopez, Thor Magnusson, Alex McLean, Rob Myers, Alejandra Maria Perez Nuñez, Eleonora Oreggia, oRx-qX, Julien Ottavi, Michael van Schaik, Femke Snelting, Pedro Soler, Hans Christoph Steiner, Prodromos Tsiavos, Simon Yuill
Reviews
From Neural, Issue 33, 2009
Advocacy of the FLOSS model in culture is a nodal strategy for change, and it is
important to keep in mind what the two editors state in the introduction:
"software industry no longer sells software: it sells licenses." Starting
from here their proposed path through all the art-related issues of Free
Software results in a rich end empowering experience. The collection of
essays is the most exhaustive ever published including the analysis of
FLOSS and music, video, theatre, graphic design, typography, libraries,
licenses, live coding, you name it. This dense book with twenty-four
authors is really not an apology of FLOSS models for the sake of an
ideological battle. On the contrary, for example, the needed open mind
and will to switch operating system, plus the consequent investment of
personal time, is not underestimated. But the amount of analysis,
practices and stimuli emerging while reading is amazing as a whole new
world discovery. The book includes the seminal Transmediale Award winning
text "all Problems of Notation Will be solved by the Masses: Free Open
Form Performance, Free/Libre Open Source Software and Distributive
Practice" by Simon Yuill, which exemplary and critically analyses the FLOSS
paradigm through history and philosophy enhancing its fundamental quality
of freedom of production. So it's a sort of manifesto, chorally written
sometimes reflecting the same FLOSS defects (redundancy and enthusiasm)
and its unmatchable virtues, but giving serious hope for its pervading
potential in every art sector.
From "Turning Software Inside Out", Tony D. Sampson, 2009
“... Mansoux and de Valk remind us that the software industry no longer sells software: it sells licences. More than that, digital content consumption, once open to the free hack, is now increasingly limited to playback only mode. So, on the one hand, the new media producer is predetermined (from education to work) by the distribution and consumption of corporately defined creative tools. On the other hand, the user festers in the passivity of a range of ‘interactive’ experiences evermore linked to indirect consumption opportunities. FLOSS+Art therefore sets out an alternative vision intended to return production and consumption of digital art back to the values of the free software and open source movements: the principles of free use, free access to source code, and freedom to share, customise and distribute software.
The editors of FLOSS+Art are fully aware of how the corporatisation of software has turned the digital creative into a consumer. Propriety operating systems (Mac and PC), alongside the nurturing of user passions for the latest Adobe version updates, ostensibly monopolise and organise education and workplace environments. As Michael van Schaik’s contribution notes, most creatives seem not to care. Indeed, educators are often complicit in the production of obsessive Flash and Photoshop users. After the University, the Adobe tool-chain (as van Schaik calls it) stretches out to the ‘creative’ job market where specific skill requirements in certain applications determine future careers. FLOSS+Art is, in this context, a valid attempt to think through an escape route out of the confines of the Adobe Creative Penal Suite..."
Read more
Read more about the making of the book, check out the table of contents or read the preface.