☆ Matera 3019 is the project that closes and reopens the program of the European Capital of Culture.
It is an opportunity to reflect, summarize, to have a vision and understand what happened and launch proposals on the cities we crave. We planned two different workshop activities: with the project Clessidra by Teatro delle Forche, involving girls and boys, we will cross Matera envisioning the possible futures, with La Scuola Open Source and the Open Design School we will work on a digital tool capable of enabling conversations to build tomorrow.
☆ Focus of the process
Over the last few years the degree of awareness and attention around platforms and their supposed neutrality and gratuitousness has become more relevant: initiatives to fight and combat the monopoly of large platforms are growing and the scandals produced by the not very transparent use that these corporations make of data obtained by users (according to extractive logic) are getting involved in the debate.
In the beginning even at La Scuola Open Source we opted — for reasons of speed more than for choice — for the adoption of online communication and collaboration services provided by large platforms such as Facebook and Google (drive, calendar, docs, sheets, forms, etc.)
We did it despite being aware of the possibility of autonomously building our instruments and of the potential that this represents. But now we are ready to try to overturn the paradigm and give life to a new chapter in this story.
For a matter of principle:
design is (always) a political act.
and for a methodogical issue:
to use third-party tools that we do not control and whose code is "closed" exposes us to multiple problems.
For example (to mention a few):
incompatibility between services;
little or no edit option;
forced compliance to top-down categories and procedures;
possibility that the data is transferred to third parties (also for commercial purposes);
In many other places what we are experiencing here at SOS has already been tested, without having produced significant results (which is why a superficial analysis what we're building may seem irrelevant), on the contrary we believe that research carried out by La Scuola represents a novelty because it reverses the methodology adopted so far ("first the tool then the project"). Our approach focuses on people, arriving — through a multidisciplinary and open co-design lab — at the development of collective processes and tools.
We are indeed convinced of the power of the collective action, because learning takes place through examples — and setting an example is the most revolutionary gesture we can make.
Furthermore, designing procedures instead of tools (at least initially) allows us to empirically verify what we design and — through iteration — sharpen the result quickly, producing at the same time a sense of belonging (symbolic capital), relationships (social capital) and knowledge ( cultural capital), for all those who take part in the process.
We would like to try to create a precedent: a social experiment, a radical attempt to build an alternative cultural and political "space", from below, together.
A ubiquitous network that recognizes itself around shared values and has at its heart a "server state".
What is a server? How does it work?
from Wikipedia:
A server (from English "to serve", therefore literally "servant, servant") [1] in computer science and telecommunications is a computer component or subsystem for processing and managing the traffic of information that it provides, at a logical level and physical, any type of service to other components (typically called "clients") that request them through a computer network, within a computer system or even directly locally on a computer.
Basically it's a piece (physical and digital) of a network that performs functions that "enable" other clients, or "users" if you prefer, to carry out operations.
This is clearly an understatement, but it allows us to introduce some important concepts to understand what we are doing:
there's a network
there's a system
there are users (nodes)
there are new possibilities to perform actions not possible before
The network we refer to is the community that gathered this year around the Matera 2019 project, composed of all those who, in various ways, attend, have attended or will attend Matera 2019 programme. The system is the set of procedures and rules that allow this community to exist and grow. The individual nodes are all of us, people and organizations that, within this community, "think and do things".
The purpose of this infrastructure is to enable new possibilities, to interconnect the community(s) and to foster their development.
“Open culture” means open hardware and open software.
Once properly configured, the Platform for New Institutions will provide various services, enabling many new possibilities for citizens and visitors of Matera. Here are some examples:
↓ the ideas bazaar
a tool in which anyone can propose ideas for cultural activities (educational, research or events) or explore those proposed by other people in the community, discussing them together;
↓ sharing of production means
a tool in which anyone can share the means of production or book those shared, through a calendar, with which it will be possible to manage, for instance a workshop, a fablab, an hackerspace;
↓ the search for skills
an easy and intuitive tool through which everyone can search for any competence in the community, like any query in any search engine;
Essentially we asked ourselves (and we're still asking) about what tools are necessary for a g-local community that wants to deal with cultural production — in a specific territorial context or not — starting from the axiom that from here on out everything should be open and transparent, in a radical way and without discounts, appropriately documented and organized with well-organized repositories (so that anyone who wants can contribute or browse without effort).
The platform for new institutions — which emerge from below — will be a tool that will enable everyone to co-operate freely within the reference community, for example:
→ contributing to the production of activity ideas or their participatory evaluation;
→ activating and / or taking part in research projects, with the possibility of donating to support them;
→ booking machinery and tools (or entering others in the system);
→ requesting quotes for manufacturing;
→ looking for the expertise we need in the network at any time with just a few clicks.
