April 12, 2012
A Castle Doctrine is an American legal doctrine that designates a person’s abode (or, in some states, any place legally occupied, such as a car or place of work) as a place in which the person has certain protections and immunities and may in certain circumstances attack an intruder without becoming liable to prosecution. Typically deadly force is considered justified, and a defense of justifiable homicide applicable, in cases ‘when the actor reasonably fears imminent peril of death or serious bodily harm to himself or another.’ The doctrine is not a defined law that can be invoked, but a set of principles which is incorporated in some form in the law of most states.
The term derives from the historic English common law dictum that ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle.’ This concept was established as English law by 17th century jurist Sir Edward Coke, in his ‘The Institutes of the Laws of England’ (1628). This was carried by colonists to the New World, who later removed ‘Englishman’ from the phrase, which thereby became simply the Castle Doctrine. The term has been used to imply a person’s absolute right in England to exclude anyone from their home, although this has always had restrictions, and since the late twentieth century police have also had increasing powers of entry. Continue reading →
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April 12, 2012
Good Copy Bad Copy is a documentary about copyright and culture in the context of Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing and other technological advances, directed by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen, and Henrik Moltke. It features interviews with copyright lawyers, producers, artists, and filesharing service providers.
A central point of the documentary is that ‘creativity itself is on the line’ and that a balance needs to be struck, or that there is a conflict, between protecting the right of those who own intellectual property and the rights of future generations to create. Artists interviewed include Girl Talk and Danger Mouse, popular musicians of the mashup scene who cut and remix sounds from other songs into their own. The interviews with these artists reveal an emerging understanding of digital works and the obstacle to their authoring copyright presents. Continue reading →
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April 11, 2012
Vidding is the fan labor practice in media fandom of creating music videos from the footage of one or more visual media sources, thereby exploring the source itself in a new way. The creator may explore a single character, support a particular romantic pairing between characters, criticize or celebrate the original text, or point out an aspect of the TV show or film that they find under-appreciated. The creators refer to themselves as ‘vidders,’ their product as ‘vids,’ ‘fanvids,’ or ‘songvids,’ and the act itself as ‘vidding.’
Vidding can occur within a fandom; however, it is also often considered its own fandom, as vidding fans will often watch vids simply because they are vids. (This is distinct from fan fiction readers and other fans, for instance, who tend to choose what to engage based on source text more than form.) Accordingly, vidding has its own dedicated fan convention, Vividcon. Fan videos within the world of anime fandom are distinct from the videos created by vidders. A fan-made music video using anime footage fans is called an anime music video or AMV, not a fanvid. While a large number of anime video makers are male, the bulk of vidders in media fandom are women.
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April 11, 2012
‘Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity’ is a 2004 book by law professor Lawrence Lessig that was released on the Internet under the Creative Commons Attribution/Non-commercial license.
The book documents how copyright power has expanded substantially since 1974 in five critical dimensions: duration (from 32 to 95 years), scope (from publishers to virtually everyone), reach (to every view on a computer), control (including “derivative works” defined so broadly that virtually any new content could be sued by some copyright holder as a ‘derivative work’ of something), and concentration and integration of the media industry.
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April 11, 2012
Remix culture is a term used to describe a society which allows and encourages derivative works. Remix is defined as combining or editing existing materials to produce a new product. A Remix Culture would be, by default, permissive of efforts to improve upon, change, integrate, or otherwise remix the work of copyright holders.
In his 2008 book, ‘Remix,’ Lawrence Lessig presents this as a desirable ideal and argues, among other things, that the health, progress, and wealth creation of a culture is fundamentally tied to this participatory remix process.
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April 11, 2012
ccMixter.org is a community music site that promotes remix culture and makes samples, remixes, and a cappella tracks licensed under Creative Commons available for download and re-use in creative works. Visitors are able to listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in a variety of ways including the download and use of tracks and samples in their own remixes.
