 | Article by
Marc Garrett (23/10/08)
About
project pure:dyne 23/10/08 by GOTO10, Heather Corcoran and Aymeric Mansoux, artist Heather Corcoran, artist Aymeric Mansoux and group GOTO10
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Pure:dyne Discussion on Netbehaviour.
Marc invited two team members of the GOTO10 collective, Heather Corcoran and Aymeric Mansoux to discuss about pure:dyne on the Netbehaviour.org list.
The discussion took place between October 16th - 23rd Oct 08. An interview and an open discussion was joined by other list members of Netbehaviour.
pure:dyne is a Linux live distribution based on Debian. It is dedicated to live audiovisual processing and streaming, and focuses largely on the Pure Data audio synthesis system, although it also includes SuperCollider, Csound as well as live video-processing systems such as Packet Forth and Fluxus. Another aspect of pure:dyne is that it is maintained by media artists for media artists. The system provides particular optimizations at the kernel and compilation level to take the most out of i686 machines for real-time audio and video. As a consequence, this operating system is well suited for live performances and art installations. The modular aspect makes it easy for artists to customize and deploy it quickly to their own project needs.
For more information about GOTO10, pure:dyne, Heather Corcoran and Aymeric Mansoux, scroll to the bottom of this page.
It begins...
Marc Garrett:
Hi Heather Corcoran & Aymeric Mansoux - a warm welcome to the Netbehaviour list.
I know that there are a few on this list who are interested in pure:dyne. Some have already used it and others are playing with the idea of using it. It would be great to hear from them as well, regarding their own thoughts and experiences with pure:dyne, as the interview progresses. Anyone can take part in this discussion.
So, I would like to kick off this discussion by asking Heather Corcoran or Aymeric Mansoux why they decided to get involved with pure:dyne and what it means to them, as practitioners in their own field, and what it means to them culturally?
Heather Corcoran:
Hi Marc, hi everyone,
Thanks everyone for the welcome and interest in pure:dyne. That question is interesting because Aymeric and I will have two different perspectives, him as an artist and co-founder of the project, and me as a curator/producer and newer to the project. Aymeric is actually teaching a pure:dyne workshop this week with some of the other developers at Goldsmiths, through Graham Harwood, so he might be popping in and out of discussion in the evenings as he can.
I joined the pure:dyne team about a year and a half ago though have been near the project for about three. The team has grown quite organically and socially, it was founded by members of the GOTO10 collective http://www.goto10.org who themselves met through workshops and events around London and Europe. When I first started working at Space Media Arts http://www.spacemedia.org.uk in London I was looking for someone to teach a workshop on Pure Data to some artists there and when asking around, the names of two GOTO10 members, Antonios Galanopoulos and Chun Lee, kept coming up. I booked them to teach the workshop and when we were communicating about system requirements in advance, we had to run through a checklist of externals and settings to make sure all our OSX Apple machines were going to work and be compatible with what they were teaching. It took a bit of time to get all the machines running in the same way and Antonios told me about this project they were working on that would eliminate a lot of that work. And, interestingly, it could also run on a LiveCD where people could take the software and system home with them to continue their work. A big bonus for us as we wanted to see our participants, often from very different backgrounds, continue their learning so the workshops would have legacy for them. That wasn't always possible if they had to buy proprietary software or get a full Linux system working at home. An increased, meaningful uptake in technology tools by wider groups of people was where I saw the culture meaning in this project.
My imagination was captured by the idea of an operating system by media artists for media artists. Artists all work in different ways of course, but there were (and are) definitely a set of tools that many of the artists I knew were using in common (Pure Data being a big one at the time). I was interested in something that could draw together those tools in a way that was optimized for the way artists work, and also saw an opportunity for media labs like the ones I
had worked in to input into the development of a system that was close to their needs as well. So although the FLOSS ideology is a big part of the pure:dyne project, I was initially more interested in it from a functional, not political, point of view. Also a community-building point of view. I imagined a network of media labs (like the ones I worked in) and artists taking collective ownership over a system that was optimized for the way they work, learning from one another and creating a common platform. That was where I saw the meaning for my field of work.
In terms of my own involvement: I hadn't seen a group of artists who were working so closely with the mainstream/wider FLOSS communities before to create something that was 'up to speed' with wider technical communities i.e. not just art. pure:dyne isn't an artwork, it's a
tool, and I was interested in how a bunch of artists had the technical capacity to make something that functioned as such. Real h4x0r stuff, but also interesting to watch them develop the system as a bona fida FLOSS project and not an artwork inspired by FLOSS. I learned about the day-to-day, boring parts of how FLOSS projects work. It's an elaborate, structured, disciplined, interesting working system - not just all love and openness. But what it seemed like is that when the pure:dyne team would get together they would have fun joking around about the things they were working on and *making* things. The developer team all became friends and the work was not always fun but doing it together, especially crammed in a small room and sharing links and snacks, looked like it would be. So I basically just wanted to get in on the party and they graciously took me on as a developer. :)
Aymeric will have more, from the artist perspective and the longer history...
Aymeric Mansoux:
Hi Everyone, and thanks Marc for the invitation.
marc garrett said :
> So, I would like to kick off this discussion by asking Heather
> Corcoran or Aymeric Mansoux why they decided to get involved with
> pure:dyne and what it means to them, as practitioners in their own
> field, and what it means to them culturally?
My decision to be involved with the project was quite simple: I started it ;)
So maybe I could explain how this all happenned and in which context pure:dyne was created, which might give some hints on the cultural aspect.
I think Heather's answer's about pure:dyne as a workshop platform is a very good introduction because it is what motivated the creation of pure:dyne in the first place, and still remains a strong component of the project.
For the last 5 years GOTO10 has been involved in organising/producing workshops on free software and digital art. The software we used to teach, or the software we were teaching at the time was running on GNU/Linux and on top of that was not easy to get running or install
even within a GNU/Linux distribution. As a consequence it was usual for us to come an entire day before a workshop and install all the machines with Debian or Gentoo and compile the software needed (no packages for the software taught). It was a real nightmare and it was very common to only finish in the middle of the night or early morning. It was impossible for us to communicate to the host's technical team or admin what to do as it was requiring a lot of last
minute hacking and improvisation to get everything installed properly, not to mention the fact that we could not just say to the people who invited us "install a full OS, re compile kernel modules if necessary, and when you're done, here is the list of libs and applications you
need to compile, see you tomorrow". It was also impossible to have a "bring-your-own-laptop" setup as we would have to sacrifice a big chunk of the workshop to install things on the participants' machines (more time because instead of fixing 10-20 times the same type of
machine, we would have to deal with 10-20 different laptops). We tried this once and it was a failure, we almost had no time left to teach and an important numbers of participants broke their install/windows/whatever and didn't even have anything running after 3 days (we fixed everything in the end, everyone came back home happy, but you get the point...). Another downside was that we were teaching software we knew that it would be hard for our participants to install, and as a consequence very unlikely to use and to learn further when they went back home. Only a few survived during this pre-pure:dyne dark ages.
Tough love, yes, but it was the only thing we knew, until a certain day...
I think it's in 2004 (or close), that Marloes de Valk http://no.systmz.goto10.org organised a Pure Data workshop at Montevideo/NIMK in Amsterdam, in which I was teaching, and where I met Jaromil http://dyne.org. He showed me the dyne:bolic liveCD that he was developing and I was quite impressed to see a whole system running from a CD that was able to detect and configure itself automatically to work on a good number of different machines. Similarly, a few years before Jaromil was impressed when he got introduced to the bolic1 liveCD
http://web.archive.org/web/20071208023945rn_1/www.autistici.org/bolic1 from LOA and which became later both a base and inspiration for dyne:bolic.
What happened next was obvious. In just an afternoon we added Pure Data and a couple of externals to dyne:bolic. To be honest, I was just pointing him to the right sources and the right configure flags, and he did all the integration very quickly. We ended up with a new minor
release of dyne:bolic that we used a couple of times in workshops with an "ok" success rate. I say "ok" success rate and not good, nor excellent because, while it was very easy for Jaromil to rebuild a new CD with some changes, it was very difficult for anyone else to do so.
dyne:bolic was a big hack and was strongly entangled with Jaromil's hard-drive :)
The side-effect of this, was that we could not update the CD to support more hardware, we could not update Pure Data, we could not add more externals etc, unless I would ask Jaromil to make
this or this change, which I did for a little while, but it was not handy at all. Yet, during this transition phase we started to use the liveCD, doing a mix of dyne:bolic/debian/gentoo depending on the software taught and the machines provided. It sounds a bit messy, and it was, but the addition of the liveCD saved us a lot of time, and simplified quite a few things.
Some months later, I had a chat with Jaromil in ASCII and we talked about this issue, and he mentionned to me that he was planning to work on a SDK and a core that would allow to create a new dyne:bolic. So the new dyne:bolic would be rewritten and updated and would be based on a lower subsystem and scripts called dyne:II. It was obviously interesting for us, and because I was quite into Pd at the time being, the name pure:dyne came. So, in brief, pure:dyne was going to be built on top the dyne:II core but maintained by GOTO10. The 1st person to join me was another GOTO10 member, Chun Lee and almost immediately after, Antonios Galanopoulos, also from GOTO10.
