It may be free but is it open? A discussion around one of the most current and pertinent issues in the arts, technology and society. The audience is invited to participate in a dabate led by contributors.

lovebytes

Chaired by
Ele Carpenter.
CRUMB, Open Source Embroidery, The Star and Shadow.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=209
http://www.starandshadow.org.uk/

Contributors include:

Charlie Davies
Ex Features Editor of ‘The Face’ Magazine, founder of the ‘London School of Art and Business’, founder member of ‘Pick Me Up’ and has recently undertaken the project ‘Free Work’.
http://charliedavies.stikipad.com/home/show/HomePage
http://charliedavies.stikipad.com/home/show/
Pick+Me+Up

Ian Anderson
the Designers Republic
http://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/

Dougald Hine
Freelance Journalist, Co-founder of ‘The School of Everything’
http://otherexcuses.blogspot.com/
http://www.schoolofeverything.com/

Simon Blackmore
The Owl Project
http://www.owlproject.com/
http://www.simonblackmore.net/

Adnan Hadzi
Deptford TV: A Film and TV project based on the principles of openess and Sharing.
http://dek.spc.org/
http://www.deptford.tv

Documentation on lovebytes.tv

Communication Technologies of Empowerment

A Postgraduate Conference for the presentation of PhD research on the intersection of power and communication technologies organised by the Institute of Communications Studies (ICS) at the University of Leeds

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“Andy Warhol said that everyone will have their 15 minutes of fame. The web means that anyone can have their 15 minutes of power.”Abstracts and Bios

Adnan Hadzi (University of London, UK)
Adnan Hadzi is currently working on a practice-based PhD titled ‘The author vs. the collective’ at Goldsmiths, focusing on the influence of digitisation and the new forms of distribution on documentary film production, as well as the author’s rights in relation to collective authorship. This interdisciplinary research project will combine sources and expertise from the fields of media and communication, computer studies and architecture. Adnan is co-founder of Liquid Culture, Deptford TV and http://www.copyleft.cc

Deptford.TV – strategies of sharing
What is Deptford.TV
Deptford.TV is a research project on collaborative film – initiated by Adnan Hadzi in collaboration with the Deckspace media lab, Bitnik media collective, Boundless project, Liquid Culture initiative, and Goldsmiths College. It is an online media database documenting the regeneration process of Deptford, in Sout East London. Deptford TV functions as an open, collaborative platform that allows artists, filmmakers and people living and working around Deptford to store, share, re-edit and redistribute the documentation of the regeneration process. The open and collaborative aspect of the project is of particular importance as it manifests in two ways: a) audiences can become producers by submitting their own footage, b) the interface that is being used enables the contributors to discuss and interact with each other through the database. Deptford TV is a form of “television”, since audiences are able to choose edited “time lines” they would like to watch; at the same time they have the option to comment on or change the actual content. Deptford TV makes us of licenses such as the creative commons sa-by and gnu general public license to allow and enhance this politics of sharing.

