Couple of weeks ago mastodon instance “Mastodon.ART” added icons from Creative Commons project to the arsenal of custom emojis to be used in toots (posts). One user wondered if this use is legally correct, so after some discussion I sent an email to Creative Commons about it and after a week or so got an answer. I’m replicating this correspondence here to put their answer in perspective.
Blog
Photodump #170821
Photodump #170719
Photodump #170715
photodump #170704
Photolog March 2017
VideoŽurnal W48
Midst a lot of very urgent work, what does the serial procrastinator do? Creates something that is not THAT urgent to do. A videožurnal (video journal) episode, and posts it to his Patreon page!
I’ve read Amanda Palmer’s book The Art of Asking. You know she’s the most successful music artist on Patreon? Her book is a lot about her life, where’s she’s coming from and it becomes pretty clear how she ended up where she did. I have notes & quotes from reading it. And it is quite inspirational and up-to-date with exactly what’s happening now – you know: twitter, crowdfunding, kickstarter, patreon, relationship-based “economy/marketing” aka your fans are your friends etc. In this context I will reflect on this year by the end of the month too.
The end of november didn’t bring another music video/release, although I was planning it. I had a concept, I had a loose synopsis for the video, I had ideas for remixes/edits, but didn’t have anough time or stamina to push it through in time. I’m learning to accept the tempo I’m working in. And I’m happy for any cheers on this path, honestly!
Along with the plan of finding a way to conitiuously offer an insight to my studio & work, here comes another timelapse video-journal, backed-up with an older track from an album released in 2004 (Z. Spavatsky: d0).
Please enjoy. It’s a december gift to you, my friends.
žurnaldela W41Y2016
Last week or two were pretty intense work-wise. But most of things went through pretty smoothly, so I’m quite happy about it. A sense of achievement is somewhere around here…, present. And that’s good. Despite the cold.
For a while now I’ve been trying different things to find a way to update my patrons on the inner workings of what I create. You know, the “frequent studio updates”. When I quietly started Patreon campaign at the beginning of the year I had many ideas how to do these updates, and I shot and edited various videos, but mostly disliked them as somewhat inauthentic. ( Yes, we can discuss authenticity online, narcissism and all youtube-culture problems! :) )
However, today I’m happy to share with my patrons an issue of so called ‘work-journal’, mostly timelapse material edited with music and annotations. I stand behind it, it feels right. It feels honest. I hope it gives you a bit of a (week-long) view of my studio and different work environments I’m creating in: a club, a theatre hall, a studio.
The Making of Turns Me On video and EP
The writing below used to be a synopsis for a some kind of vlog progress report about how the Turns Me On video was made. To be honest, I recorded the talk but didn’t like it, but since it actually detailed in a brief way the process I converted it into a blog post.
The idea of this post is to give a peek at the behind the scenes ideas and mechanics that lead to the way the Turns Me On video turned out.
At the initial brainstorming the basic problem in that early stage seemed to be this question: does a video for a track about sexual excitement really needs hypersexualized images of women in any way? I really wanted to turn this stereotype on its head somehow and first had the idea to go to clothes shops with a friend, a young male actor, and take skirts, high heels, sexy tights and other women’s clothes, go to changing rooms and have another friend shoot him trying things on. But I was already getting late with finishing the main track, not to mention I wanted to make remixes and so on. So the video was on hold all this time as I was working on music and I felt I need a more flexible plan. And, you know, the need for flexibilty usually translates into kinda do-it-yourself quick guerilla work. At least with me.
The Meaning of Netlabel Day
I’m not sure what happened, but it seems like I took notes for a short essay that I wanted to write for Netlabel Day 2016, but never got to it. But the notes seem to be quite to the point. So I’m simply leaving this here. Enjoy.
—-
Netlabel Day means
– freedom from the middlemen
– low production costs for bedroom producers
– asking ourselves what does the value of music depend on
– asking ourselves what platforms do we use for distributionThis has nothing to do with the physical media and wonderful sound of the vinyl.
This is not against the right that musican should be able to earn a living with their music.Netlabel Day means this: music being at the center stage with help of digital distribution networks embracing the idea that information and artistic expression wants to be freely distributed.
This is about re-evaluating platforms like iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music. This is about re-evaluating how much of a slave each and every musician is to the music industry, to commodification of music, to the capitalism and exploitation.
This is not about the idea that everything should be free and costless while still costing many hours of work. It’s about thinking about in what system do we work and create, how this system forces us to sell our own work and ourselves and how free online access to music bypasses such systems.
It’s also an opportunity to think about how democratisation of taste and free access to all cultural works at any time from everywhere is really beneficial and how it is hurting creators & musicians.
Netlabel Day offers us an opportunity to think about the world of musical creativity and its distribution, which is far from simple black or white, good or bad.
Monokel & Alpina
studio video diary timelapse 8. May, 2016
A simple timelapse from yesterday’s work. It didn’t went smoothly, so you can see some Renoise audio work (Turns Me On alternative dub edit) but also other posting, mobile checking and typing stuff. What’s nice is the attached wide-angle lens which comes from an old DV cam and is taped on my Panasonic TM700 HD cam.
