Here are some of the better posts:

This one is about a shrimp.

This one is about chimps and cyber altruism.

This one is about the fluxus art movement.

And this brain bender is about DJ Spooky and AfroFuturism.

This last one is about a Chineese blog.

Morgan

I really like how these turned out.  This is how she really is, and when I can capture that with the camera then I know I have done a good job.

I just wanted to write a quick post and share this everyone.

This is a movie about the open source movement.  In fact, the movie itself (or at least a version of the movie) is open source itself.  It features Girl Talk, Gilberto Gil (Minister of Culture of Brazil), and Lawrence Lessig (the creator of the Creative Commons and author of many books on the subject of copyright law).

The issue here is specifically about music and remixing.  I have thought about this issue a lot, from the point of view of a musician that is using unlicensed samples, from the point of view of a DJ, and as a musician trying to make a few dollars on my “original” compositions.

An initial question is: what is this issue like from the perspective of a musician?  What is the issue about for the record industry?  The musicians that make remixed or sample based music are usually using technology in ways that were unimaginable in the past.  When a major music studio says “you can’t use this,” or that what a remix artist does with sound isn’t valid (as a commodity) unless you have enough money to pay for the licencing fees for the samples, that basically comes down to corporations trying the shut down a whole art movement.

I see remix artist as the forerunners of and an extention of the postmodern art movement.  They express the way this movement alive today.  In the music industry, mash up and sample based artists like Girl Talk are alive and striving.  So to connect this thought to the issue:  Copyright laws were first set up to deter plagiarism.  Sample based music however is a different animal.  Owning a Girl Talk album would never deter anyone from buying a Jackson 5 album.  They are not the same thing.  Not even close.  So using laws that were designed for plagiarism and enforcing them on artist that are re-purposing cultural memes makes me think that the record industry has another agenda.

By the way, this has nothing to do with the illegal downloading of music or other media.  I don’t think they should be lumped into the same conversation.

I don’t want to write a diatribe about this, there are many books and lectures about this by people who know way more about the subject that I do.  I think it’s important.  I think that the debate is about way more that about the major labels and bands making a few dollars.  

Here are a few websites that explore this more:

http://www.lessig.org/blog/

http://www.djspooky.com/

Thanks,

Morgan