Transforming Freedom News

Relaunch! Party!

Transformer — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:33:38 +0100

How to own sound? The strange history of music copyright - Rasmus Fleischer (SE)

Volker E. — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:09:41 +0100

A short history of Law and Media about the fugitive Conduct of Music in the time of its enhanced Ownability

Date: Freitag, 15.2.2008
Time: 7 PM
Location: Museumsquartier, Quarter for Digital Culture, Raum D /quartier 21

Today, any musical recordings is covered by several separate layers of immaterial rights. Uses of music are strictly regulated by copyright collectives, which have set fixed rates on how much music is worth and how a large part of the money should go to to different actors including record companies and music publishers. Other uses, like creating music out of samples, are practically banned or have to operate in a grey zone. How did we get here?

Copyright, and its philosophical foundation in the distinction between “ideas” and “expressions”, was once constructed only to cover written text. Soon, it expanded to written music. However, stretching copyright to covering the musical sounds as such is something completely different. It took a long time to develop, even after the advent of musical recording. Referring to his ongoing historical research, Rasmus Fleischer will show how this development began as a unionist struggle to resist the supposed `mechanization´ of music and defend live music against the economy of reproduction – but how the age of digitalization rather turned the result into the opposite.

His talk will include examples of the resistance against tape recorders, DJ:ing and synthesizers, as well as presenting audio-visual examples of how older and newer kinds of artistic practice are colliding with the established notion of musical copyright. What he will not present, however, is a recipe for the future.

Rasmus Fleischer is a musician, a historician and one of the co-founders of the Swedish Pirate Office. (Photo by Malin Arnesson, on the right: Markus Nieminen: source)

Screening: Steal This Film - Part II

leo — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:25:00 +0100

The long awaited second part of STEAL THIS FILM by the Leage of Noble Peers will be screened. A legend of the web goes into the second round as the Swedish State finally plans to meet The Pirate Bay in court. Special Guest: Felix Stalder
Date: Wednesday, 20th of February 2008, 7 PM
Location: Museumsquarter, Quarter for Digital Culture, Raum D

Steal This Film - Part I (watch it online) was produced in about a month by an international team visiting Sweden after the infamous raid against the Bittorrent tracker The Pirate Bay, through which the film reached millions of viewers worldwide. The second part, financed by donations from the viewers of the first film and released freely on file-sharing networks in December 2007, is something completely different: A much more deeply worked-through attempt to put contemporary battles over file-sharing and digital reproduction in a long historical context.

It includes interviews with prominent historians as well as internet pioneers, combined with some animation work and archive material. This is a film with a clear message: File-sharing can't be stopped. The filmmakers describe their aim as "bringing new people into the leagues of those now prepared to think 'after intellectual property'".The screening will be followed by an open discussion, introduced and moderated by Felix Stalder. Some news and discussion about the legal battle Swedish State vs. The Pirate Bay may also take place.

Length: 0:44:43
Produced by: The League of Noble Peers (Alan Toner, J.J. King, Jan Gerber, Sebastian Lütgert, Luca Lucarini, and others)
Felix Stalder is a media theorist and sociologist, based in Vienna and Zürich. He is one of several experts on net culture interviewed in Steal This Film II. Felix Stalder's review of Steal This Film Part II was published on the nettime mailing list.

access to tools

armin — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:17:55 +0100

a little about hippies and computers

Kerstin von Gabain

Music: Binär (live)

Friday, 11th January 2008, 19:00
Transforming Freedom

Museumsquartier, Q21 / QDK
curated by Armin B. Wagner

(ohne titel), dia

tinker toy, drawing

binär, performing

further, mesh

The mesh, designed by Kerstin von Gabain and modelled by Marcus Hinterthuer, can be downloaded and used for non-commercial purposes: Further.zip (908 kB)

A booklet about the happening is available as a pdf-file: access_to_tools.pdf (756 kB)

Network Glimpse 02: Dunkle(s) Vorfahren, Eröffnung am 02. Oktober, 19:00 Uhr

Volker E. — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 01:03:54 +0200

Die zweite Ausstellung im Rahmen der Reihe „Network Glimpse“ trägt den Titel „Dunkle(s) Vorfahren“. Es handelt sich um ein Werk des Wiener Künstler Thomas Naegerl, in Eigenbeschreibung Skulpteur - Urbanist.

Eröffnung ist am 02. Oktober 2007 im Raum von Transforming Freedom, um 19:00 Uhr.

Dunkle(s) Vorfahren by Thomas Naegerl
Das kleinste Licht erhellt das Dunkle.

Die Installation ist bis 16.10. zu sehen – mehr zum Künstler unter www.naegerl.com

June, 15th: Vernissage of Marko Košnik - Operabil*:The early documents

Volker E. — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:45:49 +0200

The first Artist-in-Residence of the Transforming Freedom-Project, Marko Košnik, is featured in a three week long screening. The opening will take place on June 15th, 6 PM at AiRBase, Museumsplatz 1, A-1060 Wien, next to the Freiraum, together with an introduction by Stephen Kovats, artistic director of the Transmediale Berlin.
It is situated at the newly installed AiR-BASE in the q21, just next to the Freiraum.

**Operabil*: The early documents**

Documentary video by Marko Košnik based on performances and installations of operabils from 2004 to 2007,
featuring materials from the following events:

2007: Operabil POW; performance lecture QDK – MQ, Istanbul,
Rumeli Han, PSWAR Amsterdam; Ditopia Bathyscaphe Trieste, performance installation,
Museum of Fine Arts, Ljubljana;
2006: The Missing Engine of Laputa, performance
lecture, Documenta Urbana 2, Kassel; Operabil Kobe, dance piece in interactive environment
(with Sumi Masayuki and Barbara Thun), Kobe – Maribor – Berlin;
2005: Operabil Shqiptare, Tirana Biennal 3, site-specific installation – action, Tirana; Operabil Vienna,
performance lecture, Serious Pop – OpenLab II;
2004: Ditopia 02, interactive installation,
Museum of Fine Arts, Ljubljana; Ditopia 05, interactive installation, Herouville Saint Clair

Opening: Fr 15.06., 18h. AiRBase, Museumsplatz 1, A-1060 Wien, next to the Freiraum

Exhibition will run from : 15.06. till 06.07., 10–20h

Link to the quartier21-page of the exhibition.

About Marko Košnik

Link to the artist´s website & videos and more archives

TF @ Istanbul 2007-04-28 – 2007-05-03

Volker E. — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 03:22:42 +0200