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.

The post Darkness in Tenement 45 – A What-If Post Apocalyptic Terror Film Review appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

For some The Magnetic Fields are icons, for most, they remain unknown. Strange Powers, the documentary about The Magnetic Fields directed by Kerthy Fix and Gail O’Hara provides an unprecedented, intimate look at the band’s difficult-to-interview, enigmatic and brilliant leader Stephin Merritt.

“Stephen does not suffer fools,” says Daniel Handler a friend of Merritt’s and author of the Lemony Snicket series of books.

Indeed until the arrival of Strange Powers, virtually any interview conducted with Merritt since the band’s beginnings over two decades ago, has afforded little more than wry quips and deflections. Seen in the context of Merritt’s surprisingly candid participation with these filmmakers however, the reputation for being difficult or impenetrable dissolves quickly and in fact reveals itself to be nothing more than an extension of his pop-cultural wariness, razor sharp wit and erudition.

Back in the early ’90’s, whilst night club staff blasted Nirvana’s Nevermind whilst sweeping cigarette butts and beer bottle caps off the floor from the night before, The Magnetic Fields would be loading their instruments, consisting primarily of a cello, an acoustic guitar, several ukuleles and perhaps a piano through the stage door.

Their show would consist of songs about love, sex, heartbreak, romance, college and plays on words delivered in an almost childlike, most certainly non-rock format, fronted by Merritt’s irreverent, baritone voice, occasionally singing in duet with pianist and band-manager Claudia Gonson. Sam Davol would meticulously execute Merritt’s cello arrangements and John Woo would add air and rhythm to Gonson’s piano lines on acoustic guitar. Between songs Gonson and Merritt would carry on the banter they forgot to leave at the car in which they traveled from city to city, betraying the unique nature of their maternal, fraternal, incestuous, Platonic relationship much to the delight of the crowds.

“[There were definitely shows] where the band felt bigger than the room,” recalls cellist Davol: “It felt like something momentous was happening – or maybe the audience was just drunk…”

With archival footage dating all the way back to their teen years, growing up in the punk scene in the 80’s, to interviews with Merritt’s former employers as a copy editor and later writer for SPIN and TimeOut, through Merritt’s recent migration from New York to Los Angeles and even interviews with his mother at his new Cali home as he sits writhing in embarrassment, Strange Powers legitimately affords an intimate walk through and alongside the history of its enigmatic subject – a brilliant lyricist, arrangist, composer and performer with all the class of Serge Gainsbourg, all the lyrical capabilities of Leonard Cohen, and all the humor of Lord Buckley.

Fortunately the film is not only engaging because of its subject, but also because it is well paced, sequenced and edited, with visual elements delicately smattered throughout, allowing the personas and songs within to be revealed without ever over-saturating with adulation.

If you are not yet hip to the Magnetic Field’s catalog, get there now. Once you do, see this film and let your love grow.

Despite the fact that band fills large venues and is a darling of the New York middle aged hipster crowd, mainstream attention continues to elude them. In fact for this Canadian premiere of the film, the theater was only a quarter filled. Outside, lines stretched out half a block in anticipation of Biutiful. So it is difficult to say what sort of distribution this may find, and when it does, whether you will know well enough to lend it your eyes and ears.

If you are in Vancouver, one screening remains:

Sun, Oct 10th 11:00am
Vancity Theatre
Tickets available through the official VIFF Website or at the door

69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields remains one of my favorite “albums” of all time (I use bunny ears only because it spans three discs. We discover, in the film that Merritt’s original intention was to create 100 love songs, each using a different set of instruments, drum sources whether acoustic or synthesized) and to this day, whenever I put this collection of songs on, I invariably want to run out onto a rooftop and proclaim how utterly overwhelmingly brilliant it all is. But instead, I typically end up keeping it to myself, like a small inexpressible wonder. After seeing footage from the recording of their eighth release, “Distortion,” I am not only ashamed of not yet having heard it, but more excited than ever to be exposed to their subsequent creative output.

Magnetic Fields Select Discography:
Distant Plastic Trees (1991)
The Wayward Bus (1992)
The House of Tomorrow (EP) (1992)
Holiday (1994)
The Charm of the Highway Strip (1994)
Get Lost (1995)
69 Love Songs (1999)
i (2004)
Distortion (2008)
Realism (2010)

The post VIFF 2010 Film Review – Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

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.

The post The Era of the Tastemaker and Arrival of the Realtime Web – Is the Film Industry Ready? appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

“Lordy knows new models must begin to emerge – the existing climate for musicians, as vastly interesting as it may be, as de-centralized as it may be, is actually rather disheartening when it comes to the heavy task of producing an audiophile grade recording. At least the old bottleneck created a filter, the new era of the tastemaker will take some time to develop gravity and in the interim “indie musician” is a hard to thing to still consider a career path. But we persist, don’t we, because the irrepressible urge is there, and so is opportunity and a vast landscape for innovation.”

Dick M. replied:

“Keram – some real contrasts there… I don’t feel like my music has ever been a “career path”… ergo, my music is lumped in the “amateur” category (which is all right with me, because as you indicated, we persist because we MUST). To me, “indie” means it’s NOT a career, because if it IS, it necessitates compromise and time spent in pursuit of $$$… NOT saying there’s anything WRONG with that, just that if it’s for $$$, I don’t believe it’s “independent”.”

To which I countered:

DJ AM found dead in NYC apartment
FB response: thing is, death is so fucking final. Believe what you need concerning the beyond; if it brings you solace, peace of mind, then God bless. But the ride is short. Music makes it so much easier. I need more of it in my life and less of the frenetic gossipy nature of the new paradigm. Apologies if this is heavy, but have lost some people, too young, this week. Have lost so many before. Too young. Followed by what. More status updates. Live goddamit. Live.

My favorite Sufi proverb says “Die before ye die, that you shall live” – recognize your mortality and revel in it.

Moreover, music is a mystical, unquantifiable gift. I am tired of posturing behind the coolness of what. It is miraculous. Lend it your energy, because it comes from something beyond what we understand.  And it needs your help.”

p2pnet news » Blog Archive » Dick Cheney new RIAA president
@ConstantChange

Tweet: No. I don’t believe it. I don’t, as a musician or music lover want to be sent to a gulag. I categorically reject the very possibility of this eventuality.

It’s hard to believe, but it is written in an online magazine format so it MUST be true.

For good measure, a moment of solace in the form of a song, video added, from my friend at Monty Python Eric Idle:

Fuck You FCC

This blog will return to reason and matters of the soul and the beauty of culture after these messages.

The post DJ AM Dies, Cheney Appointed New Prez of RIAA – A Brief Twitterstream appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.