#spanishrevolution

Primer borrador / first draft

Over the past two months thousands of people have gathered in plazas and public spaces across local neighbourhoods in Spain. They have come together to constitute themselves into so-called ‘popular assemblies’. Theirs is a call to tomar la plaza: to take over the plazas and recuperate the barrio (neighbourhood) as a space of self-made political action – a making visible of the circuitry of do-it-yourself associative work that animates neighbourhood life.

In this sense, the assemblies are very much experiments in grassroots democratic self-organisation. Participants are not allowed to speak on behalf of political parties or partisan organisations. People attend on their own capacity, to speak in their own voice. Indeed, the assemblies have developed a democratic sign-language of their own. In the name of ‘respect’, participants are called to index their approbation or disapprobation of proposals by waving and gesturing their hands in an established etiquette. Proposals thus agreed turn into working groups staffed by volunteers. Different barrios are thus incarnating in different groups and projects their neighbourhood capacities. We will come back to the assemblies at the end.

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Entre los mapas locativos y las esperanzas de revolución blogger

El segundo de los seminarios ‘Empiria Digital’ que se celebran mensualmente aborda dos temas diferentes el próximo 10 de junio. Susana Zaragozá presenta la investigación que realizó en la Universidad de Ámsterdam sobre mapas locativos.  Situándolo en el contexto de las iniciativas por mapear colectivamente el territorio, Zaragozá se aproxima al estudio de algunas prácticas locativas desde la teoría no representacional de Nigel Thrifht. El segundo tema del seminario lo presenta Adolfo Estalella, que discute una etnografía realizada sobre los que denomina bloggers apasionados centrada en el análisis de las esperanzas tecnológicas de transformación social. Su trabajo analiza específicamente la emergencia, circulación y las condiciones materiales de posibilidad de las esperanzas de transformar diferentes ámbitos de nuestra sociedad (política y medios de comunicación) a través de Internet. El seminario se celebra el próximo 10 de junio, entre las 11.00 y las 13.00, en el Medialab-Prado de Madrid. Más detalles sobre los seminarios en Empiria Digital y en Medialab-Prado.

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Seminarios Empiria Digital, un espacio para explorar la dimensión social de Internet (y lo digital)

Comenzamos nuestros seminarios de Empiria Digital para la discusión de investigaciones sobre los aspectos sociales de Internet y las tecnologías digitales. La primera sesión se celebra el 20 de mayo en Medialab-Prado Madrid (11.00-13.00). Habrá una presentación a cargo de Carla Estrella, antropóloga, titulada: ‘Una antropología de los mundos virtuales: avatares, comunidades y piratas digitales ‘ y otra de Jara Rocha, de la Universidad Carlos III, que presentará su proyecto de investigación sobre interfaces gráficas con el título de ‘La interfaz como dispositivo cultural de monitorización y gestión de la experiencia‘. El nombre de los seminarios, mensuales y con intención de continuIdad, se plantean como señala eso que de manera laxa se designa como ‘lo digital’ como lugar privilegiado para comprender algunos aspectos salientes de nuestra contemporaneidad. La discusión que aspiramos a entablar busca suministrar diversidad frente a los discursos homogeneizadores sobre Internet y las tecnologías digitales, desgranar las múltiples articulaciones de estas tecnologías, explorar las diversas culturas digitales y cuestionar en ese proceso los mismos límites de ‘lo digital’. Y no en menor medida, indagar en los desafíos metodológicos que se plantean en estos análisis.

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New models for ‘cultural production’. The new is the culture, not the model

The Free Culture Forum (FCF) has published a document that under the title ‘How-To for Sustainable Creativity in the Digital Era’ made a strong defense of free culture and different strategists for promoting creativity inspired on it. The FCF is defined as “a space for creating tools and strengthening civil society in regards to the creation and distribution of art, culture and knowledge in the digital age”. Last November they celebrate their second meeting in Barcelona. After it, they have published the How-To for Sustainable Creativity… a declaration whose point of departure is very simple: “Many of the old models no longer work. They have become unsustainable and detrimental to civil society. We need to define and promote innovative strategies that make cultural practices sustainable and empower the wealth of society in general”. And following this statement they elaborate a long argument in favor of models for a “sustainable creativity”. I completely endorse the main principles of the declaration, although I don’t agree with their arguments. Paradoxical perhaps? I don’t think so.

