Towards a Culture of Open Networks [T_CON]

T_CON is a collaborative project between the Waag Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam, The Sarai Programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi and Public Netbase, Vienna enabled by the EU-India Cross Cultural Programme, 2003 under its media, communication and culture dimension.

The collaboration is an initiative focused on bridging "Information Society" in Europe and India through Culture and Communication.

The Vision of the Project:

1. Today, the streets of European and Indian cities are beginning to speak to each other. Walking down the heart of downtown Amsterdam or Vienna, phone shops and internet cafes catering to a hybrid clientele of locals and immigrants promise connectivity to the streets of Indian cities. Films, music and software from India are beginning to make their presence felt in European capitals. Media practitioners and software programmers from India and Europe, as well as scholars, researchers and activists working with communication mediums in India and Europe are beginning to interact with each other on a regular basis.

2. New Media, Information and Communication Technologies, particularly digital media (computers, the internet, software culture and new digital peer-to-peer networks for the sharing of data and cultural material) are vital to this process of process of dialogue, interaction and exchange. There is a great potential for developing and strengthening existing relationships between India and Europe that can impact positively on the interface between media, the info sphere and culture in both spaces.

3. T_CON recognizes the emergence of an "Information Society" in Europe and India. Here, the term 'Information Society' is taken to mean a web of social, cultural, economic and political relationships that give primacy to the production, assimilation and distribution of information. Looking at contemporary Europe and India, particularly at the rapid developments in recent years in computer and telecommunications based 'info economies' in both spaces, it is evident that 'Information Society' is a theme that carries within it many possibilities for the inauguration of a timely, engaging and mutually beneficial process of collaboration, exchange and dialogue. We believe that our network is best placed to play this role in a manner that is innovative and dynamic, and at the same time sensitive to local, ground realities in each of our spaces.

4. Urban spaces in both India and Europe are intensely communication rich societies. Contemporary Indian cities are spaces with active networks of connectivity through distributed and easily available internet access, public cultures of computer usage and high media density. European cities have seen the emergence of an active public built around the everyday life of new communication and information practices.

5. These realities call for the development of innovative approaches to the interface between society and information technology, which a network embracing Indian and European initiatives (such as one constituted by Sarai and the Alternative Legal Forum in India, the Waag Society and Public Netbase in Europe) is particularly well positioned to undertake in the fields of media, communications and culture.

6. All the activities and processes envisaged in T_CON are attempts to transcend the binaries of India/Europe, Culture/Technology, Information/Society, Theory/Practice and Research/Production in order to give rise to more agile categories, concepts and practices that are commensurate to the complexity of our times, our spaces and the pathways that we navigate to arrive at points of convergence where cultures, knowledge systems and practices intersect in the contemporary global moment.

7. At the same time, the partnership recognizes that there is a clear necessity to go beyond technology per se and see how online connections, and digital interfaces translate in the real world of creative collaboration, intellectual dialogue and cultural sharing. Here, digital media (as the foundation and interface of the process) needs to be seen as a means, as a provocation for an agile method of imparting informational dynamism, public transparency and extensive dissemination for deeper, more structural processes of collaboration.

8. Hence, the T_CON partnership will focus especially on the social, cultural and legal frames which technology finds itself located in - issues such as Free, Libre and Open Source software (FLOSS), cultures of production and knowledge sharing’ language, the localization of interfaces, operating systems, browsers and software in general, the ethical concerns that underpin communicative action, the new political and social ramifications of the emerging reality of an 'information driven' society, the building of 'public spheres' and 'commons' through digital interaction and cultural action, and the implications of intellectual property on culture, especially in a digital environment take on a special significance here. These are the thrust areas of the processes envisaged by the project.

9. These thrust areas are to be realized by a concerted programme of activities and processes that are being collaboratively designed by the partnership that constitutes the project. This website will act as a chronicle and public platform for these processes A broad framework of activities and processes envisioned by the partnership is as follows:

Initiation of creative and artistic processes, through residencies, collaborative projects, workshops and online/offline exhibitions of artistic and media content reflecting the themes of the proposal. These will be hosted on a rotating basis by the three partners in the network.
Serious theoretical reflection on the social and cultural implications of interventions within "Information society". Formulations of Position Papers designed for IT based interventions within civil society frameworks. Comparative analyses of social usages of software projects, particularly those using Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in India and Europe.
Analysis and investigation of the legal frameworks within which new media practices (particularly video, audio, image based, software and other cultural materials such as fine arts, music and print) find themselves in the contemporary context. Here, the project would emphasize analysis and investigation of the developing discourse of intellectual property law and its implications for cultural production in Europe and in India, in the light of the legal and licensing innovations surrounding the ideas of "cultural and creative commons" that lie at the heart of FLOSS philosophies.
The facilitation of a variety of open source software dedicated towards social and community oriented projects in the course of a three-year long collaborative process initiated between the partners.
Analysis, investigation and debate on the ethical dimensions, rights and obligation pertaining to the freedom of expression with regard to the politics of information, media practice and an ecology of communication in democratic societies and political cultures such as Europe and India.
Dissemination of the ideas, processes and outputs of the project through an active outreach programme to a wider constituency of practitioners, researchers, community workers, educationists, theorists, artists, programmers and technicians and youth in India and Europe. The outreach programme will be actualized through a combination of publications, web presence, events (conferences, workshops, seminars) exhibitions and screenings.

10. Each partner in the network brings different strengths to the partnership - the Waag and Public Netbase bring a vibrant history of public initiatives in new media culture and efforts to open out media publics and practices through interventions in civil society: events like world information.org, and open cultures, executed by Public Netbase and innovative community oriented software processes developed at the Waag. Sarai brings a strong interdisciplinary research, theoretical and intellectual base, a proven engagement with the interface between digital culture and society as evinced in the Cybermohalla project, as well as a history of cultural production. The partnership builds on existing histories of collaboration, dialogue and exchange, and furthers processes already initiated by key partners that have resulted in jointly held events (as in the case of the Waag and Public Netbase), joint projects and publications (as in the case of Sarai and the Waag), exchange of publications, dissemination of each other's material and texts, visits and lectures (between Sarai and Public Netbase).

Watch this Space for further developments. We welcome your comments, criticisms and suggestions to the project. Do write in with your queries and information to: info@opencultures.net