This chapter is written from the perspective of an artist who develops models
of practice founded on the fundamental assumption that knowledge is socially
constructed. Knowledge, according to this understanding, builds on imitation
and dialogue and is therefore based on a collective endeavour. Although
collective forms of knowledge production are common in the sciences, such
modes of working constitute a distinct shift for artistic practice, which has
been conceived as individual and isolated or subjective. Moreover, the shift
from the individual to the social in artistic production — what has been
called art’s ‘social turn’[1](ch11.xhtml#footnote-525) — also shifts the
emphasis from the artwork to the social processes of production and therefore
proposes to relinquish ‘the notion of the “work” as a noun (a static object)’
and re-conceptualises ‘the “work” as a verb (a communicative
activity)’.[2](ch11.xhtml#footnote-524) This shift from ‘noun’ to ‘verb’
promotes collective practices over authored objects and includes work such as
developing infrastructures, organising events, facilitating, hosting,
curating, editing and publishing. Such generative practices also question the
nature of authorship in art.
Authorship is no doubt a method to develop one’s voice, to communicate and to
interact with others, but it is also a legal, economic and institutional
construct, and it is this function of authorship as a framing and measuring
device that I will discuss in this chapter. Oscillating between the arts and
academia, I shall examine the concept of authorship from a legal, economic and
institutional perspective by studying a set of artistic practices that have
made copyright, intellectual property and authorship into their artistic
material.
Copyright’s legal definition combines authorship, originality and property.
‘Copyright is not a transcendent moral idea’, as Mark Rose has shown, ‘but a
specifically modern formation [of property rights] produced by printing
technology, marketplace economics and the classical liberal culture of
possessive individualism’.[3](ch11.xhtml#footnote-523) Therefore the author in
copyright law is unequivocally postulated in terms of liberal and neoliberal
values. Feminist legal scholar Carys Craig argues that copyright law and the
concept of authorship it supports fail to adequately recognise the essential
social nature of human creativity. It chooses relationships qua private
property instead of recognising the author as necessarily social situated and
therefore creating (works) within a network of social
relations.[4](ch11.xhtml#footnote-522) This chapter tries to reimagine
authorial activity in contemporary art that is not caught in ‘simplifying
dichotomies that pervade copyright theory (author/user, creator/copier,
labourer/free-rider)’,[5](ch11.xhtml#footnote-521) and to examine both the
blockages that restrict our acknowledgement of the social production of art
and the social forces that exist within emancipatory collective
practices.[6](ch11.xhtml#footnote-520)
Copyright is granted for an ‘original work [that] is fixed in any tangible
medium of expression’. It is based on the relationship between an
‘originator’, being imagined as the origin of the
work,[7](ch11.xhtml#footnote-519) and distinct products, which are fixed in a
medium, ‘from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise
communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or
device.’[8](ch11.xhtml#footnote-518)
Practices, on the contrary, are not protected under
copyright.[9](ch11.xhtml#footnote-517) Because practice can’t be fixed into a
tangible form of expression, intellectual property rights are not created and
cannot be exploited economically. This inability to profit from practice by
making use of intellectual property results in a clear privileging of the
‘outputs’ of authored works over practice. This value system therefore
produces ‘divisive hierarchical splits between those who ‘do’ [practices], and
those who write about, make work about
[outputs]’.[10](ch11.xhtml#footnote-516)
Media scholar Kathleen Fitzpatrick observes in her forthcoming book Generous
Thinking:
[H]owever much we might reject individualism as part and parcel of the
humanist, positivist ways of the past, our working lives — on campus and off —
are overdetermined by it. […] c. And the drive to compete […] bleeds out into
all areas of the ways we work, even when we’re working together.’ The
competitive individualism that the academy cultivates makes all of us
painfully aware that even our most collaborative efforts will be assessed
individually, with the result that even those fields whose advancement depends
most on team-based efforts are required to develop careful guidelines for
establishing credit and priority.[11](ch11.xhtml#footnote-515)
Artist and activist Susan Kelly expands on this experience with her
observation that this regime of individual merit even inhibits us from
partaking in collective practices. She describes the dilemma for the academic
activist, when the demand for ‘outputs’ (designs, objects, texts,
exhibitions), which can be measured, quantified and exploited by institutions
(galleries, museums, publishers, research universities), becomes the
prerequisite of professional survival.
Take the young academic, for example, who spends evenings and weekends in the
library fast tracking a book on social movements about which she cares deeply
and wants to broaden her understanding. She is also desperate for it to be
published quickly to earn her the university research points that will see her
teaching contract renewed for the following year. It is likely that the same
academic is losing touch with the very movements she writes about, and is no
longer participating in their work because she is exhausted and the book takes
time to write no matter how fast she works. On publication of the book, her
work is validated professionally; she gets the university contract and is
invited to sit on panels in public institutions about contemporary social
movements. In this hypothetical case, it is clear that the academic’s work has
become detached from the movements she now writes and talks about, and she no
doubt sees this. But there is good compensation for this uneasiness in the
form of professional validation, invitations that flatter, and most
importantly, an ease of the cycle of hourly paid or precarious nine-month
contracts.[12](ch11.xhtml#footnote-514)
Kelly’s and Fitzpatrick’s examples describe the paradoxes that the demand for
authorship creates for collective practices. But how can we actually escape
regimes of authorship that are conceptualised and economised as ‘cultural
capital’?
Academic authorship, after all, is the basis for employment, promotion, and
tenure. Also, arguably, artists who stop being ‘authors’ of their own work
would no longer be considered ‘artists’, because authorship is one of art’s
main framing devices. In the following I will discuss three artistic practices
that address this question — with, as we will see, very different
outcomes.[13](ch11.xhtml#footnote-513)
The artist’s main objective appeared to be not to pirate and circulate an
unauthorised reprint of Salinger’s novel, because he did not present the book
under Salinger’s name but his own. Prince also chose a very limited
circulation figure.[16](ch11.xhtml#footnote-510) It is also far from
conventional plagiarism, because hardly any twentieth century literature is
more read and widely known than Salinger’s Catcher. So the question is, why
would Prince want to recirculate one of the most-read American novels of all
time, a book available in bookshops around the world, with a total circulation
of 65 million copies, translated into 30
languages?[17](ch11.xhtml#footnote-509)
Prince stated that he loved Salinger’s novel so much that ‘I just wanted to
make sure, if you were going to buy my Catcher in the Rye, you were going to
have to pay twice as much as the one Barnes and Noble was selling from J. D.
Salinger. I know that sounds really kind of shallow and maybe that’s not the
best way to contribute to something, but in the book-collecting world you pay
a premium for really collectible books,’ he explained in an interview with
singer Kim Gordon.[18](ch11.xhtml#footnote-508)
As intended, the work quickly turned into a
collectible[19](ch11.xhtml#footnote-507) and attracted lots of applause from
members of the contemporary art world including, among others, conceptual
writer Kenneth Goldsmith, who described the work as a ‘terribly ballsy move’.
Prince was openly ‘pirating what is arguably the most valuable property in
American literature, practically begging the estate of Salinger to sue
him.’[20](ch11.xhtml#footnote-506)
## Who has the Power to Appropriate?
We need to examine Goldsmith’s appraisal more closely. What is this ‘ballsy
move’? And how does it relate to the asserted criticality of appropriation
artists in the late 1970s, a group of which Prince was part?
Prince rose to prominence in New York in the late 1970s, associated with the
Pictures generation of artists[21](ch11.xhtml#footnote-505) whose
appropriation of images from mass culture and advertising — Prince’s
photographs of Marlboro Man adverts, for example — examined the politics of
representation.[22](ch11.xhtml#footnote-504) Theorists and critics, often
associated with the academic October journal,[23](ch11.xhtml#footnote-503)
interpreted the Pictures artists’ ‘unabashed usurpations of images as radical
interrogations of the categories of originality and authenticity within the
social construction of authorship. […] The author had become irrelevant
because the original gesture had become unimportant; the copy adequately stood
in its place and performed its legitimising
function.’[24](ch11.xhtml#footnote-502)
Artist Sherrie Levine, one of the leading figures in American appropriation
art, expresses the core theoretical commitment of this group of artists in her
1982 manifesto: ‘The world is filled to suffocating. Man has placed his token
on every stone. Every word, every image, is leased and mortgaged. […] A
picture is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of
culture. We can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never
original.’[25](ch11.xhtml#footnote-501) This ostensive refusal of originality
poses, no doubt, a critique of the author who creates ‘ex nihilo’. But does it
really present a critique of authorship per se? I shall propose three
arguments from different viewpoints — aesthetic, economic and legal — to
explore the assumptions of this assertion.
From the aesthetic perspective, Prince and Levine are making formal choices in
the process of appropriating already existing work. They re-photograph,
produce photographic prints, make colour choices; they enlarge or scale down,
trim the edges and take decisions about framing. Nate Harrison makes this
point when he argues that ‘Levine and Prince take individual control of the
mass-authored image, and in so doing, reaffirm the ground upon which the
romantic author stands.’[26](ch11.xhtml#footnote-500) It is exactly this
control of, and authority over, the signed and exhibited image that leads
Prince and Levine to be validated as ‘author[s] par
excellence’.[27](ch11.xhtml#footnote-499) Prince, for example, has been lauded
as an artist who ‘makes it new, by making it
again’.[28](ch11.xhtml#footnote-498) This ‘making it again’, a process that
Hal Foster names ‘recoding’,[29](ch11.xhtml#footnote-497) creates new meaning
and must therefore be interpreted as an ‘original’ authorial act.
Subsequently, this work has been validated by museums, galleries, collectors
and critics. From an economic perspective one can therefore argue that
Prince’s numerous solo exhibitions in prestigious museums, his sales figures,
and affiliation to commercial galleries are evidence that he has been ascribed
artistic authorship as well as authorial agency by the institutions of the art
world.[30](ch11.xhtml#footnote-496)
The legal framework remains conceptual, theoretical and untested in this case.
But on another occasion, Prince’s authorship was tested in court — and
eventually legally confirmed to belong to him. This is crucial to my inquiry.
What are we to make of the fact that Prince, who challenges the copyright
doctrine in his gestures of appropriation, has been ascribed legitimate
authorship by courts who rule on copyright law? It seems paradoxical, because
as Elizabeth Wang rightly claims, ‘if appropriation is legitimized, the
political dimension of this act is excised’.[32](ch11.xhtml#footnote-494) And
Cornelia Sollfrank argues ‘the value of appropriation art lies in its
illicitness. […] Any form of [judicial] legitimisation would not support the
[appropriation] artists’ claims, but rather undermine
them.’[33](ch11.xhtml#footnote-493)
## Authorship Defined by Market Value and Celebrity Status?
To illustrate this point I will briefly digress to discuss a controversial
court case about Prince’s authorial legitimacy. In 2009, New-York-based
photographer, Patrick Cariou began litigation against Prince, his gallerist
Larry Gagosian and his catalogue publisher Rizzoli. Prince had appropriated
Cariou’s photographs in his series Canal Zone which went on show at Gagosian
Gallery.[34](ch11.xhtml#footnote-492) A first ruling by a district judge
stated that Prince’s appropriation was copyright infringement and requested
him to destroy the unsold paintings on show. The ruling also forbade those
that had been sold from being displayed publicly in the
future.[35](ch11.xhtml#footnote-491)
However Prince’s eventual appeal turned the verdict around. A second circuit
court decided that twenty-five of his thirty paintings fell under the fair use
rule. The legal concept of fair use allows for copyright exceptions in order
to balance the interests of exclusive right holders with the interests of
users and the public ‘for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting,
teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or
research’.[36](ch11.xhtml#footnote-490) One requirement to justify fair use is
that the new work should be transformative, understood as presenting a new
expression, meaning or message. The appeal’s court considered Prince’s
appropriation as sufficiently transformative because a ‘reasonable
observer’[37](ch11.xhtml#footnote-489)would perceive aesthetic differences
with the original.[38](ch11.xhtml#footnote-488)
Many artists applauded the appeal court’s verdict, as it seemed to set a
precedent for a more liberal approach towards appropriation art. Yet attorney
Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento and art historian Lauren van Haaften-Schick voiced
concerns about the verdict’s interpretation of ‘transformative’ and the
ruling’s underlying assumptions.
The questions of ‘aesthetic differences’ perceived by a ‘reasonable observer’,
Sarmiento rightly says, are significant. After all, Prince did not provide a
statement of intent in his deposition[39](ch11.xhtml#footnote-487) therefore
the judges had to adopt the role of a (quasi) art critic ‘employing [their]
own artistic judgment[s]’ in a field in which they had not been
trained.[40](ch11.xhtml#footnote-486)
Secondly, trying to evaluate the markets Cariou and Prince cater for, the
court introduced a controversial distinction between celebrity and non-
celebrity artists. The court opinion reasons: ‘Certain of the Canal Zone
artworks have sold for two million or more dollars. The invitation list for a
dinner that Gagosian hosted in conjunction with the opening of the Canal Zone
show included a number of the wealthy and famous such as the musicians Jay-Z
and Beyoncé Knowles, artists Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, [….] and actors
Robert De Niro, Angelina Jolie, and Brad Pitt’.[41](ch11.xhtml#footnote-485)
Cariou, on the contrary, so the verdict argues, ‘has not aggressively marketed
his work’, and has earned just over $8,000 in royalties from Yes Rasta since
its publication.[42](ch11.xhtml#footnote-484) Furthermore, he made only ‘a
handful of private sales [of his photographic prints] to personal
acquaintances’.[43](ch11.xhtml#footnote-483) Prince, by contrast, sold eight
of his Canal Zone paintings for a total of $10,480,000 and exchanged seven
others for works by canonical artists such as painter Larry Rivers and
sculptor Richard Serra.[44](ch11.xhtml#footnote-482)
The court documents here tend to portray Cariou as a sort of hobby artist or
‘lower class amateur’ in Sarmiento’s words,[45](ch11.xhtml#footnote-481)
whereas Prince is described as a ‘well-known appropriation
artist’[46](ch11.xhtml#footnote-480) with considerable success in the art
market.[47](ch11.xhtml#footnote-479) Such arguing is dangerous, because it
brings social class, celebrity status and art market success into play as
legal categories to be considered in future copyright cases and dismisses
‘Cariou’s claim as a legitimate author and
artist’.[48](ch11.xhtml#footnote-478) The parties eventually reached an out-
of-court settlement regarding the remaining five paintings, and their
infringement claim was returned to the district court meaning that no ruling
had been issued. This pragmatic settlement can be interpreted as a missed
opportunity for further clarification in the interpretation of fair use. No
details about the settlement have been disclosed.[49](ch11.xhtml#footnote-477)
Richard Prince presented himself in his court deposition as an artist, who
‘do[es]n’t really have a message,’ and was not ‘trying to create anything with
a new meaning or a new message.’[50](ch11.xhtml#footnote-476) Nevertheless the
appeal court’s ruling transforms the ‘elusive artist not only into a subject,
but also into an [artist] author’[51](ch11.xhtml#footnote-475) — a status he
set out to challenge in the first place. Therefore Richard Prince’s ongoing
games[52](ch11.xhtml#footnote-474) might be entertaining or make us laugh, but
they stop short of effectively challenging the conceptualisation of
authorship, originality and property because they are assigned the very
properties that are denied to the authors whose works are copied. That is to
say, Prince’s performative toying with the law does not endanger his art’s
operability in the art world. On the contrary, it constructs and affirms his
reputation as a radical and saleable artist-author.
## De-Authoring
A very different approach to copyright law is demonstrated by American artist
Cady Noland, who employs the law to effectively endanger her art’s operability
in the art market. Noland is famously concerned with the circulation and
display of her work with respect to context, installation and photographic
representation. Relatedly, she has also become very critical of short-term
speculation on the art market. Noland has apparently not produced any new work
for over a decade, due to the time she now spends pursuing litigation around
her existing oeuvre.[53](ch11.xhtml#footnote-473) In 2011, she strikingly
demonstrated that an artist need not give up control when her work enters the
commercial art market and turns into a commodity for short-term profit. She
made probably one of the most important stands in modern art history when she
‘de-authored’ her work Cowboys Milking (1990), after it was put up for auction
at Sotheby’s with the consequence that the work could not be sold as a Cady
Noland work anymore.
Swiss-born dealer Marc Jancou, based in New York and Geneva, had consigned the
work to Sotheby’s a few months after having purchased it for $106,500 from a
private collector.[54](ch11.xhtml#footnote-472) Jancou was obviously attracted
by the fact that one of Noland’s works had achieved the highest price for a
piece by a living female artist: $6.6m.
At Noland’s request, on the eve of the auction, Sotheby’s abruptly withdrew
the piece, a silkscreen print on an aluminium panel. The artist argued that it
was damaged: ‘The current condition […] materially differs from that at the
time of its creation. […] [H]er honor and reputation [would] be prejudiced as
a result of offering [it] for sale with her name associated with
it.’[55](ch11.xhtml#footnote-471) From a legal point of view, this amounts to
a withdrawal of Noland’s authorship. The US Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990,
VARA, grants artists ‘authorship’ rights over works even after they have been
sold, including the right to prevent intentional modification and to forbid
the use of their name in association with distorted or mutilated
work.[56](ch11.xhtml#footnote-470) Such rights are based on the premise that
the integrity of a work needs to be guaranteed and a work of art has cultural
significance that extends beyond mere property
value.[57](ch11.xhtml#footnote-469)
Noland’s withdrawal of authorship left Jancou with ‘a Cady Noland’ in his
living room, but not on the market. In an email to Sotheby’s, he complained:
‘This is not serious! Why does an auction house ask the advise [sic] of an
artist that has no gallery representation and has a biased and radical
approach to the art market?’[58](ch11.xhtml#footnote-468) Given that Noland is
a long-standing and outspoken sceptic with respect to speculative dealing in
art, he somewhat naively wonders why she would be able to exercise this degree
of power over an artwork that had been entered into a system of commercial
exchange. His complaint had no effect. The piece remained withdrawn from the
auction and Jancou filed a lawsuit in February 2012 seeking $26 million in
damages from Sotheby’s.[59](ch11.xhtml#footnote-467)
From an economic perspective, both artists, Noland and Prince, illustrated
powerfully how authorship is instituted in the form of the artist’s signature,
to construct (Prince’s Catcher in the Rye) or destroy (Noland’s Cowboy
Milking) monetary value. Richard Prince’s stated intention is to double the
book’s price, and by attaching his name to Salinger’s book in a Duchampian
gesture, he turns it into a work of art authored and copyrighted by Prince.
Noland, on the contrary lowers the value of her artwork by removing her
signature and by asserting the artist-author’s (Noland) rights over the
dealer-owner’s (Jancou).[60](ch11.xhtml#footnote-466)
However, from a legal perspective I would argue that both Noland and Prince —
in their opposite approaches of removing and adding their signatures — affirm
authorship as it is conceptualised by the law.[61](ch11.xhtml#footnote-465)
After all ‘copyright law is a system to which the notion of the author appears
to be central — in defining the right owner, in defining the work, in defining
infringement.’[62](ch11.xhtml#footnote-464)
## Intellectual Property Obsession Running Amok?
Intellectual property — granted via copyright — has become one of the driving
forces of the creative economy, being exploited by corporations and
institutions of the so-called ‘creative industries’. In the governmental
imagination, creative workers are described as ‘model entrepreneurs for the
new economy’.[63](ch11.xhtml#footnote-463) Shortly after the election of New
Labour in the UK in 1997, the newly formed Department of Culture, Media and
Sport established the Creative Industries Mapping Document (CIMD 1998) and
defined the ‘Creative Industries’ primarily in relation to creativity and
intellectual property.[64](ch11.xhtml#footnote-462) According to the
Department for Culture Media and Sport the creative industries have ‘their
origin in individual creativity, skill and talent, which have a potential for
wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of
intellectual property.’[65](ch11.xhtml#footnote-461) This exploitation of
intellectual property as intangible capital has been taken on board by
institutions and public management policymakers, which not only turn creative
practices into private property, but trigger working policies that produce
precarious self-entrepreneurship and sacrifice in pursuit of
gratification.[66](ch11.xhtml#footnote-460)
We find this kind of thinking reflected for instance on the website built by
the University of the Arts London to give advice on intellectual property —
which was until recently headlined ‘Own It’.[67](ch11.xhtml#footnote-459)
Here, institutional policies privilege the privatisation and propertisation of
creative student work over the concept of sharing and fair use.
