Openness As A Mindset — Retas Budaya Festival in Indonesia
Taking inspiration from Coding da Vinci as the first German hackathon for open cultural data, a group of people from Indonesia conceived their own cultural hacking with a little twist.
It was called “Hack Your Culture” (Retas Budaya in Indonesian) and was part hackathon and part festival. The hacking culminated in an online festival and awarding ceremony on 6–8 November 2020.
Although the term “hacking” is widely associated with computer systems and coding, hacking could also mean to transform something beyond its initial intended purpose. With this in mind, we put a little twist and design a hackathon not limited to computer scientists.
Joining forces in Retas Budaya are Goethe-Institut Indonesien, Indonesian Directorate General of Culture, Wikimedia Indonesia, Indonesian Game Association, Indonesian Institute of Sciences, and Elex Media Komputindo, a book publisher from Indonesia.
This project was held with the goal of inviting cultural institutions from Indonesia to join the OpenGLAM movement.
Eleven cultural institutions in Indonesia finally decided to participate. Their participation resulted in more than 2,500 Indonesian cultural artefacts being now available online to the public via Wikimedia Commons.
Even though we put emphasis on open access and open data by encouraging GLAM institutions to publish their collections online, we also wanted to propose a broader approach to openness.
As Katrin Glinka mentioned in her keynote speech:
“Approaching how we work, how we communicate, and how we interpret and mediate cultural heritage with an open mindset will play an even bigger role in terms of how GLAM institutions will remain relevant also in the future.”
This could be achieved through being open to try new methods & technologies, collaborating with other disciplines, and enabling participation.
We realized that the best way to advocate for openness among GLAM institutions is to let them dip their toes in the ocean of open cultural data and assess the benefit themselves.
With that in mind, we approached several institutions to join us in this little experiment in which they publish some of their digitized collections and allow the public to remix, repurpose, and transform their collections.
Since this is the first time ever an open cultural data hackathon was held for GLAM institutions in Indonesia, the team had to work hard to convince institutions to embark on this experiment.
For most institutions this is the first time they publish their collections online with an open license. That means they give away some of their control by allowing others to use those collections. Some were skeptical but are now finally happy with the results.
Open to new methods & technologies
The GLAM institutions that joined us in this experiment are trying to change the way in which they approach their audiences. Previously, it was a one-way communication where GLAMs would release the information they have and the audience would receive them. Now, the GLAMs are looking to a more participatory approach where they put the audience at the center.
With this method, audiences are not just passive consumers of information but are partners in exploring and making meaning of the collections.
Open to collaboration with other disciplines
Moreover, GLAMs could benefit from the perspectives and skills outside of their own bubble and traditional approach.
To do this in Retas Budaya, unusual alliances were formed. This resulted in six institutions joining as organizing partners. Although differing in specialization and mission, the organizing partners collaborated to make the project happen.
Enable participation
Retas Budaya does not stop at access. Even if the collections are online, if nobody knows or uses them, it would be no different than the one-way model of communicating information. Therefore, utilization is also of importance.
This is where the “hacking” part comes in. The public was invited to apply its own creativity to the cultural artefacts beyond its initial form. As such, initiating a dialog between the artefacts and the creators leading to multiple interpretations.
Instead of focusing on building digital applications, we targeted participants based on their skills and created tracks based on that.
Leveraging on the networks of our organizing partners, we designed tracks as creative challenges for writers, game developers, graphic designers, and citizen scientists.
The tracks are “Stories from Data”, “Games from Data”, “Open Design Remix”, and “Citizen Science & Open Data”.
Stories from Data participants wrote short stories inspired from the cultural artefacts made available by the GLAM partners. They then uploaded them to the writing platform Gramedia Writing Project. This track is coordinated with our partner, the publisher Elex Media Komputindo.
With Indonesian Game Association’s network, we reached out to games developers for Games from Data track. In this track, game developers designed digital games that incorporated cultural data during the 3-day Open Data Game Jam. All of the games are then published on itch.io.