minding the gap 

Conference Report by Cathy Baldwin

This training day was set up to bring together the small but growing minority of media practitioners entering higher education to conduct media research through postgraduate study or as part of ‘practitioner’ appointments at academic institutions. It seemed to be a common experience that many found themselves caught out by a series of ‘gaps’ between the intellectual models taken up in analytic studies of media institutions and practices and the practical experiences they brought with them into the academic environment. Furthermore there are evident gaps between the intellectual status of text-based social scientific analyses of the media and practice-based approaches to research through media such as film, photography, audio-documentation and multi-media as legitimate forms of knowledge. Finally, a clear tension is experienced in the separation of the ‘intellectual’ and ‘practical’ in the internal organisation of media faculties in higher education. Prior to this event, there had not been a dedicated symposium where ‘double practitioners’ from across the
industry and disciplinary spectrums were able to voice their concerns and set out a vocational and intellectual agenda towards reconciling these gaps. The aims of the day were therefore just this. The organisers felt that it was vital that the event should target postgraduate students and early career researchers in the first five years of an academic career as
the current generation confronting these problems at the ‘up and coming’ end of media research. The event set out to profile their work and to gauge an overview of how far we have come towards reconciling the ‘gaps’ in the historic progression of the field. The day drew its parameters around work centred on factual, non-fiction-based media that engage with and represent the ‘real world’ through journalistic and documentary formats, and whose products are intended for mass or substantial public circulation. The training day brief also appealed for researchers drawing on a
wide range of theoretical approaches newly associated with media research, such as anthropology, film-practice, legal studies and development studies, as well as the more traditional schools of cultural studies, social psychology, semiotics and literary theory.
The programme was structured around three thematic workshops highlighting different facets of the relationship between theory and practice. The first of these, Workshop 1, dealt with practice in methodology across two panels. The first encouraged discussion on film as a method of research, documentation and the presentation of data. The second looked at practitioners’ uses of their inside experiences of the media to inform their research. Examples of this included drawing upon professional contacts, knowledge of production terminology, roles, codes of conduct and practices to gain access to research subjects and locations, and to interact effectively with them. Two out of five panelists were anthropologists, highlighting the rapid growth in popularity of ethnographic research methods.
The second workshop, Workshop 2, took examples of theory in practice as its topic, reversing the equation between intellectual models of media institutions and practices, to ask how often intellectual models form the basis of media practice. The workshop was split into two panels exemplifying cases from the Western world and the developing world respectively. This was so that the different issues generated by firstly long-established and globally dominant media systems and secondly those still in formation in countries which have yet to reach a plateau of political, social and
economic stability could be given separate consideration.
Workshop 3, the final session, was set up to encourage ‘double practitioners’ to bring to the floor more personal accounts of the challenges – personal, ethical, political and practical – facing those whose careers combine the media industries and academia. The intention was that presentations in this session would tie together the issues raised by the explorations in the first two sessions of practice brought into the academic world and intellectual models taken up in the media industries.
In keeping with the aims of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network of providing peer support and networking and learning opportunities, it was decided that all the organizational and academic preparations should be carried out by postgraduates for postgraduates. Given the range of practice specialisms in broadcast, print and online
journalism, and filmmaking that the event sought to engage with, and the scattered location of researchers with an industry profile, the organizational team was recruited from universities across Britain (plus one in Denmark). Cathy Baldwin, a D.Phil student in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a former BBC World Service and Radio 3 /4 reporter, received over 40 emails and phone calls from individuals interested in participating. She recruited the team below to compliment the work of the small team in Oxford comprising herself, Paddy
Coulter (Reuters Institute) and Andres Schipani-Aduriz, an M.Sc student at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, also a media studies graduate and print journalist with the Observer as well as a variety of international publications.
The other team members were Lizzie Jackson, a PhD Media Studies student at the University of Westminster and BBC New Media editor and consultant; Dafydd Sills-Jones, a PhD Media Studies student and lecturer in Media Production at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and a former documentary development producer; Catherine Joppart of The Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research, who also works as a freelance journalist for Associated Press Television and as a fundraiser and researcher for the One World Broadcasting Trust; John Sealey, a PhD by Film Practice student and lecturer at the University of Exeter and award-winning filmmaker specialising in cultural identity and the African diaspora; Line Thomsen, a PhD Anthropology student at the University of Aarhus, Denmark and ITN/Channel 4
news reporter; and Venkata Vemuri, a PhD Media Studies student at the University of the West of England (UWE) and former print and television journalist and executive producer, Aajtak News Channel, New Delhi, India.
The training day was hosted by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, a new research centre within the Department of Politics and International Relations which opened in November 2006. It builds on the long-
running Reuters Foundation Fellowship Programme (Green College). Its broad aims are: to become the focus within the University for the study of the role of journalism in modern societies; to consider the ethical basis, the practice and the development of journalism; and its public policy implications; to pursue impartial scholarship of the highest standard in the study of journalism as it is practised on all media platforms at an international, national and local level; to offer an academic analysis of long term issues, but also to respond in a timely way to the emerging agenda created by the media in their daily operations, and to provide an independent forum for exchanges between practitioners and analysts of journalism, and all those affected by it. http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/ Media research is a new and emerging tradition at the University of Oxford and is currently being consolidated through a number of other units and programmes across the university including Oxford Internet Institute, the Programme in Comparative Media Law at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (Wolfson College), and Oxford Media and Communications Seminar Programme.
Additional support in kind was obtained from The Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research (London). The Centre is closely affiliated and receives institutional support from the Annenberg School of Communication at the
University of Pennsylvania and collaborates closely with partners such as City University, the London School of Economics, Central European University and Oxford’s Programme in Comparative Media Law. It was developed to provide a forum for open dialogue and scholarship related to media law and policy around the world.
Stanhope is particularly keen in developing and working with student researchers, often acting in an advisory role and engaging MA and PhD students on media policy related projects. www.stanhopecentre.org Delegates from a range of institutions from around Britain and Europe attended the training day. Presenters represented the following institutions: Goldsmiths College, Bournemouth University, London South Bank University, University of Westminster, SOAS, University of Aarhus (Denmark), University of Wales (Aberystwyth), University of Edinburgh, Institute of Education, University of London, University of Oxford, University of Vic (Barcelona, Spain), LSE, University of Worcester, University
of Exeter and University of the West of England (UWE). Additional institutions represented by non-presenter delegates included University of Cardiff, University of Loughborough, Trinity College, University of Wales and City University.
The event was opened by Cathy Baldwin and Paddy Coulter, who welcomed delegates and explained the origins and aims of the event. Cathy stated that it was her personal experiences of the difference between media studies and working as a
radio journalist that motivated her to initiate the conference. Paddy, currently Director of Studies at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and a Fellow of Green College, Oxford, has had a prolific career as a television producer (formerly Director of the International Broadcasting Trust) and a journalist specialising in international development issues. He pointed out that getting journalists and media academics together was the main goal of the Reuters Institute, and that the training day was the very first conference to have achieved this at Oxford University. He outlined the difficulties that have already emerged in mediating between the two sets of professionals, with the timescales of research in journalism and academia being vastly different and also the differences between the conceptual frameworks of the
two arenas.
The keynote speech, entitled ‘If it Bleeds it Leads….’: Modes of Inquiry in a World of Sensation, was delivered by Professor Brian Winston, award-winning documentary maker, renowned media academic and journalism commentator, and currently Dean of the University of Lincoln. He laid out the similarities between journalism and academia, particularly the underlying rationale for carrying out reporting and research, and the nature of the problems with both pursuits. He opened the debate of why greater academic attention is not afforded to journalism. He illuminated the
contradiction between the status of journalism in society as ‘powerful and important’ and its relatively low status as a subject of study on the elite intellectual agenda. He suggested that the roots of the problem lay in a ‘constant schizophrenia’ directed towards journalists by academics, that ‘practice’ was not respected as ‘research’ and there was a suspicion of and hostility towards journalists among academics. He put this down to academic snobbery! Delegates found him a dynamic, provocative and involved speaker, and he raised many a laugh and smile with his animated delivery
and performance-like manner.

