House is a feeling.

By artist Olly Moss, via PSFK.

Reposted from Boing Boing

PLAY MACHINIMA LAW

DATE: April 24-25, 2009

LOCATION: Stanford Law School

Register now.

Machinima.

…It has been hailed as the art form of the 21st century. …It is redefining music videos. …And reinventing the videogame. …It might be the future of cinema.

But there’s a catch: if you make machinima, you might be breaking the law.

Or are you?

Find out at Stanford University. “Play Machinima Law” from April 24-25, 2009. This two-day conference will cover key issues associated with player-generated, computer animated cinema that is based on 3D game and virtual world environments. Speakers include machinima artists/players, legal experts, commercial game developers, theorists, and more. Topics include: game art, game hacking, open source and “modding,” player/consumer-driven innovation, cultural/technology studies, fan culture, legal and business issues, transgressive play, game preservation, and notions of collaborative co-creation drawn from virtual worlds and online games. Films will be shown throughout the conference, including: Douglas Grayeton’s Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator and Joshua Diltz’ Mercy of the Sea.

Via Hypebeast

After a long morning reading various accounts of corporate copyright douche-baggery, I needed some cheering up. This did the trick. Not only is this piece of vinyl totally awesome in every possible way, it’s also a great piece of marketing for Street Fighter IV.

Sue your fans, they’ll wage war against you. Give them battle weapons, they’ll go out and fight for you.

ThruYou by Kutiman is one of the most mesmerizing mash-up projects I’ve seen. The artist spent countless hours sifting through YouTube clips of (mostly) unknown musicians and vocalists, looking for snippets of sound and film that would fit together perfectly, turning unrelated morsels of talent into a synced-up symphonies of awesome.

VJing is getting ever more sophisticated (something I talk about a lot with dubstep VJ and good pal Vector Meldrew) as the tools of media manipulation become ever-more accessible. One-way media and culture is no longer a relevant idea. What we have now is a jigsaw that can and should be continuously remade and built upon. Figuring out the legalities of all this remains something of a puzzle as well, but Kutiman’s ThruYou project alone is reason enough to update copyright laws.

Below is ‘I’m New’, my favourite of his tracks. You can (and should) check out the rest at ThruYou.

I know I’m a little old for My Little Ponies, but these mods are great. View the whole collection here.

My friend and sometimes co-conspirator John Carluccio makes incredible pieces of film (that is, when he’s not busy inventing turntablist transcription method) and his latest short Cease and Desist is relevant to anybody who enjoyed reading Pirate’s, especially if you like sneakers.

From the blog of the film:

“Branding, addiction, sneaker culture and legal infringement are explored when artist/designer Ari Saal Forman mash-ups the lively Newport cigarette brand into a cool “Nike-like” sneaker. Shot at the height of the sneaker movement in 2006 and in present day, the short film reveals how trends quickly turn and how these urban expressionists compete even harder to stand out. Sneaker collectors soon face their own (cigarette like) addictions and Ari gets a legal gag for his clever design.

“The “alive with pleasure” moment that “legally never happened” is presented with before and after accounts.”

Make it a priority.

MY speech from Pop!Tech last week has just gone up. I talked about a few other things besides competing with pirates, including virtuous circles, a subject I’m getting really interested in. There were so many great speakers there – two others worth watching are Juan Enriquez’s “10 commandments” talk on the state of the economy, and Benjamin Zander, who was sort of talking about virtuous and vicious circles too, and was just incredible.

Just saw this over at The Global Couch. This is The Last Guy, which is now available on PSN according to Joystiq. The Last Guy is 15 stages of zombie-dodging gameplay that take place in cities across the globe, which use aerial photography as “levels”. Kinda reminds me of the way Charles Cumming used Google Maps to remix The 21 Steps in the We Tell Stories project we did for Penguin. The future of multimedia hacking is bright. Looking forward to Halo meets Google Earth.