De GERMINADOR wiki

Comments If you want to comment on this text, do it in the discussion page

David Gómez i Jaume Ferrer
TAG Taller d'Intangibles
December 2006

translation: Oscar Nogueras

Contingut 1 Introduction 1.1 Collective creation 1.2 Digging up, fertilizing, pollinating, sprouting 1.3 Open process, collaborative resource 2 Approaches 2.1 Providing proposals 2.2 Experiencing 2.3 Developing systems 2.4 Discussing and reflecting 3 Proposals 3.1 Traits of proposals 3.2 Ready-made proposals 3.3 Collective creation practices 3.4 Online systems 3.5 Generated proposals 3.5.1 Seeds 3.5.2 Germinats 4 Strategies 4.1 metaphors 4.2 explaining proposals 4.3 generating proposals 5 Parallels and derived 5.1 GERMINADORMaçart 5.2 Argila 5.3 Wiki Licenses 5.4 CzW-WzC 6 About this text 6.1 Copyright note 6.2 Version 6.3 Also available

Introduction

"GERMINADOR - sprouter of net collective creation proposals " is a project which started off in October 2005 and has been promoted by the artistic and research group TAG Taller d'Intangibles. We are equipped with our own technical infrastructure and other which is provided by the Institut Universitari de l'Audiovisual of Pompeu Fabra University. In the period 2005-2006, the project has been economically sustained by the Culture Department of the Generalitat de Catalunya by means of the "Fund for research and experimentation " intended to '...research projects, experimentation, analysis, criticism and curating, as a stage previous to the creation stage ' that gathers 'on one hand, those expenses resulting from researching and, on the other hand, those expenses related to the survival of the investigator while researching ' (DOGC 4326). Without this support it would have been quite difficult to carry on with a project like this. During more than one year, a personal and team research has been carried out consisting of reviewing everything related to collective creation we had to hand, but also unraveling possible new lines and exploring them. Identifying, harvesting and describing proposals; comparing them, organizing them and reflecting upon some of the questions that they pose. Searching strategies in order to explain them; generating new proposals.

There has also been a process of contrast and involvement with other people. In the middle of the project (May-June 2006) three people shared with us their points of view on the material collected and the topic: Roc Parés, Jaume Nualart and Laia Sadurní. The interviews with each of them have served for contrasting and exchanging ideas as well as for opening up new lines of exploration.

During the project, some workshops and activities have taken place in order to spread the partial results of the project and to make it easy for other people to participate in providing, generating and discussing the proposals. Some of these activities have been organized specifically, in other cases we have incorporated the dynamics of the project into activities we were already carrying out. Different institutions, organizations and people have made this possible: the multimedia studies of the UOC; the design degree of Elisava school; Gala Pujol, the IGAC and the Sales Municipals of Girona; the UPC foundation; the Kernelpanic hacklab and the Centre d'Iniciatives La Quimera; teachers staff of the CEIP El Dofí; the Research Department of Madrid community and the organizers of the blogAUT; the CSOA La Fibra and the participants /co-organizers of HackIluro hackmeeting.

The translations into Spanish and into English of this final report, the partial report, the explanation pages about the project in process in the wiki and some of the contents generated are thanks to Kconsonant team and Oscar Nogueras.

In summer 2006 we were asked to take part in Maçart Festival with an intervention working on the social and associative fabric of Maçanet de Cabrenys and a parallel and autonomous project emerged. GERMINADORMaçart had the economic and organizational support of the Festival and the active participation of people and institutions from Maçanet. This intervention partly shared the area of interest of GERMINADOR, especially as regards to carrying out collective creation experiences, but also it adapted itself to the local context gathering in other themes (collective activities, appropriation of objects and tools) that were also used as complement and contrast.

A great part of our work (even more than we thought at the beginning) has been devoted to the installation, configuration and maintenance of the technical infrastructure; to the review of activities and summary of interviews, compilation and publication of information; to the management related to the economic and legal aspect of the project; to the preparation of the material for the translators and to the publication of the translated material; to the coordination and contact with the people and collaborating organizations; to the spreading of the project; as well as to the organization of the environment and resources of online work.

We have also devoted some time to collecting seeds, making them sprout in kitchen sprouters, sometimes planting or eating the sprouts; to taking pictures of this process and to improving them as visual complement for the proposals.

We would not like this report to be understood as an "end". With it we intend to place on record what the GERMINADOR is at present, trying to include what we can provide by means of a review of the path covered from October 2005 since December 2006. Also we try to point out in it the working possibilities using the material collected and the structures created in these months.

On the other hand, this report is unavoidably partial due to several reasons:

• Partial because it is written in a determined moment in time and the idea is that the project continue much longer.
• Partial because it is written from a determined point of view that cannot represent the perspectives of everybody who has participated
• And finally partial because even when trying to produce a detailed review of what GERMINADOR project has meant up to now, we cannot help leaving some things behind or highlighting some more than others.

Those who happen to read this report would not round it up until having his or her own approach to the project, to the proposals and to the generated material.

Collective creation

"What is collective creation?" is an interesting question that we have not bothered about answering.

The fact of not becoming obsessed with it has been very useful in the process of the GERMINADOR in order to be able to collect a wide variety of proposals that we thought to be related.

The expression "collective creation" has a special energy which gathers around a field of research and experimentation that is related to other expressions such as "group creation", “groupware”, "co-creation", "co-authorship", "collaboration ", "cooperation", "participation". To distinguish what it refers to or what we would like to refer with each of them is something that may help us to understand the phenomena and the practices the project brings light to. But we should not forget that its meaning may be dynamic and may vary depending on the context.

In any case, in collecting the proposals we have opted for a non-regulated perspective, inclusive and not exclusive. We have not missed out on "seeds" or "sprouts" just because of having doubts about them being or not a proposal of collective creation, but we have tried to express these doubts as a complement of the description.