Very quickly we used pure:dyne as a default solution to be able to teach workshops in all kind of different situations, reducing install parties (read nightmare) to only last minute quick fixes. The added bonus was that we could tell the host organisation to download the liveCD, test it on their machines, and if necessary we could make immediately some modifications to make it work. Last but not least, participants were going back home with a liveCD that had good chances to work on their hardware and they could go on learning on their own without disrupting their main operating system habits/etc..
From a practitioner point of view, while we were fine-tuning pure:dyne, we started to go really into details to the point where some of us stopped using their regular GNU/Linux distro to only use pure:dyne as their main operating system. After all, pure:dyne was supposed to provide a stable system, high performance and a unique collection of exotic software. So why would we just use that to only teach?
Antonios was the first one to make the complete switch, and I followed a little bit after. pure:dyne was not anymore just a teaching platform, it became our operating system, the one we used for our live performances, installations, and any of our artistic projects or experiments. This boosted dramatically the project because we were confronted to it everyday, and any fixes or enhancement or new features that we added "as artist needs" or just "daily user" was
immediately available in a new version of the liveCD. At this point things started to go very fast, and we started to modify the core system, the scripts, updating large chunks of the system, stripping things out, adding some bits and bytes, etc. Ending up with a system that was in fact a sort of snapshot of our constantly evolving needs and even mood changes.
I could tell you, that since the beginning we had this grand vision of the ultimate software artist environment and that we worked hard to make it happen, of course we thought about it, but just like many other things completely unrelated. So saying it was an initial goal or
that we felt the need to fullfill a particular demand we had carefully observed would be lying. As Heather said, and what I find fantastic about working on this type of free software project, is that you just initiate something, it develops itself organically, and you see a whole new world unfold in front of you. We did not try hard, we just followed the flow.
In GOTO10, the social and political aspect of free software is very important and is implicit/embedded in every of our projects, but from the perspective of the initial pure:dyne impulse,
all this was pretty much very utilitarian and self-centered, it seemed, because we designed a platform to teach our workshops and make our art and we did not really expected what was coming around the corner, or said differently we did not pay too much attention.
The project was obviously GPL, we had a website with ISO downloads since the beginning, a public mailing list, etc. So even if the project was mostly directed by our own interests and personal needs, the whole proces was entirely visible/open. Of course we were announcing new releases, and communicating a bit on the project, but this was just a matter of telling what was on our system, waiting for people to try it out and give us some feedback.
And then one day, they started to arrive ...
... out of nowhere ...
... our first regular users :)
Except that they were not any type of users, they were artists, who had in fact very similar needs to ours. From teaching, to using the system for performances/installation, and even using it as main operating system.
Then, things started to get more complicated :)
Rob Myers:
> Except that they were not any type of users, they were artists, who
> had in fact very similar needs to ours. From teaching, to using the
> system for performances/installation, and even using it as main
> operating system.
I recently tried out the pure:dyne live CD and I loved the feel of the system. So one of the things I wanted to ask was whether pure:dyne is suitable for use as a main OS, and I'm pleased to see that it is.
You mention that pure:dyne emerged from practical necessity and didn't have a grand plan. Did you design its user experience with any model or set of requirements in mind? It reminds me of the clean, pleasurable, no-nonsense environments of old Mac and SGI systems. Was that intentional or a product of evolution in a similar niche?
And on a boring practical level, now that pure:dyne is Debian based can I just install Debian packages or is pure:dyne a different package universe? I'm using Fedora on my laptop at the moment and I'm frustrated by the lack of some music and animation software as packages for it.
Aymeric Mansoux:
Hi Rob,
> You mention that pure:dyne emerged from practical necessity and didn't
> have a grand plan. Did you design its user experience with any model
> or set of requirements in mind? It reminds me of the clean,
> pleasurable, no-nonsense environments of old Mac and SGI systems. Was
> that intentional or a product of evolution in a similar niche?
It was a natural thing to do.
We've always been working on minimal environments, which, to paraphrase the UNIX philosophy, needs to do one thing and one thing well. In the context of windows manager that implies to be able to spawn terminals and start applications, preferrably with as less mouse interaction as possible. Nothing else :)
To give you an idea, the wm we like to use are:
- evilwm http://www.6809.org.uk/evilwm
- dwm http://www.suckless.org/dwm
- ratpoison http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison
- awesome http://awesome.naquadah.org
Of course, the wms above can be a bit disorientating for people that come from an OS that has a wm built around the desktop metaphor. That's why we decided to provide by default XFCE, which is a desktop oriented windows manager, but comes with very little bloat. So although the other
minimal wms are provided, we had to start right away with something that workshop participants could interact with, based on their experience with commercial operating systems, but at the same time light and "to the point". It was discussed that we would just not use any desktop and
even tried to run some workshops using one of these minimal wm, but it was too much of a shock. The good thing is that we converted quite a few users to these minimal wm anyway because they are very handy on a daily basis but also to provide a simple performance setup or an installation.
The second aspect of this choice, whether it is with a minimal wm or a light desktop, is the need to have a system that takes as little resources as possible. When we run <insert-your-fav-software-here>, we want the machine to allocate as much resources as possible to <insert-your-fav-software-here> and certainly not to a collection of 3D effects, twirling icons, wobbly windows and others industry sponsored gimmicks. Our aim was right away to provide a fully functionnal environment to systems as modests as an old Pentium III.
For the gory tech details, we also use i686 optimisations when compiling and we have been the first to provide a RT kernel on a live distribution. We also try to make this effort available for others, for example our upcoming new release will feature a kernel which config will be used as a base config for an attempt to provide a unified linuxaudio kernel that would be shared amongst several multimedia distributions. (that is for those who are interested in this collaboration).
> And on a boring practical level, now that pure:dyne is Debian based
> can I just install Debian packages or is pure:dyne a different package
> universe? I'm using Fedora on my laptop at the moment and I'm
> frustrated by the lack of some music and animation software as
> packages for it.
It' s not boring at all.
It's a key characteristic of the new pure:dyne. pure:dyne is a mix of 3 repos, Debian Lenny, Debian Multimedia and our own repository, so you can use pure:dyne repos on a Debian install, and you can add Debian repos on a pure:dyne install. Afterall, this is Debian.
With the previous version, our users, were either beginners or experts, so 2 groups with little common points and both at the extreme of a normal distribution. For beginners, pure:dyne was great to discover GNU/Linux and some of the exotic software bundled with it. But as soon as they wanted to make the switch to use the system more regularly or as main OS, they would miss several software that:
- we were not packaging
- and, we had no interest in packaging, or no time to do it
- and, would require "advanced" knowledge to package themselves.
So such users would only use pure:dyne for special case and never as main OS, due to the technical knowledge required to make it fit to their daily needs. We did package some generic stuff though, for example OpenOffice, but this is not exciting and a bit a waste of time. Just
like I said in the previous mail, we were using pure:dyne as main OS so the choice of generic software and design was modelled around our own needs, and while the software we packaged was common to many artists, the environment itself is often a matter of taste and personal habits.
With a Debian based environment we are now able to provide a system that is very modular and that more importantly grow as the user's knowledge grow.
In a nutshell, we have now 4 levels of usability:
- live* modes (liveCD, liveDVD, liveHD, liveUSB) provides a read-only system that can be booted from different medium and in which you can access to your hard drives to read/write files.
- persistence modes, added to the live modes, they allow the user(s) to save their home content, or if configured, any changes done to the OS, including adding extra software. This persistence can be a partition on a disk, but also on a USB key or a file on a windows
partition (this feature is being tested atm)
- full installation, we have a documentation explaining how to install debian and add the same settings as on the live* systems, so you can have a "proper" installation and use the debian package manager to update the system, including receiving new packages from our repos.
- custom, for advanced Debian/Ubuntu users, they can just grab software
from our repository, including the kernel.
It is good to note that the package manager can also be used in the live* modes, of course without persistence, the added software will be lost at the 1st reboot, but it can be very useful to be able to pull a software from debian during a live session, or even a driver, etc.
Bob Catchpole:
Art forms have their technical aspects. Artists are forever learning, playing, working and experimenting with the technology at their disposal. Tools for the job. Means and ends. Artists are largely focused on the latter; the ability to use the tools is presumed.
However when it comes to digital/new media/net art, discussion of the technical aspects still seems to predominate. Do you think that's in the nature of the technology? Or will there come a time when 'new media' artists won't have to talk like Formula 1 engineers?
Marc Garrett:
Hi Bob, Heather, Aymeric & all,
I think that Bob has raised one of the most important questions that many artists ask themselves in respect of using technology as part of their art, and those who are interested in exploring it further themselves as a contemporary practice. This question can also be extended to those who wish to curate it and critique it as well, not forgetting audiences.
