Does the Street do your job better than the Court?... Oh, and what does this mean for art dammit?

Answer: yes – but a. only because the Court is so restricted by, er, the Court and b. only so far...

OK, some terms-defining for a kick off. When we say ‘The Street’ here. We’re obviously borrowing heavily from William Gibson, who, in his now-famous and hugely insightful essay Rocket Radio claimed that ‘The Street finds its own uses for things - uses the manufacturers never imagined.’

The Street we identify here is The Web and with we’ve termed above Social Norms. Its ‘opposite’ we set up as the Court (of the royal type – though the legal kind has a rich role to play here too) or, if you prefer, Industry, The Market. The Law.

What we set out to look at in this last section are ways in which, in the arts sector at least, the Street is often doing the job one might actually expect of the Court, precisely because the latter is beholden to laws so often circumnavigated by the Street.

What kinds of ‘jobs’ are we talking about here then?
•    Invention of new business models
•    Archiving or building bodies of knowledge and collections of content
•    Curation – a more ‘flavoured’ kind of archiving, giving context and meaning to an archive. And closely related…
•    Education – for both arts practitioners and consumers
•    Effective Contracts or Rules of engagement

It’s worth pointing out upfront that you’ll notice what we’re not talking about here are the rights and wrongs of uploading, downloading or – ahem – piracy. Of course, as a practice, the unauthorised consumption, sharing or manipulation of another’s copyrighted material undercuts everything in this presentation. But we’re trying to broaden the picture here. Yes, another month, another P2P cause celebre; this month, stand up Pirate Bay trial!

Next month… well something else - perhaps YouTube vs PRS. This stuff is the battleground, of course, but essentially we work from the position that this poop will sort itself out… that the law will catch up with the norms, the court with the street… even if there’s a lot of pain in the working out.

Rather, what’s interesting to us is what could be done by the arts sector in a world in which these issues have - to a greater or lesser degree - been put to bed; and clues about that can be gleaned from what the Street is up to – now.

But for an example of the street sorting out some great business ideas at work, check out Nine Inch Nails, whom we’ve talked about elsewhere. In this video, Michael Masnick talks a MidemNet audience through some of Trent Reznor’s activity around the Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I - IV.

A recap on that then…

•    The full album (of 36 tracks) released as downloads under a Creative Commons licence.
•    The first 9 tracks released for free – in high quality.
•    For $5 you can download the lot
•    For $10 you can buy an standard double CD
•    For $75 the deluxe set with extra materials
•    For $300 asuper deluxe set - limited to  2500 (which sold out in 30 hours, making $750,000 alone off of music he was giving away elsewhere!)
Additional activity included …
•    Encouraging remixes by the public by releasing mix elements
•    Leaving full album copies on memory sticks geo-cached at various locations (apparently mostly male public lavatories)
•    Pictures taken by the public aggregated on the band’s official website
•    Alternate Reality Games
•    HD video

As an aside here, we ask: where is the value in your proposition? Is it quality? Scarcity? ‘Keep-ness'? The copy itself? Re-sale? Personal enhancement of the user's reputation? A short answer might be: all of the above. But if Reznor’s approach to business models seems promiscuous we have to say at this point in time, experimentation with your business seems like the best policy.

Now, onto Archiving, Curation etc…Let's talk about video artist and tuntablist-improviser Christian Marclay. We've chosen CM because his art is already made up of others’ art, so it’s an essay on cultural ownership in itself… but that’s not necessarily what we’re going to be talking about…

Here's a little documentary about him:

And here he is in performance:

Now think about this. Less than a generation ago, easy access to a documentary film about an underground musician would have been unthinkable. Ditto easy access to a TV performance. Note that the videos above are accessible because a member of the public - someone from the Street - has uploaded their own recording of these shows.

This starts to look even more extreme when looking for a representation of Marclay's ingenious video work Video Quartet. Here's an excert from it, in the form of a clandestine film of it made by a member of the public while it was installed at the Tate Modern in London.

On the Tate site, I'm afraid all you'll come across is some information about the piece; essentially: metadata. The Tate are restricted by legal considerations not taken that seriously, or just not part of the community's norms of the person shooting the video.

Which brings us to "The Seashell Problem".

Let us explain, again through example. Some weeks ago, BBC Radio 1's electronica DJ Mary Anne Hobbes made a show about the exciting electronic dance music currently emanating from the West Coast of the US. If you go to MAH's showpage on the Radio 1 site, you can no longer listen to the show; the 7 day post-broadcast "window" for on-demand listening via the BBC iPlayer has well and truly lapsed, the 'rights' the BBC have purchased have expired. Note that at the site you can look at a tracklisting for the show. As before, a home-made video doc MAH made while out in the US is available on YouTube and linked to from the Radio 1 show. Here it is:

So there's no sign of the original show, but a whole lot of 'collateral' content. That's what we call the Seashell: when only the record of something's existence remains - the living thing itself long disappeared.

Here's another example from Radio 1. Again, a few weeks ago, legendary UK electro-funk DJ Greg Wilson played a Radio 1 Essential Mix. And once again, at the showpage, you can find a full tracklisting, and, perhaps even more tanatalisingly, hundreds of comments from listeners saying what a fantastic show it was. Again: only the Seashell remains.

Funnily enough though, if you go to Wilson's Facebook page you'll notice a link to a site hosting a download of the entire set. Just to ram the point home: the Street is, again, way ahead of the Court.

