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.