There is evidence that this line of thought creates a self-inflicted
impediment for cultural workers inside and outside art colleges. The College
Art Association, a US-based organization of about fourteen thousand artists,
arts professionals, students and scholars released a report in 2015 on the
state of fair use in the visual arts.[68](ch11.xhtml#footnote-458) The survey
reveals that ‘visual arts communities of practice share a great deal of
confusion about and misunderstanding of the nature of copyright law and the
availability of fair use. […] Formal education on copyright, not least at art
colleges, appears to increase tendencies to overestimate risk and underuse
fair use.’ As a result, the report states, the work of art students ‘is
constrained and censored, most powerfully by themselves, because of that
confusion and the resulting fear and anxiety.’[69](ch11.xhtml#footnote-457)
This climate even results in outright self-censorship. The interviewees of
this study ‘repeatedly expressed a pre-emptive decision not to pursue an
idea’[70](ch11.xhtml#footnote-456) because gaining permission from right
holders is often difficult, time consuming or expensive. The authors of this
report called this mindset a ‘permissions culture’, giving some examples. ‘I
think of copyright as a cudgel, and I have been repeatedly forestalled and
censored because I have not been able to obtain copyright permission’, stated
one academic, whose research did not get approval from an artist’s estate. He
added: ‘For those of us who work against the grain of [the] market-driven arts
economy, their one recourse for controlling us is copyright.’ Another said:
‘In many cases I have encountered artists’ estates and sometimes artists who
refuse rights to publish (even when clearly fair use) unless they like the
interpretation in the text. This is censorship and very deleterious to
scholarship and a free public discourse on
images.’[71](ch11.xhtml#footnote-455) One scholar declared that copyright
questions overshadowed his entire work process: ‘In my own writing, I’m
worrying all the time.’[72](ch11.xhtml#footnote-454) In such a climate of
anxiety ‘editors choose not to publish books that they believe might have
prohibitive permission costs; museums delay or abandon digital-access
projects’, as Ben Mauk comments in the New Yorker
Magazine.[73](ch11.xhtml#footnote-453)
The language of law does harm because it has the rhetorical power to foreclose
debate. Legal and political science scholar Jennifer Nedelsky traces the
problem to the fact ‘that many right claims, such as “it’s my property”, have
a conclusory quality. They are meant to end, not to open up debate’, therefore
‘treating as settled, what should be debated’.[74](ch11.xhtml#footnote-452)
In a similar vein, political scientist Deborah Halbert describes how her
critique of intellectual property took her on a journey to study the details
of the law. The more she got into it, so she says, the more her own thinking
had been ‘co-opted’ by the law. ‘The more I read the case law and law
journals, the more I came to speak from a position inside the status quo. My
ability to critique the law became increasingly bounded by the law itself and
the language used by those within the legal profession to discuss issues of
intellectual property. I began to speak in terms of incentives and public
goods. I began to start any discussion of intellectual property by what was
and was not allowed under the law. It became clear that the very act of
studying the subject had transformed my standpoint from an outsider to an
insider.’[75](ch11.xhtml#footnote-451)
## The Piracy Project — Multiple Authorship or ‘Unsolicited Collaborations’?
A similar question of language applies to the term
‘pirate’.[76](ch11.xhtml#footnote-450) Media and communication scholar Ramon
Lobato asks whether the language of piracy used by the critical intellectual
property discourse ‘should be embraced, rejected, recuperated or
rearticulated’? He contends that reducing ‘piracy’ to a mere legal category —
of conforming, or not, with the law — tends to neglect the generative forces
of piracy, which ‘create its own economies, exemplify wider changes in social
structure, and bring into being tense and unusual relationships between
consumers, cultural producers and governments.’[77](ch11.xhtml#footnote-449)
When the word pirate first appeared in ancient Greek texts, it was closely
related to the noun ‘peira’ which means trial or attempt. ‘The ‘pirate’ would
then be the one who ‘tests’, ‘puts to proof’, ‘contends with’, and ‘makes an
attempt’.[78](ch11.xhtml#footnote-448) Further etymological research shows
that from the same root stems pira: experience, practice [πείρα], pirama:
experiment [πείραμα], piragma: teasing [πείραγμα] and pirazo: tease, give
trouble [πειράζω].[79](ch11.xhtml#footnote-447)
This ‘contending with’, ’making an attempt’ and ‘teasing’ is at the core of
the Piracy Project’s practice, whose aim is twofold: firstly, to gather and
study a vast array of piratical practices (to test and negotiate the
complexities and paradoxes created by intellectual property for artistic
practice); and secondly to build a practice that is itself collaborative and
generative on many different levels.[80](ch11.xhtml#footnote-446)
The Piracy Project explores the philosophical, legal and social implications
of cultural piracy and creative modes of dissemination. Through an open call,
workshops, reading rooms and performative debates as well as through our
research into international pirate book markets[81](ch11.xhtml#footnote-445)
we gathered a collection of roughly 150 copied, emulated, appropriated and
modified books from across the world. Their approaches to copying vary widely,
from playful strategies of reproduction, modification and reinterpretation of
existing works; to acts of civil disobedience circumventing enclosures such as
censorship or market monopolies; to acts of piracy generated by commercial
interests. This vast and contradictory spectrum of cases, from politically
motivated bravery as well as artistic statements to cases of hard-edged
commercial exploitation, serves as the starting point to explore the
complexities and contradictions of authorship in debates, workshops, lectures
and texts, like this one.
In an attempt to rearticulate the language of piracy we call the books in the
collection ‘unsolicited collaborations’.[82](ch11.xhtml#footnote-444)
Unsolicited indicates that the makers of the books in the Piracy Project did
not ask for permission — Richard Prince’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’ is one
example.[83](ch11.xhtml#footnote-443) Collaboration refers to a relational
activity and re-imagines authorship not as proprietary and stable, but as a
dialogical and generative process. Here, as feminist legal scholar Carys Craig
claims, ‘authorship is not originative but participative; it is not internal
but interactive; it is not independent but interdependent. In short, a
dialogic account of authorship is equipped to appreciate the derivative,
collaborative, and communicative nature of authorial activity in a way that
the Romantic [individual genius] account never
can.’[84](ch11.xhtml#footnote-442)
Such a participatory and interdependent conceptualisation of authorship is
illustrated and tested in the Piracy Project’s research into reprinting,
modifying, emulating and commenting on published books. As such it revisits —
through material practice — Michel Foucault’s critical concept of the ‘author
function’ as the triggering of a discourse, rather than a proprietary
right.[85](ch11.xhtml#footnote-441)
This becomes clearer when we consider that digital print technologies, for
example through print on demand and desktop publishing, allow for a constant
re-printing and re-editing of existing files. The advent and widespread
accessibility of the photocopy machine in the late 1960s allowed the reader to
photocopy books and collate selected chapters, pages or images in new and
customised compilations. These new reproduction technologies undermine to an
extent the concept of the printed book as a stable and authoritative
work,[86](ch11.xhtml#footnote-440) which had prevailed since the mass
production of books on industrial printing presses came into being. Eva
Hemmungs Wirtén describes how the widespread availability of the
photocopier[87](ch11.xhtml#footnote-439) has been perceived as a threat to the
authority of the text and cites Marshall McLuhan’s address at the Vision 65
congress in 1965:
Xerography is bringing a reign of terror into the world of publishing because
it means that every reader can become both author and publisher. […]
Authorship and readership alike can become production-oriented under
xerography. Anyone can take a book apart, insert parts of other books and
other materials of his own interest, and make his own book in a relatively
fast time. Any teacher can take any ten textbooks on any subject and custom-
make a different one by simply xeroxing a chapter from this one and from that
one.[88](ch11.xhtml#footnote-438)
One example of a reprinted and modified book in the Piracy Project is No se
diga a nadie (‘Don’t tell anyone’).[89](ch11.xhtml#footnote-437) It is an
autobiographical novel by Peruvian journalist and TV presenter Jaime Bayli.
The pirate copy, found by Andrea Francke on Lima’s pirate book markets, is
almost identical in size, weight, and format and the cover image is only
slightly cropped. However, this pirate copy has two extra chapters. Somebody
has infiltrated the named author’s work and sneaked in two fictionalised
chapters about the author’s life. These extra chapters are well written, good
enough to blend in and not noticeable at first glance by the
reader.[90](ch11.xhtml#footnote-436)
The pirates cannot gain any cultural capital here, as the pirating author
remains an anonymous ghost. Equally there is no financial profit to be made,
as long as the pirate version is not pointed out to readers as an extended
version. Such act is also not framed as a conceptual gesture, as it is the
case with Prince’s Catcher in the Rye. It rather operates under the radar of
everyone, and moreover and importantly, any revelation of this intervention or
any claim of authorship would be counterproductive.
This example helps us to think through concepts of the authoritative text and
the stability of the book. Other cases in the Piracy Project find similar ways
to queer the category of authorship and the dominant modes of production and
dissemination.[91](ch11.xhtml#footnote-435) Our practice consists of
collecting; setting up temporary reading rooms to house the collection; and
organising workshops and debates in order to find out about the reasons and
intentions for these acts of piracy, to learn from their strategies and to
track their implications for dominant modes of production and
dissemination.[92](ch11.xhtml#footnote-434)
This discursive practice distinguishes the Piracy Project from radical online
libraries, such as aaaaarg.fail or
[memoryoftheworld.org](http://memoryoftheworld.org).[93](ch11.xhtml#footnote-433)
While we share similar concerns, such as distribution monopolies, enclosure
and the streamlining of knowledge, these peer-to-peer (p2p) platforms mainly
operate as distribution platforms, developing strategies to share intact
copies of authoritative texts. Marcell Mars, for example, argues against
institutional and corporate distribution monopolies when he states ‘when
everyone is a librarian, [the] library is everywhere’. Mars invites users of
the online archive [memoryoftheworld.org](http://memoryoftheworld.org) to
upload their scanned books to share with others. Similarly, Sean Dockray, who
initiated aaaaarg.fail, a user generated online archive of books and texts,
said in an interview: ‘the project wasn’t about criticising institutions,
copyright, authority, and so on. It was simply about sharing knowledge. This
wasn’t as general as it sounds; I mean literally the sharing of knowledge
between various individuals and groups that I was in correspondence with at
the time but who weren’t necessarily in correspondence with each
other.’[94](ch11.xhtml#footnote-432)
In contrast to online p2p sharing platforms, the Piracy Project took off in a
physical space, in the library of Byam Shaw School of Art in London. Its
creation was a response to restrictive university policies when, in 2010, the
management announced the closure of the art college library due to a merger
with the University of the Arts London. A joint effort by students and staff,
supported by the acting principal, turned Byam Shaw’s art college library into
a self-organised library that remained public, as well as intellectually and
socially generative.[95](ch11.xhtml#footnote-431)
As a result of the college taking collective ownership over the library and
its books, the space opened up. It had been a resource that was controlled and
validated by institutional policies that shaped crucial decisions about what
went on the shelves, but it became an assemblage of knowledge in which
potentially obscure, self-published materials that were not institutionally
validated were able to enter.
For example, artist and writer Neil Chapman’s handmade facsimile of Gilles
Deleuze’s Proust and Signs[96](ch11.xhtml#footnote-430) explored the
materiality of print and related questions about the institutional policies of
authorisation. Chapman produced a handmade facsimile of his personal paperback
copy of Deleuze’s work, including binding mistakes in which a few pages were
bound upside down, by scanning and printing the book on his home inkjet
printer. The book is close to the original format, cover and weight. However,
it has a crafty feel to it: the ink soaks into the paper creating a blurry
text image very different from a mass-produced offset printed text. It has
been assembled in DIY style and speaks the language of amateurism and
makeshift. The transformation is subtle, and it is this subtlety that makes
the book subversive in an institutional library context. How do students deal
with their expectations that they will access authoritative and validated
knowledge on library shelves and instead encounter a book that was printed and
assembled by hand?[97](ch11.xhtml#footnote-429) Such publications circumvent
the chain of institutional validation: from the author, to the publisher, the
book trade, and lastly the librarian purchasing and cataloguing the book
according to the standard bibliographic
practices.[98](ch11.xhtml#footnote-428) A similar challenge to the stability
of the printed book and the related hierarchy of knowledge occurred when
students at Byam Shaw sought a copy of Jacques Ranciere’s Ignorant
Schoolmaster and found three copied and modified versions. In accordance with,
or as a response to, Ranciere’s pedagogical proposal, one copy featured
deleted passages that left blank spaces for the reader to fill and to
construct their own meaning in lieu of Ranciere’s
text.[99](ch11.xhtml#footnote-427)
This queering of the authority of the book as well as the normative,
institutional frameworks felt like a liberating practice. It involved an open
call for pirated books, a set of workshops and a series of
lectures,[100](ch11.xhtml#footnote-426) which built a structure that allowed
the Piracy Project to share concerns about the wider developments at the
university and the government’s funding cuts in education, while the project
could at the same time playfully subvert the dire and frustrating situation of
a library that is earmarked for closure.
The fact that the library’s acquisition budget was cut made the pirating
action even more meaningful. Many books were produced on the photocopy machine
in the college. Other copies were sent to the project by artists, writers,
curators and critics who responded to the international call. The initial
agreement was to accept any submission, no matter how controversial, illegal
or unethical it might be. This invited a variety of approaches and
contradicting voices, which were not muted by the self-censorship of their
originators, nor by the context in which they circulated. By resisting
generalised judgments, the project tried to practice critique in Judith
Butler’s sense. For Butler ‘judgments operate […] as ways to subsume a
particular under an already constituted category, whereas critique asks after
the occlusive constitution of the field of categories themselves. […] Critique
is able to call foundations into question, denaturalise social and political
hierarchy, and even establish perspectives by which a certain distance on the
naturalised world can be had.’[101](ch11.xhtml#footnote-425)
To create such a space for the critique of the naturalisation of authorship as
intellectual property was one of the aims of the Piracy Project: firstly by
understanding that there is always a choice through discovering and exploring
other cultures and nations dealing with (or deliberately suspending) Western
copyright, and secondly through the project’s collective practice itself.
## Collective Authorship, Institutional Framing
The collaborative mode and collectivity within the Piracy Project
differentiates its artistic strategy in principle from Prince’s or Noland’s
approaches, who both operate as individuals claiming individual authorship for
their work.
But how did the Piracy Project deal with the big authorship question? There
was an interesting shift here: when the project still operated within the art
college library, there was not much need for the articulation of authorship
because it was embedded in a community who contributed in many different ways.
Once the library was eventually shut after two years and the project was
hosted by art institutions, a demand for the definition and framing of
authorship arose.[102](ch11.xhtml#footnote-424) Here the relationship between
the individual and the collective requires constant and careful
negotiation.[103](ch11.xhtml#footnote-423) Members of collectives naturally
develop different priorities and the differences in time, labour and thought
invested by individuals makes one contributor want to claim ‘more authorship’
than another. These conflicts require trust, transparency and a decision to
value the less glamorous, more invisible and supportive work needed to
maintain the project as much as the authoring of a text or speaking on a
panel.[104](ch11.xhtml#footnote-422) We also do not necessarily speak with one
voice. Andrea grew up in Peru and Brazil, and I in Germany, so we have
different starting points and experiences: ‘we’ was therefore sometimes a
problematic category.
## Our Relationships Felt Temporarily Transformed
Walter Benjamin, in his text ‘The Author as Producer’, rightly called on
intellectuals to take into account the means of production as much as the
radical content of their writings.[105](ch11.xhtml#footnote-421) In
theoretical writing, modes of production are too often ignored, which means in
practice that theorists uncritically comply with the conventional
micropolitics of publishing and dissemination. In other words, radical men and
women write radical thoughts in books that are not radical at all in the way
they are produced, published and disseminated. Cultural philosopher Gary Hall
recounts with surprise a discussion headlined ‘Radical Publishing: What Are We
Struggling For?’ that was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in
London in 2011. The invited panel speakers — Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, David
Graeber, Peter Hallward, and Mark Fisher among others — were mostly concerned
with, as Hall remembers,
political transformations elsewhere: in the past, the future, Egypt, [….] but
there was very little discussion of anything that would actually affect the
work, business, role, and practices of the speakers themselves: radical ideas
of publishing with transformed modes of production, say. As a result, the
event in the end risked appearing mainly to be about a few publishers,
including Verso, Pluto, and Zero Books, that may indeed publish radical
political content but in fact operate according to quite traditional business
models […] promoting their authors and products and providing more goods for
the ticket-paying audience to buy. If the content of their publications is
politically transformative, their publishing models certainly are not, with
phenomena such as the student protests and ideas of communism all being turned
into commodities to be marketed and sold.[106](ch11.xhtml#footnote-420)
That truly radical practices are possible is demonstrated by Susan Kelly, when
she reflects on her involvement in collective practices of creative dissent
during the austerity protests in the UK in 2010 — roughly at the same time and
in the same climate that the panel at the ICA took
place.[107](ch11.xhtml#footnote-419) Kelly describes occasions when artists
and activists who were involved in political organising, direct action,
campaigning, and claiming and organising alternative social and cultural
spaces, came together. She sees these occasions as powerful moments that
provided a glimpse into what the beginnings of a transversal and overarching
movement might look like.[108](ch11.xhtml#footnote-418) It was an attempt to
devise the new modes of action, and new kinds of objects from our emerging
analyses of the situation while keeping the format open, avoiding the
replication of given positions, hierarchies and roles of teachers, students,
artists, onlookers and so on. […] We met people we had never met before, never
worked with or known, and for many of us, our relationships felt temporarily
transformed, our vulnerabilities exposed and prior positions and defenses left
irrelevant, or at least suspended.[109](ch11.xhtml#footnote-417)
Exactly because these moments of protest produced actions and props that
escaped authorship, it was even more alienating for the participants when a
collectively fabricated prop for a demonstration, a large papier-mâché
carrot[110](ch11.xhtml#footnote-416) that became a notorious image in the
press at the time, was retrospectively ascribed in an Artforum interview to be
the ‘authored’ work of an individual artist.[111](ch11.xhtml#footnote-415)
Kelly, correctly, is highly critical of such designation, which re-erects the
blockages and boundaries connected to regimes of authorship that collective
action aimed to dismantle in the first place. It is vital not to ignore the
‘complex set of open and contingent relationships, actions and manifestations
that composed this specific collective political work.’ We would have to ask,
to which of the activities in the making of the papier-mâché carrot would we
attribute authorship? Is it the paper sourcing, the gluing, the painting, the
carrying or the communicative work of organising the gatherings? What if the
roles and practices are fluid and cannot be delimited like this?
## How Not to Assign Authorship?
What about this text you are reading now? It is based on a five-year
collaboration to which numerous people contributed. Pirated books were given
to the Piracy Project as well as arguments, ideas, questions, knowledge and
practices in the form of conversations and workshops.
In that regard, this text is informed by a myriad of encounters in panel
discussions and debates, as well as in the classrooms supported by
institutions, activist spaces and art spaces.[112](ch11.xhtml#footnote-414)
All these people donated their valuable ideas to its writing. Various drafts
have been read and commented on by friends, PhD supervisors and an anonymous
peer reviewer, and it has been edited by the publishers in the process of
becoming part of the anthology you now hold in your hands or read on a screen.
In that light, do I simply and uncritically affirm the mechanisms I am
criticising by delivering a single-authored text to be printed and validated
within the prevailing audit culture?
What if I did not add my name to this text? If it went unsigned, so to speak?
If anonymity replaced the designation of authorship? The text has not been
written collectively or collaboratively, despite the conventional processes of
seeking comments from friendly and critical readers. This is my text, but what
would happen if I did not assert my right to be its named author?
How would the non-visibility of the author matter to the reader? We are used
to making judgements that are at least partially based on the gender, status,
authority and reputation of a writer. There are also questions of liability
and accountability with respect to the content of the
text.[113](ch11.xhtml#footnote-413) Given the long struggle of women writers
and writers of colour to gain the right to be acknowledged as author, the act
of not signing my text might be controversial or even counter productive. It
would also go against the grain of scholarship that aims to decolonise the
canon or fight against the prevailing gender inequality in scholarly
publishing.[114](ch11.xhtml#footnote-412) And more, we have to ask who is
actually in a position to afford not to assign individual names to works given
that authorship — as discussed above — is used as a marker for professional
survival and advancement.
In this specific context however, and as practice based research, it would be
worth testing out practically what such a text orphan would trigger within
dominant infrastructures of publishing and validation. How would
bibliographers catalogue such a text? How could it be referenced and cited?
And how would it live online with respect to search engines, if there is no
searchable name attached to it? Most of our current research repositories
don’t allow the upload of author-less texts, instead returning error messages:
‘The author field must be completed’. Or they require a personalised log-in,
which automatically tags the registered username to the uploaded text.
