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% http://snelting.domainepublic.net/interviews/fragments.txt

% MC = Miguel Arana Catania
% JD = Julien Deswaef
% CB = Carla Bosermans
% EG = Eleanor Greenhalgh
% FS = Femke Snelting
% CBL = Chema Blanco
% DC = Dave Crossland
% SS = Susan Spencer
% CBA = Carlos Barragán
% OO = Olatz Otalora
% MJC = Mireia Juan Coco
% APA = Ana Pérez Aguilar

% TITLE: Tools for a read-write world

% NOWSPEAKING: X

In 2013, Constant teamed up with Medialab Prado in Madrid to organise Tools for a Read-Write World, a ten day prototyping session that allowed us to  develop nine different projects to design, edit, draw and write together. We wanted to extend the notion of 'Read-Write' beyond just the canvas, beyond the pixels of an image, the contents of a document into software itself, and into standards, platforms, frameworks, hardware and  ways-of-doing. We asked ourselves what tools would allow us to develop, design and produce shareable content, and how we could make many different  practices of knowledge work together. The following excerpts were recorded near the end of the work period, and give a sense of the issues and energies that participants brought to the table.

% BIGSKIP:

% SLOGAN: Colaboratorio de Relatos #HackMito (a platform to co-create stories on and with Free Culture)

% NOWSPEAKING: CB
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In all this work, we're trying to find something poetical in digital practices. We think that they are transforming things, and that there's  something artistic in them, because they're not just programs, they're  ways of doing things. Ricardo gave us a two hours explan ation about how version control systems work, with just a paper and a pencil. And he explained it to people who don't know anything about  version control, and it was incredible because he could translate these concepts to us. We decided that ‘d iff ’ was really important to us. Then, we decided we could get something symbolic or something poetic out of  everything. Difference is the most important thing for me, because the point in that is the difference, not w hat is the common, because that is the normal way of thinking. So d iff is a really important 'god' for us.

% SLOGAN: Incoma. Exploring the 'collective' in collective intelligence

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Why is it important that the structure of your system should be flexible on all levels?

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I think that this part can make the discussion evolve, because in traditional discussions, the only important thing is the content of the contributions, but in the process of thought, the connections you make are really important . F or example , if something is a consequence of another thing, you can say _if I'm really sure of this, then I'm sure of this other thing a s well ._ So you can advance in the process of thought. I think this property can make discussions really go to another level. And the fact that everyone can contribute to these links can make it really powerful, I think.

% NOWSPEAKING: MC
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From my point of view, politics has to do with many things. One thing politics has to do with is organi s ation, how we organize the world, how we organi s e the energy, the style, the work, everything. And we have seen that delegating this to powers to the people who has more money, etc. has terrible consequences in the life of people. So we have to find new ways of organi s ing between people, all of them. This is one of the main ideas of the tool. Although since politics is also creating and thinking about new worlds, it's how we think the world could be, how the relations between people could be set, how we can behave in our lives. And it's about thinking, debating, which is one of the goals of the tool: to help people think together, make clear the way we think, and find more intelligent thoughts, but made by the collective, not just by some genius who comes with an idea.

% SLOGAN: Design with G it

% NOWSPEAKING: FS
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It seems that especially when you work together on a file, you need hints of where things changed if you didn't make the change yourself.

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Yeah. Exactly. I'm a bit mixed. I don't really know if these visual changes are maybe something that will improve a designer's workflow, but I think because this is so attractive, then designers will come to it saying _oh, let's try it_ and then they will find out about versioning, and then they will find out about collaboration, and then they will start working on collaboration. I mean, the visual d iff tool, it's not really practical in any way, I don't really know. But getting designers into collaboration is more important. It's a tool that will maybe attract people into that.

In my opinion, when you have a complex file or, maybe not  complex, but when the changes are subtle, if there's a tool that's  displaying it as a bright red, or really putting a marker on _this node  has changed,_ it's helpful. You don't need to spend a lot of time  guessing what's the difference. I believe this is useful.

I  received lots of feedback, or more like _I'm interested in this!_ For  me, it's maybe the first real open source project where I really want  other people to be involved. It's a challenge to get people involved in  the project. This is a bit new to me, so I ... I'm expecting that people  will join in, but I have no idea if this is going to happen because I  think usually people need to see a finished project before getting in.  Maybe in the designers ’ world, I don't know. It's a question. I'm trying  not to have too much expectation around this and just keep going. We'll see.

