August 31, 2006
Visible Evidence In Brazil
By
Katherine Dodds
Earlier this month I traveled to Sao Paulo and Rio, in Brazil, to participate in the Visible Evidence Documentary Conference. Invited by Concordia Communications Professors Liz Miller and Tim Scwhab to be part of their panel "Branding Politics — Emerging Forms of Distributing Political Documentaries", this was an opportunity to reflect on what we are trying to achieve with HelloCoolWorld and our work as idea distributors and net workers. (Or "discourse networkers" in more academic parlance!) Thanks to a travel grant from the Canada Council I was able to attend this conference and it was a real opportunity to think our collective project through in an inspiring setting.
Cinemateca, Sao Paulo
Tim and Liz – Branding Politics Panel.
Alluding to the underpinnings of what has come to be known today as "Web 2.0", and the strategic uses for what are becoming ever-more accessible media tools for media artists what I was trying to keep in play with my paper was the HOW the WHY, and the WHAT NEXT?
When I was first conceiving the talk I began to think of the very essence of the viral, which frankly is to create a space where things can get a little out of control. If they’re controllable they’re limited in how effective they can be. Out of control is the very definition of viral. Of course this breeds terror in those who seek to control information and the rights around it’s release.
On the long flight to Sao Paulo I cruised again through a small text by Felix Guattari: Chaosmosis. In it I found a passage that stuck me as particularly prescient:
"Rather than adopting a reticent attitude with respect to the machinic revolution sweeping the planet (at the risk of destroying it) or of clinging onto traditional systems of value — with the pretence of re-establishing transcendence — the movement of progress — or if one prefers the movement of process, will endeavor to reconcile values and machines. ... All systems of value — religious, aesthetic, scientific, ecosophic ... install themselves at this machinic interface between the necessary actual and the possibilist virtual."
What our collective panel "Branding Politics – Emerging Forms of Distributing Political Documentaries" explored was the intersection of practicality and desire for social outcome that those involved in the making of political films invariably find themselves debating, and literally, laboring over.
And the Corporation is no exception. My return to Canada marked the beginning of the viral seeding of The Corporation official "share ware" version. Masterminded by Mark Achbar, and HelloCoolWorld architect David Griffith, this project has only just begun. In blogs to come I want to discuss the complex interplay of forces that enliven this process, and most particularly how we at HelloCoolWorld.com want to use this new momentum to spearhead our own efforts to develop, and launch a Campaign for Corporate Harm Reduction.
HelloCoolWorld.com is an evolving idea distribution network and an application. It is also an experiment in new media forms and functions. There is a buzz about social network sites these days ... but what we are up to moving from the mere sites of online social interaction to building social value net workers.
The mission of Hello Cool World is to build a sustainable assisted dissemination model to help independent creators, in all media, to not only get their work out — but to get the ideas that inform and define their work into a public arena of discourse, all the while maximizing social change potential.
So in effect, Hello Cool World becomes a flexible platform for experimentation in the ways in which we can assist filmmakers, distributors, grassroots and political organizations, and ourselves, to sustain the spread of ideas and to maximize their potential for social outcome.
Since this blog is long overdue—rather than force it into a quick conclusion – I’d like to frame some questions (and invite debate) around the nature of economic distribution models in this neo-age of mechanical reproduction. What indeed is to be done to see that cultural producers survive, to build new economic models, and to maximize the power of (all) media to inspire social change?
Need Homework?
Consider these symbols from Creative Commons, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/,
and how reconsidering copyright and other paradigms of "rights management" frame how we conceive of distribution this is the very core of what is at stake as we envision, and enact new ways of distributing ideas
Xok@t
To be continued....
Tag(s):
Hello Cool World,
Strategy,
Technology,
Rights Management,
Alternative Economics
Recent Blogs by Katherine Dodds:
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Katherine Dodds AKA "Kat" is the founder of Good Company Communications and HelloCoolWorld.com. Trained in renegade advertising & branding through her work with Adbusters in the '90s, Kat's early induction into the possibilities of the web-world was inspired by the term hypertext, which she immediately found comforting. She is dedicated to cause-related communication and to the development and use of tools that promote democratic processes.
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