Monthly Archives: December 2011

Visual Culture

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Visual culture is an evolution of art history. The latter field of study tended to focus on heroic artists who were either famous in their own lifetimes or subsequently became famous following their demise. It is flawed in this way as it fails to attach significance to peers of the heroes who were perhaps prpducing similar work at a similar time and place and socio-economic political context. As such, it is a skewed perspective that places particular artists on a pedestal and reinforces the genius in an ivory ptower paradigm. In contrast, Visual Culture attempts a more ‘realistic’ approach, taking into account the situation s and circumstances from which art was created. What was going on in the society in which the artist lived at the time, who was in power politically, what kind of economic system was in place? The assumption is that all of these factors influenced the artist in the creation of their work. The meaning can be extracted differently. An art history survey could be a study of found filmmaking from 1927-2010, taking in key names, dates, periods and artworks. However, a Visual Culture survey could also include theories, alternative ideas and criticism. May include tools from critical theory and cultural studies. Need to read some art history PhD theses to get an idea. Art history focuses on the aesthetic valued of a work, whereas Visual Culture focuses on the cultural meaning of a work of art. Art history was quite elitist in what could be studied, while visual culture incorporates film, tc, photography, graphic design and new media etc. The traditional view is that a work of art speaks to people no matter what time, space or socio-political / economic system is in place when the piece is perceived anew, while visual culture says that it is omportant to take the circumstances of the works’ creation into consideration but also the situation in which it is viewed – impacts on the perceived meaning within the piece. If we take the Mona Lisa – from a visual culture perspective, we need to analyse what was going on in Florence, Italy in the early 1500s from social, political, economic and cultural perspectives. Also, one could take a piece, say the Mona Lisa and study how it was received in different times, places and periods as a progression over time, that is, if we look at the Mona Lisa today, do we still perceived the same meaning as people who viewed it in Italy in the 1500s? Civilisation – Kenneth Clark. Robert Hughes – Shock of the New. Ways of Seeing – John Berger. Walter Benjamin.

Found Footage Filmmaking

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Refocus on history of found footage film-making. Embrace the high artness of this form rather than the cheap mass art of YouTube mash-ups. Craig Baldwin. Wood Allen. Guy Debord. Adopt a ‘look-down-the-nose’ approach to YouTube videos for a while to see how that goes. Explore found footage material more. The impact of digitality on the historical practice of found footage filmmaking. Movement 1.1 The Futures of Cinmea – Story Without End? Found Footage in the Digital Era. By Tilly Walnes. www.movementjournal.com. Recycling. Spatial montage. Manovich. E.g. After Effects videos (like CHI Media showreel). Matte extraction – physically putting cutouts from different films together. Temporal Photoshop collages. Cinematic montage vs collage. Montage is in sequence, collage is together in the same frame. Combining both together = Enda, Bertie. Digital compositing combined with linear editing – cinematic cluster where the spatial dimension takes precedence over the linear temporality of the piece. Time and space are no longer separate, but intertwined and overlapping in a new multi-dimensional form of montage. Source material not restricted to video – may include photos, analogue and digital film, drawings, engravings, newspapers, animation, graphics, typography. No longer medium specific, but rather all reducible to 1s and 0s, made of the same malleable stuff – interchangeable. Film is rejected by practitioners of ‘digital moving image’ or Motion Graphics (not quite). Footage is not accurate to describe all the media that may make up a remixed work. “Hybrid media text’? Recycled moving image collage? ‘Remix’ is too colloquial. Need a new and better term. Recycled cinema is too limited as it may incorporate video, audio, text, image, interactivity and code – any media type. Solid historical relationship to Found Footage Filmmaking, but it has evolved into a new beast. Need to read Manovich. All of his work indeed. ‘Found’ doesn’t apply. Material is ubiquitous online. ‘Footage’ does not apply – multiple media types. Filmmaking – the end result is not film – it is a digital moving image created using non-linear montage and spatial collage techniques in tandem. No longer subversive or critical – what was once experimental is now main-stream. Subversiveness is restricted to the unauthorized appropriation of copyrighted material.