So my next question is, Rob's question ;-)
Heather Corcoran:
Hello,
I imagine Bob's question came from Aymeric's somewhat technical last response. I think its important to remember that, as I mentioned in my first answer, pure:dyne is a tool and not an artwork. Bob's question was about the discussion of artwork and I don't think it exactly applies because of this. Naturally a discussion about a tool might turn technical, especially if it's a relatively new one that people are (luckily) interested in trying for themselves.
But to answer the question more broadly, it can of course help when audiences understand some formal aspects of a medium an artwork is made in. It's not just media arts. Luckily for media artists, the uptake of technology is happening not only in our field but in society as a whole :)
I'm reminded of something Olia Lialina said recently, paraphrasing her paraphrasing herself, that net art never used to make sense in a gallery years ago, but now we can surely imagine that gallery audiences have just got up from their computers - so they understand the references and the context. Audiences are becoming more comfortable with technological references so discussion around media artworks may not seem so obscure for much longer.
To bring this back to pure:dyne you could turn it into an accessibility question. Not whether *discussion* around media art must always be at the level of Formula 1 engineers, but whether the artists must be Formula 1 engineers themselves. Do all media artists need to have the
deep technical understanding that someone like Aymeric does, to the point where they can build their own tools like pure:dyne? Depending on your definition of media arts, but mine doesn't even require that artwork uses a single piece of technology. The technical discussion around pure:dyne might be off-putting for some, but part of the reason for moving to the Debian system, as Aymeric laid out, was so that it could be more accessible to more people. The aim of pure:dyne is not that everyone needs to be an expert to use the tool. For example see
Aymeric's discussion about the window manager (i.e. the desktop interface) we chose. But our accessibility choices will hopefully lead you closer to, not further from, a true understanding of how the tool you are using works. In short, you don't have to understand what repositories and packages are in order to open up applications in pure:dyne and start using them. We're happy to have a great group of partners across the UK who use pure:dyne with their local, varied, communities - young people, older people, all different backgrounds.
But of course this leads into the concept the Beige collective call intentional computing. The idea that artists should learn about the tools they're using down to the very core (code) elements in order to truly have control over what they're creating. No Photoshop filters but
hand-coded effects; even the operating system pushes you to make certain aesthetic choices. So maybe you do want to learn a bit more about how we've built pure:dyne if you want to have full control over what you're making and how it runs. Otherwise, at least be consoled that the ones
making those choices are artists like you :)
Aymeric Mansoux:
Hi Bob, Marc, list
> "Art forms have their technical aspects. Artists are forever learning,
> playing, working and experimenting with the technology at their
> disposal. Tools for the job. Means and ends. Artists are largely
> focused on the latter; the ability to use the tools is presumed."
>
> "However when it comes to digital/new media/net art, discussion of the
> technical aspects still seems to predominate. Do you think that's in
> the nature of the technology? Or will there come a time when 'new
> media' artists won't have to talk like Formula 1 engineers?"
Short answer:
There will be indeed a time 'new media' artists won't have to talk like Formula 1 engineers. But not because their discourse has changed, but because their lingo will have been absorbed in popular culture, or on the other hand made completely obsolete just like the technology they
once used. (which is why it is always difficult to talk about "new media" without any context attached to it)
Long (non)answer:
As Heather just said, my previous post was a technical answer to a technical question, and indeed pure:dyne is a platform to allow us, and a few others, to make art or anything creative with artistic software. But this platform is not art. It's a software environment (and I won't
get into the neoclassical code as craft thing either).
Back to the question, I don't know if it can be answered or not. As it is formulated now, it's very difficult to come up with something that would be really satisfying because it might carry a couple of cans of worms attached to it.
For example, I believe it is not possible to generalise on the fact that technical aspects predominate in new media art, without first making a distinction between, on the one hand, artists operating in the field of new media with a complete technology illiteracy and who need technicians to implement their concept, and on the other hand, artists who can code and coders who make art. That sounds trivial, but it's often forgotten or left as a detail from the art perspective. But in my eyes it's very relevant.
In the 1st case the technological factor is little or not present because the artist see the technic as just a support or an enabler to illustrate an idea/concept. Nothing new, and it's something common no matter from which angle it is seen: from the relationship contemporary
conceptual artists and designers have with craftmanship, or from the engineers/artists post E.A.T. collaborative dreams point of view.
In the second group, though, "artists who can code and coders who make art" it is true that technology is predominant, but this *not* predominant compared to something else that would be in minority, such as art. It is predominant because it *is* art, the good old concept/technic dichotomy cannot apply here, and any attempt will end up in this deadlock where one will try to look for something which is right under his nose.
Of course there are important variations within this field as well. For example an artist who can program might build an imaginary based on a very badly programmed, but creative software art, or an artistic interpretation of technology that would sound like pseudoscience. At the
other extreme, a programer making art will have the tendency to focus much more be in the technical process and the manifestations of this underlying mechanics would be treated as side effects or illustrations of these.
In real life, such extremes exists, but things are generally a bit more balanced, but what is important is that in both cases software is seen as something much closer to a medium rather than something like a tool.
It is up to an artist to stay in the safe frame of the "material>tool>object" instruments and the multimedia metaphors (digital paint, virtual canvas, etc) or to decide to explore what software as artistic medium has to offer. In this situation the technology is either
transparent or its structure used as platform to reflect upon an idea. The understanding of software as technology is mandatory here of course. But what seems to appear as a mass of overwhelming technical information is just language to express and explore ideas that cannot be expressed otherwise.
Marc Garrett:
Hi Heather, Aymeric & all,
Thank you for your answers so far,
As the global, economical crisis seeps deeper into people's lives everywhere. More are questioning their own approaches to living, and many are reconsidering their social values after the break-down of these capitalist, (free) market-led frameworks and the attitudes that
once supported them. It has been mentioned on various news channels that East Germans are now flocking to buy Das Kapital by Karl Marx. "A recent survey found 52 percent of eastern Germans believe the free market economy is "unsuitable" and 43 percent said they wanted socialism rather than capitalism, findings confirmed in interviews with dozens of ordinary easterners." http://tinyurl.com/5zlo5c
Perhaps East Germany is an easy target for declaring that social change is occuring, but there is something in the air. So, considering the current state of things and the impact of economies collapsing around us, do you think that this climate adds extra weight for more
people to use (FLOSS) Free/Libre/Open Source Software and pure:dyne, if so why?
James W. Morris:
Hi,
I'm curious about how pure:dyne might compare to other multimedia distributions. I have always gone back to Debian (stable) as my main OS, but have tried 64studio... and another, can't remember it's name, it used fluxbox as it's desktop but the distro died, but the desktop was
fast and it all worked from go.
Does pure:dyne come in 64bit flavour? (and any chance of ordering a live/install DVD btw?)
> Of course there are important variations within this field as well. For
> example an artist who can program might build an imaginary based on a
> very badly programmed, but creative software art, or an artistic
> interpretation of technology that would sound like pseudoscience. At the
> other extreme, a programer making art will have the tendency to focus
> much more be in the technical process and the manifestations of this
> underlying mechanics would be treated as side effects or illustrations
> of these.
I found this quite interesting. If neither programming nor art is earning one a living, how can one tell if they're a programmer making art or an artist writing code? Hang on, there's a clue at the end of the paragraph... Yes I agree there, with the illustrations analogy.
Aymeric Mansoux:
Hi Marc,
Well it's obvious that the current situation is an occasion for all the grow-your-own, do-it-yourself, open and free cultures to be under the spotlight. Although during this process there will be a lot of reinvinting the wheel and re-discoveries, it's still of course a very good thing and might present alternative future for our societies, by breaking down hierarchic glass structures into more "meshy" robust heterarchic systems.
Unfortunately, maybe I am bit too pessimistic, but I suspect that just like usual, only the most educated groups will benefit from this. The masses will be served the usual soup. "we will do everything we can, to fix the issue, and it's together that we will get out of this crisis"
will be copy/pasted all over the place, which usually means introducing more contol and less freedom to ensure the well-being of a few. Panem et circenses, over and over again.
From the cultural and artistic institutions point of view, things might be much better though. The obvious economy crisis and the current lack of funding/support for media arts (in its broadest definition), make platform like pure:dyne very attractive to run a multimedia lab using
shiny imacs or just a bunch of recycled PC. Even if FLOSS get introduced only for cost reasons, it is still a good thing as it will show it has more to offer in the long term. From a social point of view a FLOSS lab is more ethical as well: your budget, even if grandly reduced, will go
to a part-time admin, a freelance developer, a GNU/Linux hacker, who will in turn contribute back to the development of the software you use. In such a case you are supporting directly a human being with direct feedback in the community, instead of injecting more money for company
shareholders.
The position of the artist, on the other hand is probably the most ambiguous. The way I see it, is that artists would use FLOSS for 3 different reasons (non-exclusive).
- money saving
- technological advantage
- politics, activism
Now the problems is that in fact money saving is not a problem. Let's be honest most artists are attached to their digital tools ... but not as much to their licenses. The majority of artists always find a way to not have to pay for a license, and nowadays you don't need to belong to a private torrent tracker community or to scene top site to get your daily dose of binaries, anyone who knows how to formulate a search expression in Google can get virtually anything in a click. So the advantage of FLOSS here is very little.
