VISA EMERGENCY

Cooprog experiments in the contemporary music sector

Report

In France, the expe­ri­ence of the Con­ven­tion Citoyenne pour le Cli­mat, which ran from 2019 to 2020, demon­strat­ed that cit­i­zens faced with a clear objec­tive, based on tan­gi­ble sci­en­tif­ic data, can co-con­struct ambi­tious respons­es to the chal­lenges.
Such was the method adopt­ed by Zone Franche from 2021 to 2022 with its (mini) cli­mate con­ven­tion and a strong objec­tive : to decar­bonize a net­work whose entire DNA is turned towards inter­na­tion­al exchange, a chal­lenge that appeared to be able to guide the action of all play­ers in the music indus­try.

This work led to the draft­ing of a report with 148 pro­pos­als for a glob­al strat­e­gy for the eco-respon­si­ble, com­mit­ted and unit­ed world music sec­tor, and a cli­mate plea : “Penser les musiques du monde à l’hori­zon 2030”.

The work of the (mini) cli­mate con­ven­tion has demon­strat­ed that, when it comes to mobil­i­ty, the mobil­i­ty of the pub­lic has the great­est impact in terms of car­bon emis­sions.
What’s more, the mobil­i­ty of artists is essen­tial to cul­tur­al open­ness and the fight against iso­la­tion­ism of all kinds : it must there­fore be pre­served.

The mobil­i­ty of artists is sus­tain­able and can be achieved with­out con­tra­dict­ing the Paris agree­ments, but this implies changes in prac­tices.
As one expert points out in the cli­mate con­ven­tion report : “The struc­tur­ing trans­for­ma­tions in terms of the rea­soned cir­cu­la­tion of artists seem to be essen­tial­ly based on the abil­i­ty to work in coop­er­a­tion, which implies a great deal of reflec­tion on the part of the indus­try with regard to its high­ly com­pet­i­tive orga­ni­za­tion­al mod­el. It there­fore seems essen­tial to orga­nize con­sul­ta­tion and aware­ness-rais­ing ses­sions for artists/programmers around these issues. The chal­lenge is to gen­er­ate accept­abil­i­ty with­in the net­work, ide­al­ly every­where else, with the sup­port of insti­tu­tions, net­works and social part­ners”.

The report high­lights oth­er issues, such as the fact that the “Reduce and For­go” pol­i­cy, while reduc­ing car­bon impact, also rais­es the ques­tion of eco­nom­ic risk.
It then became clear that the net­work need­ed to be pro­tect­ed against the risk of inter­na­tion­al mobil­i­ty con­tract­ing as a result of var­i­ous crises or future changes.
The Cooprog project fol­lows on from this pre­lim­i­nary phase.

Doc­u­ments to down­load :

Cooprog is one response to the need for a par­a­digm shift in the cul­tur­al sec­tor and in soci­ety as a whole.

Cooprog

Ini­ti­at­ed by par­tic­i­pants in the Euro­pean forum Where to land forum in autumn 2022, CooProg (www.cooprog.eu) is a plat­form con­ceived as a free, open-source com­mons to enable pro­gram­mers to share and iden­ti­fy con­verg­ing projects, and thus cre­ate geo­graph­i­cal­ly and tem­po­ral­ly coher­ent tours with the aim of lim­it­ing the eco­log­i­cal foot­print of live per­for­mance.


CooProg responds to these chal­lenges with a sim­ple, intu­itive tool that enables pro­gram­mers to share ideas, desires or pro­gram­ming inten­tions at an ear­ly stage, in order to iden­ti­fy con­verg­ing inter­ests in a giv­en ter­ri­to­ry.
On this basis, they can work with artists/producers to devel­op coher­ent tours in space and time.

More than just envi­ron­men­tal, Cooprog is a civic tool. It has coop­er­a­tion at its heart, with the aim of cre­at­ing a space of benev­o­lence and sol­i­dar­i­ty for pro­gram­mers in the ser­vice of the arts who share a com­mon desire for change.

We already know : the project can’t stop here.
Le tra­vail doit se pour­suiv­re si l’on veut que CooProg s’installe durable­ment dans le paysage et qu’il pro­duise ses effets sur l’évolution des pra­tiques de dif­fu­sion et la réduction de l’impact écologique des mobilités artis­tiques.