One last example, non-BBC this time. The Saturday night Live Christopher Walken/Don't Fear the Reaper sketch became a cult phenomenon a few years ago when recording of it started appearing on YouTube. 'Gotta Have More Cowbell' became something of a po-mo catchphrase.

Now, almost inevitably, it's pretty difficult to find the original. (Although there seems to be a tiny and lo-res version of it here.) My guess is that lawyers have been all over this like an especially nasty rash. But, what you will be able to find, if you Google, say, 'more cowbell', is dozens of User Generated Content clips skitting the original skit.

For instance, hand-held footage of a high school concert skit:

Or this dance music piece made up of samples from the sketch:

Oh, and here's a couple of guys just jerking around in their basement… but mashed up with the original skit:

So what other roles, normally thought of as jobs for cultural institutions, are being done effectively by the Street.

Well, how about education?

In previous workshops for music educationalists, we've explored how the web enables a new form of peer mentoring. One of our favourite instances of this is how young kids are now learning to play extremely complex guitar parts from songs by Swedish math-metallers Meshuggah. In each of the examples below, look at the comments and see how, to all intents and purposes, there's instant peer feedback and review. Sure, much of the language is robust, and some of the comments merely inflammatory, but at their best these kids are helping each other to learn with incredible speed. Here are two high school kids playing the rhythm parts to (Meshuggah guitarist) Frederik Thordendal's mesmerisingly complex metal-jazz piece Sol Niger Within:

And here's young Samuel from Brazil trying his hand at the same piece.

And here's Achokarlos, from Spain, performing Meshuggah's Combustion in his bedroom - just a week after this track had been released. Check the eyebrow action. Remember in each case these young guitarists are ripping off their heroes' music - breaking the law - so that they can learn the music they love - fast.

So how do all these issues about IP and creativity affect Art itself? This presentation has been largely about the implications of IPR for arts organisations, but let's leave off with a little bit about art itself, and go out with a couple of anecdotes.

•    Negativland vs U2 – where art is made about the art/IP relationship
•    Jimme Rodgers – where one man’s business dealings very possibly altered the course of 20th Century popular music

From Wikipedia:

Negativland's next project was the infamous U2 EP, with samples from American Top 40 host Casey Kasem. In 1991, Negativland released a single with the title ‘U2’ displayed in very large type on the front of the packaging, and ‘Negativland’ in a smaller typeface. An image of the Lockheed U-2 spy plane was also on the single cover.The songs within were parodies of the group U2's well-known 1987 song, ‘I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For’, including kazoos and extensive sampling of the original song.

The song ‘The Letter U And The Numeral 2’ features a musical backing to an extended profane rant from well-known disc jockey Casey Kasem, lapsing out of his more polished and professional tone during a frustrating rehearsal which had gone out to many stations as raw feed and was taped by several engineers, who had been passing it around for a number of years. One of Kasem's milder comments was ‘These guys are from England and who gives a shit?’ (U2's members are in fact from the Republic of Ireland).U2's label Island Records quickly sued Negativland, claiming that placing the word ‘U2’ on the cover violated trademark law, as did the song itself. Island Records also contended that the single was an attempt to deliberately confuse U2 fans, awaiting the impending release of Achtung Baby, into purchasing what they believed was a new U2 album called Negativland.

In June, 1992, R. U. Sirius, publisher of the magazine Mondo 2000, came up with an interesting idea. Publicists from U2 had contacted him regarding the possibility of interviewing Dave ‘The Edge’ Evans, hoping to promote U2's impending multi-million dollar Zoo TV Tour, which featured found sounds and live sampling from mass media outlets (things for which Negativland had been known for some time). Sirius, unbeknownst to Edge, decided to have his friends Joyce and Hosler of Negativland conduct the interview. Joyce and Hosler, fresh from Island's lawsuit, peppered the Edge with questions regarding his ideas about the use of sampling in their new tour, and the legality of using copyrighted material without permission. Midway through the interview, Joyce and Hosler revealed their identities as members of Negativland. An embarrassed Edge reported that U2 were bothered by the sledgehammer legal approach Island Records took in their lawsuit, and furthermore that much of the legal wrangling took place without U2's knowledge: ‘by the time we [U2] realized what was going on it was kinda too late, and we actually did approach the record company on your [Negativland's] behalf and said, 'Look, c'mon, this is just, this is very heavy...''

That says it all, really. Here's an edit of the song.

And here's a version by avant-doo-wop (?!) group the 180 Gs, taking Casem's words, turning 'em into doo wop lines and spinning them over a Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For backing.

Unpick the IP issues in that!

And finally, an anecdote about the (arguable) father of modern country music, Jimme Rodgers, from the excellent Faking It - The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music by Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor.

Prior to Rodgers, most popular song had not been personal or especially confessional - with some noble exceptions. But the influence of Rodgers' autobiographical songwriting on Woody Guthrie and, through Guthrie, Bob Dylan and even John Lennon, helped make personal authenticity in songwriting de rigeur in the second half of the 20th Century.

Rodgers was not especially fixated on performing autobiographical songs; they were simply part of his repertoire. But his A&R man, Ralph Peer, had different motivations. His deal with the record company, Victor, was a publishing only one. 'Peer was completely uninterested in songs whose provenance was known and established, for he himself could make no money on these.'

It might be a bit of a leap to say that the entire trajectory of 20th Century popular song was affected quite so massively by, essentially, an Intellectual Property assertion, but then again, maybe not...
Simon

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