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\title{Data, data, everywhere, nor any bit to use: copyleft havens in the information sea.}
\author{Aymeric Mansoux}
\date{December 18, 2011}
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As graphic designers often remind us, information is beautiful.\footnote{David McCandless, Information is Beautiful: The Information Atlas
(New York: Collins, 2010). }
Combined with the plethora of programmable design tools available
today and the ever-growing quantity of data available online,
processing anything into gorgeous graphics and animations is
increasingly easy.

Looking at the ancestors of these modes of representation, we might
have difficulty imagining that one day pie charts and monochrome
histograms would escape the realm of office meetings, scientific
papers and management tools, to reach out to a broader and sexier
audience gathered in the many communities of data visualization fans.
Of course, plots and graphs software in office tools are still as dull
as they were the first day of their creation, but they make it to the
covers of many glossy magazines, just like fashion models and
celebrities.

This success did not happen overnight; it is the result of the
increasing electronic mediation that exists when we produce and
consume information.  In essence, data visualization is so versatile
and flexible that it becomes almost meaningless; it is used in media
to engage an audience in just about any topic.  Indeed, pretty much
anything can be represented by anything, and it does not always matter
if it makes sense or not as long as it looks good – extra points
granted if it’s animated, even more if you can interact with it.
Because any set of data can be mapped and represented into any other
complex visual representation, the question of sense, interpretation,
and usefulness is bypassed by the powerful illustrative value of the
visualization.

As a consequence, if there is any truth to be sought through such
illustrations, it is more likely to be lying somewhere within the
design process that led to the creative mapping of data using
algorithms in an artistic way – rather than in its ability to
successfully translate a model from one mode of representation to
another, so as to highlight an interesting feature or quality.

The whole field of data visualization is symptomatic of the way we
communicate, share and publish information today.  We have at our
fingertips a vast amount of data that we can access using a
combination of hardware and software technology.

Usman Haque's data brokerage platform, Pachube, is a good example to
show the connected fetishisms of information exchange and processing.
Entering the main website, we are greeted with the following text:
``Store, share \& discover real-time sensor, energy and environment data
from objects, devices \& buildings around the world.  Pachube is a
convenient, secure \& scalable platform that helps you connect to and
build the `internet of things.'''\footnote{''Pachube – data infrastructure for the Internet of Things,''
Connected Environments Ltd, \href{http://www.pachube.com}{http://www.pachube.com} (accessed April 19,
2011). }

This way of engaging with data and the network is not specific to
Pachube but is itself a good, non-infographic illustration of the way
information is treated nowadays.  By focusing too much on the
networked infrastructure that permits the distribution and the
processing of data, the nature of information that is being
distributed and processed is constantly fading into the background.
Its ``raison d’être'' becomes of lesser interest.  In this quest for
system interfaces and protocols, quantity and quality are now both
superseded by potentiality and accessibility.

Instead of asking substantive questions (e.g., Why are such data
available? What are their nature and meaning? What are the conditions
of using and connecting to such a system?), artists and designers can
become overwhelmed by the potentiality of data and the simplified
access to it. They can be distracted from challenging the concepts and
concurrent definitions of freedom and openness of information on the
Internet.  It is not surprising, then, that media art practices often
lead to the creation of complex pipes in which data flows from one
input to a processing unit, the output of which can then be plugged
and processed further for no apparent reason – other than the obvious
excitement to shape and develop the aesthetics of an infinite LEGO
construction site.

While the playfulness of the LEGO methodology for making art is not so
far from the metamechanics of Jean Tinguely, and the nature of the
pipes we use to build the ``Internet of things'' is not so distant from
the one that René Magritte painted in La trahison des images, a
society obsessed with communication and the transmission of
information does seem to lose something in translation.

\begin{figure}[htb]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=.9\linewidth]{./heureka.jpg}
\caption{\label{bloblo}Heureka (detail), 1964, Jean Tinguely, steel, Photo Micha L. Rieser – Creative Commons Attribution -ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)}
\end{figure}


Indeed, unlike the metamechanics that were created as a critique to
the cult of technological progress, and the pipe that questioned the
real and its representation, we are, in fact, more than ever embracing
the consumerism of goods that can pull, transform and push information
to build an ever-expanding universe of misrepresentation and deceptive
realities.

