Loving what these guys & gals are doing:

Free Art & Technology Overview from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

Following on from a visit to Public Works on Friday, an organisation about public spaces and art John is involved with I thought most of their projects came off a bit dry, needed the artist input, something funny/humourous with a pop culture touch.

What I was thinking of was something more like the Free Art & Technology group over at Boing Boing (recently allegedly tagging a Google Street View car in Berlin so you can track it on GPS – probably as the comments say with something like this – ability to track stuff on GPS for $85? ME WANT!)

Like the Kopimi station and the Piratebay/Amazon add-on (piggybacking onto existing sites with artwork or counter-cultural things is very now – I assume this is Steve Lambert as I’ve just installed his Add-Art plugin which displays artworks instead of browser ads) and the GML graffiti robot arm Great projects which force the issue by humorously or intentionally breaking the law, activism, or just brilliant ideas…love the cheap Matrix bullet-time too.

The thing is like the scientists who get training about presentation and PR, you need to present your ideas to a wider public with a hook, a meme, a snappy idea or sentence. And if you’re scared of breaking laws or offending grant-making bodies you’ll not actually engage people – because people don’t exist in some safe padded Tellytubbies world those in charge would like them to live in.

Now if the architects and town planning bods over at Public Works got in bed with the rapper/hacker/artists over at FAT…that would be a marriage made in heaven. Or hell, depending on which (Google) view point

This is the role of the 21st century artist – less Klee and more KLF.

I so wish I had stuff like this when I was doing my degree and creating artwork, I was messing with relays and switch circuits and floorpads…but it was 1995, which unless you were in Silicon Valley with rich daddies you couldn’t afford the decent shizzle…now anyone can afford it!

The embedding wars continue…and it seems to me that the industry as it scrabbles for money is just shooting itself in the horse when the foot has bolted (did I get that right? ) – it is as Damien from OK GO writes:

we’ve got this ridiculous situation where the machinery of the old system is frantically trying to contort and reshape and rewire itself to run without actually selling music. It’s like a car trying to figure out how to run without gas, or a fish trying to learn to breath air.

Damien was describing their bands battle over license/country and embed (as in when you copy the code and put videos into your own webpage/profile/blog) restricted videos, realising that this is counter-productive and annoys fans.

Apparently this is all to do with advertising – the Ad revenue isn’t shared for embedded ads (although annoyingly YouTube STILL shows the ads an embedded videos – what IS with that?) as advertisings don’t like the idea of embedded videos possibly ‘hurting’ their brand by being embedded on any old site (say, a porn site or site of a rival or critical party…yes advertisers get with the 21st century, and the fact of mass comment and lack of control, but as we know like with music marketers they don’t have a clue(train) as yet)…

So when you have bands criticising their paymasters (in this case our old friends EMI) or like with Amanda Palmer criticising Warners for pulling her videos (and then created the wonderful song above ‘Please Drop Me’ to the tune of Moon River – asking fans to upload it to YouTube as a response to Warners), then you know something is very wrong in the state of DigiMark.

And I think this is counterproductive – as Damien and Amanda realise such freedom over their videos help build their career – to clamp down on embedding or sharing or streaming or posting low-quality MP3s is actually to stop the massive free-promotional tool that is the internet. It’s far worse when someone doesn’t actually give a shit and want to listen/post/play/embed your videos and music, believe me. To have their attention is a luxury – don’t waste it, or turn it off by silly restrictions – to lose that possibly a lifetime of attention for the sake of a few cents is really to cut your face off to spite your nose (again? did I do that right?) (thanks to chronicpaint for the link)

Conversation between Buddy Holly and Paul Cohen of Decca from Thursday February 28, 1957 wanting to release his songs they hated and didn’t want to release, but still wanted to hold onto for 5 years. One of them was ‘That’ll Be The Day’ and he went ahead and recorded and released his version against his contract – funnily enough on a Decca subsidiary, and then being signed as a solo artist back at Decca after the hitr – the rest is history…

Just think what would have happened if he ‘played by the rules’? (via boingboing)

Unlike the previous one over at LJ this one IS from me…I looked at Apple’s new iWotsit and thought ‘Etch-a-Sketch’!

As @parkylondon said:

Photographers! #photog Can you download, cross post or whatever you can to get into #changewesee at Flickr?

Go to it! Print, use, spread, etc.