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"RIP.MIX.BURN.BAM.PFA celebrates the cultural and artistic practice of remix, inviting guest artists to “rip, mix, and burn” elements from two digital-media works in the museum's collection"
October 2007 Archives
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"Now, Chris Anderson provides some handy stats that show that the music business is booming but says that the problem with the music labels is not that music is an industry in decline, but that they have a too-narrow view of what business they're in."
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MTAA on Chris Fahey on what you learn in art school. You can't just turn up for the lectures when you are making art...
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"Work that directly uses web portals such as Flickr, YouTube, and MySpace or virtual worlds, such as Second Life–along with projects that demonstrate similar principals of generative consumption–have become a significant part of the collection of inte
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"Interested individuals are invited to submit a 1-2 page manuscript on their proposed chapter by November 15, 2007"
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"This is completely real. You're buying me a Guinness. You don't get anything."
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"I think as long as vendors manage to stay away from the whole “environmental effects of production and consumption” issue, we have a pretty good argument that Open Source is software's solution to creating the perfect efficient market. "
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"As you may know, you can view the HTML code with a standard browser. We do not permit you to view such code since we consider it to be our intellectual property protected by the copyright laws. You are therefore not authorized to do so."
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"It brought culture to the masses and changed how we view our national treasures for ever. So why, asks Joanna Moorhead, was the country's biggest ever art show airbrushed out of history? "
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"The Long Tail a thoroughly partial book. As I read through a second time, I was struck by what is missing. "
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Creative Commons licenced blog that quotes other sources is not placing them under a CC licence.
It is also a fairly well known fact that most blog reader don't understand this any better than they understand any of the rest of copyright law.
So I believe that blogs that quote often should say something like "Original content under a CC licence" or "My writing under a CC licence". Like this one used to and will again when I fix it.
This would stop people, say, copying an Ursula K Le Guin story believing it is CC licenced.
It wouldn't stop them copying it under the four-step Fair Use system of course, but that is a different matter.
I am trying to add some pages to this blog but they are not showing up.
For example: http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/free-culture-greatest-hits/
Is there something I need to do to my blog or web server settings, could this be a plugin acting up, or is it likely that I've misconfigured something somewhere?
Any help gratefully received.
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Excellent interview with Eben Moglen in which he discusses Free Software and how it relates to Free Culture, as well as how to pay artists under Free Culture.
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Here are the 5 ways to help CC that I mentioned.
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Cory shows some class in an apology to Ursula K Le Guin over a Fair Use dispute. The links are interesting as well, although I wouldn't use Le Guin or Pournelle's posts as guides to copyright law, and the call to reinstate the e-piracy group is bogus.
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"Russia's culture minister, Alexander Sokolov, announced that he is banning a Bansky-inspired photo of two kissing policemen, and 16 other works, from a Paris exhibition of contemporary Russian art."
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"According to analysis made by the Daily Swarm, Radiohead's In Rainbow has sold at the equivalent price of$8 a CD worldwide. In just three days it has sold 1.2 million downloads and made up to $9.6m."
Art and Language wrote lyrics that The Red Krayola (nee Crayola) set to music for three albums in the 1970s and 1980s. After a gap of more than twenty years they have got together again a fourth time for "Sighs Trapped By Liars".
The album has a summery psychedelic rock sound that is very contemporary in its smooth retro feel. The songs are about mirrors, the authors of "Art Since 1900", economic and social anecdotes and the texts of various Art & Language artworks. The lyrics, written by the two male artists of Art & Language, are delivered by two female vocalists, continuing the mirroring theme.
The sleeve notes mercifully contain brief explanations of the lyrics as well as the text of the lyrics themselves. These are songs that are deceptively easy on the ear. Their usually laid back feel hides a musical as well as a lyrical bite. Art & Language's paintings are still texts, and The Red Krayola's songs are still incisive.
"Four Stars" (about the authors of "Art Since 1900"), "Laughter At The Foot Of The Cross" (about a story by Rabelais), "Hostage" (the text of a series of paintings by A&L) and the title track are my favourites from an album of thirteen strong tracks.
Sometimes Art & Language's lyrics and The Red Krayola's instrumentation are both unstructured enough at the same time that they give neither singers nor listener enough to work with. This can be disorientating, which is presumably the point, but it does rob a good anecdote ("Jerry Fodor's Story") of its satisfying conclusion.
You can get the album from any online CD store or on iTunes. I recommend very highly that you do. There are previews on some sites, notably Amazon, so don't just take my word for it.
Siouxsie Sioux has been making music since1977 or so but Mantaray is her first solo album. Her last album with The Creatures, "Hai!", was marked by meandering lyrics and over-produced vocals. Mantaray is a real return to form with much more focussed songwriting and a clearer voice.
Much has been made in reviews of the personal nature of the lyrics on this album compared to Siouxsie's work with The Banshees and The Creatures. I'm not sure about that. If songs about bees and oceans are personal then songs about deceptive lovers and new found freedom might be impersonal. The album has all of these.
This is a good album but there are two things I would bemoan. Both are a product of the economics of this album, which seems aimed squarely at the American, probably college radio, market.
The first is Siouxsie's newly Americanized pronunciation. She slips in and out of ts as ds on the same track and it detracts from the power of the vocals. I love both English and American accents but I prefer one or the other from the same person on the same song and from someone who has sung in the former for so long the latter can be jarring.
The second is the instrumentation. It is slick, polished, soulless content. I can see the producers brainstorming each track: "this one should be punky, this one grungy, this one a torch song". Siouxsie's vocals deserve much more than such safe corporate lullabies as backing.
