.readymade dictionary of the author:

.readymade dictionary of the author_

.readymade dictionary of the author_ is a .f.reeP_ project by .-_-.

.readymade dictionary of the author_ was realized as a f.reeP_ project by .-_-. with Özüm Asılkazancı, Mert Uzun, Ayşen Ünlü, Özlem Aleçakır, Elif Akmanlar and Alperen Tokgöz during 2009 spring term of Basic Design course at Yildiz Technical University, Faculty of Art and Design. 33 other people who has participated the .f.reeP_ debates, where .readymade dictionary of the author_ was discussed, has chosen not to participate_

. for the project, more than 270 videos were shot by a core group of seven. more than 250 different people appeared on the videos saying a single word to the camera. these words were chosen since they are parts of the famous quotations that you can appropriate and remix now using the .copyleft!_ free/open source content of .readymade dictionary of the author_

. a gmail acoount, “readymadedictionaryoftheauther@gmail.com” with an open password “temtas09” was used to collect and store the pure data of the project and as an experimental tool, “google docs”, which can be accessed here, was used as a wiki for the participants to share the words to be shot on video and to communicate_

. the quotations have been chosen during .f.reeP_ debates. when we searched for the origins of the quotations (mostly referencing to the wikiquote project by wikimedia foundation) we have found that originals of the most of the quotations were not exactly as we have known. so we have also worked on those inaccurate versions of the quotations. most of the quotations chosen were cliché but some of them were also about the conceptual framework of the project that has been discussed at .f.reeP_ debates_

. the name of the project “readymade dictionary…” comes from a phrase in Roland Barthes‘ essay “the death of the author”. Barthes writes “…the writer can only imitate a gesture forever anterior, never original; his only power is to combine the different kinds of writing, to oppose some by others, so as never to sustain himself by just one of them; if he wants to express himself, at least he should know that the internal “thing” he claims to “translate” is itself only a readymade dictionary whose words can be explained (defined) only by other words, and so on ad infinitum””
this quotation is also appropriated by .readymade dictionary of the author_ project_

“the death of the author” is one of the cornerstones of the postmodern authorship theories, where the “originality” of the author is questioned. recent authorship theories, influenced by information technologies enabling new forms of collective authorship as in peer production and enabling the audience to appropriate the works almost as easy as viewing them, blurs the distinction between the author and the audience. one of the basis of the copyleft attitude is also built on the idea that all cultural productions are the products of all human culture and they cannot be privileged to one particular author by means of recent aggressive copyright laws. the words in the .readymade dictionary of the author_ are also the words that do not belong to anyone. they can be freely spoken. the author who has combined them is also never original, as stated by Barthes, and the unity of a text is not in its origin, it is in its destination;_ join the journey to appropriate and remix the words in the .readymade dictionary of the author_

.f.reeP_

.readymade dictionary of the author_ is a part of the ongoing experimental project series .f.reeP_ by .-_-.

.f.reeP_ investigates the recent concepts driven by information technologies such as free/open source movement, copyleft attitude, distributed computing, p2p, crowdsourcing, peer production, network economy etc. .f.reeP_ explores what they can offer for artistic creation and contemporary art in the age of information technologies in order to influence social, economic and cultural life through re-examining notions of art such as culture industry, appropriation, authorship, relational aesthetics, gift economy, multiples, use value of art etc. .f.reeP_ is free and peer oriented_

.for .f.reeP_ projects, .-_-. works with crowds and communities as peers to experiment on the potential of artistic creation of the peers, to debate on the notions of art, culture, life and information technologies and to create free/open source copyleft content and artworks that can be shared and appropriated freely so that new works and concepts can be developed. The process itself, where each peer is free in how they may contribute and choose to be creative, allows a form of relational aesthetics, in which there is no art at all or everything is art. concepts, content, works and whatever else created as a part of .f.reeP_ is distributed/shared on internet with free formats to encourage peers all over the world to freely share, study and appropriate the featured copyleft content_

.peers all over the world and p2p networks are proposed to determine the value of what is created (if there is or there will be any) by sharing and appropriating. websites, blogs and other platforms also contribute to determining the value by linking, appropriating, hosting and sharing the featured content. this is the way .f.reeP_ proposes for determining the real use value of a work of art, content or concept. each .f.reeP_ project builds on the experiences of the previous ones, whether backing up or challenging them. .f.reeP_ is experimental_

.recent .f.reeP_ projects_

. .re_potemkin: a copyleft crowdsourcing free/open source cinema project_: re_potemkin is one of the very first examples of investigating the potential of using crowdsourcing to create a film_

. .complaints choir of basic design: (as) a free copyleft peer production project_ : .complaints choir of basic design_ is based on the original concept by tellervo kalleinen and oliver kochta-kalleinen to explore the peer production model to create copyleft free/open source content.

. .aa_: an anonymous distributed identity project_: this .f.reeP_ project consists of just creating an identity with an e-mail account and distributing its password on a blog to let people build a distributed identity which can be appropriated for anonymous distributed responsibility of any act. the name chosen for this distributed identity (which is mentioned as “aa” here) is not announced as a part of .f.reeP_ but it is yours to discover and appropriate if you happen to find it out. this distributed identity already has many online accounts and everyone who adds a new account for it announces its password and info on the blog.

. .readymade dictionary of the author: a f.reeP_ project by .-_-. _ : readymade dictionary is a video database of various people saying a single word to the camera. 270 single words are chosen from famous quotations and videos of these words being uttered are shot by 6 other peers besides .-_-. .these single-word-videos are then concatenated to appropriate famous quotations. the video database is free for everyone to remix. all the content is copyleft and distributed to be re-appropriated, remixed and sequenced to create new, anonymous discource for the visitors_