hi Crumblers

have been following intently.. (thank you all for your experience
downloads) while watching the bbc series desparate romantics - a
lovely juxtaposition of 21c concerns with upstart pre-raphaelite art
of C19.

Im interested in these divergent approaches in (secondary ?)
knowledge and wealth creation in the the world of media art. the
polarization between the nesta/ creative industries approach which
sees everything as a potential income source, where the art making as
almost incidental; and the open source /crowd sourceing/ "information
wants to be free" founding principles of reproducible distributed
media art and networked media; really simplifies the issues and
divert us from doing the hard work of initiating new models while we
flay around dissecting dichotomies

i tend to think there needs to be a myriad of approaches - Jon Is
posting on the cross cultural partnership is step in that
direction..and perhaps a 4th and 5th and 6th way exist as well.. I
think we forget that media and emerging art itself can not be lumped
together as a whole.. art production has many culturally specific
goals.. from the capitalist ideal of fame and fortune; as a means of
political intervention and activism; story telling and preserving
heritage; it can be therapeutic, practical and decorative;
entertaining, frightening or confronting.

Rick side-saddelled on this point earlier- why put yourself into a
museum collection to become a discrete object behind a hard and soft
fire wall where your work will be less visible - obviously here the
select market and the art historical record is the objective, and a
fine one too as artists need to be recognized and shoulnt have to
starve. the "nailing down the bits" provides a great overview of
operating within this scape. -however i dont believe it is the only
artscape, or that we have to conform and mould media practices into.
after almost a year outside of the parameters of the institution and
funding rounds im reclaiming a libertarian perspective that utilises
non-institutional pathways to produce viable incomes for artist,
curators and cultural producers.

not everyone wants their work preserved/ codified/marketed as the
live, alive, rhythmic cant be reproduced. Every piece of art we look
at is decontextualized documentation any way - we were talking about
this issue a few days ago in a forum at the australian national
portrait gallery -the perfect example being the good old mona lisa- a
very minor painting which currently brings hordes of admirers to look
at its now undecipherable codes and its centuraries of alteration and
tampering with conservation .

And at the other end of the spectrum, open source/floss is not free -
doesn't materialize out of the aether - its is supported by
uncountable hours work subsidized by artists and programmers,
universities and institutions, etc etc, It operates in an economy
where knowledge transfer, notoriety, problem solving and cooperation
are of the highest value rather than the more virtual and ephemeral
monetary economy.

Given that the geo political scape is changing rapidly- (of course
Sotheby's is not going to disappear tomorrow, and collectors wont stop
acquiring paintings like pork belly futures to store in their
warehouses, and resell when the market is right ) band-aiding with
potential ip income seems to be such a short sighted solution to a
problem of competing markets and shifting global power structures.

Perhaps these fraught economics can be reordered by commissioning and
neo-patronage, if commissioners pay artists upfront a decent amount
for their work, contract for future scenarios, then issues of
secondary income become irrelavent. This is probably generational- as
thoes who have grown up with a "free" cultural distribution sysetem
assume positions of influence, the models will change.. although the
outcome of the networks closing down with filtering , censorship and
probably the end of the pretense of net neutrality- will have an
unpredictable effect on current distribution systems.

just for the historical record i recall a precedent in the
commissioning/commercialization of netart which Jon T was refereing
to, form over a decade ago in a curated commercial online net art
gallery--
'artcart' by Mario Hergueta. http://www.artcart.de/
documentation: http://mario.hergueta.org/projects/curating/artcart/

Artists - Lew Baldwin, Blank&Jeron, Natalie Bookchin, Heath Bunting,
Valéry Grancher,Yael Kanarek, Takuji Kogo, Antonio Mendoza, Mouchette,
Tina LaPorta, Jan Robert Leegte, Peter Luining, mi_ga, J.
Niemandsverdriet, PAVU, Melinda Rackham, Erwin Redl, Station Rose,
Jochem van der Spek, Teo Spiller, Zden.

We were making works which some of us open sourced, while also
providing limited /custom editions.. of course it was too early then
to create a lot of debate.. but it is interesting that a decade later
we are discussing the same issues. perhaps its an infinite circularity
- however each time we come past these familiar issues again we work
on shaping them just a little differently.

warm regards,
                     Melinda

Melinda Rackham (PhD)
Emerging Artforms Curator
Adjunct Professor
School of Media and Communications
RMIT University, Melbourne