Meanwhile, we cooperated with Gimpscape, a community of FOSS-using graphic designers for the third track. Designers were asked to create a catalog using the image collections available on the Open Design Remix track.
Finally, on the Citizen Science & Open Data track the public contributed to scientific research by uploading their documentation of cultural data. For this track, participants upload their data to the national science repository managed by Indonesian Institute of Sciences.
Each track encouraged participants to do what they feel they are good at.
What were the results?
Over a 100 short stories were submitted to the Stories from Data track.
The top winning story was “Pelontak” by Sholihati Lathifa Sakina. It revolves around the life of Wulan, a young woman from Sumbawa, who has to endure pressure from her parents and relatives for not getting married even though her younger brothers have.
Sholihati based “Pelontak” on the poem, “The Long Wait” by Subagio Sastrowardoyo, published by Horison magazine on 1989.
The top two stories, “Pelontak” and “Lukisan Kala”, were then transformed into audio by Difalitera, an organization working on making accessible literature for the visually impaired.
Meanwhile, 25 teams composed by members of the general public and students submitted their games to Games from Data track. The winner for the general category is the game “Good Artist Copy, Great Artist Steal“ from SandBox team. It is an idle game where the player is tasked to copy painting collections from Museum Pasifika Bali.
As for the student category, Pudidi Cult team took the prize with their game, Arthiefactor, an action boss rush game about stolen Indonesian artefact.
In the Open Data Remix category, the best design was a catalog from the collection of Indonesian Islamic Art Museum.
For Citizen Science & Open Data, the winner submitted data on traditional houses in Padang, West Sumatera.
Besides the hacking, a digital collage workshop was also held on the festival day. During the session, participants made their own digital collages using the open images provided by the partnering GLAM institutions.
In keeping with the spirit of the festival, the closing performance was a “hack” of open cultural data. The group Edjaan Peralihan was basing their music performance on the 1960s to 1990s editions of the Indonesian literary magazine, Horison.
They turned poems, short stories, and cultural essays into an ensemble of sound, music, and verbal intonation.
Exchange of knowledge
Another important part of the festival program was the mini-conference, where speakers from Europe, Indonesia, India, and New Zealand shared their experiences and perspectives on implementing open access in GLAM institutions.
The panel “Our Collections Are Online, Now What?” discussed what are the things that can be done after GLAM collections are published online. Several activities and strategies were proposed.
In another discussion, we delved into citizen science and its potential for GLAM institutions. We asked questions such as “what roles do GLAM and research institutions play in the co-production of knowledge through Citizen Science?” and “how to best design a citizen science project and encourage people to participate?”
Meanwhile, an overview of the latest EU copyright reform and the relation between copyright and open cultural data was discussed in the session, “Open Culture & Copyright in Europe”.
Finally, representatives from Indonesia, Brazil, and Kenya talked about the digital transformation in the Global South, what are the common struggles and problems and why is it important for cultural institutions to make their archives accessible.
What did we learn?
First, collaboration is key. Being open to collaborate with others who are not in the cultural sector proved to be able to bring innovation and fresh approach.
Many of the participating GLAMs are small and private institutions with no public funding. They did not have the resources nor the skills to develop their own educational games to promote their collection or to develop their own websites and digital catalogs.
By working with other organizations such as those in Retas Budaya, such things are possible.
Moreover, since the program is being held fully online, we were able to reach out to the public outside Indonesia’s capital city. And in so doing, we increased the reach for those who have never visited nor heard of the participating GLAM institutions.
Second, to achieve big, start small. Being open is a daunting task. GLAM institutions that have a huge collection might be overwhelmed when asked to provide open access to their collection. Also, not all of their collections might be suitable to be in the open access due to some copyright issues and other concerns.
However, that is not a reason to never implement open access at all. By picking a small collection that is safe and manageable to open, GLAM institutions can experiment and innovate in promoting their collection.
And finally, we learned that having openness as the mindset opened doors that leads to interesting places never imagined before.
All of the Retas Budaya Festival recorded videos can be rewatched here. The best works from the finalists are showcased here.
