Sustainable Digital Intro

This project started out at MediaLAB, a weekly meeting in a physical space called hacklab01 where a group of (digital) artists exchanged ideas on digital art and set out to make a collaborative art piece. Our discussions led to the conclusion that a manifesto was necessary as our stands on digital art tools (software) were very political. So we turned our efforts to writing and thought up the Sustainable Digital Art (SUDA) manifesto.

Writing about software sustainability demands the exclusive use of free (libre) and open source software. We installed Nextcloud with Collabora on a VPS and decided to use that instead of Google Docs, Office365 or similar proprietary solutions for collaborative writing. Proper documentation is just essential so an open source WIKI system - Bookstack - was used to make notes and write any documentation in the process.

In the process of writing the Manifesto (which took some time) the subject of presentation often came up. We agreed to present the manifesto not merely as text or multimedia and decided to build a whole computer and present it in the form of something we called a server essay, using the desktop as a medium connected to the internet as a server and served to the audience as a familiar-looking interface in the browser complete with artworks by everyone from the group. Infinitely reproducible and deployable and well documented for anyone to replicate or to base their work upon in the future.

Naturally only free software should be used to build the entire system. That enables us to read the underlying code for everything and can change everything if needed. Using GNU+Linux would just be too simple. Most Linux distributions use non-free software in the kernel - the very core of the system. These are known as binary blobs, usually drivers included by vendors in order to be able to use their hardware without making the source code freely available to users.

To get around this, we turn to Linux distributions built for using libre software entirely. The politics of these distributions differs widely so we decided to go into several directions with several different flavours:

Trisqel (https://trisquel.info/)

- based off Ubuntu

- fixed release distro

Parabola (https://www.parabola.nu/)

- based off Arch

- rolling release distro

Gnuinos (https://www.gnuinos.org/)

- based off Devuan (Debian without systemd)

- fixed release distro

Why not just pick one? Because libre software is about choice and choices make the world fragmented. We decided to embrace this diversity with this project. That's why SUDA is distributed by three separate ISO files, essentially holding the same data and being built for the same purpose. Based on three different systems with different politics, all built around safeguarding the user from non-free software.

In a nutshell SUDA is:

1) The Sustainable Digital Art Manifesto

2) A server containing the server essay which is hosted in a physical space and available on the web

3) Three separate operating system images containing the server essay which can be ran on a physical of virtual computer

4) A physical manifestation of this in the form of a server-sculpture that can be presented in galleries or similar art spaces

5) Online documentation

6) Printed documentation (artist book)