<nettime> [CODE] [Free Art Licence] about Florian Cramer's point of vue & my speech.

[Antoine Moreau <antoine@artlibre.org>]

Hello,

I'm back in nettime list after leaving it last year. Back because I
heard some words about my presentation during CODE
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/CODE/ of Copyleft Attitude, an artistic
movement which use a juridic tool based on the GPL and named the
Free Art Licence http://antomoro.free.fr/c/lalgb.html.
I would like, despite my very bad english, bring some other light
than Florian Cramer's.
And further down, let you read what I said (oh! what a lovely and
exotic accent you had Antoine! ;-)
Sorry for being long and late to reply.

>Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 15:19:56 +0200
>From: Florian Cramer <paragram@gmx.net>
>To: Nettime <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
[...]
>To make matters worse, the artists who spoke on the second day of CODE
>echoed these aesthetic conservatisms in perfect symmetry. Michael Century,
>co-organiser of the conference and Stallman's respondent, unfortunately
>didn't have enough time to speak about the notational complexity of modern
>art in any detail. He was the only speaker to address this issue.
>Otherwise, artists were happy to be 'artists', and programmers were happy
>to be 'programmers'.

I am surprised by the way you heard artists here. Nobody say this.
And artists know that they are in the heritage of non-art too. But you'll
read it in my speech when I point at an art without qualities (in
Robert Musil's terms). This is not a kind of zero and bad art, but
some creations not definited only by aesthetic rules.
May be you don't know, and this makes sens : in
France softwares are considered as "litterature work". It is what the
law say in order to the Bern convention.
"la directive du conseil des communautés de 1991 définit
expressément le logiciel comme oeuvre littéraire: "ART 1: les Etats
membres protègent les programmes d'ordinateur par le droit d'auteur en
tant qu'oeuvres littéraires au sens de la convention de Berne.[...]"
But we must see again "droit d'auteur's" questions...

I applauded when Linus Torvalds won the first price, net categorie,
during Ars Electronica in 99. A kind of reconnaissance of the
ready-made in numeric culture. "Non-ar"t is now understanding like a
digital art not only pretty images or easthetics effects. (so
hacking is really an art) It is not my practice, but I like to appreciate it
like a true art.
Isn't it?

>  Stallman's separation of the 'functional' and the
>'aesthetic' was also implied in Antoine Moireau's Free Art License
><<http://www.artlibre.org>http://www.artlibre.org>, a copyleft for
>artworks which failed to
>illuminate why artists shouldn't simply use the GNU copyleft proper.

You asked me and I answered you :" because artists are not making some
GNU art. We are free of free. Free-free, you know what Arthur Rimbaud
said about freedom : "la liberté libre". (may be translated by " the
free freedom".
Your remark is important and I must say clearly that artists won't
do some "GNU realism" pieces of art like some did in other places
and times some "socialist realism" art works (or now, some "capitalism
realism" creations: I think of Jeff Koons by exemple, heavy publicity,
totalitarian trade marks, etc)
No. We love the philosophy of the GNU project and Free Software. But
we're artists before all. Some are programmers too, most of the
artists in the Copyleft Attitude movement are what we call
"contemporary artists" (plastics arts, music, video, etc). We are not
creating GNU illustrations for "how-to". We can do this, but not only.
Because art is not definited by rules, but by what it is discovering.
Discovering and loving the GNU it creates a GNUlike, with some space
and some breathing. Don't do no more Chinese "Cultural Revolution",
but a real cultural revolution without little red book, without
blood, just floodlights on the moon, soon, a spoon say :"nothing
happens unless the place" (Mallarmé)
And the Free Art Licence can operate in intelligence with the GNU project.

>This
>question is begged all the more since the license is based on the
>assumption that the artwork in contrast to the codework is, quote,
>'fixed'.  While Moireau's project was at least an honest reflection of
>Free Software/Open Source, one couldn't help the impression that other
>digital artists appropriated the term as a nebulous, buzzword-compatible
>analogy.  While there are certainly good reasons for not releasing art as
>Free Software, it still might be necessary to speak of digital art and
>Free Software in a more practical way. Much if not most of digital art is
>locked into proprietary formats like Macromedia Director, QuickTime and
>RealVideo.  It is doomed to obscurity as soon as their respective
>manufacturers discontinue the software.
>
Being honest isn't being integrist (I'm sure you're not). The
question is to build bridges between different worlds not to plan
to do one day an only and one world.
When I talked two years ago with Richard Stallman, when he came in Paris for
a conference, about this idea to extend the Free philosophy to Art,
he was a little septic, because softwares aren't excately art works.
In order that art is a work in progress but there is no progress in art.
Coding is a work in progress (when the sources are open;-) AND there
is a real progress. It is the litlle difference. Art is not a
positive business. It is not enterely negativ of course (but punk's
not dead;-). It is a freedom over positive and negative, remember
Nietzsche. (all this very rough because of my difficulties with english)

Now, When RMS read the Free Art Licence, he does agree with the terms
of it (because it is really inspired by the GPL and close) except a detail
(clause 3) that we'll change in the next version.
Don't forget that the FAL isn't only aimed to digital artists but to
every contemporary artists, non-digital and non-artists too. Every
creators (like I said in my speech).