What if I used a pseudonym, a common practice throughout literary
history?[115](ch11.xhtml#footnote-411) Multiple identity pseudonyms, such as
‘Karen Eliot’ or ‘Monty Cantsin’ used by the Neoist movement in the 1980s and
1990s could be interesting as they provide a joint name under which anybody
could sign her or his work without revealing the author’s
identity.[116](ch11.xhtml#footnote-410) This strategy of using a multi-
identity avatar is currently practiced by a decentralised, international
collective of hacktivists operating under the name ‘Anonymous’. The
‘elimination of the persona [of the author], and by extension everything
associated with it, such as leadership, representation, and status, is’,
according to Gabriella Coleman, ‘the primary ideal of
Anonymous.’[117](ch11.xhtml#footnote-409)
What if we adopted such models for academia? If we unionised and put in place
a procedure to collectively publish our work anonymously, for example under a
multi-identity avatar instead of individual names — how would such a text,
non-attributable as it is, change the policies of evaluation and assessment
within the knowledge economy? Would the lack of an identifiable name allow the
text to resist being measured as (or reduced to) a quantifiable auditable
‘output’ and therefore allow the issue of individualistic authorship to be
politicised? Or would it rather, as an individual and solitary act, be
subjected — again — to the regimes of individualisation? It seems that only if
not assigning individual authorship became a widespread and unionised practice
could procedures be put in place that acknowledged non-authored, collective,
non-competitive practices.[118](ch11.xhtml#footnote-408)
However, as tempting and urgent as such a move might appear in order to allow
individualistic authorship to be politicised, such a step also produces a
challenging double bind. According to Sara Ahmed it actually does matter who
is speaking. ’The ’who ’ does make a difference, not in the form of an
ontology of the individual, but as a marker of a specific location from which
the subject writes’.[119](ch11.xhtml#footnote-407)
From a feminist and postcolonial perspective, the detachment of writing from
the empirical body is problematic. Ahmed points out: ‘The universalism of the
masculine perspective relies precisely on being disembodied, on lacking the
contingency of a body. A feminist perspective would surely emphasise the
implication of writing in embodiment, in order to re-historicise this supposed
universalism, to locate it, and to expose the violence of its contingency and
particularity (by declaring some-body wrote this text, by asking which body
wrote this text).’[120](ch11.xhtml#footnote-406) Gayatri Spivak for example
insists on marking the positionality of a speaking subject in order to account
for the often unacknowledged eurocentrism of western
philosophy.[121](ch11.xhtml#footnote-405)
If we acknowledged this double bind, we might eventually be able to invent
modes of being and working together that recognise the difference of the ’who’
that writes, and at the same time might be able to move on from the question
‘how can we get rid of the author’ to inventing processes of subjectivation
that we want to support and instigate.
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Munro, Cait (10 November 2014) ‘Is Cady Noland More Difficult To Work With
Than Richard Prince?’, artNet news,
cady-noland-as-psychotic-as-richard-prince-162310>
Myers, Julian (26 August 2009) Four Dialogues 2: On AAAARG, San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art — Open Space,
dialogues-2-on-aaaarg/>
Nedelsky, Jennifer (1993) ’Reconceiving Rights as Relationship’, Review of
Constitutional Studies / Revue d’études constitutionnelles 1.1, 1–26,
Open Book Publishers Authors’ Guide,
Piracy Project Catalogue. No se diga a nadie, [http://andpublishing.org/Public
Catalogue/PCat_record.php?cat_index=99](http://andpublishing.org/PublicCatalogue/PCat_record.php?cat_index=99)
Piracy Project Catalogue / Camille Bondon, Jacques Rancière: le mâitre
ignorant,
Piracy Project Catalogue / Neil Chapman, Deleuze, Proust and Signs,
Piracy Project (19 April 2012) ‘The Impermanent Book’, Rhizome,
Policante, Amedeo (2015) The Pirate Myth, Genealogies of an Imperial Concept
(Oxford and New York: Routledge).
Precarious Workers Brigade (24 April 2011) ‘Fragments Toward an Understanding
of a Week that Changed Everything…’, e-flux,
-week-that-changed-everything/>
Prince, Richard (13 April 2015) Birdtalk,
Rancière, Jacques (2010) Education, Truth and Emancipation (London:
Continuum).
— (2008) The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation
(Stanford: University Press California)
Rose, Mark (1993) Authors and Owners, The Invention of Copyright (Cambridge MA
and London: Harvard University Press).
Schor, Naomi (1989) ‘Dreaming Dissymmetry: Barthes, Foucault and Sexual
Difference’, in Elizabeth Weed (ed.), Coming to Terms: Feminism, Theory,
Politics (London: Routledge), pp. 47–58.
Sollfrank, Cornelia (2012) ‘Copyright Cowboys Performing the Law’, Journal of
New Media Caucus 8.2,
fall-2012-v-08-n-02-december-2nd-2012/copyright-cowboys-performing-the-law/>
Spivak, Gayatry Chakravorty (1988) ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Cary Nelson
and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press), pp. 271–313.
Strathern, Marilyn (2005) Kinship, Law, and the Unexpected: Relatives Are
Always a Surprise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Thoburn, Nicholas (2016) Anti-Book, On the Art and Politics of Radical
Publishing (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press).
UK Government, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (2015)
Creative Industries Economic Estimates January 2015,
estimates-january-2015/creative-industries-economic-estimates-january-2015
-key-findings>
— (1998) The Creative Industries Mapping Document,
documents-1998>
US Copyright Act (1976, amended 2016),
Wang, Elizabeth H. (1990) ‘(Re)Productive Rights: Copyright and the Postmodern
Artist’, Columbia-VLA Journal of Law & the Arts 14.2, 261–81,
[https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/cjla14&div=10&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals](https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/cjla14&div=10&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals)
Waugh, Seth (2007) ‘Sponsor Statement‘, in The Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation (ed.), Richard Prince (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz).
Wellmon, Chad and Andrew Piper (21 July 2017) ‘Publication, Power, Patronage:
On Inequality and Academic Publishing’, Critical Inquiry,
Wright, Stephen (2013) Towards a Lexicon of Usership (Eindhoven: Van
Abbemuseum).
Zwick, Tracy (29 August 2013) ‘Art in America’, [https://www.artinamerica
magazine.com/news-features/news/sothebys-wins-in-dispute-with-jancou-gallery-
over-cady-noland-artwork/](https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-
features/news/sothebys-wins-in-dispute-with-jancou-gallery-over-cady-noland-
artwork/)
[2](ch11.xhtml#footnote-524-backlink) Carys J. Craig, ‘Symposium:
Reconstructing the Author-Self: Some Feminist Lessons for Copyright Law’,
American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law 15\. 2 (2007),
207–68 (p. 224).
[3](ch11.xhtml#footnote-523-backlink) Mark Rose, Authors and Owners, The
Invention of Copyright (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press,
1993), p. 142.
[4](ch11.xhtml#footnote-522-backlink) Craig, ‘Symposium: Reconstructing the
Author-Self’, p. 261.
[5](ch11.xhtml#footnote-521-backlink) Ibid., p. 267.
[6](ch11.xhtml#footnote-520-backlink) See also cultural theorist Gary Hall’s
discussion of Pirate Philosophy, as a potential way forward to overcome such
simplyfying dichotomies. ‘How can we [theorists] operate differently with
regard to our own work, business, roles, and practices to the point where we
actually begin to confront, think through, and take on (rather than take for
granted, forget, repress, ignore, or otherwise marginalize) some of the
implications of the challenge that is offered by theory to fundamental
humanities concepts such as the human, the subject, the author, the book,
copyright, and intellectual property, for the ways in which we create,
perform, and circulate knowledge and research?’ Gary Hall, Pirate Philosophy,
for a Digital Posthumanities (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 2016),
p. 16.
[7](ch11.xhtml#footnote-519-backlink) Here ‘the producer is being imagined as
the origin of the product’. (Strathern, p. 156). Therefore ‘in law,
originality is simply the description of a causal relationship between a
person and a thing: to say that a work is original in law is to say nothing
more than that it originates from [can be attributed to] its creator’ (Barron,
p. 56). And conversely, in law ‘there can be no ‘copyright work’ […] without
some author who can be said to originate it’ (ibid., p. 55). Anne Barron, ‘No
Other Law? Author–ity, Property and Aboriginal Art’, in Lionel Bently and
Spyros Maniatis (eds.), Intellectual Property and Ethics (London: Sweet and
Maxwell, 1998), pp. 37–88, and Marilyn Strathern, Kinship, Law, and the
Unexpected: Relatives Are Always a Surprise (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005).
See also Mario Biagioli’s and Marilyn Strathern’s discussion of the author-
work relationship as kinship in Mario Biagioli, ‘Plagiarism, Kinship and
Slavery’, Theory Culture Society 31.2–3 (2014), 65–91,
[9](ch11.xhtml#footnote-517-backlink) ‘In no case does copyright protection
for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process,
system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of
the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such
work.’ US Copyright Law, Article 17, §102 (b), amendment 2016,
[10](ch11.xhtml#footnote-516-backlink) Susan Kelly, ‘“But that was my idea!”
Problems of Authorship and Validation in Contemporary Practices of Creative
Dissent’, Parallax 19.2 (2013), 53–69,
https://doi.org/[10.1080/13534645.2013.778496](https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2013.778496).
All references to this text refer to the version published on
[academia.edu](http://academia.edu), which is slightly different: ,
p. 6.
[11](ch11.xhtml#footnote-515-backlink) Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s working method
with her book Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2019) presents an interesting
alternative to standard procedures in scholarly publishing. She published the
draft of her book online, inviting readers to comment. This could potentially
become a model for multiple authorship as well as an alternative to the
standard peer review procedures. I am quoting from the published draft
version: Kathleen Fitzpatrick, ‘Critique and Competition’ in Generous
Thinking: The University and the Public Good (Humanities Commons, 2018),
paragraph 1,
[12](ch11.xhtml#footnote-514-backlink) Kelly, ‘“But that was my idea!”’, p. 6.
[13](ch11.xhtml#footnote-513-backlink) I refer in this chapter to US copyright
law, if not indicated otherwise.
[14](ch11.xhtml#footnote-512-backlink) He also released the book with Printed
Matter at the New York Art Book Fair in 2011.
[15](ch11.xhtml#footnote-511-backlink) It took Prince and his collaborator
John McWhinney over a year to find a printer with the guts to print this
facsimile. The one he eventually found was based in Iceland.
[16](ch11.xhtml#footnote-510-backlink) Prince states in his blog entry ‘Second
Thoughts on Being Original’, that he made 300 copies. ‘My plan was to show up
once a week, same day, same time, same place, until all three hundred copies
were gone.’ Birdtalk, 13 April 2015,
Booksellers’ web pages, such as Printed Matter, N.Y. and
[richardprincebooks.com](http://richardprincebooks.com), list an edition of
500. See:
[17](ch11.xhtml#footnote-509-backlink) Mark Krupnick, ‘JD Salinger Obituary’,
The Guardian, 28 January 2010,
/jd-salinger-obituary>
[18](ch11.xhtml#footnote-508-backlink) Kim Gordon, ‘Band Paintings: Kim Gordon
Interviews Richard Prince’, Interview Magazine, 18 June 2012,
[http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/kim-gordon-richard-
prince#](http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/kim-gordon-richard-prince)
[19](ch11.xhtml#footnote-507-backlink) The inside flap of his replica stated a
price of $62. On this afternoon on the sidewalk outside Central Park, he sold
his copies for $40. When I was browsing the shelves at the New York art
bookshop Printed Matter in 2012 I saw copies for $200 and in 2018 it is priced
at $1200 and $3500 for a signed copy on Abebooks,
[https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=&an=richard%20prince
&tn=catcher%20rye&n=100121503&cm_sp=mbc-_-ats-_-used](https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=&an=richard%252520prince&tn=catcher%252520rye&n=100121503&cm_sp=mbc-_-ats-_-used)
[20](ch11.xhtml#footnote-506-backlink) Kenneth Goldsmith, ‘Richard Prince’s
Latest Act of Appropriation: The Catcher in the Rye’, Harriet: A Poetry Blog,
19 April 2012,
princes-latest-act-of-appropriation-the-catcher-in-the-rye/>
[21](ch11.xhtml#footnote-505-backlink) In 1977 Douglas Crimp curated the
exhibition ‘Pictures’ at Artists’ Space in New York with artists Troy
Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo and Philip Smith.
Artist Cornelia Sollfrank interprets ‘the non-specific title of the show’ as a
first indication of the aesthetic strategies presented in the exhibition. The
presentation of reproduced visual materials marked, according to Sollfrank, ‘a
major challenge to the then predominant modernist discourse.’ Cornelia
Sollfrank, ‘Copyright Cowboys Performing the Law’, Journal of New Media Caucus
8.2 (2012),
fall-2012-v-08-n-02-december-2nd-2012/copyright-cowboys-performing-the-law/>
[22](ch11.xhtml#footnote-504-backlink) As Benjamin Buchloh writes ‘these
processes of quotation, excerption, framing and staging that constitute the
strategies of the work […] necessitate [the] uncovering strata of
representation. Needless to say we are not in search of sources of origin, but
of structures of signification: underneath each picture there is always
another picture.’ Benjamin Buchloh, ‘Pictures’, in David Evans (ed.),
Appropriation, Documents of Contemporary Art (London: Whitechapel Gallery,
2009), p. 78\. Originally published in October 8 (1979), 75–88.
[23](ch11.xhtml#footnote-503-backlink) October’s editors — including among
others Rosalind Krauss, Hal Foster, Craig Owens, and Benjamin Buchloh —
provided a theoretical context for this emerging art by introducing French
structuralist and poststructuralist theory, i.e. the writings of Roland
Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida to the English speaking world.
[24](ch11.xhtml#footnote-502-backlink) Nate Harrison, ‘The Pictures
Generation, the Copyright Act of 1976, and the Reassertion of Authorship in
Postmodernity’, art&education.net, 29 June 2012,
pictures-generation-the-copyright-act-of-1976-and-the-reassertion-of-
authorship-in-postmodernity/>
[25](ch11.xhtml#footnote-501-backlink) Sherrie Levine, ‘Statement//1982’, in
David Evans (ed.), Appropriation, Documents of Contemporary Art (London:
Whitechapel Gallery, 2009), p. 81.
[26](ch11.xhtml#footnote-500-backlink) Nate Harrison, ‘The Pictures
Generation, the Copyright Act of 1976, and the Reassertion of Authorship in
Postmodernity’, art&education.net, 29 June 2012,
pictures-generation-the-copyright-act-of-1976-and-the-reassertion-of-
authorship-in-postmodernity/>
[27](ch11.xhtml#footnote-499-backlink) Ibid.
[28](ch11.xhtml#footnote-498-backlink) Quoting this line from Prince book, Why
I Go to the Movies Alone (New York: Barbara Gladstone Gallery, 1994), the
sponsor statement in the catalogue for Prince’s solo show Spiritual America at
The Guggenheim Museum in New York continues: ‘although his [work is] primarily
appropriated […] from popular culture, [it] convey[s] a deeply personal
vision. His selection of mediums and subject matter […] suggest a uniquely
individual logic […] with wit and an idiosyncratic eye, Richard Prince has
that rare ability to analyze and translate contemporary experience in new and
unexpected ways.’ Seth Waugh, ‘Sponsor Statement‘, in The Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation (ed.), Richard Prince (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2007).
[29](ch11.xhtml#footnote-497-backlink) See Hal Foster, ‘(Post)modern
Polemics’, in Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (Port Townsend, WA:
Bay Press, 1985).
[30](ch11.xhtml#footnote-496-backlink) See note 47.
[31](ch11.xhtml#footnote-495-backlink) One might argue that this performative
act of claiming intellectual property is an attempt to challenge J. D.
Salinger’s notorious protectiveness about his writing. Salinger sued the
Swedish writer Fredrik Colting successfully for copyright infringement. Under
the pseudonym John David California, Colting had written a sequel to The
Catcher in the Rye. The sequel, 60 Years Later Coming Through The Rye, depicts
the protagonist Holden Caulfield’s adventures as an old man. In 2009, the US
District Court Judge in Manhattan, Deborah A. Batts, issued a preliminary
injunction indefinitely barring the publication, advertising or distribution
of the book in the US. See Sewell Chan, ‘Judge Rules for J. D. Salinger in
“Catcher” Copyright Suit’, The New York Times, 1 July 2009,
‘In a settlement agreement reached between Salinger and Colting in 2011,
Colting has agreed not to publish or otherwise distribute the book, e-book, or
any other editions of 60 Years Later in the U.S. or Canada until The Catcher
in the Rye enters the public domain. Notably, however, Colting is free to sell
the book in other international territories without fear of interference, and
a source has told Publishers Weekly that book rights have already been sold in
as many as a half-dozen territories, with the settlement documents included as
proof that the Salinger Estate will not sue. In addition, the settlement
agreement bars Colting from using the title “Coming through the Rye”; forbids
him from dedicating the book to Salinger; and would prohibit Colting or any
publisher of the book from referring to The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger, the
book being “banned” by Salinger, or from using the litigation to promote the
book.’ Andrew Albanese, ‘J. D. Salinger Estate, Swedish Author Settle
Copyright Suit’, Publishers Weekly, 11 January 2011,
news/article/45738-j-d-salinger-estate-swedish-author-settle-copyright-
suit.html>
[32](ch11.xhtml#footnote-494-backlink) Elizabeth H. Wang, ‘(Re)Productive
Rights: Copyright and the Postmodern Artist’, Columbia-VLA Journal of Law &
the Arts 14.2 (1990), 261–81 (p. 281),
[https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/cjla14&div=10&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals](https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/cjla14&div=10&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals)
[34](ch11.xhtml#footnote-492-backlink) Thirty paintings created by Prince
contained forty-one of Cariou’s photographs. The images had been taken from
Cariou’s book Yes Rasta (Brooklyn: powerHouse Books, 2000) and used by Prince
in his painting series Canal Zone, which was shown at Gagosian Gallery, New
York, in 2008.
[35](ch11.xhtml#footnote-491-backlink) It might be no coincidence (or then
again, it might) that the district court judge in this case, Deborah Batts, is
the same judge who ruled in the 2009 case in which Salinger successfully
brought suit for copyright infringement against Swedish author Fredrik Colting
for 60 Years Later Coming Through the Rye, a sequel to Salinger’s book. See
note 31.
[36](ch11.xhtml#footnote-490-backlink) ’In determining whether the use made of
a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall
include — (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use
is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the
nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the
portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the
effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted
work.’ US Copyright Act of 1976, amended 2016,
[37](ch11.xhtml#footnote-489-backlink) ‘What is critical is how the work in
question appears to the reasonable observer, not simply what an artist might
say about a particular piece or body of work.’ Cariou v Prince, et al., court
document, No. 11–1197-cv, page 14,
[http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/f6e88b8b-48af-401c-
96a0-54d5007c2f33/1/doc/11-1197_complete_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery
/f6e88b8b-48af-401c-
96a0-54d5007c2f33/1/hilite/](http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery
/f6e88b8b-48af-401c-
96a0-54d5007c2f33/1/doc/11-1197_complete_opn.pdf%23xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery
/f6e88b8b-48af-401c-96a0-54d5007c2f33/1/hilite/)
[38](ch11.xhtml#footnote-488-backlink) The court opinion states: ‘These
twenty-five of Prince’s artworks manifest an entirely different aesthetic from
Cariou’s photographs. Where Cariou’s serene and deliberately composed
portraits and landscape photographs depict the natural beauty of Rastafarians
and their surrounding environs, Prince’s crude and jarring works, on the other
hand, are hectic and provocative. Cariou’s black-and-white photographs were
printed in a 9 1/2” x 12” book. Prince has created collages on canvas that
incorporate color, feature distorted human and other forms and settings, and
measure between ten and nearly a hundred times the size of the photographs.
Prince’s composition, presentation, scale, color palette, and media are
fundamentally different and new compared to the photographs, as is the
expressive nature of Prince’s work.’ Ibid., pp. 12–13.
[39](ch11.xhtml#footnote-487-backlink) Prince’s deposition testimony stated
that he ‘do[es]n’t really have a message,’ that he was not ‘trying to create
anything with a new meaning or a new message,’ and that he ‘do[es]n’t have any
[…] interest in [Cariou’s] original intent.’ Court Opinion, p. 13\. For full
deposition see Greg Allen (ed.), The Deposition of Richard Prince in the Case
of Cariou v. Prince et al. (Zurich: Bookhorse, 2012).
[40](ch11.xhtml#footnote-486-backlink) The court opinion includes a dissent by
Circuit Judge Clifford Wallace sitting by designation from the US Court of
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, ‘I, for one, do not believe that I am in a
position to make these fact- and opinion-intensive decisions on the twenty-
five works that passed the majority’s judicial observation. […] nor am I
trained to make art opinions ab initio.’ Ibid., p. 5\.
‘Furthermore, Judge Wallace questions the majority’s insistence on analyzing
only the visual similarities and differences between Cariou’s and Prince’s art
works, “Unlike the majority, I would allow the district court to consider
Prince’s statements reviewing fair use … I see no reason to discount Prince’s
statements as the majority does.” In fact, Judge Wallace remarks that he views
Prince’s statements as “relevant to the transformativeness analysis.” Judge
Wallace does not believe that a simple visual side-by-side analysis is enough
because this would call for judges to “employ [their] own artistic
Judgment[s].”’ Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento and Lauren van Haaften-Schick, citing
court documents. ‘Cariou v. Prince: Toward a Theory of Aesthetic-Judicial
Judgements’, Texas A&M Law Review, vol. 1, 2013–2014, p. 948.
