Having grown up in the 1990’s I am all too familiar with the do-it-yourself, indie ethic: Without the internet that could support rich media, we were always at the mercy of the established Gatekeepers and had to devise our methods of self-promotion – whether this meant publishing zines with photocopies at the local Kinko’s or touring dive bars in our 3rd-hand van.

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But in 2020’s DIY and independent artists increasingly proliferated, then sort of plateaued. The rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) provided a new way for artists to sell and monetize their work, including the alleged ability to track provenance and track revenue in primary and secondary sales (which to an extent, and for a time it did, until wallets, coins, and marketplaces started failing.) The sustainability and long-term viability of the NFT market crashed and burned as copycat hordes oversaturated the market to the point of meaninglessness.

The explosion of creativity was witnessed when Hic et Nunc, the ecoNFT and Women of Crypto Art scenes converged, exposing a network of artists that encircled the globe ready to self-pilot into their autonomous future. It was a powerful and ultimately effective movement as major marketplaces scrambled to shift to a Proof of Stake framework. Alas, it eventually imploded when HEN’s single dev became disgusted with the dynamics of the incumbent aggregators looking for quick dividends and left the communities scrambling. The pitfalls of everything resting on a single developer. This was seen again when Twitter emigrated en masse to Mastodon, and 3rd party apps developed by single devs weren’t able to keep up. So it isn’t just about being free as in speech, but also distributing the load.

Separately the quiet expansion of ubiquitous online self-publishing platforms and tools, many of which grew out of the gig economy, and then were reinforced through the pandemic, have allowed virtually anyone with a smartphone, computer, or tablet to create and share their work with a global audience and maintain constant contact with their supporters. VR (and Zoom) had a hail mary renaissance as folks had to work remotely so were introduced to embodied virtual workspaces and conferences, and yet soon enough The Metaverse became a quantifiable, ownable, productization of an idea whose true developers wanted primarily to elude ensnarement. It was the indies moving the needle. In WebXR and game development.

But the tools are there for a new generation of artists, musicians, writers, game developers, and makers to bypass traditional gatekeepers and reach a wider audience than ever before. Platforms like bandcamp, etsy, IndieGoGo, itch.io, and Patreon are but some of the powerful tools and frameworks in the hands of the indies. Nonetheless, they are still prone to central control schemes. (bandcamp was recently acquired by EPIC games).

Opportunities and Challenges

In an era where we are mercilessly summoned by dopamine pumps, many people are seeking out authentic and unique voices that reflect their own experiences and values. DIY and independent culture offers an alternative to the homogenized and commercialized content that is often prevalent in mainstream media. That is when DIY isn’t attempting to resemble the mainstream, to please the almighty Algorithm.

But the rise of DIY and independent culture has been accompanied by some challenges and concerns: least of which is that when everyone is talking, no one is listening. Add to this that the Content Creator economy is an appropriation of the movement, dulling the edge of the art, the way Walmart took out a line of Grunge clothing, effectively inoculating the powerful social counterculture by packaging it up and selling it back to them.

But even as a shift towards “the democratization” of the tools becomes more widespread, the public isn’t really primed for this redistribution of responsibility; many are still of the mindset that stuff should just work, free, because. However, with a little awareness and communication, we could turn the tide towards a more holistic, truly decentralized new paradigm where the participants help to maintain, support, and expand the framework for self-expression and enterprise.

The rise of AI-generated art, text, video, materials and 3D meshes and even code is also challenging indie artists and developers, as the ability of AI algorithms to create increasingly sophisticated and realistic content makes it difficult to stand out. One of the main challenges for AI-generated art is the lack of accountability and tools for tracking provenance and paying out royalties, though others argue that media is in a common trust and when resynthesized represents the creative manipulation of the prompt engineer in the way Warhol demonstrated. But that discussion is beyond the scope of this article.

Another issue is the impending collapse of centralized large-scale social media platforms, which have become sometimes essential lifelines for independent creators, and also wholesale appropriators of that content in exchange for free, advertiser-driven access.

Reasons for the potential collapse of these platforms are mismanagement – their handling of user data, privacy concerns, and lack of transparency, failure to connect with the zeitgeist – failure to adapt and keep pace with changing user preferences and expectations, and the right to ownership and control of their content.

