Grazing the Digital Commons: artist-made social softwares, politicised technologies and the creation of new generative realms.

The growth of the free and open source software movements from the mid 1980s to the present day has contributed vast amounts of creative labor and technical innovation to the 'digital commons'. This has enabled individuals, groups, organisations and governments affordable use of powerful computing environments and tools, and the co-operative sharing of knowledge, skills and information. In many instances it has been 'the greater good' rather than commercial gain which has driven research and production. Traditionally artists have played a strategic role in the research, development, creative application and socialisation of various technologies, yet their recent contributions to social software have not been widely analysed outside of the media arts field itself. This thesis begins with an outline of early developments in the history of computing, emphasising the social and political factors shaping the technologies, illustrating the fact that technological development has never been politically neutral. This is followed by a discussion of the creative power of the 'digital commons', the collaborative labour processes involved in the free software movement (participatory design and testing), examples of innovative social technologies which are being produced, and the kinds of opportunities which can be opened up through the adoption of these tools and processes. The research concludes with an in-depth study of the NetMonster software made by the artist group Mongrel. Netmonster combines search engine functions integrated with a unique data visualisation tool, both of which feed into a 'writing machine' designed for the collaborative authoring of dynamic online narratives. I will draw upon my own experiences of using Netmonster as a research and artmaking tool in 2005 to explain and illustrate its features. According to Mongrel, Netmonster was created for 'the online resourcing and collaborative construction of the “networked image”. A responsive, immediate and sensuous space for projects based on networked collaboration – the future of generative social software'. The creative and transformative power that social software such as Netmonster could offer, especially when customised for and by those living in the economic margins, will be explored. My research will conclude that the digital commons is a thriving site of creative and affective production which seems to simultaneously sit inside of and hover over and under the networks of 'informational capitalism'. Although the digital commons is increasingly a site of contestation as attempts are made by various forces to restrict and enclose it, it appears to be flexible and 'genetically-diverse' enough to either repel such efforts, or to incorporate them into itself to inspire and fertilise new allotments.