ArtMarketOnline_blog

The Ngoma Vuma story

2006-06-28T17:12:00.000+02:00

This afternoon we were busy editing the Ngoma Vuma Afrika website - and added Peter Okeno's story on how the group started. Here it is:

"As I walked from where I stayed in the North-West University Potchefstroom Campus I thought of the time when I was wtith Victor Savani in Kenya in the same secondary school. I taught him how to play tumba drums though he was a super isikuti drums player and currently he has his own group touring all over the world and they are famous.

I was also in the same school with George Mutunga. I taught him how to play drums. He also became a very good player and he has combined drumming with gymnastics and acrobatics and he is doing very well touring all over the world with his group.

The question came to my mind : What about starting a percussion group?

I recalled the moments when I appeared in Potchefstroom with the help of Prof. Jacques van der Elst in 2002, I had a concert titled Kenyan rhythms with colleagues whom I taught at the music school in the North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus and it was successful.

I remembered the moments when I was David Nkosi's drumming guru and when we played together and won many trophies in the talent festival.

I then laughed knowing that to some it will sound very weird to start a percussion group and have songs to produce or even have a captivating and entertaining performance. I imagined how people will perceive it but I was happy since I knew my vision and how to accomplish it.

I thanked God and decided to go and talk to Horst Butow about it. By then I had reached the Law faculty which is not far from Horst Butow's office. I booked an appointment to see him.

On the day of the appointment, I was excited. I shared my vision with him. Having a lot of experience in arts and culture as a lecturer, manager, assessor, advisor and a producer – he looked at it in all angles, asked many questions which was a brain opener. He then advised that we have a small group from the Serenaders Choir, try it out and see its viability on the tour to Germany.

We went and purchased some percussion instruments including the djembe drums.I started training members from Serenaders Choir though it was a very frustrating endeavour since to many, it was strange but I pushed forward. I managed to teach a few songs and how to play some percussion instruments. It was difficult to find committed members on campus.

The group was ready by the time we went to Germany.

After several performances in Germany, Horst Butow called me and we had a very long discussion in the boat. The discussion was about the official start of a percussion group.

Coming back to South Africa Ngoma Afrika was born and it is still in existence as Ngoma Vuma Afrika."

So this is how you start a percussion band - you have the story, all you have to do is : follow Peter's example and start your own.

Click here to visit the groups site.

ccCreators - online collaboration site launched

2006-06-27T18:34:00.000+02:00

The guys from ccMixter just started an online collaboration site - this is what they say about the site:

If you're an artist who's using Creative Commons licenses (composer,filmmaker,writer,podcaster.. you name it!) it would be great if you would join. It will cost you nothing. Let's build a collective, so we can share our opinions, our work and start collaborating.

There are so many open content sites out there - this is one way to bring them together and start remixing and build on each others work.

Click to visit and join the ccCreators site.

Open Video Contest

2006-06-20T23:09:00.000+02:00

Creative Commons and the Fedora Project have launched an open video contest.

Click here to find out more.

New gallery on the Ikageng Arts and Crafts site

2006-06-20T19:58:00.000+02:00

Click to see Thabo Mafaese's work on the Ikageng Arts and Crafts site.

'Marketing your music through podcasting'

2006-06-18T16:06:00.000+02:00

While we are busy with online tools for musicians - here is a very informative post on podcasting - from the Magnatune blog.

Fair Trade Music - an interview with Brad Powell, President and Creative Director of Calabash Music

2006-06-18T14:53:00.000+02:00

Calabashmusic.com is an online music shop - which artists can use directly to sell their music. We visit the site every week and the Calabash blog is also on our blogroll.

Artists definitely must know about sites like Calabashmusic.com - since the music industry is changing - selling your music in mp3 and other audio formats are becoming very popular - using the Internet to connect with music fans, market and sell music is becoming the way to go.

The open content / open source community is involved in a big way in this - if you are clever enough you can actually do it all yourself - lots of freely available open source tools are available for musicians to record, remix, publish, market and sell their work. Click here to read an article on this.

If you are a musician and would like to find out more about the process of signing up and selling your music through calabashmusic.com - click here to read all the info you need.

Calabashmusic.com is just one of the many sites that use online tools to sell and promote music in a new much more exciting ways - contact us if you have a specific question on this topic - or listen to this interview at Here On Earth radio with Brad Powell, President and Creative Director of Calabash Music.