Another problem is that, it is very likely that if an artist is at the same time already an activist and fond of technology, we can safely assume he knows about FLOSS and already uses it. I don't remember seeing any Microsoft hacktivist ... ever ... :)
So in the end what could bring an artist to change his toolset/environment is to access a new field of possibilities. This doesn't mean the two other situations are completely leading to a logic dead-end, but we can assume they are not the most important cause. In such a situation the economic context would have very little influence. To embrace FLOSS, artists must be able to see what is has to offer that is not available elsewhere (from practical issues, to social aspects and knowledge sharing) and this only needs curiosity and a good dose of self motivation.
Rob Myers:
aymeric mansoux wrote:
> To embrace FLOSS, artists must be able to see what is has to
> offer that is not available elsewhere (from practical issues, to
> social aspects and knowledge sharing) and this only needs curiosity
> and a good dose of self motivation.
Do you think that artists should extend the freedom of free software into their artistic work? Is there an obligation or inspiration from free software for artists to embrace copyleft? Or is it only the case that artists should use and contribute to software freely?
Heather Corcoran:
Just briefly to add to what Aymeric is saying here (brief because we're preparing for our pure:dyne event tomorrow night, 23rd at 6:30pm - please join us! - at Mute HQ in London, and Aymeric has said lots here that I agree with). Coincidentally I've just been doing some work around this for an upcoming exhibition at FACT on (un)sustainability issues, taking a wider view of environmental sustainability in this present moment - from peak oil to peak credit - and while maybe its not obvious at first, FLOSS communities do have a place in this debate. Chris Carlsson quotes Will Doherty at the opening of one of the chapters in his book Nowtopia: "The open source community is pretty much tech support for the revolution, if you will, or tech support for the new society". As Aymeric calls them, the 'grow-your-own, do-it-yourself,
open and free cultures', FLOSS being one of many, do something besides provide products that will be accessible to all in the wake of economic recession - they build a network of individuals gaining practical experience organising outside of this particular capitalist framework. Read the FLOSS chapter of the Carlsson book if you come across it, its decent at talking about this with specific reference to Marxist thought, since Marx has come up now. :)
Aymeric Mansoux:
Hi James,
james jwm-art net said :
> I'm curious about how pure:dyne might compare to other multimedia
> distributions. I have always gone back to Debian (stable) as my main OS,
> but have tried 64studio... and another, can't remember it's name, it
> used fluxbox as it's desktop but the distro died, but the desktop was
> fast and it all worked from go.
maybe it was demudi?
We used fluxbox in the very early pure:dyne iterations, but we quickly realised that during workshops we really need something that provides as much graphical helpers as possible. XFCE is good for that, it's very light and fast on modest machines and has a complete desktop. Also,
even though fluxbox is really good, it's one of these desktop that is not minimal enough to provide a barebone wm, and it's too minimal to provide a user experience similar to what is available in typical desktop based wm.
Concerning Debian, I can't recall if I mentionned it previously, our goal is also not to leave our packages in a nich repository, the mid term plan for the pure:dyne team is to start moving as much things as possible in Debian itself, so it will benefit to an even wider audience.
> Does pure:dyne come in 64bit flavour? (and any chance of ordering a
> live/install DVD btw?)
pure:dyne is 32bit only at the moment, which of course works perfectly fine on 64bit CPU. We'll start exploring 64bit when we consider the live system and the environment that produces it, are stable enough and well documented.
We are also in discussion with 64studio, who contacted us a while ago, to start to think about long term collaboration.
There are no CD/DVD available to order, it's only available as direct downloads or torrents.
http://code.goto10.org/projects/puredyne/wiki/GetPureDyne
But, the next milestone, leek and potato, will be available as liveUSB keys that we will sell, we're still trying to figure out how to do that with as little extra cost added to make it cheap, but sustainable. For those in London tonight, you'll be able to get one or see it in action.
I think the issue with software art is that it is interdisciplinary, which is, at the same time, its greatest quality, but also its curse. It is still too often that today software artists are left in a academe/institutional limbo because they are either considered too geeky
or too arty depending the point of view of the single discipline that examines it. But I think is a general problem for any (multi|cross|trans|inter)disciplinary practice and research :)
Aymeric Mansoux:
Hi Rob,
Rob Myers said :
> To embrace FLOSS, artists must be able to see what is has to
> offer that is not available elsewhere (from practical issues, to
> social aspects and knowledge sharing) and this only needs curiosity
> and a good dose of self motivation.
>
> Do you think that artists should extend the freedom of free software
> into their artistic work? Is there an obligation or inspiration from
> free software for artists to embrace copyleft? Or is it only the case
> that artists should use and contribute to software freely?
Well, artists are quite known to do whatever they want to do with whatever comes around, so this won't change :) (and it's a good thing!) So I think at the moment most artists are using and contributing to software freely, which as a consequence leads very often to paradoxes such as "I use free software to make art, but I won't release the patch/code of my installation/performance".
There is still this idea, that giving away the technology/software of the artwork, is giving away the income (maybe the soul too?). This is not true, as we know, media artists incomes are mostly coming from teaching, residency, comissions and manifestations of their art, whether it is performances or installations, certainly not selling software or registering patents (and we also know what this thinking brought us so far in other fields).
But I have good hope, or said differently, I'm looking forward to the day where critical mass of artists making free software art will be reached, and hopefully will start to generate interesting things. Free software art is not making software art a better Art, but it will
certainly allow it to develop itself in ways we can only speculate about right now, based on how it affected other domains until now.
Also, just like the rest, the freedom of free software is a quite powerful virus, not just for the viral licensing aspect, but also for the mind. Artists who are operating for a while in its presence, very often start to introduce it in their work and their research, as an inspiration and method.
Interview ends.
Also just published - FLOSS+Art:
http://goto10.org/flossart/
FLOSS+Art critically reflects on the growing relationship between Free Software ideology, open content and digital art. It provides a view onto the social, political and economic myths and realities linked to this phenomenon.
Compiled and edited by Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes de Valk.
With contributions from: Fabianne Balvedi, Florian Cramer, Sher Doruff, Nancy Mauro Flude, Olga Goriunova, Dave Griffiths, Ross Harley, Martin Howse, Shahee Ilyas, Ricardo Lafuente, Ivan Monroy Lopez, Thor Magnusson, Alex McLean, Rob Myers, Alejandra Maria Perez Nu?ez, Eleonora Oreggia, oRx-qX, Julien Ottavi, Michael van Schaik, Femke Snelting, Pedro Soler, Hans Christoph Steiner, Prodromos Tsiavos, Simon Yuill.
ABOUT PURE:DYNE:
pure:dyne is an operating system developed to provide media artists with a complete set of tools for realtime audio and video processing. pure:dyne is a live distribution, you don't need to install anything. Simply boot your computer using the live CD and you're ready to start
using software such as Pure Data, Supercollider, Icecast, Csound, Fluxus, Processing, and much much more.
http://code.goto10.org/projects/puredyne/
pure:dyne will work on any PC laptop, desktop, and single-board computers, including the intel-based Mac, Asus' Eee PC, and any x86 netbooks.
pure:dyne is based on Debian and Debian Multimedia. All packages provided by pure:dyne can be used if you are running these flavours of GNU/Linux.
pure:dyne is: Rob Canning, Heather Corcoran, Antonios Galanopoulos, Karsten Gebbert, Claude Heiland-Allen, Chun Lee, Aymeric Mansoux, Marloes de Valk
WHO USES PURE:DYNE?
pure:dyne is developed by artists, for artists. Our primary users are people like us, media artists who build all kinds of creative projects, using pure:dyne to do anything from recording and manipulating sound, making live visuals, creating interactive media in installations, and more. We use 'artist' as a broad term for anyone who is doing or wants to do something creative using their computer.
pure:dyne is also used by media art organisations across the world. Galleries, production centres, school departments and more are finding pure:dyne useful for teaching media art skills to their local communities.
http://320x200.goto10.org/
ABOUT HEATHER CORCORAN:
Heather Corcoran (CA/UK) is a curator/producer with a specialist in media art and music, currently working as Curator at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) in Liverpool. Recently she has worked at Space Media Arts in London and InterAccess Electronic Media Arts in
Toronto, as well as producing a number of freelance projects. She works hands on with technology and technology communities - currently a Developer of the free software project pure:dyne, the GNU/Linux distribution for media art; co-organizer of Dorkbot London; and a
lurking-only member of OpenLab. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in New Media at Ryerson University in Toronto.
http://guests.goto10.org/~heather
ABOUT AYMERIC MANSOUX:
Aymeric Mansoux (FR) is an artist and musician, member of the GOTO10 collective (http://goto10.org). His main artistic and research interests revolve around online communities, software as a medium and the influence of FLOSS in the development and understanding of digital art. His most recent projects and collaborations include 0xA the file repository based music project with Chun Lee (https://code.goto10.org/hg/0xa/), the digital artlife Metabiosis project with Marloes de Valk (http://metabiosis.goto10.org) and the pure:dyne GNU/Linux live distribution for media artists (http://puredyne.goto10.org). Aymeric is editor of the FLOSS+Art book (OpenMute 2008) as well as Folly's Digital Artists' Handbook
http://digitalartistshandbook.org which was launched early 2008.