Digging up, fertilizing, pollinating, sprouting

The ambition (not at all complete) of this project has been to contribute by digging up the panorama of collective creation. To collect experiences, socio-technical systems, artistic practices, games... and formulate them as "proposals". To try to generate new proposals out of those by making variations, hybridizations or adaptations to other contexts and means. To study the traits of collected proposals in order to understand them better, to be able to compare them and to contrast each other and as the stem for reflection about what they imply.

Working by means of someone else’s work is often seen as negative within some artistic spheres. It is an activity that is carried out but that is hardly never vindicated; it is usually disguised as homage if a piece is taken from the “art world” or as parody if it is taken from outside. In any case, it is more common to praise the originality and the differences regarding previous works, rather than highlighting the continuity in the lines of research and development. It is not like this in other fields of knowledge and especially in the development of free software. The motto "don’t try to reinvent the wheel " invites us to take the work which is already done as a starting point, making the most of the code from other projects, supporting those projects already running without starting new ones to reach the same objectives.

Net.art driving force has triggered off a new appropriation of technologies which sometimes questions and/or explores rather unconventional possibilities. This attitude of experimentation has given way during the last fifteen years to projects quite significant as regards to this one, especially those which involve participation, collaboration and group creation. Most of them developed by individuals or small groups. The proposal of the “rules of the game” and the collective experience of creation are usually accompanied by the development of specific software that makes them possible. In spite of some exceptions, few of these software packages are free or their code published; even when in some cases the common traits or references to some other projects are stated explicitly regarding concepts and approach.

The increasing interest for web contributions has provided a new dimension to researching, developing and spreading of the groupware. The Wikis, spaces of self-publication, content management systems (CMS's) with collaborative resources, tag folksonomies for relating contributions, etc... Maybe the models are relatively few in relation to their spreading, but a great part of them are free software-based and above all every innovation is consolidated and gives way to a wider experience (due to diversity of contexts and number of people involved) which models its evolution. The realm of "contribution" in the web is the one of tensions between big important corporations and non-profit-in-mind organizations; communities of users and developers; and a diversity of social groups making technologies their own.

We would like the GERMINADOR project to be used for creating and reinforcing the synapses, for creating some relationships potentially fruitful, for contributing to soothe some taboos setting limits to re-use and experimentation. At least we expect to have oxygenated a little bit the fields, to have provided some nutrients, spread the pollen and seeds, and at the same time sprouted some proposals that may be used as stimulus to keep on experimenting.

Open process, collaborative resource

The main working resource in the project has been the "GERMINADOR wiki". A wiki is a system of web publishing where every page can be edited from the browser. There are different programs that enable this function; for the GERMINADOR we opted for MediaWiki software developed as technical infrastructure of the Wikipedia, and used by many other projects since it is free software and is distributed under GPL 2.0 license. Using free software that is being used in a big project where thousands of people are making an intensive use guarantees the minimization of bugs and a wide experience of use to refer to in order to look for examples of how to use it for determined needs. The use we make of it is quite different from the one of creating an encyclopedia but also different for other types of projects that involve quite a few different examples of use from those of MediaWiki.

During the project we have used the "GERMINADOR wiki" to describe and organize the proposals. We distinguish "seeds" to "sprouts" to differentiate between "harvested" proposals and those we generated out of their variations or hybridizations. The use of a system of templates has helped us to keep a common layout as a record form for the different proposals. The wiki has been used for many other things: such as the notebook to pencil down some research notes (that sometimes are left unfinished), of the reflections in the process, the interviews or the gatherings; as a working environment or as an outline for workshops and activities; as environment to write and publish texts; etc... Having employed a resource like this has make it possible for the process of the work to be open and accessible at any time. Thus, in an environment where most of the pages are editable by anybody, we have been able to organize the collected material and the structures of the work as a collaborative resource to keep on with the initiated task by enlarging, and if necessary, by transforming it.

On the other hand, the greatest part of the contents (unless the contrary is stated explicitly) is copyleft (we use GFDL license) and may be transferred to other online publications or reproduced in any format as long as the same conditions are maintained.

Approaches

We understand that to provide a unique approach to what the GERMINADOR project has collected and generated would be impoverishing its possibilities. The approaches are multiple and the fact that the material and the activity are developed mainly in the internet enables it to keep on developing depending on the interests of the individuals. Here you have some of them:

1. PROVIDING PROPOSALS: for those who would like to incorporate proposals which already knows, to create new proposals or variants of the existing ones.
2. EXPERIENCING: for those who feel like participating in experiences of collective creation.
3. DEVELOPING: for those who would like to develop systems of collective creation and would like to start from the systems already proposed
4. DISCUSSION AND REFLECTION: for those who are interested in theoretical reflection, knowledge of the characteristics of the proposals and the social and political implications of collective creation.

Providing proposals

The wiki is a live resource that can still be used for collecting and generating proposals. There is a specific page where we will try to guide you about how to do it. Our work during these months has also implied the creation of certain methodology (quite flexible) and a series of resources (such as the tags to describe and classify the proposals). There are some pages called "maybe seeds" and "maybe sprouts" in the case of someone feeling like adding "something" to be considered as a proposal. And there are some guides if someone feels like creating a specific page to describe a proposal that considers relevant or to create one from scratch.

We would not like to stop organizing activities, whether them being face-to-face or online, in order to foster the generation of proposals.

Experiencing

There would be some who would be interested in taking part in experiences of collective creation and would be able to use the GERMINADOR as a way to get to know them. For those who would like to experience, "GERMINADOR wiki" has a page entitled "Experiències CCX". From there, you can have access to systems of net collective creation that have been collected as proposals to participate in them. Also there is information on activities of collective creation that can be organized, as well as proposals described as DIY (Do-It-Yourself) instructions for those who feel like carrying them out.

The search for characteristics will also be an additional way to get to know the proposals that you may be interested in.