No hawkers allowed - an article on street trade

2006-06-11T18:16:00.000+02:00

I met Netanya in 2003 - and ArtMarketOnline started.

This art project evolved naturally from me wanting to get to know the diverse cultures of the land while teaching artists web design - and it all started with sitting down with Netanya and teaching her basic web design skills. She is definitely one of the most interesting South Africans I have ever met. Her creativity, determination and bravery is just simply unbelievable. You need to be brave to become a street trader. This is what she writes on her experiences:

At a point in my life, a street trader sold peanuts and raisons for me. He informed me of trading licenses and where to get them. I went to the Traffic Department Offices here, and asked whether or not I needed a trading license to set up a street stand. A woman there told me that I did not need one, because I was selling jewellery and not food. The only catch was that I could not sit in front of shops selling similar items, I could sit anywhere. Amen to free enterprise – or so I thought.

Click here to visit her site and read the rest of the article.

Ikageng Arts and Crafts - website launch

2006-06-10T13:08:00.000+02:00

We have set up the website for our Ikageng Arts and Crafts group - click here to visit the site.

Take part in the SAfro-Brazilian remix

2006-06-06T14:32:00.000+02:00

ccMixter has announced a new remix contest - click here for more info!

The world's most important 6-sec drum loop

2006-06-06T10:23:00.000+02:00

Click here to see a fascinating 20 minute video by Nate Harrison about the history of the Amen break - a 6 second drum loop that was first recorded in 1969.

This short drum loop has been used many times in various compositions over the years - and is a great example of how creativity works and how we always build on the work of those before us.
If you like the video and the idea of using loops from other artists for your own songs - visit ccMixter to download freely available loops and you can also add your own for others to use.

Ngoma Vuma website

2006-06-04T11:46:00.000+02:00

The site ready - and Okeno & Nthabi has also finished their basic computer skills course.

The first months with Ngoma Vuma Afrika have been great - working with these musicians has been really rewarding - they are really hard working - never short of new ideas and projects to do. They already have plans that will make up the next phase of their training.

We have exciting plans with them for the next few months. Since Aardklop is Software Freedom Day is coming up - we will be working on a special Aardklop program with them and we are also planning an African music workshop and performance as part of the celebrations during Software Freedom Day.

Ikageng Arts & Crafts

2006-06-04T11:18:00.000+02:00

We have started training two members of Ikageng arts & crafts - which is a small organization busy with various arts and crafts projects including paintings, fabric paintings, wire work, bead work, sewing, leather shoes and leather bags amongst others.

Sam and Ethel from the group are busy with their basic computer skills training and we have also started to collect material we can use for their art site.

Ngoma Vuma Afrika

2006-04-05T18:08:00.000+02:00

A warm welcome to the members of Ngoma Vuma Afrika.

They are a 15 member percussion group playing songs from different parts of Africa.

The band leader, Peter Okeno is from Kenya - all other members are students of the local School of music majoring in different musical instruments.

The team has already launched their first CD - click here to read more about the event and the band itself .

The team's program at ArtMarketOnline includes basic computer skills training, we will also be setting up a website as well and teach some of the band members how to maintain their new website.

Those nominated to maintain the team's website will be coming weekly to do regular website updates.

This is quite an interesting project for us at the OpenCafe - we normally work with individuals so this will be the first time we get busy with a team of musicians.

"Help, I am being spontaneous!"

2006-03-27T06:17:00.000+02:00

....said Jim Carrey - in the Truman show and started driving around in a circle. After 30 years of living a typical middle class 9 to 5 life - he decided to get out of it.

When one travels one sees various different structures, rules that everyone in that community sticks to - and if they are lucky - they are good rules. I have travelled around a bit and tried to make sure that I learn from everything I see and use that knowledge to better my life.

At the OpenCafe we try to do things according to the above realization and encourage everyone to step outside the box and reexamine things.

One very important rule is - Get Creative. Do something. For yourself - or for others. Make a necklace. Play a song. Set up an OpenCafe.:-) It's all up to you. Come up with an idea and we will try to support you - provide you with basic computer skills, computer and Internet access, webspace to host and maintain your project sites, and more.

When it comes to music - the cafe is a place for free basic music lessons. Mainly for those interested in playing the violin or guitar. We have some acoustic and an electric guitar and all you have to do is - design a "music program" for yourself - we discuss it - and as long as you keep to your program - you can carry on using the facilities - although you have to drive your own training - we'll continuously support you to learn the basics of tuning the guitar and playing basic chords and strumming patterns.

