digital waste? corkspace · 7 March 07 by Ray Crowley
In 2004 I launched a community image sharing project localized in Cork City, Ireland. 2005 was going to see the city carrying the weighty burden of European Capital of Culture status. Anyway, I am not going to rake up old embers suffice to say that there were no community driven new media projects on the official programme. I said to myself “Sure, I might as well try something”. So I initiated corkspace.
The project is still online and functional. It runs on coppermine – a chunky/robust LAMP solution.
Below is an article I wrote in early 2005 about the project and its origins in the wheresmecuture experiment.
It was published in the first issue of the WMC? experiment’s magazine:
The CORKSPACE project was initiated in late December 2004. At 16:48:35 on the 22nd to be exact; when I posted a topic for discussion on the WMC? Forum. The idea of creating an online space in which the public could post images of the city had been on my list of potential projects for a while. The emergence of the WMC? movement changed that by enabling me to articulate the proposal to the community via the forum.
I had a clear picture in my mind of the project deliverable:
an online opensource archive for images taken of the built environment in Cork. A rush job? Absolutely. However, over the following weeks the site was refined, reorganized, simplified and contextualized thanks to the feedback I received from WMC? Ultimately, the positive energy generated by the slogan ‘anything can happen, everyone is welcome’ drove the project.
What are its the defining features? It is inclusive. The site can be used in multiple languages from Arabic to Vietnamese. It is free. No advertising is sought, users can upload media at no cost. The software is published under the General Public License and the images hosted are published under the Creative Commons License. It is open. No strict submission guidelines are imposed. It is participatory. Users can engage with the project both passively and actively. The potential that users might be encouraged to take their camera on a long walk around Cork is, to my mind, quite appealing.
So, if you want to participate go to corkspace.com and evolve it. And if you have your own ideas for projects or want to engage in discussions on what ‘culture’ might mean then go to wheresmeculture.com or to one of the public meetings and remember “anything can happen, everyone is welcome”.
