Still Water was a research and development

laboratory A laboratory (; ; colloquially lab) is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific or technological research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. Laboratory services are provided in a variety of settings: physicia ...

at the

New Media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...

Department of the

University of Maine The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the Flagship universities, flagshi ...

that studied and built networks for artists, academics, and other creative professions. Still Water examined networking from technical, social, and political angles; specific areas of interest included online collaboration, indigenous sharing protocols, and limits placed on artistic

remix A remix (or reorchestration) is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, video, poem, or photograph can all be remixes. The o ...

es and

filesharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include re ...

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...

law.

Digital tools

Still Water has released social software intended to foster collaborative creation, distribution, and preservation of common culture. ThoughtMesh and The Pool are meant to connect digital scholars and creators, and have been described as incubators for artists and students that may serve as a means of evaluating academics working in new media. Still Water is also the current development team for the Variable Media Questionnaire, a tool that tracks strategies for preserving ephemeral artworks and has been proposed as a means of resurrecting obsolescent artistic and scientific media. Still Water also helped create the Cross-Cultural Partnership, a legal instrument meant to encourage ethical behavior across cultural divides, as when

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...

ians want to sample Native American chants or when Wabanaki elders and

permaculture Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking. It applies these principle ...

activists live and work together in Still Water's LongGreenHouse project.

Public events

Public events that Still Water has produced with these themes include the Code and Creativity conferences (2003–present) and Connected Knowledge conferences (2006–present). In 2004, Still Water co-organized the event Distributed Creativity with Eyebeam Atelier, which merged conversations during a six-week period from the email discussion lists

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

(USA), Rhizome.org (USA), DATA (Ireland), Sarai (India), and Fibreculture (Australia).

References

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External links

Still Water Web site

The Pool

ThoughtMesh

Forging the Future, home of the Variable Media Questionnaire

LongGreenHouse
University of Maine