There is some pretty spooky stuff going on over at LiveJournal. Apparently a group called “Warriors for Innocence” (Google it, I won’t link to it) have been lobbying LiveJournal to delete users and groups that outwardly appear to condone paedophilia. Sounds fair right? Well it turns out a lot of the accounts that have been deleted (seemingly without any investigation) were fan fiction groups or fictional characters with disclaimers in their User Info. This makes me squirm for several reasons the most important one being LiveJournal’s disregard for their members right to publish fictional stories. Yes, child molestation and exploitation is criminal not only on a legal level, but ethically and morally also. I don’t advocate or condone it in any way. But the precedent this sets frightens me.
I first read about this on Mary Gardiner’s LiveJournal, I think she said it best; “this is an immensely big anti-speech hammer being wielded here: that kind of fiction might not appeal to you, but writing fiction featuring incest and abuse themes is not a crime in the US, and is in any event a long way from committing actual abuse.”
I won’t write any more because plenty of other people have. Like Liz Marks, who has a tentative summary.
Last night I had dinner and a beer with Greg Carey – Indent Project Coordinator, fellow CSU Graduate and friend. I’ve wanted to work with this guy for a long time and it looks like I might finally have a chance. We have decided to start a record label. Well, I say ‘record label’ but we want it to be much more than that – promoting, touring, management and heaps more.
At its outset this projects primary aim will be to find music with potential, music of significance and importance and create a space for them in the current music market. We are starting small but our aspirations are big. A particular emphasis will be put on harnessing the different social networks that are out there. What really got me excited was the discussion we had about social media and its power and influence in capturing specific markets, about the importance of formal and informal social networks and how a critical understanding of these networks can help get music to people that otherwise wouldn’t have heard it.
I would put a call out for ideas around the development of the label via the social medias, but seeing as no one really reads this blog (yet) I won’t go get my hopes up :)
I feel an excited tingling in my loins – its resonations are faint but they are getting louder. I heard Brendan Cowell say in an interview that the biggest thing he learnt from BA Communications (Theatre Media) - a degree I’m proud to say that I have – was that you can’t just wait for things to happen. No one is going to knock on your door and hand you a bucket of success, you have to create your own work and I finally feel like I might be doing that.
Clive Thompson has written a really interesting article for the New York Times called “Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog”. He looks at different musicians and the prowess they have displayed in harnessing the power of social networks and social media.
One thing Clive said really struck me;
“For many of these ultraconnected artists, it seems the nature of creativity itself is changing. It is no longer a solitary act: their audiences are peering over their shoulders as they work, offering pointed comments and suggestions.”
Could this be the future of music? Imagine if a band let their fans have creative input! I think this is something popular music has failed to do over the years, and that’s give their fans a sense of ownership over the music they invest so much in. I for one would love to hear Nick Zinner playing a riff I’d written.
On Tuesday night I was unfortunate enough to have won tickets to the Jack Awards at Sydney’sLuna
Park. Being an event manager I should have smelt the shit long before I did, however the opportunistic ex-student in me heard the words “free tickets” and, at that point, nothing else seemed to matter. I called the radio station and low and behold, I was the first caller (hindsight tells me that I was probably the only caller). I was contacted on the day of the event and told to pick up my tickets at 6.00pm;
JOEL: 6.00pm? I thought it started at 8.30pm?
WORK EXPERIENCE KID: Oh, well… yeah it does… but can you make it at 6?
JOEL: I gue…
WORK EXPERIENCE KID: There is dinner and we will give you drinks and stuff so…yeah.
JOEL: Oh, like beer? Is that what you mean?
WORK EXPERIENCE KID: Yeah. No. It’s the Jack Awards, so you get Jack Daniels
JOEL: OK then. But I was told earlier that I could get there at 7. I work and I may have trouble getting there at 6.
WORK EXPERIENCE KID: Um…Just let me check (muffled voice) hey can he get there later? Like 7? I think he has to go to the vet? Something about his cat. OK. (TALKING TO ME AGAIN) Yeah sure that’s fine, you won’t miss anything
And so with that my +1 and I arrived at 7 and got ushered in to this old, dank dining hall only to be told that there was no food left and the drinks were all gone. That’s right, no drinks. Turns out people had been taking more than the one they were allocated and so now there were none left, “Just go and ask one of the people with heaps if you can have one of theirs” said the poor catering girl.
