Sightings: Research: Interviews: Bong Ramilo

Bong Ramilo

Bong Ramilo, Australia Council CCD Fellow, talks about his experience on the CCD.net Steering Committee to make a website to support community arts projects. He highlights the importance of open-source. Read about 'open-source' technology in the Internet + Community article.

Could you briefly describe your involvement in the development in CCD.net?

I sit on the steering committee of CCD.net. This committee oversees the project (sets policies, manages funds, commissions developers, etc.). I was invited to sit on this committee because I have a strong interest (and some experience) in exploring the relationship between new technologies and CCD, highlighted by my receiving an Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship (2000-2002) to look into these relationships.

I believe my significant contribution to the CCD.net project is my advocacy for Open Source development. This advocacy has created debate in the steering committee, which has resulted in other committee members exploring Open Source as an option to commercial, proprietary approaches to software development.

Some little advances through my advocacy have been: the preference for Open Source technologies in the original tender process for building the site (the winning firm used PHP and MySQL), and a willingness of the steering committee to support an Open Source project for inclusion in CCD.net.

I am, however, still a minority opinion when it comes to embracing Open Source as fully as possible. I had proposed that the existing code base of CCD.net be opened up so that the site can be developed further using Open Source approaches. This has met resistance from the contracted developers and others on the steering committee. Rather than get into protracted arguments about licensing arrangements, I have suggested to the steering committee on 15 May 2003 that we instead support an Open Source project to develop an application (or applications) desired and needed by the CCD field that can be integrated into CCD.net with little or no intrusion into the existing code base. The committee has agreed to this approach; we will ask the field, through a survey and other means, for suggestions on desirable/necessary applications that can be developed the Open Source way. I will lead this development effort.

What kinds of barriers have you met in attracting participation from community arts practitioners? Or have you have you found the response good?

While CCD.net has succeeded in providing a gathering and keeping place for some CCD resources (news, project information, etc.), the response has been disappointing in relation to generating self-publishing and discourse.

Projects in some States and Territories where there are no project partners (Western Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, Australian Capital Territory, Northern Territory) are underrepresented in the database -- projects from the other jurisdictions are well represented due, I believe, to the work of the community arts networks there who have put in time and effort to contribute content.

Where discussion forums have been set up for specific projects (by the Centre for Popular Education, for instance), there has been some active discussion. Other forums, set up by CCD.net (on Artwork magazine articles, for example), has been very quiet. The busiest forums of this sort are the "CCD lingo" and "what do you think of CCD.net?" forum. The former contains a lot of messages from the administrators of CCD.net, thus boosting message numbers. The latter has more input from the field and provides some insight into the effectivity (or otherwise) of CCD.net.

Some comments in the "what do you think of CCD.net" identify barriers to wider participation -- e.g. login procedures, Flash and other technologies that hinder access by the disabled -- some of which have been addressed by recent code and design changes (undertaken by the original developers with input from the steering committee).

While recognising that there are barriers erected through the technical implementation of CCD.net, I believe that the barriers are not purely technical. One barrier may have to do with the attitude or mindset of some participating organisations re valuing a new technology that often gets added to an already long list of "technologies" needed to run an organisation. A steering committee member observed that stakeholders (particularly community arts organisations) needed to allocate time and resources for staff to devote to CCD.net, otherwise they would not contribute effectively. This problem of adopting new technologies seems to be common among other commmunity-based organisations; it has been observed in the USA by Policylink in Bridging the Divide (PDF).

Participating organisations (i.e. those represented on the steering committee) now contribute significantly to publishing content on CCD.net. There is still, however, the problem of wide participation among CCD practitioners and communities. One barrier cited in the "what do you think of CCD.net?" forum was the lack of adequate access to the Internet by many, if not most practitioners and communities. This may well be true and CCD.net should address this issue, and I don't think it really has addressed it so far. My proposed area for exploring ways of providing or enhancing access -- that is, "bridging the digital divide" -- has been to foster models of community computing over personal computing, or rather than seek to proliferate machines and ISP accounts among individuals, build more community access facilities instead. But we (the committee) have not discussed this yet.

Assuming, however, that we do agree on a strategy to widen access to new technologies, I believe we will still face the same cultural and other non-technical barriers that now face those who already have access to the Net and CCD.net: the more than 100 signed-up members of CCD.net. We still need to find out why, even as we have a significant already-connected membership, we don't have more participation from our members. A survey has been designed by CCD.net recently to start getting answers.

What is the state of net.art in Australia?