Marc invited two team members of the GOTO10 collective, Heather Corcoran and Aymeric Mansoux to discuss about pure:dyne on the Netbehaviour.org list.
The discussion took place between October 16th - 23rd Oct 08. An interview and an open discussion was joined by other list members of Netbehaviour.
pure:dyne is a Linux live distribution based on Debian. It is dedicated to live audiovisual processing and streaming, and focuses largely on the Pure Data audio synthesis system, although it also includes SuperCollider, Csound as well as live video-processing systems such as Packet Forth and Fluxus. Another aspect of pure:dyne is that it is maintained by media artists for media artists. The system provides particular optimizations at the kernel and compilation level to take the most out of i686 machines for real-time audio and video. As a consequence, this operating system is well suited for live performances and art installations. The modular aspect makes it easy for artists to customize and deploy it quickly to their own project needs.
For more information about GOTO10, pure:dyne, Heather Corcoran and Aymeric Mansoux, scroll to the bottom of this page.
It begins...
Marc Garrett:
Hi Heather Corcoran & Aymeric Mansoux - a warm welcome to the Netbehaviour list.
I know that there are a few on this list who are interested in pure:dyne. Some have already used it and others are playing with the idea of using it. It would be great to hear from them as well, regarding their own thoughts and experiences with pure:dyne, as the interview progresses. Anyone can take part in this discussion.
So, I would like to kick off this discussion by asking Heather Corcoran or Aymeric Mansoux why they decided to get involved with pure:dyne and what it means to them, as practitioners in their own field, and what it means to them culturally?
Heather Corcoran:
Hi Marc, hi everyone,
Thanks everyone for the welcome and interest in pure:dyne. That question is interesting because Aymeric and I will have two different perspectives, him as an artist and co-founder of the project, and me as a curator/producer and newer to the project. Aymeric is actually teaching a pure:dyne workshop this week with some of the other developers at Goldsmiths, through Graham Harwood, so he might be popping in and out of discussion in the evenings as he can.
I joined the pure:dyne team about a year and a half ago though have been near the project for about three. The team has grown quite organically and socially, it was founded by members of the GOTO10 collective http://www.goto10.org who themselves met through workshops and events around London and Europe. When I first started working at Space Media Arts http://www.spacemedia.org.uk in London I was looking for someone to teach a workshop on Pure Data to some artists there and when asking around, the names of two GOTO10 members, Antonios Galanopoulos and Chun Lee, kept coming up. I booked them to teach the workshop and when we were communicating about system requirements in advance, we had to run through a checklist of externals and settings to make sure all our OSX Apple machines were going to work and be compatible with what they were teaching. It took a bit of time to get all the machines running in the same way and Antonios told me about this project they were working on that would eliminate a lot of that work. And, interestingly, it could also run on a LiveCD where people could take the software and system home with them to continue their work. A big bonus for us as we wanted to see our participants, often from very different backgrounds, continue their learning so the workshops would have legacy for them. That wasn't always possible if they had to buy proprietary software or get a full Linux system working at home. An increased, meaningful uptake in technology tools by wider groups of people was where I saw the culture meaning in this project.
My imagination was captured by the idea of an operating system by media artists for media artists. Artists all work in different ways of course, but there were (and are) definitely a set of tools that many of the artists I knew were using in common (Pure Data being a big one at the time). I was interested in something that could draw together those tools in a way that was optimized for the way artists work, and also saw an opportunity for media labs like the ones I
had worked in to input into the development of a system that was close to their needs as well. So although the FLOSS ideology is a big part of the pure:dyne project, I was initially more interested in it from a functional, not political, point of view. Also a community-building point of view. I imagined a network of media labs (like the ones I worked in) and artists taking collective ownership over a system that was optimized for the way they work, learning from one another and creating a common platform. That was where I saw the meaning for my field of work.
In terms of my own involvement: I hadn't seen a group of artists who were working so closely with the mainstream/wider FLOSS communities before to create something that was 'up to speed' with wider technical communities i.e. not just art. pure:dyne isn't an artwork, it's a
tool, and I was interested in how a bunch of artists had the technical capacity to make something that functioned as such. Real h4x0r stuff, but also interesting to watch them develop the system as a bona fida FLOSS project and not an artwork inspired by FLOSS. I learned about the day-to-day, boring parts of how FLOSS projects work. It's an elaborate, structured, disciplined, interesting working system - not just all love and openness. But what it seemed like is that when the pure:dyne team would get together they would have fun joking around about the things they were working on and *making* things. The developer team all became friends and the work was not always fun but doing it together, especially crammed in a small room and sharing links and snacks, looked like it would be. So I basically just wanted to get in on the party and they graciously took me on as a developer. :)
Aymeric will have more, from the artist perspective and the longer history...
Aymeric Mansoux:
Hi Everyone, and thanks Marc for the invitation.
marc garrett said :
> So, I would like to kick off this discussion by asking Heather
> Corcoran or Aymeric Mansoux why they decided to get involved with
> pure:dyne and what it means to them, as practitioners in their own
> field, and what it means to them culturally?
My decision to be involved with the project was quite simple: I started it ;)
So maybe I could explain how this all happenned and in which context pure:dyne was created, which might give some hints on the cultural aspect.
I think Heather's answer's about pure:dyne as a workshop platform is a very good introduction because it is what motivated the creation of pure:dyne in the first place, and still remains a strong component of the project.
For the last 5 years GOTO10 has been involved in organising/producing workshops on free software and digital art. The software we used to teach, or the software we were teaching at the time was running on GNU/Linux and on top of that was not easy to get running or install
even within a GNU/Linux distribution. As a consequence it was usual for us to come an entire day before a workshop and install all the machines with Debian or Gentoo and compile the software needed (no packages for the software taught). It was a real nightmare and it was very common to only finish in the middle of the night or early morning. It was impossible for us to communicate to the host's technical team or admin what to do as it was requiring a lot of last
minute hacking and improvisation to get everything installed properly, not to mention the fact that we could not just say to the people who invited us "install a full OS, re compile kernel modules if necessary, and when you're done, here is the list of libs and applications you
need to compile, see you tomorrow". It was also impossible to have a "bring-your-own-laptop" setup as we would have to sacrifice a big chunk of the workshop to install things on the participants' machines (more time because instead of fixing 10-20 times the same type of
machine, we would have to deal with 10-20 different laptops). We tried this once and it was a failure, we almost had no time left to teach and an important numbers of participants broke their install/windows/whatever and didn't even have anything running after 3 days (we fixed everything in the end, everyone came back home happy, but you get the point...). Another downside was that we were teaching software we knew that it would be hard for our participants to install, and as a consequence very unlikely to use and to learn further when they went back home. Only a few survived during this pre-pure:dyne dark ages.
Tough love, yes, but it was the only thing we knew, until a certain day...
I think it's in 2004 (or close), that Marloes de Valk http://no.systmz.goto10.org organised a Pure Data workshop at Montevideo/NIMK in Amsterdam, in which I was teaching, and where I met Jaromil http://dyne.org. He showed me the dyne:bolic liveCD that he was developing and I was quite impressed to see a whole system running from a CD that was able to detect and configure itself automatically to work on a good number of different machines. Similarly, a few years before Jaromil was impressed when he got introduced to the bolic1 liveCD
http://web.archive.org/web/20071208023945rn_1/www.autistici.org/bolic1 from LOA and which became later both a base and inspiration for dyne:bolic.
What happened next was obvious. In just an afternoon we added Pure Data and a couple of externals to dyne:bolic. To be honest, I was just pointing him to the right sources and the right configure flags, and he did all the integration very quickly. We ended up with a new minor
release of dyne:bolic that we used a couple of times in workshops with an "ok" success rate. I say "ok" success rate and not good, nor excellent because, while it was very easy for Jaromil to rebuild a new CD with some changes, it was very difficult for anyone else to do so.
dyne:bolic was a big hack and was strongly entangled with Jaromil's hard-drive :)
The side-effect of this, was that we could not update the CD to support more hardware, we could not update Pure Data, we could not add more externals etc, unless I would ask Jaromil to make
this or this change, which I did for a little while, but it was not handy at all. Yet, during this transition phase we started to use the liveCD, doing a mix of dyne:bolic/debian/gentoo depending on the software taught and the machines provided. It sounds a bit messy, and it was, but the addition of the liveCD saved us a lot of time, and simplified quite a few things.
Some months later, I had a chat with Jaromil in ASCII and we talked about this issue, and he mentionned to me that he was planning to work on a SDK and a core that would allow to create a new dyne:bolic. So the new dyne:bolic would be rewritten and updated and would be based on a lower subsystem and scripts called dyne:II. It was obviously interesting for us, and because I was quite into Pd at the time being, the name pure:dyne came. So, in brief, pure:dyne was going to be built on top the dyne:II core but maintained by GOTO10. The 1st person to join me was another GOTO10 member, Chun Lee and almost immediately after, Antonios Galanopoulos, also from GOTO10.
