Quick Project Links
brainstorm cchost compaction creativecommons creativecommons developer community cvsbook eventmap fabricatorz gopets infrastructures inkscape mediabar mediaexperiment meshfm ocal openfontlibrary openlibrary overlap.org oss realtime scale soundsystem ucdarnet
Fabricatorz
Company started by myself and Lu Fang.
Website: http://www.fabricatorz.com
Status: Active since November 2007.
The Open Library
Working on some big pieces of this project initially through Creative Commons.
Website: http://www.openlibrary.org
Status: Active since 2007.
Overlap.org
Experimental media community and company started by myself and Christopher Willits.
Website: http://www.overlap.org
Status: Active since 2005.
Creative Commons
I am now employed by Creative Commons as a community and business development manager to specifically push Open Source development surrounding their licenses and standards such as meta-data and ccHost.
Website: http://www.creativecommons.org
Status: Active since September 2005.
GoPetsLive.com, Ltd.
For GoPetslive.com, a Seoul, Korea based company, my skills were contracted to advise this young company of development strategies for promoting Open Source philosophies in their project. The current decision to make money as a business comes from the provision of a service to users for a small fee. Unlike common American games, the client software is given away for free with confidence that a user will find it valuable to purchase a service above and beyond what the free client provides.
Also, part of the contract was to develop a Jabber instant messaging client for the Gopets intelligent agent software. The general concept behind Gopets is that a user may own multiple pets which travel all around the
world through and across other people’s desktops. The Jabber code I developed uses multiple Open Source libraries such as Expat XML parser (used in Mozilla and Mozilla FireFox) and OpenSSL (the defacto standard for ssl), The software also depends upon MySQL behind the scenes and PHP which is used to process user login and friend
requests and add them to the Jabber table in the MySQL database.
Website: http://www.gopetslive.com/
Status: Completed May 2005.
ucDARnet Database Programming & Design
I programmed the University of California Digital Arts Research Network’s website infrastructure. Their new website features a complete database solution to power events, news, and an internal members-only site. The site also features a custom content management system (CMS) I built from the ground up using common Open Source Software.
Website: http://www.ucdarnet.org/
Status: Completed, June 2004.
MediaExperiment.org
MediaExperiment.org is a multi-year series of projects and events expanding outward from San Francisco and Guangzhou that experiment with live media.
Website: http://www.mediaexperiment.org
Status: Active.
Open Font Library
The goal of the Open Font Library is to collect public domain fonts created by people around the world to be used for any purpose.
Website: http://www.openfontlibrary.org
Status: Active.
Event Map
The goal of the Event Map project is to create an interactive map for people to find various events based upon specific search criteria such as time, location, and the type of event. Initially, this will be a simple web-based system for geographically locating events around the world and will evolve to include more intelligent systems for plotting “event patterns” to help coordinate and catalyze different interactions between people and events. For example, one could visit a brand new city such as Amsterdam, and use a web browser to access the Event Map to enter in one’s present local address, current interests like food, new media and network, and time available from 7 - 10 PM. Then, one is presented with a visual map depicting the various events that fit this description within a default 10 square Kilometer radius. The final stage of this project will be to add a deeper peer review system1 so that individuals may help each other by reviewing specific events.
Website: http://eventmap.rejon.org
Status: Proposed. Activation Pending.
ccHost
ccHost is an Open Source project that provides web-based infrastructure to support collaborating, sharing, and storing multi-media using the Creative Commons licenses and metadata. It is used by ccMixter and other sites.
Website: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CcHost
Status: Active.
Creative Commons Development Community (CCDC)
I participated in starting this development community by applying common Open Source community building strategies including building the holy trinity of communication: wiki, chat channel, and mailing list. The goal of the project is to focalize around Creative Commons standards and licenses.
Website: http://developer.creativecommons.org
Status: Active.
The Create Project
Creative Free and Open Source projects such as Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus, Audacity, Open Clip Art Library and others are highly successful projects which produce much video, audio, illustrations, photos, and other content. However, much code, media, and infrastructure are produced by each project somewhat independently which could be shared inter-project. For example, several of the aforementioned applications have their own brush types, color preferences, preferred media storage locations, keyboard shortcuts and file format converters. Sharing these resources saves developer time, increases productivity, and contributes to an overall improved user experience. Because of this overlap and the similarity of media, there is need to work together on standards, promotions, and inter-community plans.
The Create Project’s goal is to catalyze communication and facilitate sharing between Free and Open Source �creative software� communities by providing a third-party space for shared infrastructure.
Website: http://create.freedesktop.org/
Status: Active.