History, Theory, Criticism

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History of Political Remix? Theorising political remix? Criticising political remix? Historicising this emergin practice if it may be referred to as such. Is political remix a distinct object of study, different from any other? Is there much going on in the run up to the general elections? Is it quite juvenile in that it tends to make fun of politicians, a form of parody or satire? Should I focus on video work? If not would I need to include audio and text-based mash-ups? Or perhaps posters, a la Adbusters, which tend to critique the advertising world / consumerism and the political world and social issues – so PRV is an evolution of Adbusters ‘Culture Jamming’ un-posters. Many made by amateurs but decent ones made by professionals in their spare time. I have to keep coming back to this from an art point of view. Need a new entry point such as contemporary found footage filmmaking. PRV is like propaganda, advertising, movie trailers – the form and style of the work is a template taken directly from the styles of the commercial mainstream culture industries. A critique of the culture industries as well as the specific subject matter of each remix. But couldn’t you produce a completely new work using similar templates and original raw material, i.e. not found footage? But actually appropriating and repurposing content from other sources withough permission / authorization instills the work with a certain power / raw energy, controversiality, potential illegality, real revellion, standing up to and sticking it to the status quo, a charge, an explosive element. Historically, the form could be legitimately traced back to Dada, collage, surrealism, Russian and American found footage film-making, avante-garde film-making, appropriation art, Adbusters, tactical media, and amateur YouTube video remixes to contemporary experimental found footage art. Why am I obsessed with this? I believe it is a powerful art form that can change things. I could map the current online practice of political remix video. There have not been that many notable examples all around the world in the last 5 years. I can document each one and each artist. Is there a claim that remixes are ineffectual? I dispute this. The Situationists have a major part to play as well. What can the past tell us about the present and the future of this art form?

What is the Research Project?

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Hermeneutic Phenomenology – interpretive textual meaning. Heidegger and Gadamers championed this research approach. Also Ricoeur. The meaning of Being, the Self and Self-Identity. An interesting point – attempting to watch a video remix without any prior knowledge or preconditions may be folly as to fully appreciate the ingenuity in the work requires a knowledge, awareness of the viewer having experienced or observed the source material in order to ‘get’ the meaning. This also implies that remixes potentially have a relatively short shelf-life, especially if they reference current affairs. On the other hand, it is easy to find out enough information or find the source material online and watch it in order to full appreciate the remix, if necessary.
What am I trying to find out? Why is it worth knowing? How will I go about doing this? What has been done so far? What will be achieved by Easter / Summer? Short background – setting the scene. A new generation of media activists are using political remix video to get their messages out to new audiences and ultimately act as a catalyst for social change. Tackling many of the big social issues of the day, including human rights violations, political and commercial corruption, social injustice, unethical and irresponsible behavior and business practices by corporations, attacks on freedom of expression and erosion of personal privacy, to name but a few. I am trying to fully understand the media content which may be categorized as Political Remix Video or Critical Remix Video and how it affects its viewers, the motivations behind its production and how acceptable the practice of making this work, the subject matter of which may often be considered unethical or immoral by certain interest groups, how acceptable it is in our societies. The implications of PRV on the original source material used in the remix and the companies or individuals who originated it and the differences of interpretation between Western and Eastern cultures – can a PRV still ‘work’ or have worth even if the viewer has never seen the source material before? Or is the meaning entirely lost in such cases? The conflict this causes in relation to the Phenomenological Reduction technique, where a work is meant to be observed without prior knowledge or context. These questions are worth answering because they will contribute to the discourse on media activism and its effects in a useful and productive way, allowing us to better understand how the construction of a piece of propaganda affects how the audience feels when they observe it. Collect work. Analyse it. Show to audiences. Analyse audience.