Most sampling or mash-up web sites on the Internet stipulate that users forgo their rights to the new song once it is created. By contrast, the material on ccMixter.org is generally licensed to be used in any arena, not just the ccMixter site or a specific contest. The ccMixter site contains over 10,000 samples from a wide range of recording artists, including high profile artists such as Beastie Boys and David Byrne. Continue reading →
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April 11, 2012
WhoSampled is a website and database of information about sample-based music founded in London. WhoSampled compares original songs with covered songs or songs that ‘borrowed’ samples, it serves as a historical line of where songs have come from and where they’re going. Registered users can submit information about a sample, remix or cover and subject, waiting for moderator’s approval that will let the entry to be published on the site.
The visitor of the site gets a comprehensive list of who that artist has sampled and how, and how that artist him/herself has been sampled. The comparison of original song and the song that sampled, covered or remixed it, is done side by side with embedded tracks or videos. All audio and video clips shown on the site are embedded links to content hosted by third party services, such as YouTube or DailyMotion. The process and idea of the site of being a tool for research and music discovery, is similar to another project called Music Genome Project, both wanting to ‘explore the DNA of music.’
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April 11, 2012
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. Sometimes this term is also used for alterations of media or recreation other than song (film, literature, beverages etc.). In remixing, a person (often a recording engineer or record producer) takes a familiar song, splits it into different parts called tracks, and changes the song’s music, instruments, layout, and or vocals to create a new version of the same song.
It is called remixing due to mixing being the putting together of all the parts of a song, and remixing being the putting together of the parts of the song differently than the original. Remixers, that is, people who remix, are musicians who use a variety of tools, primarily electronic, to create the new song versions. Remixing can be simply moving song parts around; it can also be creating new music for an old song lyric. The most popular types of remixing are production remixing, where new instruments are used with the old song vocal, and mashups, in which two old songs are mixed together.
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April 10, 2012
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a 2008 musical tragicomedy miniseries in three acts, produced exclusively for Internet distribution. Filmed and set in Los Angeles, the show tells the story of Dr. Horrible (played by Neil Patrick Harris), an aspiring supervillain; Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion), his nemesis; and Penny (Felicia Day), their shared love interest.
The movie was written by writer/director Joss Whedon, his brothers Zack Whedon (a television writer) and Jed Whedon (a composer), and Jed’s wife, actress Maurissa Tancharoen. The team wrote the musical during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. The idea was to create something small and inexpensive, yet professionally done, in a way that would circumvent the issues that were being protested during the strike.
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April 10, 2012
The Second City is an improvisational comedy enterprise which originated in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood. The Second City Theatre opened in late 1959 and has since expanded its presence to several other cities, including Toronto and Los Angeles.
The Second City has produced television programs in both the United States and Canada including ‘SCTV,’ ‘Second City Presents’, and ‘Next Comedy Legend,’ as well as being heavily involved in the creation of the satirical 1969 science fiction film ‘The Monitors.’ Since its debut, the Second City has consistently been a starting point for comedians, award winning actors, directors, and others in show business. Continue reading →
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April 10, 2012
The Compass Players (or Compass Theater) was a cabaret revue show started by alumni, dropouts and hangers-on from the University of Chicago from 1955-1958 in Chicago and St. Louis. Several of the members went on to form The Second City Theater in 1959. Founded by David Shepherd, the original idea was to produce a new play derived through improvisation from outlines (in the tradition of the Italian commedia dell’arte) or scenarios written by members of the ensemble.
Shepherd turned to director Paul Sills to head this venture based on his experience working with Sills on an earlier Chicago theater effort. He noticed that Sills in rehearsal employed theater games, structures designed to create spontaneous theatrical play between actors that had been developed and named by Sills’ mother, Viola Spolin (who would later author the ‘bible’ of theater games, ‘Improvisation for the Theatre’). Continue reading →
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April 10, 2012
Viola Spolin (1906 — 1994) was an important innovator of the American theater in the 20th century. She created directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life. These acting exercises she later called ‘Theater Games’ and formed the first body of work that enabled other directors and actors to create improvisational theater.
Her book, ‘Improvisation for the Theater,’ which published these techniques, includes her philosophy, as well as her teaching and coaching methods and is considered the ‘bible of improvisational theater.’ Spolin’s contributions were seminal to the improvisational theater movement in the U.S. She is considered to be the mother of Improvisational theater. Her work has influenced American theater, television and film by providing new tools and techniques that are now used by actors, directors and writers.
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