We play music every day at the cafe , click here to have a look at photos of our OpenDay which turned out to be a music workshop.

Naseer and the lute

2006-03-26T15:42:00.000+02:00

"When invented, Music has only gained its value and assets from being the spirit means for approaching God. For this reason, I want my music to remain the spirit of humanity through expansion and extension of the human soul"

Naseer Shamma

A quote from Naseer Shamma - an exceptional Iraqi lute player.

Some time ago - we had a visitor from Iraq at the cafe - ( he came to find out about the Linux distros available ) - while talking I mentioned that I knew the Iraqi lute player, Nasee Shamma. He said he knew him very well - since they were childhood friends back in Iraq.

Click here to read more Arabic music, Naseer and the lute.

Learn all about 'Copyright, copyleft and everything in between'

2006-03-16T22:49:00.000+02:00

Ever wondered what copyright is - or what belongs to the public domain?

If you are an artist -
probably you did think of the rights you have as the creator - but have you thought about the rights of your fans - should they be allowed to download some of your songs - or should they be allowed to use parts of your song and mix it with their own compositions?

Luckily there are great easy-to-read multimedia materials and comics available to help you to learn the basics.

Creative Commons site has a collection of movies and comics.

Or you can watch the
Creative Commons South Africa flash movie.

Then there is the Learning Commons' flash movie called
'Copyright, copyleft and everything in between'
- it explains all about open source / open content concepts.

Another great comic book I discovered on the Creative Commons blog: "Bound by law" - released by the Duke Law School's Center for Study of the Public Domain.

By the time you finish reading / listening to all of these - you will definitely have a much better idea what license to choose for your book or song.

All of the above are freely available as free downloads and are all available at the OpenCafe - just bring a blank CD!

PanAfrican Blog

2006-03-13T08:06:00.000+02:00

We have started a new Pan African blog to gather info, news and stories around open source and open content projects from all over the continent.

Click here to have a look.

OpenCafe life - slideshow

2006-03-09T18:31:00.000+02:00

It is at the OpenCafe where our artists pick up their basic (and advanced) computer skills - together with all others interested in learning computer skills.

The OpenCafe is a meeting place for artists, programmers, computer skills students, teachers, OpenCafe volunteers, OpenCafe trainees, and ... everyone else ... and ... there is always a chance that one becomes the other:-) roles can change quickly at the cafe - computer students become artists - and artists become teachers .....

Ever wondered how this happens?

Click here to have a look at the slideshow on our home page!

A system of patronage for the digital economy

2006-03-02T11:08:00.000+02:00

Reffering somewhat to the previous post on the Carte Blanche story, but I will be looking at a possible solution rather than the question itself (which I should say was briliantly stated).

In the ages before copyright, artists did not starve or fail to create, this alone is proof that copyright is not the sole means of supporting artists, in fact in the ancient world - artists were on average a slightly bit less likely to starve (under certain provisions which I will get to just now). The system in place then was something called patronage. Patronage was perhaps the one positive side effect of the class system, ¨nobles¨ were expected to sponsor artists, paying them a living wage to allow them the freedom to create art.
This was a great system except for one small catch - since an artist needed a patron to survive, patrons chose artists based on the willingness of those artists to create art that suited the patron.

This resulted in a kind of economic censorship which meant that only such art as failed to critisize the current powers-that-be could be funded, we see this clearly in Shakespeare´s work for example. Even in MacBeth - a story about a power hungry royal-wannabe who contrives his own doom through his ambitions, there is an entire paragraph dedicated to a character telling us just what a cool guy the king of England is. How he heals dandruff with his touch !

Of course artists were smart enough to get around this in some ways, Shakespear used the old ¨praise-poetry¨ technique - critisizing through praise, very effectively while Da Vinci simply made his living from science and engineering so he could practise his real art mostly undisturbed (of course he also took on commisioned works like the last supper but this made up a very small part of his art).

Copyright came into the picture when the printing press made copying a reality, in a world where an artwork was no longer an once-off thing but could be copied, it was designed to give artists some sort of recompence for those copies - but more importantly to censor just what was copied in the first place.
The censorship motivation mostly dissapeared over time (though it was still alive in the USSR right up the fall of the Berlin Wall) but copyright persisted, replacing patronage as the system for artistic recompense as the class system began to come appart.
For a while, everything was dandy, artists created, copyright got them paid and since there was no patronage - there was no economic censorship (other varieties of course abounded). Since copying was essentially and industrial activity, this made copyright essentially and industrial regulation so it didn´t bother us normal folk much.
We had neither the means nor the need to make copies anyway.