Very quickly we used pure:dyne as a default solution to be able to teach workshops in all kind of different situations, reducing install parties (read nightmare) to only last minute quick fixes. The added bonus was that we could tell the host organisation to download the liveCD, test it on their machines, and if necessary we could make immediately some modifications to make it work. Last but not least, participants were going back home with a liveCD that had good chances to work on their hardware and they could go on learning on their own without disrupting their main operating system habits/etc..
From a practitioner point of view, while we were fine-tuning pure:dyne, we started to go really into details to the point where some of us stopped using their regular GNU/Linux distro to only use pure:dyne as their main operating system. After all, pure:dyne was supposed to provide a stable system, high performance and a unique collection of exotic software. So why would we just use that to only teach?
Antonios was the first one to make the complete switch, and I followed a little bit after. pure:dyne was not anymore just a teaching platform, it became our operating system, the one we used for our live performances, installations, and any of our artistic projects or experiments. This boosted dramatically the project because we were confronted to it everyday, and any fixes or enhancement or new features that we added "as artist needs" or just "daily user" was
immediately available in a new version of the liveCD. At this point things started to go very fast, and we started to modify the core system, the scripts, updating large chunks of the system, stripping things out, adding some bits and bytes, etc. Ending up with a system that was in fact a sort of snapshot of our constantly evolving needs and even mood changes.
I could tell you, that since the beginning we had this grand vision of the ultimate software artist environment and that we worked hard to make it happen, of course we thought about it, but just like many other things completely unrelated. So saying it was an initial goal or
that we felt the need to fullfill a particular demand we had carefully observed would be lying. As Heather said, and what I find fantastic about working on this type of free software project, is that you just initiate something, it develops itself organically, and you see a whole new world unfold in front of you. We did not try hard, we just followed the flow.
In GOTO10, the social and political aspect of free software is very important and is implicit/embedded in every of our projects, but from the perspective of the initial pure:dyne impulse,
all this was pretty much very utilitarian and self-centered, it seemed, because we designed a platform to teach our workshops and make our art and we did not really expected what was coming around the corner, or said differently we did not pay too much attention.
The project was obviously GPL, we had a website with ISO downloads since the beginning, a public mailing list, etc. So even if the project was mostly directed by our own interests and personal needs, the whole proces was entirely visible/open. Of course we were announcing new releases, and communicating a bit on the project, but this was just a matter of telling what was on our system, waiting for people to try it out and give us some feedback.
And then one day, they started to arrive ...
... out of nowhere ...
... our first regular users :)
Except that they were not any type of users, they were artists, who had in fact very similar needs to ours. From teaching, to using the system for performances/installation, and even using it as main operating system.
Then, things started to get more complicated :)
Rob Myers:
> Except that they were not any type of users, they were artists, who
> had in fact very similar needs to ours. From teaching, to using the
> system for performances/installation, and even using it as main
> operating system.
I recently tried out the pure:dyne live CD and I loved the feel of the system. So one of the things I wanted to ask was whether pure:dyne is suitable for use as a main OS, and I'm pleased to see that it is.
You mention that pure:dyne emerged from practical necessity and didn't have a grand plan. Did you design its user experience with any model or set of requirements in mind? It reminds me of the clean, pleasurable, no-nonsense environments of old Mac and SGI systems. Was that intentional or a product of evolution in a similar niche?
And on a boring practical level, now that pure:dyne is Debian based can I just install Debian packages or is pure:dyne a different package universe? I'm using Fedora on my laptop at the moment and I'm frustrated by the lack of some music and animation software as packages for it.
Aymeric Mansoux:
Hi Rob,
> You mention that pure:dyne emerged from practical necessity and didn't
> have a grand plan. Did you design its user experience with any model
> or set of requirements in mind? It reminds me of the clean,
> pleasurable, no-nonsense environments of old Mac and SGI systems. Was
> that intentional or a product of evolution in a similar niche?
It was a natural thing to do.
We've always been working on minimal environments, which, to paraphrase the UNIX philosophy, needs to do one thing and one thing well. In the context of windows manager that implies to be able to spawn terminals and start applications, preferrably with as less mouse interaction as possible. Nothing else :)
To give you an idea, the wm we like to use are:
- evilwm http://www.6809.org.uk/evilwm
- dwm http://www.suckless.org/dwm
- ratpoison http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison
- awesome http://awesome.naquadah.org
Of course, the wms above can be a bit disorientating for people that come from an OS that has a wm built around the desktop metaphor. That's why we decided to provide by default XFCE, which is a desktop oriented windows manager, but comes with very little bloat. So although the other
minimal wms are provided, we had to start right away with something that workshop participants could interact with, based on their experience with commercial operating systems, but at the same time light and "to the point". It was discussed that we would just not use any desktop and
even tried to run some workshops using one of these minimal wm, but it was too much of a shock. The good thing is that we converted quite a few users to these minimal wm anyway because they are very handy on a daily basis but also to provide a simple performance setup or an installation.
The second aspect of this choice, whether it is with a minimal wm or a light desktop, is the need to have a system that takes as little resources as possible. When we run <insert-your-fav-software-here>, we want the machine to allocate as much resources as possible to <insert-your-fav-software-here> and certainly not to a collection of 3D effects, twirling icons, wobbly windows and others industry sponsored gimmicks. Our aim was right away to provide a fully functionnal environment to systems as modests as an old Pentium III.
For the gory tech details, we also use i686 optimisations when compiling and we have been the first to provide a RT kernel on a live distribution. We also try to make this effort available for others, for example our upcoming new release will feature a kernel which config will be used as a base config for an attempt to provide a unified linuxaudio kernel that would be shared amongst several multimedia distributions. (that is for those who are interested in this collaboration).
> And on a boring practical level, now that pure:dyne is Debian based
> can I just install Debian packages or is pure:dyne a different package
> universe? I'm using Fedora on my laptop at the moment and I'm
> frustrated by the lack of some music and animation software as
> packages for it.
It' s not boring at all.
It's a key characteristic of the new pure:dyne. pure:dyne is a mix of 3 repos, Debian Lenny, Debian Multimedia and our own repository, so you can use pure:dyne repos on a Debian install, and you can add Debian repos on a pure:dyne install. Afterall, this is Debian.
With the previous version, our users, were either beginners or experts, so 2 groups with little common points and both at the extreme of a normal distribution. For beginners, pure:dyne was great to discover GNU/Linux and some of the exotic software bundled with it. But as soon as they wanted to make the switch to use the system more regularly or as main OS, they would miss several software that:
- we were not packaging
- and, we had no interest in packaging, or no time to do it
- and, would require "advanced" knowledge to package themselves.
So such users would only use pure:dyne for special case and never as main OS, due to the technical knowledge required to make it fit to their daily needs. We did package some generic stuff though, for example OpenOffice, but this is not exciting and a bit a waste of time. Just
like I said in the previous mail, we were using pure:dyne as main OS so the choice of generic software and design was modelled around our own needs, and while the software we packaged was common to many artists, the environment itself is often a matter of taste and personal habits.
With a Debian based environment we are now able to provide a system that is very modular and that more importantly grow as the user's knowledge grow.
In a nutshell, we have now 4 levels of usability:
- live* modes (liveCD, liveDVD, liveHD, liveUSB) provides a read-only system that can be booted from different medium and in which you can access to your hard drives to read/write files.
- persistence modes, added to the live modes, they allow the user(s) to save their home content, or if configured, any changes done to the OS, including adding extra software. This persistence can be a partition on a disk, but also on a USB key or a file on a windows
partition (this feature is being tested atm)
- full installation, we have a documentation explaining how to install debian and add the same settings as on the live* systems, so you can have a "proper" installation and use the debian package manager to update the system, including receiving new packages from our repos.
- custom, for advanced Debian/Ubuntu users, they can just grab software
from our repository, including the kernel.
It is good to note that the package manager can also be used in the live* modes, of course without persistence, the added software will be lost at the 1st reboot, but it can be very useful to be able to pull a software from debian during a live session, or even a driver, etc.
Bob Catchpole:
Art forms have their technical aspects. Artists are forever learning, playing, working and experimenting with the technology at their disposal. Tools for the job. Means and ends. Artists are largely focused on the latter; the ability to use the tools is presumed.
However when it comes to digital/new media/net art, discussion of the technical aspects still seems to predominate. Do you think that's in the nature of the technology? Or will there come a time when 'new media' artists won't have to talk like Formula 1 engineers?
Marc Garrett:
Hi Bob, Heather, Aymeric & all,
I think that Bob has raised one of the most important questions that many artists ask themselves in respect of using technology as part of their art, and those who are interested in exploring it further themselves as a contemporary practice. This question can also be extended to those who wish to curate it and critique it as well, not forgetting audiences.
So my next question is, Rob's question ;-)
Heather Corcoran:
Hello,
I imagine Bob's question came from Aymeric's somewhat technical last response. I think its important to remember that, as I mentioned in my first answer, pure:dyne is a tool and not an artwork. Bob's question was about the discussion of artwork and I don't think it exactly applies because of this. Naturally a discussion about a tool might turn technical, especially if it's a relatively new one that people are (luckily) interested in trying for themselves.