This "tool" transforms a physical space — like a building , but also a city — in a place of possibilities, as well as in an open data source.
☆Project partners
↓ Fondazione Matera 2019
The Matera-Basilicata 2019 Foundation [↪] is the body tasked with putting into place the lines of work laid down in the final candidacy dossier so as to consolidate the positioning won by Matera and the Basilicata region at a European level in the creativity sector, and to become a cultural platform for Southern Europe. The Foundation's lifetime is linked to the timescale of the cultural strategy laid down in the candidacy dossier (2015-2020) and the need to manage, monitor and assess the outcome and impact of the strategy itself. The Founders of the Matera-Basilicata 2019 Foundation are: Matera City Hall, the Basilicata Region, the Province of Matera, the Matera Chamber of Commerce, University of Basilicata.
The Matera-Basilicata 2019 Foundation follows the goals laid down in the candidacy dossier, which are to:
→ attract and promote creativity with new talent and investment;
→ set in motion a new model of cultural citizenship with a European dimension, based on co-creation, co-production and the sharing of artistic practices;
→ promote social inclusiveness through art and culture;
→ promote social, technological and cultural innovation.
↓ Open Design School
Open Design School is an interdisciplinary experimentation and innovation laboratory, born as a pillar of the cultural program of Matera 2019, but that looks even further. To date, 110 Lucanian, Italian and European artists and professionals have been involved in the Open Design School activities, which together have mapped around 400 places, produced 9 major exhibitions, 11 urban installations and 10 cultural events, thus promoting the meeting and the use of creative content by the public. ODS is a horizontal platform. A place of sharing and mutual learning, driven by the need for continuous creative exchange between art, science and technology. Inside it we design, model and build solutions through a modular system that, in addition to being functional and reversible, temporarily modifies the urban space suggesting new possibilities of use, inviting the public to enjoy the artistic contents and feel an active part of Matera 2019.
☆ Insights
Perché insegniamo, nonostante tutto
→ Salvatore Iaconesi e Oriana Persico
Perché lo stai facendo, se non ti pagano?
→ Tommaso Guariento
La Didattica Open Source
→ Alessandro Tartaglia
Punti aperti sui processi didattici
→ Salvatore Zingale + AA.VV.
Le 12 cose che ho imparato co-progettando La Scuola Open Source
→ Paolo Musano
Un pensiero Open Source
→ Daniele Bucci
Design collettivo e Antidisciplina
→ Daniele Bucci
La necessità di sbagliare, sapendo di sbagliare
→ Sebastiano Pirisi
Report XYZ2017
→ Staff
Report XYZ2018
→ Staff
🔥 ENTRIES ARE CLOSED 🔥
Selected participants will be contacted in the next few hours and the list will be published on this page.
☆ Schedule
The workshop will be held at the Open Design School, in Matera , the laboratory activities are concentrated in the days between the 7th and 15th of December.
We'll start with a welcome (December 7th) and briefing (December 8th) and we'll end with a public presentation of the outputs and final party ( December 15), plus a day of decompression, greetings and departures (December 16).
09.30 / 10.30 → Plenary Meeting
10.30 / 13.00 → Research and co-design
13.00 / 14.00 → Lunch break
14.00 / 15.00 → La Controra
15.00 / 19.00 → Research and co-design
19.00 / 20.00 → La Uascézz / Talks
↓ GLOSSARY:
Plenary meeting — public discussion on the progress of the work
Research and co-design — teachers, tutors and participants work together in teams
La Controra — after lunch relax
La Uascézz / Talk — free time at the end of the day, until dinner, with 5/6 short talks given by guests selected in collaboration with ODS and Fondazione Matera 2019.
☆ Teachers / Tutors
↓ X — COMMUNICATION
Tommaso Guariento [↪]
→ Strategy / Communication
Camilla Pin Montagnana [↪]
→ Strategy / Communication
Giovanni Abbatepaolo [ ↪ / ↪]
→ Ruled Based Design / Parametric Typography
Arianna Smaron [↪]
→ Art Direction / Identity Design
Puria Nafisi [↪]
→ Data Visualization / Coding
↓ Y — TOOLS
Emidio Torre [↪]
→ Web Architecture / Frontend Develpment
Simone Robutti {by remote} [↪]
→ Machine Learning Engineer / Backend Developer
Alessandro Petrone [↪]
→ Interaction Design / Making
Ma Rio [↪]
→ Hacking / Sys Admin
↓ Z — PROCESSES
Maria Pia Erice [↪]
→ UX / Graphic Design
Maurizio Schifano [↪]
→ UX / UI
Rosanna Prevete [↪]
→ Social Innovation / Cooperation
Federico Fred Fumagalli [↪]
→ Social Innovation / Community management
☆ INPUTS
"From the Europe of the economy to the Europe of culture ".