Phenomenology

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Phenomenological reduction is about sustaining a sense of wonder or astonishment when analyzing phenomena (observable / perceivable occurances.) Also referred to as ‘eopche’ (suspension) or ‘bracketing’. I will be analyzing examples of remixed work and also analyzing people’s reactions to viewing such material, how it affects them/us and where the work stands from an ethical perspective in western and eastern societies and the differences between these cultures. The aesthetics of the work itself will be fully deconstructed and analysed to get inside the artists’ mind, their original intentions for the work and whether or not this work achieves the desired intention when exposed to audiences. The specific types of remix work I will be analyzing are political remix videos distributed virally via the web – critiquing power structures and potentially exposing untruths. Would be very interesting to screen ‘Planet of the Arabs’ to Arabs and measure their reactions (emotional – Paul Eckhart) and then interview them qualitatively to see if their actual felt emotions tally with how they say the work made them feel and whether it is an immoral work. Could be potentially dangerous, e.g. Mohamed cartoons.
Can art itself be considered moral or immoral? Husserl, Hegel, Heidegger, Adorno – Layers of meaning in the work and how those meanings are interpreted by individuals and demographic groups. Existential phenomenology. Definitely. Resonance with Taoism and Zen Budhism. Reconciling Western and Eastern philosophy. Perhaps it would make a lot of sense to seek out and analyse example of Eastern remix and expose them to Western audiences as well as the opposite. Asian remix? Perhaps they have a different word for it. If remix does not exist in the Middle East, perhaps I could introduce it into the cultural stream? The subject and object of experience – their beingness. For example, watching a YouTube video. The video is the object, the viewer is the subject. Watching the video is the experience. How do the subject and object exist in reality and what impact does the experience have on the viewer? You can see the video on YouTube, on a cinema screen on TV, on your iPod – the experience is different each time. You can also see it in your memory, your imagination, your dreams and experience it just as fully – also if someone were describing it to you, verbally or in writing, it is also experienced, albeit indirectly.
Political remix as Alatheia – uncovering the hidden truths concealed by politicians, transnational corporations and power elites. Observation is receiving information of the outside world through the senses or the recording of data using scientific instruments. Filtering sensory information through the thought process. Input is received through hearing, sight, smell, taste or touch then analysed and interpreted through either rational or irrational thought. A judgment is made on whether what was observed was/is good or bad. Over time, these personal impressions and opinions develop into a construct/framework about the moral implications of behavior. The defining characteristic of observation is that it involves drawing conclusions and building personal views on situations as similar situations may occur in the future and one’s thinking on the initial situation will almost certainly colour their impression of the second. Observation may also be considered a continuous process of learning and increasing our understanding of the world around us.
‘Qualia’ – the way things seem to us. The subjective quality of conscious experience. The Phenomenological Reduction consists of the ‘Epoche’ and the ‘Reduction.’ It is a form of self-meditation that aims to free the individual from the scientific framework of presupposition and prejudices as well as their personal psychological assumptions from lived experience that inevitably colour the way we observe and draw conclusions from phenomena. The idea being that by transcending these preconditions, we can potentially observe a phenomenon in its pure form and understand it objectively. It is a way to make subjective observations objective. By performing the phenomenological reduction, one can convert from being a philosopher into becoming a phenomenologist. It is like a religious or spiritual conversion that laters the way one can observe phenomena in the world. The process is as follows: 1) Still the body, the mind and the emotions, sitting in a comfortable position having made provisions not to be disturbed. 2) Repeatedly affirm ‘I am’ – attempting to experience the ‘I’ in the present rather than remembering it, trying to “push back” and force the self onto itself in the present moment so that you are fully “in the now”, being in the moment ,experiencing and observing phenomena as they occur in real time. There are three ‘I’s, the human ego, the constituting ego and the spectator.