The first of the day’s three workshops began with a presentation by Adnan Hadzi of Goldsmiths College, who opened panel 1 – Sound and Image: Alternative Methods of Research and Presentation – with a description of his research project on collaborative film entitled ‘Deptford TV’. This comprises an online media database documenting the regeneration process of Deptford in South East London. He explained how it functioned as an open, collaborative platform that allowed artists, filmmakers and people living and working around Deptford to store, share, re-edit and redistribute the documentation of the regeneration process. His contribution closed with a screening of several clips depicting local residents taking part in the project.
Trevor Hearing of Bournemouth University briefly introduced and screened his 15- minute reflective film that considered how he might develop the documentary film form into a method of ‘writing’ with video to articulate a more complex
understanding of the world. He outlined the importance of two strands in his practice as a film-maker: the meaning of evidence in the use of documentary video and the value of documentary video as a creative academic research tool.
Dr Charlotte Crofts of London South Bank University talked through the challenges of legitimating and gaining accreditation for film as a form of research within higher education, particularly among funding bodies. She explored the point that practice research differs from professional practice mainly in the way in which it is framed and reflected upon within a research context. She screened a short research film which used “pro-sumer” technology to document and reflect on the effect of emergent digital technologies on mainstream cinema production from image acquisition, post production and delivery to film preservation and archiving.
Finally, Tony Dowmunt of Goldsmiths College outlined what he described as his ‘research journey’ during the production of a video-diary based film – A Whited Sepulchre – which drew on the stories of his great-grandfather’s account in his
diaries of his posting to Sierra Leone as a soldier in the 1880s and his own video diary of a trip to Africa made in December/January 2004-5, where he explored his position as a White man in a Black environment. He also investigated the ‘authenticity’ of the more personal/confessional mode of the video diary in contrast with the formal written tone of the Victorian written diaries. The presentations were introduced by Cathy Baldwin and responses were given and
the discussion chaired by Dr Charlotte Crofts who stood in for filmmaker and Film Studies lecturer, John Sealey who was sadly unable to attend due to illness.
Lizzie Jackson from the University of Westminster/BBC chaired the second panel of the workshop, entitled: Bringing Work to School: Industry Experience in Media Research.
Somnath Batabyal from the Department of Film and Media at SOAS gave a paper that clearly illustrated how his academic career had been enhanced by having had a career in journalism. As he said in his paper, ‘However much time a researcher spends in a newsroom, one can never really be a part of the newsroom dynamics.’ He made the case that journalists in academia have the advantage of being able to bring their professional experience to bear on research taking the newsroom as a locale of study. He reflected that had he not had a career in journalism, his research would have been approached differently and the results would have differed. In turn, if it were not for his fledgling academic career, he would not have been able to conceive of his project.
The second paper was given by Ole J. Mjos from the School of Media, Arts and Design at the University of Westminster. Ole demonstrated how he considered a deconstruction of empathy and sympathy for journalists to be important. He showed how research findings have shown that journalists often occupy a detached position.
Ole suggested that this could assist in the development of training for journalists who might arrive at the scene of an incident looking for comment, and who by lack of awareness of the impact of their tone of voice or their actions might inadvertently distress victims.
Line Thomsen from the Institute of Information and Media Studies at Aarhus University talked through her thoughts prior to her doctoral observation of a small selection of newsrooms, including the BBC newsroom. She deconstructed participant observation and observation, picking out ways of approaching the contact time with journalists as a researcher. Her paper carefully listed many of the classic problems and risks, but also the potential benefits of the methodology.
The fourth paper was delivered by Dafydd Sills-Jones, lecturer in media production at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He gave examples, taken from his field work with television history producers, of oft-used uncritical and celebratory language exemplifed by the constant and un-defined use of the word ‘big’. He noted that whilst such uncritical useage could be a barrier to scholarly study, he also believed it was important to engage with what he referred to as the ‘big discourse’. In order to outline the advantages and pitfalls of such an approach, Dafydd offered three provocative ‘confessions’ as to his methods, and ended by inviting the audience to reflect on their own methodological ‘sins’.
In the final paper, Dr Dorota Ostrowska of the Department of Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh covered a wide area, including the benefits of partnerships between academics and industry, through the learning extracted by both parties in the setting up of a major film festival, the UK Festival of Chinese Cinema. She noted the cultural benefits to Edinburgh and its residents, and also the benefits to the university through the availability of experts from China over the period of the festival. She presented a useful business model in action, proving the importance of bringing together the joint experience of academics and practitioners.
After a networking lunch where delegates mingled and chatted, the afternoon sessions began. Dr Charlotte Crofts briefly outlined the aims of the MeCCSA Practice Session and encouraged delegates to get involved. The first panel of Workshop 2 entitled Theoretical Models in Mass Media Practice: Perspectives from the West, was chaired by Lizzie Jackson (Westminster) and Line Thomsen (Aarhus).During this panel, Gavin Rees of Bournemouth University reflected upon the fact that journalists in the UK receive scant formal training on how to interview, and that emotional interactions between interviewee and interviewer were subject to little professional or theoretical analysis. Drawing on his research talking to news organisations about the trauma training given to reporters, such as in situations of war, mental illness, bereavement or violent crime, he examined why the emotional interactions of the interview space remained under-explored. In particular he concluded that empathetic listening skills need to be taught both for ethical reasons and to improve the quality of journalism and its ability to engage audiences.
Jo Henderson of the Institute of Education, University of London, focused on the BBC’s Video Nation, in which ‘ordinary people’ are invited to represent themselves through the creation of self-filmed monologues to camera: video diaries. She located her research within an exploration of the implications of the notion of ‘the citizen producer’ in the particular climate of the BBC news and factual programming departments. Her paper revealed that the ‘Amateur video’ tag enabled broadcasters to distance themselves from low production values and subjectivity. Maxwell Boykoff of the University of Oxford presented the findings of his research examining the application of journalistic norms in the coverage of human
contributions to climate change in the US and UK. An analysis of the output of numerous news organisations and print media led him to the realisation that some news sources have significantly diverged from the consensus view in climate science.
The need for ‘balance’ in reporting has created bias when reporting a scientific concensus such as the role of humans in climate change. Cristina Perales García and Mon Rodríguez Amat from the University of Vic, Barcelona reflected upon the importance of managing new and constantly evolving modes of communications, specifically a new approach to the growth area of e- journalism. Their particular concern was the creation of an appropriate and non- traditional theoretical model that would serve to study this new communicative sector.
In the final paper, Patrice Holderbach from the University of Oxford considered the investigative nature of journalism which can propel media practitioners and their products into sensitive environments that are prone to judicial scrutiny, including judicial penalties for refusal to disclose sources. She focused on the pros and cons of a controversial bill considered in 2006 by the US Senate to create a federal shield law protecting media practitioners from disclosure and the wider implications for journalists and the general public, particularly ‘bloggers’.

