Hiya! I'm Korcenton.

Thanks for stopping by!

I want...

• to make art!
• for others to make art!
• to be free!
• for others to be free!
• to find out how to make these things happen!

But I don't know how. So I have a lot to learn… about stuff! And things! Talk to me about stuff and things :D

This site is a work-in progress! So am I tbh. Everything's new!

What I'm about

My nascent interests are:

• Visual arts, videography, game design, music

  I'm two birds on a wire, and making art would let me fly away. I want to! But I'm just a liar, so far. There's so much I want to learn, but I need to just start making! If (when? 🥺) I start, I want to keep track of my progress. I have ideas for sharing that as a video chronicle, but also in other mediums on this website!

• Free Culture

  Imagine media you could share, adapt, build upon, or remix — even commercially — without keeping hush or getting in legal trouble! It'd be like media owned by everybody.

  That's rare. Corporations own the cultural works, so (pop) culture is played on their turf. They can wall off your access until you do what they want. If you refuse, your social life is worse off — you're not where the conversation is!

  Being in that conversation nags at my heart. I'd rather talk about art made by people! But people don't talk about free culture, and it's hard to survive financially by making free culture. To change that is to change the world, but still — I want to grow the space to foster free culture and its authors!

  Information is the other side of free culture. Wikipedia is free culture! But it won't teach you how to draw, mend, or be kind. We need books, articles, blogs, forums, pamphlets, zines, videos, cheatsheets, manuals, and guides of all other forms to exist. Communities should be empowered to keep the information correct, up-to-date, and well-presented. If you want to learn about a topic, good resources should be at your fingertips.

• Community Pedagogy

  If you want to learn a subject, you deserve more than free literature or other self-driven resources. You should be able to seek guidance and surround yourself with teachers and peers. Online communities can be great for this, but they're often under-moderated or are hostile to newcomers. They can be too fast or too quiet. Community knowledge may be a pain to search through, if it's indexed at all.

  Running a community is very hard work, so I'm interested in what tools can help, or what norms can be rethought. Is there a playbook for running (and maybe growing) a healthy community online?

  Communities not focused on learning still have a pedagogical role. People are growing up where their social spaces are... Discord servers (or similar). Often administered by internet microcelebrities that don't foster very pro-social attitudes. People will always be jerks online! But social spaces don't need to tolerate that, and should guide people towards something better. Normal conversation can have bits of bias baked in, with other insidious thought patterns too. So it would be lovely if these spaces equipped people with the skills to deconstruct that! To be the change they wanna see in the world.

• Inclusivity in Open-Source

  Software and hardware should be made for everyone and by everyone. I see pockets of compassionate and wise people from many backgrounds building great things! We should be welcoming, accomodating, and lifting up more people like that. Today, FOSS Bro behaviour is rampant (and the opposite of inclusive). I want to move the culture away from that.

• Common Technology

  Everyone has to use tech to go about their lives. Some of that is unnecessary, but the tech we do need should be common — not privatized!

  Open-Source wares are an alternative, but aren't fit for use to most people. It doesn't have to be that way! We could evolve it into something that empowers everyone. The challenge is at the intersection of the technical and the social.

  Imagine we overcome that challenge, and build truly inclusive common tech; we can bring it to our communities with information, support, and spirit. Instead of saying Big tech bad, we can show that common tech is good! But it's a long road there, so we need to meet people where they're at.