Artificial Eye

Disney Creativity for all

There's a cultural war going on that IMHO is far more determinative for our future than the superficial one being waged by the christian right against islam - a battle for our ability to communicate with one another creatively and interactively with the products of our shared culture. Todays vlogpost is a remix of the cover image from Lawrence Lessig's book, Free Culture some creative commons images, and Lost in the plot from The Dears, who took the SXSW festival this year by storm.

Lessig talks, in the opening paragraphs of this phenomenal book about "Disney creativity,"--a form of expression and genius that builds upon the culture around us and makes it something different. Disney (or Disney, Inc.) ripped creativity from the culture around him, mixed that creativity with his own extraordinary talent, and then burned that mix into the soul of his culture. Rip, mix, and burn. Most of the content from the nineteenth century was free for Disney to use and build upon in 1928. It was free for anyone--whether connected or not, whether rich or not, whether approved or not--to use and build upon, without permission. Yet today, the public domain is presumptive only for content from before the Great Depression.

Lessig has been instrumental in the Orphan Works project as well, and is probably the most important contemporary legal activists fighting to maintain a common culture, and therefore our ability to collectively communicate with each other via the powerful tools that have been put on our desktop.

As noted by Tom Sherman in 1996, "We are willing participants in the creation of a second nature. While the biological world is collapsing, we are busy constructing an elaborate media environment."

Lets hope this environment wont collapse as well.

8 Bit Revolverlution for dogs

A few things came together today to enable me to continue with my 8 bit theme. Following a link to the Petesthe website from a link at Red Ferret with this text:

"A beautiful variety of infinite colors and brightness can be generated by blending the pet’s original hair color with new colors, making the pet’s image more impressive and harmonious with your desires! Enjoy the color design system that satisfies your pet-loving sensitivity!"

Once there i found some pictures of poodles dyed in my favorite 8 bit colors, which couldnt do anything better to illustrate the depth of decadence to which we have sunken as a race of beings while the planet falls apart around our ears. Check the link and u will see that i havent touched the dog's colors in today's post, which is backed by the first 30 seconds of the future remix sermon/manifesto, "Revolverlution" from the awesome mashup kings, The Kleptones. Go download the album (hell, get all of their stuff, they kick some serious ass!) to hear the rest of their view of the future state of media...one which many of us will not escape.

Homage to Creative Commons

As an answer to Michaels first post yesterday I would like to point out that I only have a 100% non other source philosophy when doing my normal VJ gigs. This is because I think to develop an own style you have to create all things yourself - like a director of a movie. What seems to got out wrong is that I am all for copyrights. Actually I hate the way the copyright system works right now and have always supported creative ways to bring the system to fall. All blogs on prototypen.com inclusive this one are subject to creative common licenses and my code releases are under GNU so I think to make a counter argument I want to pay homage to Creative Commons .

Music from the the WIRED CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share.
performed by Beastie Boys song called now get busy.

Losing Who We Are

from michael again:
One of the most important cases being heard before the supreme court at the moment is MGM vs Grokster. Twenty-eight of the world's largest entertainment companies brought the lawsuit against the makers of the Morpheus, Grokster, and KaZaA software products, aiming to set a precedent to use against other technology companies (P2P and otherwise). In honor thereof, i took animated some text in VDMX from an article on Salon.com by Andrew Leonard:

The deeper we get into the digital age, the more we will be defined not by our relationships with physical objects but with the data that we have accumulated in our journeys through life. If we lose the right to own that data and do what we want with it, if the power of the computer, and the Net, is taken from us, we're at risk of losing a lot more than a few files -- we stand at risk of losing the evidence that tells us who we are.

The track is "Run The Crowd" by The Shapeshifters taken from the SXSW music festival performing artist bittorrent.

Guest Entry#1: Copyleft.|.Copyright

Today is only 4 Minutes old but it starts very lovely with the first entry from a guest VJ. I got a mail from Michael yesterday and thought he is very intelligent and in the know. It turnes out after chatting a little that he is dead funny as well. His loops will feel home here our thoughts are somehow close yet far away. So here it goes and expect an answer from me soon...

Falk and i subscribe to different schools of thought as far as content origin are concerned, and i consider myself a copyleftist and believe that once things are released into the public domain, that they are there for us to reinterpret as artists... and essentially that is what enables public dialog. So what better way to set us two apart here on the blog than to remix the copyleft logo with some of my other favorite footage, including a classic demoreel animation clip from niels jansson that he put up on the web in 2000. This is a live mix created in GRIDPRO from vidvox, using the sequencer, with all added color, motion fx and transitions created by synchronizing the modules to the audiotrack in the built in audioplayer. The track is called "copy copy", including the great line "super terror, copy, NOW", from a japanese band way too far ahead of their time, The Plastics which was released as a single on Rough Trade in 1979.

any musicians out there who want to contribute tracks for a mix to be posted on this site can mail me at exiledsurfer at onemail dot at

cheers, exiledsurfer.