open source hardware

The open source movement gave rise to Linux and spawned a generation of collaborative coders. Now it’s extending its reach to the hardware industry.

Open source hardware is designed to be reprogrammed or physically modified to make it easy to install custom firmware and software to create entirely new products. The big idea: crowdsourcing hardware development will encourage innovation in unforeseen ways, much like how Creative Commons licenses have enabled artists to remix existing content to create new works.

Future of Open Source: Hack This Gadget by Ryan Paul more….

cloud computing

Enter the world of computer clouding. Come and float with us in a world full of fluffy data, virtual machines, simulated systems and massive data centers that can be can be created and configured with ease. Use the minds eye for a second and think of the biggest storage system you can think of and then fill it with cushions. Eliminate the need for infrastructure and cruise – this ever expanding ecosystem could revolutionise the world.

Just another online fad – or the biggest thing since the internet?

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General Systems Theory, is it Open Source?

The systems view looks at the world in terms of relationships and integration. Systems are integrated wholes whose properties cannot be reduced to those of smaller units. Instead of concentrating on basic building blocks or substances, the systems approach emphasizes the principles of organization. Every organism, from the smallest bacterium through the range of plant, animals and human beings – plus the family, society and the planet as whole – is an integrated whole and thus a living system.
By Gregory Mitchell

problematic

There already seems to be a tradition of applying open source and free software principles to art, maybe not as a framework but as a tool; curating however seems problematic as a term, not only in this context. Self-organisation. The tradition is older than the terms. Mail Art for example developed at Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School in the 1960’s. The Mail art network had its own coded system – decentralized, international, open participation. They produced non-juries exhibitions and festivals of earlier avant-garde movements forming a historical pretext to consider.

Against the confusion and urban myths the fact is its about decentralisation. But the problem lies when a decentralised system becomes hierarchical, when the inevitable networked control system becomes the clear empirical indicator. Its clear that open distributed development processes are technically far superior to closed processes but they come with risks.

An Illustrated Introduction to Ray Johnson 1927 – 1995

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Michael Morris – Ray Johnson: An Appreciation (1999)

CURATORIAL APPRENTICES REQUIRED

CURATORIAL APPRENTICES REQUIRED* – In search of the Superstar Curator

As a curatorial apprentice, guided by the Norwegian writer & curator Olav Henriksen, I am investigating the notion of the ‘superstar curator’ in an attempt to create (or manufacture) the perfect curator. I am now looking to recruit WORLDWIDE APPRENTICES to help on this project. The ‘superstar curator’ is a fairly virginal phenomenon, but increasingly we are seeing curators of a ‘superstar’ calibre, most of which play the international circuit, making them c-o-n-s-i-d-e-r-a-b-l-y more ‘windswept and interesting’.