Developing systems

Those who would like to program and develop systems of collective creation, if nevermind to start from what someone else has created, there is plenty of material to do it in "GERMINADOR wiki". The page "Desenvolupar CCX" tries to gather those proposals which are ready to be developed or to create prototypes out of them. It also identifies those programs which are free software if someone feels like modifying them or participating in their development.

A great part of the proposals may require at least the creation of a prototype in order to contrast their approach by means of experience so that we would be able to see the practical problems that are posed and then to provide new solutions to start outlining their definition.

In some cases such in the Argila proposal, some technical challenges come up and it is necessary to consider how to solve them.

Discussing and reflecting

The topic, the collected proposals and the experiences which have been carried out are susceptible of discussion and reflection. If interested in this approach, you can visit the page "Reflexió i debat CCX" of the wiki where we try to link the open lines of discussion, the explanations about theoretical concepts, the texts, the classifications, etc...

The workshops and face-to-face gatherings happen to be a good occasion for discussion, especially when they are related to a time devoted to share an experience of collective creation that is later discussed in agreement. We think that the collected and generated material may be a useful resource for those who would like to organize an activity of this type.

We have created some texts during the process and we are still doing it. Apart from the notes in the wiki, we have written more detailed texts due to conferences and congresses or articles for publications. Some of them have a global approach on the project but some others try to deal with particular aspects in order to go into them in depth.

Proposals

Traits of proposals

Once we have gathered in some proposals, a way to understand their diversity is by looking at the traits that they share and those that make them different. Likewise, by contrasting how similar solutions are realized in every case.

Having this in mind, we have created an open list (that can be extended) of traits and we have used them as "tags" to describe the proposals. Using the categories of the wiki system, we have made use of these tags to group proposals into automatic lists according to their common traits.

Some of the most significant traits are the following: Synchronous/asynchronous: whether contributions made by participants are set to be executed at the same time or not.

A concurrence paradigm in time would be a jam session where musicians play together on stage or a ”happening” where several people gather in the same place to jointly create an aesthetic experience. There are several examples following the jam or happenings approach, but where time coincidence there is not space correspondence. This would be the case of 'Open Studio (on-line drawing) and Wikipool (on-line text and image composition) and of proposals similar to WOD WebOpenDraw or HOjam. In them, the proposals head towards synchronous participation but due to their session features remaining always open, asynchrony is not prevented.

There are some collected proposals that we consider synchronous not because of an aesthetic experience is being created simultaneously but because of participants working in parallel, each one on their own, so that what they got is worked through together to obtain only one work. This would be the case of the literary "game" Consequences and its variants. As it happens with the work in bits of paper of the REN activity, the inclusion of items into a list in PoLLECo or the drawing of squares that is being validated in Draw&vote online.

Asynchronous communication is a feature of Internet as well as asynchronous participation is also common to net collective creation experiences. Several proposals have been collected when participation is executed "in a self-determined time" so that participants may or may not coincide in space: Glyphiti, Gridcosm, HyGrid, PIXELdraw, Pixelfest, SwarmSketch, Communimage, DiscGrf, E-coo-sound, etc... Also there are proposals where asynchronous participation is absolutely necessary since a contribution precedes another according to an established approach. An example would be the practice of the cadàver exquisit, the chain drawings and their internet variants (such as FreakMachine), where everyone draws a part and leaves some lines for the following participant to continue the drawing. This "chain" contribution is realized in some narrative proposals like in The Floating Almiral where every writer was in charge of a chapter of the novel.

Amalgam-mosaic: whether the outcome of a collective creation is an "amalgam" where contributions intermingle or a "mosaic" where they fit into each other but remain identifiable.

The modeling of the Argila entre mans (G) may be a good example of amalgam. Even when somebody creates a quite significant element (a figure, for instance), it does not stop being part of the group and someone else may transform it or reintegrate it into the whole. Something similar happens with the image of Glyphiti, that even when being created by means of different squares, since they are exchangeable and participants are anonymous, we cannot understand it as distinguishable contributions. In the graphic share editor software OPEN Studio, the mixture of contributions on the same drawing space is even clearer. However, Wikipedia and SwarmSketch share a characteristic, even when one is an environment for text composition and the other for graphic creation. Both systems provide for an amalgam of contributions (the current version of the article or the last version of the drawing) but they have some mechanisms to restore every contribution independently (the history of changes and the comparison of versions in wikipedia, the voting of lines and the animation of the process in SwarmSketch).

Among proposals of collective graphic creation there are some constituting "mosaics". The clearest are Communimage, PIXELdraw or REN, Retícula d'Enllaços where participants add an image to a common composition. Once introduced, it cannot be modified (not even by the author him or herself). The Dins-Fora (G) proposal entails a similar idea of wrapping a building by means of projections. Gridcosm (L) is based on this idea of mosaic but the (social?) dynamics of the project itself makes authors try to "merge" their part with the rest. Precisely, interestingly enough from the audience perspective is to see how coherent images have been executed by different authors, everyone working on one square.

There are other proposals that are difficult to be displayed as mosaics but that they fit in contributions that do not integrate but link to each other. This is the case of the exquisite corpses and other of the like that have been already commented. Also COiNTEL, a comic that spreads out (where every panel is drawn by one person), and 'Un conte de mil maneres (A thousand-ways tale) where every page has different versions (drawn by different authors).

Protocols-decisions: whether there are rules or protocols regulating the integration of contributions and/or collective mechanisms for decision making.

Most of the proposals stated above, where contributions "fit in", somehow have a kind of rules or protocols that make them possible. Image size or dimensions must be taken into account as in (Communimage, Dins-Fora), some points must be linked to a line in (REN), or some lines must be extended so that the next participant continues as in (exquisite corpse and chain drawings). Depending on the case, protocols are more or less formalized, more or less explicit and the level tolerance for contributions outside the framework more or less rigid. In the case of the DiscGrf proposal, where diversity is pursued among consecutive images, the software itself would constraint the image to be placed at the same height or similarly as regards to colors among pixels. Some rules must be followed because there is nobody to negotiate them with.

