This blog is about web 2.0, traditional media and advertising, how they affect each other and how they affect us (especially me). It is also about stuff I like such as art, design, animation, music and photography. what I feel like writing. Nothing written here should be taken too seriously...
There’s quite a stir about the issue of copyrights and how to force anyone who listens to music, reads a book, etc., to pay her fee. I just do not understand how you can maintain this situation.
The author of an anthem, music or lyrics of a song, the writer of a book or whatever work, sets a price for the buyer and collects a sum according to her contract. And this should end the matter. Exactly what happens to those who build a bridge, a landmark building, a monument or sculpture … I do not recall of any established fee for those who enjoy watching them.
From this direct compensation, from the commissioner of the work or the buyer, it might be more honest for an artist to ask herself what price should she pay for receiving for free, abilities, skills, and creative intelligence, something people can’t choose to receive and neither can be manufactured.
Since the introduction of digital technology the relationship between camera and photographer has altered dramatically. Speed and accessibility have come at the expense of mystery, intimacy and tactility – qualities exclusive to analogue photography. Initially, and in reaction to this cultural atrophy, I composed a piece of music made entirely from sounds that I had recorded from a collection of antique cameras.
Constructed using the digital composition software Reason, this piece carried a strong hip hop feel and seemed to connect past with future technologies. To accompany this track I created a video response that captured traditional, analogue techniques yet also had a strong contemporary theme.
This short film is made entirely with stop motion animation, with over six thousand still photos shot and then edited together. The cameras are literally ‘brought to life’ here, while image composition and lighting is as carefully considered in each video frame as they would be for individual photo shots.
There’s a time to laugh a time to cry
a time to live and a time to die
a time to break and a time to chill
to act civilized or act real ill
but whatever ya do in your lifetime
ya never let an MC steal your rhyme
–Big Bank Hank from Sugarhill Gang, in Rapper’s Delight, 1978
La Banda Municipal del Polo Norte has recorded a demo CD with 5 tracks and a nice sleeve design which features a bear. Its title “Iros Despidiendo de Todo” which would roughly translate for “Say Goodbye To Everything”, reminds me of Dougas Adams’ So Long And Thanks For The Fish form the Hitch Hicker’s Guide To The Galaxy saga. I’m still working out the connexions between the two.
And by the way, any band that features me in their acknowledgements if of course the best band in the world.
I watched this documentary late last night. I just wanted to watch the beginning and let it for today but it turned out to be impossible to stop.
The film deals with copyrights, copylefts, intellectual property and how the net is changing well established business models while allowing for reach and creativity for the rest of us.
In the documentary you’ll find:
Danger Mouse talking about his highly successful The Grey Album where he mashed Jay-Z Black Album with Beatles White Album (thus The Grey Album). It violated all kinds of copyrights but it’s a masterpiece. Obviously it was downloaded by millions, earning Danger Mouse just credibility and respect. Fancy a torrent?
Here’s the video with John Lennon breakdancing to Ringo Star’s DJing.
Musician Girl Talk. He performs live with a laptop mixing and mashing every conceivable sample creating new real time songs. He would be willing to pay the billions he should, according to current copyright laws, for using the original songs, but even if he had the money it would take him no less than 50 years to get all the permissions from the owners.
The Brazilian DJs from the Techno Brega scene in the north of Brazil (a kind of Techno Kitsch, don’t try at home). They mix and remix whatever they listen on the radio and download from the net, Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy this time. After that they distrubute their CDs for free expecting to attract fans to their live acts, a business model that is catching up in the traditional music industry.
Larry Lessig, author of Free Culture and creator of the Creative Commons licensing model, talking about the need to protect intellectual property but also on how too restrictive copyright laws hinder creativity and access to culture by everybody.
Funny at the end when Girl Talk remixes Gnarls Barkley’s (Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse) remix of Crazy done by the Brazilian Techno Brega DJ, and turns it into something completely new. You could see him rocking the house with this small sample and his laptop.
He expects to save the world with this song and he will no doubt be the next viral video. I wish he would only save us from spam and links to virtual casinos as he says. Don’t miss the end part when he sings about “lots of videos of people lip synching to we are the world”.
Kudos to Tom Willett for this great country ballad!
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