The Decommodification of Culture

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There is a reason why most artists are considered to be ‘bohemian’. They come from wealthy families with parents who can afford to financially support them, so they don’t have to go out and get a bill-paying job. Therefore they can spend all of their time painting, writing music, etc. Collective patronage is not for the well-off. It is for those who cannot afford not to work a day job. It is a social movement aimed at the working class, or in today’s terms, the multitude. The true ‘struggling artist.’ Anyone who is not in a position to spend their 40 hour working week working on their art is eligible for the fund. Would this would involve some kind of means testing?
Everyone has talents. But you need to be of a certain standard before you are food enough to be patronised for your work. What is someone tries to abe a bare minimum box-ticker, producing album after album of crap music that no one wants to listen to? If there is no audience, ther will be no funding. Patrons of the pot must publish their work through the proper channels – books must be available to download as eBooks and as print-on-demand. Films must be available to watch online, but also should be given cinema screenings in key cities around the world, if only a projector screen and lecture theatre, bands and musicians must make their album available to stream and download, buy as an on-demand CD and perform the music live at gigs around the world. Working full-time on the music means going on tour. Equally so, travel is integral to the deal in all disciplines. Painters must exhibit their work in multiple cities, for example. The work must be disseminated as widely as possible – the cream will rise to the top, but as long as there is an audience for the work, if even as small as 50 people, the fund will continue to be received. How to measure an audience? Qualitatively and quantitatively. Using online metrics for hard data. Evidence will be available on the artist’s page, where they are required to document their publications and performances, thus building communities around themselves and ultimately increasing the number of donations to the pot. It may be possible to spend some of the pot on other things like setting up small cinemas, concert venues and so on, easily rolled into one. All work must be Creative Commons licenced. Collective patronage encourages talented individuals to embrace their vocations, increases the amount of art produced and decommodifies culture.
Art for art’s sake. That is justification enough. Talented artists should be engaged in the creation of art for its own sake, that is, to be consumed, enjoyed and experienced by audiences. Yet today’s thinking fails to see that justification. Unless an artist can make a living from selling their work, it is seen as a hobby. Success is measured in monetary terms rather than the quality of the work itself. The importance of cultural works in society cannot be understated, yet the argument in favour of it needs to be strengthened. The benefits to people, psychological, emotional, social – of consuming cultural works, i.e. music, paintings, books, films are many. Artist would need to produce an exhibition of their own work. A minimum number of works. A film-maker, a feature film – a musician, an album, an author, a full book.
Collaboration is a sticking point. It is much more straightforward to deal with individual sproducing individual works. Somewhat more tricky if a number of people collaborate on a single work. It is a question of relativity. In order to continue to qualify for patronage, you would need to produce more collaborative works than an individual producing finished works alone, solo. In theory, collaborative projects should be completed more quickly and require less involvement from individual artists than working solo. However, the scale of the project could be an issue – for example, attempting to produce a Hollywood style feature-film might require a much greater number of collaborators and take a lot longer to produce than a sole director shooting a low-budget documentary with his own handycam. Another option would be for a filmmaker to hire everyone they need to produce their film – none of these would receive partronage but the ‘film-maker’ would. It could get muddy defining exactly what constitutes a film-maker – is it the director? The producer? The script-writer? I would guess in all cases, it is the producer, without whom the finished piece would not materialize. That is not to say that the producer may not also be the director, or the scriptwriter, the camera operator or even one of the actors, but the person claiming the title of producer is the one person who primarily brought the project to fruition. All other players in the team are expendable and replaceable. Of course, if the producer decides to write the script, direct and edit the movie themselves, they are fully entitled to do so. This is a more likely scenario for smaller projects, as opposed to Hollywood blockbuster style movies. Small budget movies. The technologies re very affordable now to become a film-maker, musician, writer, animator, games developer. What about so-called ‘commercial art’? Advertising, yes there is such a thing as non-commercial advertising. Certainly graphic design may exist as a non-commercial art form. TV commercials – instead of advertising dog food or cola, perhaps artists could advertise the pot, social or political issues. What about stand-up comedy, dance, performance art?
What about cover performers – no this is about creating new art. Not open to performers of other people’s work. Only for the creation of new work. But is recording a cover of a song in your own style not bringing something new to the table? It is derivative, but is it any more derivative than producing a remix using copyrighted material? This needs to be explored further. Quality is a significant aspect of this project. There’s no point giving people €25,000 a year to produce amateur or shoddily produced content. This is for serious and committed artists to produce substantial works of art. The quality, in terms of production values, has to be of a professional standar, on par with mainstream media content. Therre is no reason why this cannot be the case. It is about producing more full-time artists, musicians writers, filmmakers. Tag line – ‘Prepare to be patronized – give up the day job!” It is not open to anyone. If you’re not good enough, you need to get further training to become a master of your art. A requirement is that the artist create a new work and gets it made in whatever from is relevant. A book, DVD or exhibition, for example. The artist is the producer, so the idea is to encourage creators to get their work produced, e.g. if you’ve written a script, you need to take responsibility to get the thing made. Hire a director, actors and a small crew and get the film made, but you, as the artist, and the person who publishes the work, will be the one who receives patronage. The actors, sound guys are just players on the team. They are not the creators or the producers.
