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ZeroOne San Jose / ISEA2006 ISEA2006 symposium
Thinktank PDF Print E-mail
Poster Sessions
Aug 04, 2006 at 12:00 AM

Inga Zimprich

online collaboration, social exchange systems, trust, agreements and compensation in virtuality and voluntary projects, resource-exchange, resource sharing network, working realities of collaborative non-profit practices, supporting self-organized initiatives

Thinktank tries to open the process of developing a groupware to practitioners from the arts and social and cultural production. In a research phase we gather the expectations, requirements and wishes towards online collaborative spaces, which pay attention to the dynamics which appear in voluntary working processes, such as agreements, compensation, and trust, but also practical aspects such as conferring online, and publishing (printing on demand). In collaboration with other partners, the conceptual design emerging from the research phase will lead to new add-on modules, to be attached to the existing groupware drupal. Furthermore the Thinktank will develop a new user-friendly interface.

Abstract

Thinktank Concept

The Thinktank is a proposal for an extended groupware, an online collaborative environment, which offers practitioners from the artistic, social and political field online spaces for group-work.

During its research phase the Thinktank invites artists, architects, designers, people from the social and cultural practice to think and envision with us how this working environment should function, what it should and could provide. In conversations in an artist-run project space in Amsterdam in February 2006, in an online communication platform and in conversations with artist groups and collectives in Berlin we are trying to formulate a conceptual design, which will later on be realized as a groupware solution.

Thinktank Research

Certain areas of collaborative work are our focal points of research. In dialogue with practitioners we are aiming to gain a better understanding of how agreements are made in groups, how relationships of trust are established, how work is delegated, how group-structures can be negotiated and changed, how external feedback is gathered, how working-processes are evaluated internally under the conditions of a self-organized, voluntary practice.

Invited research participants include artist from an interventionist and socially engaged background, artist-run spaces, free universities, feminist and hacker organisations and exchange initiatives.

Thinktank Aims

1. Supporting non-commercial initiatives technically and structurally by bringing them in virtual proximity with like-minded initiatives to exchange methods, skills, resources and knowledge, create visibility and connect to an exchange network

2. Offering them autonomously and individually adjustable (virtual) working environments, which pay attention to the character of work or occupation within collaborative (artistic) and voluntary practices. Agreements and authorship in groups, compensation or alternative compensation systems, decision-making, evaluation, conferences, trust and inefficiency are the core-areas in which the Thinktank – collaboratively through its research phase – wants to develop and offer improvements.

3. Offering these environments easily usable and accessible for non-computer-skilled people by creating a simple, intuitive and customizable interface, releasing the Thinktank as Open Software, offering Thinktank services such as hosting and group-spaces for free.

Thinktank Partners

Thinktank will be realized in partnerships, for example on the technical level with the software development project Knosos, conducted at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels and Hoogeschool Mechelen (BE), and in collaboration with openmute / metamute (http://www.metamute.com) – Magazine for Culture and Politics after the Net. All three projects develop compatible with the existing groupware drupal, http://www.drupal.org. Next to cultural and artistic partnerships, with e.g. the residency for the mind, Het Blauwe Huis, the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht and the project space Public Space With A Roof, Amsterdam, the Thinktank seeks to broaden and expand it’s network in order to a) Create a strong community of a potential user-groups b) Gather skills, interests and resources from various areas, as collaborative experience of artists, institutions and initiatives, technical computer skills, contacts to potential user-communities. c) Finding partners for follow-up projects which can translate the Thinktank into other national / cultural contexts and connecting to communities there.

For more information please consult: http://www.Thinktank.con-gress.net As well as (under construction until mid February 2006:) http://www.rekalldesign.com/tt

Last Updated ( Aug 04, 2006 at 08:34 PM )
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