Few proposals have a quite established mechanism for decision making. But there are several cases where voting systems are used as filtering procedure. This is the case of COiNTEL where by means of voting during a short period of time, it is decided which panel (among several alternatives) would ultimately pass on the main line (printed periodically) and which ones would remain as secondary branches. In applying vota6 to wikipool use we are setting a mechanism for decision making quite similar, but in a synchronous creation experience and also we are introducing successive voting processes and the possibility to comment on them. In the collective sketch of SwarmSketch the participant is allowed to draw a very short line but can influence on the final opacity of the line, thus on the relevance of the final drawing. In Draw&vote online contributions (squares constituting a common image) of one participant are also assessed by the rest who can validate or reject them. If rejected, they are susceptible of being made up again. And in E-coo-sound a voting mechanism is set influencing on the "visibility" of the music pieces (similar to filtering systems in photoblogs or blogs of news).

In Wikipedia the filtering of contributions has to do with the correction and review other participants may do. But this process is set within its own social structure as described in capes de ceba (onion layers). To those individual actions of restoring versions or correcting contributions on an article, some other mechanisms for decision making should be added such as those voting processes in cases of conflict or of selection of users as administrators. The grouping of wikipedists in linguistic communities and the associated communication mechanisms (the discussion page of every article, Village pump pages of every Wikipedia, or mailing list) facilitate contrast of opinions and common reflection.

Anonymous-identified-registered participant: whether contribution in collective creation implies or not identification, whether this identification is implicit or explicit, whether it requires a sign-up process and what it implies.

In a system like Glyphiti, the anonymity of participants stands to be a central aspect of the experience. The dynamics that emerge, to a certain extent, and the magnet of the proposal have a lot to do with the impossibility to identify who or how many people have participated. However in OPEN Studio where participants are also anonymous, we have an idea of how many people are interacting and can be identified through the chat. In SwarmSketch there is not explicit identification but the system uses the IP to constraint a double interaction and to identify the geographic "origin" of the participant. There are other cases where the access IP address is used as identifier for inner system processes.

In Wikipedia a kind of anonymity is possible (precisely, anonymous editions are identified by the access IP) but registration as wikipedists is promoted for the signing up as users in the system. This sign-up process does not require many personal data, nor there any kind of authentication of the information that is provided. Identification is made through a user’s name that gets identified as recognized identity depending on the activity on the articles and the options in discussion spaces. A similar situation occurs in the "community" SITO.org where the participation in SYNERGY projects of collective creation (HyGrid, Gridcosm, etc...), forum entries, together with the personal page and the portfolio in the Artchive, provides the registered user with a "personality". Due to technical matters, some systems do need registering to offer determined "services", especially those involving the recovery of information recorded in previous sessions.

There are several proposals where a kind of ephemeral or weak identification takes place. They are experiences where at a certain moment a name is required as input, which is used to identify the "authorship" of a contribution or to enable communication with the author ; but without implying any sign-up process. This occurs in Bubblr (L) where the created photo-comic panel is identified or in FreakMachine where it identifies the authorship of part of the drawing and allows the next participant to identify the e-mail sender". In Communimage it is used to block the box where an image will be inserted and, at a faster pace, as a nick-like function as proposed in DiscGrf.

Other traits that have been defined as tags are being considered to be included: if participant's perception of what is being created is global or partial; if participation is open or restricted to a number (or type) of user; when the process of participation or the resulting structure of contributions is susceptible of being understood as chain or tree-shaped; when in the experience there is a strong social component; when the communitary social structure follow a onion layers model; if the goal pursued by participants is set as games or it entails a quite significant ludic component; if the proposal has an undefined or limited length of time. Furthermore, some technical traits are defined (whether it is offline or online and, in the second case, if it grants resources for online editing; if it implies software and/or hardware; if it is a non-tech or low-tech proposal) as well as the media involved in the process of creation (text, graphic, audio, audio-visuals media).

Ready-made proposals

The ready-made concept, as we pointed out in the Report of July 2006, is from the begining part of the conceptual bagagge of the project. Keeping watch to locate possible "seeds", we have felt free of contextualizing practices and activities framing them under parameters of net collective creation, re-interpreting them and describing them as "proposals" with which to be able to experiment. Find below some cases where by means of a religious act, a novel, a street game, a tale or a regulation of author’s rights some proposals have been defined.

Ofrenda floral a la Virgen de Las Angustias (Virgen de las Angustias flower offering).

This religious act has been reinterpreted as a net.art practice. By analyzing the process that takes place in creating two flower compositions in front of the facade of the Virgen de las Angustias church in Granada the actors involved as contributors, routers and/or integrators got identified, providing the physical structure and florists who influence in the configuration of the bunch as basic unit of the composition. Comparing this "system" to the Communimage project we realize about the possibilities of automatization of the role of some of the actors involved in the digitalization of the process.

The Floating Admiral.

It was Miguel Ángel Falcón Pliego, participating in the UOC net.art CCR workshop, who pointed out this novel as referent for his proposal entitled Cierta histeria de amor. The procedure followed to write the novel has been described as proposal of collective creation and somehow more abstract as DIY instructions. The experience of the Detection Club detective novel is rescued and described as a "system" that may bring about new experiences.

Shadow monsters.

Merging shadows to make up weird figures is a game that emerges spontaneously out of everyday experience. Retracing the resulting figure (and sometimes working having it as start) has been used as a creative resource in education and entertainment environments. In the framework of the project, this activity has been experienced as part of GERMINADORMaçart and described as a proposal of collective creation. But here you have, Yoko Ono also described it as DIY instructions in 1963.

Sopa de pedres (Stone Soup).