[41](ch11.xhtml#footnote-485-backlink) Court opinion, p. 18.
[42](ch11.xhtml#footnote-484-backlink) Ibid., p. 17.
[43](ch11.xhtml#footnote-483-backlink) Ibid., pp. 4–5.
[44](ch11.xhtml#footnote-482-backlink) Ibid., p. 18.
[45](ch11.xhtml#footnote-481-backlink) Muñoz Sarmiento and van Haaften-Schick,
‘Aesthetic-Judicial Judgements’, p. 945.
[46](ch11.xhtml#footnote-480-backlink) Court opinion, p. 15.
[47](ch11.xhtml#footnote-479-backlink) The court opinion states: ‘He is a
leading exponent of this genre and his work has been displayed in museums
around the world, including New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and
Whitney Museum, San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, Rotterdam’s Museum
Boijmans van Beuningen, and Basel’s Museum für Gegenwartskunst.’ Ibid., p. 5.
[48](ch11.xhtml#footnote-478-backlink) Muñoz Sarmiento and van Haaften-Schick,
‘Aesthetic-Judicial Judgements’, p. 945.
[49](ch11.xhtml#footnote-477-backlink) The New York Times reports Prince had
not to destroy the five paintings at issue. Randy Kennedy, ‘Richard Prince
Settles Copyright Suit With Patrick Cariou Over Photographs’, New York Times,
18 March 2014, [https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/richard-prince-
settles-copyright-suit-with-patrick-cariou-over-
photographs/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0](https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/18
/richard-prince-settles-copyright-suit-with-patrick-cariou-over-
photographs/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0)
[50](ch11.xhtml#footnote-476-backlink) Court opinion, p. 13.
[52](ch11.xhtml#footnote-474-backlink) In 2016 photographer Donald Graham
filed a lawsuit against Prince with regard to Prince’s use of Graham’s
Instagram pictures. Again, the image shows a photographic representation of
Rastafarians. And similar to the Cariou case Prince appropriates Graham’s and
Cariou’s cultural appropriation of Rastafarian culture.
[53](ch11.xhtml#footnote-473-backlink) Cait Munro quotes Cady Noland from
Sarah Thornton’s book 33 Artists in 3 Acts. Noland gave Thornton her first
interview for twenty-four years: ‘Noland, an extremely talented artist, has
become so obsessed with her old work that she’s been unable to create anything
new in years. She admits to Thornton that ‘I’d like to get into a studio and
start making work,’ but that tracking the old work has become a ‘full-time
thing’. Cait Munro, ‘Is Cady Noland More Difficult To Work With Than Richard
Prince?’, artNet news, 10 November 2014,
/is-cady-noland-as-psychotic-as-richard-prince-162310>;
[54](ch11.xhtml#footnote-472-backlink) Martha Buskirk, ‘Marc Jancou, Cady
Noland, and the Case of the Authorless Artwork’, Hyperallergic, 9 December
2013,
an-authorless-artwork/>
[55](ch11.xhtml#footnote-471-backlink) Marc Jancou Fine Art Ltd. v Sotheby’s,
Inc., New York State Unified Court System, 2012 NY Slip Op 33163(U), 13
November 2012,
op-33163-u.pdf?ts=1396133024>
[56](ch11.xhtml#footnote-470-backlink) ‘The author of a work of visual art —
(1) shall have the right — (A) to claim authorship of that work, and (B) to
prevent the use of his or her name as the author of any work of visual art
which he or she did not create; (2) shall have the right to prevent the use of
his or her name as the author of the work of visual art in the event of a
distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work which would be
prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation; and (3) subject to the
limitations set forth in section 113(d), shall have the right — (A) to prevent
any intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification of that work
which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation, and any
intentional distortion, mutilation, or modification of that work is a
violation of that right, and (B) to prevent any destruction of a work of
recognized stature, and any intentional or grossly negligent destruction of
that work is a violation of that right’, from US Code, Title 17, § 106A, Legal
Information Institute, Cornell Law School,
[59](ch11.xhtml#footnote-467-backlink) Jancou’s claim was dismissed by the New
York Supreme Court in the same year. The Court’s decision was based on the
language of Jancou’s consignment agreement with Sotheby’s, which gave
Sotheby’s the right to withdraw Cowboys Milking ‘at any time before the sale’
if, in Sotheby’s judgment, ‘there is doubt as to its authenticity or
attribution.’ Tracy Zwick, ‘Art in America’, 29 August 2013,
dispute-with-jancou-gallery-over-cady-noland-artwork/>
[60](ch11.xhtml#footnote-466-backlink) It might be important here to recall
that both Richard Prince and Cady Noland are able to afford the expensive
costs incurred by a court case due to their success in the art market.
[61](ch11.xhtml#footnote-465-backlink) The legal grounds for Noland’s move,
the federal Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, is based on French moral rights
or author rights (droit d’auteur), which are inspired by the humanistic and
individualistic values of the French Revolution and form part of European
copyright law. They conceive the work as an intellectual and creative
expression that is directly connected to its creator. Legal scholar Lionel
Bently observes ‘the prominence of romantic conceptions of authorship’ in the
recognition of moral rights, which are based on concepts of the originality
and authenticity of the modern subject (Lionel Bently, ‘Copyright and the
Death of the Author in Literature and Law’, Modern Law Review, 57 (1994),
973–86 (p. 977)). ‘Authenticity is the pure expression, the expressivity, of
the artist, whose soul is mirrored in the work of art.’ (Cornelia Klinger,
‘Autonomy-Authenticity-Alterity: On the Aesthetic Ideology of Modernity’ in
Modernologies: Contemporary Artists Researching Modernity and Modernism,
exhibition catalogue (Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2009),
pp. 26–28 (p. 29)) Moral rights are the personal rights of authors, which
cannot be surrendered fully to somebody else because they conceptualize
authorship as authentic extension of the subject. They are ‘rights of authors
and artists to be named in relation to the work and to control alterations of
the work.’ (Bently, ‘Copyright and the Death of the Author’, p. 977) In
contrast to copyright, moral rights are granted in perpetuity, and fall to the
estate of an artist after his or her death.
Anglo-American copyright, employed in Prince’s case, on the contrary builds
the concept of intellectual property mainly on economic and distribution
rights, against unauthorised copying, adaptation, distribution and display.
Copyright lasts for a certain amount of time, after which the work enters the
public domain. In most countries the copyright term expires seventy years
after the death of the author. Non-perpetual copyright attempts to strike a
balance between the needs of the author to benefit economically from his or
her work and the interests of the public who benefit from the use of new work.
[62](ch11.xhtml#footnote-464-backlink) Bently, ‘Copyright and the Death of the
Author’, p. 974.
[63](ch11.xhtml#footnote-463-backlink) Geert Lovink and Andrew Ross, ‘Organic
Intellectual Work’, in Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter (eds.), My Creativity
Reader: A Critique of Creative Industries (Amsterdam: Institute of Network
Cultures, 2007), pp. 225–38 (p. 230),
[64](ch11.xhtml#footnote-462-backlink) UK Government Department for Digital,
Culture, Media and Sports, The Creative Industries Mapping Document, 1998,
documents-1998>
[65](ch11.xhtml#footnote-461-backlink) UK Government, Department for Media,
Culture & Sport, Creative Industries Economic Estimates January 2015,
estimates-january-2015/creative-industries-economic-estimates-january-2015
-key-findings>
[66](ch11.xhtml#footnote-460-backlink) See critical discussion of the creative
industries paradigm and the effects of related systems of governance on the
precarisation of the individual: Lovink and Rossiter, My Creativity, and
Isabell Lorey, State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious (London:
Verso, 2015).
[67](ch11.xhtml#footnote-459-backlink) University of the Arts London,
‘Intellectual Property Know-How for the Creative Sector’. This site was
initially accessed on 30 March 2015. In 2018 it was taken down and integrated
into the UAL Intellectual Property Advice pages. Their downloadable PDFs still
show the ‘Own-it’ logo,
/freelance-and-business-advice/intellectual-property-advice>
[68](ch11.xhtml#footnote-458-backlink) Patricia Aufderheide, Peter Jaszi,
Bryan Bello, and Tijana Milosevic, Copyright, Permissions, and Fair Use Among
Visual Artists and the Academic and Museum Visual Arts Communities: An Issues
Report (New York: College Art Association, 2014).
[69](ch11.xhtml#footnote-457-backlink) Ibid., p. 5.
[70](ch11.xhtml#footnote-456-backlink) Sixty-six percent of all those who
reported that they had abandoned or avoided a project because of an actual or
perceived inability to obtain permissions said they would be ‘very likely’ to
use copyrighted works of others more than they have in the past were
permissions not needed. Ibid., p. 50.
[71](ch11.xhtml#footnote-455-backlink) The Copyright, Permissions, and Fair
Use Report gives some intriguing further observations: ‘Permissions roadblocks
result in deformed or even abandoned work. Exhibition catalogues may be issued
without relevant images because rights cannot be cleared. Editors of art
scholarship reported journal articles going to print with blank spots where
reproductions should be, because artists’ representatives disagreed with the
substance of the article; and one book was published with last-minute
revisions and deletions of all images because of a dispute with an estate —
with disastrous results for sales. Journal editors have had to substitute
articles or go without an article altogether because an author could not
arrange permissions in time for publication. In one case, after an author’s
manuscript was completed, an estate changed position, compelling the author
both to rewrite and to draw substitute illustrations. Among other things, the
cost of permissions leads to less work that features historical overviews and
comparisons, and more monographs and case studies. Scholarship itself is
distorted and even censored by the operation of the permissions culture. […]
In some cases, the demands of rights holders have extended to altering or
censoring the scholarly argument about a work. Catalogue copy sometimes is
altered because scholarly arguments and perspectives are unacceptable to
rights holders.’ These actions are in some cases explicitly seen as
censorship. Ibid., p. 52.
[72](ch11.xhtml#footnote-454-backlink) Ibid., p. 51.
[73](ch11.xhtml#footnote-453-backlink) Ben Mauk, ‘Who Owns This Image?’, The
New Yorker, 12 February 2014,
owns-this-image>
[74](ch11.xhtml#footnote-452-backlink) Jennifer Nedelsky, ’Reconceiving Rights
as Relationship’, in Review of Constitutional Studies / Revue d’études
constitutionnelles 1.1 (1993), 1–26 (p. 16),
[75](ch11.xhtml#footnote-451-backlink) Deborah J. Halbert, Resisting
Intellectual Property (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 1–2.
[76](ch11.xhtml#footnote-450-backlink) See for example Amedeo Policante
examining the relationship between empire and pirate, claiming that the pirate
can exist only in a relationship with imperial foundations. ‘Upon the naming
of the pirate, in fighting it and finally in celebrating its triumph over it,
Empire erects itself. There is no Empire without a pirate, a terrorizing
common enemy, an enemy of all. At the same time, there is no pirate without
Empire. In fact, pirates as outlaws cannot be understood in any other way but
as legal creatures. In other words, they exist only in a certain extreme,
liminal relationship with the law.’ Amedeo Policante, The Pirate Myth,
Genealogies of an Imperial Concept (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2015), p.
viii.
[77](ch11.xhtml#footnote-449-backlink) Ramon Lobato, ‘The Paradoxes of
Piracy’, in Lars Eckstein and Anja Schwarz (eds.), Postcolonial Piracy: Media
Distribution and Cultural Production in the Global South (London and New York:
Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 121–34 (pp. 121, 123).
[78](ch11.xhtml#footnote-448-backlink) Daniel Heller-Roazen, The Enemy of All:
Piracy and the Law of Nations (New York: Zone Books, 2009), p. 35, as cited by
Gary Hall, Pirate Philosophy, p. 16.
[79](ch11.xhtml#footnote-447-backlink) ‘Etymology of Pirate’, in English Words
of (Unexpected) Greek Origin, 2 March 2012,
[80](ch11.xhtml#footnote-446-backlink) The Piracy Project is a collaboration
between AND Publishing and Andrea Francke initiated in London in 2010.
[81](ch11.xhtml#footnote-445-backlink) Andrea Francke visited pirate book
markets in Lima, Peru in 2010. The Red Mansion Prize residency enabled us to
research book piracy in Beijing and Shanghai in 2012. A research residency at
SALT Istanbul in 2012 facilitated field research in Turkey.
[82](ch11.xhtml#footnote-444-backlink) See also Stephen Wright’s Towards a
Lexicon of Usership (Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum, 2013) proposing to replace the
term (media) ‘piracy’ with ‘usership’. He explains: ‘On the one hand, the most
notorious and ruthless cultural pirates today are Google and its subsidiaries
like YouTube (through the institutionalized rip-off of user-generated value
broadly known as Page-Rank), Facebook, and of course Warner Bros etc., but
also academic publishers such as the redoubtable Routledge. On the other hand,
all the user-run and user-driven initiatives like aaaaarg, or
[pad.ma](http://pad.ma), or until recently the wonderful Dr Auratheft. But,
personally, I would hesitate to assimilate such scaled-up, de-creative, user-
propelled examples with anything like “cultural piracy”. They are, through
usership, enriching what would otherwise fall prey to cultural piracy.’ Email
to the author, 1 August 2012.
See also: Andrea Francke and Eva Weinmayr (eds.), Borrowing, Poaching,
Plagiarising, Pirating, Stealing, Gleaning, Referencing, Leaking, Copying,
Imitating, Adapting, Faking, Paraphrasing, Quoting, Reproducing, Using,
Counterfeiting, Repeating, Translating, Cloning (London: AND Publishing,
2014).
[83](ch11.xhtml#footnote-443-backlink) Richard Prince’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’
forms part of the Piracy Collection. Not the book copy priced at £1,500, just
an A4 colour printout of the cover, downloaded from the Internet. On the shelf
it sits next to Salinger’s copy, which we bought at Barnes and Noble for £20.
[84](ch11.xhtml#footnote-442-backlink) Craig, ‘Symposium: Reconstructing the
Author-Self’, p. 246.
[85](ch11.xhtml#footnote-441-backlink) Michel Foucault, ‘What Is an Author?’,
in [Donald F.
Bouchard](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_2?ie=UTF8&text=Donald+F.+Bouchard
&search-alias=books-uk&field-author=Donald+F.+Bouchard&sort=relevancerank)
(ed.), Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 113–38.
[86](ch11.xhtml#footnote-440-backlink) See The Piracy Project, ‘The
Impermanent Book’, Rhizome, 19 April 2012,
[87](ch11.xhtml#footnote-439-backlink) It might be no coincidence that Roland
Barthes’ seminal short essay ‘Death of the Author’ was published in the
magazine Aspen at the same time, when photocopy machines were beginning to be
widely used in libraries and offices.
[88](ch11.xhtml#footnote-438-backlink) Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, No Trespassing,
Authorship, Intellectual Property Rights and the Boundaries of Globalization
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), p. 66.
[89](ch11.xhtml#footnote-437-backlink) See No se diga a nadie, The Piracy
Project Catalogue,
[90](ch11.xhtml#footnote-436-backlink) In an essay in Granta Magazine, Daniel
Alarcon explains the popularity of book piracy in Peru due to the lack of
formal distribution. ‘Outside Lima, the pirate book industry is the only one
that matters’ explains Alarcon. Iquitos, the largest city in the Peruvian
Amazon, with nearly 400,000 residents, had until 2007 no formal bookstore and
in 2010 only two. Trujillo, the country’s third largest city, has one.
According to Alarcon, an officially produced book costs twenty percent of an
average worker’s weekly income, therefore the pirate printing industry fills
this gap — an activity that is not seriously restricted by the state. In fact,
Alarcon claims that the government is involved in the pirate printing industry
as a way to control what is being read. Pirated books are openly sold in book
markets and by street vendors at traffic crossings, therefore they ‘reach
sectors of the market that formal book publishers cannot or don’t care to
access. In a similar vein, the few prestigious private universities’ book
check-out time is exactly twenty-four hours, the very turnaround for the copy
shops in the neighbourhood to make a photocopied version of the checked-out
library books. Daniel Alarcon, ‘Life Amongst the Pirates’, Granta Magazine, 14
January 2010,
[91](ch11.xhtml#footnote-435-backlink) A discussion of the vast variety of
approaches here would exceed the scope of this text. If you are interested,
please visit our searchable Piracy Collection catalogue, which provides short
descriptions of the pirates’ approaches and strategies,
[92](ch11.xhtml#footnote-434-backlink) For the performative debate A Day at
the Courtroom hosted by The Showroom in London, the Piracy Project invited
three copyright lawyers from different cultural and legal backgrounds to
discuss and assess selected cases from the Piracy Project from the perspective
of their differing jurisdictions. The final verdict was given by the audience,
who positioned the ‘case’ on a colour scale ranging from illegal (red) to
legal (blue). The scale replaced the law’s fundamental binary of legal —
illegal, allowing for greater complexity and nuance. The advising scholars and
lawyers were Lionel Bently (Professor of Intellectual Property at the
University of Cambridge), Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento (Art and Law, New York),
Prodromos Tsiavos (Project lead for Creative Commons, England, Wales and
Greece). A Day at the Courtroom, The Showroom London, 15 June 2013. See a
transcript of the debate in Francke and Weinmayr, Borrowing, Poaching,
Plagiarising.
[93](ch11.xhtml#footnote-433-backlink) Aaaaaarg.fail operates on an invitation
only basis; [memoryoftheworld.org](http://memoryoftheworld.org) is openly
accessible.
[94](ch11.xhtml#footnote-432-backlink) Julian Myers, Four Dialogues 2: On
AAAARG, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art — Open Space, 26 August 2009, . This
constructive approach has been observed by Jonas Andersson generally with p2p
sharing networks, which ’have begun to appear less as a reactive force (i.e.
breaking the rules) and more as a proactive one (setting the rules). […]
Rather than complain about the conservatism of established forms of
distribution they simply create new, alternative ones.’ Jonas Andersson, ‘For
the Good of the Net: The Pirate Bay as a Strategic Sovereign’, Culture Machine
10 (2009), p. 64.
[95](ch11.xhtml#footnote-431-backlink) This process was somewhat fraught,
because at the same time David Cameron launched his perfidious ‘Big Society’
concept, which proposed that members of the community should volunteer at
institutions, such as local public libraries, which otherwise could not
survive because of government cuts.
[96](ch11.xhtml#footnote-430-backlink) See the Piracy Project catalogue: Neil
Chapman, Deleuze, Proust and Signs,
[97](ch11.xhtml#footnote-429-backlink) Of course unconventional publications
can and are being collected, but these are often more arty objects, flimsy or
oversized, undersized etc. and frequently end up in the special collections,
framed and categorised ‘as different’ from the main stack of the collections.
[98](ch11.xhtml#footnote-428-backlink) When The Piracy Project was invited to
create a reading room at the New York Art Book Fair in 2012, a librarian from
the Pratt Institute dropped by every single day, because she was so fixed on
the questions, the pirate books and their complex strategies of queering the
category of authorship posed to standardised bibliographic practices. Based on
this question we organised a cataloguing workshop ‘Putting the Piracy
Collection on the shelf’ at Grand Union in Birmingham, where we developed a
new cataloguing vocabulary for cases in the collection. See
union.org.uk/gallery/putting-the-piracy-collection-on-the-shelves/>
See also Karen Di Franco’s reflection on the cataloguing workshop ‘The Library
Medium’ in Francke and Weinmayr, Borrowing, Poaching, Plagiarising.
[99](ch11.xhtml#footnote-427-backlink) See Piracy Project catalogue: Camille
Bondon, Jacques Rancière: le mâitre ignorant, .
Rancière’s pedagogical proposal suggests that ‘the most important quality of a
schoolmaster is the virtue of ignorance’. (Rancière, 2010, p. 1). In his book
The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation Jacques
Rancière uses the historic case of the French teacher Joseph Jacotot, who was
exiled in Belgium and taught French classes to Flemish students whose language
he did not know and vice versa. Reportedly he gave his students a French text
to read alongside its translation and, without mediation or explanation, let
the students figure out the relationship between the two texts themselves. By
intentionally using his ignorance as teaching method, Rancière claims, Jacotot
removed himself as the centre of the classroom, as the one who knows. This
teaching method arguably destabilises the hierarchical relationship of
knowledge (between student and teacher) and therefore ‘establishes equality as
the centre of the educational process’. Annette Krauss, ‘Sites for Unlearning:
On the Material, Artistic and Political Dimensions of Processes of
Unlearning’, PhD, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2017, p. 113\. Jacques
Rancière, Education, Truth and Emancipation (London: Continuum, 2010). Jacques
Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation
(Stanford: University Press California, 1987).
