warning: this version is yet under development.


Abstract


This presentation shows the evolution of the Estúdio Livre project in Brazil.

Born from an insights into free media tools necessary for research, development and production, the project was initiated by the Programa Software Livre Paraná - a non-profit organization that promotes FOSS initiatives.

The goals are: to stimulate production of free/open media; to analyze the professional potential of free/open media tools; to collaborate with the multimedia FOSS community; to build collaboration between programmers, between computer scientists, artists and media producers; to experiment with the use of artistic meta languages, mixing new technological processes and contemporary concepts; and to build new interface possibilities using technologies once considered obsolete.

Estúdio Livre is unique as a collaborative Brazilian Portuguese speaking network. The interactions within its environment are presented through personal weblogs, media for download, manuals for users, forums, research groups, discussion lists and other unique collaborative work tools.


Last year, through a partnership with the Brazilian government - Ministry of Culture - Estudiolivre delivered implementation support for the Cultural Hotspots, a project which uses free media tools in creative processes as a way to improve the circulation of cultural 'goods'. Through an interface to estudiolivre.org, each Hotspot is now becoming mediactive in the network.


/* adicionei este paragrafo abaixo para não parecer que o Estudio Livre é restrito a este projeto do governo
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We are however not restricted to support work on such a large scale project. We are open for donations, endorsements or any other specific consultancies which are looking for new ways to maintain structure, with a focus on support and maintenance of our community and research into the implementation of collaborative tools and methods.
}''


This initiative is still restricted to the Portuguese language yet, but intends to interact very soon with the world wide net that also researches and develops professional and experimental media production softwares.

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1. Free Software and its Process

Free Software as a phenomenon is gaining more space everyday, both in media and in practice, as it is considered a powerful instrument for digital inclusion and technological development. The notion of open systems as proxy activists for freedom in the "Information Age" is widespread - capable of equaling and in many cases surpassing "proprietary" monopolies. With this perspective, free software is appropriate as a flag and weapon against hegemonic models of closed information systems. Free software is often technically superior, more secure and offers an economic alternative because of its open source and its open distribution license.

This is all well and good but it ignores the most important characteristics of the Free Software phenomenon: its production dynamics, its viral rules of product circulation and the changes in social behaviour brought about by its utilization logic .
There's a world of difference between "proprietary" and "open" models not only in materialistic terms, but also in terms of the social relationships that it moderates. Actually, it's not correct to argue that free software is better than "proprietary", but in fact that it belongs to another order. This order can be argued as more honest and better than proprietary.

A proprietary model is motivated by competition and financial gain whilst an open model is motivated by collaboration and generosity.
In any level of interaction in the open model, a horizontal relationship exists between producer and consumer, which is completely different from the producer/consumer or server/consumer relationships of the closed model, as these are often seen as qualitatively unfair social relationships. More importantly, and stressing the divergence from closed source software, publishing with open source is part of its process of development - the moment that the collaborators will build it together.

Therefore, the new collaborative paradigm that we present is inspired by free software production and in the structure of information cycles in the Internet, in that should be understood as a new cultural PROCESS and not as a new cultural PRODUCT. This PROCESS can be defined as a cycle of cumulative feedback, that pushes the network to think and is based on information sharing as a motor of technological innovation for the PRODUCTION of cultural goods.

It is interesting to observe the coexistence of the variables PROCESS and PRODUCT (or PRODUCTION ), in a continuous flux of events which can be better understood by the computationally modern concept of "fuzzy logic". Under a traditional Aristothelic logic, based on "True" or "False" statements, we usually conclude that some PRODUCT is a RESULT of a PROCESS. Fuzzy Logic works with the idea of complex scales calculated at the limits of processes. Most human experiences can't be just classified as "true" or "false", "yes" or "no". We want to see all the implications and inter-relations in the dichotomy between PROCESS and PRODUCT, to know and to learn about complex scales of interaction, through various perspectives. Working technology with human aspects: that's the way Estudio livre works.

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2.Estudio Livre


Free multimedia software is finding more barriers due to the advanced state of proprietary software serving the media industry . To fill this vacuum Estudio Livre was created, a collaborative environment for people interested in the production and distribution of media made with free software and through independent networks. The objective of the website is to support a community involved in the research, production and motivation to circulate collaborative cultural goods. Works can be freely distributed, remixed and retransmitted legally by the authors without any restriction to access - including monetary access. Therefore, we can assume that Estudio Livre is involved in the production of new forms of media and in information technology research.