The second panel, Theoretical Models in Mass Media Practice: Perspectives from the Developing World, was chaired by Catherine Joppart of the Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research and Venkata Vemuri (UWE). Sarah Kamal’s paper looked at how media reconstructions form a natural space for investigating media theory. She examined the concept of ‘media development’ as practice and theory in post-Taliban Afghanistan, problematizing the reciprocal relationship of media theory and the development context to pinpoint lessons for media theory in reconstruction
and in the West.
Nina Bigalke of Goldsmiths College scrutinised the operations of Al Jazeera English, the latest English-language 24-hour news channel which made headlines prior to its launch in November 2006, as a noticeable example of an institution that effectively incorporated long-standing academic debates into its policy and brand identity.
Dr Carolina Oliveira Matos, also of Goldsmiths College, discussed her research methods when investigating the relationship between the democratization process that occurred in Brazil in the last two decades and the role played by the media. She also reflected upon the difficulties that many academics and journalists have in combining theory with practice and the misunderstandings that exist on both sides.
Dr Xin Xin of the China Media Centre at the University of Westminster set out to explain the complexity of journalistic practices in different social contexts by focusing on the case of China. She analyzed the causes, dynamics and consequences of the negotiations between political, economic and socio-journalistic interests in journalism practice. She also aimed to clarify confusion regarding the coexistence of investigative journalism and ‘paid journalism’ during China’s media transformations.
Two papers were delivered in the final workshop, Double Vocations: Media Practice and Theory, as the third contributor, John Sealey, had to withdraw due to illness. The session was chaired by Dafydd Sills-Jones and responses were given by Cathy Baldwin. Maureen Matthews from the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford discussed the cross-cultural nature of media practice using the example of a recent documentary project broadcast on Canadian radio which debunked the popular ecological stereotype of ‘Mother Earth’ found in the cosmology of Native Canadians. She drew parallels between journalism practice and anthropological concerns over ‘reflexivity’ during field research, postulating that journalists would benefit from attention to the latter. She also outlined how they could improve their practice through taking up anthropology’s ethical stance towards the representation of its subjects.
To close, George Nyabuga of the University of Worcester drew upon his personal experience as a journalist with The Standard, the oldest newspaper in Kenya, to explain how professional journalistic ethics and press freedom in that country were under threat both internally within the media establishment and externally by representatives of the state and business sectors. He revealed how objectivity and unbiased accounts of events intended to enlighten people and provide a forum for exchanges of information and views were being sacrificed for the sake of vested interests and financial gain.
Professor Winston rounded off the day’s academic discussions with some summary remarks. He warned the delegates against the danger of treating the gaps outlined across the discussions in an ahistorical manner, reminding them that he had experienced them throughout the course of his career. He was optimistic at the rise in the number of practitioners in research, lamenting that 30 years ago, the numbers were considerably lower. He also defended the arena of media research in the light of many delegates having expressed a concern with a perceived general misunderstanding of practice. He recalled that when media research was launched as an academic discipline, figures from the media industry were disconcerted by the critical analyses presented by himself and his colleagues from the Glasgow Media Group! He concluded by suggesting that journalism could be improved through a closer engagement with academia, and inversely that the climate for journalism studies is much better today than in the early years of his career, with greater
receptivity within academia and more opportunities to obtain funding.
Paddy Coulter then brought the event to a close by leading Brian Winston and all delegates in an open evaluation discussion where points were taken from the floor.
The feedback was resoundingly positive, and aspects praised included the breadth of media forms and theoretical approaches discussed, the frank and candid tone of the day set up in the opening speeches, the friendly and informal atmosphere, the small scale which enabled delegates to converse with a wide range of people in intimate surroundings, the splendour of the conference venue at 13 Norham Gardens, the internationalism of the delegates, and the choice of keynote speaker. Constructive criticisms raised were the short length of the event, a general consensus that its high
quality merited two days, and frustrations were expressed at the restricted time for the development of prolonged discussions due to the tight schedule.
Delegates finished the day with a wine reception at Reuters Institute, a meal at the Pizza Express in Oxford and drinks at the pub afterwards where discussions went on late into the night!
Due to the popularity of the event and the excitement that it generated, several postgraduates from the Media and Anthropology departments at SOAS and Goldsmiths College have proposed to repeat it next year at either university over a two-day period. As media research is in its infancy at the University of Oxford and the concentration of staff and postgraduates working on media topics is still growing, the organizers have fully endorsed and encouraged this proposal. The envisaged title of the second event is ‘Mending the Gap’, with an aim of building on the agenda of concerns set up by this first event and moving forward to look for concrete ways of addressing them.

Our grateful thanks are due to all the ‘Minding the Gap’ delegates, both presenters and non-presenter audience members for bringing their enthusiasm and passion for the topic to the lively and productive discussions that took place. Special thanks are owed to Paddy Coulter for his tremendous support and dedication throughout the preparation process, and to Professor Brian Winston for his inspirational address and generous input into delegates’ discussions and keen engagement with the issues facing young researcher-practitioners today. We would also like to thank Professors
Marcus Banks and Harvey Whitehouse of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), University of Oxford, and the Art Design Media Higher Education Academy Subject Centre (ADM-HEA) for funding the event, and Oxford
University Anthropological Society for support in kind. Thanks are also due to Nicole Stremlau for linking the project with the Stanhope Centre and to Peter Bailey and Jennie Turner for their valuable input in the coordination of the day. A debt of gratitude is owed to Andres Schipani-Aduriz for assisting with the production of the event and for turning out to register delegates in spite of illness. Additionally, we are grateful to Dr Charlotte Crofts of the MeCCSA Practice Section for standing in as a chair at the last minute. Last but by no means least, I would personally like to thank my colleagues at
MeCCSA Postgraduate Network for encouraging me in the running of the event within a university that is a new collaborator for the MeCCSA network, and in particular the current chair, Kaity Mendes for compiling delegates’ feedback. Finally, without the commitment and high quality input of the postgraduate organising team and chairs,
the event could not have taken place.

Cathy Baldwin, MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Executive Committee University of Oxford, 3rd June 2007.

The research “the author vs. the collective” was presented at HotDocs documentary film festival in Toronto, Canada. See slides (as .pdf).

“The Documentary Auteur is a dead duck in the digital water.”

quoted from http://www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence/blog/?cat=2&paged=2

That’s what 6 people debated, 3 for and 3 against, on stage at Hot Docs, during the third real-life instalment of DocAgora. A clap-athon from the audience was to determine the winner.

FIR friends Peter and Amit, co-founders of DocAgora, clearly set up this false dichotomy to get people thinking deeper about the shifting roles of authorship and the digital collective. But at times the discussion was painful, until finally, Adnan Hadzi on the “pro-side” finally wisely reframed the argument: its not authorship that’s dead, but its copyright and ownership that’s dead.

But it was too late in the game, and the documentary world’s Simon Cowell, Nick Fraser of the BBC, wrapped-it up for the “con” side by trashing the whole debate, trashing the notion of Auteur: “Could we please use a proper Anglo-Saxon word for it,” then evoking the spirit of Torontonian Marshal McLuhan and (after trashing him) proclaiming the authorial duck alive and well by saying: “Quite simply, works made collectively are boring”.

The clap-athon swung in favour for the con-side. Only then did the really interesting aruguments for the collective emerge. Montrealer Sylvia Van Brabant stood up from the audience and pointed out: “What about the Native storytelling traditions… who are the authors in that!?” Sanjay, another documentarian, criticized the “hyper-individualism of the west and its notions of authorship.” And later in tha hallway, Marc Glassman, complained to me he hadn’t gotten a chance to speak because he’s bald and wears glasses. He wanted to desperately say “What about Jazz, guys?”

Luckily, no real ducks were hurt in the making of DocAgora, as Peter is also one of the co-founders of the Greencode, a movement to green the doc industry.

Btw, FIR is an alumni of DocAgora, as Gerry and I both presented at the inaugural DocAgora in Amsterdam.