[100](ch11.xhtml#footnote-426-backlink) ‘AND Publishing announces The Piracy
Lectures’, Art Agenda, 4 May 2011,
publishing-announces-the-piracy-lectures/>
[101](ch11.xhtml#footnote-425-backlink) Judith Butler, ‘What is Critique? An
Essay on Foucault’s Virtue’, Transversal 5 (2001),
[102](ch11.xhtml#footnote-424-backlink) Institutions that hosted long and
short-term reading rooms or invited us for workshops included: The Showroom
London, Grand Union Birmingham, Salt Istanbul, ZKM Academy for Media Arts
Cologne, Kunstverein Munich. The Bluecoat Liverpool, Truth is Concrete,
Steirischer Herbst Graz, Printed Matter New York, New York Art Book Fair at
MoMA PS1, 281 Vancouver, Rum 46 Aarhus, Miss Read, Kunstwerke Berlin.
Institutions that invited us for talks or panel discussions included:
Whitechapel Art Gallery, Open Design Conference Barcelona, Institutions by
Artists Vancouver, Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, Freie University Berlin, and
various art academies and universities across Europe.
[103](ch11.xhtml#footnote-423-backlink) At times, we signed ‘the Piracy
Project’ (the title) under our own names (the artist-authors), because it felt
suitable to take the credit for all our personal work, instead of
strengthening the ‘umbrella organisation’ AND. When the editor of Rhizome
asked us to write about the project, we authored the jointly written text as
‘by Piracy Project’. On other occasions we framed it ‘The Piracy Project is a
collaboration of the artists x and y, as part of AND Publishing’s research
program.’ At some point, the Piracy Project outgrew AND Publishing because it
took up all our time, and we began to question whether the Piracy Project was
part of AND, or whether AND was part of the Piracy Project.
[104](ch11.xhtml#footnote-422-backlink) This less glamourous work includes
answering emails, booking flights, organising rooms and hosting, in short the
administrative work required to run and maintain such a project. The feminist
discourse of domestic and reproductive labour is relevant here, but a more
detailed discussion exceeds the scope of this text.
[105](ch11.xhtml#footnote-421-backlink) Walter Benjamin, ‘The Author as
Producer’, New Left Review 1.62 (1970), 83–96. See also Hall, Pirate
Philosophy, pp. 127–232.
[106](ch11.xhtml#footnote-420-backlink) Ibid., p. 129.
[107](ch11.xhtml#footnote-419-backlink) Several gatherings, such as ‘Direct
Weekend’ and ‘Long Weekend’ at various art colleges in London involved
Precarious Workers Brigade, Carrot Workers, tax evasion campaigners, UK Uncut,
alternative media groups, feminist alliances, anti-poverty groups. See
Precarious Workers Brigade, ‘Fragments Toward an Understanding of a Week that
Changed Everything…’, e-flux 24 (April 2011),
-week-that-changed-everything/>
[108](ch11.xhtml#footnote-418-backlink) Susan Kelly describes Felix Guattari’s
use of the term transversality ‘as a conceptual tool to open hitherto closed
logics and hierarchies and to experiment with relations of interdependency in
order to produce new assemblages and alliances […] and different forms of
(collective) subjectivity that break down oppositions between the individual
and the group.’ Susan Kelly, ‘The Transversal and the Invisible: How do You
Really Make a Work of Art that Is not a Work of Art?’, Transversal 1 (2005), . See also Gerald Raunig’s
description of transversal activist practice: as ‘There is no longer any
artificially produced subject of articulation; it becomes clear that every
name, every linkage, every label has always already been collective and must
be newly constructed over and over again. In particular, to the same extent to
which transversal collectives are only to be understood as polyvocal groups,
transversality is linked with a critique of representation, with a refusal to
speak for others, in the name of others, with abandoning identity, with a loss
of a unified face, with the subversion of the social pressure to produce
faces.’ Gerald Raunig, ‘Transversal Multitudes’, Transversal 9 (2002),
[109](ch11.xhtml#footnote-417-backlink) Kelly, ‘”But that was my idea!”’, p.
3.
[110](ch11.xhtml#footnote-416-backlink) The carrot is used as ‘a symbol of the
promise of paid work and future fulfilment made to those working under
conditions of free labour in the cultural sector.’ Ibid.
[111](ch11.xhtml#footnote-415-backlink) In an interview published in Artforum,
David Graeber says: ‘Another artist I know, for example, made a sculpture of a
giant carrot used during a protest at Millbank; I think it was actually thrown
through the window of Tory headquarters and set on fire. She feels it was her
best work, but her collective, which is mostly women, insisted on collective
authorship, and she feels unable to attach her name to the work.’ ‘Another
World: Michelle Kuo Talks with David Graeber’, Artforum International (Summer
2012), p. 270,
david-graeber-31099>
[112](ch11.xhtml#footnote-414-backlink) Artist Rosalie Schweiker, who read a
draft of this text, suggested that I make a list of the name of every person
involved in the project in order to demonstrate this generative and expansive
mode of working.
[113](ch11.xhtml#footnote-413-backlink) Such an action might even infringe
legal requirements or contracts. Open Book Publishers’ contract, for example,
states: ‘The author hereby asserts his/her right to be identified in relation
to the work on the title page and cover and the publisher undertakes to comply
with this requirement. A copyright notice in the Author’s name will be printed
in the front pages of the Work.’ Open Book Publishers, Authors’ Guide, p. 19,
[114](ch11.xhtml#footnote-412-backlink) For a discussion of gender inequality
in recent scholarly publishing see Chad Wellmon and Andrew Piper ‘Publication,
Power, Patronage: On Inequality and Academic Publishing’, Critical Inquiry (21
July 2017), publication_power_and_patronage_on_inequality_and_academic_publishing/
[115](ch11.xhtml#footnote-411-backlink) See Gérard Genette’s discussion of the
‘pseudonym effect’ as conceptual device. He distinguishes between the reader
not knowing about the use of the pseudonym and the conceptual effect of the
reader having information about the use of a pseudonym. Gérard Genette,
Paratexts, Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
[116](ch11.xhtml#footnote-410-backlink) The Neoist movement developed in
Canada, North America and Europe in the late 1970s. It selected one signature
name for multiple identities and authors, who published, performed and
exhibited under this joint name. It is different from a collective name, as
any person could sign her or his work with these joint names without revealing
the author’s identity. See letter exchanges between cultural theorist Florian
Cramer and artist and writer Stewart Home: ‘I would like to describe “Monty
Cantsin” as a multiple identity, “Karen Eliot” as a multiple pen-name and,
judging from the information I have, “Luther Blissett” as a collective
phantom.’ Florian Cramer, 2 October 1995, in Stewart Home and Florian Cramer,
House of Nine Squares: Letters on Neoism, Psychogeography & Epistemological
Trepidation, . See also
Nicholas Thoburn’s research into the political agency of anonymous authorship.
Nicholas Thoburn, Anti-Book, On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing
(Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2016) pp. 168–223.
[117](ch11.xhtml#footnote-409-backlink) Anonymous started on 4chan, an online
imageboard where users post anonymously. ‘The posts on 4chan have no names or
any identifiable markers attached to them. The only thing you are able to
judge a post by is its content and nothing else.’ Gabriella Coleman, Hacker,
Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (London and New York:
Verso, 2014), p. 47.
[118](ch11.xhtml#footnote-408-backlink) I thank Susan Kelly for making this
point while reviewing my text.
[119](ch11.xhtml#footnote-407-backlink) It is interesting to come back to
Foucault’s text ‘What is an author’ and complicate his own position as
authorial subject. Referring to Naomi Schor and Gayatri Spivak, Sara Ahmed
suggests, that ‘Foucault effaces the sexual specificity of his own narrative
and perspective as a male philosopher. The refusal to enter the discourse as
an empirical subject, a subject which is both sexed and European, may finally
translate into a universalising mode of discourse, which negates the
specificity of its own inscription (as a text)’. See Naomi Schor, ‘Dreaming
Dissymmetry: Barthes, Foucault and Sexual Difference’, in Elizabeth Weed
(ed.), Coming to Terms: Feminism, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1989),
pp. 47–58; and Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Cary
Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of
Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271–313.
[120](ch11.xhtml#footnote-406-backlink) Sara Ahmed, Differences That Matter,
Feminist Theory and Postmodernism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2004) p. 125.
[121](ch11.xhtml#footnote-405-backlink) Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’,
pp. 271–313.
The Guide to techno-galactic software observing was compiled by Carlin
Wing, Martino Morandi, Peggy Pierrot, Anita, Christoph Haag, Michael
Murtaugh, Femke Snelting
License: Free Art License
Support:
Sources:
Constant, February 2018
::: {.footnotes}
1. [[[Haraway]{.fname}, [Donna]{.gname}, [Galison]{.fname},
[Peter]{.gname} and [Stump]{.fname}, [David J]{.gname}: [Modest
Witness: Feminist Diffractions in Science Studies]{.title},
[Stanford University Press]{.publisher}, [1996]{.date}.
]{.collection} [-\>](#eeffecbe)]{#ebceffee}
2. [Worksessions are intensive transdisciplinary moments, organised
twice a year by Constant. They aim to provide conditions for
participants with different experiences and capabilities to
Constant
The Techno-Galactic Guide to Software Observation
2018
::: {.toc}
[Introduction](#mtljymuz) [Encounter several collections of historical
hardware back-to-back](#njm5zwm4) [Interview people about their
histories with software](#mguzmza4) [Ask several people from different
fields and age-groups the same question: \"***What is
software?***\"](#odfkotky) [FMEM and /DEV/MEM](#mzcxodix)
[Pan/Monopsychism](#m2mwogri) [Fountain refreshment](#ndawnmy5) [Create
\"nannyware\": Software that observes and addresses the user](#mtk5yjbl)
[Useless scroll against productivity](#yzuwmdq4) [Investigating how
humans and machines negotiate the experience of time](#m2vjndu3)
[Quine](#nmi5mgjm) [Glossaries as an exercise](#zwu0ogu0) [Adding
qualifiers](#mja0m2i5) [Searching \"software\" through
software](#mmmwmje2) [Persist in calling everyone a Software Curious
Person](#ndhkmwey) [Setup a Relational software observatory consultancy
(RSOC)](#mmu1mgy0) [Agile Sun Salutation](#mta1ntzm) [Hand
reading](#mdu0mmji) [Bug reporting for sharing observations](#yznjodq3)
[Interface Détournement](#ytu5y2qy) [Comportments of software
(softwear)](#y2q4zju5) [Continuous integration](#mwrhm2y4) [make make
do](#zdixmgrm) [Flowcharts (Flow of the chart -- chart of the flow on
demand!)](#zweymtni) [Something in the Middle Maybe (SitMM)](#ywfin2e4)
[What is it like to be AN ELEVATOR?](#ntlimgqy) [Side Channel
Analysis](#ndg2zte4) [Compiling a bestiary of software logos](#njmzmjm1)
[Encounter several collections of historical hardware
back-to-back](#njm5zwm4) [Testing the testbed: testing software with
observatory ambitions (SWOA)](#mmy2zgrl) [Prepare a reader to think
theory with software](#mmmzmmrh)
:::
[]{#mtljymuz .anchor}
A guide to techno-galactic software observation
> I am less interested in the critical practice of reflection, of
> showing once-again that the emperor has no clothes, than in finding a
> way to *diffract* critical inquiry in order to make difference
> patterns in a more worldly way.^[1](#ebceffee)^
The techno-galactic software survival guide that you are holding right
now was collectively produced as an outcome of the Techno-Galactic
Software Observatory. This guide proposes several ways to achieve
critical distance from the seemingly endless software systems that
surround us. It offers practical and fantastical tools for the tactical
(mis)use of software, empowering/enabling users to resist embedded
paradigms and assumptions. It is a collection of methods for approaching
software, experiencing its myths and realities, its risks and benefits.
With the rise of online services, the use of software has increasingly
been knitted into the production of software, even while the rhetoric,
rights, and procedures continue to suggest that use and production
constitute separate realms. This knitting together and its corresponding
disavowal have an effect on the way software is used and produced, and
radically alters its operative role in society. The shifts ripple across
galaxies, through social structures, working conditions and personal
relations, resulting in a profusion of apparatuses aspiring to be
seamless while optimizing and monetizing individual and collective flows
of information in line with the interests of a handful of actors. The
diffusion of software services affects the personal, in the form of
intensified identity shaping and self-management. It also affects the
public, as more and more libraries, universities and public
infrastructures as well as the management of public life rely on
\"solutions\" provided by private companies. Centralizing data flows in
the clouds, services blur the last traces of the thin line that
separates bio- from necro-politics.
Given how fast these changes resonate and reproduce, there is a growing
urgency to engage in a critique of software that goes beyond taking a
distance, and that deals with the fact that we are inevitably already
entangled. How can we interact, intervene, respond and think with
software? What approaches can allow us to recognize the agency of
different actors, their ways of functioning and their politics? What
methods of observation enable critical inquiry and affirmative discord?
What techniques can we apply to resurface software where it has melted
into the infrastructure and into the everyday? How can we remember that
software is always at work, especially where it is designed to disappear
into the background?
We adopted the term of observation for a number of reasons. We regard
observation as a way to approach software, as one way to organize
engagement with its implications. Observation, and the enabling of
observation through intensive data-centric feedback mechanisms, is part
of the cybernetic principles that underpin present day software
production. Our aim was to scrutinize this methodology in its many
manifestations, including in \"observatories\" \-- high cost
infrastructures \[testing infrastructures?CITECLOSE23310 of observation
troubled by colonial, imperial traditions and their problematic
divisions of nature and culture \-- with the hope of opening up
questions about who gets to observe software (and how) and who is being
observed by software (and with what impact)? It is a question of power,
one that we answer, at least in part, with critical play.
We adopted the term techno-galactic to match the advertised capability
of \"scaling up to the universe\" that comes in contemporary paradigms
of computation, and to address different scales of software communities
and related political economies that involve and require observation.
Drawing on theories of software and computation developed in academia
and elsewhere, we grounded our methods in hands-on exercises and
experiments that you now can try at home. This Guide to Techno-Galactic
Software Observation offers methods developed in and inspired by the
context of software production, hacker culture, software studies,
computer science research, Free Software communities, privacy activism,
and artistic practice. It invites you to experiment with ways to stay
with the trouble of software.
The Techno-Galactic Software Observatory
----------------------------------------
In the summer of 2017, around thirty people gathered in Brussels to
explore practices of proximate critique with and of software in the
context of a worksession entitled \"Techno-Galactic Software
Observatory\".^[2](#bcaacdcf)^ The worksession called for
software-curious people of all kinds to ask questions about software.
The intuition behind such a call was that different types of engagement
requires a heterogeneous group of participants with different levels of
expertise, skill and background. During three sessions of two days,
participants collectively inspected the space-time of computation and
probed the universe of hardware-software separations through excursions,
exercises and conversations. They tried out various perspectives and
methods to look at the larger picture of software as a concept, as a
practice, and as a set of techniques.
The first two days of The Techno-Galactic Software Observatory included
visits to the Musée de l\'Informatique Pionnière en
Belgique^[3](#aaceaeff)^ in Namur and the Computermuseum
KULeuven^[4](#afbebabd)^. In the surroundings of these collections of
historical 'numerical artefacts', we started viewing software in a
long-term context. It offered us the occasion to reflect on the
conditions of its appearance, and allowed us to take on current-day
questions from a genealogical perspective. What is software? How did it
appear as a concept, in what industrial and governmental circumstances?
What happens to the material conditions of its production (minerals,
factory labor, hardware) when it evaporates into a cloud?
The second two days we focused on the space-time dimension of IT
development. The way computer programs and operating systems are
manufactured changed tremendously through time, and so did its
production times and places. From military labs via the mega-corporation
cubicles to the open-space freelancer utopia, what ruptures and
continuities can be traced in the production, deployment, maintenance
and destruction of software? From time-sharing to user-space partitions
and containerization, what separations were and are at work? Where and
when is software made today?
The Walk-in Clinic
------------------
The last two days at the Techno-galactic software observatory were
dedicated to observation and its consequences. The development of
software encompasses a series of practices whose evocative names are
increasingly familiar: feedback, report, probe, audit, inspect, scan,
diagnose, explore, test \... What are the systems of knowledge and power
within which these activities take place, and what other types of
observation are possible? As a practical set for our investigations, we
set up a walk-in clinic on the 25th floor of the World Trade Center,
where users and developers could arrive with software-questions of all
kinds.
> Do you suffer from the disappearance of your software into the cloud,
> feel oppressed by unequal user privilege, or experience the torment of
> software-ransom of any sort? Bring your devices and interfaces to the
> World Trade Center! With the help of a clear and in-depth session, at
> the Techno-Galactic Walk-In Clinic we guarantee immediate results. The
> Walk-In Clinic provides free hands-on observations to software curious
> people of all kinds. A wide range of professional and amateur
> practitioners will provide you with
> Software-as-a-Critique-as-a-Service on the spot. Available services
> range from immediate interface critique, collaborative code
> inspection, data dowsing, various forms of network analyses,
> unusability testing, identification of unknown viruses, risk
> assessment, opening of black-boxes and more. Free software
> observations provided. Last intake at 16:45.\
> (invitation to the Walk-In Clinic, June 2017)
On the following pages: Software as a Critique as a Service (SaaCaaS)
Directory and intake forms for Software Curious People (SCP).
The survival techniques described in the following guide are to be used
at your own risk in case of emergency regarding software curiosity. The
publisher will not accept any responsability in case of damages caused
by misuse, misundestanding of instruction or lack of curiosity. By
trying the action exposed in the guide, you accept the responsability of
loosing data or altering hardware, including hard disks, usb key, cloud
storage, screens by throwing them on the floor, or even when falling on
the floor with your laptop by tangling your feet in an entanglement of
cables. No harm has been done to human, animal, computers or plants
while creating the guide. No firearms or any kind of weapon is needed in
order to survive software.\
Just a little bit of patience.
**Software observation survival stresses**
**Physical fitness plays a great part of software observation. Be fit or
CTRL-Quit.**
When trying to observe software you might experience stresses as such :
*Anxiety*Sleep deprivation *Forgetting about eating*Loss of time
tracking
**Can you cope with software ? You have to.**
> our methods for observation, like mapping, come with their luggage.
[Close encounters]{.grouping} []{#njm5zwm4 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.visit)
Encounter several collections of historical hardware
back-to-back]{.method .descriptor} [How]{.how .empty .descriptor}
This can be done by identifying one or more computer museums and visit
them with little time in-between. Visiting a friend with a large
basement and lots of left-over computer equipment can help. Seeing and
possibly touching hardware from different contexts
(state-administration, business, research, \...), periods of time,
cultural contexts (California, Germany, French-speaking Belgium) and
price ranges allows you to sense the interactions between hardware and
software development.
[Note: It\'s a perfect way to hear people speak about the objects and
their contexts, how they worked or not and how objects are linked one
with another. It also shows the economic and cultural aspects of
softwares.]{.note .descriptor} [WARNING: **DO NOT FOLD, SPINDLE OR
MUTILATE**]{.warning .descriptor} [Example: Spaghetti Suitcase]{.example
.descriptor}
At one point during the demonstration of a Bull computer, the guide
revealed the system\'s \"software\" \-- a suitcase sized module with
dozens of patch cords. She made the comment that the term \"spaghetti
code\" (a derogatory expression about early code usign many \"GOTO\"
statments) had its origin in this physical arrangement of code as
patchings.
Preserving old hardware in order to observe physical manifestation of
software. See software here : we did experienced the incredible
possibility of actually touching software.
[SHOW IMAGE HERE:
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/images/wednesday/IMG\_20170607\_113634\_585.jpg]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE:
http://gallery.constantvzw.org/var/resizes/Techno-Galactic-Software-Observatory/IMG\_1163.JPG?m=1496916927]{.tmp}
[Example: Playing with the binary. Bull cards. Happy operator! Punch
card plays.]{.example .descriptor}
\"The highlight of the collection is to revive a real punch card
workshop of the 1960s.\"
[Example: Collection de la Maison des Écritures d\'Informatique & Bible,
Maredsous]{.example .descriptor}
The particularity of the collection lies in the fact that it\'s the
conservation of multiple stages of life of a software since its initial
computerization until today. The idea of introducing informatics into
the work of working with/on the Bible (versions in Hebrew, Greek, Latin,
and French) dates back to 1971, via punch card recordings and their
memorization on magnetic tape. Then came the step of analyzing texts
using computers.
[SHOW IMAGE HERE:
http://gallery.constantvzw.org/var/resizes/Preparing-the-Techno-galactic-Software-Observatory/DSC05019.JPG?m=1490635726]{.tmp}
[TODO: RELATES TO
http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.jean.heuns]{.tmp}
[]{#mguzmza4 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.jean.heuns)
Interview people about their histories with software]{.method
.descriptor} [What: Observe personnal narratives around software
history. Retrace the path of relation to software, how it changed during
the years and what are the human access memories that surrounds it. To
look at software through personal relations and emotions.]{.what
.descriptor} [How: Interviews are a good way to do it. Informal
conversations also.]{.how .descriptor}
Jean Heuns has been collecting servers, calculators, softwares, magnetic
tapes hard disks for xxx years. Found an agreement for them to be
displayed in the department hallways. Department of Computer sciences -
Kul Leuven.
