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Learning from communities
Posted by Heather Ford on April 24th, 2007 filed in SA Free Culture Tour
Daniela Faris has written a great post about the SA Free Culture Tour - especially interesting are her reports from open source researcher, Rishab Gosh and
Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales. For me, I think the great insight of the week came from Larry Lessig. We were sitting around a table at the Shuttleworth Foundation offices with some of the great pioneers of open education in South Africa. National Director of Curriculum Innovation, Trudi van Wyk, was saying that the biggest challenge for her is in convincing people (teachers) who are already so under-resourced and busy, that they have to add ’sharing’ to their list of things to do. Larry responded by saying that a seminal article on peer production, the ‘Cornucopia of the Commons‘, talks about the fact that you have to create environments where sharing is just a part of doing your job. An example of this might be that teachers are required to submit lesson plans to the department at the beginning of the year. To do this, the department creates a lesson-plan development and sharing tool where people can both develop their lesson plans and share them with their colleagues (who then don’t have as much of a job to do). In this case, sharing is just a part of a larger process rather than an isolated step on its own. Keep reading icommons.org for more insights 
Pic: Leigh Blackall, CC BY 2.0
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Thank you!
Posted by Heather Ford on April 24th, 2007 filed in SA Free Culture Tour
A very big thank you to everyone who made the Bring ‘n Braai at the Armchair Theatre this weekend such a success. There was some fabulous news coverage of the event (being updated here), the bands were awesome, Larry Lessig and Jimmy Wales had an absolute blast and I’m sure we’ll be doing something again soon!
Thanks again to sponsors, sa-venues.com and BulkSMS, to Missing Link for the video (can’t wait to see it!), to the Freedom Toaster guys for bringing the hardware, to Michael and Steve from the Muso for organising the bands, to Cabins in the Forest and Closet Snare for donating your music to the commons, to Dave Duarte and Max Kaizen for the incredible support and publicity, Shinjuku for the beautiful design, to Gil for the passion and the beautiful venue, to Justin from Laugh It Off for the crazy video, to Stormhoek for the wine and to CulturaLivre, supported by the Ford Foundation, for bringing Lucio K and DJ Whispa to perform.
What an awesome team effort - looking forward to the next one!
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Laugh It Off’s CC Video
Posted by admin on April 23rd, 2007 filed in SA Free Culture Tour
Check out this hilarious video by Laugh It Off’s Justin Nurse who introduced Heather Ford and Larry Lessig at the Bring ‘n Braai.
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Dit was ‘n gewone blou Maandagoggend
Posted by Heather Ford on April 23rd, 2007 filed in SA Free Culture Tour
Author: Ronelda S. Kamfer Thanks for the pic, Litnet. êrens het ‘n ma haar kind se lyk gaan uit ken by eerste pouse was daar ‘n lyk in skoolstraat
This beautiful Afrikaans poem was sent to me this morning as the most recent donation to the commons.
License: http://creativecommons.org
ek, het my gewas, tande geborsel en my BIO taak afgehandel
op die yskas was ‘n briefie van my ma wat sê dat ek tog nie die breyani
so sterk moet maak vanaand nie
my sussie het haar sokkies gesoek en by half ag het ek die voordeur gesluit
en die sleutel op die ou plek gaan wegsteek
by die huiswinkel het ek twee los sigarette gekoop en in my sokkie weggesteek
op die hoek van Wildflower en Rosestraat
het ‘n meisie, tussen die Port Jacksons, saam met haar toekomstige
moordenaars gejoke
in my kop het Dylan Thomas geskreeu
‘DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT, RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE DYING
OF THE LIGHT’
in die voorligting klas het my hoogswanger bestevriendin begin bloei
buite in die straat was daar ‘n paar gunshots
‘n miskraam in my klas
‘n uitstel op die bio taak
en ‘n vrou wat gillend in die straat afhardloop
en vir die Here vra
‘waar was Josef toe Jesus gekruisig was?’