% SLOGAN: Yes, No? Maybe, (if 'yes' doesn't always mean 'yes', how can we encode 'maybe'?)

% NOWSPEAKING: EG
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I've been excited by some of the things that have come out.

% NOWSPEAKING: FS
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Can you describe them, why they were exciting?
    
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One of the things that wa s interesting was the idea of allowing for doubt to emerge , not in the answers that were given, but in the process of repetition. For instance , if you change your answer , how how can we represent that visually ? And this is where parallels emerge with the _ Design with g it _ project . Because then, for example, you have a design object which bears traces of its history. H istory in terms of how certain somebody was, how sure they were. And I found it conceptually, but also visually , interesting to experiment with how a shape could change over time and retain traces of th at change.

% SLOGAN: Freedom of speech kit

% NOWSPEAKING: CBL
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The main goal of the thing is this idea of empowering people. To make it accessible to people. We're not going to finish by the end of Interactivos and this is not an end, but we need to reach the first stage, a working prototype , and then , technically , we need to iterate and make it more robust, see how it behaves in real circumstances, so we can improve the system to make it more solid for real demonstrations. And we also have this open discussion, we have to talk to a lot of people to continue giving the conceptual basis and make it as powerful as we can.

% SLOGAN: Real time collaboration in Fontforge

% NOWSPEAKING: DC
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I think that a lot of designers work in small studios, they work with maybe one or two other people on things. And at the moment, when people share, they save the file, they close the program, they put the file into maybe some kind of shared folder system... And then other people can open the file. If two people open the same file at once, they can overwrite each other's changes and that's always very frustrating, when you lose work. To have that kind of collaboration built right into the tool so it's live, really speeds things up.

% SLOGAN: Open source digital pattern making

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We're taking into account many more points of data so that the traditional method of making garments, using ratios of waist to hip... and if you have this size hip, then your leg size is going to be a certain one. That doesn't work. What we're doing is we're busting through even that limitation of the current garment industry. If you use a pattern created with our tool, the pattern will be 100% to your specifications with no ratios assumed. If your shoulder size is such and such, then your arm length will be... You know, it could be too short or too long.

The only thing that stays the same in each pattern is the point of origin, where you start. And then all other points are derived in sequence from that point. And using the body measurements. So with any given instance of a pattern, the only thing that is the same between patterns is the relationship, the mapping between the pattern formulas and the body measurement.

%SLOGAN: El Recetario (a collaborative platform for research and experiments on using waste to construct furniture)

% NOWSPEAKING: APA
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Before coming here, I thought the 'how' was going to be more difficult, but the 'what' was way more difficult. To get the starting point right and to agree, to discuss with the group what we wanted to do. It took a long time.

% NOWSPEAKING: MJC
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Because we wanted to make it a participative process with the users that are already registered.

% NOWSPEAKING: APA
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We had to put ourselves in the skin of other people and be potential users, the kind of users that we don't have yet, because the ones we have already want to be in the platform. So other kinds of users.

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Do you feel you have made decisions that you now can move forward with?

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I think we have a very defined idea of what the platform is and what it can be. We're not worried about how it's going to be, because we know it's just a matter of technical stuff and time. And it's important for us to have a prototype, but it doesn't matter how it is now, because we know how to do it. 

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We have the basis now, and I think it's been a big change to know that anything we do, or any decision we make... Now we are working in Wordpress, we're going to be more free to change it than we were before with the other platform. Like, okay, we can make mistakes now, or we can leave this for later because it's easier.

% SLOGAN: GRAPA (platform for libre editions and publications)

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You talked about how a book is made by many hands, which is a really nice way of describing the process of publishing, as a relation between let's say texts and books and bodies.

% NOWSPEAKING: OO
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I found it really beautiful what Enrique said one day, that the limit of reading words in a book, is the paper. When you read it, those words come to you so that your skin becomes the limit of those words, so that you think them and then show to others. That's beautiful.
For me, it would be very beautiful if just one person would come and tell us _your tool helped me with..._ I don't know what. Someone interested, someone who plays with mixing. If someone comes and says _Thank you, you helped me, you made my life easier_ that's enough.