Meanwhile, FIR had two presentations at Hot Docs, including one for Doc U, to university students all intent on becoming filmmakers. They later told their mentor, Sarah Zammit, who told me, “I want to do what FIR does!” and some even said, “I want to be her!” Scary.

quoted from documentary.org

Author? Autheur? by Marc Glassman

DocAgora, a nonprofit organization created to make the digital world comprehensible and useful to the documentary community, is the virtual brainchild of Peter Wintonick, co-director of the definitive profile of Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent; Israeli-Canadian producer Amit Breuer (Checkpoint, Sentenced to Marriage); and American “webjockey” and director Cameron Hickey (Garlic and Watermelons). In ancient Greece, the agora was the crossroads where a marketplace was established and public debates would occur. Using classic forms of communication—debates, panel discussions and lectures—DocAgora is bringing a new marketplace of ideas to documentary festivals around the world. A self-styled “gypsy caravan” of practical philosophers, DocAgora has been plying its trade for a year now, in festivals ranging from IDFA to Silverdocs to Hot Docs.

Joining Breuer and Wintonick as core members of DocAgora is a trio of distinguished individuals. Fleur Knopperts brings marketing and financing expertise to the group. The former director of IDFA’s FORUM, where scores of documentaries have found broadcasting and financial partners, Knopperts has recently become the industry and marketing director at the Sheffield Documentary Festival in England. Replacing Knopperts as the IDFA rep is industry veteran Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen, who has a wealth of knowledge on documentary filmmaking. Neil Sieling, American University New Media Fellow at the Center for Social Media, is recognized internationally as a consultant, TV producer (Alive from Off Center) and curator, who helped to launch a multitude of projects, including Link TV.

This sextet of visionary media activists scored its initial North American success with an afternoon of spirited, well-structured debates at the 2007 Hot Docs festival in Toronto, Canada. Seats were hard to come by as filmmakers, broadcasters, academics, producers and students jostled for space at University of Toronto’s Innis Town Hall. The highlight was an Oxford Union-style debate organized around the proposition that “The authored documentary is a dead duck in the digital water.”

Arguing in favor of the proposition were activist director Daniel Cross (The Street, S.P.I.T. and creator of the website homeless.org); producer and cross-media creator Femke Wolting of the Dutch-based company Submarine (My Second Life); and the British-based communications academic Adnan Hadzi (Liquid Culture, Deptford TV). Arguing in favor of the auteur were director Jennifer Fox (Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman), new technologies student Brad Dworkin (Ryerson University in Toronto) and broadcaster/producer/writer Nick Fraser (BBC’s Storyville).

Operating as the moderator, Sieling pointed out that DocAgora questions the new digital age in “a Socratic manner without being pretentious.” He set up the ground rules, keeping the speakers to a slightly loose five-minute time limit, announcing a “clap-o-meter” for an informal audience vote and explaining that Canadian veteran commissioning editor Rudy Buttignol would be the adjudicator for the debate.

Cross brought the proceedings to life right away by announcing, “The water is poisoned, the ducks are dead and the auteurs ain’t got no money––so we’re going to win this debate.” He then challenged the audience, asking all the auteurs to stand up and be counted. No one stood up, hardly surprising in a room full of reticent Canadians and international doc-makers.

Cross’ argument centered on the collaborative nature of documentary filmmaking, particularly in cinema vérité. Since the main camera operator, sound recordist and editor have so much to do with the making of that type of doc, Cross suggested that the director is simply part of the process, not an auteur. To him, the best documentaries have layers of authorship, not just a single vision. He concluded by pointing out that the website he has founded, www.homelessnation.org, welcomes that layering through blogs by street people, who are given cameras and encouraged to contribute pieces on issues ranging from police brutality to squatting

Counter-punching for the auteur side, the distinguished documentary director Fox passionately argued, “I live for authorship.” To her, scientific and medical discoveries are authored. Even An American Love Story has become as much her story as the subjects’ because she gave shape and structure to the documentary. Fox expressed her belief in “a singular vision” of filmmaking, replying to Cross’ layers of authorship by suggesting that creative collaborators only work well when there’s a link: the auteur.

Next up, presumably for the collective, non-auteur side, was Wolting. The Dutch new media pioneer used to be a programmer at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and, while there, grew weary of the old-style auteurs, who seemed to always get funding and have their films included in prestigious festivals worldwide. While arguing against that style of auteurism, which smacks of elitism, Wolting did make a case for young “authors” being able to make their films with new digital tools. With YouTube, it is possible to distribute short films for free and bypass festivals altogether. A believer in the punk ethic DIY (do it yourself), Wolting ended up endorsing a “new age of auteurs,” who are not members of a privileged class but simply the ones with the best ideas and methods of execution.

Toronto new media artist Brad Dworkin followed Wolting to the podium, arguing on the auteur side. Dworkin pointed out that even Andrew Sarris, the critic who popularized the auteur theory in the US back in the 1960s, now admits that the old definition doesn’t work anymore. Calling auteurism a “pattern theory in flux,” Dworkin asked, “In a digital world, can we say the author is dead? I don’t think so; it’s in a new form: the website itself.”

Dworkin suggested that we look at an entire website as one work: the layout, the text, even the color. “The new auteurs,” he went on, “are the creators of the search engines because they develop the programming, aesthetics and set the parameters, like a director of a documentary.” Citing an experiment he conducted in collective authorship, where 20 feeds of Toronto were shot simultaneously, Dworkin noted that by setting the time, format and place, he was, in fact, the auteur. Even in digital work, he concluded, “the context of the exhibition and distribution” are handled by one person, who is effectively, its author or creator.

Hadzi came to the debate highly prepared, as his PhD project is on “the author versus the collective.” Taking the high road, he argued that “the author is in flux. The copyright is the dead duck in the digital water.” Playing to the crowd as a tongue-in-cheek academic radical, Hadzi offered an astonishing amount of facts and speculation around new media technology. For instance, did you know that by 2015, your home computer will be able to store all the music created in the world? Or that by 2020, all the content ever created could potentially be stored in that same computer?

Hadzi is a believer in “copyleft,” a practice where directors and other artists voluntarily remove some usage restrictions from their own work. His ideas complement the “free use” access to archival materials, which the Center for Social Media advocates. For Hadzi, open licensing and common source technology will open up production and distribution for documentary filmmakers. And the auteur? Artists with singular visions will provide knowledge and wisdom to the collective voices that will spring out of the new panacea in the upcoming digital age.

Leaving the visionary thoughts of Hadzi, Dworkin and Wolting far behind, the avuncular Fraser arose to deliver the final speech of the debate. The well educated and fearsomely amusing Brit suffers fools badly. He denounced famed French cultural theorists Deleuze and Baudrillard, who were obvious inspirations for Hadzi and Dworkin in particular. Fraser pointed out that “everyone in the debate basically agrees with one another,” making it impossible to do what a true Oxford debater would do in conclusion: “Trash the enemies and praise our side.” Apart from a nice but gratuitous aside praising Canadian media philosopher Marshall McLuhan (“Artists are the canaries in the coal mine.”), Fraser’s conclusion was contentious but engaging: “The documentary shall survive made by individuals and collectives.”

