hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0556.txt

Episode: 556
Title: HPR0556: Basekamp Interview
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0556/hpr0556.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:01:29

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Hello everyone, this is Glad to, I'm at Foscon in upstate New York and I'm talking with Scott
and Meg from, I think, PossibleArtWorlds.org, is that what you guys are with?
Basecamp.com is a domain for the group.
Basecamp with a K.
Basecamp with a K.com with a C.
Good distinction there. I'm always going to the comm with a K.
Yeah, so Basecamp.com is, you guys should probably explain what it is.
To me, it's an art collective, is that right, or it's completely wrong?
Not completely wrong.
It's a collection of artists, and ideas, and events.
It's a physical space in Philadelphia, and sort of a number of programs and projects have been running in the past and this year's focus is PossibleArtWorlds.
Although PossibleArtWorlds is older than just this year.
It's been in the works for many years, and Scott can speak to that.
Tell me what exactly, let's start with PossibleArtWorlds.
I guess that's what your keynote was on, so what exactly is PossibleArtWorlds?
Well, the keynote was about one part of PossibleArtWorlds, just the part that's concerned with free and open source culture.
Or actually, that's concerned with art worlds that relate to free and open source culture in some way.
PossibleArtWorlds, the way to explain it is to talk about our interest in plausibility, and also our interest in art worlds, like why we're sort of combined.
Okay, those, and why are there, and why you should care?
I guess, plausibility.
We're interested in the possible, as opposed to the merely possible, or the extent?
Yeah, the extent of the definite.
Things that are ever so slightly out of reach.
Just over the end.
Just potentially out of reach.
At least enough to be valid to question their viability or their plausibility.
You wouldn't say that, is Microsoft plausible, or is capital is implausible?
On one hand, there's almost nothing less plausible, but in reality, they are.
Of course, there are things that are not, things that are maybe in fledgling form.
They may have not been around for very long, or they may have been around for very long, but just they haven't been dominant.
You'd have for a long time, maybe for a long time.
Some of the hypothesis, testing active hypotheses, and open source culture being one of the themes.
There are six themes, but there's a lot of overlap between all of them.
And for the question, it's not about the themes, it's more about the content in there.
Exactly, yeah.
What are we looking at the plausibility of?
We're looking at the plausibility of art worlds in particular.
Why?
Because we were trained as artists, or we had, at some point in our lives, been interested in artists,
a vehicle for culture.
And communication.
Yeah, and also, yeah, and art is really weird in the sense that a part of our job
is to continue to redefine our own job description.
All the part of our job is to reimagine every part of the world around us.
It doesn't mean that we ever can successfully do that.
And I would definitely wouldn't say most artists do that at all, though, to the point to the extent that we ever do.
It's not just the sort of art objects themselves, or the artists themselves, but the art worlds that are created.
The environment that sustains our practice becomes a kind of petri dish for these cultural mutations,
because we're trying to experiment with them.
And so, we're really looking at not just groups of artists or art scenes, or any particular art world,
because there are tons of them.
Are there many art worlds as there are artists potentially?
Probably not, just mathematically, because, I mean, maybe.
But if everyone were always collaborating, that's probably not.
If you think of the artists as sort of like the point in the Venn diagram where there's intersections,
it's possible that there are for every artist, there are one or more art worlds.
It's possible.
Is it possible?
It's not possible in our world, because if you just find an art world as an imagined intersection between any artist and the universe,
or any artist in the world, I'm sure.
But really, we're looking at people who literally do have some engagement with one another and work together.
So, probably not, and that says it could.
Yeah, yeah.
But the group component is pretty important, and the groups of groups component is also important.
Exactly.
What makes a world how reducible is a world?
Like, some theorists believe that.
Or make an argument that you really can't reduce a world to less than two people.
Well, then you have individuals.
Yeah, you can't.
Although we're also really interested in the fractured self and collective pseudonyms and that sort of thing.
But literally, you can't have from some ways that you can't have a world of less than three people, ultimately, less than three.
I don't really know.