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Message in a Bottle - Whispa Reports from Porto Alegre
Posted by admin on April 13th, 2007 filed in SA Free Culture Tour
Fresh air, clean streets and a world famous sunset that introduces you to an electrifyingly vibrant night life, where you have people pulling chairs onto the sidewalks to gaze at the bright stars, while having dinner at one of the many restaurants, or many other getting ready to party the night away at a choice of a dozen clubs all over the city… I introduce to you Porto Alegre, a city that will easily have you investing in Spanish or Portuguese lessons, packing your suitcase and relocating.
The one thing that has really impressed me is the friendliness and warmth of the people. Bearing in mind that English is hardly spoken, it is easy for one to panic when you get lost in this huge cosmopolitan city. No need to though, as the people warm up to you and literally stop what they are doing to try guide you to your destination. I was really impressed by this.
Yesterday was the opening of the Free Software festival, and it continues running until Saturday, 14th of April. The day started with an array of companies participating and showcasing their contributions to the free software movement. Streams of people walked in and out of the venue, trying to gain as much knowledge about the open source movement.
A concert was held later on where Lucio K and I along with DJ Dolores, Batacla and the first group to release under a cc license called Mombojo, rocked the crowd and closed off the event. The performance was so hot that we’ve been called back to perform on Saturday.
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African music samples latest donation to the commons
Posted by Daniela on April 11th, 2007 filed in SA Free Culture Tour, Music
Another donation to the South African digital archive, being collected through Bring ‘n Braai and the Free Music Project, is one which will be an incredible resource for children who will be using the One Laptop per Child computer. This donation is from ccMixter South Africa, and consists of the samples that were used for the SAfro-Brazil Remix competition.
Rebecca Kahn, ccMixter SA’s resident blogger, explained more about the samples:
“The International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University and Anthony Caplan both created samples using traditional instruments such as the mutumba drums and the umrhube mouth bow. The mutumba drums are originallly from Zimbabwe and are used to accompany spiritual ceremonies that include dancing, singing, clapping and playing the mbira thumb piano. The ILAM have used these drums in a sample which you can hear here.
The umrhube mouth bow is a Xhosa mouth-resonated friction bow, and has been used by Anthony Caplan by using whistling techniques of Xhosa origin, as well as tapping the string in the style of similar instruments found around southern Africa, rather than ‘bowing‘ the string as the Xhosa people do. Check out Anthony’s sample, Umrhube Gees here.
The Kundi harp, which has been used in an ILAM sample that you can hear here, is a five-string harp from Central Africa. It is an instrument traditionally played by young men and boys.”
As Rebecca said in her blog entry, it is often difficult to find information or audio clips of these instruments on the internet. And if one does find this type of material, it’s usually marked with a big ‘all rights reserved’ sign. So to have these samples made available on the web, as well as under a CC licence, is truly an invaluable resource. Even more so, these samples will now not only be used to stimulate the talent of our South African remixers, but will also be made available to open the minds of children around the world to the sounds of Africa. And who knows when the next Miriam Makeba or Hugh Masekela will be inspired to start making beautiful music?
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Bulksms.com sponsor Larry Lessig
Posted by Kerryn on April 10th, 2007 filed in SA Free Culture Tour
On Thursday last week, I received an enthusiastic message from Glen Thompson, marketer at Bulksms.com to phone him A-sap. Upon doing so, Glen informed me that Bulksms.com would love to sponsor Larry Lessig in the SA Free Culture Tour.
Bulksms.com focuses on supporting commercial SMS messaging and is committed to promoting the use of mobile technologies to foster new communicative and artistic experiences. Cell phones provide a means to produce and circulate mobile content as SMS, MMS, photos, ringtones, or video clips. These mobile genres offer an interactive and democratic medium for communicating across social and cultural spaces, re-mixing content as shared conversations, accessed via cell phone, blog or website.
Glen says that, “As Webheads into messaging, Bulksms.com is excited to be able to be part of the SA Free Culture Tour and support the important work Creative Commons is doing in providing a platform for sharing and opening access to digital content.”
Fantastic, Bulksms.com. You have our vote! See you on Friday, 20 April!