As the adjudicator, it was upto Buttignol to deliver the final word. The clap-o-meter had already registered a resounding victory for the auteur side. An advocate of auteurism, Buttignol turned into a contrarian, admitting that he felt suspicious that the audience agreed with him. His conclusion was Jesuitical: “The argument is dead.” Evoking yet another Canadian philosopher and scientist, Hubert Reeves, Buttignol left the audience with this thought: “Chaos and order co-exist.” In other words, auteurs and collectives will always be among us.

Doc Agora will certainly be with us for quite a while. The group plans to be a presence at this fall’s Sheffield and Amsterdam documentary festivals. The future looms before them. Whether it’s bright or not may well be the subject of another debate.

Check out www.docagora.org for details.

Marc Glassman is the editor of POV, Canada’s leading documentary magazine, and of Montage, the publication of the Directors Guild of Canada.

Deptford.TV will take part in the moving images archive research until December 2008.

Using Moving Image Archives in Academic Research

Applications are invited from doctoral students registered at U.K. universities in film, television, media or cultural studies, history, American studies, architecture, anthropology and other relevant disciplines for an Arts and Humanities Research Council sponsored collaborative doctoral training programme on using moving image archives and archival materials in academic research. Leading academics, together with representatives from the BFI National Archive, the Imperial War Museum, The British Universities Film and Video Council, the Media Archive of Central England, the national archives of Wales and Scotland, the Broadway Media Centre and others will deliver training events between November 2007 and December 2008. Students can be linked to an archive/institution appropriate to their research. Bursaries are available to defray the costs of travel and accommodation.

We will welcome applications from anyone pursuing doctoral research using moving image materials. To apply please contact Professor Roberta Pearson at the University of Nottingham and Dr Lee Grieveson at UCL.

Click here to download a poster (pdf).

Click here to download a letter with more information for applicants.

Click on the links below to visit the sites of participating institutions.

Graduate Programme in Film Studies : UCL

University of Nottingham : Institute of Film and Television Studies

University of Ulster : Centre for Media Research

University of Ulster : Media Studies Research Institute

Imperial War Museum

British Film Institute

Scottish Screen Archive : National Library of Scotland

British Silent Cinema

British Universities Film and Video Council

the presentation & programme as (pdf) file

showing old television to students is a culture shock for them because there is  a difference in production, surface & deep attitude – nostalgia? memory?

archive footage offers a unique access to the complexities of history
see BIRTH television archive

video active has a catalogue application, metadata & transcoding, thesarus module, multilinguality, launch in nov 2007 videoactive.eu

Video Active’s content selection strategy will be informed by the input of a wide range of television history scholars. For this purpose a conference will be held on 19-21 April 2007 at the Strand campus of King’s College, Universty of London.The conference is being organised by the Department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London, in co-operation with the Department of Media and Representation at Utrecht University as part of the Video Active project. The conference will play a crucial role in informing and influencing the development of the project’s content selection and editorial strategies.
Rethinking Television Histories: Digitising Europe’s Televisual Heritage

see also:

the harlem digital archive
archival.tv

elvira one of deptford.tv’s contributor presented the project from a collaborators POV, see programme & sessions as .pdf files.

Common Work / Glasgow

Common Work is a unique conference-event which aims to discuss and challenge some of the issues and tensions surrounding socially engaged arts practice

What is socially engaged arts practice – whose definition counts?

Who benefits?

What difference does it make?

Using Tramway’s world renowned visual art and performance spaces, Common Work will connect a range of people – artists, educators, academics – who share a belief in the power of art to explore issues of social relevance.

Common Work – a collaboration between the Participation Inclusion and Equity Research Network (PIER) and Tramway – promises to inform, challenge, entertain and enlighten

For more information please go to: www.ioe.stir.ac.uk/commonwork/abstract.html

Venue: Tramway, 25 Albert Drive, Glasgow, G41 2PE, Scotland

                    Open Knowledge 1.0
            Saturday 17th March 2007, 1100-1830
                    Limehouse Town Hall
                http://www.okfn.org/okcon/
          Organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation

  * Programme: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/programme/
  * Registration: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/
  * Wiki: http://okfn.org/wiki/okcon/

  * http://www.okfn.org/okcon/after/

On the 17th March 2007 the first all-day Open Knowledge event is taking
place in London. This event will bring together individuals and groups
from across the open knowledge spectrum and includes panels on open
media, open geodata and open scientific and civic information.

The event is open to all but we encourage you to register because space
is limited. A small entrance fee of £10 is planned to help pay for costs
but concessions are available.

## Speakers

### Open Scientific and Civic Data

  * Tim Hubbard, leader of the Human Genome Analysis Group at the Sanger
    Institute
  * Peter Murray-Rust, Professor in the Unilever Centre for Molecular
    Science Informatics at Cambridge University
  * John Sheridan, Head of e-Services at the Office of Public Sector
    Information

### Geodata and Civic Information

  * Ed Parsons, until recently CTO of the Ordnance Survey
  * Steve Coast, founder of Open Street Map
  * Charles Arthur, freeourdata.org.uk and Technology Editor of the
    Guardian

### Open Media

  * Paula Ledieu, formerly Director of the BBC's Creative Archive
    project and now Managing Director and Director of Open Media for
    Magic Lantern Productions
  * Fleur Knopperts of DocAgora
  * Zoe Young of http://www.transmission.cc/

## Theme: Atomisation and Commercial Opportunity

Discussions of 'Open Knowledge' often end with licensing wars: legal
arguments, technicalities, and ethics. While those debates rage on, Open
Knowledge 1.0 will concentrate on two pragmatic and often-overlooked
aspects of Open Knowledge: atomisation and commercial possibility.

Atomisation on a large scale (such as in the Debian 'apt' packaging
system) has allowed large software projects to employ an amazing degree
of decentralised, collaborative and incremental development. But what
other kinds of knowledge can be atomised? What are the opportunities and
problems of this approach for forms of knowledge other than Software?

Atomisation also holds a key to commercial opportunity: unrestricted
access to an ever-changing, atomised landscape of knowledge creates
commercial opportunities that are not available with proprietary
approaches. What examples are there of commercial systems that function
with Open Knowledge, and how can those systems be shared?

Bringing together open threads from Science, Geodata, Civic Information
and Media, Open Knowledge 1.0 is an opportunity for people and projects
to meet, talk and plan things.