But really, we're interested in not just these like those kinds of micro worlds, and like continuing to sort of reduce reduced residues,
but also these macro-r worlds.
Some of them are really fast at large.
Of a warmingly self.
Yeah, and you've got a good thing or a bad thing, or you're just plucking it up.
Well, it depends on what we're really trying to do.
I mean, if we were just looking at art worlds, then that kind of sounds a lot like Howard Becker's art world book.
That, like, you're supposed to read for art and sociology, but we're looking at particular kinds.
We're looking at art worlds that we describe as, or can argue as being plausible in a way that we just sort of mentioned it before.
So things that are doing something different than they're creating a world, an art world that is structurally different, or in some substantive way, differs from what's currently available in the mainstream.
Okay.
One thing just sort of, like, draw a line between our keynote and Foscon, because one of the questions that was raised during the speech was,
how is this applicable to open source, or can you give us one example of how this is applicable to open source software?
And I think that the answer to that question is that all of the examples that we showed are somehow applicable.
But so what is an example in open source software communities that would be, that we would describe as plausible?
And one of the things that I heard somebody mention was social coding.
It's just, like, idea of, like, the GitHub that comes out that's just, like, you know, emergent kind of this out of necessity, this community that's formed to organize the efforts of the coders and the projects and the development practices.
It's even begun to, like, there and also has formed, like, smaller and more micro kind of examples of.
Yeah, what you guys were talking about sounded like open source software to me, because it was, like, wait a minute, they're just describing to the artists exactly what the software people are doing.
What are we've been doing?
We've been involved in the open source, the cultural movement, basically.
Like, create a common idea.
Like that sort of?
Well, creative commons wasn't around.
But, like, many people are involved in open collaborative engagement.
And our missions to focus on the...
I think in a more intimate level.
And not, like, a global and cultural level, but, like, sort of, like, local and non-local, but, like, romantically local.
I mean, and literally, in some cases, where there's polyamorous communities and groups that are more tight-knit-like families, where the family structure is set up a bit differently than a kind of, you know, from a nuclear family or something like that.
Basically, at a certain point, pretty quickly decided to form a mission, to focus on the weird, like, problems and intricacies of collaboration, not just to celebrate working together.
Because collaboration itself is not good.
I mean, you collaborate in war.
You collaborate on all kinds of stupid ships.
You collaborate on great things.
It just means working together.
Collectivity, the reason we don't really...
Collectivity, usually means living together.
And although we do that too, our collective, sort of, I think the word has been so abused, that it sort of lost its meaning for people.
You can kind of ban lots of artists, ban together for notoriety, for association, and they sort of call them collective.
And we just haven't really done that as much, because not to distinguish ourselves, but just to not further confuse that picture.
But in any case, like, that's what they can have a set up for.
And so, because we have all the time finding different ways to work together, finding different ways to work with other people, trying to support other people that are working together in critical ways, critical in the sense that they're also the question, how they do it, and the question whether it's good for them, and good for other people, and good for anything.
In that sense, I think it's very similar to open-source software, because at least the methods of open-source software, where it is all about looking with one another, finding different ways to work, and some of the philosophy that has supported open-source software movement as a kind of branch of open-source culture movement.
And open-source culture movement only defined itself over time, and we just sort of over time just realized, hey, we're really kind of running parallel in a way.
And we just wanted to reach out to really understand other people that are doing this too, and to kind of just try to see just what is really all going on here, because there's something larger than any of us.
There's really just interesting mini structures that come out of open-source culture and open-source software that become very poignant moments where you see, I, with some person that you've never met, or I, with the project that you've never thought you would possibly find.
Scott and I are both affiliated with, like, Drupal as a primary platform for the web work that we do.
I'll be, like, trolling to the modules, and I'll come across something, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, like this emergent kind of this, like, acidity.
You know, it's like, there's this stuff here that I would never have ever been able to find without this world that supports its signing, and the structure of the search, and the idea of cotervue, and the idea of, you know, of just sort of, like, meet-ups, and lightning talks,
to describe things, and have, like, you know, progressive, and amnesty.
And in our community, community, that triplets.
