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Subject: Creative Commons-Eyebeam Forum 2003 November 12-19

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  • From: "rejiquar" <beads AT newcastlegardens.com>
  • To: cc-eyebeam AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-eyebeam] some reactions to prior posts fwiw, folks...
  • Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 23:04:09 -0500



Dear Mr. Brown (and other Members):

Greetings.

Thank you for your answer to my question. As I explain below, no, you
don't quite answer the one I asked (how to let people who simply can't
*stand* the thought of *their* work being used commercially
incorporate my SA/commerce allowed stuff, which, of course would
require them to license their work to be sold if someone
downstream wished to do so).

But in fact, I find your answer more useful: splitting the use between
original and derived works strikes me as *very* attractive: for years
I've preached to my friends and fellow artists (who screamed endlessly
about `stealing' work)---copy my work all you like---but show it to
me, because if you keep doing it, you will eventually come up with
something new---that I can `steal' from you. And then the process
starts again. This is why artists like working in co-operatives.

---Btw, is there any way to easily go down a list of the all the
licenses offered, without taking the test? I'm not good at navigating
sites, and can't find it.

At any rate, it appears I want a commerical share-alike license. If I
go that route, someone who doesn't want her work distributed commercially is
out of luck, if she wants to use mine. I will have to
consider whether it's more important to impose my feelings about
commerce or to be more accommodating. That's okay.

M. John, responding to Ms. Ford:

>I am personally interested in understanding how practical economic
>models of cultural exchange aligned with digital values and tools can
>be implemented in developing nations...

I can think of several cases of developing nations exporting their
craft, and, thus, creating a cultural exchange. One was a catalog of
clothing made by Indians, using traditional dye-stamping and
embroidery. It was organized by an American with the very objectives
you state, and unfortunately I don't recall precisely the name of the
company. A second is the success of Teotitlan Mexican (Indian) rug
weavers, who according to the current issue of _Smithsonian Magazine_
are world famous (and considerably more prosperous than their
neighbors) for their rugs. The article mentions generally that the
weavers are expert at promoting their work, and specifically that one
has a website.

A third is the Hope Bracelet,
http://www.cindybeads.com/projectmercy.htm (a part of Project Mercy)
in which American bead designers have collected beads, taken them to
Africa, taught the Yetebons to string (they already know how to
design; Africans are among the most inventive beadworkers in the
world), returned them to the US, where they are sold, with the
proceeds going for Project Mercy's food and education efforts. This
latter project has the greatest component of charity in it, but it
also is relying heavily upon the web and email to promote it.

That, to me, points out the first difficulty for exporting many
wonderful `developing' nations' craft traditions, which are rapidly
being lost, in general, and Creative Commons' message of `some rights
reserved' in particular: simply getting the messages (or meme, to use
the trendy form) out there amongst all the cacophony. Until and
unless enough people see the wonderful craft these people have (in
part, of course because *their* creative commons is a much greater
percentage of their cultural background) and are exposed to the fact
that we're rapidly losing ours, nothing else really matters---we need
that critical mass.

Which brings me to that favorite (not) topic of working artists:
marketing. Creative Commons, in effect, needs to market its message,
not traditionally a strong suit or favorite activity of modern
artists. Until that happens, all the effectiveness of its licenses,
or methods for empowering the third world, are so much trees falling
in an empty forest if the industrialized nations' artists are unaware
of the former or the developing nations' artists are unaware of the
latter. And, the poorer the environment (as I learned firsthand, when
attempting to teach drawing to inner-city Detroit children) the more
constricted the pipeline, the harder it is to inform people of their
options.

Which brings me to another issue:

I would agree with M. Randolph about artists being uncomfortable
quoting others. I, personally, won't do it. Under any
circumstances. Why? Because I have no idea whether *someday* I might
want to sell or otherwise market the work. It seems to me that a lot
of people do not mind having their works copied, but only for
non-commercial use. This, in my view, is a mistake. Had the Open
Source people required this, various corps would not now be banding
together to create large applications that even the OS community feels
is very nearly beyond their resources, at least in a timely manner.

Part of the problem is that, until a given artist actually goes out
there and makes a concerted effort to market her work, s/he has no
real idea of how much that adds to its cost: most artists like to make
art. *Selling* it, on the other hand, is a pain, and even highly
successful artists to devote a lot of time to marketing; to judge by
polls published in _The Crafts Reports_ spend at 2 days running the
business to every three creating---and they're the lucky ones! So
when someone else sells (or publicizes) your work, they've probably
doubled the time
put into it.