Furthermore, the switch to subscription-based business models for most creative commercial software (I’m looking at you Adobe and Digidesign – and Pantone), and the tax for seemingly endless streaming platforms can make it difficult for independent creators to afford the tools they need to thrive and create freely.

From Kinko’s to the Fediverse

The fediverse is a network of interconnected servers that support a range of decentralized online services, that include social networking, blogging, and file sharing. Mastodon is an open-source social networking platform that is part of the fediverse. Unlike algorithm-driven platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Mastodon allows users to choose and follow other users to control the content that appears in their feeds.

Users can also add other users to their “boosts” list, which allows their posts to appear in their timelines. This allows users to curate the content they see and connect with others who share their interests.

Additionally, Mastodon is decentralized and community-run, which means that it is not controlled by a single company or entity. This allows for greater control and autonomy for users and provides an alternative to the centralized and commercialized nature of many mainstream platforms.

Some of the fediverse’s other online services include:

Mastodon: a decentralized and open-source social networking platform that is part of the fediverse
Diaspora: a decentralized social networking platform that allows users to own and control their data:
Pixelfed: an open-source platform for sharing and discovering photography
Peertube: a decentralized video platform that allows users to host their content.

While far from perfect, both technologically and culturally, the rise of these open-sourced public-operated alternatives, lights a path towards a different kind of future, one that is not weaponized to exploit your dopamine daze.

Open-source software solutions, like GIMP for graphics and illustration, Ardour for audio, and Blender for 3D modeling, provide accessible and affordable, extensible, customizable options for DIY and indie artists and meanwhile, their participation in these solutions help to make them a more diverse, robust, public trust.

So with all that said, let’s explore some of today’s open-source resources for DIY and independent creators:

Accessibility

NVDA – An open source screenreader

Graphics, Illustration, and Design:

GIMP: Image editing tool for manipulating color, cropping and resizing, and optimizing file size for the web
Inkscape: Vector graphics editor for creating SVG and PDF files
Krita: Drawing and painting tool for use with a tablet
Bulma: CSS framework for designing interfaces
LazPaint: Lightweight raster and vector graphics editor

Video Editors:

Shotcut: Non-linear video editor with support for hundreds of audio and video formats and codecs thanks to FFmpeg, 360° Video Filters, and 4k/ProRes.
Olive: Upcoming video editor that features flexible node-based compositing

Tooll3: An incredible node-based motion graphics editor

Panorama, 360 and Image Stitching

Hugin –panorama photo stitching and HDR merging program that enables the creation of wide-angle to 360-degree panoramic photographs.

Audio Tools:

Ardour: Music creation software with support for AudioUnit, LV2, LinuxVST and LADSPA formats
Audacity: Audio software for editing, mixing, and recording audio

3D Modeling and Design:

Blender3D: a comprehensive 3D modeling and animation, video production, 2D animation, archviz software suite
FreeCAD: parametric 3D modeling software for 3D print designers
Meshlab: a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering, texturing and converting meshes
Poly Haven: Public asset library for 3D assets.

Web Development:

WordPress: Content management system and website builder
Bootstrap: Front-end component library for building responsive websites and applications
React: JavaScript library for building user interfaces
Threejs: a JavaScript library that enables developers to create and display animated 3D graphics using WebGL in a web browser.

Software Development:

Eclipse: Integrated development environment (IDE) for Java and other languages
Visual Studio Code: Source code editor and IDE
Git: Version control system for tracking and managing changes to code.

Makers and 3D Printing:

OpenSCAD: Program for creating solid 3D CAD objects
FreeCAD: General-purpose 3D CAD modeling software
Slic3r: 3D printing slicing software
Repetier-Host: 3D printing host software for managing and controlling 3D printers.

Writing and Publishing:

LibreOffice Writer: Word processor with advanced layout and formatting options
Scribus: Desktop publishing software for creating books, brochures, and other printed materials
Calibre: E-book management and conversion tool
Pressbooks: Web-based platform for creating, publishing, and sharing books.
Sumatra PDF: Thank god. A free, working PDF reader. Better than most paid options
Free PDF: Thank god. A free, working PDF editor that also adds signatures. Better than most paid options

Game Development:

Godot: Game engine and development platform
LÖVE: 2D game engine and development framework
OpenRA: Open-source implementation of the classic Command & Conquer real-time strategy games.
ScummVM: Allows you to run classic adventure games on modern hardware and operating systems.

