User:Cristinac/Proposal

Tentative Title

Introduction

A general interest that I have seen develop alongside my practice has been that of the dichotomy between open and closed information sources. Whether the divide is realised by physical obstacles (location for example), digital obstacles (DRM), or economic reasons (tickets as impediments to access a conference or festival), it is often illusory. As most dichotic splits, there is ambiguity in the space between them. There are for example, torrent websites that allow you to download material as long as you are able to maintain the download-upload ratio. As starting points, I am interested in offline and pirate sharing cultures, which do not necessarily subscribe to a social contract.

Relation to previous practice

In the previous two thematic projects, the topic of subversive methods of escaping the proprietary ball and chain was an underlying aspect. In the CAPTCHA project I started considering alternative uses of the image generator, which seemed to be a possible, if unpractical, way of circumventing the DRM system of digital books.

The connection with the subject became more pronounced in the Encyclopedia of Potentialities, which was dealing with the grayness of the 'open' European patent database. A patent is a common agreement between the state and the inventor, which binds the latter to providing an insight into how their invention functions and thus increase the pool of knowledge in a particular field, in exchange for protection against however, this transparency excludes access.

Relation to a larger context

There are already a few projects that exist within this mindset, such as the Alexandria Project, which is developing models, tools and techniques necessary to archive and index relevant parts of the Web, and retrieving and exploring this information in a meaningful way. The Pirate Box, as well as the Dead Drops provide alternatives for creating a library that is locally implemented

Thesis intention

Practical steps

Experiments with creating sharing environments

References

Radical Tactics of the Offline Library

Secrecy, Authorship and Nuclear Weapons Scientists

Knowledge Capital Osaka

Bibliotecha

Dead drops

Personal Portable Library

Pirate Box

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