Creative Networks, in the Rearview Mirror of Eastern European History

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THEORY ON DEMAND

the servers of both our media centers E-Lab (rE-Lab.net) and RIXC (rixc.lv) and maintained his own personal server (x-i.net). He has been building ‘art servers’ since 1997 and uses them for his own creative experiments and for publishing his own website and those of other individual artists. Let us look at the RIXC center in Riga as an example. In the course of time, it has been possible to follow a few turns in RIXC’s infrastructural development. In 1997 (when we still worked as E-Lab) the first server was installed and administrated by Jaanis Garancs. The server provided E-Lab community members with e-mail addresses, mailing list services, the possibility to publish personal websites, a broadcasting server, data basis, etc., in short, all that is necessary for communicating, expressing and working creatively on the Internet. In the course of time, the commercial services developed more professionally and had much more resources to handle the relentless hacker attacks and the continuous reinstalling of the servers that was required by the software updates. In 2001, the RIXC center had still few servers (for experiments) but around the middle of the first decade of the new millennium RIXC’s main server was passed on to a commercial Internet service company. Individual international projects and e-mail services are located on virtual servers (servage.net) abroad and it is possible that in a near future almost all content of the RIXC.LV server will be moved there as well, because experience learns that this solution would be both safer and financially more beneficial. Because ‘they own huge cluster servers that replace one another if one falls out of order another one takes its place. We have access and we can work independently on it and configure it the way we need but all basic things are nevertheless provided. I do not really have to take care of any security related issues there; if something breaks down they fix it soon on their own’ (Garancs 2010). Either way Jaanis Garancs believes that nowadays this is a much more convenient option than to return to the 1990s praxis of art server administration: ‘It is difficult and expensive to maintain all this in one organization, therefore economically it is better to purchase these services from a professional provider’ (Garancs 2010). However, this tendency does not mean that all art server administrators think this way. Depending on the possibilities, resources and finances, some media centers still try to create and to maintain their infrastructures – their virtual homes – at their own effort. Conclusions This chapter draws several conclusions concerning the social organization forms of creative networks. First, the existence of translocal networks and creative communities relies a lot on local media centers, because they function as nodes and in a way also as a base for the translocal network culture –their resources are used to support translocal networks and activities of their communities. Second, festivals serve as the main venues in real space for creative network community meetings; they provide the possibility for creative networks to develop and strengthen their communities. Third, one must consider the most suitable solutions for the community at a point in time in relation to the ‘virtual home’ of creative networks, namely, the maintenance of their technical infrastructure – to what extent to maintain their own ‘art servers’ and to what extent use the professional providers of commercial services. In the case of creative networks these three elements together – media centers, festivals, infrastructure, ‘on top’ of which there are mailing lists –are the cornerstone which founded, evolved and developed the early network culture with its creative communities. Although the aims and activities of creative networks in time may have changed and other issues may become more relevant (for example, sustainability), still today creative networks use mailing list (as a main channel for communication and information exchange). Together with the other three main forms of social


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