Other Tools

AutoHotkey: The ultimate automation scripting language for Windows.

The growth of online DIY and independent culture has also been accompanied by some challenges, like the potential collapse of widely used social media platforms and the rise of AI-generated content. To support independent creators, we need to foster the tools and platforms needed to succeed beyond the walled gardens, and exploitative business models that fail to nourish them.

The post How Open Source Tools are Challenging the Status Quo (with a List of Resources) appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

When I write my reviews I tend to ‘live-blog’ them, giving my honest impression as I go. I review a lot of indie games, usually coming in cold – with very little context – and it is usually not hard to tell what level of polish we will face by the time the intro screen is done. Writer-director Nicole Groton’s debut feature-length film Darkness In Tenement 45 is no exception – a series of yellow archival footage over an of score prepares us for a home movie, a passion project. The film, which was primarily funded through a Kickstarter campaign features over 20 associate producers in the end credits and ten pages of 2 columns of backers – roughly 460 backers! That is a lot of faith in this project.

But as we get to picture – we see a highly stylized world that feels like some out of early Jeunet – Delicatessen, or City of Lost Children: green patina walls, lit candles, brass candelabras, jade and ochre color palette.

A broad spectrum of ethnic and age-diverse characters are introduced early on (which always is refreshing) – using a performing style that feels almost whimsical; they all speak in a sort of mid-Atlantic pentameter: are they a commune? Does living in a bunker cause you speak like a Mennonite? Was this a creative decision? It is like watching a school play that still somehow keeps you from leaving for the restroom.

We begin with the group gathering around a table with all the characters discussing their inventory list – standard post-apocalyptic fetishism. Here the score turns into subdued woodwinds and strings-driven melodrama, distant horns that might be the horns of Gabriel from Thomas Newman’s score for Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture. The score eventually turns to Jackie Gleason-style mid-century big orchestra mood-music – a terrific stylistic twist. Composer Logan Rees, who works from LA but developed his musical career in New Orleans, brings a wonderfully unexpected, swooning and thematic musical context throughout the film.

Turn On Some Lights

The cinematography and lighting are quite good. Though it appears a lot was done with color timing and vignetting in post – the soft light wraps beautifully around the actors’ faces, handling the breadth of skin tones marvellously. Frequently the frame looks like a Norman Rockwell painting hanging on the wall of a Fallout game.

So cumulatively there are some nice creative decisions. On the other hand, the film is painfully slow. It is essentially a soporific Eugene O’Neill play that happens on a bisected two-storey set, that we are watching from the auditorium. I want to make sure to set expectations for anyone coming at this thinking they are signing up for a radioactive apartment horror.

There’s Something Happening Here…

There are some creepy dream sequences and, without giving too much away, a character arc that reminds me of John Wyndham’s novels or the first season of Umbrella Academy – that is to say a little magic realism. The anachronistic visuals – of a 19th-century New England (apparently New York) Architecture blended with Harry S. Truman era trappings (gas masks, etc) lend some mystery and intrigue, but ultimately only allude to a world that may never extend beyond the imagination.

Waiting to Exhale

After I am done watching the film, I pore over the press materials – apparently, someone at Dread Central breathlessly proclaimed this to be a ‘candidate movie of the year’ and an ‘absolute triumph.’ I would point that reviewer to some of the aforementioned materials I have cited in my impressions here, to anchor their astonishment.

That said, the Darkness in Tenement 45 take some chances, for all its references, and pulls off some nice beats. Could be a sign of good things to come from the director. The door has definitely been cracked open.

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Standing on the runway in California, they have not even two pennies to hail a cab, whereupon they encounter a Yuppie with a car who offers them a lift to Nicole’s aunt’s house. This character, played by SNL’s Will Forte eventually has some sort of psychotic episode and the movie never fully returns from this tone. Episode after episode of strange behavior from all characters, deus ex machinas, and non-sequiturs lead to a rocky narrative strand but ultimately something that is refreshingly original.

The two leads – Weixler and Prediger that is – hold on strong and deliver nuanced and at times truly multi-layered performances, both dramatically and intellectually – something more likely due to the fact that they are so cognizant of the material they have written and directed. I even had a few glimpses of something altogether ancient, the rough-shod and earnest acting found in the films 70’s filmmakers like John Cassavettes or Sydney Lumet catching me off-guard.