Yeah, community, other forms, other streams of communication, you know, ways to document, self-documentation, and that sort of thing.
So it's like, there's a lot of, and all of those tools and things that are constantly going through my head as an artist, you know, to use, but I'm using them instead for the web.
So it's like, how can we find ways to tether, or like, to grab onto these structures that exist?
So do you guys see any distinction between technology and art?
Well, I mean, technology is an evolving set of tools, you know?
I mean, art has always made use of technology.
It's a primitive sense, like, technology being tool-making, which has always been intrinsically tied to art-making, since the dawn of man.
If you think about that way, like, you know-
It's the way we like to look back and describe it.
Right.
But art always, am I, I mean, like, I don't know if you show this to you, but in my mind, art exists in technology, integrity, and technology exists in art, integrity.
There's sort of two separate industry, but, you know, does there openly and equally related artists?
Artists are sort of historically bottom-featers.
Artists are almost always behind that technology, for sure.
And so we pick up on, oh, people stop making, stop using lithography as a primary, you know?
Right.
You know, like, the 19th century is like, as a primary printing method.
Oh, you know, maybe, maybe we should use this, because now nobody cares about any more.
But look at, like, minority reports, for example, you know, and, like, sort of, like, this artist designed the interface for this film.
You know, it's like this, like, you know, kind of forward-thinking, you know, like, gestural, you know, and now, you know, these technologies are, like, you know, really serving.
Exactly.
You include designers in that equation, or the definition of what artists are.
That's an interesting thing, too.
Then, yeah, I mean, like, technology, or industry always makes use, and absorbs artists' ideas.
You say art, do you mean art and design, or do you mean specifically?
Are you asking?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, personally, I like to make very little distinction between that, unless there's a reason to get more fine-grained.
Right.
Because what interests me about collaboration and contemporary cultural practice, the reason we've sort of, like, generisized that description, is because there's really no reason that's good that I can see to continue supporting hyper-specialization.
I mean, if you'll start it and we'll end it with this institution, institutional setting, you know, where I'm going to school, to be a graphic designer, I'm going to school to be a fine artist, or a craft person, like, the school's like, RIT, and I'm learning, you know, where there's, like, so much overlap.
And those schools are coming out, but there's also, like, smaller, well, alternative communities and opportunities for pedagogy, and, like, sort of, the way that we can learn from each other, and find stuff more easily than it would take to sort of sift through the institutional.
Or, whether, if you're inside of that, framework, you'll ever see the stuff that you would see if it was more open.
Are you talking about, like, sort of, the democratization of, like, art training and stuff? Is that what you mean?
That's part of it, I think, just in general, the hierarchical structures that are sitting between a hungry, creative person, their future as an innovator.
Well, interdisciplinarity is really important for contemporary art, no doubt. But also, you know, that doesn't necessarily lead to some kind of liberatory place.
It could be liberating for an individual to, like, try different things, and be like, I want to blur the boundaries, that's good in that sense as well.
But also, like, it's just, it's really tough not to crack, you know, because-
Fires an amazing amount of research and sort of dedication to think for truth, you know, seeking, like, truth seeking, is this, like, infinite activity?
Probably my biggest concern in looking at collaboration, collaboration is really effective, right? I mean, managerial models just work. They tend to work. They tend to work in certain circumstances as productivity goes up. This is industry, you know.
Artists have their competencies, their competencies are used in the service of other interests that are just don't really care about, but they're happy to be supportive. They're willing to play ball.
Or they're not, but then they basically get sucked into the game anyway, because there's seemingly no other choice.
You know, I don't know. I think it's really important to look at how we work together. The way that we work together means something. It's not just-
It's not just means to end. It has to do with whether I'm just talking about workers' alienation, although it's part of it, but even just-
How are we contributing to the world around us? What kind of world do we want to see and be in?
Well, and what kind of world are we building then? How important, I guess, is the fact, because you're talking about a lot of local stuff that sounds like-
Well, artists are very important, increasingly important, in shaping the world around us. I mean, especially if you include architects, designers-
Sure, sure. Industrial designers, people that cross the lines between our technology. I mean, Jesus, almost everything you see in everything that we do is in touch in some way by one of those fields.