We are interested in funding individuals only who will ideally create something – write a novel, write 10 songs, paint 10 pictures, write a script – fix it in the form of some kind of appropriate media, e.g. eBook, CD, exhibition space, DVD/cinema screening and publish it for public consumption. Print on demand book or downloadable ebook etc. So, this idea of the idea-expression-media trichotomy comes into play. The intangible idea – the expression – as soon as you write it down or record / perform it and the media is the actual storage device, whether a CD, a DVD, a book or whatever. So the quality of the work needs to be of a professional standard and individuals who wish to be patronised should ideally be currently working a day job but doing their art in their spare time. They need to give up their job and also have a proven track record of art-making. They must prove their worth by first producing a substantial work in their spare time.
Popel who are more interested in money than making art need not applu. Having said that, perhaps €25,000 is not enough. How much would I need in order to be able to give up my job and make art full-time? In Ireland, considering it would be tax free under the artist exemption relief, I’d say between €25,000 and €30,000 per year. So, we could up it to €30,000? Should it make any difference if you have children? No. Must be rigid on that point. A good place to trawl would be advertising companies – anywhere that creative people tend to wind up after they’ve sold their soul. But even better would be talented people who have been forced to work unrelated, uncreative jobs to pay the bills and who have forsaken their natural gifts in order to survive, or be able to afford to buy material possessions. The collective patronage model requires applicants to choose art-making as a vocation, potentially sacrificing monetary gain for the opportunity to focus on their art without having to worry about paying the bills. But the chances of becoming financially wealthy by following this path are very slim.
How do we keep the pot full? Each new person is paid monthly, so the more people you have, the more outgoings but also the more fans will put money in. A beautiful cycle that results in the creation of lots more new art and enables artists to make a living doing what they love, supported directly by the people who love what they do. If 100 people gave €5 each, that’s €500. If 10,000 people gave €10 each, that’s €100k. That would pay for 3 artists for a year. Or 30 artists for a month. Need a lot of money in the pot. If 10,000 people gave €10 each once a month, that would be about €1.2 million. Not bad. There are 4.5 million people in Ireland. A lot of people here are highly creative. We’re known for it. If 1,000 people gave €5 a month, that would be €60,000 a year. Perhaps we could give smaller amounts initially? Would there be any point giving people €5,000? Or less than the dole? Why would an artist not go on the dole if it was worth more than the amount we could give them? What if people tried to game the system? Take the patronage and the dole? The big challenge would be in getting enough money in the pot initially and keeping funding coming in on an ongoing basis. It’s all about having the money there in the pot and then taking an active role in following who gets patronised. Perhaps by contributing to the fund, you get some say in how the money gets spent. Only those who contribute have a voice and can be patronised.
A key aspect to this is that it is global and non-geographical. In other words, the ‘finished piece’ must be digitized and shared with the online community. Of course, it’s important for each artist to drum up local support and have physical audiences at their gigs, but using networked digital technologies sduch as live video streaming and digital recording and encoding as well as networked distribution, there is absolutely no need to be restricted by geographical location. Most of the action takes place in virtual space, however, all work must be available in material form also – books, CDs, DVDs, as well as mp3s, ebooks and online video. Exciting! Couple of ideas to tease out here – First of all, the idea that there are people who are very special types of individuals, who have something to say and who can make a difference in people’s lives. Most people like this came to my attention as a result of having read one of their books, listened to one of their albums, watched one of their movies, played one of their games and I became a fan or follower of theirs. What they created spoke to me on a personal level and it made no difference whether I paid for it or not – the value of this kind of work is not reducible to monetary terms. It communicates, inspires, motivates – I suppose overall, it has an effect on people. It affects people. Those are not necessarily the same thing. It stirs the emotions, makes you feel something you would not otherwise have felt if you hadn’t been affected by the work – it can make you think in a different way, change or enhance your perspective on life – alter your opinions.
Artistic works are incredibly valuable to us as human beings and money doesn’t even come into the equation. One of my goals is to decommodify cultural works. They are not commodities and should not be treated as such. Not everything in life can or should be thought of in economic terms. Life can exist without any form of money. Societies can exist without money. Communities and individuals can live full and utterly meaningful lives without the concept of money. Life should not revolve around it. Dedicating one’s live to making more money is a wasted life. This system is rotten to the core. Alternative systems can exist alongside or even within such a system, and can eventually outgrow the host, like a virus, an idea can spread and take over until the entire system is transformed, changed utterly from the inside out.

