I went to a terrific conference today. I should probably name check all the major participants in the hope of bringing this blog to more people's attention.
I particularly liked a writer called Katherine May - she wrote a blog called 52 Seductions as which was eventually published as a book. Must have a look at it. There was a great deal about experimental work that one could do using digital media - such as crowd-sourced writing - but this seemed a bit too cutting edge, and there was a sense that the work that was produced wasn't actually especially good or readable.
I find myself wondering occasionally about writers who want to work in this way - surely most artists want to be in control of their work... to really have something that's uniquely theirs. There was a certain amount of discussion about ownership - and that was interesting. For example if you use anonymous comments to make a piece of music/writing - don't those people have some sort of right over the material? I would argue that they don't, if they know it'll be used for a piece of art and agree to it. Otherwise one gets to the situation where if you transcribe a conversation overheard in a bus and use it for characters in fiction, should you track down the participants and ask for their permission or give them a tiny crumb of the action?
There was a rather horrifying thing about Kindle - apparently if there are contractual issues over a Kindle book it will just be deleted from the device, so if you've bought a book which defames someone it will be withdrawn willy-nilly.
There was also a discussion about piracy - apparently the leader of the Pirate Party in Germany, Julia Schramm described intellectual property as "disgusting" - until she got a E130K advance for her book and didn't want it pirated. Unbelievable. The "free content" crowd are definitely out of their heads. Art does have to be paid for - artists have mortgages and debts.
I particularly liked a writer called Katherine May - she wrote a blog called 52 Seductions as which was eventually published as a book. Must have a look at it. There was a great deal about experimental work that one could do using digital media - such as crowd-sourced writing - but this seemed a bit too cutting edge, and there was a sense that the work that was produced wasn't actually especially good or readable.
I find myself wondering occasionally about writers who want to work in this way - surely most artists want to be in control of their work... to really have something that's uniquely theirs. There was a certain amount of discussion about ownership - and that was interesting. For example if you use anonymous comments to make a piece of music/writing - don't those people have some sort of right over the material? I would argue that they don't, if they know it'll be used for a piece of art and agree to it. Otherwise one gets to the situation where if you transcribe a conversation overheard in a bus and use it for characters in fiction, should you track down the participants and ask for their permission or give them a tiny crumb of the action?
There was a rather horrifying thing about Kindle - apparently if there are contractual issues over a Kindle book it will just be deleted from the device, so if you've bought a book which defames someone it will be withdrawn willy-nilly.
There was also a discussion about piracy - apparently the leader of the Pirate Party in Germany, Julia Schramm described intellectual property as "disgusting" - until she got a E130K advance for her book and didn't want it pirated. Unbelievable. The "free content" crowd are definitely out of their heads. Art does have to be paid for - artists have mortgages and debts.
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