Frankly, I'd rather see someone else figure out which of the many
projects I've done over the years has marketability; and if they make
lots of money, well, then I'll know that's the product to move (I can
put bonus material in mine. Or state that mine is from the artist
direct. Or whatever. The point is, the person has performed a
service for me, who hates marketing, in identifying what sells. Of
course, maybe they're making a mint off something I now *hate* doing.
Well, then they've pointed up a choice---do I make stuff I like, or
stuff that sells?

But at any rate, there is a value-added, just as the `Creative
Commons' is an important balancing element against individual
copyright. I think this value-added is lost on people who've never
tried to sell their work, and reduces the likelihood of their work
being incorporated; of becoming part of the commons. Certainly those
developing nations folk don't have the spare resources to give their
stuff away, though for what they currently get paid it very nearly
seems that way.)

Which brings me to some of the, um, more idealistic threads taking
place---from M. Dmytrick:

>Art is not an object, art happens. Art happens when the actions of
>artists bring expressions into a state where they can be
>perceived. All objects that result from an incident are merely the
>residue of the incident, not the art itself.

Some of my problems have to do with semantics. Why must we call what
happens to the viewer/auditor (the art consumer---and I mean that in a
literal sense: you take that sensation into yourself) `art' and the
object or performance that inspires the sensation something else?
That might just barely make sense in a performance context, such as
dance or theatre; it doesn't for most visual arts. For centuries,
we've been calling the stuff that incites the emotion---that serves as
a conduit between the artist's head and her viewer's---art.

I don't disagree that the viewer is an important---even
coequal---participant in the experience. I'm not even disagreeing
that the object is an imperfect rendition of the artist's concept
(since it's very well documented by any artist who's ever claimed the
term that that's almost always the case.) But the viewer is not all,
any more than the artist is all. They're a team. If we need a word
for the consumer's contribution, well and good. Let's find one.

But let's *not* change currently accepted usage. There are plenty of
other problems on the plate---like getting the message out at all.
Art is the expression of the original creator, not the multitude of
folk we hope will appreciate and enjoy the work. I suppose in
*theory* we can have virtual art, but at the present time I can't
think of any convincing examples that didn't involve my senses in some
way.

>From M. Mancini (sorry, don't know what to change your M$ special
characters into--and pasting this post into the web based mailer appears to
made them even weirder):

>In an interview with sculptor James Carl she said she&#146;s interested in
>work that &#147;&#133;positions itself as a service rather than a thing, with
>the aim, in general, of identifying an aesthetic dimension of
>&#145;normal&#146; >experience.&#148; Moving in the direction of such an art
>is
>necessarily to move away from a type of work that is either ownable
>or copyrightable, as the work, like curation, becomes merely a
>vessel, a vehicle for the transference of ideas. Artist as middleman.

Huh? That's what are *is*. Cave paintings to quilts to Jazz is a
transference of ideas. And, sorry, all those things being made now
are copyrightable. The only reason art is not a greater part of
``normal experience'' ---in this country anyway---is because we have
so little regard for it. That it should be as much part of our
culture as travel by automobile will get no argument from me. That
incorporating into everyday experience will not involve copyright,
otoh, baffles me. How?

Ms. Sabater says:

>I am thinking of how net Artists in general are still creating online
>communities, salons and studios à la 1996.

(She goes on to compare them to the sophistication of the
blogosphere---something I
discovered three days ago, reading up on copyright history. And I've
had a website since 1996, or so. Talk about embarressing!)

Speaking as a working artist, we're rather clueless about computers as
a class. Actually, there's no `rather' about it. Every time I read
an article in _The Crafts Report_ about digital technology, I cringe.
And I'm a clueless user! ---I probably would barely know to use email
(let alone linux!) were it not for the fact that I'm married to a
geek. Just as a personal example, I very nearly lost this letter trying to
post it into the webmail browser, and I don't know how to fix the word wrap in
this program. Duh.
Hurray for xemacs' autosave function.

Perhaps part of the problem is that whole-head intuitive
(left-brained) thinking doesn't go along so well with the analytical
approaches required to solve the inevitable problems of using these
powerful, but complicated, tools.

sylvus tarn
(rejiquar)


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