The invitation to participate in Festival Maçart, whose motto was "stone soup", paralleled the start of the GERMINADOR project. Research and reflection on the traditional tale came with us and ended up constituting part of the activities of the GERMINADORMaçart. What happens in the tale was also added as proposal of collective creation where someone (the soldier) starts up a process that makes everybody contribute to a "work" (the soup) to be shared afterwards. Out of it some materials and the sprouted-experience "Sopa de Pedres, un conte de moltes maneres" (Stone Soup, a multi-way tale) emerged.

Copyleft.

Copyleft makes a creative use of the legislation regulating the author’s right to provide rights to the user that are to permit the creation of derived works as long as the same conditions are maintained. This regulation is spread through accumulated co-authorships that extend the freedom of use and modification. The regulatory framework of copyleft may be understood as the conditions setting the limits of a collective creation that ramifies and interwines.

Collective creation practices

We have tried to be alert in collecting collective creation practices of any field, even without being internet-based and the fact of being “on line” involved being susceptible to interpretations. As we have seen, to explore the potential of describing them as a "proposal" is quite interesting to us. This is a task which is surely uncomplete and that must be round up in the future. Find below some of the practices which have been collected.

The Exquisite Corpse and other Surrealist practices.

In their exploration of techniques to produce creative processes which are free from consciousness control, Surrealists and Dadaists borrowed some traditional games which have an unexpected or chance component. To this appropriation they added the use as tools for artistic research to the ludic nature of the game. Following this line, new activities were defined with the same intentions in mind. Most of these practices (re-appropriated or newly created) involve the co–creation of a work and/or the collective construction of an experience.

As proposals we have collected the cadavre exquis (Exquisite Corpse) in its graphic and written variants, the Consequences game and the Chain drawings. Surrealist practices have then been reappropriated and adapted to many different contexts, especially in the education field. We have also gathered in a variant of "Consequences" entitled QuiQuanOnQuè (WhoWhenWhereWhat).

As a part of the GERMINADORMaçart, an experience was carried out by adapting the "Chain drawings " that had been described as the Dibuixos comunicats - regals en cadena (Chain drawings – Chain gifts) proposal. Stemming out of this, the Qumran-enginy proposal has also been "sprouted". A descriptive tag has been used to identify those proposals related to Surrealist practices and a category entitled Proposta cadàver exquisit (Exquisite corpse proposal ) to group all the "GERMINADOR wiki" material related to this practice.

Jam sessions

The idea of the "jam session" is a strong referent that is part of the art imaginary that tries to incorporate participation in the work and its process of creation. Thus this description is present as the proposal of collective creation of the jam session, a musical performance where musicians get together to jointly play without having set any repertoire or having rehearsed before.

Happening

Another proposal that describes a practice in a general way. Even when not dealing with the conditions set in any particular case, the idea itself of participating openly without being focused on producing an object but on the event itself should also be present.

Online systems

In subtitling "net collective creation proposals ", we basically refer to online systems providing the conditions to create jointly or that account for the participation of the audience/user in the creation of the work. Find below some of the systems that have been gathered in as proposals.

SITO-SYNERGY

Started off in 1993 and maintained by Ed Stastny and Jon Van Oast, SITO is one of the most senior art community-projects. Under "SITO-SYNERGY" there are several experiences and systems of collective creation such as Gridcosm where images are created out of 9 squares, where the central is the reduced version of the previous image (so that a kind of tunnel is created). HyGrid also shares this mosaic conception as regards to contributions but bringing about a maze-like and hypertext structure. Apart from "Gridcosm" and "HyGrid", the Impulse Freak seed has been described, a project where a comic is co-created by means of a protagonist who provides the contributions with a unity and a "plot".

Communimage

Fathers of "Commmunimage", the "Calc" and Johannes Gees recognize the relation of this project to SITO but they understand the creation of the collective mosaic as a big-size image in constant growth thanks to individual contributions of the participants. As it happens with "Gridcosm" or "HyGrid" the user blocks a square and has some time to work with the image editor and to upload the resulting image to the server afterwards.

PIXELdraw

Another mosaic of square images of small-size made up by the contributions of participants that, in this case, draw with a graphic editing software that is running online. Developed by Joan Soler-Adillon.

COiNTEL

Hannes Niepold and Hans Wastlhuber are responsible for this system to create collectively, panel after panel, a comic by means of a simple online graphic editor. To highlight the filtering system already pointed out.

FreakMachine

"FreakMachine" is one of the adaptations of the Surrealist exquisite corpse in the net. Developed by Nick Langridge, this is another of the systems incorporating online graphic editing, but in this case it is implemented to produce one of the three parts of the drawing that will come out as a "Freak".

Artcontext

Using artcontext.org website as working platform, Andy Deck has developed several systems that provide it with the infrastructure and define the conditions of a collective creation experience. Up to the moment of writing this final report, Glyphiti (where an image is created by online editing its squares) and OPEN Studio (that establishes a synchronous experience of collective drawing) have been described as proposals. These two systems have been the centre of our reflections and studies for a long time. In the framework of the project, the GlyAlphiti sprout has stemmed out of it. Artcontext systems are some of the few "artistic" projects under GPL 2.0 free license.

Online drawing

Online graphic editing on a shared screen in a multiuser environment is one of the aspects of net collective creation that has been central to us. Apart from "OPEN Studio" others such as Pixelfest, one of the "experiments" of Cameron Adams at The Man in Blue website, where a participant decides the colour of pixel images; or SwarmSketch, developed and maintained by Peter Edmunds, where, as pointed out before, a topic is set for everybody to contribute to the drawing following an only line while influencing on the opacity of the lines the rest of participants draw.

Wikipedia

As you may have noticed from reading this text, the "Wikipedia" experience has been an important referent in creating this project. Apart from the project seed itself, we have gathered in the one of the Mediawiki software and the Proposta Wikipedia (Wikipedia proposal) category to group the materials of the "GERMINADOR wiki" related to it.

Wikipool

In 2003, from TAG we developed "Wikipool" as a system of visual shared composition to publish texts and images following a hapenning online. In the framework of the project, several sprouts have been generated as it is made explicit below in this report. Provided all the material that has been gathered, the "Proposta Wikipool" (Wikipool proposal) category has been created to group those published contents which are somehow linked.