Collective Patronage

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What is Collective Patronage? As the name suggests, it require a ‘collective’ of people to make it happen. A group of individuals brought together to support an artist. Patronage means providing financial support to artists. The dictionary defines patronage as “the financial support provided to hotels by its customers” – in historical terms, it is most often associated with the renaissance period in the 15th century, when wealthy merchants such as the De Medici family would act as patrons of the arts.They would provide an artist with financial support in exchange for his ongoing production of artistic works. Note that the De Medici were not necessarily purchasing the artworks themselves but rather, were supporting the artists financially thereby facilitating the ongoing creation of such works. Otherwise, the artist would have to find some other means of supporting himself, which would naturally take up their time and prevent them from focusing their full attention and time on their art. It was a fantastic system, if not without its own issues. The biggest issue was perhaps the increased definition of class distinction as a result. The artist had nothing in economic terms, while the patron had everything. Financial wealth. Power. And through their generosity, they used their power to facilitate the creation of art, thereby taking credir in part for the finished work and of course, the benefits that went with being associate with l’artiste du jour.
So, fast-forward 500 years and we now have an opportunity to improve the patronage model through the use of networked technologies. What I call collective patronage, involves a critical mass of ‘patrons’, supporters or fans providing an artist or group with micropayments, which collectively add up to enough so that the artist can concentrate full-time on making music/art, while still being able to pay the bills. The idea would be that an artist would have a profile on a website and a Paypal account. Users of the site could then send money (any amount they choose) to the artist, which would go to a collective fund – and every month the pot would be divided among artists who continue to produce new music. You don’t produce, you don’t receive financial support. The system could be quite open.
The concept of collective patronage would need to be regulated or controlled in some way. Having a completely open network that relies on its users to make it work is probably overly idealistic. The internet itself is an open network that can be used by anyone in any way, within the limitations of the technology. Allowing people to pay money directly into an artist’s individual Paypal account is problematic. It is open to all sorts of abuse and corruption. First of all, it would in some ways replicate the current sustem in that a tiny few would be the most popular and therefore would receive the cast majority of donations. They may be the artists who can afford to advertise most and use existing wealth to generate more wealth by playing the system. People wsould give money to artists they like general, artists who are already successful and don’t need the money, while the lesser-known and up-and-coming artists would receive infrequent and small payments on a sporadic basis, thus negating the point of the whole concept. The core idea behind collective patronage is that artists / creators of cultural works have enough money so they don’t have to work a day job and can concentrate full-time on producing more art – art of merit – thereby increasing the quality of the current wave of ‘amateur’ work. It would, however, not be a meritocracy in the strictest sense, as the quality of the work produced should not be the only determining factor in whether or not the artist receives financial support.
There are potential problems with both options. So, if artists have their own payment page and fans pay them directly, the system fails. No, there needs to be a central fund, which can be divided up among qualifying artists. So, imagine there was a registered charity, collectivepatronage.org, who could receive charitable donations, which it could store in a bank account, connected to a Paypal account. The ‘pot’ would then gradually build over time and if sitting in a deposit account, at least partly, could generate interest, perhaps could be partially invested, to increase the pot. A constant aim would be to keep the pot on the increase. A charity to support the arts, in Ireland initially, by providing collective patronage to individual artists. Potential problem – bands and production teams – should each member be paid, no ‘pay’ is the wrong word. ‘Patronised’ (Prepare to be Patronised.) Or do you provide funding on a per project basis? I think individually, but how to measure qualification? A musician has to produce an album off their own bat, a director a feature-length film, an author a 300 page minimum book – then they receive enough to live on for a year, monthly.
SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Based. A musician receives monthly funding from the pot, no strings attached, except that they have to produce more work. The idea is that their full-time job is to produce new work constantly. If no work is forthcoming, the funding stops. How much would someone need? Let’s say €25,000 per year. It’s not wealthy, but it’s certainly enough to live on. Approximately €2,000 per month. Sounds like a lot? There probably wouldn’t be tax issues, as it is for the creation of art. The idea is not to attract people who want to be rich and famous, but rather people who want to spend their time being crearive but have to work day jobs to pay the bills. The pot would pay the bills. And if the artist continues to produce new work, they continue to receive funding. A couple of issues – where does the funding come from? Users give money to the pot via Paypal. Problem- users want to give their money directly to their favourite artists, or at least have some say in how their money is being spent/distributed.
Should everyone receive the same amount of money? If attempting to produce a film, should the director receive as much as an actor, a sound guy or an editor? It’s not quite as clear cut as patronizing an artist to produce oil paintings, or sculptures, perhaps. It almost assumes the idea of the sole, lonely genius in an ivory tower. Often not the case these days. Collaborative work is the norm – and who may claim authoriship of the finished piece? The idea is that more work hets created. So, it is all relative. Everyone has the same minimuym living expenses, so I guess it depends on the type of work being produced. Collective Patronage is aimed at providing ongoing financial support to artists in exchange for regular production of new creative works. So, it must be initially restricted to authors, artists, directors, msuciains, designers – individuals who are capable of delivering a finished piece, whethere that is a book, an album , a feature-film, a computer game or an animation. The collective patronage pot is not there to fund projects, e.g. pay a camera crew – it is there to provide a director with a financial incentive to get their film made, which includes seeking and acquiring funding from a variety of sources to pay the camera crew. The criteria would need to be very clear of what is required by each artist in order to continue receiveing patronage. There would be quite a lot of admin involved. If I was doing this full-time, how much should I be earning? The organisation would need to be transparent, open, accountable.
Another issue, obviously for the first while, there would not be enough money in the fund to patronize anyone. In olden days, wealthy individuals could use their money to be patrons of the arts. So, it would be necessary to have a certain amount in the pot before any of the funds could be released to artists. So, perhaps fundraising would be a constant activity – people could contribute to the pot, however mush or however little they wished. € 1000 from the 100 wealthiest people in Ireland would be a good start. €100k, could finance maybe 5 people for a year. If the pot went too low, then artists would have to wait a while befoe reciveing their funds – what if they were producing work – would they feel like they were owed the money? From the point of view of the fans if they didn’t keep giving money to the pot, their favourite artists may stop producing new work. A new album every 3-6 months. Technologies and equipment are so affordable now anyone can purchase recording / production gear.
The collective patronage fund is not intended to fund projects. The money should not be spent on hiring cameras, actors, sound people locations etc. Rather the money is meant to be used by individuals to pay their living expenses – accommodation, utilities, food, socializing and so on. Enough money that the artist may otherwise have to work 40 hours a week to earn in the conventional way. Some ambitious individual might feel that they can apply for patronage by recording an album and uploading it or linking to their profile but then continuing to work 40hrs a week at a day job, writing and recording the music in their spare time and essentially double-dipping. If they can manage to produce the work on an ongoing basis, so be it. Should this be allowed? Would it not open the flood gates to corruption, where already wealthy individuals would use the fund to top up their monthly incomes? There could be some kind of rating system. On another point, say a director receives patronage – €2,000 a month. It is up to them to then raise the finance they need to produce the film separately. Digital technologies make it more affordable, but film-making still costs money. The pot pays the bills, freeing up the artist’s time, rescinding the need for a day job and allowing them to become a full-time film-maker. Payback for donators / patrons? More art.
Big issue – the user’s payback is free access to music, games, films, books – should it be a requirement that benefactors of the pot must publish their work on the network and make it freely available? The artists may feel that they should be able to make money by selling their work. Double-dipping again. What are you selling? A copy of a digital file? Ridiculous. In the renaissance, an artist might sell their painting – a unique, one-off artifact. Digital files are infinitely reproducible. They can’t be sold as copies. There are no originals! There is no issue with artists making supplemental income, however, they must make their work available for free on the collective patronage network. Perhaps you have to donate regularly in order to continue your access to the content. You can donate a minimum of 1 cent, no even 0 cent. But you have to donate at least once a month via Paypal to continue receiving free content. Perhaps some people will pay 0. And some will give €100. Collective patronage – knowing that you can take partial credit for the production of new artwork.
What if someone is receiving patronage and their work is complete crap? Needs to be a rating system of some kind. Number of fans? Or panel of experts. Definitely the latter. What makes an expert? Who decides? So, you could have a pyramid system, or perhaps a ring – or more palatable, a network of nodes. That would be most appropriate. Should collective patronage be a decentralized network? Partly. Some aspects are decentralized, but key parts are highly centralized, much like Facebook. It is a form of philanthropy. I would possibly need to put in a certain amount of cash myself. If I was able to draw €3,000 a month or so, I could work on it full time. We could have a headquarters in Dublin, like the Factory. Perhaps I should make some real money first. Think of an artist – they could on the dole or get a job or perhaps try to get grants and funding from the arts councils. We would need to be masters of fund-raising. In a way, competing with the arts council. By making the fund transparent, perhaps we could avoid corruption. It would definitely generate a lot of interest. The pot gives monthly payments of €2,000 to authors, in exchange for the creation of new artworks. Mainstream media.

