Media Mutandis

This publication documented and assessed the inaugural season of media art in London, 2005, ‘NODE’ - Networked, Open, Distributed Events. Francis was invited to be one of the contributing editors for a 100-page section documenting one of the constituent events of NODE entitled ‘Open Congress’. This was a 2-day event at Tate Britain, which Francis co-organised. The ‘Open Congress’ took as its motif the Open Source software process, ‘source-modify-evaluate’ and was the first ever event to explore this as a means for art production. Francis therefore also applied this motif to her section of the publication. Hence, to document the Congress and consider how its questions were addressed, Francis created three subsections that explored the following: the key texts on Open Source software production; how these were adapted at the Congress for thinking about art production; and how those adaptations and the Congress itself were evaluated. Sections (1) and (2) comprised existing texts e.g., ‘The Open Source Definition 1.9’ alongside commissioned texts e.g., by Toni Prug and Felix Stalder, while section (3) comprised texts written in response to an open invitation to Congress presenters. Collectively, they represent the first anthology of texts on Open Source (and) culture; and provide an introduction to the underlying theoretical positions and points of debate in its application. Francis wrote an introduction to the section, along with a 3500-word paper addressing the question of how Open Source, as a mode of digitised production, applies to non-digital/unique works of art. She contended that these atypically propose a system of material recycling as unique, manually-produced artworks (unlike computer code) that are easier to modify in their original state, than to copy and then modify.