This is a strong enough album that hopefully the next one will give Siouxsie the room to experiment that produced the sound that drew the corporate zombies on the mixing desk to her in the first place.
Compared to past glories this is only as good as Superstition, but much better than Anima Animus. Even just Siouxsie as content would be much, much better than no Siouxsie at all. And this is not just Siouxsie as content. A new found strength indeed...
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Mike L on how refundable Street Performer Protocol encourages donation and makes finishing work more likely.
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"DRM has been an impediment to the creation of new business models, not an enabler"
Samsung YP-C1.
Closed firmware but good Ogg support.
An excellent case study in alternative funding models for cultural works. Radiohead aren't making their latest album copyleft (maybe next time?) but it is available as DRM free downloads a week after it was recorded and mixed.
The site is currently down which is hopefully a sign of high demand. I paid four pounds (8 dollars) for the album plus credit card fees. It's currently on my Ogg player.
Radiohead have released the album as downloads now and are taking orders for a deluxe package of the album in various formats in a couple of months. This is a smart strategy. They are getting what money they can from downloaders before the finished album can be leaked. And they are targeting collectors with a package that costs four times what a simple CD release does. This simultaneously captures value that would be lost to filesharers and unrealised with collectors if the tracks were released on a CD through supermarkets some time next year. This is all the value that can currently be captured for an album without alienating fans and thereby paradoxically reducing value by trying to maximize it.
One interesting effect I've seen is that the existence of the cheap downloads has driven some people towards the more expensive deluxe package. I'm sure economists and psychologists will have a lot to say about this.
Some commentators have complained that this strategy will create a burst of revenue but destroy long-term sales. I'd like to introduce these commentators to Napster, and more importantly to the stagnation of popular culture that has resulted from maximizing distribution of old recordings. Popular culture is meant to be disposable. If it creates something lasting, like the recordings of Elvis Presley, then these will keep their value however they are released. Elvis tracks in the public domain are now being profitably released in the UK.
Oasis, Jamiroquai, Ian Brown, The Charlatans and other UK acts are hot on the heels of Radiohead with plans to release music online. America's Nine Inch Nails are, like Radiohead, now free of their recording contract and seeking to release music online and build a direct relationship with their fans.
Build a multi-pronged strategy and capture value in as many places as possible. Radiohead have put some good ideas into effect here:
- Release early. Don't wait for leaks and "pirates".
- Work with downloaders. Get any value you can from them.
- Work with collectors. Release packages they will pay many times the odds for.
- Build buzz and translate that into live performance revenue.
- And take all this and see if any recording companies are smart enough to work with it.
Support the Commons | Creative Commons
Please help Creative Commons in their annual funding drive.
I have put time and money into supporting CC over the last few years (I'm not just a mailing-list-activist) because they are doing something positive for Free Culture. So if you are not a fan of NC and ND, and I'm certainly not, don't let that stop you supporting SA.
I got a letter from Lessig suggesting some good ways to support the funding drive (centred around the theme of "five") but I can't find a copy online. Does anyone know if it's out there anywhere? Lessig suggests:
- Using 5 CC licenced works.
- Licencing 5 new works (I say make them BY-SA!)
- Introducing 5 new people to Creative Commons.
- Giving 50% more to CC this year than you did last year
And spreading the campaign, which I'm doing here.
Support CC!
You've got you MacBook Pro and you've taken a break from the conference to have a tall skinny decaf latte and listen to some music while you update your blog on the free wifi. You hipster, you. Could you be any cooler? Well, yes.
Your iPod and your iTunes library are proprietary software and closed formats. They are limiting your freedom. But there's a Free alternative.
Ogg Vorbis is an MP3/MP4 replacement. You can use it in iTunes and on music players, so it isn't inconvenient, and unlike MP3/MP4 it is Free and doesn't limit your freedom. It sounds good too.
To rip CDs to OGG see here: http://www.vorbis.com/software/
To listen to OGG in iTunes see here: http://xiph.org/quicktime/
To get an OGG player see here: http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/PortablePlayers
Or to use OGG on your existing player try here: http://www.rockbox.org/
I'm very pleased with how draw-something is performing at the moment. The debugging that resulted from the improved logging and the pen parameters system means that it is now at least not working in the way it is meant to, rather than doing some things twice and others not at all.
The current look is due to the colouring system based on AARON's new colouring system, the varied drawing styles enabled by pen-parameters, and the compositional tightness enabled by all forms being created from an initial, shared, set of points.
The colouring system needs more debugging and the composition system needs tuning up. In particular; colour application, particularly to the background, needs fixing. I want to add stars, non-self-intersecting random walk lines and circles to the repertoire of shapes. I want to make some shapes specifically smaller and larger, either growing to include nearest points or using only the points in a small area. And I want to limit kinds of shapes to various areas of the composition.
One of the things that is sorely lacking in draw-something is decision making. The actual drawing of outlines is a continuous process of deciding where the pen should go next, but the forms that the pen is drawing around are laid out randomly. In the long term I want draw-something to start with a few basic shapes and then build up from them, relating them and adorning them. But that is in the long term.
I have uploaded the latest draw-something code to SourceForge CVS (as part of rob-art), and updated the rob-art website at http://rob-art.sourceforge.net.
This version has a new drawing style system ("pen-parameters") and more extensive logging. Much refactoring was required by pen-parameters, which has made the code cleaner. And much debugging was enabled by the new logging, which has made the code faster and stabler.
Grab a Lisp compiler, get the source and you can draw your own draw-something drawings, or have draw-something draw them for you.
