Art unlimited: an investigation into contemporary digital arts and the free software movement.

Computing technology has not only significantly shaped many of the contemporary artistic disciplines, it has also given birth to many new and exciting practices. Modest, low cost hardware enabled artists to manipulate real-time multimedia data and coordinate vast amounts of hardware devices, whilst high bandwidth Internet connections has allowed them to communicate and distribute their work rapidly. For this reason, art practices in the digital domain have become highly decentralized.
It is therefore not surprising that the rise of free and open source software (FLOSS) has been warmly welcomed and adopted by an increasing number of practitioners. The technical advantages in free software allows them to create works of art with greater freedom and flexibility. Its open and collaborative ideology, on the other hand, further embraces the increasingly autonomous and distributed characteristics in the artistic community.
This thesis aims to examine the impact of free and open source software in the context of contemporary digital arts. It will look at the current climate of both digital arts and the FLOSS movement, attempting to rationalize the implications of such a phenomena. It will also provide concrete examples of ongoing activities in FLOSS digital arts, as an evidence and documentation of its development to date. Lastly, the practical work in this research will offer a first hand insight into developing a FLOSS project within the given context.