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.

I can’t believe the film was made and that it came from Russia but reached American distribution alongside Dark Knight Rises and the latest Wayans brothers’ satire, and moreover that it was nary mentioned on a single 2012 year-end list. This is a film I dreamed of making for years – not necessarily the subject matter alone, but the tone, the style, the acting – it’s like John Cassavettes directing Ghostbusters. Leelee Sobieski is amazingly understated but charismatic and sexy in this movie and Ed Stoppard carries the film well, playing the line between insanity and prophecy beautifully.

Anyway, see it. It works and it is wonderful and it will be the first film to be added to my favorites of all time (that includes the aforementioned Blade Runner and Brazil as well as Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Stalker and Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers) since Olivier Assayas’ Demonlover in 2002.

Finally I want to mention that this is a Lionsgate release. LGF has it going ON right now. They are the New Line Cinema for which I originally moved to Hollywood. Fuck the Hobbit. Lionsgate is taking chances and making bold choices – The Hunger Games, The Cabin In the Woods and grindhouse fare like Rambo and The Expendables, and that I have worked on for them via Punisher: War Zone and Texas Chainsaw 3D – which remind of what it might have felt like to work on a Roger Corman film when the going was really good. they are releasing the funnest, most daring slate of any studio around and Branded is a perfect example of that.

The post “Branded” from Lionsgate Films – A Review appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

The second part in understanding the seemingly esoteric series is understanding who is paying the bills – in this case ABC / Disney. Like Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, it is fun to draw upon the canon of esoterica and mysticism to seemingly substantiate the boundless pathways to intrigue necessitated by a weekly one-hour high-budget drama based on anything outside the run-of-the-mill police procedural, teen coming-of-age drama or Yuppie comedy. That does not mean that it is any deeper than the respective minds of its viewers.

All of which is not to say that I disliked the show. Read my previous post about season 6 episode 16 to get a better idea of why I loved the series as much as I did, and then read the following as to why I don’t think it is much more than that:

On a Facebook thread dated March 24th, 2010 I wrote:

I told you in season one it was Purgatory.

The quick reply was:

The producers debunked the “purgatory” theory a few years ago. Sorry, it’s not that simple.

So I felt I needed to extrapolate my theory:

“ABC loves doing shows that are just Biblical parables – I wondered if they might manage to escape that pattern with Lost, but given how close this is seeming to the whole afterlife concept, I would be really amazed if they can escape its gravity and pull off something way more quantum. Nonetheless, I loved the episode last night – for sheer production value alone. And yeah Jacob and Smokey, Hugo the medium, Ricardus – wonderfully metaphysical and all those Mcguffins about the Devil! Can’t wait to see how this ends up having nothing to do with a biblical afterlife.

Granted the Egyptian references are ubiquitous as are all other manner of esoterica – good stuff to draw from in building a canon of mythological symbolism to take us down the rabbit hole, but in the end, whether or not it is literally a retelling of Job, it is about sitting in limbo (not the kind populated by unborn babies, but, well purgatory) and asking whether or not we can transcend our fate and find absolution.

Christiany co-opted everything before it anyway, so the Egyptian thing doesn’t throw that off course. (The Virgin Mary is mentioned more in the Quran than in the entire New Testament.) In fact the very horned image of the devil that we know is the product of the battle between Templars who may have bastardized the name of of Islam’s prophet into Baphomet (so as to disempower its influence, it was literally demonized).

The Devil is the figure who was short-changed and cast out of Heaven and whose function is to tempt you away from certainty. “Think you are ready? Need anything? Can I help you with something” the Devil asks. If you concede that you in fact require a favor, or help from the Devil then he will grant it but you will be in his debt and unprepared for the Kingdom of Heaven. Smokey has always been this way (and although Jacob may appear to do this, he never makes such offers and in fact is totally loathe to intervene lest he become devil-like). “If you let him (Flocke) talk to you, then it is already too late.”

See where I am going with this? Doesn’t matter what you call it – it is still a parable about purgatory in the biblical sense.”

