Although the projects of Sol Lewitt, Ben Fry, and Casey Reas all explore networked collaboration, investigations can still be made in regards to the idea of ownership. Sol Lewitt’s project “Wall Drawings” defined ownership by stating constraints like “the wall drawing is the artist’s art, as long as the plan is not violated.” But Fry and Reas’ project, Processing, the line between owner and contributor is more blurred.

Does participation in an open-sourced platform like Processing imply a willing surrendering of ownership? Let’s assume that Processing in itself, at its structural core, is owned by Fry and Reas. As a user and contributor to the system, am I still the owner of my code, even when it joins with Processing? Are we joint owners?

Can ownership be revoked? If the contribution of a community member does not improve the code, does not benefit the bigger picture, or doesn’t even work, can the contribution be denied? Open source communities in the same vein as Processing are appealing in their own right as many do not suffer at finding participants. Maybe the concept of ownership in networked collaborations is moot as the entire draw of the community is the literal and proverbial release of individual ownership to one’s work.

Referenced Readings

Ben Fry and Casey Reas, “Processing . . . ,” in Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012), 1–7.

Sol LeWitt, “Doing Wall Drawings,” Art Now 3, no. 2 (1971)