Too many images

Glenn Otis Brown, February 28th, 2005

Wunderkind novelist Jonathan Safran Foer and badboy British artist Damien Hirst make unrelated appearances in this week’s New York Times magazine. Unrelated, but for this nice coincidence in how the Net has affected each artist’s craft.

From the Jonathan Safran Foer profile:

Full-page photographs, all in arty black-and-white, are woven into the narrative, and typography is at times deployed toward pictorial ends. Page 26, for example, comes with only one tiny word — ”Help” — marooned in a vast desert of white. At the opposite extreme, Page 284 is so crowded with words printed on top of words that you cannot decipher them, except as a vertical slab of black, a tombstone of type, or perhaps (like the photograph on Page 318) a velvety night sky. The book also includes a dozen or so grainy newslike photographs that risk offense by appropriating the image of a body falling from the towers — albeit a digitally simulated image — for artistic gain.

”The moment when I chose to put the photographs in the book,” Foer said, ”I was browsing around the Internet. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at — beheadings, C-sections, shark attacks, people jumping from planes with broken parachutes. It made me wonder what it must be like to be young right now. Kids are subjected to images that adults aren’t because a) their curiosity for the grotesque is greater and b) their ability to access it is greater.”

From the Damient Hirst interview:

NYT: [Can we] expect to see seascapes in your show?

DH: No. There are 30 paintings in the show, and most of them are based on photographs from newspapers and magazines.

NYT: I’m sorry to hear that. It seems that most painters today are basing their work on photographs.

DH: There are so many images in the world. An artist doesn’t really need to create anymore.

License Distribution

Neeru Paharia, February 25th, 2005

Last week we mentioned there were over 5 million web pages linking to Creative Commons licenses. This week, it has come to our attention that Yahoo! has updated their index to find well over 10 million web pages that link to our licenses. If you’re curious at all to see what licenses people are choosing, you can see the breakdown here, on this chart:

How Many Web Pages Link to a CC License?

Neeru Paharia, February 18th, 2005

At the end of 2003, we were proud to announce that over 1 million web pages had linked to Creative Commons licenses. Today, we are even more proud to say that this number is now well over 5 million web pages. Thanks to you, a vibrant base of free culture is flourishing.

CC licensed Microsoft site

Mike Linksvayer, February 16th, 2005

The Microsoft-hosted PatternShare community brings together information on software patterns organized by wiki inventor and now Microsoft employee Ward Cunningham.

PatternShare uses the liberal Creative Commons Attribution License.

Thanks Ward Cunningham and thanks Microsoft!

Although it predates the availability of Creative Commons licensing by many years, I would be remiss to not recommend Cunningham’s still active Portland Pattern Repository Wiki, which I suppose could be characterized as the wild and woolly counterpart of PatternShare.

News From Florida Free Culture

Neeru Paharia, February 16th, 2005

The Florida chapter of Free Culture made their presence known at the University of Florida Law School’s Music Law Conference. They wrote about the experience here on their blog, and also made a remarkable visual display which can only speak for itself. The photos were taken by Gavin Baker:

Fine Art of Sampling Contest Judging

Neeru Paharia, February 16th, 2005

The Fine Art of Sampling Contest has drawn to a close and we’re fortunate enough to have great judges picking the winners. For the Freestyle Mix, WIRED music editors and contributors Eric Steuer, Philip Sherburne, Adrienne Day, Hua Hsu, and Geeta Dayal will be making the final call. For the Militia Mix, Brian Hardgroove of the Fine Arts Militia, Scott Egbert of GigAmerica, and their associates will be making the final pick.

If you’re interested in hearing the submissions (of which many are amazing) they’re all available here, and here. We’d like to thank all of the entrants and judges for participating in this experiment of free culture.

Web only artist nabs a Grammy Award

Matt Haughey, February 15th, 2005

While not Creative Commons licensed, we were gratified to hear that a web-only release from Maria Schneider won a Grammy at the recent awards, despite the fact that her CD was only available from ArtistsDirect, and not in any record store. Reuters has a good wrapup and it’s our hope this is the first of many for artists recording, producing, and releasing their music online.

Our Sampling Contest deadlines drawing near

Matt Haughey, February 9th, 2005

Over on our Mixter site, we’re nearing the closing date on the Fine Art of Sampling contests. Saturday, Feburary 12th is the last day to submit your entries into The Freestyle Mix contest pool and the Militia Mix pools.

The top prize on the Freestyle Mix will be appearing on an upcoming mix CD released by Creative Commons, while the best Militia Mix track will end up on the Fine Arts Militia’s next album. If you’re into audio mixing, turntables, and making music on your computer, check out the current entries and be sure and upload your entries before Saturday’s deadline.

Free Spam Filtering for Progressive Nonprofits

Mike Linksvayer, February 9th, 2005

Marc Perkel is offering free spam filtering for progressive nonprofit organizations (more info here). Creative Commons has been using his service since last summer. I don’t get much spam delivered to my creativecommons.org inbox.

Thanks Marc!

A short short story

Matt Haughey, February 8th, 2005

Scott Esposito noticed a short story, within a book of poetry, all on the copyright page of the book. An amusing tale of the entire history of a poem collection.