Michael Atavar (www.atavar.com) is an artist who works with the unconscious, using methodologies of chance and process to make performances both in real time and in the online environment. In 2001 he was artist-in-residence at the Guardian Newspaper producing a print piece for G2 magazine in an unlimited edition of 400,000 copies. Recent performances of his latest work ‘dusk’ have been at the Hayward Gallery, V&A and Artsadmin. An article in The Times by Grayson Perry about Michael Atavar can be found at http://www.atavar.com/dusk/

Joe Banks is a writer and artist.

Matt Locke is Creative Director at BBC Imagineering; a small ideas led innovations team working to combine creativity, technology and multi-disciplinary talent. Imagineering helps to develop new types of content for future audiences. Research areas include media toolkits for communities, avatars, 3D immersive environments, intelligent agents, user interface, and metadata. In addition to this, he writes and talks widely about issues related to technologies creative practise, including recent articles for Portfolio, Third Text, Public Art Journal, Transcript and Mute.

Steve Beard is the author of the ambient novel Digital Leatherette (Codex 1999) and the artist’s book Perfumed Head (Bookworks, 1998). Selections of his essays and journalism are available as Logic Bomb (Serpent’s Tail, 1999), and the forthcoming Aftershocks (Wallflower, 2002). Mappalujo is a new, internet-based collaborative writing project by Steve Beard and Jeff Noon, published at http://mappalujo.com Online resources relating to Steve Beard’s work can be found at www.codexbooks.co.uk and at www.bookworks.org.uk

Stewart Home is an artist who has used social networking sites such as MySpace as the location for much of his non-gallery work in recent years. He is also the author of many books of fiction and cultural commentary, including 69 Things to do With a Dead Princess (Canongate, 2002)), and The Assault on Culture: Utopian current from Lettrisme to Class War (AK Press 1991). His latest novel is Memphis Underground (Snowbooks, 2007). Online resources relating to Stewart Home’s work can be found at
www.stewarthomesociety.co.uk

Non-proprietary or free approaches to creating and distributing digital tools and content have come increasingly into the public eye. The Free Software and Open Source movements – centred around operating systems, programming languages, and other utilities – have inspired (and been inspired by) a diverse group of initiatives. Apparent in all these movements is a tendency to reinforce the breadth and richness of the public domain in cyberspace. They create new kinds of collective goods, while at the same time challenging traditional copyright regimes, and questioning more individualistic modes of authorship.

To consider these issues the Collaborative Arts Unit of the Arts Council of England and the Academia Europaea, in partnership with the new Crucible agency at the Computer Laboratory, Cambridge and the Cambridge University Law Faculty’s Intellectual Property Unit, held a Conference at Queen’s College, Cambridge, in April 2001. The conference, CODE – Collaboration and Ownership in the Digital Economy – brought together leading theorists and practitioners in the media, software, law, technology and the arts to ask: How do non-proprietary principles contribute to creativity and collective action? What problems may be encountered in the legal domain? Will the current efforts of established IP rights holders to extend copyright enforcement eventually be reconciled with this emerging world of free-flowing, network-based collaboration? What lessons may be gained from alternative concepts of ownership? How can these movements interface with regular commercial practice?

The Arts Council of England’s Collaborative Arts Unit has commissioned a series of new texts from leading, UK-based researchers and writers, which contribute different perspectives and views to the issues raised by the CODE Conference, providing both a background resource and a location for the continuation of these debates. These books are published in the Diffusion eBook format, and are available both from this site, and from Metamute.

Tony White
February 2002

Publisher: The Arts Council of England
Publication Date: April 4th 2001
Series Editor: Tony White
Production: Giles Lane
Design: Paul Farrington & Nima Falatoori

Contributors:
Michael Atavar, Joe Banks, Steve Beard, Stewart Home and Matt Locke.

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About to come

Published November 2002

Joe Banks is a writer and artist.

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About : <Code as nature, code as being here, code as process.>

Published November 2002

Michael Atavar (www.atavar.com) is an artist who works with the unconscious, using methodologies of chance and process to make performances both in real time and in the online environment. In 2001 he was artist-in-residence at the Guardian Newspaper producing a print piece for G2 magazine in an unlimited edition of 400,000 copies. Recent performances of his latest work ‘dusk’ have been at the Hayward Gallery, V&A and Artsadmin. An article in The Times by Grayson Perry about Michael Atavar can be found at http://www.atavar.com/dusk/

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 128Kb

About to come

Published March 2002

Matt Locke is Creative Director at BBC Imagineering; a small ideas led innovations team working to combine creativity, technology and multi-disciplinary talent. Imagineering helps to develop new types of content for future audiences. Research areas include media toolkits for communities, avatars, 3D immersive environments, intelligent agents, user interface, and metadata. In addition to this, he writes and talks widely about issues related to technologies creative practise, including recent articles for Portfolio, Third Text, Public Art Journal, Transcript and Mute.

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 128Kb

About : Anti-capitalist critique of hype around the electronic frontier which is still pertinent to ongoing debates about the development of Web 2.0.

Published March 2002

Stewart Home is an artist who has used social networking sites such as MySpace as the location for much of his non-gallery work in recent years. He is also the author of many books of fiction and cultural commentary, including 69 Things to do With a Dead Princess (Canongate, 2002), and The Assault on Culture: Utopian current from Lettrisme to Class War (AK Press 1991). His latest novel is Memphis Underground (Snowbooks, 2007). Online resources relating to Stewart Home’s work can be found at
www.stewarthomesociety.org

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 128Kb

About : ‘Wapping Ghost Ship’ is a mash-up of nineteenth century journalism in the East End of London by the Uncommercial Traveller (aka Charles Dickens) with contemporary psychogeography by the Mass Transit Lounger (aka Steve Beard). The result is an example of Anthropofferjist fiction.

Published March 2002

Steve Beard is a writer who has produced essays for the ‘journal of fierce sociology’ Inventory, collaborated with London Fieldworks on two installations and is working with the visual artist Victoria Halford on a film about the Health and Safety Laboratory at Buxton. His essays and articles have been compiled in two volumes, Logic Bomb and Aftershocks. His latest novel is Meat Puppet Cabaret.