During the Summit, Digital Pioneers will present their projects and ideas every hour in the Hall of Trouw Amsterdam. On Thursday 28 October 14.15 hrs Sara Mattens & Jeffrey Croese will tell us all about de Bijlmer and how to make virtual artworks with the tools they designed within the Virtuele Straat van Sculpturen project. We interviewed Sara and Jeff shortly about themselves and the project…

- Please tell us a little about yourself…
“We are Jeffrey Croese and Sara Mattens, together we form vinger.nl. As a creative studio we work on strategy and concept and give ideas shape in the form of film and design. We do diverse projects, mainly in the cultural, artistic and social domain. Ofcourse we do not stand alone and work with a whole bunch of other creatives, no fingers no fist..”

- How and why did you start The Virtual Street?
“We started www.devirtuelestraat.nl because of the Street of Sculptures, an international art biennale in the public space of the Amsterdam Bijlmer. Our project is part of the first biennale in 2009. In this project we wanted to link fysical and virtual worlds and present the work of both local and international artists in the context of our fine but underestimated neighbourhood, the Bijlmer”.

- What can we do with www.devirtuelestraat.nl?
“People with an interest for art -whether they are makers, lovers or wanderers- are welcome on the Virtual Street. Artworks in public space of Amsterdam Zuidoost are digitally disclosed and more information, audio and visuals are offered. Also Bijlmer artists are invited to participate by making artworks especially for the virtual domain. An important aspect here is to develop means that enable visitors to leave their creative traces aswell.  www.thevirtualstreet.nl is open to everybody anywhere, and on the streets of Bijlmer people can also use their smartphones to discover the Virtual Street in AR by the Layar app”.

- How does  www.devirtuelestraat.nl stimulates social innovation?
“We aim at an active and fun form of art experience and creation in the Bijlmer. We now have a platform for virtual and fysical art in and by the Bijlmer”.

- What are you going to bring and get at the State of Social Media Summit?
“We are excited to introduce our project to the public of the Summit. Not only because we believe in it, but  also because we need a lot of knowledge, skills and help to make it happen in a meaningfull way”.

Interested in hearing more about Jeff & Sara and making virtual artworks? Meet them at the Summit!

- Register for the Summit
- More info about the presentations

Photo by Kennisland.

photo by Sebsatiaan ter Burg

Several recommendations that came up during the Open e-culture round table discussion are presented in this third and last blog on this particular topic. Mind that this is just the start of a discussion that will be continued online and during the State of Social Media Summit (28th-29th of October). Your comments are most welcome!

• Generally, producers, consumers and policymakers must be informed about the opportunities and constraints, so they can make a deliberate choice between an ‘open’ or ‘closed’ approach.

• Open initiatives should become visible for the general public. Success stories should be presented in an attractive way! For example by a Remix Manifesto-like documentary or regular program. Or, by integrating the use of open source software or open content materials in your activities (as a teacher, as an artist etc.).

• Public funded institutions should be forced to take a stance in the discussion. Do they disclose their material and knowledge according to open principles?

• Challenge big organizations and institutions by means of specific online initiatives and lawsuits that might result from it (such as web 2.0 suicide machine). This results in jurisprudence, and transparent communication on these lawsuits creates public consciousness.

• Start with educating on issues of information and free culture at primary and secondary schools.

• Create online tools for instant reflection by consumers. By means of such a tool they are forced to actually think about what they do, want to do, need or don’t need.

• Define what sustainability means with regard to Open initiatives. What are, for example, the consequences for particular business-models? How to measure value? As such the movement might become (even) more convincing.

• Find a form of representation to talk with government, media or corporate sector.

• Share successes within the community of producers and entrepreneurs.

• Change the legal system and policy to support openness. For example, by advocating the reform of copyright laws or advocate openness based on acts of freedom of expression.

System & Content
A first challenge for anyone engaged with open e-culture issues is where to focus on. Should most effort be targeted at changing the central system (copyright, licensing, funding, policy, transparency)? Or should one make use of the existing possibilities and start creating within the contemporary situation (i.e. starting an initiative that focusses on providing services or content without necessarily contesting the contemporary legal or policy situation directly.)? Of course people may be working on both challenges at the same time (as most entrepreneurs probably do).
Moreover, what challenges are urgent depends on the specific (national) system in which one is active. For example, during the round table discussion it was mentioned that in comparison the contemporary Dutch system is quite progressive, so entrepreneurs in the Netherlands have certainly different challenges than entrepreneurs in other parts of the world.
Nonetheless, also in the Netherlands changing the system seems to be a central issue in the discussion on the evolvement of open e-culture. The urgency of reassessing existing legal boundaries in the context of contemporary technological developments is very clear to most entrepreneurs. Depending on the particular perspective, people advocate total openness or propose other solutions such as tailor made packages of legal rights for specific segments.