Death of the 20th Century Music Industry?

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Can we imagine a system where musicians could receive monetary support for producing music? The old model was simple and worked very well for a long time, even if it only favoured a tiny minority of hugely successful artists. The talent, i.e. the artist – whether a singer/songwriter or performer, would either record a demo tape and send it to a record company or be head-hunted by studio executive – basically ‘discovered’ by a music publishing company talent scout. They were offered a deal. The record company would provide money to record an album in exchange for a large percentage of the ‘royaltys’ on the sales of the music once published. ‘Royalty’ is in fact a buzzword to make musicians feel like they were getting something valuable, when in fact the music publishing company received the lion’s share of the profits. Giving money in advance to fund the recording of an album by an unknown artist is risky business. How do we know if it will see? Does the artist have a big enough following, enough fans that would buy the album? If not, then music sales may not cover the cost of recording the album and they would make a loss. This happened in most cases.
In a few cases, for reason or another, the album sold by the bucket-load – making many multiples of profits for the company, ongoing revenue as long as the album continued to remain popular and sell copies of the LP record, cassette or CD. Building the audience was everything. Promoting the artist and the album was paramount. Maximum exposure. Interviews, touring, performing concerts in as many key places as possible, gathering fans along the way. Selling concert tickets and t-shirts, posters and other such merchandise added to the revenue stream. Incredible wealth could be amassed if the artist/performer kept coming up with the foods and the fans continued to buy the albums and go to concerts. Napster changed all that. Once music could be digitized at a small enough file size to be listened to on a computer or a portable media player like an iPod, sales of CDs began to decline. Why spend 20 bucks on a piece of plastic, when you can download the contents of the disc for free? Sales of CDs gradually went the way of the dodo – almost. There are still parts of the world where you can buy cassette tapes, so CDs will be around for another while yet. Artists and record companies (established artists – used to the constant revenue stream from music sales) were up in arms over this attack on their livelihood. The reality is that the old business model of selling music is dead. You can still buy songs and album on iTunes and similar services, you can still buy CDs but why would you when you can also download them for free? Yet still, some people do. Clearly a new model and a new system are needed.

