(continued from here)
More recently, online communication forums such as Friendster,
LinkedIn, or Tribe offer easy-touse forums for interaction. For instance,
Friendster is a web-based application allowing users to network their friends
based on social profiles. Free text books are put online at Wikibooks(.org),
and many texts can
be found at the Gutenberg Project (textz.org).
The project Opentheory(.org) applies ideas of Free Software to the development
of texts as users of the site improve on each others’ submissions. Wikiversity
expresses the goal of facilitating learning through the Wiki-real-time logging
format. The online initiative Wikipedia will become more comprehensive than
classical encyclopedias in a few years. The aforementioned open content formats
introduce a new production paradigm, offering new annotational and editorial
opportunities and a potential for broad participation in the knowledge commons—
from the collection, and re-combination, to the distribution of knowledge.
In the context of the post-welfare state economy, these ideas of open theory
and open content are also introduced into self-organized educational projects
such as the “The University of Openess” (twenteenthcentury.com).
Collaborations should start with the building of trust, testing out the compatibility
of values and interests, instead of immediately focusing on the project goals.
Social resources like trust, mutual respect, tolerance and shared values make
it easier for people to work together. Based on this trust, true communication
can take place. The term collaboration assumes that there is a common goal
and that group participants share responsibility for it. Therefore, each collaborator
needs to be given authority over her task. Collaborators need to get to know
each other as people and need to find out about each other’s agency
and professional needs. Collaboration requires genuine dialogue, a human encounter
full of presence; this requires the skills of receptivity and responsiveness.
At times, the dedication to the other person can be a bit scary, thus collaboration
does not work for everybody. The ABC’s of collaboration demand that
needs are addressed and lines of communication kept open. Collaborations need
to constantly change and question themselves, otherwise they will get trapped
in their own definition.
Collective leadership is another important issue. Leadership should take turns
in a collaboration. Leadership is usually defined by commitment of time, energy,
resources and intellectual contribution. Commonly, the person who contributes
the most to a project has the most say. This dynamic endangers the cooperation,
as it marginalizes the otherwise more silent or withdrawn group members. Collaboration
and consultation are increasingly inevitable, since technology-based artwork
requires deeper levels of specialization bringing together technological and
conceptual components. On- and offline there is the risk of involuntary altruism
caused by the possibility of freeloaders in the collective process. We must
ask: whose labor becomes invisible and which type of labor comes to the front
stage? These issues of crediting are more developed in theatre, dance, architecture,
music and film, where each person receives credit for her individual contribution.
Some members of the Open Source movement suggest a tit-for-tat strategy based
on exchanges of effort—one gives a bit of code and then receives a bit.
Comparably, Jazz and Dance Improvisation actors study the moves of the others,
and take turns leading. However, this improvisational freedom needs to be
based on discipline (Brubeck). At best, collaborations can playfully spark
off one another, with a “third body” resulting from a chorus (Green).
The free development of each individual is the condition for the free development
of all (Marx/ Engels), although commonly, self-sacrifice and giving up of
personal gain rather than freedom are associated with collaborative work.
Murray Bookchin’s hope for radically new configurations of society based
on sharing and cooperation can inspire us to a positive active imagination
of the future that impacts our collaborative experiments and explorations
in the present online and face-to-face. But in the end we should view our
collaborations and the tools that facilitate them as what they are without
mistaking them for our utopian projections.
Trebor Scholz is a German-born, New York-based media artist, writer and organizer who works collaboratively and individually in the fields of media art, event-based cultural practice, new media arts education, and interactivist media cartography. In 2004 Scholz founded the Institute for Distributed Creativity (bio.critical-netcultures.net). He has taught new media, art history and theory at The University of Arizona, and The Bauhaus University, and is assistant professor and researcher at the Department of Media Study, SUNY at Buffalo. In spring 2005 the book “The Art of Online Collaboration” (editors Lovink/Scholz) will be published by oe/b_books, Berlin.
Other full legnth texts can be read and downloaded at freecooperation.org.