Prediger, who spends much of the film mourning the death of a “friend” plays the beautifully restrained, but textured straight man to Weixler’s more over the top tortured artist. Weixler, who may be most famous for her role in the nearly avant-garde dark comedy “Teeth,” is destined to become a far bigger Hollywood star than she is presently, and an indie platform like this is what is going to finally catapult her. This may or may not be the one that does it, but it’s only a matter of time.

In the end, Apartment Troubles is an engaging, twisting, and even alluring festival film wrapped in marketing better suited for a Gary Marshall holiday picture. I recommend it to the indie crowd but would caution suburban parents looking for a fun night out that this may not be what they expect. I myself, was happily surprised to discover a film for an under-addressed generation, that is to say, the one presently walking the streets.

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From Zeitgeist films, two things struck me about this epic film – the incredibly personal footage that the filmmaker captured amidst the pandemonium and sheer size of this movement, and the insight it affords into one of the most powerful but least understood countries in the world. In spite of its scope, it focuses on the individuals and tells a powerfully intimate human story.

Last Train Home – official US trailer:

Sweetgrass (2009)
“As much a work of cultural anthropology as it is a documentary, this unique film traces the path of a family of Montana sheepherders as they drive their flock down from the treacherous and beautiful Absaroka Beartooth mountain range. With no guiding narration, filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor let the natural images speak for themselves, capturing the danger, pathos and humor in this haunting elegy to a bygone way of life.”

If there is a thing that links the five films I have selected together, it is the ability of the filmmakers to render from seemingly abstract subjects, legitimately engaging stories focused on the people inside of their contexts. On the surface, Sweetgrass may appear a remote subject to city dwellers, and yet it works as an analogy that in spite of the incredible feats of which we are capable, the greatest obstacle is often within our own minds. An awe-inspiring document of a reality leaving the modern world perhaps forever.

The trailer for Sweetgrass:

The Cool School (2007)
“In the late 1950s, when Pollock and de Kooning were being hailed as revolutionary artists in New York, Los Angeles was still dealing with a blacklist that gutted creativity in all media. This is the story of the two men who changed all that. Recording a pledge on a hot dog wrapper to open a cutting-edge gallery, Walter Hopps and Ed Kienholz took the West Coast art world by storm, embracing artists from Marcel Duchamp to Andy Warhol.”

Los Angeles is a city like no other. It is a lens and a megaphone, a magnet to the luminaries of so many small villages scattered around the world that transforms and ignites their minds. And yet it is often looked upon as a vapid cultural cesspool. In The Cool School we explore the transformation of a dustbowl into a hotbed of cultural significance that would be exported and impact perceptions of popular culture irrevocably.

The Cool School trailer:

Superheroes (2011)
“Filmmaker Michael Barnett takes on the ultimate odd job in this eye-opening documentary about real-life “superheroes,” ordinary people who don capes, masks and alter egos in their spare time to right wrongs and make criminals pay for their actions. Among other characters, you’ll meet a tight-knit Brooklyn foursome that tackles tough cases as a squad dubbed the New York Initiative and a San Diego security officer who calls himself Mr. Xtreme.”

We collectively pay a lot of money into the blockbusters centered around the fantastical comic book heroes that raised us. Some take these examples of benevolence, courage, public service and yes, pageantry to heart, and in a quest to emulate them, find ways to substantiate their obsession by attempting to make them real. Beyond the rubber-necking curiosity that these real-life characters may elicit, comes a poignant message about being proactive and taking the risk to make a change in the world as opposed to a passive onlooker, judging their often dangerous lifestyle from the sidelines. A parable about taking responsibility and not simply being an innocuous voice of dissent.

Here is the trailer:

Samsara
“A nonverbal film described by the makers as a “guided meditation”. The film uses very high quality images, scenes of nature and mankind to stimulate the viewer. The film contains no plot or actors, although there are several performers in the film. Samsara is Ron Fricke’s 2011 follow-up to Baraka.”

In the picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words spirit of Baraka or Koyaanisqatsi, “Samsara” affords us yet another lovingly executed, desperate look at our beautiful planet. At present, Samara, which had its world premier at the Toronto International Film Festival is awaiting distribution. You can help coordinate a screening at the official site.