Eventually, after much whining on my behalf, we were given a cold burger and a Sprite. “OK, clean slate. From here we forget about all that has happened and give this thing a chance” I told my friend. I would later make these words my catch phrase for the evening. After 15 minutes eating time, we got ushered to the red carpet were we were to cheer and applaud all the B-Grade celebs as they made their way in to the awards hall (Bessie Bardot was my personal favourite). This went on for an hour. It was friggin’ boring. However there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Once the celebs had arrived we would be able to go in to the bar area, drink our problems away and see some bands. Or so we were told. Turns out that was never the plan. As soon as everyone had marched down the carpet security guards began ushering us in to the “mosh pit”, which actually resembled a cage:
JOEL: Can we get anything to drink in there? Water even?
SECURITY: No.
JOEL: What about toilets, are there toilets inside (I was busting by this stage)
SECURITY: It’s a f***** TV studio mate, what the f*** do you reckon? Now move! At this point we both turned around and left.
So what’s my major beef with Jack? Primarily it was the complete lack of information we received. I won the tickets under the impression that I was actually a “winner” and that I would be attending the awards as a guest. Had I been told that I was rent-a-crowd and that I would actually be doing the promoters a favour, my attitude would have been completely different. To intentionally mislead your publics isn’t only unethical, it’s incredibly bad brand management. The artists were definitely looked after, but none of the punters were. Which is pretty short sighted in my opinion. Had Jack honestly communicated with me (as a punter) I wouldn’t still be sitting here feeling cheated. I much prefer the Bundy Bear – he seems more friendly.
Finally I am going to add some substance to Pop Medium. My absence from Blog-town has been in part due to the number of projects we have going on at work. One such project was the R***** Projections, a component of the R***** Festival. I thought I would share a few of my experiences with the digital world.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/j2P6mBC-GFo]
Public Space and Cultural Divides
One of the key ideas behind the R***** Projections project was to take a popular public space and change the way the community see it and to alter their understanding of what the space actually is and what it could be. By doing this the hope is that the community will grow and learn a thing or two together, maybe even enhance (possibly on more of a subconscious level) their understanding of the space’s cultural significance. To do this we decided it might be a nice idea to project some images by local artists on to the sand, get some kids from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music to compose a sound scape and put the event on when at a time when lots of people are already using the space in their own way.
Projecting the images down on the ground as opposed to, say, projecting up on to a surface such as a wall proved to be one of our major logistical problems. We decided on a 10 tone crane that had a reach of about 20 meters. Of course this meant we had a giant machine in the middle of our show, not the ideal situation but one we felt we had to live with. If anyone out there has an idea that would have worked better, please leave a comment.
Aside from that I think the major problem with the event was that the due to the nature of the images that were being projected and the style of the music that was composed, the show ended up being inaccessible to a large chunk of the community (educationally, socio-economically, culturally). While “high art” has a tremendous amount of value, it tends to alienate particular groups of people and can actually work to further the divide between different community groups (both formal and informal). Working in community and cultural development, I think you should always be trying to open peoples minds a little, expand their world and show them something they may not have otherwise been exposed to. However this process should be a long one and the steps you take need to be small. I feel as if we may have rushed in, made some inaccurate assumptions about the community and as a result produced an event that alienated a portion of our demographic. Having said this, the projections were well received by those who went and we have yet to receive any negative criticism, so maybe I’m way off the mark…
Note: I have bleeped out the name of the event because I work for local government and while I don’t feel anything I have said could be considered as defamation, I do value my job and would rather air on the side of caution.
So what is Pop Medium?
pop·u·lar adj
appealing to or appreciated by a wide range of people
or
believed, embraced, or perpetuated by ordinary people
me·di·um n
a means of conveying ideas or information
or
the means by which something is carried out or achieved
(Definitions curtesy of Encarta® World English Dictionary)
I chose those words carefully so they do go some way towards explaining what this blog is about, but somehow they don’t capture the totality of what I want this space to be. I guess I am hoping the people that populate ‘Pop Medium’ will define it and so with that I will stop trying to define it myself.
Some of the topics I will write about include cultural development, community development, events management, social media, critical communications theory (maybe) and music management. I am interested in all of these things and their relationship to one another.
I want to learn from people with similar (or completely different) interests and hopefully return the favour. This is, ostensibly, Pop Medium’s primary purpose. So please, throw your ideas at me and we can talk turkey.
Hooray!!!
“You do an awfully good impression of yourself “
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