colin mutchler - 'open source' media

zynthetix

I got to hear musician, artist, and public policy proffesional Colin Mutchler speak and perform last week.

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Colin has been touring around the U.S. in attempts to bring open-source philosophy to various media types. This is a refreshing concept for anyone who has been aghast or discouraged by Court rulings on media formats in recent years. (for more info, see the thread here).

Colin's session was equally informative and entertaining. Inbetween his speaking and discussions with the audience, he performed some of his music and video works in addition to sharing revised versions and remixes others have produced from his work thanks to permissive copyrights. The idea is that original artists get respective credit but their work can be openly modified or utilized in other projects by other artists, hence creating community culture. It is also up to the original artist whether credit referring back to them should even be a concern in other's derivative works.

Talking to Colin afterward, he pointed me to a few sites that I found of interest. http://www.flickr.com is a database of photographs and graphic designs, many of which other artists can utilize in their own projects.

More exciting and relevant to electronic-music is http://ccmixter.org , a home for "open-source" samples and musical works. This site is a subsidary of http://www.creativecommons.org , where the copyright policies and accessibility issues can be read or proclaimed in fine print. One of the intriguing aspects is "trees" for a peice of work, where the original artist and peice of media are rooted and linked to by all other works that used it or were inspired by it.