2000
Title: OPUS (Open Platform for Unlimited Signification)
Artist / Author: Raqs Media Collective at the Sarai Media Lab.
Technical Team: Silvan Zurbreugg, Pankaj Kaushal, Supreet Singh Sethi, and Bauke Freiburg.
Legal License Text: Lawrence Liang
Photo: Raqs Media Collective
Opus, is an acronym for "Open Platform for Unlimited Signification!". It was created as an online space for people, machines, and codes to play and work together - to share, create and transform images, sounds, videos and texts. Opus was an attempt to create a digital common in culture, based on the principle of sharing of work and source files, while at the same time, retaining the possibility of maintaining traces of individual authorship and identity.
Opus was an online adjunct to the documentary installation "Co-Ordinates: 28.28N/77.15E :: 2001/2002" presented by Raqs Media Collective at Documenta11, Kassel, OPUS (Release Candidate). Opus went public on the 8th of June, 2002.
The New Media Historian Lev Manovich said of Opus - “…this is ‘software theory’ at its best : theoretical ideas translated into a new kind of cultural software.” (‘Who is the Author? Sampling / Remixing / Open Source’ by Lev Manovich - http://manovich.net/content/04-projects/035-models-of-authorship-in-new-media/32_article_2002.pdf )
Raqs Media Collective is a contemporary art practice and curatorial configuration based in New Delhi. Raqs was founded in New Delhi in 1992 at a turbulent moment, and since then, has never stopped thinking about, with and in time. The word “raqs” in several languages denotes an intensification of awareness and presence attained by whirling, turning, being in a state of revolution. Raqs Media Collective take this sense to mean ‘kinetic contemplation’ and a restless and energetic entanglement with the world, and with time.