Ethics of Remixing Photographs

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Let us first consider the visual image – in digital terms, the most common type of image is a JPG. That’s the technical taxonomy. However, different classes of JPG may variously be, perhaps most commonly first, photographs, but also scanned paintings, drawings, etching or photographs of material objects such as sculpture, models, architecture, people, landscapes – anything that can be seen with they eyes and captured in a single still frame. So, if we use a photograph as an example – let’s imagine a photograph of a man standing in front of the front door of his house. In order to remix it, the photograph must first be considered a ‘finished’ or ‘completed’ piece and the measure of this is generally publication – going to press or even exhibition – when the creator deems the work ready to be seen by the public. So, it may be published in a book, or more likely, on a photography website like Flickr or perhaps on the photographer’s personal portfolio website. Another general trend is that a remixed work is generally not created by the original artist of the source published photograph in this example. It is appropriated from wherever it has been published, whether scanned from a book or downloaded from a website and then altered by the remixer using some kind of software, most likely Photoshop or equivalent in this case, usually without the permission or even knowledge of the original creator.
Perhaps a point may be made that there is now so much media content online, that if you ‘publish’ your work, you have to be willing to make it available for reuse in future works by other people. Perhaps someone likes the image of the man in the photograph – they may use editing and image manipulation techniques to cut the man out of the original image and paste him into a new document, perhaps in front of a different background, like a beach or a forest. So, we end up with a new image, which is a composite of two different images created by a remixer, author ‘C’, without the permission of either author ‘A’ or author ‘B’. But what does author ‘C’ do with the new image then? Is it a ‘finished’ or ‘completed’ work now? In itself? Arguably, yes. So, if author ‘C’ publishes it via the same distribution platform as authors ‘A’ and ‘B’, i.e. on Flickr, and takes credit for the creation of the composite image, even if giving acknowledgement to authors ‘A’ and ‘B’ for their unknowing contribution, surely the original photographers would be less than pleased to see the unauthorized appropriation and repurposing of their work as well as the publication of it in the same market as their own work, thus becoming direct competition to the originals. This is an ethical question. Should author ‘C’ be allowed to create work from author ‘A’ and ‘B’s work without their knowledge or permission?

Aesthetics of Remix

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How can we come to understand the aesthetic of remix? Is there a more academic friendly term other than remix? I am less interested in digital appropriation than in remix. Somehitn gthat is clearly defined. So, what is involved in a discussion on remix and aesthetics? The crux of my research is the ethics and aesthetics of political remix. That’s it. So, aesthetically, as mentioned previously, remix comes in many forms. In fact, any cultural work may be remixed – music, film, literature, animation – anything that may be recorded or performed live through some form of media platform, whether that is a book, a newspaper, a magazine, a poster, a flyer, a brochure, a business card, a CD, a DVD, a website, a YouTube video, a game, an animation, a computer program/software package, any kind of printed or digital media. Of course, it is infinitely easier to remix digital media, due to its fundamentally malleable nature, however, all forms of printed media may be digitized and subsequently remixed more easily. Remix refers to adjustment after the work has been deemed ‘finished’ or ‘completed’.
In that respect, Nicolas Bourriaud’s attempt to label the practive of remix as post-production is somewhat flawed. Post-production is a stage of the creative process that occurs before a work is deemed finished, admittedly, the final stage of the process, but once the axe comes down, the post-production phase is over. Anything that follows this, whether digitally remastering, re-editing a director’s cut, or using samples in the creation of an entirely new work, may be categorized as remix. In plain English, it means making changes to a work after it is finished. Reworking it. Reinterpreting it. Reimagining it, but still using the same words, video, audio, code, imagery or animation that you used in the so-called ‘finished’ piece, just reshuffling them, rejigging, changing their order, the sequence of events, or combining parts of it together with parts from other finished works or adding completely original elements to it.
But where does the original work end and the remix begin and vice-versa? The distinction between an original work and a remixed work is important in understanding both. So, remix may be perceived in the same way that non-remixed or ‘original’ content may be. It can be watched, read, listened to, smelt, tasted, touched, experienced. Eyes, ears, mouth, nose, tongues, fingers/body and of course it may be recollected, imagined, dreamed. But what is different about watching a remixed video and watching a non-remixed video? Do we perceive it differently? How so?