Sorry having being so long and badly expressed.In a couple of weeks we'll
have a new site php and I hope translated in english too.

All my best.

antoine moreau

----
This is my speech for CODE you can find here too
http://antomoro.free.fr/c/cc/code/speechgb.html



CODE
"The Free Art Licence: for art not to be stopped".

First of all, I would like to thank Tina Horne, Antoine Schmitt and
Pierre Amadio for the translation of my text. And also Nicolas Malevé
and Laurence Rassel from Constant association for their help. And
thank too Bronac Ferran for inviting me and of course, thanks to my
mother and father.

I will start by talking about the birth, in France, of the "copyleft
attitude" movement, and will follow up by giving the reasons for the
creation of the Free Art Licence, and explain its usefulness. I will end
with a few reflexions related to contemporary art, and to creation in
general in the digital age.

* It is the widespread use of the Internet, and the observations of the
community of programmers who make and use free software, which is at
the origin of the artistic movement "CopyLeft Attitude". When I first grasped
the notion of copyleft, I realized that it could also be applied to
artistic creation. To authorize the copying, distribution and
transformation of objects : this echoed much of the research carried out
in contemporary art over the last 20 years. But it had never been
formulated in such a real and relevant way by the artists as it had been
by the programmers with the GNU project.
I immediately discussed it with artist friends involved in a magazine
called "Allotopie" (its name is a pun on "everywhere" and "utopia") and
we started work.

Before going on, I have to render unto Caesar, not what belongs to him,
but what he deserves: as you probably know, "copyleft" is a word invented
by Richard Stallman to designate the free software created under the
General Public Licence. I think I've heard somewhere that it wasn't
actually him who was the source of this pun, but a friend of his... As
you see, one can never be sure of paternity... There may even be a
strange, cloven-hoofed animal behind all this ? ...

Anyway - In Paris, in January 2000, we organized a series of meetings and
debates between artists, programmers, lawyers and various members of the
art world, to spread information about the notion of "copyleft" and of
free software. The idea was to see how relevant this notion could be to
artists and to creative work in general. For the first time, free software
programmers and contemporary artists got to know each other and realized
that they had much in common - So much so that, for example, Eric S.
Raymond's "How to be a hacker" could easily be transformed into "How to
be an artist". Which I did, with the permission of the author, by
exchanging certain words specific to programming for words relating to
art.

In March 2000, we set up a workshop-exhibition-meeting to experiment with
open artworks, and to draft a licence inspired by the GPL. I must say we
were not able to do this very quickly nor very easily, and we only
finalized it in July 2000, with the help of the two first lawyers in
France to be interested by the GPL: Mélanie Clément-Fontaine and David
Géraud.


What _is_ the Free Art licence ?

It's very simple: the Free Art Licence is a licence designed for use by
artists, that permits the copying, distribution and transformation of
work. It prevents any proprietory control of the work: which means
leaving your work of art open-ended and free.
It can be applied to any kind of art work, digital or otherwise, music,
sculpture, text, etc...
It's a tool: it enables work to pass through the hands of various artists
without being stopped, or fixed. In this way, the creation may nourish
other artists and authors. As André Malraux was fond of saying, 'Art is
fed by art'. Art is not only a finished product, it's also a raw material
that can be re-used in other creations.

Thus, a collective creation may happen. It's open, free, egalitarian,
fraternal. It's about sharing. This tool, the Free Art Licence, aims to
encourage collective creation by abolishing definitive authoritarian
control.

In France, we have the 'droit d'auteur' (author's right) which is
slightly different from the anglo-saxon copyright; but as time passes,
the French 'droit d'auteur' is coming to resemble copyright more and
more, to the benefit of the producer and the middleman. The artists and
the public are the losers. The notions of public service and the public
good are being co-opted by marketing imperatives. Creation itself becomes
merchandise in the hands of the 'cultural engineers' (yes, that's what we
call the middlemen in France) who work for a culture dominated by greed.
It is generally acknowledged that the time has come to redefine author's
rights and copyright, and copyleft seems like an idea in tune with the
current economic and artistic situation.

* Now I would like to get a bit more specific and explain how the
powerful combination of free software, the internet and artistic creation
will have repercussions not only for artists, but also for contemporary
culture.

Don't get me wrong, when I say 'artist', I mean any type of creator,
however far from the Art-Academy tradition. To accompany the 'Man without
Qualities" defined by Robert Musil we can now joyfully announce an "art
without qualities" - Art which is both banal and extra-ordinary in terms
of its original definition.

When we think 'art', let's also think cooking, walking, talking, even
idling (which is a more complex art than most people would believe).
Those we call "artists" have no monopoly on art.

Just as politicans have no monopoly on politics. We all are creators. All
of us, authors of multiple creations, we are all creators of the society
in which we live and of the life we lead. Each one with the others, each
one against the others. Our creations are both political and artistic.

