A Handbook for Coding Cultures

Coding Cultures explored how a range of media technologies can enable communities to express and share their stories in innovative and imaginative ways. I am particularly interested in this intersection between people using well established processes for engaging with communities and individuals and the application of a range of information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as the web or mobile phones for example. These new technologies enable a rich participatory media culture where people can make, share and distribute their experiences.

As Commissioning Editor for the publication I wanted to invite texts from people who are co-operatively building some of the nodes and networks, tools and processes, of participatory culture. But a mere handful of authors could not represent the diversity of approaches, cultural influences and ethical positions driving this emergent phenomenon, especially within the confines of a small book.

I decided upon a series of “deep excursions” into the fields and fiords of open culture, commissioning six original texts from artists, writers and cultural activists whose work I have followed with interest. Their projects and processes are emblematic of many of open culture’s animating key principles and practices. A Handbook for Coding Cultures also includes contributions from guest artists Alice Angus and Giles Lane, Camille Turner, and from mervin Jarman with Jamaican journalist Sonia Mills, plus statements from each of the Symposium speakers.

When these texts are considered together they offer a framework for understanding the interrelations between free software and free culture, open code and open knowledge, cooperative research and production, nodes and networks, and the dynamic conjunctions between art and activism.

Francesca da Rimini, March 2007

In 2007, together with Campbelltown Arts Centre which ranks as one of the most progressive cultural organisations in our country who, we hosted a week long program of free concept labs, a symposium and the Handbook for Coding Cultures. Working together with our remarkable Project Curator, Francesca da Rimini, we brought together an extraordinary group of leading international artists from the UK, Canada and Jamaica with some of Australia’s most inspiring and innovative new media and screen culture practitioners.

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A Handbook for Coding Cultures	Format: PDF (Zipped)	2984 Kb

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