What is Phy-d’eau?
Phy-d’eau is amorphously thinking toward unfamiliar living.
This stuff is old, it’s still here for archival reasons.
The idea for this site is to have a space for people to explore, think about creative projects, and bring those projects back to push everyone’s mindset further. Phydeau.org is a gathering space for people to meet, challenge, and conspire as a creative collective. Phy-d’eau is the means and evidence of these activities. Phy-d’eau is not bound to notions of real or unreal, it is, for the sake of unbinding participants and opening new measures of care. To encourage creative activity and freedom in thinking, we promote application of the Phy-d’eau License of Intention for Liberty in Expression and Creativity (P-LILEC).
What is the Phy-d’eau Manifest?
The Phy-d’eau Manifest is a publication (possibly taking on a physical form, like paper). It is essentially a magazine, but it is made differently from other magazines. Rather than publish the magazine on a regular basis and compose it of articles like other magazines, we create the Phy-d’eau Manifest in a way similar to how GNU/Linux distributions are made.
Let me explain. There exist a number of groups (non-profit organizations, companies, individuals) that form their top choices of different free (”free” like freedom or liberty) software applications into entire distributions of the GNU/Linux operating system. Each group uses the sources of these common programs, but they modify the software and fit it together so that as a whole distribution it takes on its own sort of characteristics. This system is particularly interesting because it develops from a collective body of programmers that have chosen to devote their energies on like-projects. A lot of coordination goes into creating a single distribution of the operating system and its accompanying programs, but I think these efforts are more significant because of the way they promote the interplay of the individual with one or more communities. With different interests and different perspectives, the individuals and their collectives coexist in a way that pushes each to create more and inspires surprising ingenuity. The point I want to make is that this type of interaction bears some similarities to the way artists (as the term that includes visual artists, authors, dancers, actors, musicians, etc.) often inspire each other’s work.
Why should any individual employed in his or her own artistic expression care about free software communities? Because there is a conflict taking place over your freedom to think. It is taking place in the silent streams of data that pour through the Internet and sit in the electronic devices you use. It is affecting what you can discuss, photograph, listen to, read, and manipulate toward creative ends. If you care about your freedom and ability to do these things, you should care deeply about the false limitations being imposed on our new mediums of expression.
The spread of information technology throughout the world is raising a lot of new questions about human freedom. We are witnessing, through changes and introductions of new mediums for experiencing, storing, creating, and transporting human expression, a great deal of confusion about how we may express ourselves freely. In at least some cultures, we are seeing the medium of information technology wither certain traditional capitalist entities into irrelevant social artifacts. Some people, in their and bounded vision, thinking, and lack of imagination cannot comprehend the beneficial elements of these changes. Instead they try to animate their artifacts for no better reason than the sake of a few short-term monetary gains. At best, these practices inconvenience “consumers.” At worst, these practices have already begun to change social structures in negative and malevolent ways. Unchecked, these practices could damage future generations’ ability to think freely. Instilling people with mental barriers against insightful artistic expression, serves nobody. It will suffocate the human soul (whatever you choose to think that metaphor could be).
The free software communities are a beautiful example of people thwarting the stranglehold of a corporate-blessed and diseased idea like “intellectual property.” Why have, we free and creative individuals, not already become the most outspoken and clearly engaged group fighting against restraints to our thinking, expression, and well-being? We must support the continued accessiblity of the many forms of human expression. We support ourselves best, by sharing our insight and inspiration. This is the motivation for Phy-d’eau creations being licensed under the Phy-d’eau License of Intention for Liberty in Expression and Creativity. The license, like many free software licenses or Creative Commons licenses (which came into existence later), promotes continuous sharing, creativity, and inspiration to any person that wants to participate. As Phy-d’eau grows, we will occasionally be able to collect our favorite pieces (from the sources of writing, art, music, etc. in the wiki) to publish in a magazine. The magazine can be understood as a parallel creation to how I described the development of free software distributions. Hence, the Phy-d’eau Manifest is the collected works of a community, embodied in one item that expresses dreams, ideas, experiences, feelings, and visions of the people making it. It promotes continued freedom by sharing the sources of its creation, freely, with every other person that would like to involve him or herself.
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