This is problematic and is best exemplified in the visual field, more
particularly throughout the coverage of news and the
self-documentation of history on a daily basis. As noted by Inke Arns,
our experience of the world is heavily relying on media, thus less and
less based on direct observation.  While this is not something new,
according to Arns, the difference today resides in ``the total and
permanent availability of images, where any image at any given time
can become its own simulacrum.''\footnote{Inke Arns, ``Introduction to History Will Repeat Itself,'' in
History Will Repeat Itself, eds. Inke Arns, Gabriele Horn and
Kunst-Werke Berlin (Berlin: Revolver Publishing by VVV, 2007). }

More specifically, on the Internet, data travels inside a ``rhizomatic''
labyrinth of many different network topologies, a labyrinth which
existence solely relies on its never-ending expansion in the domain of
technologies and their legal framework.  This rapid growth goes hand
in hand with the development of statistics, machine-to-machine
communication, analytics and data mining. Because it's tuned to give
access, process and interface with the many systems through which
information is flowing, it’s a positive feedback.

So the information does flow, again and again, aimlessly and without
interruption; information is mashed up in an ever-changing
superimposition and collage of the truth.  Looking back at the
dramatic events that happened in Japan after the 2011 Tohoku
earthquake and tsunami, Brian Massumi writes:

\begin{quote}
Of course, nothing can ever expunge the horror.  It will be archived.
The images of the disaster will be held indefinitely in store.  For as
long as there is an Internet, they will remain available for
recirculation.  It is not so much that the horror is replaced by human
warmth and its accompaniments.  It is rather that it ``decays'' in the
media.  The horror transmutes into a different affective element, its
intensity halved, then halved again, eventually reducing to trace
levels.  Globally, the event settles back into a more stable range of
the periodic table of collective emotion.\footnote{Brian Massumi, ``The half-life of disaster,'' The Guardian, April
15, 2011,
\href{http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/15/half-life-of-disaster}{http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/15/half-life-of-disaster}
(accessed April 19, 2011). }
\end{quote}

So when contemplating the information sea, we can almost feel peaks
and tension, waves, echoes, ripples and patterns, and be seduced by
its cold beauty that does not take a stand, as it is too busy with its
inner mechanisms of delivery and distribution.  But the sense of decay
is an illusion coming from an attempt to attach a human interpretation
to such patterns disguised as communication.  From a system
perspective, the origin and historical context of information is
irrelevant.  For example, in image boards, we are constantly reminded
of this disconnection: photos of Nazis are mashed up with MC Hammer
lyrics, and kittens are pasted onto pornographic photos.\footnote{Timo Klok, ``4chan and Imageboards,'' in post.pic: imageboards,
tagging, tool images, visual studies – a primer by practitioners,
Communication in a Digital Age, (Rotterdam: Willem de Kooning Academy,
Rotterdam University, 2010), 16-19. }

It would be naive to think that art can escape this fate, but even if
it is being treated just like any other form of information, once
mediated via electronic systems and turned data, could there be a way
to manipulate this mediation in such a way that it alters our
perception of this never ending “dada-esque” information orgy that is
Internet culture?

Unlike instant forwarding, remixing and mashing up that are
short-lived manipulations of the information, reenactment is a way to
achieve a short circuit effect by creating distance with an event,\footnote{Inke Arns, ``Introduction to History Will Repeat Itself.'' }
thus disrupting space and time to allow reflection and analysis.
Eventually, the reenactment will also decay because it is operating
only on the perception of information and not its condition of
existence in the digital mediated space.

To provide a more stable and durable effect it would then be necessary
to operate in the space in between information and its distribution,
building a haven within the legal and technological fabric of the Net.

\begin{figure}[htb]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=.9\linewidth]{./datacentre.jpg}
\caption{\label{blabla}Close-up Data Center. Photo The Planet – Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)}
\end{figure}


Antoine Moreau, co-creator of the Free Art License,\footnote{''Free Art License 1.3,'' \href{http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en}{http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en}
(accessed April 19, 2011). } points that
``L’art est à la culture ce que l’inter-dit est aux dits.''\footnote{Antoine Moreau, ``L’art est à la culture ce que l’inter-dit est aux
dits,'' Loisirs Éducation, September-October, 2002. } By
arguing that art is to culture what the inter-said is to what is said,
he is referring to a concept from Lacan\footnote{Jacques Lacan, ``Subversion du sujet et dialectique du désir,'' in
Écrits, (Paris: Édition du Seuil, 1966), 800. } that addresses the
discontinuity of the signifier.  Jacques Lacan coined the term
“discontinuity” to describe the existence of in-between spaces and
holes in the structure of language that give clues to hidden truths
that analysis seeks to access and reveal.