And so how we are in some ways in control, or at least in- have more agency in our role in that stuff, has to do with how the world gets shaped, or could be shaped.
So speculative thinking, I don't mean venture speculation, but thinking about plausibility of certain options is important.
And I think back to the plausible, our world is saying the reason that I feel that looking at worlds or the social environments that we create and the relationships that we set up and the working relationships that we set up-
Those structures are super important, because when we're creative with that, we're reimagining the way the world is shaped on the social level, the way our very systems are shaped, education systems, government systems, family systems.
We could also, like, hyper-focus our creativity on materials and colors and textures and things like that. No, if I was to even love that stuff, because it is interesting, but I don't really care if I'm living in a fascist regime that has better textures.
I think it's more comfortable chairs. Yeah, more comfortable. I mean, it doesn't mean that- I mean, just to sort of hit you over the frying pan on that.
It doesn't mean that I'm not interested in nuances really, but for this particular project, I think those come with the projects that are looking at the social environments.
A lot of those people do design stuff too, and they're interested in the visual.
I don't know. It's just a really interesting angle for us. It's opened a lot of doors, and it's sort of presented a lot of questions that through trying to, I don't know, approach them, we see a lot of innovation on the social level coming out of this.
So is that a byproduct then of your primary mission, I guess?
New ideas and social systems?
Or is that part of the point?
Yeah, it's both. I think, yeah, I agree with Meg. I think it is both. And I think that looking at part world, people can understand these part world variants, these part world mutations.
People on other fields can learn so much more.
It's really hard when you're like knee deep and in any industry or any media or practice, to like take a step back and look at yourself and what you're working on and look at the world around you.
And then more sort of like forces their artwork to facilitate your undoing. I mean, it's beyond a habit. It's actually like a lifestyle or it's like a life system.
A life system, yeah, that you, and then we're sort of like creating patterns, you know, like frenetic, you know, sort of activity, and then the more that we're able to create a place where we're able to be aware.
But also remain focused on what it is that is meaningful to us is autonomous individuals. It's sort of like that for me is really important.
Definitely. How to find an individual place within fields of collectivity is one of the hardest questions to have.
Because then we over engineer these social systems that are like that end up being these like, you know, fashions.
Yeah, you have another very impressive system.
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I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I meanagg is a real different thing than I do, it's like a socialistic A7 by the way I mean, as far as I know aeta complian, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, at least fills it up with my usual solution, there really isn't
And even like this stuff between the cracks that comes out and you don't even expect to see it, it totally screws you.
We do horrible things to each other, people do.
And we, you know, we're not organized, we're unorganized at a certain level.
If we were organized, would we still do that?
You can definitely do horrible things in an organized way.
There's different fractions in different levels of organizations.
But definitely, you know, this is part of what we need to, the kinds of knowledge we need to accumulate and pass on.
And focus on is, you know, really, how do we live and work together?
And so, is this for the, you're in for the long haul?
Do you think that the work that you're doing now, or whatever you are doing right now, is going to sort of like make lasting impressions?
Or again, is that not necessarily?
I mean, by long.
I mean, we've been around for 12 years.
Oh, okay.
This project started as proposal in 2002.
A possible artwork.
Yeah, it's a possible artwork.
Okay, okay.
Okay, okay.
Based on your absence in 1998.
Okay.
But, you know, I'm a pro-poner for like the butterfly effect and just the well-being that there is, that lies in knowing that anything I do is going to make an impact.
Short-term long-term.
Short-term long-term, big or small, you know?
One of our collaborators proposed work done with a group, proposing asking people to make public proposals that would have a 100-year time span.
And I'm sort of interested in what that, what that turned out.
Mm-hmm.
I'm moved for an art festival on New York, but I liked it because you asked a question like that and then different responses start to come out.
Fortunately, you just set a milestone and then the path route comes out of that in between where you are now and where that milestone is set, which with 100 years, you're talking about a large negotiation of time and space.
