Categories
Aesthetics Free Culture

Big Buck Bunny Is Out!

And it’s brilliant. Seriously, these guys know more about classic humorously violent funny animal cartoons than Dreamworks animators have ever been told they can’t use by their managerial overlords.

See here for downloads: Big Buck Bunny Downloads

And buy the 2 DVD set for PAL & NTSC versions of the cartoon as well as all the “source” used to make it, the 3D models, textures, animations, etc: Big Buck Bunny DVD

But will the soundtrack be released under a Free licence this time?

Categories
Personal

Nope, I Got Nothing

I’ve had very little energy recently (no idea, possibly a virus, no not a computer virus, work with me here) and so I’m behind on just about everything I’m meant to be doing. I’ve also been reading Batman and Silver Surfer collections that the library has in. Oh and the T&H “Internet Art” book, “Laws Of Cool”, the second Alfred Jarry collection from Atlas Press, and “War In The Age Of Intelligent Machines” which I’ve wanted to re-read since borrowing Tessa Elliot’s copy about fifteen years ago. All of which has also got in the way of making stuff.

Like That is progressing slowly but surely, I’ve written some code to screenscrape art market data sites for some possible visualization work, a couple of reviews are almost ready for Furtherfield, and I got to the Open Source Embroidery show opening which was brilliant. I also had to edit my essay for the art & FOSS book, which LaTeX made nice and easy.

As soon as I have anything to show, I’ll show it.

Categories
Free Culture

Copyleft And Literary Genius

Moorcock’s Miscellany – View Single Post – BLACK PETALS

I had another child to support, but by then I was selling very well and
had royalties and foreign rights coming in This enabled me to devote
the kind of time I came to devote to the Pyat books which were
something my conscience demanded I write

One of the things that I try to do as a proponent of Free Culture is to come up with ways of alleviating any negative economic consequences for producers caused by the effective absence of copyright under copyleft. I’m quite happy that I have a good grasp of how this works for fine at, for film, for television, for computer games and for popular music. But books are another matter.

Michael Moorcock is a literary hero of mine. In the quote above he describes supporting both his family and his art on the basis of the economic exploitation of rights that copyleft removes; sales royalties and regional market/translation fees. Neither exists under copyleft. So would Moorcock not have been able to feed his children and create the art that he was driven to make without Cory Doctorow-style NonCommercial restrictions?

I will ignore the question of whether he should, for some ethical value of “should”, be able to or not. As far as I am concerned it would have been a loss to culture had the Cornelius and Pyat stories not have been produced. A loss of positive freedom (to use Berlin’s terminology) would have resulted as these amazing resources for the collective imagination would not have existed. I support this end, I’m just talking about the means.

No single solution can replicate the effects of copyright (no single application of copyright replicates the effects of copyright…) but I think that its benefits can be approximated. Can that approximation replace copyright economically speaking, and thereby generate a cultural superstructure of the kind that Moorcock’s copyright did and does?

I need to work on this.

Categories
Uncategorized

Where I Will Be Tomorrow Night

Open Source Embroidery: Craft and Code

HTTP Gallery
Unit A2, Arena Design Centre
71 Ashfield Road
London N4 1LD

Come and see the show and meet up with lots of extremely excellent people. And me.

Categories
Uncategorized

Robert Rauschenberg RIP

Robert Rauschenberg, RIP – Boing Boing

Robert Rauschenberg, a pioneer of multimedia art in the truest sense of the phrase, died last night. He was 82.

Rauschenberg’s work had a massive impact on me when I first arrived at art school. His art was high stakes aesthetics in which either everything was transformed into art or… But it was always transformed into art. Rauschenberg convinced me that freedom was not only possible but worth pursuing in art, and that art could transform any materials while still (or possibly thereby) retaining a link to real life.

Categories
Personal

Still Busy

I’m still working on various projects, notably Like That and an artworld social network data visualisation project that may be called “Information”. And I may have some good news regarding my criticism and design work as well soon.

I’ll post when I have something to show…

Categories
Aesthetics Free Culture

Exhibitions at HTTP Gallery. Open Source Embroidery: Craft and Code

Exhibitions at HTTP Gallery. Open Source Embroidery: Craft and Code

This exhibition explores the connections between the collaborative characteristics of needlework, craft and Open Source software. This project has brought together embroiderers, patch-workers, knitters, artists and computer programmers, to share their practice and make new work.

I met the curator/artist at an HTTP social last year and they are a very thoughtful and insightful commentator on “Open Source”. The show should be good, and if you can get to the opening I recommend it.