[SHOW IMAGE HERE:
http://gallery.constantvzw.org/var/albums/Techno-Galactic-Software-Observatory/PWFU3350.JPG]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE:
http://gallery.constantvzw.org/var/albums/Techno-Galactic-Software-Observatory/PWFU3361.JPG]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE:
http://gallery.constantvzw.org/var/albums/Techno-Galactic-Software-Observatory/PWFU3356.JPG]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE:
http://gallery.constantvzw.org/var/albums/Techno-Galactic-Software-Observatory/PWFU3343.JPG]{.tmp}
[TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp} []{#odfkotky .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.samequestion)
Ask several people from different fields and age-groups the same
question: \"***What is software?***\"]{.method .descriptor} [Remember:
The answers to this question will vary depending on who is asking it to
who.]{.remember .descriptor} [What: By paying close attention to the
answers, and possibly logging them, observations on the ambiguous place
and nature of software can be made.]{.what .descriptor}
[Example]{.example .empty .descriptor}
Jean Huens (system administrator at the department of Computer Science,
KULeuven): \"*It is difficult to answer the question \'what is
software\', but I know what is good software*\"
Thomas Cnudde (hardware designer at ESAT - COSIC, Computer Security and
Industrial Cryptography, KULeuven): \"*Software is a list of sequential
instructions! Hardware for me is made of silicon, software a sequence of
bits in a file. But naturally I am biased: I\'m a hardware designer so I
like to consider it as unique and special*\".
Amal Mahious (Director of NAM-IP, Namur): \"*This, you have to ask the
specialists.*\"
` {.verbatim}
*what is software?
--the unix filesystem says: it's a file----what is a file?
----in the filesystem, if you ask xxd:
------ it's a set of hexadecimal bytes
-------what is hexadecimal bytes?
------ -b it's a set of binary 01s
----if you ask objdump
-------it's a set of instructions
--side channel researching also says:
----it's a set of instructions
--the computer glossary says:
----it's a computer's programs, plus the procedure for their use http://etherbox.local/home/pi/video/A_Computer_Glossary.webm#t=02:26
------ a computer's programs is a set of instrutions for performing computer operations `
[Remember: To answer the question \"*what is software*\" depends on the
situation, goal, time, and other contextual influences.]{.remember
.descriptor} [TODO: RELATES TO
http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.everyonescp]{.tmp}
[]{#mzcxodix .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.devmem) FMEM
and /DEV/MEM]{.method .descriptor} [What: Different ways of exploring
your memory (RAM). Because in unix everything is a file, you can access
your memory as if it were a file.]{.what .descriptor} [Urgency: To try
and observe the operational level of software, getting closer to the
workings, the instruction-being of an executable/executing file, the way
it is when it is loaded into memory rather than when it sits in the
harddisk]{.urgency .descriptor} [Remember: In Unix-like operating
systems, a device file or special file is an interface for a device
driver that appears in a file system as if it were an ordinary file. In
the early days you could fully access your memory via the memory device
(`/dev/mem`) but over time the access was more and more restricted in
order to avoid malicious processes to directly access the kernel memory.
The kernel option CONFIG\_STRICT\_DEVMEM was introduced in kernel
version 2.6 and upper (2.6.36--2.6.39, 3.0--3.8, 3.8+HEAD). So you\'ll
need to use the Linux kernel module fmem: this module creates
`/dev/fmem` device, that can be used for accessing physical memory
without the limits of /dev/mem (1MB/1GB, depending on
distribution).]{.remember .descriptor}
`/dev/mem` tools to explore processes stored in the memory
ps ax | grep process
cd /proc/numberoftheprocess
cat maps
\--\> check what it is using
The proc filesystem is a pseudo-filesystem which provides an interface
to kernel data structures. It is commonly mounted at `/proc`. Most of it
is read-only, but some files allow kernel variables to be changed.
dump to a file\--\>change something in the file\--\>dump new to a
file\--\>diff oldfile newfile
\"where am i?\"
to find read/write memory addresses of a certain process\
`awk -F "-| " '$3 ~ /rw/ { print $1 " " $2}' /proc/PID/maps`{.bash}
Besides opening the memory dump with an hex editor you can also try and
explore it with other tools or devices. You can open it as a raw image,
you can play it as a sound or perhaps send it directly to your
frame-buffer device (`/dev/fb0`).
[WARNING: Although your memory may look like/sound like/read like
gibberish, it may contain sensitive information about you and your
computer!]{.warning .descriptor} [Example]{.example .empty .descriptor}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE:
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/images/Screenshot\_from\_2017-06-07\_164407.png]{.tmp}
[TODO: BOX: Forensic and debuggung tools can be used to explore and
problematize the layers of abstraction of computing.]{.tmp} [TODO:
RELATES TO
http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.monopsychism]{.tmp}
[]{#m2mwogri .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.monopsychism)
Pan/Monopsychism]{.method .descriptor} [What: Reading and writing
sectors of memory from/to different computers]{.what .descriptor} [How:
Shell commands and fmem kernel module]{.how .descriptor} [Urgency:
Memory, even when it is volatile, is a trace of the processes happening
in your computer in the form of saved information, and is therefore more
similar to a file than to a process. Challenging the file/process
divide, sharing memory with others will allow a more intimate relation
with your and other\'s computers.]{.urgency .descriptor} [About:
Monopsychism is the philosophical/theological doctrine according to
which there exists but one intellect/soul, shared by all beings.]{.about
.descriptor} [TODO: RELATES TO
http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.devmem]{.tmp} [Note: The
parallel allocation and observation of the same memory sector in two
different computers is in a sense the opposite process of machine
virtualization, where the localization of multiple virtual machines in
one physical comptuers can only happen by rigidly separating the memory
sectors dedicated to the different virtual machines.]{.note .descriptor}
[WARNING: THIS METHOD HAS NOT BEEN TESTED, IT CAN PROBABLY DAMAGE YOUR
RAM MEMORY AND/OR COMPUTER]{.warning .descriptor}
First start the fmem kernel module in both computers:
`sudo sh fmem/run.sh`{.bash}
Then load part of your computer memory into the other computer via dd
and ssh:
or it could go through the memory of different computers one after the other and take and leave something there `
[Temporality]{.grouping} []{#ndawnmy5 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.fountain)
Fountain refreshment]{.method .descriptor} [What: Augmenting a piece of
standardised office equipment designed to dispense water to perform a
decorative function.]{.what .descriptor} [How: Rearranging space as
conditioning observations (WTC vs. Museum vs. University vs. Startup
Office vs. Shifting Walls that became Water Fountains)]{.how
.descriptor} [Who: Gaining access to standardised water dispensing
equipment turned out to be more difficult than expected as such
equipment is typically licensed / rented rather than purchased outright.
Acquiring a unit that could be modified required access to secondary
markets of second hand office equiment in order to purchase a disused
model.]{.who .descriptor} [Urgency: EU-OSHA (European Agency for Safety
and Health at Work) Directive 2003/10/EC noise places describes the
minimum health and safety requirements regarding the exposure of workers
to the risks arising from physical agents (noise). However no current
European guidelines exist on the potential benefitial uses of tactially
designed additive noise systems.]{.urgency .descriptor}
The Techno-Galactic Software Observatory -- Comfortable silence, one way
mirrors
A drinking fountain and screens of one-way mirrors as part of the work
session \"*The Techno-Galactic Software Observatory*\" organised by
Constant.
For the past 100 years the western ideal of a corporate landscape has
been has been moving like a pendulum, oscillating between grids of
cubicles and organic, open landscapes, in a near to perfect 25-year
rhythm. These days the changes in office organisation is supplemented by
sound design, in corporate settings mostly to create comfortable
silence. Increase the sound and the space becomes more intimate, the
person on the table next to you can not immediately hear what you are
saying. It seems that actual silence in public and corporate spaces has
not been sought after since the start of the 20th century. Actual
silence is not at the moment considered comfortable. One of the visible
symptoms of our desire to take the edge off the silence is to be
observed through the appearance of fountains in public space. The
fountains purpose being to give off neutral sound, like white noise
without the negative connotations. However as a sound engineer\'s
definition of noise is unwanted sound that all depends on ones personal
relation to the sound of dripping water.
This means that there needs to be a consistent inoffensiveness to create
comfortable silence.
In corporate architecture the arrival of glass buildings were originally
seen as a symbol of transparency, especially loved by governmental
buildings. Yet the reflectiveness of this shiny surface once combined
with strong light -- known as the treason of the glass -- was only
completely embraced at the invention of one-way-mirror foil. And it was
the corporate business-world that would come to be known for their
reflective glass skyscrapers. As the foil reacts to light, it appears
transparent to someone standing in the dark, while leaving the side with
the most light with an opaque surface. Using this foil as room dividers
in a room with a changing light, what is hidden or visible will vary
throughout the day. So will the need for comfortable silence. Disclaimer
:\
Similar to the last 100 years of western office organisation,\
this fountain only has two modes:\
on or off
If it is on it also offers two options\
cold water and hot water
This fountain has been tampered with and has not in any way been
approved by a proffesional fountain cleaner. I do urge you to consider
this before you take the decision to drink from the fountain.
Should you chose to drink from the fountain, then I urge you to write
your name on your cup, in the designated area, for a customised
experience of my care for you.
Nannyware is software meant to protect users while limiting their space
of activity. It is software that passive-aggressively suggests or
enforces some kind of discipline. In other words, create a form of
parental control extended to adults by means of user experience / user
interfaces.
Nannyware is a form of Content-control software: software designed to
restrict or control the content a reader is authorised to access,
especially when utilised to restrict material delivered over the
Internet via the Web, e-mail, or other means. Content-control software
determines what content will be available or be blocked.
[How]{.how .empty .descriptor}
> \[\...RestrictionsCITECLOSE23310 can be applied at various levels: a
> government can attempt to apply them nationwide (see Internet
> censorship), or they can, for example, be applied by an ISP to its
> clients, by an employer to its personnel, by a school to its students,
> by a library to its visitors, by a parent to a child\'s computer, or
> by an individual user to his or her own computer.^[5](#fcefedaf)^
[Who]{.who .empty .descriptor}
> Unlike filtering, accountability software simply reports on Internet
> usage. No blocking occurs. In setting it up, you decide who will
> receive the detailed report of the computer's usage. Web sites that
> are deemed inappropriate, based on the options you've chosen, will be
> red-flagged. Because monitoring software is of value only "after the
> fact", we do not recommend this as a solution for families with
> children. However, it can be an effective aid in personal
> accountability for adults. There are several available products out
> there.^[6](#bffbbeaf)^
[Urgency]{.urgency .empty .descriptor}
> As with all new lifestyle technologies that come along, in the
> beginning there is also some chaos until their impact can be assessed
> and rules put in place to bring order and respect to their
> implementation and use in society. When the automobile first came into
> being there was much confusion regarding who had the right of way, the
> horse or the car. There were no paved roads, speed limits, stop signs,
> or any other traffic rules. Many lives were lost and much property was
> destroyed as a result. Over time, government and society developed
> written and unwritten rules as to the proper use of the
> car.^[7](#bbfcbcfa)^
[WARNING]{.warning .empty .descriptor}
> Disadvantages of explicit proxy deployment include a user\'s ability
> to alter an individual client configuration and bypass the proxy. To
> counter this, you can configure the firewall to allow client traffic
> to proceed only through the proxy. Note that this type of firewall
> blocking may result in some applications not working
> properly.^[8](#ededebde)^
[Example]{.example .empty .descriptor}
> The main problem here is that the settings that are required are
> different from person to person. For example, I use workrave with a 25
> second micropause every two and a half minute, and a 10 minute
> restbreak every 20 minutes. I need these frequent breaks, because I\'m
> recovering from RSI. And as I recover, I change the settings to fewer
> breaks. If you have never had any problem at all (using the computer,
> that is), then you may want much fewer breaks, say 10 seconds
> micropause every 10 minutes, and a 5 minute restbreak every hour. It
> is very hard to give proper guidelines here. My best advice is to play
> around and see what works for you. Which settings \"feel right\".
> Basically, that\'s how Workrave\'s defaults evolve.^[9](#cfbbbfdd)^
[SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[Content-control software\](
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2008/05/03/nannyware.jpg )]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[A \"nudge\" from your music player
\](http://img.wonderhowto.com/img/10/25/63533437022064/0/disable-high-volume-warning-when-using-headphones-your-samsung-galaxy-s4.w654.jpg)]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[Emphasis on the body\]
(http://classicallytrained.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/take-a-break.jpg)]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[ \"Slack is trying to be my friend but it\'s more
like a slightly insensitive and slightly bossy acquaintance.\"
\@briecode \] (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CuZLgV4XgAAYexX.jpg)]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[Slack is trying to be my friend but it\'s more like
a slightly insensitive and slightly bossy acquaintance.\]
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CuZLgV4XgAAYexX.jpg)]{.tmp} [SHOW IMAGE
HERE:
!\[\](https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi0.wp.com%2Fatherbeg.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F06%2FWorkrave-Restbreak-Shoulder.png&f=1)]{.tmp}
Facebook is working on an app to stop you from drunk-posting \"Yann
LeCun, who overseas the lab, told Wired magazine that the program would
be like someone asking you, \'Uh, this is being posted publicly. Are you
sure you want your boss and your mother to see this?\'\"
[SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[This Terminal Dashboard Reminds You to Take a Break
When You\'re Lost Deep Inside the Command
Line\](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s\--\_of0PoM2\--/c\_fit,fl\_progressive,q\_80,w\_636/eegvqork0qizokwrlemz.png)]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[\](http://waterlog.gd/images/homescreen.png)]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE:
!\[\](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6oKTduWcAEruIE.jpg:large)]{.tmp}
[TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp} []{#yzuwmdq4 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.scrollresistance)
Useless scroll against productivity]{.method .descriptor} []{#m2vjndu3
.anchor} [[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.time)
Investigating how humans and machines negotiate the experience of
time]{.method .descriptor} [What]{.what .empty .descriptor} [SHOW IMAGE
HERE:
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/images/Screenshot\_from\_2017-06-10\_172547.png]{.tmp}
[How: python script]{.how .descriptor} [Example]{.example .empty
.descriptor}
` {.verbatim}
# ends of time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
Exact moment of the epoch:
03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038
## commands
local UNIX time of this machine
%XBASHCODE: date +%s
UNIX time + 1
%BASHCODE: echo $((`date +%s` +1 ))
## goodbye unix time
while :
do
sleep 1
figlet $((2147483647 - `date +%s`))
done
# Sundial Time Protocol Group tweaks
printf 'Current Time in Millennium Unix Time: '
printf $((2147483647 - `date +%s`))
echo
sleep 2
echo $((`cat ends-of-times/idletime` + 2)) > ends-of-times/idletime
idletime=`cat ends-of-times/idletime`
echo
figlet "Thank you for having donated 2 seconds to our ${idletime} seconds of collective SSH pause "
echo
echo
[TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp} [Languaging]{.grouping} []{#nmi5mgjm .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.quine)
Quine]{.method .descriptor} [What: A program whose function consists of
displaying its own code. Also known as \"self-replicating
program\"]{.what .descriptor} [Why: Quines show the tension between
\"software as language\" and \"software as operation\".]{.why
.descriptor} [How: By running a quine you will get your code back. You
may do a step forward and wonder about functionality and aesthetics,
uselessness and performativity, data and code.]{.how .descriptor}
[Example: A quine (Python). When executed it outputs the same text as
the source:]{.example .descriptor}
` {.sourceCode .python}
s = 's = %r\nprint(s%%s)'
print(s%s) `
[Example: A oneline unibash/etherpad quine, created during relearn
2017:]{.example .descriptor}
The encounter with quines may deeply affect you. You may want to write
one and get lost in trying to make an ever shorter and more elegant one.
You may also take quines as point of departure or limit-ideas for
exploring software dualisms.
\"A quine is without why. It prints because it prints. It pays no
attention to itself, nor does it asks whether anyone sees it.\" \"Aquine
is aquine is aquine. \" Aquine is not a quine This is not aquine
[Remember: Although seemingly absolutely useless, quines can be used as
exploits.]{.remember .descriptor}
Exploring boundaries/tensions
databases treat their content as data (database punctualization) some
exploits manage to include operations in a database
[TODO: RELATES TO
http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.monopsychism]{.tmp}
[]{#zwu0ogu0 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.glossary)
Glossaries as an exercise]{.method .descriptor} [What: Use the technique
of psychanalytic listening to compile (gather, collect, bring together)
a list of key words for understanding software.]{.what .descriptor}
[How: Create a shared document that participants can add words to as
their importance emerges.To do pyschoanalytic listening, let your
attention float freely, hovering evenly, over a conversation or a text
until something catches its ear. Write down what your ear/eye catches.
When working in a collective context invite others to participate in
this project and describe the practice to them. Each individual may move
in and out of this mode of listening according to their interest and
desire and may add as many words to the list as they want. Use this list
to create an index of software observation.]{.how .descriptor} [When:
This is best done in a bounded context. In the case of the
Techno-Galactic Observatory, our bounded contexts includes the six day
work session and the pages and process of this publication.]{.when
.descriptor} [Who: The so-inclined within the group]{.who .descriptor}
[Urgency: Creating and troubling categories]{.urgency .descriptor}
[Note: Do not remove someone else\'s word from the glossary during the
accumulation phase. If an editing and cutting phase is desired this
should be done after the collection through collective consensus.]{.note
.descriptor} [WARNING: This method is not exclusive to and was not
developed for software observation. It may lead to awareness of
unconscious processes and to shifts in structures of feeling and
relation.]{.warning .descriptor} [Example]{.example .empty .descriptor}
` {.verbatim}
Agile
Code
Colonial
Command Line
Communication
Connectivity
Emotional
Galaxies
Green
Guide
Kernel
Imperial
Issues
Machine
Mantra
Memory
Museum
Observation
ProductionPower
Programmers
Progress
Relational
Red
Scripting
Scrum
Software
Survival
Technology
Test
Warning
WhiteBoard
Yoga `
[TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp} []{#mja0m2i5 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.validation)
Adding qualifiers]{.method .descriptor} [Remember: \"\[V\]alues are
properties of things and states of affairs that we care about and strive
to attain\...vlaues expressed in technical systems are a function of
their uses as well as their features and designs.\" Values at Play in
Digital Games, Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum]{.remember
.descriptor} [What: Bringing a moral, ethical, or otherwise
evaluative/adjectival/validating lens.]{.what .descriptor} [How:
Adjectives create subcategories. They narrow the focus by naming more
specifically the imagined object at hand and by implicitly excluding all
objects that do not meet the criteria of the qualifier. The more
adjectives that are added, the easier it becomes to answer the question
what is software. Or so it seems. Consider what happens if you add the
words good, bad, bourgeois, queer, stable, or expensive to software. Now
make a list of adjectives and try it for yourself. Level two of this
exercise consists of observing a software application and deducing from
this the values of the individuals, companies, and societies that
produced it.]{.how .descriptor} [Note: A qualifier may narrow down
definitions to undesirable degrees.]{.note .descriptor} [WARNING: This
exercise may be more effective at identifying normative and ideological
assumptions at play in the making, distributing, using, and maintaining
of software than at producing a concise definition.]{.warning
.descriptor} [Example: \"This morning, Jan had difficulties to answer
the question \"what is software\", but he said that he could answer the
question \"what is good software\". What is good software?]{.example
.descriptor} [TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp} []{#mmmwmje2 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.softwarethrough)
Searching \"software\" through software]{.method .descriptor} [What: A
quick way to sense the ambiguity of the term \'software\', is to go
through the manual files on your hard drive and observe in which cases
is the term used.]{.what .descriptor} [How: command-line oneliner]{.how
.descriptor} [Why: Software is a polymorphic term that take different
meanings and comes with different assumptions for the different agents
involved in its production, usage and all other forms of encounter and
subjection. From the situated point of view of the software present on
your machine, when and why does software call itself as such?]{.why
.descriptor} [Example]{.example .empty .descriptor}
so software exists only outside your computer? only in general terms?
checking for the word software in all man pages:
grep -nr software /usr/local/man
!!!!
software appears only in terms of license:
This program is free software
This software is copyright (c)
we don\'t run software. we still run programs.\
nevertheless software is everywhere
[TODO: RELATES TO
http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.samequestion]{.tmp}
[]{#ndhkmwey .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.everyonescp)
Persist in calling everyone a Software Curious Person]{.method
.descriptor} [What: Persistance in naming is a method for changing a
person\'s relationship to software by (sometimes forcibly) call everyone
a Software Curious Person.]{.what .descriptor} [How: Insisting on
curiosity as a relation, rather than for example \'fear\' or
\'admiration\' might help cut down the barriers between different types
of expertise and allows multiple stakeholders feel entitled to ask
questions, to engage, to investigate and to observe.]{.how .descriptor}
[Urgency: Software is too important to not be curious about.