Generated proposals

There is a great variety of generated proposals throughout the GERMINADOR project. Some proposals are only a brief note of an idea that emerged by manipulating the material on collective creation or emerged in a discussion in a workshop. Some others are more elaborate proposals, at the level of their operation design, theoretical level or level of speculation/anticipation of the experience that may bring about.

Seeds are considered those proposals that, although being generated during the project, they do not start directly from a previous collected proposal. They are usually the result of a "what if we do..." with a genealogy difficult to trace back.

Consequently, sprouts have been considered those proposals that start from or take as referent one or more collected proposals. In some cases they are variations or developments strictly linked to a particular proposal. Some others are hybridizations of some or new constructions but that they have a/some clear referent/s.

Find below of the generated proposals.

Seeds

Argila or Clay

"Clay" is a theoretical proposal that entails the development of a system of net collective creation susceptible of being deeply and easily modified. This poses a series of technical challenges and a discussion on the social and political dimension of the software. By means of "Proposta Argila (Clay proposal)" (for which a category has been created to group the many published materials in the wiki) many activities have been carried out, including discussions, the Argila entre mans (Clay between hands) experiences and the "Ur" sprout. Below in this final report there is a detailed account on "Clay" as project/s that becomes autonomous independently from GERMINADOR.

HOjam

"HOJam" is nothing but the formulation of an idea: to have a HTML WYSIWYG editor in an online multiuser environment at our disposal.

vota6

The "vota6" proposal is the resume of a group of ideas to create a voting system in multiuser environments (especially synchronous) that were defined in 2003. With it we try to obtain a mechanism of filtering and negotiation of proposals by providing opposite parties with possibilities and arguments. Out of this proposal a sprout has been generated where its possible implementation into Wikipool has been described.

PoLLECo

This proposal responds to the interest of a group of people creating a list of items in order to be working with it jointly in a workshop or in an education context. Stemming out of this "seed" a prototype has been developed and carried out in courses with administration experts at the UPC foundation, as well as in EDRA (a school art of Rubí) design studies.

Germinats

Wikipool variations

There are several sprouts that stem out of "Wikipool". On one hand we have located the copyleft dragging layers code that has enabled us to get rid of the proprietary code that prevented us from releasing it as free software. On the other hand, some sprouts have been established such as Wikipool MMW (to deepen into Wikipool as a variant of the Wiki system) or Wikipool amb vota6 (the application of the vota6 to the system). The participants of the workshop that was carried out in the Sala d'Exposicions of the Rambla de Girona proposed several sprouts and hybridizations with Omisa (most of them still to be developed). And out of the conversation with Jaume Nualart the idea of an hybridization between "Wikipool" and Casual emerged, involving the wikipoolitzation of Casual or casualitzation of Wikipool. This reciprocal interest has opened a line of work that has brought about the formulation of proposals and prototypes.

sprouts related to online graphic editing

It has been stated before that this is one of the lines of exploration that has brought about some sprouts such as WOD WebOpenDraw, almost a common sense realization in creating a multiuser drawing arena based on web standards and not encrusted into Flash or Java applications. Likewise Draw&vote online is based on the proposal that Josep Ferrando, student of the Elisava ,developed by means of a process of generation of proposals, also assisted by another student called Melody Brown.

mM tale

With the Proposta conte mM (mM tale proposal) category the sprouts and the material related to proposals involving the creation of "a multi-ways tale" are grouped. Everything stems out of the un conte de mil maneres (a thousand-ways tale) sprout that is an exploration of collective narration which is not based on contributions to the plot but on obtaining several graphic interpretations of each of its parts. Out of this proposal and making use of the "stone soup" tale we experienced Stone soup, a multi-ways tale that was presented in Festival Maçart with the participation of kid summer camps from Maçanet de Cabrenys, Banyoles and Premià de Mar. The proposal has been described as DIY instructions in order to make it easier for those interested in carrying it out: Conte en 10 cadires – DIY (Tale in 10 chairs- DIY).

GlyAlphiti

As easily recognized by its name, this is a variation of Glyphiti. Nothing from the graphic implementation of the software is modified but here we have the possibility of using text trying to respect the anonymity nature of the contributions that is a central feature in the programme. The proposal emerges from the discussion on "Glyphiti" in the La Quimera workshop carried out with Kernelpanic.

time-line participation

Some of the proposals derived from the work carried out in the net.art subject of Elisava coincide in the fact of approaching participation in a time line. Animació col·lectiva (Collective animation) is a generic proposal that want to account for future developments gathering somehow, Alex Camacho’s proposal. Rounding up Tomàs Luckacs’ proposal, E-coo-sound has been described, which transforms a music editing environment into an online multiuser programme.

Setting out synchronous participation in the time flow in ImageChat, out of Anna Martínez’s work, the idea of the chat is resumed to create conversation together with text and images. Running on a line of graphics and looking for discontinuity among them we find the DiscGrf sprout that is established by those proposals by Adrià Llahí and Anna Martínez herself.

new proposals with mosaics

There are two sprouts that emerged from the net collective creation workshop of UOC that establish proposals in collective creation of image mosaics. Tablero de imágenes by Carlos Salgado is the starting point for developing a system to be applied to any project involving mosaics. The other, Dins-Fora by Isabel Pérez Vidal, is based on the use of projectors to "wrap up" a building with images by means of graphic contributions that people send from their mobiles or through internet.

Do-It-Yourself instructions

There is a tradition that starts from artistic practices related to the punk and alternative scene of the second half of the 20th century also known as DIY, acrononym of Do-It-Yourself. Gathering this tradition in the "GERMINADOR wiki" we have started to describe some proposals by means of a sequence of instructions that facilitate their execution by any group of people.

