I would like to share my experience of an art project taking place in Greece of which I am a core member. This project, to my knowledge, is one of the first projects in the country -and perhaps one could say, one of the first worldwide- which simultaneously combines three different forms of human expression, i.e. literature, music and photography, and its creative process was impregnated with the values and the practices of Commons-based peer production.
To become more concrete, in late September/ early October 2011 the publishing house Voreiodytikes, based in Ioannina (GR), is going to publish (under a Creative Commons license) a collaborative project named Matrioska, which consists of literature (11 stories), music (as the soundtrack of the book) and photography (photos that are related to each story).
13 people situated in 6 different cities and 2 countries (many of them do not know each other in person) collaborated via the Internet technologies (email, wikis, survey tools, social media) producing literature, music and photography for the versatile project Matrioska. Apart from photography, which was assigned to a single photographer/member, literature and music followed an open source approach with a semi-open call, i.e. first call to a certain team that could bring new contributors which were already acquainted with at least one core member, and basic guidelines by the benevolent dictatorship of the core team. Everybody could contribute a story which would, then, go through collaborative editing process and evaluation. Concerning the music, recordings took place in three different cities (songs and music were already written by two core members) to which each musician/member added their input and everyone had their say in evaluating the recorded tracks.
The digital copy of the book along with the music will be available under a Creative Commons license; however, the hard copies will be available from bookstores. This project becomes sustainable -and even lucrative (judging from the experience of the previous projects Sti Giorti and Nemania’s Story which followed a similar, but not identical, pattern)- not only via the profits of the sold copies, but also through the profits of live gigs, at which copies of the book are sold. Of course, all the possible revenues are re-invested in new projects enhancing the quality of the team’s creative artifacts.
It could be argued that all this inaugurates a new business model for cultural production, which at the same time creates and sustains a Commons.
I will keep P2P readers informed when the project is officially on-line and afterwards, about its developing course.
This is the website (in Greek) of “Voreiodytikes Publications”.
It sounds like you’ve got a good structure for the project. I like the semi-open call first stage leading to a more structured and iterative development process.
Which CC licence is the work under?
Rob, thank you for the comment. Our publisher distributes its books under the CC-BY-NC-SA -3.0
Hello Vasilis,
good work, congratulations to you and your team. I am working on a project to facilitate actions and works such as this one. Some statements in response…
The modern creative and collaborative artist is moving away from art as product to art as a living experience. The ‘work of art’ is taking a back seat to the ‘action of art’ in a changing world where collaboration facilitates shared experiences of learning, expression, creativity and culture. Individuals pushing in this direction are increasingly aware of the negation of creativity effected by ‘the goal’ (The goal being creativity’s gaol) and thus do not see their work as a means to an end but an end in its self. In this way the process becomes sustained and the result is this sustained and developing process.
Gutenberg’s printing press of the 15th century provided the baseline for the ownership of the idea. This was further magnified by Descartes maxim ‘Cogito ergo sum’ and its translation to ‘I think therefore I am’. During the renaissance artists began to sign their paintings, the seperate development of the individual
was accompanied by specialisation and the culmination of the classical scientific model with Newtonian physics and classical mechanics.Ownership of the idea equated to ownership of the self and thus control over environment.
In the last hundred years we have seen the filtration of the quantum, thermodynamical, and complexity models into the public domain of general knowledge and practice. Non-locationality, holistic divergent creativity, and the development of the swarm-mind as facilitated by the internet are processes indicative of a huge increase in rates of information exchange among the networked population. The group has effectively become the ‘new entity’ and with this we see the old institutions, modes of life, and practices built on the individuating and specialised/isolatory model are being outgrown by the group dynamic.
What previously had been the percieved success of the individual (status, wealth, possesion, health, ability, education, culture) is being metafied by our understanding of the group dynamic of our species (culture, ability, health, education, recognition, possesion). This process of understanding is coming about by examining trends already in action around the world, these active trends are providing a bottom-up educative model as opposed to the top-down methods of education that exist in public institutions. Intelligence is more and more accurately appraised as a dynamic and active awareness set in the present state of constant change and is often determined by one’s ability to remain connected with this flux.
‘Social networks’ as they exist today are generally used in accordance with their ‘concept’. Perhaps the next thing to come of the network civilisation will be a heart to found the face. Cultural networks developed to facilitate creative collaboration and transnational collection and consensus of information aswell as providing a cultural map of the world based on celebriate recognition of human diversity and of cultural and supra-cultural acivity can perhaps better facilitate these advances in human culture. There is an opportunity to protect such a development to transnational human heritage in such a way as can be to the mutual advantage of all of mankind, forming a means of production that can be beyond monopolised self-interest thus sealing in the created material world the internal changes in the group psyche.
For more information email me at involuteconduit( at )gmail.com
Eimhin, thank you for your intriguing and constructive comments, which provide a nice theoretical framework to projects like ours (any link to your project?). I would like to highlight your view of “art as a living experience”, which I appreciate a lot.
Vasilis – Thanks.
Vasili, we thank you for sharing Fortigo with us.
It’s our most intriguing project.
Hi Vasilis,
I’m not technically skilled with computers and so I have no link I’m afraid, its still mostly in my head and on notebooks, but I still can’t decide the better route to take with it. Its a sublte issue. I prefer energy to force but still have some way to go with work on myself first, otherwise one could easily get lost trying to bend the world to an impercieved self will…I don’t want to ‘try’…if you get my meaning.
@ Eimhin
I do get your meaning; please keep us updated!
@ Voreiodytikes
🙂