Platform REPO
→ frontend
→ backend
→ ui shared
The platform for new institutions is a techno-political tool developed over the course of two years by La Scuola Open Source during the XYZ research and co-design labs thanks to the precious collaboration of Coompany , Dyne.org , WeMake , MACAO , Bank of the Common and Faircoop network.
The management software is a community software.
It allows users to self-organize (for Events, Courses, Laboratories, Research Projects), to access shared tools (for Fablabs or Hackerspaces), to access to a system for knowledge and skills sharing, to collaborate around ideas, developing them and turning them into real activities.
But the most important platform function is to deconstruct the classic dichotomies of education (eg teacher / learner polarity), production (cognitive / material) and organization (decentralization).
It allows the emerging new cultural institutions to have a way of measuring their own functioning, in real time, as the activities take place. This will be possible thanks to the co-design of specific functions of the platform, which will enable communities to use their own data (qualitative and quantitative), transforming spaces and places into open data sources.
In the future, thanks to these data, it will be possible to develop studies and strategies for the cultural development of the territory and its communities.
☆ TOOLS FOR NEW INSTITUTIONS
Since the extraction (of data, capital, resources, time, etc.) is perpetrated in every area, from ecological destruction to neo-colonial wars, from 24/7 jobs to High Frequency trading and so on, the role of the new institutions it is central — as well as the otherness that these are able to build, guarantee, defend and spread.
For this reason it is urgent to form a common network, to meet, to mix skills, to discuss collectively.
The new emerging institutions — daughters of continuous hand-to-hand with reality — are looking for a political, legal, working, cultural and planning definition.
☆ BIBLIOGRAPHY
Protocol: How control exists after decentralization
→ Alexander Galloway
(Cambridge - M.I.T. Press, 2004) [P]
Il Potere Costituente: Saggio sulle alternative del moderno
→ Antonio Negri
(Venezia - SugarCo, 1992) [PC]
Making things public: atmospheres of democracy
→ Bruno Latour e Peter Weibel
(Karlsruhe - MIT Press, 2005) [MTP]
Futurability : The age of impotence and the horizon of possibility
→ Franco Berardi
(London - New York: Verso, 2017) [F]
Instincts et Institutions in L’île déserte et autres textes : textes et entretiens 1953-1974
→ Gilles Deleuze
(Paris - Editions de Minuit 2002, pp. 24-27) [I]
Che cos’è un comando?
In Creazione e anarchia: L’opera nell’età della religione capitalistica
→ Giorgio Agamben
(Vicenza - Neri Pozza 2017, pp. 91-112) [CC]
Neurocapitalismo: Mediazioni tecnologiche e linee di fuga
→ Giorgio Griziotti
(Milano - Mimesis, 2016) [NC]
“Costituzione” voce dell’Enciclopedia Einaudi
→ José Gil
(Einaudi - Torino, 1978, pp. 3-24) [C]
Gli algoritmi del capitale:
Accelerazionismo, macchine della conoscenza e autonomia del comune
→ Matteo Pasquinelli
(Verona - Ombre corte, 2014) [AC]
Assembly
→ Michael Hardt e Antonio Negri
(Oxford - Oxford University Press, 2017) [A]
Inventing the future: postcapitalism and a world without work
→ Nick Srnicek e Alex Williams
(London - Verso 2015) [IF]
☆ PREVIOUS EDITIONS
→ XYZ 2018 @ Officina degli Esordi
→ XYZ 2016 @ Isolato 47 + Spazio Murat
☆ Archive
SOS Blog
→ past edition report archive, with interviews and articles
SOS youtube channel
→ SOS youtube channel
☆ OUTPUTS
The project includes a digital platform (website), a process of community development, networking and animation of the same, for the following purposes:
✔ collect, measure, systematize and enhance what was done during Matera 2019 (events, reports, contents, ideas, etc.);
✔ connecting all the people who participated in the activities, promoting self-organization and collaboration;
✔ build a digital platform that effectively enables independent cultural production;
↓ X — IDENTITY
✔ Strategy
✔ Branding
✔ Data visualization
↓ Y — TOOLS
✔ Server
✔ Platform
✔ Other services
↓ Z — PROCESSES
✔ UX / UI
✔ Impact analysis
✔ Future Functions
↓ EXTRA
All outputs will be designed:
→ so that they can be evolved, modified and improved over time;
→ according to the dynamics of the functioning of the space;
→ according to the operating dynamics of the single realities;
→ according to the vocation to the multiplicity of space;
→ in order to aggregate, manage and enhance the offer (activities, services, events and / or products) of the individual subjects;
☆ Teaching methodology
The "typical" hacker learning process begins with the identification of an interesting problem, then works to solve it using different sources and iteratively testing the solutions. Very often these are non-linear routes, guided more by passions than by a formalized method. It has been verified, for example, how the use of "reverse engineering" is recursive (recurrent and fractal) in this type of experience. Another of the features of this model is that participants are never ashamed to ask for help from those who know more.
