
The Tigris Woods project - Reclaiming the River - Free Flow From Baghdad 

                      STREAMTIME - free as a fish!

                      http://www.streamtime.org


Streamtime is a project of Radio Reedflute in collaboration with
Rastasoft, developed with artists and activists from Iraq and elsewhere.
Initiated by Dutch journalist and media activist Jo van der Spek,
Streamtime is a loose network of media activists dedicated to assist
local media to get connected. Streamtime uses old and new media for the
production of content and networks in the fields of media, arts, culture
and activism in crisis areas, like Iraq.

Streamtime is first of all a gesture of solidarity: it may take the form
of a campaign, a work of collaborative art, a current of unheard sounds,
unspeakable words and unseen imaginations. Very concretely it is a
handshake in cyberspace, a hanging garden for dialogue and cooperation,
generated by a sense of solidarity, hospitality and a desire to
communicate and relate. These are the leading principles. The flow of
Streamtime is determined by shared needs, skills, knowledge and
experiences of all involved. The design should be guided by openness,
free publishing (copy left), easy access, low-to-no literacy and
multi-linguality. Open source software will be preferred and stimulated.
The Web is a powerful and accessible structure, but web content stays
fragmented. Streamtime wants to research, indicate, point to amazing
stories of people that, against all odds, are building a new Iraq. We
want to help break the media barriers, provide tools and knowledge to
build their own radio broadcast stations, make programs and exchange
content.


      First radio streams from Halabja and Baghdad

On Wednesday 14th. of July 2004, between 11 a.m. and 1.30 p.m (CET) the
first live streaming radio transmission was realized from Baghdad,
facilitated by the Streamtime campaign. On the 30th of June, two weeks
before, the first ever internet radio program came from the Kurdish
village of Halabja, which suffered a poison gas attack by order of
former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

Salam Khedher, returned from Switzerland to start an independent,
alternative radio station called Radio Nas. He presented the program
from a private house with Internet connection in Baghdad. In the two
hour program, interrupted for twenty minutes by a power cut, children, a
businessman and a man who makes a living installing satellite dishes
were speaking to the world through a hand held microphone, connected
with a computer.

Radio activist Michel from Radio Lora operated the GNU/Linux software
called Dyne:bolic, to make the sound heard on the internet. Servers in
Europe (for example Montevideo in Amsterdam) were used to distribute the
stream. The stream was picked up by various radio stations in Europe:
Naples (IT), Zuerich (CH), Munich (DE), Sheffield (UK), Bern (CH) and
Amsterdam (NL) and broadcasted either directly, or in an edited version
later on.


      Tigris: river, stream, metaphor, muse

The Tigris river flows from the Anatolian mountains in Turkey through
Kurdish, Syrian and Iraqi lands to Basrah in the south. It is both a
natural connecting element and a metaphor for the continuity of history
and culture, for imagination and liberation. In Baghdad its banks have
been ruined by Saddam Hussein and are again occupied by military forces
of the Coalition. In the north the Tigris is object of mega projects
like the Great Anatolian Project, in the south the marshes are the scene
of lasting havoc of pollution, repression and resistance. So this
borderless Tigris itself is in need of liberation: free flow, clean
water, noccupied it can be restored as part of public life, reclaimed a
source of civilization like it used to be in Sumerian times.

Streamtime takes the Tigris as the starting point for doing just that:
the stream will be transformed into a stream of sounds and images on the
internet, through local radio stations and web based networked projects
it will promote civil activities in media, architecture, poetry, music
and popular expression. Architects, artists and reconstruction workers
will be challenged to look at Baghdad from the river and reshape the
public sphere. Reclaiming the Tigris entails regaining the pleasure, but
also processing the pain.


      Dyne:bolic free streaming software

The free software project Dyne:bolic, specialized in streaming live
audio over the Internet is involved in Streamtime from an early moment.
Following the vision of a slick tool to setup online radio stations,
Dyne:bolic was employed by the author in its early stages of development
in an independent project in Palestine during August 2002, aiming to
foster independent media production. Following that experience,
development focused on lowering requisites and optimizing the
occasionally available resources in order to employ recycled equipment,
as well as to make it easier to master moderate streaming and online
publishing technologies.

Jaromil, author of Dyne:bolic and MuSE, is collaborating with Streamtime
to precisely focus on a critical employment field as Baghdad, where free
media can just start, maybe right in and after war.