So, among entrepreneurs and stakeholders there exists a general vision which supports the movement towards a system that supports open e-culture, however, the exact realisation is a point of discussion. An interesting case in this regard is the different impact of copyright issues on different forms of content. The specific features of the content (and the related community) has direct consequences for the legal needs. During the discussion it was argued that for a variety of reasons Creative Commons seems a more obvious solution when it comes to images and text than with the production of music. For example, because of different career expectations of musicians, differences in the creative process, their early association with the industry (Buma/Stemra) and the uniqueness of a particular song. So, (professional) musicians generally seem to strive to early association with the industry, and protect their work, because they assume their (financial) success is depending on it. A professional  photographer, on the other hand, mentioned that he was paid by the hour, and spread his work immediately under a CC-license.
All in all, it can be concluded that there is still a lot of work to be done to adapt structures to specific needs, and even to find out what exactly is needed.

Convincing Consumers & Producers
Next to the endeavor to change and/or make use of the possibilities of the central system, a main challenge for open e-culture is to confront consumers and producers of content with the possibilities of an open approach. Or, in other words, boosting a paradigm shift.
One can imagine that if pioneers and policymakers still have many questions, a significant amount of consumers and producers must still be slightly puzzled about the changing playing field. So, for the initiators of the movement there is a task to bring the discussion and activity further. And, at least, make people (and institutions!) conscious of the situation and its possibilities. Not necessarily from an ideological perspective but by showing the possibilities and the success stories. An obstacle in this regard is the strong lobby against open e-culture initiated by the commercial industry. That is why solely a political-ideological lobby might not work and presenting practical examples might proof to be a more convincing method. Moreover, general distrust and ignorance by all kinds of agents and stakeholders must be overcome.
Altogether it is not necessarily about convincing everybody to open up everything. The point is that people should be conscious of the state of social media, and are able to make deliberate choices.

Do you think these are really the main challenges for open e-culture initiatives in the near future? Are there more, or do you have any additional suggestions? Please comment! The next blog will be posted next week and is about possible solutions and recommendations for a vital movement.

In this first of three blogs a short introduction to the several open initiatives in the Netherlands.

A wide variety of initiatives can affiliate with the word, or concept, ‘Open’. A general interpretation seems to be the strive for free and public sharing of information, open communication and cooperation. Many interesting initiatives working on those themes have sprouted the last couple of years.  These projects can be roughly divided in those who work on art & culture and those who work on open public information and knowledge.

Art & Culture

Considering the creativity and innovativity of the Art & Culture scene, this seems to be a context par excellence to experiment with open initatives. Not surpisingly, some striking projects have been founded in that segment. In art & culture several issues seem to be of relevance. Such as the disclosure and sharing of artistic expressions. Take for example the Ipoetry project by poeziecircus that archives and presents every performance of poets during their events, or wormweb that programmes cutting edge soundart and music neglected by mainstream media. These initiatives try to bring certain forms of culture to the public and try to facilitate the related community. An endeavour that would be much more difficult, if not impossible, without such online platforms.

Other initiatives such as simuze, blender, open margin and NARB actively try to connect producers with producers, consumers with consumers or producers with consumers. Simuze is a community for music producers and consumers that tries to offer an alternative for the industry, blender connects 3d animators to work on collective projects, open margin is a visionary tool to connect readers of e-books by facilitating communication via the ‘margins’ of the books and NARB connects vistors of museums by facilitating the exchange of their comments on certain exibitions.

Open public information and knowledge

A second cluster of initiatives is active in Open public information and knowledge. They may  function mainly  as a platform to collect and present particular forms of knowledge and information publicly. However, in most instances they have social-political arguments to provide information and knowledge which, in the contemporary economic system, is often perceived as a commodity. Whereas big companies would attach commercial intentions to particular services these initiatives try to provide it as ‘common good’ (in fact, similarly to most cultural and artistic initiatives mentioned above). A slightly diffrent issue, base don similar principles, may be the transparancy of information by (governmental) institutions.

Concrete examples in this context are OpenStreetMap, open search, and, of course, wikimedia. All initiatives that try to build up and share knowledge free and publicly. Another interesting endeavour is Floss Manuals a website that shares manuals to use open source software and facilitates exchange of information about the use of open source software. Or, the Woberator a mixed-media manual for the appliance of the Government Information act (Wet openbaarheid van bestuur: WOB).

Altogether, interesting and relevant forms of researching the possibilities of the free and open exchange of culture and knowledge. Moreover, all of these initiatives use open source standards and/or creative commons licensing.

So far for this short introduction on Open e-culture initiatives. The next blog will be about the challenges perceived by the movement of open e-culture entrepreneurs. Any other examples of great initiatives (in- or outside the Netherlands)? Please leave your comments!