But behind the scenes, something happened over the course of the twentieth century. See the problem with copyright for artists is what you might call ¨seed money¨ - somehow they have to live while creating, and then they have to hope like hell they can sell the results for enough to live on until the next one is done. Enter ¨publishers¨, publishers became the middleman, by having large capital basis they could offer artists sums of money in advance to cover the risk of creation - it was never very much - in exchange for taking the copyrights from them. Of course the most successfull artists also get a royalty cut - but don´t imagine it´s typical. According to Courteney Love´s mathematics, the average non-superstart musician can expect a negative return on every single album they ever produce. The real money goes to the publishers, every time.

This was tolerated because publishers brought one more thing to the table -distribution, publishers had the means to actually get the art to the public. So the artists who generally aren´t interested in getting rich if they can just survive to create went along with it -because getting their message out was worth the poverty and the publishers could do that for them.

The advent of the digital economy and the network changed this, copying became ridiculously easy. Distribution became practically free of charge - the publishers were charging money for a service nobody really needed anymore.
Thanks to the internet, artists can now sell directly to a bilion users - even if only 1% buys, that´s more than the publishers would ever have given them.
So publishers freaked out, their house of cards was missing several decks on the bottom floor and it was about to fall down - their answer was to start abusing copyright to try and illegalize the tools that made this direct and peer-to-peer distribution mechanism possible in the first place.
Thus far, no amount of effort has worked but they persist and they would love nothing more than to destroy the network. It´s almost as if a horse dealer tried to blow up the Ford factory back in 1932.
The weapon they use to hide their nefarious scheme is to talk about the ¨artists rights¨ and how these artists starve because of copying by the public. The truth is the artists were starving long before the network because the publishers did a lot less to take care of them than the patrons used to - and most artists could never get published, without publication, there was no money to be made.

Copying has not robbed the artists of their livelihood, the publishers did that a long time ago - copying is robbing the fat cats of their cream, and that is why they are up in arms, and sadly have managed to get the very artists they exploit to speak up for them - because those artists are bound to their slavemasters as securely as their ancestors were to the wishes of their patrons.

So then, what can we do about this ? Well I have long been playing with the idea of a new form of patronage. A patronage system for the digital world. Here is how it may work:
Many countries currently tax the sales of certain electronics like CD media and pay this to recording companies since these media ¨may be used for illegal copying" - of course 99% of all CD-R´s bought are used to back up data on, not write music cd´s but oh well.
But even after paying a tax for being able to copy - you are still not allowed too...

Hold on though... maybe there is an opportunity here.
Imagine the government sets up a web site where anybody can register any artwork capable of digital distribution, the price of registration is to implicitely allow copying and derivation. But this site is linked to a fund. The fund gets it´s income from a sales tax on devices and media that can be used for digital copying, a small tax would more than suffice.
Then for every time an artist´s work is downloaded from the main site, he gets a cut of the fund, the maths is simple 80% of the fund gets distributed for direct downloads (say once a year or so) if your work was 2% of the total downloads, you get 2% of the 80% that is thus distributed - it´s a small piece of the pie, but the pie is so big that it is much more than they are making now. Since there is no limit on what you can post - the only limit to your income is your ability to please your customers - and there is no economic censorship, if people like your art, you get paid - and nothing stops them from personally paying you a little extra on the side if they really like it.
Now 20% of the fund is left, of this say 5% should be used for the cost of running all this, keeping the site up with plenty of bandwith, paying programmers salaries and the like.
That leaves 15% - this 15% is for secondary distribution. Some technology should be available from the site, a multiplatform program with source code. Nothing forces you to run it, but if you do - you are rewarded with an additional right - redistribution of copies.
The program never bothers you, it merely tracks when a copy of a piece of art downloaded from that sight leaves your computer. And reports back the names and numbers on this, without identifying you.
The 15% gets divided among artists based on how often their work is shared by previous downloaders. After the third tier, I believe there is no longer any justification for payment to creators (the third tier: if Jack downloads from the site, and gives to Sally, and Sally then gives to Peter, the author gets a big fee for Jack´s download, a smaller one for Sally´s copy, and nothing for Peter - the third tier).
This means artists are free to create anything and they are rewarded for digital art by allowing the users to make full use of the power that digital arts offer them. The users are happy because they are never asked for their credit cards, they are not ¨paying for the song¨ - when they bought their CD player or their computer a small amount of the price paid to allow them to do this !