I think it is only fair, however, to point out that the value of the subject matter in LOST became greater than the sum of its parts in no small way due to the input of the cast and their performances, the highly active fan base and the questions it posed to the creators and the people behind the scenes that put the show together; there was an incredible vitality to the end product that ultimately led to many questions and emotional quandaries for which the writers simply couldn’t be accountable. The show outgrew its concept and will stand the test of time, in my estimation, as one of the great television storytelling events.

At its best, LOST’s final episode summoned one of my favorite and most underrated films: Final Approach. It also took the avant-garde trapdoor from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and I guess The Sixth Sense. Interestingly, 2001 was a major inspiration for the ending of The Sopranos, a parallel in ambiguity that Lost’s producers were quick to parody on the special episode of Jimmy Kimmel that followed their final episode.

I refrain from addressing specific plot points and story lines out of respect to those who are just now discovering the series or haven’t completed the final season. But I would love to get into them with you. See my invitation below.

So long, LOST, and thank for all the fish, which is another way of saying, thanks for giving us a new opportunity to consider ourselves, what we are doing, and what it all means from something like outside the box, one more time.

I would love to discuss salient points with you further – feel free to post your comments, reactions, questions and challenges in the comments section of this post.

The post LOST Series Finale and What It All Means appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

NOTE: The following should be spoiler-free. It may not be recommended for devout followers who haven’t yet seen the episode, but I really have taken measures to avoid giving anything away.

I am going to be uncharacteristically emotive and offer little insight for the typical Culturepin post, but I really needed to capture and share the amazing feeling of buoyancy after watching tonight’s episode of Lost – “What They Died For.”

It is not only for the relief in having bold answers at last, or for the myriad connections and subtexts provided. I have debated, opined and otherwise pontificated at length on some of the social media platforms I frequent, only with friends, and never at any great length publicly, so I will not go into my take on what the mythology, story arcs or implications of ABC’s hugely successful epic series ultimately means. There are so many sites that have squeezed every last drop of possibility out of the material.

I just really wanted to take a moment, as the series comes to a close, to commend the people who made the show on what they have accomplished; to engage us in a fascinating, captivating, thrilling, mesmerizing story often quite literally around a campfire (albeit one we see on the television screen, an electronic campfire in itself) in a way that at least I haven’t felt since my grandfather used to put me to sleep with bedside tales culled from Greek mythology.

Tonight’s episode was beautifully acted (Terry O’Quinn was simply incredible, as were Mark Pellegrino, Michael Emerson, Henry Ian Cusick and even Evangeline Lilly – all completely adept at harlequin-type vacillations in motive and emotional structure) beautifully lit (Ben Linus’ hellfire orange glow in the secret room while talking with Flocke, or the ethereal tonality of the prisoners in the paddy wagon as Desmond makes his offer) and brilliantly scored by Michael Giacchino. The makeup was excellent, and the sound design as meticulous as ever.

Many shows take time, even seasons, to catch their stride, but Lost seemed to be quite well formed right out of the gate. Most of the characters already felt well rounded, and though admittedly the actors were getting to know the characters even as they were getting to know one another within the world of the play, it felt unusually present. But now, six years later, and on the eve of its death, the whole is reaching new heights.

Now don’t be fooled into thinking that I am uncritical or not skeptical about many points concerning the series let alone this last season. There have been stronger and weaker episodes, certainly. But every so often I would take a step back and simply marvel at the scope of what was being accomplished and presented within 47 minutes of television entertainment on a weekly basis. And then, there were times, like at the end of tonight’s show in particular, where I realized I hadn’t taken a breath in minutes. As the show ended I was completely in awe. I felt my body tingling, my heart thumping, and this strange sort of euphoria at the end of an incredible tale.

I am certain my buzz will dull considerably with time, and so again, I wanted simply to catalog this amazing feeling of excitement for posterity, because what I just witnessed was nothing short of a wonder, a gift.

Thanks guys.

Post your reaction to this episode or the ideas above in the comments section.

The post What Lost S6Ep16 “What They Died For” Did For Me appeared first on TheCulturepin.com.

Hawking is a British theoretical physicist whose 40-year scientific career has produced key scientific theorems regarding singularities in the framework of general relativity, the properties and natural laws of black holes, developing new models for the universe that has no boundaries in space time, and set ablaze the imagination of countless armchair enthusiasts interested in time travel, alien life, and colonization of other planets.