All the tools in the estudiolivre.org environment are based on the concepts of free software, free knowledge and technological appropriation. The tools of interaction in this environment are personal weblogs, media for download, user manuals, forums, research groups, mailing lists and other collaborative tools.

At estudiolivre.org , information exists not only in portuguese, so interactive communication throught its network is available. Hence users feel less isolated and can more easily integrate into the process. The idea is to turn this web site into a reference for research in the portuguese language into multimedia production in open environments and to motivate collaborative works in between members of the community.

To interact in the website, the users must register their personal data, specify the type of material material that is being published (phonograms, images, audiovisual, softwares, texts, samples, etc.), and authorize, without exclusivity, its exhibition and electronic distribution at http://www.estudiolivre.org respecting the terms of the website use policy. They have to confirm that they agree with the collaborative licence, take responsibility for complaints about the merits of the material.
They have to be conscious that estudiolivre.org does not have any obligations regarding the distribution or exhibition of the material (it should happen with the flow of the community inside the website ) and will not own or be rewarded by the licensed material. This warning is a summary of the website "Terms of Use".

/* o paragráfo sobre aproximação entre desenvolvedores e produtores culturais ( "usuarios") esta desenvolvido abaixo...

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3.Community

Developers: Open Source, Arts and Science.


The utilization of open source software, with licenses that allow sharing and recombination of their source codes is potentially a great asset in the search for a more interdisciplinary community that could put arts and science closer together.

Stimulating this model of production, we support a space where science can operate with more innovation and arts can work with better understanding of development techniques. A big problem of human relationships within arts production technologies is the non-questioning of repetition mechanisms, characteristic of the "professional media industry". The computer is seen by artists in many cases as a "closed box", that will always dictate the aesthetical paths of its interfaces, attaching the cultural producer in a blind dependency to mass culture industry patterns and products.

In the case of open source software production follows a demand rhythm and mutual collaboration, where the developer has an immediate feedback from the artist and the artist can have advanced knowledge about the development of his working tools. This occurs because as the production of these tools is not in a eternal cycle of "industrial secrets". In this case a deeper self knowledge about the tools allows for customisation and a deeper interest in the techniques that made it possible.

Similarly, the scientists and especially the programmer, can find in this environment a huge motivation creatively to break the boundaries between his techniques and the artists methods, stimulating visions which produce code, project an interface or build a machine so poetic and lucid as painting a canvas or playing a guitar. It brings back the image of the inventor, in this cold age of seemingly automated mass production industries.


Artists and cultural activists: Collaborative Production Environments.


The way that free software is developed is for sure one of the most successful models of organic and participative management of a collective project known. The idea of collaborative production using an internet interface which allows code edition, version control, discussion forums and mailing lists allowed the creation of complete operational systems which today are in some cases more efficient than proprietary software. This happens because there is more intelligence and faster sharing of problems and "bugs" with an open community than there is with "secret" methods and decisions.

This vision influenced the way of artistic production in the beginning of this century. It's explicit that artistic production could reach its public directly without middlemen and getting directly to those interested, without have to mold itself to "marketing" aesthetics demands from its distributor ( in most cases suppositions made full of prejudice and fear of creativity). Artists could understand their own field of influence. Therefore, this generated the need to go deep inside the question of licensing this sharing authoring, as every "consumer" is also a potential distributer or even a collaborator in their own works.

One of the proposed solutions is that Estudio livre works in practice to encourage this collaborative production using the sharing licenses of the Creative commons, when dealing with copyrights. In this way the producer gives in advance to his "public" the rights to be his partner in creativity and/or distribution of his works. In this way we can create the relationship where production and consumption are parts of the same cycle, where profit is acquired knowledge and stronger and stronger social network that sooner or later will be supported by reliability between community members. This production chain can pass through cultural and geopolitical borders, becoming autonomous networks more self-conscious of their direction and more able to think in terms of their social and economic role in production.


4.Conclusion


The scope of Estudio Livre is concentrated on supporting thee approximation of cycles of free media production software and on the motivations for sharing and collaboration in this production and development. After all, it's a collective that counts on community volunteers with shared interests for the autonomy and principles of its existence. On the other hand it encourages the participation of its more active members into consultancy and supporting other projects that want this work methodology, utilizing the material and documentation of the website and bringing more self evolution into the production of more content for the website.
Estudio Livre also accepts volunteer donations and institutional partnerships, when it's not against the collaborative policies and in the case of institutional profits the authors of content will be contacted.