Observations could benefit from recognising different forms of
knowledge. It seems important to engage with software through multiple
interests, not only by means of technical expertise.]{.urgency
.descriptor} [Example: This method was used to address each of the
visitors at the Techno-Galactic Walk-in Clinic.]{.example .descriptor}
[TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp} [Healing]{.grouping} []{#mmu1mgy0 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.relational)
Setup a Relational software observatory consultancy (RSOC)]{.method
.descriptor} [Remember]{.remember .empty .descriptor}
- Collectivise research around hacking to save time.
- Self-articulate software needs as your own Operating (system)
perspective.
- Change the lens by looking to software through a time perspective.
[What: By paying a visit to our ethnomethodology interview practice
you'll learn to observe software from different angles / perspectives.
Our practionners passion is to make the \"what is the relation to
software\" discussion into a service.]{.what .descriptor} [How: Reading
the signs. Considering the everchanging nature of software development
and use and its vast impact on globalized societies, it is necessary to
recognize some of the issues of how software is (often) either
passively-perceived or actively-observed, without an articulation of the
relations. We offer a method to read the signs of the relational aspect
of software observance. It\'s a crucial aspect of our guide. It will
give you another view on software that will shape your ability to
survive any kind of software disaster.]{.how .descriptor} [SHOW IMAGE
HERE: !\[Reading the signs. From: John \"Lofty\" Wiseman, SAS Survival
Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere\](
http://gallery.constantvzw.org/index.php/Techno-Galactic-Software-Observatory/IMAG1319
)]{.tmp} [WARNING]{.warning .empty .descriptor} [SHOW IMAGE HERE: have a
advertising blob for the RSOC with a smiling doctor welcoming
image]{.tmp} [Example]{.example .empty .descriptor}
What follows is an example of a possible diagnostic questionnaire.
Sample Questionnaire
--------------------
**What to expect** You will obtain a cartography of software users
profiles. It will help you to shape your own relation to software. You
will be able to construct your own taxonomy and classifcation of
software users that is needed in order to find a means of rescue in case
of a software catastrophy.
- SKILLS\
- What kind of user would you say that you are?
- What is your most frequently used type of software?
- How often do you install/experiment/learn new software?
- History
- What is your first recollection of software use?
- How often do / when did you last purchase software or pay for a
software service?
- Ethics
- What is the software feature you care about the most?
- Do you use any free software?
- if yes than
- do you remember your first attempt at using this software
service? Do you still use it? If not why?
- Do you pay for media distribution/streaming services?
- Do you remember your first attempt at using free software and how
did that make you feel?
- Have you used any of these software services : facebook, dating app
(grindr, tinder, etc.), twitter, instagram or equivalent.
- Can you talk about your favorite apps or webtools that you use
regularly?
- What is most popular software your friends use?
- SKILL
- Would you say that you are a specilised user?
- Have you ever used the command line?
- Do you know about scripting?
- Have you ever edited an HTML page? A CSS file? A PHP file? A
configuration file?
- Can you talk about your most technical encounter with your computer
/ telephone?
- ECONOMY\
- How do you pay for your software use?
- Please elaborate (for example, do you buy the software? /
contribute in kind / deliver services or support)
- What is the last software that you paid for using?
- What online services are you currently paying for?
- Is someone paying for your use of service?
- Personal
- What stories do you have concerning contracts and administration in
relation to your software, Internet or computer?
- How does software help you shape your relations with other people?
- From which countries does your softwares come from / reside? How do
you feel about that?
- Have you ever read a terms of software service, what about one that
is not targeting the American market?
Possible/anticipated user profiles
----------------------------------
### \...meAsHardwareOwnerSoftwareUSER:
\"I did not own a computer personally until very very late as I did not
enjoy gaming as a kid or had interest in spending much time behind PC
beyond work (and work computer). My first was hence I think in 2005 and
it was a SGI workstation that was the computer of the year 2000 (cost
10.000USD) and I got it for around 300USD. Proprietary drivers for
unified graphics+RAM were never released, so it remained a software
dead-end in gorgeous blue curved chassis
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/pics/vwdocs.jpg\"
### \...meAsSoftwareCONSUMER:
\"I payed/purchased software only twice in my life (totalling less then
25eur), as I could access most commercial software as widely pirated in
Balkans and later had more passion for FLOSS anyway, this made me relate
to software as material to exchange and work it, rather than commodity
goods I could or not afford.\"
### \...meAsSoftwareINVESTOR:
\"I did it as both of those apps were niche products in early beta (one
was Jeeper Elvis, real-time-non-linear-video-editor for BeOS) that
failed to reach market, but I think I would likely do it again and only
in that mode (supporting the bleeding edge and off-stream work), but
maybe with more than 25eur.\"
### \...meAsSoftwareUserOfOS:
\"I would spend most of 80s ignoring computers, 90ties figuring out
software from high-end to low-end, starting with OSF/DecAlpha and SunOS,
than IRIX and MacOS, finally Win 95/98 SE, that permanently pushed me
into niches (of montly LINUX distro install fests, or even QNX/Solaris
experiments and finally BeOS use).\"
### \...meAsSoftwareWEBSURFER:
\"I got used to websurfing in more than 15 windows on UNIX systems and
never got used to less than that ever since, furthermore with addition
of more browser options this number only multiplied (always wondered if
my first system was Windows 3.11 - would I be a more focused person and
how would that form my relations to browser windows\>tabs).\"
### \...meAsSoftwareUserOfPropertarySoftware:
\"I signed one NDA contract in person on the paper and with ink on a
rainy day while stopping of at trainstaion in north Germany for the
software that was later to be pulled out of market due to problematic
licencing agreement (intuitivly I knew it was wrong) - it had too much
unprofessional pixeleted edges in its graphics.
### \...meAsSoftwareUserOfDatingWebsites:
\"I got one feature request implemented by a prominent dating website
(to search profiles by language they speak), however I was never
publicly acknowledged (though I tried to make use of it few times), that
made our relations feel a bit exploitative and underappreciated. \"
### \...meAsSoftwareUserTryingToGoPRO:
\"my only two attempts to get into the software company failed as they
insisted on full time commitments. Later I found out ones were
intimidated in interview and other gave it to a person that negotiated
to work part time with friend! My relation to professionalism is likely
equally complex and pervert as one to the software.\"
Case study : W. W.
------------------
\...ww.AsExperiencedAdventerousUSER - experiments with software every
two days as she uses FLOSS and Gnu/Linux, cares the most for maliabity
of the software - as a result she has big expectations of flexibility
even in software category which is quite conventional and stability
focused like file-hosting.
\...ww.AsAnInevstorInSoftware - paid compiled version of FLOSS audio
software 5 years ago as she is supportive of economy and work around
production, maintainance and support, but she also used closed
hardware/software where she had to agree on licences she finds unfair,
but then she was hacking it in order to use it as an expert - when she
had time.
\...ww.AsCommunicationSoftwareUSER - she is not using commercial social
networks, so she is very concious of information transfers and time
relations, but has no strong media/format/design focus.
Q: What is your first recollection of software use?\
A: ms dos in 1990 at school \_ i was 15 or 16. oh no 12. Basic in 1986.
Q: What are the emotions related to this use?\
A: fun. i\'m good at this. empowering
Q: How often do / when did you last purchase software or pay for a
software service?\
A: I paid for ardour five years ago. I paid the developper directly. For
the compiled version. I paid for the service. I pay for my website and
email service at domaine public.
Q: What kind of user would you say you are?\
A: An experienced user drawing out the line. I don\'t behave.
Q: Is there a link between this and your issue?\
A: Even if it\'s been F/LOSS there is a lot of decision power in my
package.
Q: What is your most frequently used type of software?\
A: Web browser. email. firefox & thunderbird
Q: How often do you install/experiment/learn new software?\
A: Every two days. I reinstall all the time. my old lts system died.
stop being supported last april. It was linux mint something.
Q: Do you know about scripting?\
A: I do automating scripts for any operation i have to doi several times
like format conversion.
Q: Can you talk about your most technical encounter with your computer /
telephone?\
A: I\'ve tried to root it. but i didn\'t succeed.
Q: How much time do you wish to spend on such activities like hacking,
rooting your device?\
A: hours. you should take your time
Q: Did you ever sign licence agreement you were not agree with? How does
that affect you?\
A: This is the first thing your when you have a phone. it\'s obey or
die.
Q: What is the software feature you care for the most?\
A: malleability. different ways to approach a problem, a challenge, an
issue.
Q: Do you use any free software?\
A: yes. there maybe are some proprietary drivers.
Q: Do you remember your first attempt at using free software and how did
that make you feel?\
A: Yes i installed my dual boot in \... 10 years ago. scared and
powerful.
Q: Do you use one of this software service: facebook, dating app (grindr
of sort), twitter, instagram or equivalent?\
A: Google, gmail that\'s it
Q: Can you talk about your favorite apps or webtools that you use
regularly?\
A: Music player. vanilla music and f-droid. browser. I pay attention to
clearing my history, no cookies. I also have iceweasel. Https by
default. Even though i have nothing to hide.
Q: What stories around contracts and administration in relation to your
software internet or computer?\
A: Nothing comes to my mind. i\'m not allowed to do, to install on
phone. When it\'s an old phone, there is nothing left that is working
you have to do it.
Q: How does software help you shape your relations with other people?\
A: It\'s a hard question. if it\'s communication software of course
it\'s it\'s nature to be related to other people.there is an expectency
of immediate reply, of information transfer\...It\'s troubling your
relation with people in certain situations.
Q: From which countries does your softwares live / is coming from? How
do you feel about that?\
A: i think i chose the netherlands as a miror. you are hoping to reflect
well in this miror.
Q: Have you ever read a terms of software service; one that is not
targeting the American market?\
A: i have read them. no.
> Agile software development describes a set of values and principles
> for software development under which requirements and solutions evolve
> through the collaborative effort of self-organizing cross-functional
> teams. It advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early
> delivery, and continuous improvement, and it encourages rapid and
> flexible response to change. These principles support the definition
> and continuing evolution of many software development
> methods.^[10](#dbabcece)^
[What: You will be observing yourself]{.what .descriptor} [How]{.how
.empty .descriptor}
> Scrum is a framework for managing software development. It is designed
> for teams of three to nine developers who break their work into
> actions that can be completed within fixed duration cycles (called
> \"sprints\"), track progress and re-plan in daily 15-minute stand-up
> meetings, and collaborate to deliver workable software every sprint.
> Approaches to coordinating the work of multiple scrum teams in larger
> organizations include Large-Scale Scrum, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
> and Scrum of Scrums, among others.^[11](#eefcbaac)^
[When: Anywhere where it\'s possible to lie on the floor]{.when
.descriptor} [Who]{.who .empty .descriptor}
> Self-organization and motivation are important, as are interactions
> like co-location and pair programming. It is better to have a good
> team of developers who communicate and collaborate well, rather than a
> team of experts each operating in isolation. Communication is a
> fundamental concept.^[12](#fbaeffab)^
[Urgency: Using Agile software development methods to develop a new path
into your professional and personal life towards creativity, focus and
health.]{.urgency .descriptor} [WARNING]{.warning .empty .descriptor}
> The agile movement is in some ways a bit like a teenager: very
> self-conscious, checking constantly its appearance in a mirror,
> accepting few criticisms, only interested in being with its peers,
> rejecting en bloc all wisdom from the past, just because it is from
> the past, adopting fads and new jargon, at times cocky and arrogant.
> But I have no doubts that it will mature further, become more open to
> the outside world, more reflective, and also therefore more
> effective.^[13](#edabeeaf)^
Hello and welcome to the presentation of the agile yoga methodology. I
am Allegra, and today I\'m going to be your personal guide to YOGA, an
acronym for why organize? Go agile! I\'ll be part of your team today and
we\'ll do a few exercises together as an introduction to a new path into
your professional and personal life towards creativity, focus and
health.
A few months ago, I was stressed, overwhelmed with my work, feeling
alone, inadequate, but since I started practicing agile yoga, I feel
more productive. I have many clients as an agile yoga coach, and I\'ve
seen new creative business opportunities coming to me as a software
developer.
For this first experience with the agile yoga method and before we do
physical exercises together, I would like to invite you to close your
eyes. Make yourself comfortable, lying on the floor, or sitting with
your back on the wall. Close your eyes, relax. Get comfortable. Feel the
weight of your body on the floor or on the wall. Relax.
Leave your troubles at the door. Right now, you are not procrastinating,
you are having a meeting at the \,
a professional building dedicated to business, you are meeting yourself,
you are your own business partner, you are one. You are building your
future.
You are in a room standing with your team, a group of lean programmers.
You are watching a white board together. You are starting your day, a
very productive day as you are preparing to run a sprint together. Now
you turn towards each other, making a scrum with your team, you breathe
together, slowly, inhaling and exhaling together, slowly, feeling the
air in and out of your body. Now you all turn towards the sun to prepare
to do your ASSanas, the agile Sun Salutations or ASS with the team
dedicated ASS Master. She\'s guiding you. You start with Namaskar, the
Salute. your palms joined together, in prayer pose. you all reflect on
the first principle of the agile manifesto. your highest priority is to
satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable
software.
Next pose, is Ardha Chandrasana or (Half Moon Pose). With a deep
inhalation, you raise both arms above your head and tilt slightly
backward arching your back. you welcome changing requirements, even late
in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer\'s
competitive advantage. then you all do Padangusthasana (Hand to Foot
Pose). With a deep exhalation, you bend forward and touch the mat, both
palms in line with your feet, forehead touching your knees. you deliver
working software frequently.
Surya Darshan (Sun Sight Pose). With a deep inhalation, you take your
right leg away from your body, in a big backward step. Both your hands
are firmly planted on your mat, your left foot between your hands. you
work daily throughout the project, business people and developers
together. now, you\'re flowing into Purvottanasana (Inclined Plane) with
a deep inhalation by taking your right leg away from your body, in a big
backward step. Both your hands are firmly planted on your mat, your left
foot between your hands. you build projects around motivated
individuals. you give them the environment and support they need, and
you trust them to get the job done.
You\'re in Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Facing Dog Pose). With a deep
exhalation, you shove your hips and butt up towards the ceiling, forming
an upward arch. Your arms are straight and aligned with your head. The
most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and
within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Then, Sashtang Dandawat (Forehead, Chest, Knee to Floor Pose). With a
deep exhalation, you lower your body down till your forehead, chest,
knees, hands and feet are touching the mat, your butt tilted up. Working
software is the primary measure of progress.
Next is Bhujangasana (Cobra Pose). With a deep inhalation, you slowly
snake forward till your head is up, your back arched concave, as much as
possible. Agile processes promote sustainable development. You are all
maintaining a constant pace indefinitely, sponsors, developers, and
users together.
Now back into Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Facing Dog Pose).
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances
agility.
And then again to Surya Darshan (Sun Sight Pose). Simplicity\--the art
of maximizing the amount of work not done\--is essential. Then to
Padangusthasana (Hand to Foot Pose). The best architectures,
requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
You all do again Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose). At regular
intervals, you as the team reflect on how to become more effective, then
tune and adjust your behavior accordingly. you end our ASSanas session
with a salute to honor your agile yoga practices. you have just had a
productive scrum meeting. now i invite you to open your eyes, move your
body around a bit, from the feet up to the head and back again.
Stand up on your feet and let\'s do a scrum together if you\'re ok being
touched on the arms by someone else. if not, you can do it on your own.
so put your hands on the shoulder of the SCP around you. now we\'re
joined together, let\'s look at the screen together as we inhale and
exhale. syncing our body together to the rythms of our own internal
software, modulating our oxygen level intake requirements to the oxygen
availability of our service facilities.
Now, let\'s do together a couple of exercise to protect and strengthen
our wrists. as programmers, as internauts, as entrepreneurs, they are a
very crucial parts of the body to protect. in order to be able to type,
to swipe, to shake hands vigourously, we need them in good health. So
bring to hands towards each other in a prayer pose, around a book, a
brick. You can do it without but I\'m using my extreme programming book
- embrace change - for that. So press the palms together firmly, press
the pad of your fingers together. do that while breathing in and out
twice.
Now let\'s expand our arms towards us, in the air, face and fingers
facing down. like we\'re typing. make your shoulders round. let\'s
breath while visualizing in our heads the first agile mantra :
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Now let\'s bring back the arms next to the body and raise them again.
And let\'s move our hands towards the ceiling this time. Strenghtening
our back. In our head, the second mantra. Working software over
comprehensive documentation. now let\'s bring back the hands in the
standing position. Then again the first movement while visualizing the
third mantra : Customer collaboration over contract negotiation and then
the second movement thinking about the fourth and last mantra :
Responding to change over following a plan and of course we continue
breathing. Now to finish this session, let\'s do a sprint together in
the corridor !
[SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[\](
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/guide/agileyoga/8-Poses-Yoga-Your-Desk.contours.png
)]{.tmp} [SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[\](
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/guide/agileyoga/gayolab-office-chair-for-yoga.contours.png
)]{.tmp} [TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp} []{#mdu0mmji .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.blobservation)
Hand reading]{.method .descriptor} [How: Visit the Future Blobservation
Booth to have your fortunes read and derive life insight from the wisdom
of software.]{.how .descriptor} [What: Put your hand in the reading
booth and get your line read.]{.what .descriptor} [Why: The hand which
holds your mouse everyday hides many secrets.]{.why .descriptor}
[Example]{.example .empty .descriptor}
` {.verbatim .wrap}
* sample reading timeline:
* 15:00 a test user, all tests clear and systems are online a user who said goodbye to us another user a user who thought it'd be silly to say thank you to the machine but thank you very much another kind user who said thank you yet another kind user another user, no feeback a nice user who found the reading process relieving yet another kind user a scared user! took the hand out but ended up trusting the system. "so cool thanks guys" another user a young user! this is a funny computer
* 15:35 another nice user
* 15:40 another nice user
* 15:47 happy user (laughing)
* 15:51 user complaining about her fortune, saying it's not true. Found the reading process creepy but eased up quickly
* 15:59 another nice user: http://etherbox.local:9001/p/SCP.sedyst.md
* 16:06 a polite user
* 16:08 a friendly playful user (stephanie)
* 16:12 a very giggly user (wendy)
* 16:14 a playful user - found the reading process erotic - DEFRAGMENTING? NO! Thanks Blobservation http://etherbox.local:9001/p/SCP.loup.md
* 16:19 a curious user
* 16:27 a friendly user but oh no, we had a glitch and computer crashed. But we still delivered the fortune. We got a thank you anyway
* 16:40 a nice user, the printer jammed but it was sorted out quickly *16:42 another nice user
* 16:50 nice user (joak)
* 16:52 yet another nice user (jogi)
* 16:55 happy user! (peter w)
* 16:57 more happy user (pierre h)
* 16:58 another happy user
* 17:00 super happy user (peggy)
* 17:02 more happy user `
[Example]{.example .empty .descriptor}
> Software time is not the same as human time. Computers will run for AS
> LONG AS THEY WILL BE ABLE TO, provided sufficient power is available.
> You, as a human, don\'t have the luxury of being always connected to
> the power grid and this have to rely on your INTERNAL BATTERY. Be
> aware of your power cycles and set yourself to POWER-SAVING MODE
> whenever possible.
[SHOW IMAGE HERE:
http://gallery.constantvzw.org/var/resizes/Techno-Galactic-Software-Observatory/IMAG1407.jpg?m=1497344230]{.tmp}
[TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp} []{#yznjodq3 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.dirty) Bug
reporting for sharing observations]{.method .descriptor} [What: Etherpad
had stopped working but it was unclear why. Where does etherpad
\'live\'?]{.what .descriptor} [How: Started by looking around the pi\'s
filesystem by reading /var/log/syslog in /opt/etherpad and in a
subdirectory named var/ there was dirty.db, and dirty it was.]{.how
.descriptor} [When: Monday morning]{.when .descriptor} [Urgency:
Software (etherpad) not working and the Walk-in Clinic was about to
start.]{.urgency .descriptor} [Note:
http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.inventory.jogi]{.note
.descriptor}
from jogi\@mur.at to \[Observatory\] When dirty.db get\'s dirty
Dear all,
as promised yesterday, here my little report regarding the broken
etherpad.
\ \#\#\# When dirty.db get\'s dirty
When I got to WTC on Monday morning the etherpad on etherbox.local was
disfunct. Later someone said that in fact etherpad had stopped working
the evening before, but it was unclear why. So I started looking around
the pi\'s filesystem to find out what was wrong. Took me a while to find
the relevant lines in /var/log/syslog but it became clear that there was
a problem with the database. Which database? Where does etherpad
\'live\'? I found it in /opt/etherpad and in a subdirectory named var/
there it was: dirty.db, and dirty it was.
A first look at the file revealed no apparent problem. The last lines
looked like this:
What I did not see at the time was that there were some (AFAIR something
around 150) binary zeroes at the end of the file. I used tail for the
first look and that tool silently ignored the zeroes at the end of the
file. It was Martino who suggested using different tools (xxd in that
case) and that showed the cause of the problem. The file looked
something like this:
which means: write the first 793080162 blocks of size 1 byte to a new
file. After half an hour or so I checked on the size of the new file and
saw that some 10% of the copying had been done. No way this would get
done in time for the walk-in-clinic. Back to the drawing board.