In an osmotic environment, the transmission of knowledge takes place more efficiently (with less time and friction): those who know best will pass on to those who have arrived at a level that will develop that request for rare knowledge (and not to anyone), while most of the nodes of the network, in possession of less rare information, will create the humus in which, through continuous and reciprocal exchange, a quality informational ecosystem can be developed more rapidly, as well as a real collective consciousness.
The strength of the hacker learning model is that anyone who learns something then teaches it to others. No one "keeps for himself" what he has learned. All the knowledge developed by each single node of the network is fed back into the network, for the benefit of all nodes. When the hacker studies a source code for a program, he often develops it further, so that other people can learn from this work. Thus a constant and continuous conversation with several voices develops around the various problems.
A critical, iterative and evolutionary discussion that uses the following methodological principles:
☛ Iteration
☛ Open work
☛ Interdisciplinarity
☛ Non-linearity
☛ Cooperation
☛ Informality
☛ Learning by doing
☆ Who are we looking for?
Participation is open to all those interested in taking part in the process, coming from any professional / academic background.
Participants will be selected based on their own motivation and experience (formal or informal).
↓ X - IDENTITY
♥ collective identity designers ♥ data shakers ♥ code shamans ♥ parameter handlers ♥ "lazy and discreet types"
↓ Y - TOOLS
♥ digital pirates ♥ platform architects ♥ error artisans ♥ linux addicted ♥ keyboards consumers ♥ network engineers
↓ Z - PROCESSES
♥ lego professionals ♥ community growers ♥ indecision theorists ♥ post-it serial attackers ♥ imagery cartographers
☆ Applications
To join X, Y or Z lab you must fill in the following application form by 11.59pm of 20/11/2019 11/30/2019.
The list of selected participants will be published on the workshop website by 11/22/2019 12/1/2019.
Applications require a motivational letter and a résumé (a short self-presentation with a list of what has been done, whatever has been done). You can also attach a portfolio (if you have one).
A Portfolio is any file or document (text, photos / images, videos, github, etc.) useful for making clear the experience gained in your field of activity: design, IT, video, publishing , making, hacking, coding, etc ...
The 3 workshops are free and open to everyone.
If the application requests exceed the available places we will select 15/20 participants for each lab.
The evaluation elements, in case of selection, will be:
→ motivational letter
→ résumé
→ portfolio
The main evaluation factor will be the consistency of the profiles with the outputs we'll work on during the activities.
Although the workshops will be held in Italian, we will ensure that foreign language participants can understand and interact at any time.
All selected participants will be contacted either by phone or at the email address provided at the time of registration.
☆ Sharing
During the workshop a small shared library will be set up, with the books that each participant will consider useful to bring with them. At the end of the workshop all books will be returned to their legitimate owners.
The list of texts thus shared during the workshop will be made public.
We will also collect obsolete books and hardware that you will want to share or donate to the school.
☆ Motivational letter
In the application form you will be asked the reason why you want to participate in the workshops: the selection will mostly be based on this. It is not worth writing mind-your-own-business. After the deadline the motivations of the selected participants will be published in a section of this website together with name, surname and place of origin.
☆ Accomodation
The course is free, whereas travel and accommodation costs will be at the expense of the participants.
We recommend searching for solutions collectively, organizing on Slack (you'll receive the link once selected).
☆ Contacts
To request information:
"info [@] lascuolaopensource • xyz"
Alessandro Tartaglia
→ Project manager LAB — X:
☎ +39 340 081 63 52
Alessandro Balena
→ Project manager LAB — Y:
☎ +39 380 37 97 188
Lucilla Fiorentino
→ Project manager LAB — Z:
☎ +39 338 63 48 436
☆ Social media
☛ SOS on Facebook
☛ SOS on Instagram
☛ SOS on Twitter
☛ SOS on Youtube
☛ SOS on Slideshare
☛ SOS on Github