Open Knowledge 1

Source: http://www.epsiplus.net/epsiplus/news/open_knowledge_1

21/03/2007

The Open Knowledge 1 conference demonstrates the value to be gained from opening up data and information.

London: Saturday, 17th March 2007

The old Lime House Town Hall in east London built in a by gone age (1879) hosts an Information Age event organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation. The Open Knowledge Foundation is a not for profit organisation that is incorporated in the United Kingdom as a company limited by guarantee.

The Open Knowledge Foundation exists to promote the openness of knowledge in all its forms, in the belief that freer access to information will have far-reaching social and commercial benefits.

The event titled Open Knowledge 1 focussed on two pragmatic aspects of Open Knowledge: atomisation and commercial possibility. This theme was developed throughout the day via an interesting programme that brought together the Science, Geodata, Civic Information and Media communities. The event concluded with a series of short sharp workshops that covered a broad range of topics.

The programme opened with an introduction from Rufus Pollock of the Open Knowledge Foundation. Rufus explained the objectives of the Open Knowledge Foundation and then the audience of 80+ people considered and took part in active debate following a series of presentations grouped under the headings:

• Open Geodata, chaired by Becky Hogge of the Open Rights Group
• Open Media, chaired by Andrea Rota of Liquid Culture
• Open Scientific and Civic Information, chaired by Jo Walsh of the Open Knowledge Foundation and OSGeo

Session 1: Open Geodata

An audio recording of this session has been published.

• Presentation 1: Open Geodata – Some personal thoughts given by Ed Parsons of Open Geomatics
• Presentation 2: OpenStreetMap given by Steve Coast of OpenStreetMap.
• Presentation 3: Free Our Data: A Technology Guardian campaign given by Charles Arthur, Technology Editor of the Guardian

A range of topics then arose in the discussion that followed as a result of questions raised by the audience. The topics discussed included amongst others:

• UK Ordnance Survey of Great Britain – behaviour of a monopoly, pricing, licencing, data quality, NIMSA, internal culture, led and dominated by the legal people employed.
• Role of legal advisors – they are involved in all parts of the business process but the Business Managers should be taking the decisions and guiding the organisation not the legal advisors.
• The role of the UK HM Treasury – lack of policy, Corporation Tax, not recognising the Information Society changes and that their policy needs to change
• The Role of politicians – they need to be challenged
• Whether Civic campaigns brought about change or rather direct action to over come the immediate issue lead to change in culture and policy. For example – providing maps for all by capturing topographic data and making that available.

Session 2: Open Media

• Presentation 1 given by Paula Ledieu of Open Media at Magic Lantern Productions.
• Presentation 2 given by Susana Noguero and Olivier Schulbaum of Platoniq
• Presentation 3 given by Zoe Young, coordinator of the Transmission metadata working group.

A range of topics then arose in the discussion that followed as a result of questions raised by the audience. The topics discussed included amongst others:

• Metadata – metadata interoperability, why not WWW Consortium
• BBC Creative Archive – what can be done to ensure the BBC opens up the archives that they hold on behalf of society? BBC Charter, BBC Trust.
• Understanding the collaboration process
• Business models
• Middle Class approach – most people have to focus on earning a living there is limited time available for voluntary activities such as some presented.
• Educational aspects: How to create a community. How to respond to a community.
• Human nature and the herd instinct.
• Life cycles: how long are people interested in particular information and initiatives.

Session 3: Open Scientific and Civic Information

• Presentation 1: Open science, Open data, Open products given by Tim Hubbard, leader of the Human Genome Analysis Group at the Sanger Institute
• Presentation 2: Peter Murray-Rust, Professor in the Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics at Cambridge University
• Presentation 3: Reflections on Civic Information given by John Sheridan Head of e-Services at the UK Office of Public Sector Information.

A range of topics then arose in the discussion that followed as a result of questions raised by the audience. The topics discussed included amongst others:

• Transformation government policy: too many web sites
• Allowing society to contribute by opening up the data: public sector spends too much time thinking about a solution before delivering it, allow innovation to operate, need to enable parallel paths and peer pressure competition to operate, allow the community to assist rather than be held at arms length.
• Skills – the society is skill rich and has a role to play.
• Use of click-Use-Licences
• EU initiatives and frameworks.

The day clearly demonstrated that:

• The information society was very broad as it touched on most human interest areas and as such no one part of society has the complete knowledge and skills to develop the knowledge economy.
• Opening up public sector data as well as that of large private sector publishing organisation’s would enable society to develop the information society in parallel with the Government initiatives.
• Knowledge and skills existed throughout society and that this would continue to grow as a result of the changing demography within Europe (The aging society and shrinking workforce). Opening data would enable this latent force of knowledge and skills to contribute to, participate in and benefit from the Information Society.
• The information age was clearly challenging the old models and methods developed and adopted by large organisation’s whether they be in the public sector or private sector and that they were slow to adapt.
• Civil society through direct action provided the catalyst for change.
• Infrastructure initiatives needed to ensure all parts of society were involved not just one part.
• The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Charles Booth Online Archive (Charles Booth and the survey into life and labour in London (1886 – 1903)) map of Lime House Town Hall summarises the issue neatly as the Charles Booth map is available and the comparison with the map of today from a private sector is also available!

ePSIplus analyst Chris Corbin whom filed this report attended the Open Foundation 1 meeting.

Freeing the Data in London

email discuss Posted by Jessica Clark on Mar 20, 2007 at 7:46 AM

quoted from http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/blogs/future_of_public_media/freeing_the_data_in_london/

How much access should members of the public have to the data and media projects that their tax dollars fund? How about corporations looking to make a buck from government-financed data? Does information really “want to be free,” as Stewart Brand famously pronounced more than two decades ago, and if so, who’s going to pay for its production?

These and other questions were on the table at the Open Knowledge 1.0 gathering this past weekend. Radical geographers, documentary filmmakers, DNA researchers and UK bureaucrats were among the panelists and audience members at London’s grubby but vibrant Limehouse Town Hall. What motivated this disparate bunch to devote their sunny Saturday to data? A passionate belief that information becomes more valuable when everyone is free to repurpose it.

Rufus Pollock, executive director of the Open Knowledge Foundation, kicked off the event by exploring the day’s themes of “atomization and commercial possibility.” From “genes to geodata, statistics to sonnets,” he suggested, data differs, but commonalities are greater. He noted that software developers have a rich history of open source practices for developing collaborative and iterative projects like the Linux-based operating system Debian; the idea now is to migrate those habits and legal structures to other disciplines.

