If lived experience is ever more prescribed through scores, scripts, and programs, then we need to continue to protect core values associated with sharing, modification and further use. These values derive from the ambiguous relation of open source development to the marketplace, and current ways that software and network services have merged into centralised server—based platforms (run by monopolies like Amazon and Google). If running code has become incorporated into the mechanisms of domination, especially in the case of service-based platforms where there is no longer (free, open) code to share (as with the App Store, for instance), then new strategies are required to resist market values in the service of art and freedom of expression.
Geoff Cox is Associate Professor in the Department of Aesthetics and Communication, Participatory IT Research Centre, Aarhus University. He is also an occasional artist, and Associate Curator of Online Projects, Arnolfini, Bristol, Adjunct faculty Transart Institute, and treasurer of the Museum of Ordure. His latest book is Speaking Code: Coding as Aesthetic and Political Expression (MIT Press 2012).