The objective is to encourage cycles where the collaborative development of free software for multimedia production and the goods generated with these tools find a distribution flow, support the sharing of theory, practical and creative knowledge, creating a scenario with a more participatory cultural and technological production, generating a kind of consumption non-alienation in the mass entertainment industry. We expect that with this will come consciousness of social roles, as part of an interdependent, open and collective process.






KEYWORDS

Media Activism, Collaborative Environment, Free Culture, Open Knowledge

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this article was fully published at FLOSS+ART colective book



by Fabianne B. Balvedi, Guilherme R. Soares, Adriana Veloso, Flavio Soares
translated by Tori Holmes

Summary: This article presents the Estúdio Livre (Free Studio) project – a collaborative environment for research, development, experimentation and production in free media – based on the perspective that one of the biggest innovations of the digital world is to be found in the structure of division of labour which takes place in an open network and of which free software is the best example. The methodology proposed illustrates the breaking down of barriers between producer and consumer as an example of collective intelligence as well as of changes in aesthetic, economic and social paradigms in contemporary society.

1. Introduction

It is not difficult today to find the image of open and shared systems associated with the defence of freedom in the fight against a proprietary monopoly. Based on this perspective, free software is almost always appropriated as a banner and a strategic weapon in a counter-hegemonic struggle, which places it in opposition to closed models of information systems.

Although this discourse succeeds in attracting the attention of the mainstream media to questions such as the inequalities present in global technological development and the consequences of patent laws, its failing is that it ignores what are perhaps the most important characteristics of the free software phenomenon: its production dynamics, its rules for the circulation of products and the behaviour changes which take place towards the medium, brought about by its philosophy regarding usage (Novaes, Caminati & Prado, 2005). It is different from the proprietary model not just in the nature of its materiality, but, principally, in terms of the social relations into which it is inserted. Therefore, from this point of view, we understand that it is not correct simply to say that free software is better than proprietary software, but that it is of another order, which is fairer and qualitatively better than the proprietary one. According to De Ugarte (2005), the free software movement is the basis of the first ever large-scale structure based on free property in distributed networks.

While the proprietary model is based on competition and holding back information, the free one is mainly motivated by collaboration and generosity. At any of the levels of interaction, multidimensional developer/user relationships are established which constitute an alternative to the unilateral producer/consumer or provider/client relationships. As a result, the ensuing product is also a process. This process can be defined as a cumulative feedback cycle which makes the network think and is based on the sharing of information as the driving force behind technological innovation and the production of cultural goods.

It is worth observing that the coexistence of the process and product variables as the result of a continuous flow of occurrences cannot be understood within the traditional Western logic, that of Aristotle, which is based on the binary values of affirmations. According to this logic, the result of a development process would be just a product, and not the process itself. As for the fuzzy logic, it supports modes of reasoning which are approximate, rather than exact, with which we are naturally used to working. Many human experiences cannot be classified simply as true or false, yes or no, black or white. This is also how Estúdio Livre works.

2. The Community

2.1 Developers: Art and Science

The use of licenses which allow the sharing and re-use of codes is potentially a huge trump card for the sustainability of a more interdisciplinary community like Estúdio Livre, which combines art and science. Stimulating this model of production encourages a space in which science can operate more innovatively and art can become more involved in improving its techniques.

One of the big problems with the dehumanisation of technologies is the failure to question the mechanisms of repetition built into the interfaces of industrial software. In most cases, artists see the computer as a closed box which ends up dictating aesthetic paths linked to standard interfaces, and ties the cultural producer to a blind dependency on new products and formats launched by the industry.

In the case of free software, production follows a rhythm of requests and mutual collaboration in which the developers receive immediate feedback from the artists, who thereby gain more advanced knowledge about the development of their tools since they are no longer trapped within the cycle of industrial secrets. This encourages the deepening of knowledge for the shaping of a personal way of using technology, and the potential for customising the production processes grows, bringing with it also a greater interest in science and the methods which make this possible.

As for scientists, in this environment they find an enormous incentive for creativity and breaking down the distances between scientific technique and the artist, bringing the awareness that producing a code or designing an interface or machine can be a technique loaded with communicative intention and as playful as making brush strokes on a canvas or strumming a guitar. A much less technocentric vision of scientific work is stimulated, bringing back the figure of the inventor and adding poetry to the mix.

2.2 Artists and Cultural Producers: Collaborative Means of Production

Without a doubt, the way free software is produced represents one of the most successful models ever known of organic and participatory management of collective work. The idea of producing collaboratively, using internet-based interfaces for editing code, version control, discussion forums and email lists, stimulated the construction of systems which are today so proficient for certain application niches that they have overtaken proprietary applications, such as in the case of web servers. This happens because there is also open dialogue between the various parties – this is a more direct and intelligent way to solve problems and implement innovations than in a closed approach in which the parties isolate themselves from everything, cloaked in secrecy.