The reason I say a government should do this, as little as I normally trust governments is that there is on major thing they have that corporations don´t - access to charge taxes. Magnatune will never make authors money from real listeners and no matter how much I like their ethical approach, the truth is that it is not enough.
Private enterprises will always have to charge for downloads, or a flat rate subscription or something, users will rather copy than pay - it´s that simple. But a government can get use a tax fund to pay the artists, a government never needs to ¨visibly¨ charge - users will see a world where for a small increase in the price of digital consumer devices, they get art they can copy, mix and share as much as they like - and then they can register their remixes on the site and get a cut of the action as well.

Sounds great eh ? Now all we need is a government not in the pocket of the fat cats so we can convince them to do what is best for art, that is the government you can sell this idea to.

PS. As a programmer and an artist, both fields which traditionally have relied on copyright to make money, I believe I am as adequately qualied as anybody to state that I believe if such a system was properly managed, without corruption and sufficiently well designed (in terms of technology) that it worked for the consumers rather than against them - that artists, programmers and other creators would go for it.

A response to tonight's Carte Blanche story entitled "stealing music"

2006-02-26T22:16:00.000+02:00

The music "industry" - should songs or poetry be looked at merely as a product?

The artists in the story were very concerned about the fact that others are stealing their money by pirating their songs - and rightly so. Since as a rule copyright applies to all creative work - and noone has the right to copy it without the artists' permission.

But the question remains - is it right for the artists to look at their profession as a job - is it right to call their songs "products" - a once-off thing sold to the audience.

In today's consumer society once-off products are sold - once consumed - they end up in the bin - noone reuses them - but rather - buy new products and consume them. The products once in the bin - are considered "waste". When it comes to music - can one ever look at a song as "waste" - never to be reused again?

If one looks at folk culture - stories and songs go from person to person freely - noone really knows who was the original author - the stories, poems, songs were part of culture and were not part of a "consumer culture". If one looks at jazz music - it is based on the constant "reusing" of melodies and rhytms - just like - anything else in our society since nothing exists in a vacuum.

This way of thinking results in artists and audiences separated - no little concern for each other - so not surprising that artists talk about people that listen to their music as pirates and the audience - so far removed from the artists - are not concerned any more about the well-being of the artists. Should all those people that listen to the music be called pirates - or is there another way to make sure that the music gets to its audience without calling them pirates?

While it is highly unfair to take and resell music without the artists' permission - are the artists sure that they themselves have created a culture where there are legal mechanisms in place to share and reuse their own music ( which they also compiled based on previous influences from other artists ).

Another important point is that an artists' responsibility is not merely providing and selling a product but also highlighting issues in their societies and making their audiences aware of problems.

These are some of the questions open source communities / open content initiatives all around the world try to address and make sure that authors like artists, musicians, poets, writers are acknowledged - and in the same time the audience has legal tools to reuse materials and provide very valuable feedback about all published materials. The audience then also has the option to become artists/creators themselves - just like in folk culture where absolutely everyone has the right to sing a song and change it they way he/she likes to sing it.

Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org) offers authors various open licenses that they can use should they wish to make sure that their creative work is later reused, modified or even resold.

The question is : if pirating of a certain material (like software or music or any other product ) becomes the norm - shouldn't the "industry" or the authors rethink the basic rules of music/software production or should they carry on the same way.

OpenCafeBlog: Go_open is now available for download from the Internet Archive

2006-02-26T18:32:00.000+02:00

OpenCafeBlog: Go_open is now available for download from the Internet Archive

Most local artists here in South Africa don't really understand the reason for using exclusively open source software for our art projects.

Watching the 13 episodes of Go_open will answer most of your questions around open source - and will also explain why many artists around the world opt for using open source software and why they choose Creative Commons licenses for publishing their books or songs.

OpenCafeBlog: Teach - a great Creative Commons movie

2006-02-26T18:21:00.000+02:00

OpenCafeBlog: Teach - a great Creative Commons movie

Great CC licensed film - to see it all you have to do is - download it - or get a copy from the OpenCafe!