Another amazing fact about Hawking is that shortly after arriving at Cambridge, he began to develop systems of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, that ultimately rendered him completely paralyzed and able to communicate solely by virtue of a voice synthesizer (developed by a colleague at Cambridge) that speaks what he has written by word selection on a screen controlled by the movement of his eyes.

But this show is not about Hawking the man, it is about his ideas, and more importantly, about rendering his mind-boggling ideas and theorems into visual form so that they can be more readily appreciated and understood by the rest of us.

The result is nothing short of awe-inspiring, daring, mesmerizing. Computer models were created to simulate maps of the universe at the bleeding edge of our capacity in order to depict on screen our place amidst the interstellar layout of our Universe, and as the program zooms us in and out of it, we begin to see just how extraordinary the scope of it is; it is one thing to hear the words “two hundred billion” when speaking about time, or miles or the count of stars, but another thing altogether when seeing it depicted in a matter of seconds.


Somehow the show also succeeds in reducing to third grade level comprehension the manner in which a slight disparity in perfection of the grand order led to the creation of matter and life and of all things in the universe as we know it, by way of that irrefutable force: gravity. (Is the “divine creator” then merely instability+gravity?)

Although I have been deeply interested in the cosmos, quantum mechanics and our place in the grand scheme of things all my life, reading Hawking’s work, even the slim best-seller “A Brief History of Time,” that sold over nine million copies, proves an exercise in determination and humility. What begins as an enthusiastic exploration on the part of the reader quickly turns into a soporific bedside coaster: the ideas, the mathematical formulas simply require a deeper understanding of the underlying mathematical quandaries. Now with the ubiquity of the internet and its propensity to transform even the most staunchly inquisitive end user into a curator of sound bytes, Hawkings book must be even harder to process effectively, and for this reason the Discovery series is on my recommended viewing list.

At the NAB screening, a member of the audience stood up during the Q&A and pointed out that Carl Sagan’s series “Cosmos” (1980) was the most widely viewed television show in the medium’s history. He wondered aloud whether the creators of Into the Universe understood the gravity of this fact and how it reflected the appetite among viewers for answers and if they believed that this show could replicate those numbers.

It is an interesting question. Do we still care? Are we still capable of sustaining inquiry long and far enough to engage topics of this scope and complexity, or will the show simply become another powder keg for debate between creationists and the scientific community? The show certainly doesn’t pander to all sides; in fact, Hawking goes right ahead and asks if the way things are turning out provide evidence of a grand designer, and then immediately answers that it doesn’t.

In the very first two hour episode everything from the nature of the Big Bang, to black holes, to the lifespan of our sun, to colonization of Mars and interstellar technology is covered, never in a sensational way but rather from a simple but deliberate set of unapologetic arguments for how these things must operate to how they could be solved. That it is all beautifully realized by way of well-executed computer generated graphics makes it all the more engaging and really fun to watch.

I happened to watch it in pitiful standard definition on my HDTV (for some reason, though the show states it is also available in HD, the high definition version of Discovery Channel on my Time Warner package was running paid ads) right after watching the third last episode of Lost. It was interesting to notice how, though Lost raises question upon question as the nature of its mysteries, it often turns to the distraction of the emotional interactions between the characters than to take the more courageous path of venturing theoretical possibilities, even metaphysical ones.

So to see Into the Universe plunge in headfirst with some of the really big questions, it occurred to me that Hawking, who has been subjected to a body without functionality, essentially a brain in a wheelchair, maintaining sustained inquiry into matters that his personal experience has never encountered, and coming up with very real possibilities for solutions that will affect our species irrevocably is quite a salve to the frustrations raised by ABC’s hit show.

Whether or not you have an interest in the stars, in space exploration, in the cosmos or how we came to be here and where we may be going, Into the Universe is extraordinary programming, a great antidote to the Facebook blues, perhaps even a restoration of childlike fascination, and for these reasons I suggest you give it a look.

For more information Into the Universe visit the Discovery Channel’s TV listings.

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