This vision has had a great influence on how artistic production is seen at the beginning of the current century (Lessig 2005). It became clear that artistic production could reach its audience directly, without intermediaries and without needing to conform to the aesthetic and marketing demands of distributors (in many case retrograde assumptions, which hamper creativity). This brought with it a better, and more organic, understanding of the artistic field of action. On the other hand, it also generated the need to look again at the question of how this authorship is recognised or remunerated since any consumer could potentially be a distributor or even a collaborator in this production.

One of the solutions proposed and encouraged by Estúdio Livre is support for collaborative production through the use of licenses for sharing. Just as the free software developer shares his or her code using licenses such as the GPL, the cultural producer, through licenses such as Creative Commons, gives the public the prior right to redistribute his or her work, with or without charge, and therefore makes them a partner in the creative production. In this way, a relationship is established in which consumption and production are parts of the same cycle, in which the great profit is the knowledge acquired and the establishment of social networks. Sooner or later, these same social networks will become partners in initiatives for mutual sustainability, creating a chain of production flows which breaks down cultural and geopolitical barriers, making possible autonomous niches which are much more self-referential and aware of their directions and more capable of reflecting their socio-economic influences and the role of their production.

3. The Environment

Estúdio Livre is a collaborative environment which emerged from the combined perception of people with the most varied backgrounds about the need for research into – and deeper knowledge of – the use and development of free media. The media contextualised through this environment corresponds to communications media, that is, it refers to the instrument or the content form used to carry out the communication process. Since software is an instrument for interaction which makes possible communication between a human and a machine, it may also be considered media, reinforcing McLuhan's (1967) hypothesis that the medium is the message. The main objective of Estúdio Livre is active research, and supporting and encouraging the production and circulation of free cultural goods, in other words works which can be freely distributed, remixed and retransmitted in a legal way and without any kind of restriction on access. Both virtually and in person, Estúdio Livre's activities and participation take place in the most free way possible. Proposals are made and these are added or other activities removed, depending on the profile of the group in each activity. All the tools in the environment are based on the concepts of free software, open knowledge and technological appropriation. The stimulus for interaction comes from workshops, media labs, free archives, user manuals, forums, personal blogs, research groups, discussions taking place via list and other differentiated tools for collaboration. The maintenance costs for the project include a big part which is voluntary on behalf of the collective and another small part which comes from its partners: the Free Software Project - Paraná (PSL-PR) and the Digital Culture sector of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture (MinC). PSL-PR was the cradle of the project and administers some of the network services, which the MinC maintains the server and a small team dedicated to the maintenance of the environment. The main reason for this partnership is the support provided to the Cultural Hotspots (Pontos de Cultura) which form part of the Ministry's Living Culture Programme (Programa Cultura Viva).

3.1 The Abstract Environment

3.1.1 Administration and Development

At the moment the tools used for virtual interaction are located on the World Wide Web. The main ones are the public discussion list and the collaborative portal which allow real-time editing of hypertexts as well as upload and download of documents with metadata.

The general public work list was the first virtual environment for interaction amongst the community. Up to now it has been hosted on the Riseup.net technical collective's server. Although we currently have emails and discussion lists under the estudiolivre.org domain, we chose to maintain our main list under the Riseup.net domain due to this connection being characterised as a “knot in the network”, in other words a project which uses resources from another and vice versa – there are people in the Estúdio Livre community who also collaborate with Riseup.net projects such as for example the translation of its web interface, which is originally in English, into Portuguese.

The Estúdio Livre website was originally hosted at the Utopia server, then by the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), and is now at the Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa (RNP) in Brasília. It is programmed in free software and can be developed by any person with technical knowledge of PHP, MySQL, Smarty and CSS. It is based on TikiWiki, a content management system (CMS) designed for communities and distributed under the LGPL license. People without programming knowledge can also contribute via bug reports.

The Estúdio Livre code is a Tiki module which consists of a group of new files, patches and SQL scripts, managed by Polvo, a software written in Perl to carry out automatic publication on the web and locally on the developer's machine. This procedure is necessary to maintain the estudiolivre.org code separate from the TikiWiki code.

The group responsible for the development, maintenance and administration of the site, discussion lists, request verification and organisation of the information is made up mainly of more experienced users, programmers, system administrators, musicians, videomakers and producers who have been using free software for some time.