According to Pollock, software development has learned to effectively atomize information processing, parsing out packets of coding to discrete individuals and stringing them back together into a working whole. Versioning systems, tagging, and numbered releases are all examples of practices that can be applied to other modes of knowledge.

Such a divide-and-conquer approach “allows us to deal with complexity,” he said. “Without it we’d be hopeless” His remarks reflect a similar realization in the creative arts—that the future is in aggregation and recombination, that reuse is the new creativity.

Mapping for the people

Becky Hogge, executive director of the Open Rights Group, moderated the day’s first panel on open geodata—a topic that has become particularly hot with the rising popularity of Google’s map-based mashups. Panelists included Charles Arthur, the technology editor of The Guardian and a principal organizer of the Free Our Data campaign; Ed Parsons, the former CTO of Britain’s national mapping agency, the Ordnance Survey; and Steve Coast, the founder of Open Street Map, a project that allows ordinary people to create collaborative digital maps by participating in “mapping parties” in which they attach GPS devices to their cars, bikes or persons and wander an agreed-upon region. Volunteers then translate these “traces” into lines, which are merged with existing public domain maps to provide up-to-date renderings.

Parsons kicked off the session by agreeing that government-funded geographical information should be more openly available, but noting that it is both expensive to produce and not particularly politically compelling. “Geodata doesn’t get votes,” he said. He suggested that the answer lies in more innovative, less bureaucratic licensing of the data for different uses.

In contrast to the United States, which places federally funded information in the public domain, Britain keeps much of its government-funded data under wraps, charging taxpayers, corporations and other government agencies to use it. Parsons had headed up an effort to provide more geodata for noncommercial use via an Ordnance Survey project dubbed OpenSpace, the hope of which was to “fill in the white space that is the gaps between the roads.” But the project has been scuttled for now, and he wasn’t able to provide details about what had happened to it.

Coast explained how his OpenStreetMap project is leading the charge against government ownership of geodata by harnessing the energy of volunteers to generate up-to-the minute maps, a “grassroots remapping.” The work of OpenStreetMap has revealed some of the tricks of commercial map-makers, who place small “easter eggs,” or false cul-de-sacs, in their maps to detect and prevent copyright infringement. OpenStreetMappers around the world can contribute to the “Free Wiki World Map” on the group’s site, and the process is “atomized,” because different volunteers perform different steps along the way. While the project is in is infancy, Coast suggested, it will gather momentum as data is added, putting pressure on private and government map-makers to lower the price of their information.

Arthur picked up the call for more public geodata with an explanation of his Free Our Data campaign, the goal of which is to make “impersonal data collected by the UK government organizations available for the cost of reproduction—which for digital is zero.” He explained that there’s some funny math happening within the government’s accounting: taxpayers dollars are used to produce one agency’s information, and that agency turns around and sells it to another agency for a profit, creating a false market value. “There’s a lot of data in there,” he said, “the trouble is that we can’t get it out.” He characterized data as the “mitochondria in the cell of government,” and suggested that by putting it in the public domain the government would both rid itself of administrative costs and significantly benefit the UK economy. He offered South Africa as an example—in 2000 the government made its maps available for free, and use of the data has grown by 500 percent.

“I don’t think this is a conspiracy, it’s a cock-up,” commented Parsons. “Government really doesn’t understand the value of the data that it’s sitting on.”

Content, copyright and community-building

The next panel examined some of the technological and legal underpinnings that are determining the use and distribution of digital media. Paula Ledieu, the director of Open Media at Magic Lantern Productions, and the former project director for the BBC’s Creative Archive project, spoke about the potential of open content and the challenges of licensing media in the digital age. She lauded the current explosion of user-generated archives like Flickr, “an extraordinary body of still images as a repository for us…a few years ago this would have sounded like a utopian la-la land.” However, content producers are still having a hard time finding visual, film and audio that is in the public domain. And, she warned, license experiments like Creative Commons risk creating “content ghettos.” She also noted that open culture experiments like the BBC’s Creative Archive are at risk; the project is currently closed down as the BBC puts it through a “public value test.” Measurements for assessing the value of such resources are scarce and poorly understood; Ledieu encouraged audience members to explore this area further, and in a later presentation, to respond to a whitepaper published by Ofcom (the UK’s version of the FCC) about the role and structure of public media in the digital era.

Other panelists offered examples for how content producers can engage with open information practices. A duo of presenters from Platoniq, a Barcelona-based collective, described a series of projects designed to combine open media distribution with public spaces, such as Burn Station. Their Bank of Common Knowledge project adapts the techniques of peer-to-peer media sharing to peer-to-peer education, allowing discrete chunks of information to be broken down and passed on via a network of volunteers. Presenters from the Transmission project described an international effort to develop open metadata standards for digital documentary film; the effort would make it easier for viewers to find the films online. They urged audience members to “join them in the fight for the freedom of the feeds.”

The science of openness

The final panel of the day tackled the question of how scientists might more easily gain access to data and research, often restricted by proprietary corporate ownership or the copyright protections of scientific journal publishers. Tim Hubbard, the leader of the Human Genome Analysis Group at the Sanger Institute, described how the process of opening up information about the human genome during a multi-organization collaborative research effort both made the research more effective and ensured that the data would remain in the public domain. The result was a shift in both scientific and corporate understanding of why it makes sense to “free the data.” Even companies are now agreeing, he said, that there’s “pre-competitive” information which it benefits everyone to have access to. He noted some current experiments in liberating pharmaceutical data from corporate control for pressing public health issues like malaria. “Biology is too complex for any organization to have a monopoly on data or ideas,” he said.

And yet, the scientific process of publishing research in peer-reviewed journals does often create a monopoly on news about new discoveries, held by influential publications like Nature. Peter Murray-Rust, a chemist based at Cambridge, described the efforts of the American Chemical Society to crack down on an open database of chemical structures, and praised the efforts of the Wellcome Trust to support open access scholarly publishing. He pointed audience members to the World Wide Molecular Matrix, an open respository of chemical information and molecules.

John Sheridan, the head of e-services for the UK government’s Office of Public Sector Information rounded out the day by trying to defend the official stance on public sector information, and to explain that they’re dancing as fast as they can. The audience was not impressed.

Formal panels were followed by informal presentations of a few interesting projects, including a proposed multimedia archive of the works of filmmaker Sally Potter, a database of public domain works, and a forthcoming project to make obscure but crucial U.N. documents more accessible to members of the public.

Proprietary system designers, grabby governments, and privatizing corporations beware! This was only version 1.0 of this intriguing event.