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I recently wrote a paper for a marketing and distribution class at UCLA concerning the outlook shared by Gill and a year later James Stearn on the health of independent cinema and the movie industry as a whole.  Gill offered a sobering reality check having to do with the glut of films that flooded the increasingly frugal marketplace whereas Stearn saw opportunity for improving the quality of the films as the best would rise to the top.  What follows are my reaction to their positions.

While I appreciate Gill’s sober stance on the realities of the industry, one that became even more dire in the subsequent year when EndGame’s James Stearn took his place at the lectern, particularly due to the fact of the perfect storm that was the collapse of the global economy and the indie equivalent of the dot com bubble bursting, I feel Gill’s take on the music industry and why it collapsed is not only smug but fundamentally flawed and somewhat dangerous. It would behoove the movie industry to bear in mind that they had a ten-year grace period due to the fact that bandwidth for showing high quality video was ten times larger than that of music. The “Movie Industry” didn’t get things right where the “Music Industry” got it wrong – they just had more time to sit back and get a sense of what the massively disruptive technology that was the Internet was really going to mean to the bottom line.

Nonetheless, the music industry blew it in that they forgot that they were part of the Entertainment Industry and not singularly the Music Industry. The hubris and competition amongst these industries is often their Achilles heel. Rather than laud Sean Fanning, creator of Napster, as the solution to distribution in the new model, Fanning was sued right and left and ostracized like Alan Turing.

I found it astounding that Mark Gill points out the 5,000 entries to Sundance in 2007 versus the 500 it had fifteen years prior. Then only a year later, James Stearn submits that the number of entries in the subsequent year was closer to 9500. If this is correct, that means the number of entries to Sundance doubled in one year!

Not only are the good people of the world making more movies at home (and this during the economic meltdown) but they are becoming increasingly cognizant of marketing, distribution and monetization opportunities. Of course, this doesn’t mean there is more audience of more money, in fact it creates an even deeper glut of film, but it does mean that not only will quality matter in order to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff, but so will how and where and why things are marketed and distributed as the competition in these areas becomes stiffer and more accessible.

James Stern is correct in highlighting the virtue of the short-form film and responding to the Millennial Boomers with the format. Attention Deficit Disorder is not a function of age but of the times. We are all real-time curators and tastemakers and should be targeted at the micro-niche level. A person I spoke with who works at Live Nation constantly expressed his chagrin at the fact that marketing to a general demographic (for example 18-24) is utterly myopic. Among those 18-24 year-olds are, to use Malcolm Gladwell’s terminology, Tastemakers, Mavericks and Connectors. They need to be isolated and the systems to delineate them must be supported, not battled in court. In fact, doing so openly, like Netflix does, is a far more rewarding effort, than doing it covertly through cookies and trackers and 3rd party data collection apps.

That film, as Gill puts it, allows us to target highly specific demographics in one part. Delivering high quality, thoughtful, engaging and memorable content is second, but making it bite sized and a la carte is paramount. We are waiting for the Kubrick of YouTube to arrive. Where is the Spielberg of Vimeo?

The app store effect is not a function of Apple but rather an effect of the widget economy. We are all master chefs in Kitchen Stadium [a reference to popular Japanese cook show Iron Chef] selecting the finest ingredients to concoct our tasty masterpieces on the fly.

From Netflix and E-Bay account piping into a sandbox aggregator like Squidoo, alongside Facebook’s status updates and Twitterstreams, we are irrevocably moving into the era of the real-time web; it is not the tomato we care about but whom the person will be that uses it most creatively. It is no less a tomato as a result, but it is merely a color with which the master will paint and, we will mash-up, mod and repurpose the content to ultimately render the portrait of our essence, personality, our souls. A portrait, whose real meaning will emerge when we cross our tired eyes slightly and gaze upon it like a magic eye.

NOTE: I originally wrote this draft in October.  At that time, I read a Tweet from Mashable that Google Wave is going live to 100,000 pre-registered users. The realtime web is not a theory or conjecture, it has literally arrived and nothing will ever be the same.

UPDATE 12-07-2009 – It’s a little strange that I am publishing this article after the one I posted earlier this morning about Google’s announcement of Realtime search.  GoogleWave now seems like an ancillary to the central eye-raising explosion of technologies that Google has innovated in bring all content to our eyeballs at near light speed.

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