According to Moreau, art is working in a similar fashion with
culture. Furthermore he urges that there is a need to separate the
communication–the cultural fact of what is said–from the creation; the
artistic fact from the inter-said.

\begin{quote}
La distinction est indispensable pour comprendre le rapport
conflictuel qui existe entre l'art et la culture et en apprécier le
nécessaire jeu martial. Cela permet de mieux saisir que l'exploration
des limites propre à l'art met en branle, au risque de l'écroulement,
l'édifice culturel. Aussi, il me semble que les pratiques artistiques
qui doivent s'inscrirent dans le cadre borné de la culture ne peuvent
faire l'objet d'une politique culturelle. Qu'il faut accepter et
apprécier la faille que l'artiste en herbe va créer dans le champ
culturel. Car si le grain ne meurt, c'est toute une récolte qui
devient stérile. Le jeune artiste est un cultivateur qui nie la
culture productiviste et positive. Loin d'être nihiliste, il est le
révélateur critique et constructif de ce qui fait la culture
vivante.\footnote{Antoine Moreau, ``L’art est à la culture ce que l’inter-dit est
aux dits,'' Loisirs Éducation. }
\end{quote}

Applying the principle of the inter-said to what Antoine Moreau
reveals to us, we can see the hidden truth within the space left in
between his own words, and that led him and the co-authors of the Free
Art License to see in the GNU General Public License\footnote{''GNU General Public License,'' Free Software Foundation,
\href{http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt}{http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt}. (accessed April 19, 2011). } a clever
mechanism; bending the limitations of copyright to highlight and
enforce the space in-between, and making room and creating pockets of
artistic freedom in the interstice of the intellectual property
fabric.

As a consequence, what is too quickly, too often understood as a mere
accelerator for collaboration, sharing and processing of information,
a free culture license such as the free art license is, in fact, also
working as a means to critically engage with the mediation of
information.  It does this by developing an alternative system by
reclaiming this in-between space.  Unlike Hakim Bey's Temporary
Autonomous Zone (TAZ), which also operates as a zone inter-dite in the
network, the free art license aims at setting up a foundation.

\begin{quote}
Babylon takes its abstractions for realities; precisely within this
margin of error the TAZ can come into existence. Getting the TAZ
started may involve tactics of violence and defense, but its greatest
strength lies in its invisibility—the State cannot recognize it
because History has no definition of it.  As soon as the TAZ is named
(represented, mediated), it must vanish, it will vanish, leaving
behind it an empty husk, only to spring up again somewhere else, once
again invisible because undefinable in terms of the Spectacle.\footnote{Hakim Bey, T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological
Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (New York: Autonomedia, 2003), 99. }
\end{quote}

Licensing does not wait for emerging network properties and does not
strive for the ephemeral intervention; instead, it seeks to build and
develop a stable alternative information network using the in-between
territory.

Of course the risk of doing so is that, while naming the unspeakable
inter-said by the means of creating rules and using them with a Free
Art License, the art distributed as such becomes forever sealed within
a nested free culture and might fail to reach or engage the one it
criticizes.

Arguably, in the end, what remains visible and the most effective is
happening at the gates of mediation, where copyright and copyleft
collide. The license seen as an artistic intervention becomes more
valuable than the works it generates.

Perhaps the Free Art License and similar free culture licenses are not
the final answer to the increasing passive consumption of data that
prevent us from understanding the dangers and illusions linked to the
networked manipulation of information.  What they do offer, though, is
a way of thinking, a proof that nothing is set in stone. They do show
that hacking the system and mediating the information is possible.
When operating at the gates of information, art can effectively
operate as a disruption that critically engages with the production of
culture, not just transforming it for the sake of rehashing the same
data over and over again.


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