Okay, but what, if I may ask sort of in that vein, like where this guy asks or this person asks for proposals and stuff, aren't you guys kind of preaching the choir?
I mean, isn't this just sort of an exercise among artistically people?
Is there a particular project that I just mentioned?
No, anything.
Yeah, let's say the plausible artworks.
I mean, like who does this really reach out to other than art students, for instance?
Honestly, that's one of my biggest concerns.
Okay.
Not trying to reach out, honestly, but to really reach in.
I think all too often, I mean, it's one of the biggest questions that people ask.
Like some of our friends that are more politically active, or they're more, but they are politically active with their ensemble with their work and otherwise.
Their work is about open social engagement or artist's social practice.
Alternative education or other things that are going on today are immediately turned off by a focus on art.
They're like, well, why are you focusing on our world?
You know, just like, what are you doing?
And really, what ends up happening?
I think artists are sometimes, well, really interesting ones anyway, are really good at picking up what's wrong with other fields.
Or critiquing, maybe institutional critiquence is an excuse to sort of critique some larger organization or whatever,
or a system and kind of sort of help reduce our complicity by saying, hey, I'm aware of this.
But, you know, I think like many of those artists works often get fed back into a particular kind of system that then just kind of like keeps that ball rolling in a certain direction that sort of continues to reify a certain type of structure.
And this is a case study in people involved in a field of study and practice who are interested in changing the conditions of their own field.
Reimagining them, experimenting with them, and ultimately changing them.
And we're looking at examples of people who are doing just that.
It's a case study, we don't have to focus on art.
We're actually way more interested in life worlds than we are in art worlds as Stephen Wright, who is part of our keynote this morning, pointed out for those who are in there.
But we focus on art worlds, A, because that's the field that we're part of, at least that's the primary one.
B, part of our role is to mutate.
It creates these petri dishes of difference, of interesting, divergent, micro worlds, micro cultures, and those are...
And frankly, different. Like, different.
It's a really good way of looking at it too.
I mean, that's what Apple sort of like build their entire model upon.
It's like, here's this technology that you can have that's different.
And like, well, we're not marketing it per se.
It's interesting to think about what different does to people.
And like, both turns them on and often turns them on at the same time.
Right. Exactly. Because it depends on what part of what we're doing, that's different.
Depending on which part it has a different kind of impact on us.
You know, I mean...
So, Pangelo is actually, when we're talking about mutation, God just told me about this last night.
It's basically you graft the branch of a tangerine onto an orange tree.
Yeah. And you come out with this like tangerlo.
And whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.
They taste good.
They taste good. They're attractive.
And it's awesome. It's creative.
It wouldn't necessarily just be the hybrids fruit or whatever.
We're talking about mutating our worlds.
It might be like when we were looking at newmla, the way that it's owned, the way that it's sold.
That would be a mutation in the system.
Maybe it's legal to do it.
Maybe it poses an interesting challenge.
But how important is free as in no mula, no money?
How important is that concept to base camp or to free culture?
Or to open culture, whatever you want to call it?
I don't think it's funny. I was calling it newmla.
Yeah, you're calling it newmla, though.
It's definitely newmla.
This is like me just have been tired.
How important is free to base camp?
And to open culture in general, I guess.
If you differentiate between the two?
Oh, well, definitely differentiate between them.
We don't represent open culture.
I did say that we saw strong connection, but I think party with that.
Yeah, well, it's a really good question because we live in the real world, right?
Some friends of ours have really built their platform.
Or it's been a very important point to them that no money has ever exchanged there.
That's a pretty strong statement.
It's very interesting.
However, the only reason they can do that is because they have the nettle and donor donating space to them.
Right.
How do they do all of the crazy awesome stuff that they do?
And ultimately, they do it not only because there's a donor.
They do it because of the extraordinary amount of energy that they put out.
But they can only do it in that space because it was freely given.
Process like that are like fire so much dedication.
Yeah.
You really have to be like you really have, and it's in strict kind of programming and strict kind of form.
Yeah.
We have to pay for our space.
That's the thing.
Yeah.