ArtMarketOnline on Tectonic

2006-02-24T19:57:00.000+02:00

Richard Frank from Tectonic has recently contacted us to find out more about ArtMarketonline .

Click here to read the story.

Our ArtMarketOnline project continues this year - right now we are busy with Kevin, Cymba and Netanya.

Cymba starts the year with doing the basic computer skills course at the cafe - he comes twice a week to do the training - Kevin comes once a week to use the computers and the NET and is busy with updating his site - Netanya is also busy with regular updates on her site.

We have also started teaching basic guitar skills to some of our OpenCafe students in the multimedia room.

What is the statute of limitations

2006-02-23T12:30:00.000+02:00

on book launches ?
Seeing as my book was first published in May 2005 and been on the ISBN database since October of that year, does that mean that it is too late to throw an official book launch party ?

I have been thinking about this, it does appear to be the next logical step in promoting my book to the more traditional outlets. The ISBN was the first step as it allows bookstores to actually find the book - but now people and bookstores need to know it exists and I have been wondering how best to let them know.
I wouldn't have written and published it if I didn't think it was something people might want to read - something in other words which bookstores would be able to get some sales out off, and every new channel that opens is one more person I manage to touch.

It took me seven years to write that book and so obviously (call it author's vanity) I would like as many people as possible to read it.
So lately I have been seriously wondering if such a book launch can still be held, and if so - how would one go about arranging it ?
I am certainly open to advice from other people who have gone through the harrowing experience of learning that when you want to publish a book there is pretty much no information on how to go about it, if you then take it further and choose to self-publish you have an even greater shortage of information on how best to promote your work. While publishing through lulu has many upsides, nobody told me what to write etc. there is one major downside - traditional media has a large budget for marketing, the new media economy doesn't have it (yet) - so getting the word out can be a little a trickier at times.

In the same veign I have been trying to find out how one would get your book reviewed in the papers - do you just send them a copy ? Bad reviews I can live with, no reviews I'm not so sure about.

Ever thought of creating a multimedia slideshow ?

2005-11-22T22:58:00.000+02:00

"What do you get when you pair a Hungarian writer-photographer with a Pakistani musician? Answer: sublime photographs of the Danube, a narrated short story, set to the sound of the tabla and atmospheric Punjabi vocals, all presented in a multimedia slideshow format."

Click to visit openDemocracy site to see the slideshow!

OpenCafe people

2005-11-18T19:44:00.000+02:00

I updated the People page on the OpenCafe site. Click to see photos of our artists, volunteers, trainees, clients, friends etc:-)

Looking back on ArtMarketOnline's first year

2005-11-18T16:36:00.000+02:00

Hi everyone! I thought it's a good idea to think back and look at all that we have accomplished during this year.

If you have a sec, click here to add your thoughts, suggestions about the OpenCafe and ArtMarketOnline - as well as read what everyone else says about the cafe.

Why Larry Why ?

2005-11-17T18:29:00.000+02:00

Okay, so Anna has been hyping my little poetry collection up a lot, for which I'm very flattered and gratefull. Ergo, time for me to say something though, and I opted for speaking a little about why I did things the way I do.
Why did I publish under a license that means you can give your whole circle of friends photostats ? Why did I choose to say you can record a song based on it, or use it for lavatory paper or anything else you wish to do without needing my permission - in fact asking only one thing - credit ?
Is it because I am crazy ? Well perhaps, but then it's a good kina crazy I think :)

If there is a short version it's because Bob Dyllan, Led Zeppelen and the Gratefull Dead all encouraged people to make mix tapes and bootlegs of their concerts ! To share it with their friends, and they are remembered not only for the great musicians they were but for how much money they made as well.
Not that I think I'll make much money either way, it's not that kind of book, but just like the Deadheads knew that the band won't mind some copying - because what matters most is being heard, so I care more than anything about being read.
All poets write to say something, many are just writing to talk to themselves - and they often not only refuse to publish but only a select few very close friends would be allowed to read their work at all. The rest of us however, we write because we want to say something to the world. Even if only a few people listen - that makes us feel better, makes us feel more human.
I allow sharing because I want people to hear what I have to say not because I want them to pay for the privilege.

In fact, to be frank, I don't think any artist has the right to say otherwize. It is not a privilege to read a poem, or a book, or see a film. But it is a privilege for the artist to be seen or read !