Using a text editor was no real option btw since even vim has a hard
time with binary zeroes and the file was really big. But there was
hexedit! Martino installed it and copied dirty.db onto his computer.
After some getting used to the various commands to navigate in hexedit
the unwanted zeroes were gone in an instant. The end of the file looked
like this now:
Martino asked about the trailing \'.\' character and I checked a
different copy of the file. No \'.\' there, so that had to go too. My
biggest mistake in a long time! The \'.\' we were seeing in Martino\'s
copy of the file was in fact a \'\' (0a)! We did not realize that,
copied the file back to etherbox.local and waited for etherpad to resume
it\'s work. But no luck there, for obvious reasons.
We ended up making backups of dirty.db in various stages of deformation
and Martino started a brandnew pad so we could use pads for the walk-
in-clinic. The processing tool chain has been disabled btw. We did not
want to mess up any of the already generated .pdf, .html and .md files.
We still don\'t know why exactly etherpad stopped working sometime
Sunday evening or how the zeroes got into the file dirty.db. Anita
thought that she caused the error when she adjusted time on
etherbox.local, but the logfile does not reflect that. The last clean
entry in /var/log/syslog regarding nodejs/etherpad is recorded with a
timestamp of something along the line of \'Jun 10 10:17\'. Some minutes
later, around \'Jun 10 10:27\' the first error appears. These timestamps
reflect the etherbox\'s understanding of time btw, not \'real time\'.
It might be that the file just got too big for etherpad to handle it.
The size of the repaired dirty.db file was already 757MB. That could btw
explain why etherpad was working somewhat slugishly after some days.
There is still a chance that the time adjustment had an unwanted side
effect, but so far there is no obvious reason for what had happened.
\ \-- J.Hofmüller
> The analysis of common sense, as opposed to the exercise of it, must
> then begin by redrawing this erased distinction between the mere
> matter-of-fact apprehension of reality\--or whatever it is you want to
> call what we apprehend merely and matter-of-factly\--and
> down-to-earth, colloquial wisdom, judgements, and assessments of it.
[What: Observe and catalog the common gestures, common comportments, and
common sense(s) surrounding software.]{.what .descriptor} [How: This can
be done through observation of yourself or others. Separate the
apprehended and matter of fact from the meanings, actions, reactions,
judgements, and assessments that the apprehension occasions. Step 1:
Begin by assembling a list of questions such as: When you see a software
application icon what are you most likely to do? When a software
application you are using presents you with a user agreement what are
you most likely to do? When a software applciation does something that
frustrates you what are you most likely to do? When a software
application you are using crashes what are you most likely to do? Step
2: Write down your responses and the responses of any subjects you are
observing. Step 3: For each question, think up three other possible
responses. Write these down. Step 4: (this step is only for the very
curious) Try the other possible responses out the next time you
encounter each of the given scenarios.]{.how .descriptor} [Note: The
common senses and comportments of software are of course informed and
conditioned by those of hardware and so perhaps this is more accurately
a method for articulating comportments of computing.]{.note .descriptor}
[WARNING: Software wears on both individual and collective bodies and
selves. Software may harm your physical and emotional health and that of
your society both by design and by accident.]{.warning .descriptor}
[TODO: RELATES TO Agile Sun Salutation, Natasha Schull\'s Addicted by
Design]{.tmp} [Flow-regulation, logistics, seamlessness]{.grouping}
[]{#mwrhm2y4 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.continuousintegration)
Continuous integration]{.method .descriptor} [What: Continuous
integration is a sophisticated form of responsibility management: it is
the fascia of services. Continous integration picks up after all other
services and identifies what needs to happen so that they can work in
concert. Continuous integration is a way of observing the evolution of
(micro)services through cybernetic (micro)management.]{.what
.descriptor} [How: Continuous integration keeps track of changes to all
services and allows everyone to observe if they still can work together
after all the moving parts are fitted together.]{.how .descriptor}
[When: Continuous integration comes to prominence in a world of
distributed systems where there are many parts being organized
simultaneously. Continuous integration is a form of observation that
helps (micro)services maintain a false sense of independence and
decentralization while constantly subjecting them to centralized
feedback.]{.when .descriptor} [Who: Continuous integration assumes that
all services will submit themselves to the feedback loops of continuous
integration. This could be a democratic process or not.]{.who
.descriptor} [Urgency: Continuous integration reconfigures divisions of
labor in the shadows of automation. How can we surface and question its
doings and undoings?]{.urgency .descriptor} [WARNING: When each service
does one thing well, the service makers tend to assume everybody else is
doing the things they do not want to do.]{.warning .descriptor}
At TGSO continuous integration was introduced as a service that responds
to integration hell when putting together a number of TGSO services for
a walk-in software clinic. Due to demand, the continuous integration
service was extended to do \"service discovery\" and \"load balancing\"
once the walk-in clinic was in operation.
Continuous integration worked by visiting the different services of the
walk-in clinic to check for updates, test the functionality and think
through implications of integration with other services. If the pieces
didn\'t fit, continuous integration delivered error messages and
solution options.
When we noticed that software curious persons visiting the walk-in
clinic may have troubles finding the different services, and that some
services may be overloaded with software curious persons, continuous
integration was extended. We automated service registration using
colored tape and provided a lookup registry for software curious
persons.
Load balancing meant that software curious persons were forwarded to
services that had capacity. If all other services were full, the load
balancer defaulted to sending the software curious person to the [Agile
Sun
Salutation](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.agile.yoga)
service.
[WARNING: At TGSO the bundling of different functionalities into the
continuous integration service broke the \"do one thing well\"
principle, but saved the day (we register this as technical debt for the
next iteration of the walk-in clinic).]{.warning .descriptor} [Remember:
Continous integration may be the string that holds your current software
galaxy together.]{.remember .descriptor}
\"More technically, I am interested in how things bounce around in
computer systems. I am not sure if these two things are relted, but I
hope continuous integration will help me.\"
[]{#zdixmgrm .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.pipeline) make
make do]{.method .descriptor} [What: Makefile as a method for
quick/collective assemblages + observing amalgamates/pipelines]{.what
.descriptor} [Note: Note:
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/etherdump/makefile.raw.html]{.note
.descriptor}
etherpad-\>md-\>pdf-\>anything pipeline. makefile as a method for
quick/collective assemblages + observing amalgamates/pipelines CHRISTOPH
[]{#zweymtni .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.ssogy)
Flowcharts (Flow of the chart -- chart of the flow on demand!)]{.method
.descriptor} [Example]{.example .empty .descriptor} [SHOW IMAGE HERE:
!\[\]( http://observatory.constantvzw.org/images/symbols/ibm-ruler.jpg
)]{.tmp} [SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[\](
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/images/symbols/burroughs-ruler.jpg
)]{.tmp} [SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[\](
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/images/symbols/rectangle.png )]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[\](
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/images/symbols/curly\_rec.png
)]{.tmp} [SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[\](
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/images/symbols/curly\_rec-2.png
)]{.tmp} [SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[\](
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/images/symbols/flag.png )]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[\](
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/images/symbols/trapec.png )]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE: !\[Claude Shannon Information Diagram Blanked: Silvio
Lorusso\](
http://silviolorusso.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/shannon\_comm\_channel.gif
)]{.tmp} [TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp}
[Beingontheside/inthemiddle/behind]{.grouping} []{#ywfin2e4 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.somethinginthemiddlemaybe)
Something in the Middle Maybe (SitMM)]{.method .descriptor} [What: The
network traffic gets observed. There are different sniffing software out
there which differ in granularity and how far the user can taylor the
different functionality. SitMM builds on one of these tools called
[scapy](http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/).]{.what .descriptor}
[How: SitMM takes a closer look at the network traffic coming from/going
to a software curious person\'s device. The software curious person
using SitMM may ask to filter the traffic based on application or device
of interest.]{.how .descriptor} [Who]{.who .empty .descriptor}
The software curious person gets to observe their own traffic. Ideally,
observing ones own network traffic should be available to anyone, but
using such software can be deemed illegal under different jurisdictions.
For example, in the US wiretap law limit packet-sniffing to parties
owning the network that is being sniffed or the availability of consent
from one of the communicating parties. Section 18 U.S. Code § 2511 (2)
(a) (i) says:
> It shall not be unlawful \... to intercept \... while engaged in any
> activity which is a necessary incident to the rendition of his service
> or to the protection of the rights or property of the provider of that
> service
See here for a
[paper](http://spot.colorado.edu/%7Esicker/publications/issues.pdf) on
the topic. Google went on a big legal spree to defend their right to
capture unencrypted wireless traffic with google street view cars. The
courts were concerned about wiretapping and infringements on the privacy
of users, and not with the leveraging of private and public WiFi
infrastructure for the gain of a for profit company. The case raises
hard questions about the state, ownership claims and material reality of
WiFi signals. So, while WiFi sniffing is common and the tools like SitMM
are widely available, it is not always possible for software curious
persons to use them legally or to neatly filter out \"their traffic\"
from that of \"others\".
[When: SitMM can be used any time a software curious person feels the
weight of the (invisible) networks.]{.when .descriptor} [Why: SitMM is
intended to be a tool that gives artists, designers and educators an
easy to use custom WiFi router to work with networks and explore the
aspects of our daily communications that are exposed when we use WiFi.
The goal is to use the output to encourage open discussions about how we
use our devices online.]{.why .descriptor} [Example]{.example .empty
.descriptor}
Snippets of a Something In The Middle, Maybe - Report
[TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp} []{#ntlimgqy .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.whatisitliketobeanelevator)
What is it like to be AN ELEVATOR?]{.method .descriptor} [What:
Understanding software systems by becoming them]{.what .descriptor}
[TODO: extend this text \.... how to observe software in the world
around you. How to observe an everyday software experience and translate
this into a flowchart )]{.tmp} [How: Creating a flowchart to incarnate a
software system you use everyday]{.how .descriptor} [WARNING: Uninformed
members of the public may panic when confronted with a software
performance in a closed space.]{.warning .descriptor} [Example: What is
it like to be an elevator?]{.example .descriptor}
` {.verbatim}
what
is
it
like
to be
an
elevator?
from 25th floor to 1st floor
light on button light of 25th floor
check current floor
if current floor is 25th floor
no
if current floor is ...
go one floor up
... smaller than 25th floor
go one floor down
... bigger than 25th floor
stop elevator
turn button light off of 25th floor
turn door light on
open door of elevator
play sound opening sequence
yes
start
user pressed button of 25th floor
close door of elevator
if door is closed
user pressed 1st floor button
start timer for door closing
if timer is running more than three seconds
yes
yes
light on button
go one floor down
no
if current floor is 1st floor
update floor indicator
check current floor
stop elevator
no
yes
light off button
turn door light on
open door of elevator
play sound opening sequence
end
update floor indicator `
[SHOW IMAGE HERE:
http://observatory.constantvzw.org/documents/joseph/flowchart.pdf]{.tmp}
[TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp} []{#ndg2zte4 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.sidechannel)
Side Channel Analysis]{.method .descriptor} [Urgency: Side Channel
attacks are possible by disregarding the abstraction of software into
pure logic: the physical effects of the running of the software become
backdoors to observe its functioning, both threatening the control of
processes and the re-affirming the materiality of software.]{.urgency
.descriptor} [WARNING: **engineers are good guys!**]{.warning
.descriptor} [Example]{.example .empty .descriptor} [SHOW IMAGE HERE:
https://www.tek.com/sites/default/files/media/image/119-4146-00%20Near%20Field%20Probe%20Set.png.jpg]{.tmp}
[SHOW IMAGE HERE:
http://gallery.constantvzw.org/index.php/Techno-Galactic-Software-Observatory/PWFU3377]{.tmp}
[TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp} [Collections / collecting]{.grouping}
[]{#njmzmjm1 .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.bestiary)
Compiling a bestiary of software logos]{.method .descriptor} [What:
Since the early days of GNU-linux and cemented through the ubiquitous
O\'Reilly publications, the visual culture of software relies heavily on
animal representations. But what kinds of animals, and to what
effect?]{.what .descriptor} [How]{.how .empty .descriptor}
Compile a collection of logos and note the metaphors for observation: \*
stethoscope \* magnifying glass \* long neck (giraffe)
[Example]{.example .empty .descriptor}
` {.verbatim}
% http://animals.oreilly.com/browse/
% [check Testing the testbed pads for examples]
% [something on bestiaries] `
[TODO: RELATES TO]{.tmp} []{#njm5zwm4 .anchor} []{#mmy2zgrl .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.testingtestbed)
Testing the testbed: testing software with observatory ambitions
(SWOA)]{.method .descriptor} [WARNING: this method may make more sense
if you first take a look at the [Something in the Middle Maybe
(SitMM)](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.sitmm) which is
an instance of a SWOA]{.warning .descriptor} [How: The interwebs hosts
many projects that aim to produce software for observing software, (from
now on Software With Observatory Ambitions (SWOA)). A comparative
methodology can be produced by testing different SWOA to observe
software of interest. Example: use different sniffing software to
observe wireless networks, e.g., wireshark vs tcpdump vs SitMM.
Comparing SWOA reveals what is seen as worthy of observation (e.g., what
protocols, what space, which devices), the granularity of the
observation (e.g., how is the observation captured, in what detail), the
logo and conceptual framework of choice etc. This type of observation
may be turned into a service (See also: Something in the Middle Maybe
(SitMM)).]{.how .descriptor} [When: Ideally, SWOA can be used everywhere
and in every situation. In reality, institutions, laws and
administrators like to limit the use of SWOA on infrastructures to
people who are also administering these networks. Hence, we are
presented with the situation that the use of SWOA is condoned when it is
down by researchers and pen testers (e.g., they were hired) and shunned
when done by others (often subject to name calling as hackers or
attackers).]{.when .descriptor} [What: Deep philosophical moment: most
software has a recursive observatory ambition (it wants to be observed
in its execution, output etc.). Debuggers, logs, dashboards are all
instances of software with observatory ambitions and can not be
separated from software itself. Continuous integration is the act of
folding the whole software development process into one big feedback
loop. So, what separates SWOA from software itself? Is it the intention
of observing software with a critical, agonistic or adversarial
perspective vs one focused on productivity and efficiency that
distinguishes SWOA from software? What makes SWOA a critical practice
over other forms of sotware observation. If our methodology is testing
SWOA, then is it a meta critique of critique?]{.what .descriptor} [Who:
If you can run multiple SWOAs, you can do it. The question is: will
people like it if you turn your gaze on their SWOA based methods of
observation? Once again we find that observation can surface power
asymmetries and lead to defensiveness or desires to escape the
observation in the case of the observed, and a instinct to try to
conceal that observation is taking place.]{.who .descriptor} [Urgency:
If observation is a form of critical engagement in that it surfaces the
workings of software that are invisible to many, it follows that people
would develop software to observe (SWOAs). Testing SWOAs puts this form
of critical observation to test with the desire to understand how what
is made transparent through each SWOA also makes things invisible and
reconfigures power.]{.urgency .descriptor} [Note: Good SWOA software
usually uses an animal as a logo.:D]{.note .descriptor} [WARNING: Many
of the SWOA projects we looked at are promises more than running
software/available code. Much of it is likely to turn into obsolete
gradware, making testing difficult.]{.warning .descriptor} [TODO:
RELATES TO
http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.bestiary]{.tmp} [TODO:
RELATES TO http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.sitmm]{.tmp}
[]{#mmmzmmrh .anchor}
[[Method:](http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.reader)
Prepare a reader to think theory with software]{.method .descriptor}
[What: Compile a collection of texts about software.]{.what .descriptor}
[How: Choose texts from different realms. Software observations are
mostly done in the realm of the technological and the pragmatic. Also
the ecology of texts around software includes first and foremost
manuals, technical documentation and academic papers by software
engineers and these all \'live\' in different realms. More recently, the
field of software studies opened up additional perspectives fuelled by
cultural studies and sometimes filosophy. By compiling a reader \...
ways of speaking/writing about. Proximity.]{.how .descriptor}
[Example]{.example .empty .descriptor}
` {.verbatim .wrap}
Pull some quotes from the reader, for example from the chapter: Observation and its consequences
Lilly Irani, Hackathons and the Making of Entrepreneurial Citizenship, 2015 http://sci-hub.bz/10.1177/0162243915578486
Kara Pernice (Nielsen Norman Group), Talking with Participants During a Usability Test, January 26, 2014, https://www.nngroup.com/articles/talking-to-users/
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Extreme Inscription: Towards a Grammatology of the Hard Drive. 2004 http://texttechnology.mcmaster.ca/pdf/vol13_2_06.pdf
Alexander R. Galloway, The Poverty of Philosophy: Realism and Post-Fordism, Critical Inquiry. 2013, http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/pdf/Galloway,%20Poverty%20of%20Philosophy.pdf
Edward Alcosser, James P. Phillips, Allen M. Wolk, How to Build a Working Digital Computer. Hayden Book Company, 1968. https://archive.org/details/howtobuildaworkingdigitalcomputer_jun67
Matthew Fuller, "It looks like you're writing a letter: Microsoft Word", Nettime, 5 Sep 2000. https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/b/xpDrXE_VQeeuDDpc5RrywyTJwbzD8eatYGHKmyT2A_HnIHKb
Barbara P. Aichinger, DDR Memory Errors Caused by Row Hammer. 2015 www.memcon.com/pdfs/proceedings2015/SAT104_FuturePlus.pdf
Fangfei Liu, Yuval Yarom, Qian Ge, Gernot Heiser, Ruby B. Lee. Last-Level Cache Side-Channel Attacks are Practical. 2015 http://palms.ee.princeton.edu/system/files/SP_vfinal.pdf `
[TODO: RELATES TO
http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.samequestion]{.tmp}
[]{#ytjmmmni .anchor}
Colophon
The Guide to techno-galactic software observing was compiled by Carlin
Wing, Martino Morandi, Peggy Pierrot, Anita, Christoph Haag, Michael
Murtaugh, Femke Snelting
License: Free Art License
Support:
Sources:
Constant, February 2018
::: {.footnotes}
1. [[[Haraway]{.fname}, [Donna]{.gname}, [Galison]{.fname},
[Peter]{.gname} and [Stump]{.fname}, [David J]{.gname}: [Modest
Witness: Feminist Diffractions in Science Studies]{.title},
[Stanford University Press]{.publisher}, [1996]{.date}.
]{.collection} [-\>](#eeffecbe)]{#ebceffee}
2. [Worksessions are intensive transdisciplinary moments, organised
twice a year by Constant. They aim to provide conditions for
participants with different experiences and capabilities to
temporarily link their practice and to develop ideas, prototypes and
research projects together. For the worksessions, primarily Free,
Libre and Open Source software is used and material that is
available under ??? [-\>](#fcdcaacb)]{#bcaacdcf}
3. [http://www.nam-ip.be [-\>](#ffeaecaa)]{#aaceaeff}
4. [http://www.etwie.be/database/actor/computermuseum-ku-leuven
[-\>](#dbabebfa)]{#afbebabd}
5. [[contributors]{.fname}, [Wikipedia]{.gname}: [Content-control
software --- Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia]{.title},
[2018]{.date}. [-\>](#fadefecf)]{#fcefedaf}
6. [[UrbanMinistry.org]{.fname}, [TechMission]{.gname}:
[SafeFamilies.org \| Accountability Software: Encyclopedia of Urban
Ministry]{.title}, [2018]{.date}. [-\>](#faebbffb)]{#bffbbeaf}
7. [[Content Watch Holdings]{.fname}, [Inc]{.gname}: [Protecting Your
Family]{.title}, [2018]{.date}. [-\>](#afcbcfbb)]{#bbfcbcfa}
8. [[websense.com]{.fname}, []{.gname}: [Explicit and transparent proxy
deployments]{.title}, [2012]{.date}. [-\>](#edbedede)]{#ededebde}
9. [[workrave.org]{.fname}, []{.gname}: [Frequently Asked
Questions]{.title}, [2018]{.date}. [-\>](#ddfbbbfc)]{#cfbbbfdd}
10. [[contributors]{.fname}, [Wikipedia]{.gname}: [Agile software
development --- Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia]{.title},
[2018]{.date}. [-\>](#ececbabd)]{#dbabcece}
11. [[contributors]{.fname}, [Wikipedia]{.gname}: [Scrum (software
development) --- Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia]{.title},
[2018]{.date}. [-\>](#caabcfee)]{#eefcbaac}
12. [[contributors]{.fname}, [Wikipedia]{.gname}: [The Manifesto for
Agile Software Development]{.title}, [2018]{.date}.
[-\>](#baffeabf)]{#fbaeffab}
13. [[Kruchten]{.fname}, [Philippe]{.gname}: [Agile's Teenage
Crisis?]{.title}, [2011]{.date}. [-\>](#faeebade)]{#edabeeaf}
:::