That’s why Zone Franche and jaz­za­head ! are now part­ner­ing the project to run an exper­i­men­tal phase of the soft­ware in the con­tem­po­rary music sec­tor.

Zone Franche experimentation

The Cooprog project seems to har­bor strong devel­op­ment poten­tial in the field of con­tem­po­rary music.

The music indus­try is mobi­lized around tran­si­tion issues for sev­er­al years now.
Numer­ous ini­tia­tives have been launched, demon­strat­ing the extent to which the issues at stake are under­stood, and the extent to which the play­ers involved are mobi­lized.

For exam­ple, Zone Franche, in con­junc­tion with ONDA, is con­duct­ing an exper­i­ment with new music play­ers. The aim of the part­ner­ship is to exam­ine how CooProg res­onates with these play­ers and what adap­ta­tions, if any, need to be made to ensure the tool’s last­ing pen­e­tra­tion of the cur­rent music indus­try.

jaz­za­head!, the world’s largest jazz salon in Bre­men (Ger­many), is run­ning a par­al­lel exper­i­ment with Euro­pean play­ers (Ger­man, Swiss and Span­ish).

The project is divid­ed into 3 phas­es :

  1. a phase of exper­i­men­ta­tion with Cooprog by a small num­ber of pro­gram­mers, to iden­ti­fy the adap­ta­tions need­ed for its deploy­ment in the con­tem­po­rary music sec­tor.
  2. An IT devel­op­ment phase to pro­pose a ver­sion of Cooprog adapt­ed to the sec­tor’s needs.
  3. Final­ly, a phase to roll out the soft­ware to all French and then Euro­pean pro­gram­mers.

The project team

To bring this exper­i­ment to fruition, the Zone Franche team is sup­port­ed by :

Hugues Bar­botin

Co-founder of the Ter­res du son fes­ti­val, which he direct­ed and pro­grammed from 2004 to 2018. He also direct­ed the SMAC “le Temps Machine.” Today, he is an eco-advi­sor, in charge of HB.Ecoprod, and sup­ports play­ers in the con­tem­po­rary music indus­try in their envi­ron­men­tal and soci­etal tran­si­tion.
He is accred­it­ed to car­ry out Car­bon Foot­prints®, and is the coor­di­na­tor of the Fresque du Cli­mat, events, cul­tur­al mobil­i­ty and “Ate­liers 2 tonnes.”

Her­mann Lugan

Inde­pen­dent eco-advi­sor ded­i­cat­ed to the eco­log­i­cal redi­rec­tion of the cul­tur­al sec­tor.
With ONDA and Euro­pean part­ners, he has devel­oped CooProg.
For­mé à la méth­ode Bilan Car­bone® et à l’accompagnement du change­ment (ARVIVA), il est con­férenci­er Teach the Shift and ani­ma­tor of var­i­ous fres­coes, includ­ing the Fresque de la mobil­ité cul­turelle and the Fresque de la cul­ture.
In 2021–2022, he will coor­di­nate the Euro­pean ini­tia­tive Where to land.

Céline Schall

Researcher in Infor­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Sci­ences and in Muse­ol­o­gy, Medi­a­tion and Her­itage.
Since 2004, she has been work­ing on notions of medi­a­tion and cul­tur­al audi­ences.

Since 2017, she has been work­ing in Esch (Lux­em­bourg) and since 2021, devel­op­ing research and train­ing on the eco­log­i­cal and social tran­si­tion of cul­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lux­em­bourg (posi­tion fund­ed by the City of Esch).

Bleu Matin — Flo­ri­an Fer­bach and Pas­cal Besson

Bleu Matin is a dig­i­tal appli­ca­tion design and devel­op­ment stu­dio found­ed by Pas­cal Besson and Flo­ri­an Fer­bach.
A com­mit­ted and impact-con­scious coop­er­a­tive, it works with its part­ners on social­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly use­ful projects, such as CooProg.

Bleu Matin also pub­lish­es a low-code impact cal­cu­la­tion solu­tion, which it derives and adapts for dif­fer­ent fields of activ­i­ty, for exam­ple with SEEDS.

Link to the Bleu Matin web­site : https://bleumatin.fr/

The project part­ners are :

The Project is sup­port­ed by :