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sa-venues.com to sponsor Cabins in the Forest
Posted by Heather Ford on April 5th, 2007 filed in SA Free Culture Tour
News just in! Thanks hugely to Christine Searle from Netfocus (the power behind sa-venues.com) for their generous donation. Christine had great things to say about the initiative. ‘We give any of our content, texts, maps, graphics etc that we create or have written or made for us, to anyone who wants to use any of it for educational or learning purposes. (For example, our maps are used extensively by learners and teachers in SA and the USA who are learning about South Africa). We decided to support this project because it is creating awareness of a platform where sharing information and resources for educational, learning and creative purposes is promoted and done in a highly ethical manner.’
Thank you, Netfocus! We’re so glad to see that there are companies in SA who are willing to support access to education for all, and are looking forward to finding more companies who will do the same.
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Sponsorship opportunities
Posted by Heather Ford on April 3rd, 2007 filed in SA Free Culture Tour
With a little over two weeks to go before the Bring ‘n Braai event, we’re hoping that the universe will bring us some great sponsors. So, please spread the word and contact me if you’d like to find out more.
The sponsorship amounts are as follows:
- R4,000 per band (2 bands: Closet Snare and Cabins in the Forest)
- R3,000 for a welcoming drink at the event
- R10,000 each for sponsoring Larry Lessig and Jimmy Wales
Companies get:
- their logo and/or hotlink on the Bring ‘n Braai/iCommons website
- ‘Free Culture SA Supporter’ button for their site
- special mention at the event by MCs
- if they sponsor Lessig/Wales, we will invite 2 people from the company to a lunch/dinner during the time that Lessig and Wales are in CT.
We have NPO status in the United Kingdom, the United States and in the South Africa if you’d like to give a tax-deductable donation to help the cause.
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Bringing art to the South African digital commons
Posted by Daniela on April 3rd, 2007 filed in SA Free Culture Tour, Art
Nathaniel Stern knows how to bring ‘n braai. He’s been a huge force in the commons movement in South Africa from his introduction to the scene with a comedic talk that involved remixing a Lessig presentation, at the ccSA launch in May 2005.
Nathaniel is an artist, teacher, blogger and commons enthusiast. He was the artist in residence at last year’s iCommons Summit, and is coordinating a bigger and better residency for the iSummit this year; a residency that includes a collaboration of artists from the US, China, Slovenia, South Africa and Croatia, with an exhibition in Second Life.
He most recently unveiled a solo exhibition, Call and Response, in Johannesburg. This exhibition showcased Nathaniel’s Compressionist works – a method of production he developed by scanning the surface of bodies, spaces or objects, compressing the result into a digital image, and then stretching, cropping and colouring the file. He explains on his site, “Compressionism is an artful performance that simultaneously occurs in both the actual and virtual space, and then uses a computer for further call and response. Each performed action produces a subsequent digital image that I then re-work and mediate through my own eye’s interpretation.” His low-res Compressionist images can be viewed on Flickr, under Creative Commons licences.
Nathaniel has several websites, other images, writings and videos all released under CC licences, and many of his design templates are available as GPL/open source. He has re-releasing much of his early, award-winning net.art, videos and interactive pieces under CC for re-mixing purposes, such as the award-winning piece Hektor.net, which he re-launched under CC at the iCommons Summit ‘06.
Reflecting on the large body of work released under CC, Nathaniel is no stranger to the concept ‘some rights reserved’. That’s why he’s going to be donating some of his CC licensed artwork to the South African commons, to be used for educational projects in the future.
If you would like to donate your artwork to the commons, please go to the ‘Upload’ page to find out how to get involved.
UPDATE: Nathaniel has since donated a performance poem dealing with the discourse surrounding HIV/Aids, which was part of a multimedia piece that won him three FNB Vita awards. We’d like to thank Nathaniel for this great contribution! As for the question about South African culture that would be good for kids to think about, Nathaniel asked: How can we ‘contaminate’ or ‘infect’ each other in good ways? Can love, healing, and creativity be ‘infectious’?”. Listen to the poem, and read more about it at Nathaniel’s blog.