But to answer the question more broadly, it can of course help when audiences understand some formal aspects of a medium an artwork is made in. It's not just media arts. Luckily for media artists, the uptake of technology is happening not only in our field but in society as a whole :)
I'm reminded of something Olia Lialina said recently, paraphrasing her paraphrasing herself, that net art never used to make sense in a gallery years ago, but now we can surely imagine that gallery audiences have just got up from their computers - so they understand the references and the context. Audiences are becoming more comfortable with technological references so discussion around media artworks may not seem so obscure for much longer.
To bring this back to pure:dyne you could turn it into an accessibility question. Not whether *discussion* around media art must always be at the level of Formula 1 engineers, but whether the artists must be Formula 1 engineers themselves. Do all media artists need to have the
deep technical understanding that someone like Aymeric does, to the point where they can build their own tools like pure:dyne? Depending on your definition of media arts, but mine doesn't even require that artwork uses a single piece of technology. The technical discussion around pure:dyne might be off-putting for some, but part of the reason for moving to the Debian system, as Aymeric laid out, was so that it could be more accessible to more people. The aim of pure:dyne is not that everyone needs to be an expert to use the tool. For example see
Aymeric's discussion about the window manager (i.e. the desktop interface) we chose. But our accessibility choices will hopefully lead you closer to, not further from, a true understanding of how the tool you are using works. In short, you don't have to understand what repositories and packages are in order to open up applications in pure:dyne and start using them. We're happy to have a great group of partners across the UK who use pure:dyne with their local, varied, communities - young people, older people, all different backgrounds.
But of course this leads into the concept the Beige collective call intentional computing. The idea that artists should learn about the tools they're using down to the very core (code) elements in order to truly have control over what they're creating. No Photoshop filters but
hand-coded effects; even the operating system pushes you to make certain aesthetic choices. So maybe you do want to learn a bit more about how we've built pure:dyne if you want to have full control over what you're making and how it runs. Otherwise, at least be consoled that the ones
making those choices are artists like you :)
Aymeric Mansoux:
Hi Bob, Marc, list
> "Art forms have their technical aspects. Artists are forever learning,
> playing, working and experimenting with the technology at their
> disposal. Tools for the job. Means and ends. Artists are largely
> focused on the latter; the ability to use the tools is presumed."
>
> "However when it comes to digital/new media/net art, discussion of the
> technical aspects still seems to predominate. Do you think that's in
> the nature of the technology? Or will there come a time when 'new
> media' artists won't have to talk like Formula 1 engineers?"
Short answer:
There will be indeed a time 'new media' artists won't have to talk like Formula 1 engineers. But not because their discourse has changed, but because their lingo will have been absorbed in popular culture, or on the other hand made completely obsolete just like the technology they
once used. (which is why it is always difficult to talk about "new media" without any context attached to it)
Long (non)answer:
As Heather just said, my previous post was a technical answer to a technical question, and indeed pure:dyne is a platform to allow us, and a few others, to make art or anything creative with artistic software. But this platform is not art. It's a software environment (and I won't
get into the neoclassical code as craft thing either).
Back to the question, I don't know if it can be answered or not. As it is formulated now, it's very difficult to come up with something that would be really satisfying because it might carry a couple of cans of worms attached to it.
For example, I believe it is not possible to generalise on the fact that technical aspects predominate in new media art, without first making a distinction between, on the one hand, artists operating in the field of new media with a complete technology illiteracy and who need technicians to implement their concept, and on the other hand, artists who can code and coders who make art. That sounds trivial, but it's often forgotten or left as a detail from the art perspective. But in my eyes it's very relevant.
In the 1st case the technological factor is little or not present because the artist see the technic as just a support or an enabler to illustrate an idea/concept. Nothing new, and it's something common no matter from which angle it is seen: from the relationship contemporary
conceptual artists and designers have with craftmanship, or from the engineers/artists post E.A.T. collaborative dreams point of view.
In the second group, though, "artists who can code and coders who make art" it is true that technology is predominant, but this *not* predominant compared to something else that would be in minority, such as art. It is predominant because it *is* art, the good old concept/technic dichotomy cannot apply here, and any attempt will end up in this deadlock where one will try to look for something which is right under his nose.
Of course there are important variations within this field as well. For example an artist who can program might build an imaginary based on a very badly programmed, but creative software art, or an artistic interpretation of technology that would sound like pseudoscience. At the
other extreme, a programer making art will have the tendency to focus much more be in the technical process and the manifestations of this underlying mechanics would be treated as side effects or illustrations of these.
In real life, such extremes exists, but things are generally a bit more balanced, but what is important is that in both cases software is seen as something much closer to a medium rather than something like a tool.
It is up to an artist to stay in the safe frame of the "material>tool>object" instruments and the multimedia metaphors (digital paint, virtual canvas, etc) or to decide to explore what software as artistic medium has to offer. In this situation the technology is either
transparent or its structure used as platform to reflect upon an idea. The understanding of software as technology is mandatory here of course. But what seems to appear as a mass of overwhelming technical information is just language to express and explore ideas that cannot be expressed otherwise.
Marc Garrett:
Hi Heather, Aymeric & all,
Thank you for your answers so far,
As the global, economical crisis seeps deeper into people's lives everywhere. More are questioning their own approaches to living, and many are reconsidering their social values after the break-down of these capitalist, (free) market-led frameworks and the attitudes that
once supported them. It has been mentioned on various news channels that East Germans are now flocking to buy Das Kapital by Karl Marx. "A recent survey found 52 percent of eastern Germans believe the free market economy is "unsuitable" and 43 percent said they wanted socialism rather than capitalism, findings confirmed in interviews with dozens of ordinary easterners." http://tinyurl.com/5zlo5c
Perhaps East Germany is an easy target for declaring that social change is occuring, but there is something in the air. So, considering the current state of things and the impact of economies collapsing around us, do you think that this climate adds extra weight for more
people to use (FLOSS) Free/Libre/Open Source Software and pure:dyne, if so why?
James W. Morris:
Hi,
I'm curious about how pure:dyne might compare to other multimedia distributions. I have always gone back to Debian (stable) as my main OS, but have tried 64studio... and another, can't remember it's name, it used fluxbox as it's desktop but the distro died, but the desktop was
fast and it all worked from go.
Does pure:dyne come in 64bit flavour? (and any chance of ordering a live/install DVD btw?)
> Of course there are important variations within this field as well. For
> example an artist who can program might build an imaginary based on a
> very badly programmed, but creative software art, or an artistic
> interpretation of technology that would sound like pseudoscience. At the
> other extreme, a programer making art will have the tendency to focus
> much more be in the technical process and the manifestations of this
> underlying mechanics would be treated as side effects or illustrations
> of these.
I found this quite interesting. If neither programming nor art is earning one a living, how can one tell if they're a programmer making art or an artist writing code? Hang on, there's a clue at the end of the paragraph... Yes I agree there, with the illustrations analogy.
Aymeric Mansoux:
Hi Marc,
Well it's obvious that the current situation is an occasion for all the grow-your-own, do-it-yourself, open and free cultures to be under the spotlight. Although during this process there will be a lot of reinvinting the wheel and re-discoveries, it's still of course a very good thing and might present alternative future for our societies, by breaking down hierarchic glass structures into more "meshy" robust heterarchic systems.
Unfortunately, maybe I am bit too pessimistic, but I suspect that just like usual, only the most educated groups will benefit from this. The masses will be served the usual soup. "we will do everything we can, to fix the issue, and it's together that we will get out of this crisis"
will be copy/pasted all over the place, which usually means introducing more contol and less freedom to ensure the well-being of a few. Panem et circenses, over and over again.
From the cultural and artistic institutions point of view, things might be much better though. The obvious economy crisis and the current lack of funding/support for media arts (in its broadest definition), make platform like pure:dyne very attractive to run a multimedia lab using
shiny imacs or just a bunch of recycled PC. Even if FLOSS get introduced only for cost reasons, it is still a good thing as it will show it has more to offer in the long term. From a social point of view a FLOSS lab is more ethical as well: your budget, even if grandly reduced, will go
to a part-time admin, a freelance developer, a GNU/Linux hacker, who will in turn contribute back to the development of the software you use. In such a case you are supporting directly a human being with direct feedback in the community, instead of injecting more money for company
shareholders.
The position of the artist, on the other hand is probably the most ambiguous. The way I see it, is that artists would use FLOSS for 3 different reasons (non-exclusive).
- money saving
- technological advantage
- politics, activism
Now the problems is that in fact money saving is not a problem. Let's be honest most artists are attached to their digital tools ... but not as much to their licenses. The majority of artists always find a way to not have to pay for a license, and nowadays you don't need to belong to a private torrent tracker community or to scene top site to get your daily dose of binaries, anyone who knows how to formulate a search expression in Google can get virtually anything in a click. So the advantage of FLOSS here is very little.
