January 2010
17 posts
December 2009
11 posts
Theory / Practice at The Public School
Very excited about the inaugural meeting of a reading group I proposed at The Public School on Theory and Practice. We’ll periodically meet and interrogate this oft-encountered dichotomy in a variety of domains and contexts: politics, philosophy, art, ethics. The idea is that by looking at the issue from a number of angles, domains, and styles of thought, we will generate new connections and new articulations, and hopefully erode the boundaries between the two.
I’ll be leading the first session on January 24 with Sarah Kessler trying to lay a foundation and find some orientation for the class for other folks to pick up going forward.
More info and sign-up here.
Open Up at Medialab Prado
I’m very excited to be one of the tutors for Medialab Prado’s Open Up Workshop the February in Madrid. The plan for the workshop is to develop projects for the digital façade of Medialab-Prado’s building. Jordi Claramont, Casey Reas, and Víctor Viña are also participating as tutors.
The program itself is really fascinating, bringing together ideas about art, publics, politics, and platforms. I’m looking forward to analyzing the process in terms of platform studies but from the perspective of active creation of an platform rather than through the analysis of a pre-existing system.
And really, who doesn’t like the prospect of creating something for a huge LED façade?
Vimeo Sued By Capitol Records Over Lip Dubs →
newteevee.com
The argument to make is that it’s Fair Use. You’ve posted it on a site that allows commentary, and you’re creating a parody. Case closed. Next?
This isn’t fair use. At least not as far as I can tell. It’s not a parody. It’s not a transformative work. It couldn’t exist without the copyrighted material. It’s an exploitation of the material. You can’t exploit the material (except in limited cases) without permission from the rights holder.
I actually really hope that Vimeo wins. I love Vimeo. But I can’t help but sympathize with the labels and the artists. Intellectual property is important. What we need is a better system for transferring and allocating intellectual property rights and permissions. The copyright office needs to modernize.
Right - it isn’t fair use, but shouldn’t it fall under a new statute that makes it so that the people that made it can’t be sued? It’s an amateur video, and these kinds of uses are made literally every minute by alike amateurs… you’re right that the copyright office needs to modernize, but the legislation has to before it.
You want to make it so that you can’t sue or prosecute copyright infringers? Awesome. Next let’s pass a law making it so you can’t sue or prosecute shoplifters. Awesome!
I think people forget that the law applies (at least should apply) to everyone. The same law that allows Capitol Records to sue also allows an independent musician to sue MTV when they rip off the musician’s new single. I want to protect independent artists, and in doing so you have to protect big corporations with failing business models. So be it.
Oh, man, I wish that were true, but trust me, there’s jack shit you can do as an independent artist when MTV plays your shit. And in any case, the comment here is that this is NON-COMMERCIAL work. The creator is not making any money off of it. Vimeo conceivably might be, but they are not the creator.
The genius of Big Media. Hey look this company gave us FREE ADVERTISING. They went so far as to make nerds feel comfortable about listening to a kinda terrible song. So much so that people probably listened to that song even more. Can’t have that. Idiots.
Digital Arts and Culture '09
Digital Arts and Culture Just got back from presenting my paper The Other Software at DAC09 as part of the Software / Platform Studies Track. This was my first presentation of a peer-reviewed paper at an academic conference and it was somewhat of a trial by fire, but I think it went well and at least there were some positive tweets in response. The paper is a criticism of the materialist approach taken by Friedrich Kittler in his famous essay There is No Software. I believe all the papers from the conference (and there are many wonderful ones) are going to be posted at escholarship.org and I’ll post a link once they’re up.
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