3.1.2 Desktop

The main aim of estudiolivre.org is to amass a community which researches, documents, experiments, produces and develops free media. For this purpose, different types of interaction options are available to users. They may either simply search for information or add to or correct incomplete content which they come across during their research. They may also make their own productions available through the Free Archive (Acervo Livre) or download productions by other members of the site. Depending on the license used by those files, users may also remix them and upload them again in a new version. This is only legally possible because the content made available on the portal uses permissive licenses, which facilitate the most diverse types of sharing.

Another resource implemented in the Free Archive are the live channels which make possible audio and/or video streaming. Users can listen to and/or watch someone else's transmission or do their own, as long as they have the necessary tools installed on the computer that will generate the stream.

Access to all of these processes is completely free. However, to interact in this virtual environment, it is necessary to register some personal details on the site. By doing this, the user declares that s/he is aware of the conditions of the site's Terms of Use, thereby taking exclusive, irrevocable and irreversible responsibility for the information provided, as well as for any complaints from third parties about the material contributed, with Estúdio Livre being exempt from any obligation related to the exhibition and distribution of the works, and guaranteeing that no remuneration will be due for the material which is licensed, exhibited and distributed by it.

3.2 The Concrete Environment

In face-to-face interactions, proactive members of the community promote and participate in workshops and events which involve themes covered by the scope of the project.

The first experience with workshops took place at the V World Social Forum in January 2005 through participation in the activities of the Free Knowledge Lab (Laboratório de Conhecimentos Livres) located at the Youth Camp, which Lawrence Lessig dropped in on and later mentioned on his personal blog. Starting that same year, the Free Knowledge Encounters (Encontros de Conhecimentos Livres) took place all over Brazil, through the partnership with the MinC.

In 2006, a partnership with the regional government of Extremadura in Spain made it possible for seven members of the community to travel to Spain to share knowledge with European activists. Workshops took place in Almendralejo and Barcelona, bringing with them a subtle upgrade in the project's evolution (this trip also encouraged the internationalisation of the site, which gained an interface in various languages, but the translation of the wiki pages is still only just beginning). Despite the mainly nomadic characteristics described above, if we analyse Estúdio Livre as a concept, we can find it applied in various parts of Brazil, such as for example Curitiba, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte – or even inside the home of a member of the community.

4. Final Considerations

Estúdio Livre's activities are concentrated on supporting the increasing closeness of the development and usage cycles of free software media for the production of other types of media and encouraging sharing and collaboration in this production. Above all it is an environment which draws on volunteers from amongst the community and from those who share these interests for the sovereignty of its principles and autonomy of its proposals. On the other hand, it encourages the participation of its more active members in consultancy and the implementation of projects which require this methodology, using the documentation and works on the site as tools. Estúdio Livre also accepts voluntary donations and partnerships with institutions, governments and companies which are using its material or which would like to encourage specific productions within the community (documentation of a specific software, compilation of documentation, customisation or multimedia production), as long as the objectives of this partnership are coherent with those of Estúdio Livre and the donor or partner in question does not stand for anything which goes against the activism carried out by the community which maintains the project.

The aim is to create a scenario for more participatory cultural and technological production, which can generate less alienated reflections than purely entertainment-driven consumption and a greater awareness of the social role of everyone involved, who come to see themselves as part of an independent, open and collective process. We call this aim Estúdio Livre Phase Two, which sets out to produce something capable of causing the impact that the film “City of God” had on the history of Brazilian cinema, but with the differential of free software and the process of methodological sharing, following in the steps of the film “Elephants Dream” which was the world's first open source film and met with critical acclaim.

References & Bibliography:

Castells, M. (1999), A Sociedade em Rede (The Rise of the Network Society), Paz e Terra.

De Ugarte, D. (2005), El Poder de Las Redes (The Power of Networks), electronic book, http://www.deugarte.com/gomi/el_poder_de_las_redes.pdf

Garcia, D. (2004), "We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin" in Wired Magazine, Issue 12.11, November.

Lessig, L. (2005), Cultura Livre (Free Culture), Trama.

Levy, P. (1993), As tecnologias da inteligência (Collective Intelligence), Editora 34.

McLuhan, M. and Fiore, Q. (1967), The Medium is the Message: An Inventory of Effects, Bantam Books.

Novaes, T., Caminati, F. e Prado, C. (2005), “Sinapse XXI: cultura digital e direito à comunicação" (Synapse XXI: digital culture and the right to communication”), Paulineas.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike? 2.5 license. To see a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ or write to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.