Courtney Love said artists should realize they are not sellers of anything - because no matter how good your art, somebody else would be willing to do just as well or better for free, they are like waiters, and if people like a waiter, they tip. That is where an artist can make some
money - he gets 'tips' from those who feel his work has touched them.

It's not that unrealistic either. How many of you would go to a restaurant and not tip the waiter ? If it's obvious that the waiter has gone the extra mile to be the best waiter he could be ? Very, very few people are so miserly that they will refuse a tip - even a bad waiter gets a little tip, a good one gets good tips from nearly everybody.
So if I my poems touch you in some way, then that is wonderful, if you then feel I deserve a tip, that's really nice of you, but I don't expect you to do it. I want my poems to touch people - whether they love or hate them, if they just make them think that's a really big something !

I'm answering this question now because I get asked it a lot. To be honest though, the question actually makes very little sense to me. How can you ask me "how do you intend to make money" or "why would you give you work away ?" - I wasn't making any money when I wrote it. I wasn't making any money when I read it at poetry nights - the feedback of which was absolutely critically to helping me hone my craft, if I needed money to write I would never have written a single line - I write because I love writing, money isn't just unimportant to the discussion, it has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Glypho is a new site experimenting with collective authorship

2005-11-12T22:27:00.000+02:00

GLYPHO - http://www.glypho.com/

Introducing AJ's book "Batteries not included" and self-publishing with Lulu.com

2005-11-09T17:04:00.000+02:00

Batteries not included is AJ Venter's book :

"A selection of poems from up and coming South African author and poet A.J. Venter. A philosopher, programmer, free software and free culture advocate and above all human being, Venter writes about the world with honesty and integrity and publishes everything under creative commons licenses."

AJ's book is published under a Creative Commons license and is available at Lulu.com .

Click here to buy the book - a download version is also available.

AJ just got his ISBN number for the book which enables him to sell his book on Amazon.com.

He says on his blog :

"One of the prices you pay for self-publication is that you do everything yourself, and things take longer to complete. Although batteries not included has been in print since May, it is only now that I have finally completed the process of getting an ISBN number assigned (that's what you see above), which greatly increases it's ease of availability. The book will be on Amazon.com from tomorrow, and will appear in the Bowker's books in print database in about two weeks, from when you will be able to ask your local bookstore about getting you a copy. ....
..... Unfortunately, due to the cost passed on by outside distributors (a cost that comes out of my personal royalty), I was forced to increase the price just a litle (my orriginal royalty was in fact less than the cost of distribution), it's not a huge increase, and it was unpreventable, so those of you who got early copies scored a little bit.

Either way, the idea of soon being able to order my own book in any bookstore in the world is just so seriously cool!!! "

AJ used Lulu.com to "self-publish" his book:

Founded in 2002, Lulu is the web's premier independent publishing marketplace for digital do-it-yourselfers. It's the only place on the web where you can publish, sell and buy any and all things digital — books, music, comics, photographs, movies and well, you get the idea. We simply provide the tools that leave control of content in the hands of the people who created the content. You see, Lulu is a technology company, not a publisher. So you can use Lulu to publish and sell any kind of digital content, and no one here is going to ask you to change anything. Ever. Your vision is entirely YOURS. ( click to read more... )

Changes on the Amaranth site

2005-11-09T16:52:00.000+02:00

Netanya has worked on the site - she added a new slide show to the home page and added new products. Check out the latest version of the site here.

About Cymba and street trade

2005-10-29T07:50:00.000+02:00

Two days ago Netanya came to the cafe with Cymba who is a wire artist.

He sells his work on the streets of Potchefstroom.
Netanya spent some time explaining to him about ArtMarketOnline, using computers.

Netanya spent some time street trading and she knows how tough it is to try to make a living with walking around town selling your goods, as well as the obstacles that remove traders from their intended market.

Netanya aims to help as many street traders in this way as possible, once she has her own computer to travel with.

Click here to read her article on problems encountered during street trade and click here to read more about possible solutions to open your mind to a different view.

2005-10-25T18:50:00.000+02:00

ccMixter is a music sharing portal where you can find freely downloadable music samples and use it for your own remix and preferrably upload it back to the site so that others can also listen to your remixes and use your samples in their own compositions. For more info have a look at this FAQ page or this About page. ....

The Yfm remix competition has ended and the winner is King Babar.

The main ccMixter site announced the ccMixter II is here, click here to have a look.