GRL australia now online!
August 20th, 2008 JerremGRL australia now has a home online!
GRL Australia formed by the participants of the GRL masterclass in Adelaide, and other dedicated Australian, dedicated to continuing the cause.
End of isolation?
March 24th, 2008 JerremThis Weekend I stood on a hill, held my mobile into the sky and connected to high speed internet. No major feet I know, im constantly checking the internet on the go. And shamefully have been sighted walking into low branches whilst checking my email.
What’s different here is I was 3 hours south of Perth on my dads farm, surrounded by fields and cattle. I started thinking about the impacts of communication technology, its benefits in solving regional isolation and the effects on local communities. I didn’t however wonder about my email, my facebook friends or National Headlines., they where all in my hand.
Just as planes and trains begun shrinking Australia last century, the internet promisses to shrink it further. (tourist broucher from 1954 image SLWA)
As the internet slowly infiltrates regional and remote Western Australia (some of the
- Will these places loose their unique isolated identities in exchange for a global culture? Forget about the local footy team or apple queen in exchange for national heroes?
- Will rural WA become a global hot spot for new and remixed ideas and culture? With isolation comes great creative freedom and with global inspiration and tuition who knows where the next Picasso or Einstein could be born.
- Will e-business change local businesses for the better?
- Will remote communities crumble or become influential online communities?
Links
http://www.slwa.wa.gov.au/federation/iss/076_endo.ht
http://www.rirdc.gov.au/reports/HCC/01-087sum.html
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/Article/0,,0_7-2_4011-4_118311,00.html
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_consumers/mobile_services/mobile_phone_coverage_in_australia
Creative Commons & NIN
March 17th, 2008 JerremSo lately ive been really interested in the whole notion of free culture. Having art thats accessible to everyday people. Just after i added a creative commons notice to this site (which enables you to copy the content of this site for non-commercial use… not the most open license but its a start) I noticed that one of my favourite musicians has done a similar thing…
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has released his new album Ghosts under a creative commons license and made the first 9 tracks available for download free from his website. with the whole 36 tracks downloadable for $5. In addition to this there are another 3 other ways you can by the album, being a CD set, deluxe and ultra-deluxe editions.
As it is licensed under creative commons non-commercial, share alike agreement we can all go nuts copying this album. in fact only one person needs to download it (for $5) then i suppose we could all just copy it of each other. BUT.
- thats not convenient
- or communal copy could have been altered from the original mp3 (new economic purpose of the remix?), therefore most legit version is from the artist.
- if you love the music you will want to support the artist
- if you love the music you will want some physical copy of it (afterall we are living in a culture of consume, consume consume.
so i think and hope NIN will go quite well with there leap of faith. in fact they have already sold out of there $300 ultra-deluxe editions.
As with earlier NIN albums audio remixing and sampling has been encouraged with this album. enabling creativity and ownership amongst listeners. In addition to this Trent has launched a film festival on youtube inviting artists to create visuals in video format to accompany his music. Tactics such as this transforms the audience into collaborators… this is how culture should be. free so that the best ideas can develop by anyone and distributed by everyone.
above: Trent Reznor’s introduction video to the Ghosts Film Festival
Copyright, copyleft etc…
March 17th, 2008 JerremCopyright is meant to protect artists so they might be able to make money from there work they tirelessly work on. What i think we are starting to see is the way in which copyright enables corporations to bleed artists dry of there art, and make as much money as possible over their art (OUR CULTURE!).
Artists (at least those with a soul) make art because they want to make a difference and impact on peoples lives. In a digital age the distribution, remixing and improvement of culture has enormous potential. In fact alot of Art (esp film and music) is copied without permission and in total disrespect to the law.
Part of the GRL masterclass in Adelaide was a discussion about copyright with Elliot Bledsoe from Creative commons Australia. He brought up some really interesting observations about the effects of copyrights which has inspired me to look deeper into the topic. Copyright is a particularly interesting topic when it comes to new media artists…
Consider if you wanted to make your art free? how do you do that when its automatically banned from copying… and whoever copys, edits or distributes your license without your permission risks being sued.
Just like graffiti and street art I believe in art should be available for free on the internet. In fact there is great power to making free art. Operating outside machinery of digital media corporations artists have more freedom for expression and the general public have a real alternative to greed and profit driven arts.
In the interest of FREE CULTURE i have compiled the list below.
Australian copyright (all rights reserved)
FREE CULTURE (a book by Lawrence Lessig)
copyleft: free art license (for art)
GNU general public license (for software)
creative commons (some rights reserved)
creative commons australia
The above video is just a confusing as the issues. but it looks kinda cool
I think the video above sums up the problem nicely and provides a solution- creative commons.
Inspired
March 16th, 2008 JerremAfter spending a week in Adelaide as a Participant of the Graffiti Research Lab Masterclass my head is a blurr with new ideas, confidence and new found enthusiasm for the modification of public space.
Ive aways believed in the social worth of graffiti and street art in making our public spaces more vibrant and more personal. James and Evan from GRL in New York have left a lasting impact on the participants, my self included. Hopefully we can start up a Australian branch of GRL!
In the meantime. Much of the talk about “internet famous“, “Geek Graffiti” and Creative Commons, has inspired me to get of my arse and change my drab one page website into a mess of ideas, art and other assorted crap.
Currently im doing ALOT of thinking about not just “real” public space but “virtual” public space. As much as free art should be available in the street so should free art be incouraged on the net.
As a result i will be looking into ideas against copyright and the legalities and licences i might be able to work under that allow others to reuse and copy my “art” freely.
above: laser tag in action in Adelaide (photo by Fee)