The difference between those two is beginning to blur. Because Culture
has become a prime value, claimed by both art and politics; a value
discussed and disputed.

In this post-democratic era, politics and art are made by Everyone.
The role of the professional in art and politics today is to demonstrate
the validity of the ordinary, and to make sure that daily creation takes
place under the right conditions.

To create implies being attentive. This attention re-formulates
expression and liberates it from an authoritarian autism which lies in
wait for those creators who try to avoid observation. Because to observe
is already the first step towards creation.

So what are we observing today? With the new economy linked to the
digital, it is no longer the object itself in which value is concentrated.
That which determines the value of an object is that which exceeds it,
which surrounds it, which is on its periphery.

This is also visible in recent art history: since the end of the
Renaissance, materials used in the production of works of art tend to be
"poorer" - less and less valuable - and the forms, less and less
sophisticated. Artists take such liberties with their creations that they
end up dispensing with the objects themselves altogether. Take, for
example, the exhibition of Emptiness by Yves Klein in 1958 , or the
"Peelings" by Joseph Beuys, considered as an exercise in sculpture, or
with the word "Time" by Ian Wilson in 1963, the "Steps of pedestrians on
paper" by Stanley Brown, and the work of Lawrence Wiener which does not
require the production of the work of art, etc.
One finds such examples in all artistic domains.

There is, therefore, a veritable "economy" that applies to creative work.
       An economy peculiar to art which even, sometimes - especially when its
definition depends on being grounded in the art-object - becomes highly
economical! - dispensing with the art-object altogether.

This is why it is important to distinguish between the art-object and the
"objective" of art. Artistic creation is not reducible to the object in
which it can, for practical and conventional reasons, be manifested.
Into the engine that drives art, artists pour an explosive mixture which
also contains non-art. The resulting explosion creates sparks and it
would be stupid to shield oneself from them. The motor would then be in
neutral and all our vehicles at a standstill.
I would like to raise a question here which is no stranger to art or
politics (we have seen how closely related these two fields are today):
Could there possibly be an "economic art" - or should I say an artistic
economy?
That is to say, an economic practice which, in its technical
characteristics, its scientific trappings and its alleged pragmatism,
would be a practice concerned not only with liberty, but also with
egality and fraternity.  These three words, you know, are the three key
words of the French Revolution and they are inscribed on every French
coin (by the way, talking of coins, I have no idea what we'll find
inscribed on the Euro...!). The problem with our liberal economy is that
it is content to stop at Liberty, turning that into a smug and complacent
Absolute. But it's not enough. Because that Liberty ends up spinning
round and round - while being obviously, _not_ well-rounded. Aiming at
wholeness, it ends up being totalitarian. Clearly one cannot, in this
case, speak of economy as art. The art would only happen if that
particular liberty were restrained, thus making room for egality and
fraternity. Otherwise, it's a dictatorship, the dictatorship of liberty.
This is why liberty must be tempered by a requirement for equality and
fraternity.
The Free Art Licence, in the field of artistic creation, is attempting to
open up this perspective.

This is not utopian. Because when we make art, our feet are firmly
planted on the ground. We are not dreamers, we are not out of touch with
reality. On the contrary, we are inside the reality of reality, in the
very stuff of life and living.

This reality, it's the floodtide of our desires in relation to matter.
Works of the mind run through our bodies. Ideas which float in the air
flash through our minds. When an idea finds refuge in a particular body,
it can't live if it is blocked: it stays trapped as in a cage.
Creativeness traverses us, transports us. It transforms us too, and we
discover that it's an infinite development of ourselves and of the world.
To stop creation because of an economy that is only concerned with
financial questions, is to impoverish. After having been seduced by gold
for art, must we abandon art for gold? NO. With the Free Art Licence we
are creating conditions that will enable art and economy to function
intelligently; so that there is a relationship between the economy proper
to Art and a feasible art of the economy.

* To finish, I would like to say that today, "Copyleft Attitude"
http://artlibre.org
represents around 150 people, mostly French, but also Belgian, Swiss and
Canadian. Works of art produced under the Free Art Licence are many and
varied: music, photographs, drawings, texts, print publications, audio
c-d's, cd roms, videos, perfomances, etc.

Last month in Paris we held a copyleft party during a Web festival which
brought together 8 artists and as many others on-line to create artworks
with the public. http://antomoro.free.fr/c/copyparty.html
With permission to copy, broadcast, distribute and transform.  We had cd
recorders, printers and 8 connected computers. It was, at one and the
same time, an artists' performance, a public workshop, a show and its
opposite, an unending rehearsal.
Next month another copyleft party will take place in Paris with musicians.

Let's hold more copyleft parties! You, too, should hold copyleft parties!
Let's create openings for artistic creation! All kinds of creation! We
could hold a copyleft cooking party with free recipes, a conversation
party with free ideas, a gardening party with free sowing of seeds on
free ground, a rambling party with free circuits.....

So that art in all its forms never stops creating...
Let's copyleft each other!

----
-- 

Antoine Moreau
	      Copyleft_Attitude
	<http://www.artlibre.org>

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