Platonic is a group of cultural producers and software developers who have been operating in Barcelona since 2001. Inspired by the net and their ways of inhabiting it, Platoniq take the Internet to the streets in an effort to publicise, create and share other ways of actively using information, knowledge and connected culture
Their recent projects include Burn Station, which allows people to copy audio documentation and non-copyright music, and the creation of the copyleft licence Aire Incondicional.
The Platoniq team explore possible social uses of technology in a search for more effective strategies that lead to new forms of communication and training and new forms of work and citizen participation such as their Bank of Common Knowledge.
Their work ends up generating innovative collective research methods and tools, as well as an extensive online audiovisual archive covered by free licences.
At the Oxcars awards ceremony, we’ll have the opportunity to see their project Burn Station live.
Platoniq will launch their new project, S.O.S., at the oXcar awards ceremony:
S.O.S.
For over 150 years, Speaker’s Corner has been one of London’s most popular attractions. On any given Sunday morning, anybody who has an opinion to air and anyone who wants to listen or refute it can gather at the point where Oxford Street and Hyde Park meet.
A symbol of free speech, Speaker’s Corner dates back to the 18th Century, when many ideas were unable to find an outlet for public expression in the lead up to the birth of the mass movements. Noted patrons have included Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, William Morris and George Orwell.
S.O.S is a kit that allows users to record messages (offers, requests and complaints) at public events and in public space. It was inspired by Speaker’s Corner and continues in the line of previous Platonic projects such as Burn Station and the Bank of Common Knowledge. S.O.S aims to connect people with similar interests who are in the same area and would like to share information and tools. Interested parties use the SOS to record ads that are then classified and can be accessed online by subject and keyword. When the system finds a match between messages or a reply to a particular ad, an sms is automatically sent to the users involved, to prompt a possible meeting or exchange.
S.O.S aims to generate policies that favour the use of significant, useful, endangered or reappropriated knowledge in urban and rural contexts, using the dynamic of local offers and requests. This project is part of Platoniq’s exploration of public collaboration formats that apply the positive effects of free software and P2P systems to the fields of (self) education and citizen participation.
http://www.platoniq.net
