User:Cristinac/moremorenotes

" From 1958 to 1969, the journal "Internationale Situationniste" appeared in succession to the pre-situationist leaflet "Potlatch". This periodical was a détournement by itself in that it camouflaged as an academic journal, complete with theoretical essays, definitions of Situationist concepts and fake-official conference reports of Situationist activities. With its printed permission for free reproduction, translation and alteration of its content, the "Internationale Situationniste" appears to have been the first "Open Content" publication of the world. "

must remind myself what the source is*******

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Whilst interrogability has obvious implications for thequestion of open source, I would like to contribute to thatdiscussion by other means. On October 10th 1990 the Artists’Museum in Lodz, Poland a self-organised group with years ofsignificant work before during and after the emergence ofSolidarnosc 41 , and whose activity in the eighties was significantlyintensified by that movement, set up an event The Copy Shop bythe Hamburg-based artist and member of NOMADS group,Wolfgang Hainke. According to Ryszard Wasko of the Artists’ Museum, “Whathappened then surpassed all our expectations. There were crowdsof people coming to the shop for five days and nights. Soldiers,accountants, clerks came, all of them bringing books, documents,certificates, encyclopedias, souvenirs, et cetera – just to takeadvantage of the opportunity to make copies free” 42

The photocopier, like the computer, is a manifestation of technicalperformance and economic bandwidth but these beige pieces offixed capital are only animated by the use values, atomic particlesof the general intellect, that surge up to its glass, continue throughit and in doing so refound it. It is important to remember thesignificance of the breakthrough that technologies for copyingmade before they were also – as computers linked to networks -technologies for distribution. But to look at this work now is alsoto understand how machines act as circuits for the amplificationand establishment of desire, memory, knowledge, the itchy need tostay still or avoid a loss, to keep up, or to get a job done quick inorder to get on with the next cycle of brain-breaking stupidity.

INDETERMINANCY A term proposed by the composer John Cage. The capacity forchance, luck, the user, for background or subconscious dynamicsto effect and generate a work.

INTERROGABILITY A quality which allows for properties and dynamics to involve asensual, critical and synthetic reflection upon themselves, forinstance, software that questions what it is to be software, andwhich draws other elements, such as a user, into the compositionof that reflexivity.

RETICULAR Networked, or ‘of networks’.