We have to pay like no less than $3,000 a month.
We're trying also to be more thorough on the self-funded side of things.
Like while we are a nonprofit, we can't accept grants and big donations and money banks.
Like we're more interested in being autonomous and self-sustaining.
But I mean, but what you were saying about this campaign isn't that kind of like, even if there's a free society or whatever kind of hovering around here,
it's still kind of built on top of where it exists and where it exists right now is in a capitalistic society.
Pretty much.
Or between or in between.
Well, maybe in between realms.
Because yeah, if you think about like Jameson's description of dominant systems like capitalism,
it's not that there's one dominant system or that we're in an era of capitalism.
It's that there may have been times in the past where various systems have had coexisted somewhere dominant, more dominant and others.
And also at the same time, in different places, that happens.
So now we're still in a place where there's this hegemonic struggle between forces of domination and forces of resistance.
Definitely going on.
It's really out tonight that it's happening.
So I think you're right. We're not just in a system.
But you're also right because like, we come to pay for our fucking experience.
And we could just like, yeah.
We could also just take LSD all day.
And like never look at reality and just have plausible experiences in our minds.
But we're not doing that.
There may be plausible and plausible starts to know.
But basically it's been strictly non-commercial for years.
It's not that no money is exchange chance because it does.
Because people pony up for pitching in for the space.
But we've never charged for admission.
We've never charged for beer.
We've never charged for classes.
We have potlucks because it's redeeming.
We're happy to share something like an event with you or whatever.
And then you can come and enjoy yourselves and allow other people to enjoy themselves too.
Yeah, and they can be comfortable.
Food is really.
Pitch in. Right?
Yeah. That's great.
Pitch in.
But we're definitely like...
I have to say that we'll solve for take here.
I think there's been a bit of self-denial over years about the relationship to money.
Yeah.
To money that we've had.
You know?
I mean, really, like, we've...
That's right.
I have a sort of emphasizing affordability to you.
I like that.
Yeah.
It's idealistic and it's also like really awesome to think about stuff being free.
But then you actually start doing that and it just disappears.
Yeah.
That opportunity to do that disappears really quickly.
A conference like this really highlights the various definitions of the word free.
Yeah.
The different concepts that are attached to that.
Yeah.
Like we've been talking about.
So we've like, when we're focusing so much on not paying money, we may actually inadvertently
be ignoring other definitions of what free could be.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so like, you know, like just really looking at what a free culture might be could very well
involve the exchange of money.
Yeah.
You know?
I don't know anything about the dominant capitalist society.
Yeah.
It's almost, it almost costs more money sometimes to get to the margins than it would to just sort of like sit in a stasis.
Like in this kind of like successful.
And we work jobs.
Yeah.
We work.
We bust our asses to make money.
We consult with people to like bring in piles of cash.
Not always.
But you know, like sometimes you do shit for free.
But oftentimes it's like we're doing it.
We're basically pimping our asses on the street in order to do these cultural projects so we can pretend that it's free.
Yeah.
And we think that it's important that we haven't really been so over about it.
And so it's, you know, maybe it's not as easy to critique.
But I think it's still worth critiquing slightly.
So we've really been talking a lot about ways to sort of like institute these kind of fundraising maneuvers we've been doing over the years.
As more exploratory experimental things.
More participatory ways.
More participatory ways to do them.
So it's not so isolated.
Yeah.
So maybe until we can find ways that don't acquire.
I eventually maybe we'll have the savvy, like fundraising savvy that we can quit our day jobs, you know, and be completely self-ustaining.
But for now, that's, you know, it's sort of just a practice.
It makes perfect kind of things.
I like the idea.
We were talking about the residency program at Basecamp.
And the idea sort of that resonates is sort of do more or clean up after yourself more than you think that you have that you need to.
Or just like, you know, bring more to the table than you think that you're using.
Or, you know, just sort of just be a proponent, you know, as opposed to a user.
And be like shared in this space with a sensibility.
And there's a positive space like Basecamp or the entire culture at large.
Like a planet.
Or the planet.
Yeah.
And I like the idea of like affordability.