Open Source Contributions
This is a place for various contributions to different Open Source projects. I have been providing some smaller patches to different projects, and sometimes it takes too long for them to get integrated into projects. Also, I am including some other code here that might not ever get into a project.
Status: Active.
CVS: Essays About Collaboration by Modern Cultural Producers
This book is a collection of essays by multiple cultural producers investigating collaborative, goal-oriented authorship that use modern technological systems and tools in order to facilitate their work.
Website: Online
Status: In-Progress.
Open Clip Art Library
This project has the goal of creating a free archive of clip art that can be used with free software, closed software, distributed with various software distributions, or be used in graphic design compositions.
Website: http://www.openclipart.org/
Status: Always In-Progress. For an Open Source project is always in progress which is a good thing, as software changes, is fixed, and upgraded.
Scale Journal
SCALE is a monthly “local” publication about aesthetics and computation. It is distributed in print and PDF.
The newest edition, Volume 01, Issue 03 is out! It seems that the thread that runs through this issue is very much related to identity. This means both reconfiguring old notions of identity and exploring contemporary views of self. This issue was guest edited by Temenuga Trifinova and features articles from Lev Manovich and Joseph Goguen as well as some of the regular contributors.
Website: http://scalejournal.org/
Status: In-Progress. Issues are released monthly.
Inkscape: Vector Graphics for the Masses
This is a dynamic new project. I’m ramping up my participation in open source development projects. This tool is a major missing type of application (vector editor, like Adobe Illustrator) in the landscape of linux design software. I also would like to develop some new tools and extensions for Inkscape that can be used to create data visualizations.
Website: http://www.inkscape.org/
Status: Always In-Progress. For an Open Source project is always in progress which is a good thing, as software changes, is fixed, and upgraded.
MESH.FM Project & Archive
This is the site redesign in-progress for MESH.FM, an experimental streaming media webcasting station. I get way too many questions about MESH.FM to just leave all the archives and experiences from that period of time untouched.
Website: Online
Status: Project Completed May 2003, Archive Completed September 2003.
MESH.FM Sound System
In order to create many contexts for MESH.FM events, conferences, and large scale events like USC’s AIM IV festival, the construction of the MESH.FM Sound System commenced. The project received funding by way of many grants, donations, and personal hard work by several people. Since the last MESH.FM event sometime in spring 2004, the sound system has since been sold to a third party whom operate it as the free sound system.
Website: Online
Status: Project Completed May 2003.
Brainstorm Linux Cluster
During the year-long MESH.FM series of events, one of my students whom worked at a large pharmaceuticals company, donated 30+ company-deemed-obsolete computers to myself in support of MESH’s research. MESH.FM members decided that these computers would best be used to further investigate cluster computing and supercomputing, and what it could be used for experimentally. The cluster was to be used to do research on
itself. Thus, this project dealt with learning how to configure many old computers into a networked cluster computer — something much more valuable than each old computers. Later the “brainstorm cluster” was used by Nathaniel Clark for his SKALD Sound War for several experimental music conferences. Since this activity, the computers have been donated to others whom need them more.
Website: Online
Status: Project Completed Fall 2004.
Mediabar
A modular bar that integrates drinking services, wireless internet, four high power full range portable cubelike speakers, and other mobile modular constructions, all built and designed according to a simple rule based system out of light-weight aluminum and chipboard (OSB). It is modular + portable + service-oriented + salon-based.
Documentation: Online
Status: Completed, August 2003.
Infrastructures of Digital Design Conference
A conference that I developed along with 5 other graduate students in Sociology, Visual Arts, Communications and Science Studies. We received a grant to seed the project from the UC Santa Barbara’s Digital Cultures Project.
Website: http://infrastructures.ucsd.edu/
Status: Completed, February 2003.
RealTime
RealTime existed as a set of events focusing on the ethos of real time determinism where the participants existing as closely to a prescribed actual event, people participating and resources available in a space are foregrounded instead of the normal artist’s production of artwork, performance and formal arrangement of strongly controlled variables. Whereas a traditional byproduct of a contemporary creative act is displayed in a space (an artifact), RealTime enforced the real existence of people working in a space in participation with others to create some “thing” in real time.
Website: Online
Status: Completed, November 2003.
Compaction
A Month of COMPACTION consisted of renting a large industrial waste container and depositing it in an empty architecturally fragmented public space at the University of California, San Diego. During the month of compaction many activities took place. From a grind-core band to an installed online Internet station to many sound and video performances, the gathering of people mirrored the gathering of artifacts similar to the container’s initial prescribed functionality. Please visit the website to
view documentation and writings about the project.
Website: Online
Status: Completed, May 2002.
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