For more information on net.art in Australia, a good resource might be the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), http://www.anat.org.au

In your experience working with community cultural developers, what are the preconceptions community arts practitioners have about new media, technology and net.art?

I think it is still mainly about making things to put on web sites. Some community arts-internet projects I know of in australia follow a basic formula: get participants to make things (such as gif animations or other "multimedia" stuff) then put it on a web site. I've even run one such project.

My impression is that the community arts-internet stuff is still early days in australia. I've tried setting up blogs and interactive newsletters for some community arts groups in Darwin but they have been largely underused. I think there are still cultural barriers among "resistant artists" to internet technologies, and its more to do with mindset, attitude, appreciation of potential benefits, fear or two-way communication, and other problems.

I sometimes describe working in this area as lonely as there aren't many people I know of who work in this field. About a year ago, The Centre for Popular Education, University of Technology Sydney, did a survey of community cultural development research projects in Australia and my project (community cultural development and new technologies) was the only one listed. Don't know if that situation has changed since then.

Information Society is a buzz-word in policy. We find in Europe that there are many funds earmarked for research in promoting an Information Society, mostly to the end of relieving over-burned state services, but with little mention of cultural development of the Information Society. In your experience of developing CCD what is the current level of institutional or state support in cultural development using the internet in Australia?

New Media Arts, which often (but not always) include digital or net art, is supported through arts grants by the Commonwealth (through the Australia Council) and arts funding bodies in the states and territories. The funding bodies also support some digital and internet-related projects such as organisational web sites such as CCD.net.

The Commonwealth's Department of Communication, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA), http;//www.dcita.gov.au/ has some programs that deal with new technologies and the arts. They run a portal on "culture and recreation" which covers arts and cultural activities, including some digital/net.art activities. Please see http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/.

One project DCITA has been running since 2001 is their Ozeculture Conference. The conferences are about "culture, new media, and ebusiness." I've been to the first two but don't intend to attend the third. I feel that these conferences are mainly about trying to fit the arts into the business mould. Arts organisations are often referred to as Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) at these conferences (and elsewhere) and I'm getting tired of the big push to corporatise or commercialise ALL of the arts, including community-based arts.

Can't blame just the bureaucracy and business in this regard; many community-based and not-for-profit organisations (including those in the arts) seem to like emulating corporate structures and behaviour -- this is why CCD.net, for example, opted to spend more than $40,000 on a web site produced by a commercial firm (in spite of a competing bid for half the price that would build the site on the foundation of free, open source content management software, i.e. phpwebsite).

Anyway, hope the government sites I cited will give you a good idea of the state of institutional and government for cultural development and the internet.

How do you see the role of a community artist in this context?

It would depend on the principles and practice of the community artist. There are many -- and sometimes conflicting -- interpretations of "community artist" in Australia. Community artists of different persuasions, however, are eligible for support from various institutions; one will just need to approach the relevant institution depending on the nature of the project.

For community artists who do not necessarily rely on government funding to do things -- and this includes what I describe as endogenous or organic artists, or artists who belong to communities where art/culture is built -- then institutional funding may not secondary, if at all a significant consideration in their work.

With the push to corporatisation, it may in fact be better to avoid institutional support for some community arts projects; this way community artists can avoid the pressures to conform to official standards of "professional" web sites or net art and concentrate on maximising Internet technologies for projects that are determined and which serve community interests.

At Kids' Own we work with professional artists in educational and community contexts. Often we find artists see these situations as 'gigs', external to their own practice and simply ways to make money. We find the best community or educational arts projects are where artists approach these situations as collaborations, and see the outcomes as part of their portfolio. In your experience, what defines quality community arts practice?

Quality community arts practice is about the democratisation of the means of cultural and artistic production. I know this betrays my Marxist heritage, but hey, I really believe in this vision. Community arts must be created, controlled, critiqued, supported, developed, etc. by communities where the arts live. I believe artists should be endogenous to the communities where art is made.

I wrote a paper on issues to do with notions of community and community arts for Artwork magazine; I have a PDF on another computer which I will send you later.

How do you feel new media, technology and the internet can effect good community arts practice?

I am most interested, at the moment, in the possibilities of cultural and arts development among virtual communities. This is a topic that I have been grappling with for some years now and will continue to grapple with in the coming years, I think.

I have a flash movie at http://bramilo.octa4.net.au/thinktank.swf about CCD and virtual communities that may be relevant in this regard.

I am also interested in using internet technologies for all sorts of dialogue and communication among community artists and communities, even if it not to make art or even if the dialogue is not about art. Dialogical processes inspire development of art, culture, and society, and Internet technologies can enhance these processes.

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