It's like sort of like affordability in the sense that like this is what I can afford.
And then there's also beyond that, there's like just a little bit more that you can probably give.
Or you're not held necessarily against that, you know, it's the idea of just like...
Doesn't isn't the burden there on the person to do those things?
Yes.
The idea of a distributed model.
That sort of like saves the individual from feeling that.
Hit.
Okay.
There definitely ways to make it easier on us to pull our way, you know.
Well, speaking of that, or speaking of that, I was going to ask how people, like me, could get involved with Basecamp.
Like a listener and say, one of the things they say, this is really a cool idea of what's the interaction that they might have with Basecamp.
To say nice.
Yeah.
You're not in Philly.
To say nice, we have a potluck, weekly potluck chat.
And that's via Skype, where we look at the plausible art roles.
And it's a way to sort of get a stronger sense of what it is that we're doing.
Is it just utter chaos?
I mean, it just sounds like a conference room could get pretty messy.
People speaking of each other.
No, it's very, very tightly organized.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's tame.
I mean, it is not 100% organized, because there's almost always a tech-tick-up that will start half an hour late.
Depending on the weather, we could have two dozen people, or two people.
We shall also push the public school.
There's another way.
Oh, okay.
We're hosting this program.
It's a public school.
Philly.thepublicschool.org.
And temporarily, Basecamp is sort of a hub.
But there's more of a free node, actually, in Philadelphia, that we're facilitating it, like, birth.
Classes, if you want to take any class, you can propose it.
If you want to teach a class, you can propose it.
You can browse the courses that have been proposed.
And the scheduling all takes place in a web interface.
And it's built-on-truple.
Sort of with the telek art exchange.
And now the class is done on that.
They're just, like, online.
No, no, they're organized in real space.
Yeah, real space.
They can't be space, whatever it is.
You know, we'd like the idea of skyping some of the courses.
Space-based.
Yeah.
Okay.
Some of them are explore Torrey's school.
It looks highly physical.
Some of them are more, kind of, meta with, like, research pieces, you know.
Okay.
But that's, that's to be determined.
I mean, it's really what this community is making of this.
This school.
Cool.
That's another way to get involved.
Yeah.
And just reach out.
I mean, just go to basecamp.com and then you'll find, you know, contact list, mailing list.
And, like, we're on Skype.
Also.
Send us a letter.
It's Basecamp with a K.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, people call us or email us.
Okay.
People propose projects.
Yeah.
We're open to that.
We're also open just to a simple hello.
Sure.
It doesn't have to be a roadblock.
But you guys must be sort of like big rock stars.
I wouldn't say that.
No, no, no.
I don't really think that's true.
Anyone can just.
No, no, no, no.
Yeah.
Not to be, not to fact pedal or anything.
For the downplay.
But just, really, it's, it's, that's really not how we roll.
It's not, like picking out cookies, improv cooking class.
And there you go.
And the public pool.
Yeah.
Those happen Tuesday nights before the hotlucks.
What does that really mean anyway?
What does not a variety in any, anyway?
Ultimately, I think it's just sort of how you, how you present yourself in what kind of games
that you'd want to play.
We don't spend any energy on that at all.
And we often turn down opportunities that don't seem to have.
These components that are important to us.
That might sort of be more noted.
I would, that might be more.
A notable flash here.
Well, yeah.
And then also, we're not opposed to that because we have done that too.
Those sure, you know.
Because, and almost only because there's someone on the inside, or there's someone who is an ally in that institution,
who we know can help put the interest of the project first.
And then we're happy to do that.
Yeah.
It's not, it's not so much about the publicity as it is about the appearance and the presence and the experience
and the shared experience.
I'm interested in sort of being an evangelist or putting myself out there.
But it's not because I, like, want to feel like popular with my friend.
Or it's because, like, I really believe that, like, what I'm being exposed to is unique.
And often, then I want to share stuff with people.
Okay.
Well, I think I'm more or less out of questions now.
I could probably go on.
But thanks for talking to me.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Thanks for asking to chat.
That was great, guys.
Oh, fantastic.
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