Some of these sprouts are the Tale in 10 chairs- DIY that somehow explains quite generically and schematically the experience carried out in Maçart; the REN DIY for those who feel like experiencing a mosaic of links; and Floating chain DIY that generalizes the proposal of the writers of the The Floating Admiral. Also there is a reference to the DIY "Work-shadow" by Yoko Ono, very similar to the Shadow monsters proposal.

Strategies

metaphors

'When we don’t understand something, we try to find analogies with other systems as metaphors of what we don’t understand. If we take the metaphor too seriously and we develop it theoretically, we end up trapped in a metaphoric paradigm, that even when seeming quite suggestive, it sometimes blocks the way to direct research of that very same thing.'

Jesús Mosterín La naturaleza humana Austral:Barcelona 2006. Pàg.162.

This is a project built up on a metaphor. The metaphor of the kitchen sprouter where we put proposals-seeds to make them sprout. Being aware of the danger Mosterín points out, we have taken the metaphor as something temporary. We have tried to be self-reflective in order to realise when it stopped being useful or when we were twisting it too much. It has also been complemented with a conceptual bagagge (socio-tech system, ready-made, social sculpture, hacking, etc...) that has been extended as we have tried to find other metaphors in order to get different points of view.

The GERMINADOR metaphor is meant to draw itself in the observer’s imaginary as a "place" or "container" where to find and leave proposals; as well as a "processs" facilitating the creation of new proposals by means of the uncomplicated manipulation of the material that is being collected.

The idea of "seeds" and "sprouts" happens to be a useful tool to organise the work and to understand some aspects of the process; but it is not enough (even useless) to understand the proposals. That is why we have forgotten about it when organizing them according to their features.

In the "Argila-Clay proposal" we have also made use of a metaphor to explain a system that could be "modelled". Previous attempts to define what we wanted to explain as a "non-lineal system" ended up being incomplete and did not have the force provided by the clay metaphor.

A way to exorcize the blocking dangers involved in the metaphors has been to recourse to the literality of the analogy and to experience the sprouting of seeds and clay modelling. This focus on experiencing has helped us to understand the limits of the metaphor and the differences between referent and simile.

explaining proposals

One of the main concerns of this project has also been "how to explain" the proposals. Some forms were defined in order to have fields to be shared among them, and the tags were created in order to describe and classify the proposals according to their features.

But the potential the wiki offers has also been exploited as a flexible arena to test different strategies to communicate what the proposals consist in. To find different points of view to "explain" also helps us to better "understand" what we are explaining. This may lead us to create other proposals or to generate a variation.

Find below some of the communication strategies that have been used throughout the project:

Diagrams

Whether it being a handmade sketch or an elaborate diagram, outlines sometimes help us to explain how a system or the elements taking part in an experience work. An example would be the two complementary diagrams we use to explain "Connected drawings – in-chain gifts": a picture with notes and highlighted areas to explain the context of participation is complemented with a diagram that explains the procedure. In a derived proposal, "Qumran-enginy", a quick handmade outline is included as a resource to record an idea. In Vota6 a diagram is also used to explain the parallel actions of 3 possible participants.

Illustrated diagrams

By means of the introduction of the material to be projected in a presentation we found figure drawing as a schematic way, and somehow characterized to explain some proposals. We developed this "strategy" to explain "hacks" and "collective activities" at GERMINADORMaçart and then we kept on developing it in order to explain some proposals of collective creation.

We have made use of illustrated diagrams to explain Argila, both in the wiki pages and in the panels exhibited in the HackIluro. On the other side, graphics on paper have been used in La Quimera workshop and the material gathered in the wiki, there is the diagram of the Stone soup and the one explaining the roles in the flower offering to Virgen de las Angustias. Illustrated diagrams have also been used to explain Onion layers, the Wikipedia or some aspects of Glyphiti.

Interaction scenarios

Interaction scenarios or use cases is a technique defined by Alan Cooper and used in interaction design where a ficticious situation is narrarted and the person makes use of an interactive system. It is about creating a credible narration that allows us to visualize the situation as if it was real and thus to foresee the situations that may entail. The description of scenarios is thought to be based on the user instead of on the producer, designer or technological matters.

In the project this technique has been used in order to try to recreate situations susceptible to collective creation from subjective experiences. It is specially used as a resource to try to visualize those systems that are not yet present and that are being proposed as "vota6" or in their application in "Wikipool with vota6".

Explaining proposals by means of outlines, diagrams, interaction scenarios or other communicative strategies is something that can still be developed. Yet, there are many proposals not properly explained or some other which can be approached from a different perspective.

generating proposals

How to stimulate the generation of new proposals? We think that having the "GERMINADOR wiki" as a resource that is both an information container and a working space may be a way to do it. But we are also interested in exploring alternative or complementary strategies.

Find below two of them as a result of some experiences carried out during the Germinador process:

hacking the bottle

A way for the participants in a workshop to have a clear referent of how we can re-contextualize or modify a system of collective creation may be by means of the comparison with an everyday object such as a bottle.

We gather in proposals of change of use or context without modifications (we call them ready-made) and changes that imply modifications (we call them hacks) on a plastic bottle. Once the procedure is clear, we present the system (or systems) with which we want to work and we do the same with it, proposals of re-contextualization and/or modification. We may work individually or in groups and then we do an idea-sharing session. By means of those resulting ideas, if possible, more elaborate proposals are susceptible to be developed.

This strategy was followed in the workshop that took place in the exhibition gallery of the Rambla de Girona (March 2006) and also it was used in the net.art subject from Elisava (third term, course 2005-06) and in the workshop with Kernelpanic (September 2006). We also collected several hacking the bottle proposals in the "Germinador@lloc" (September 2006).

constrictions raffle - proposals sharing

Potential literature shows how setting oneself limits and conditions may be a stimulus for creativity to bring about interesting outcomes. From this point of view, the proposals of collective creation could be studied as a group of annotations that make shared experience possible. This approach entails the fact that working with constrictions may be a good strategy to generate proposals.