Another problem is that, it is very likely that if an artist is at the same time already an activist and fond of technology, we can safely assume he knows about FLOSS and already uses it. I don't remember seeing any Microsoft hacktivist ... ever ... :)
So in the end what could bring an artist to change his toolset/environment is to access a new field of possibilities. This doesn't mean the two other situations are completely leading to a logic dead-end, but we can assume they are not the most important cause. In such a situation the economic context would have very little influence. To embrace FLOSS, artists must be able to see what is has to offer that is not available elsewhere (from practical issues, to social aspects and knowledge sharing) and this only needs curiosity and a good dose of self motivation.
Rob Myers:
aymeric mansoux wrote:
> To embrace FLOSS, artists must be able to see what is has to
> offer that is not available elsewhere (from practical issues, to
> social aspects and knowledge sharing) and this only needs curiosity
> and a good dose of self motivation.
Do you think that artists should extend the freedom of free software into their artistic work? Is there an obligation or inspiration from free software for artists to embrace copyleft? Or is it only the case that artists should use and contribute to software freely?
Heather Corcoran:
Just briefly to add to what Aymeric is saying here (brief because we're preparing for our pure:dyne event tomorrow night, 23rd at 6:30pm - please join us! - at Mute HQ in London, and Aymeric has said lots here that I agree with). Coincidentally I've just been doing some work around this for an upcoming exhibition at FACT on (un)sustainability issues, taking a wider view of environmental sustainability in this present moment - from peak oil to peak credit - and while maybe its not obvious at first, FLOSS communities do have a place in this debate. Chris Carlsson quotes Will Doherty at the opening of one of the chapters in his book Nowtopia: "The open source community is pretty much tech support for the revolution, if you will, or tech support for the new society". As Aymeric calls them, the 'grow-your-own, do-it-yourself,
open and free cultures', FLOSS being one of many, do something besides provide products that will be accessible to all in the wake of economic recession - they build a network of individuals gaining practical experience organising outside of this particular capitalist framework. Read the FLOSS chapter of the Carlsson book if you come across it, its decent at talking about this with specific reference to Marxist thought, since Marx has come up now. :)
Aymeric Mansoux:
Hi James,
james jwm-art net said :
> I'm curious about how pure:dyne might compare to other multimedia
> distributions. I have always gone back to Debian (stable) as my main OS,
> but have tried 64studio... and another, can't remember it's name, it
> used fluxbox as it's desktop but the distro died, but the desktop was
> fast and it all worked from go.
maybe it was demudi?
We used fluxbox in the very early pure:dyne iterations, but we quickly realised that during workshops we really need something that provides as much graphical helpers as possible. XFCE is good for that, it's very light and fast on modest machines and has a complete desktop. Also,
even though fluxbox is really good, it's one of these desktop that is not minimal enough to provide a barebone wm, and it's too minimal to provide a user experience similar to what is available in typical desktop based wm.
Concerning Debian, I can't recall if I mentionned it previously, our goal is also not to leave our packages in a nich repository, the mid term plan for the pure:dyne team is to start moving as much things as possible in Debian itself, so it will benefit to an even wider audience.
> Does pure:dyne come in 64bit flavour? (and any chance of ordering a
> live/install DVD btw?)
pure:dyne is 32bit only at the moment, which of course works perfectly fine on 64bit CPU. We'll start exploring 64bit when we consider the live system and the environment that produces it, are stable enough and well documented.
We are also in discussion with 64studio, who contacted us a while ago, to start to think about long term collaboration.
There are no CD/DVD available to order, it's only available as direct downloads or torrents.
http://code.goto10.org/projects/puredyne/wiki/GetPureDyne
But, the next milestone, leek and potato, will be available as liveUSB keys that we will sell, we're still trying to figure out how to do that with as little extra cost added to make it cheap, but sustainable. For those in London tonight, you'll be able to get one or see it in action.
I think the issue with software art is that it is interdisciplinary, which is, at the same time, its greatest quality, but also its curse. It is still too often that today software artists are left in a academe/institutional limbo because they are either considered too geeky
or too arty depending the point of view of the single discipline that examines it. But I think is a general problem for any (multi|cross|trans|inter)disciplinary practice and research :)
Aymeric Mansoux:
Hi Rob,
Rob Myers said :
> To embrace FLOSS, artists must be able to see what is has to
> offer that is not available elsewhere (from practical issues, to
> social aspects and knowledge sharing) and this only needs curiosity
> and a good dose of self motivation.
>
> Do you think that artists should extend the freedom of free software
> into their artistic work? Is there an obligation or inspiration from
> free software for artists to embrace copyleft? Or is it only the case
> that artists should use and contribute to software freely?
Well, artists are quite known to do whatever they want to do with whatever comes around, so this won't change :) (and it's a good thing!) So I think at the moment most artists are using and contributing to software freely, which as a consequence leads very often to paradoxes such as "I use free software to make art, but I won't release the patch/code of my installation/performance".
There is still this idea, that giving away the technology/software of the artwork, is giving away the income (maybe the soul too?). This is not true, as we know, media artists incomes are mostly coming from teaching, residency, comissions and manifestations of their art, whether it is performances or installations, certainly not selling software or registering patents (and we also know what this thinking brought us so far in other fields).
But I have good hope, or said differently, I'm looking forward to the day where critical mass of artists making free software art will be reached, and hopefully will start to generate interesting things. Free software art is not making software art a better Art, but it will
certainly allow it to develop itself in ways we can only speculate about right now, based on how it affected other domains until now.
Also, just like the rest, the freedom of free software is a quite powerful virus, not just for the viral licensing aspect, but also for the mind. Artists who are operating for a while in its presence, very often start to introduce it in their work and their research, as an inspiration and method.
Interview ends.
Also just published - FLOSS+Art:
http://goto10.org/flossart/
FLOSS+Art critically reflects on the growing relationship between Free Software ideology, open content and digital art. It provides a view onto the social, political and economic myths and realities linked to this phenomenon.
Compiled and edited by Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes de Valk.
With contributions from: Fabianne Balvedi, Florian Cramer, Sher Doruff, Nancy Mauro Flude, Olga Goriunova, Dave Griffiths, Ross Harley, Martin Howse, Shahee Ilyas, Ricardo Lafuente, Ivan Monroy Lopez, Thor Magnusson, Alex McLean, Rob Myers, Alejandra Maria Perez Nu?ez, Eleonora Oreggia, oRx-qX, Julien Ottavi, Michael van Schaik, Femke Snelting, Pedro Soler, Hans Christoph Steiner, Prodromos Tsiavos, Simon Yuill.
ABOUT PURE:DYNE:
pure:dyne is an operating system developed to provide media artists with a complete set of tools for realtime audio and video processing. pure:dyne is a live distribution, you don't need to install anything. Simply boot your computer using the live CD and you're ready to start
using software such as Pure Data, Supercollider, Icecast, Csound, Fluxus, Processing, and much much more.
http://code.goto10.org/projects/puredyne/
pure:dyne will work on any PC laptop, desktop, and single-board computers, including the intel-based Mac, Asus' Eee PC, and any x86 netbooks.
pure:dyne is based on Debian and Debian Multimedia. All packages provided by pure:dyne can be used if you are running these flavours of GNU/Linux.
pure:dyne is: Rob Canning, Heather Corcoran, Antonios Galanopoulos, Karsten Gebbert, Claude Heiland-Allen, Chun Lee, Aymeric Mansoux, Marloes de Valk
WHO USES PURE:DYNE?
pure:dyne is developed by artists, for artists. Our primary users are people like us, media artists who build all kinds of creative projects, using pure:dyne to do anything from recording and manipulating sound, making live visuals, creating interactive media in installations, and more. We use 'artist' as a broad term for anyone who is doing or wants to do something creative using their computer.
pure:dyne is also used by media art organisations across the world. Galleries, production centres, school departments and more are finding pure:dyne useful for teaching media art skills to their local communities.
http://320x200.goto10.org/
ABOUT HEATHER CORCORAN:
Heather Corcoran (CA/UK) is a curator/producer with a specialist in media art and music, currently working as Curator at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) in Liverpool. Recently she has worked at Space Media Arts in London and InterAccess Electronic Media Arts in
Toronto, as well as producing a number of freelance projects. She works hands on with technology and technology communities - currently a Developer of the free software project pure:dyne, the GNU/Linux distribution for media art; co-organizer of Dorkbot London; and a
lurking-only member of OpenLab. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in New Media at Ryerson University in Toronto.
http://guests.goto10.org/~heather
ABOUT AYMERIC MANSOUX:
Aymeric Mansoux (FR) is an artist and musician, member of the GOTO10 collective (http://goto10.org). His main artistic and research interests revolve around online communities, software as a medium and the influence of FLOSS in the development and understanding of digital art. His most recent projects and collaborations include 0xA the file repository based music project with Chun Lee (https://code.goto10.org/hg/0xa/), the digital artlife Metabiosis project with Marloes de Valk (http://metabiosis.goto10.org) and the pure:dyne GNU/Linux live distribution for media artists (http://puredyne.goto10.org). Aymeric is editor of the FLOSS+Art book (OpenMute 2008) as well as Folly's Digital Artists' Handbook
http://digitalartistshandbook.org which was launched early 2008.
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