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Prototyping: a sociology in abeyance

Along with our ethnographic piece (to which you’ll find a video-link in a previous entry), we further contributed a slightly more theoretical piece to the ‘Prototyping prototyping’ Episode which Chris Kelty directed for the Anthropological Research on the Contemporary Studio.

It is an unsually long entry, but we thought it was worth embedding it here too:

PROTOTYPING: A SOCIOLOGY IN ABEYANCE
Alberto Corsín Jiménez and Adolfo Estalella (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas)

Could we speak of a saint as a prototype for a religious movement or of a clue as a prototype for a crime?

Writing in the early 20th century, philosopher Max Scheler thought that heroes, saints and geniuses played a prototypical role for larger models of social organisation.[1] Scheler was interested in the distribution of ethical values across societies. Insofar as a saint was a role model for society, his character and charisma would indeed count as prototypical of certain value structures. The prototype carried a combined sociology of leadership and organisation. It released charismatic and transcendental values of significance for society as a whole. It spilled-over or ‘externalised’, as today’s economists might put it, ethical goodies. The prototype as a public good.[2]

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Arduino and the storytellers

What happens when the political economy of free/open source software is translated to the production and circulation of physical objects? This is one of the questions that intrigues me about Arduino. I attended last Friday the premiere in Medialab-Prado of a film that tells the history of this electronic project under the title Arduino. The documentary. For those not into the world of electronics, Arduino is an Open Source hardware that tries to translate the philosophy of Free and Open Source software into electronics. It is defined as:

an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators…

The main idea of free/open source software (this of free flow of knowledge without the restriction imposed by copyright; ok, it is much more than this) has been translated into very different domains like music, books and movies (I wrote about it when I worked as a journalist, even on open source hardware seven years ago!). In all these cases we are dealing with non-material objects that circulate easily on the Internet; but what happens when the political economy of open source is translated to the production and circulation of material objects that cannot travel instantly and so easily around the globe? This situation is closer to the classical work (v.g. Mauss) that has sometimes been used for approaching the analysis of free software. But while there is a huge literature of social analysis of free/open source software there is still very limited work on open source hardware. It is not so strange if we consider that the first Open Source Hardware Definition was published last week! But leaving this aside, I guess that there are many issues to be discussed. A small example of the implications of the physicality of objects: one of the advantages of Arduino is the reduced price of their electronic boards: around 30 dollars (sometimes three or four times below the price of similar products); however, when you send a board to some countries in South America it is taxed with 100 dollars in the custom. The price advantaged is lost.

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Episode 3

Building on our ‘Prototyping cultures’ conference, Chris Kelty has just directed a new Episode on ‘Prototyping prototyping’ for the Anthropological Research on the Contemporary Studio. The Episode is available here.

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The hospitable prototype

Here is the video of our talk at the Prototyping Cultures conference. Courtesy of Medialab-Prado. More video-talks available at their website.

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The cultural economy of open innovation

On December 2-3 we will be convening an international ‘brainstorming’ workshop on the cultural economy of open innovation. The event will be held jointly at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Spain’s School for Industrial Organisation (Escuela de Organización Industrial, EOI). Admission is free.

The language and practices of open innovation have taken hold of the imagination of urban life in the early 21st century. From the rise of ‘free software’ in the mid 1990s to the current adoption and promotion of ‘free culture’ in places and contexts as varied as public administration, national systems of innovation, urban planning or user-centred and local community initiatives, the imaginary of ‘openness’ is pervading social life. In this light, open innovation has transubstantiated from an original techno-economic concept to a wholesale sociological paradigm: ‘openness’ as a self-explanatory and emerging figure of the social.

The seminar inaugurates a three-year research project at the Spanish National Research Council which aims to study from a critical and interdisciplinary perspective the current emergence of openness as a figure of, and configurative framework for, the socio-economic structure of our contemporary. We want to study the cultural economy of openness as a new sociological paradigm: What contexts and processes legitimate and enable the circulation of openness as a cultural category across organisations, institutions and communities?

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Prototyping prototyping

Prior to our ‘Prototyping Cultures’ conference, Chris Kelty came up with the idea to ‘prototype’ the conference itself. The outcome: a conference publication finished before the conference. Awesome. I think the result speaks for itself. Thanks a million, Chris!!!

arce_episode2

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