Starting from a list of conditions that the system that we would like to design may have to fulfil. We take some at random (2 or 3 conditions) and we try to define a proposal that accounts from them.

If we are a group of people following this procedure, once the first draft is done we add a new condition and we exchange it with another person. This one must start from our proposal and modify it by introducing a new condition.

This procedure was used in the net.art subject at Elisava to stimulate the generation of proposals. By means of these two steps we have a "bank of proposals " of which every student develops a more elaborate one.

Parallels and derived

Many proposals or lines of work started in the "GERMINADOR project " may resolve as potential projects becoming autonomous so that they start "running on their own". This is one of the set-up intentions of the project. Find below 3 projects linked to GERMINADOR that in writing this final report they have began or are about to have their own autonomy.

GERMINADORMaçart

GERMINADORMaçart is the result of the confluence between the GERMINADOR project and the Festival Maçart where TAG Taller d'Intangibles was invited to participate. In this 9th edition of the festival of contemporary culture that is hold in Maçanet de Cabrenys (Alt Empordà), the motto "stone soup" guided the contributions of artistic groups towards the social fabric of the town.

Stemming out from the stone soup idea, the project dynamics and object metamorphosed and adapted to the festival. The identification of collective creation proposals got extended into several types of actions or activities of collective nature. Also we paid special attention to people's appropriation of objects, tools and technologies. From July 2006 onwards, quite many visits and contacts with people and institutions of Maçanet made up a process that developed into the transformation of the Tourist Office into the "GERMINADOR@lloc" site where documentation, activities, objects and plants came together.

"GERMINADOR@lloc" make it possible to participate in several experiences of collective creation such as the chain drawings/chain gifts, the thousand-ends tale implemented on 10 chairs or the clay between hands. Ideas were also to be provided in order to hack a bottle or use the "cooperative skis" together with other people. "GERMINADOR@lloc" worked well as a working space. Descriptions of activities had been collected and under the ambiguous motto "we are all hackers?!", examples of re-use and modification of machines, tools and objects. All this information appearing in the wiki was printed and hung on the clotheslines. Meanwhile we kept on working collecting other statements and drawing diagrams to help for a better understanding of the collected material.

Outside the Office, an announcement invited to make shadow monsters and instructors, boys and girs of the kid summer camp “Estiu Creatiu “with whom we had collaborated presented a group of games from all over the world.

The extension of "GERMINADORMaçart" focus of attention as regards to "GERMINADOR project" was used to refresh it and to provide it with elements of contrast. On one hand it was about applying a net dynamics towards a local dimension. But on the other hand collective creation was compared to other collective activities (games, organization of events, forest defense,...) that were not focused on the creation of any "work". And the recontextualization of the adjective "hacker" helped us to think about how people position themselves before objects and technologies beyond digital or internet spheres.

Argila

"Argila-Clay" is a theoretical proposal that considers the possibility of creating an online multiuser system aimed at collective creation gathering the following features:

• Susceptible of being reprogrammed while being used
• Any participant must find it easy to programme
• Being stable in spite of changes
• Being distributed to guarantee a decentralized control

The goal of this approach is, rather than obtaining a viable design, it is more focused on questioning the authority principle exercised by means of authorship or expert knowledge on those technologies collectively used.

So far we have had the chance to discuss and contrast ideas on this proposal in two discussion-workshops, in Quimera with kernelpanic (Gràcia, Barcelona) and in HakIluro (Mataró) respectively; as well as in the online forums of the CyberSociety Observatory Congress by means of a paper about art and technology there presented.

The "Germinador@lloc" within the Maçart Festival provided us with the opportunity to put into practice what we call "Clay between hands" (to be contrasted with the "Clay" proposal as a tech system). For three days people was able to work on a piece of clay that kept on being modified. The experienced was repeated, also for three days, in Mataró during the "HackIluro" hackmeeting where the process was recorded by a web-cam. And recently, Anna Luna from El Dofí school has carried out a variant with her students of year 6 primary school.

We understand "Clay" and "Clay between hands", jointly or independently, as proposals with a strong potential to generate reflection by means of discussions and experiences. Likewise they seem to be quite easily adaptable to different contexts.

Wiki Licenses

In order to identify the licenses used in the software and the contents of the proposals of collective creation, we found it useful and necessary to list in the "GERMINADOR wiki" some links to complement that information. But we have realized that this material may also be useful to be linked from other wikis, web sites or weblogs as a way to contextualize references and comments on these licenses. Furthermore, due to the compatibility GFDL offers, the contents can be transferred to Wikipedia and the other way round. It is also a material that can be freely reproduced and modified in any format.

The Wiki Licenses project emerges somehow "naturally" as a project stemming out of the " GERMINADOR Project " and aimed at obtaining a reference page on licenses related to author/user’s rights and available online, under GFDL copyleft license and susceptible of being jointly improved and updated on a wiki system.

CzW-WzC

CzW-WzC is the acronym for "Casualitzation of Wikipool, wikipoolitzation of Casual" that identifies a line of work that began in the last stage of the project with the collaboration of Jaume Nualart. By means of the interview we started to think about the idea of exploring the possibilities of hybridization of the Casual and Wikipool systems. Provided the interest in the idea, we decided to devote some time and resources of the project to execute it. Out of the exchange of ideas, several proposals and lines of work came up and have been explained in of the wiki. This collaboration has also implied the review of the software involved and the processes of development to permit (yet in another project or in a new stage of this one) the convergence between the two systems in order to carry on with some of the proposals.

About this text Copyright note David Gómez and Jaume Ferrer 2006. Oscar Nogueras for the English translation. This text is under ( by-nd 2.5)license. You are free to reproduce it as long as it is under the same license. Version 1.2 (review 1/2007) Also available Download from GERMINADOR repository (47 Kb, v.1.2 ODT file - 700 Kb, v.1.2 PDF file) Download from lafarga documents directory (47Kb, v.1.2 ODT file)