April 14, 2005
Turbulence Spotlight: "VTMZ" by Victor Liu
http://turbulence.org/spotlight/liu/index.html

"VTMZ" began with the wish to open up an online space for shared music.
This wish was guided by certain key images: the street beatbox, the
church organ, carillon bells, the car radio, wind chimes, Muzak –
namely sources of musical performance and ambience which serve to create
temporary and fluid social zones in the public sphere. We may actively
engage ourselves in such shared music spaces, as when we crowd around a
street performer, or such zones may happen upon us by chance, as when a
bicyclist with a beatbox rides by. These impromptu performances entreat
their audiences, whether active or accidental, to recall a tune, feel
the beat, and enjoy the ambience.

This notion of a shared music space in the public sphere may seem quite
innocuous and well within the norms of civil activity, yet when the
public stage shifts to the internet, the activity of sharing music
becomes contested. Corporate interests such as the RIAA have used their
deep pockets to try to shut down any music distribution not expressly
authorized by the holders of copyrights. Their ham-fisted tactics
include: prohibitive fines on small-time net broadcasters; mass lawsuits
against casual music file sharers; lawsuits against companies whose
software allows transfer of music files; and software controls on music
files to lock them down to one machine.

The model Liu proposes with VTMZ, that of a higher-tech community organ
grinder, violates current copyright law in several ways, namely the
transfer of copyrighted materials from one machine to another, and the
unlicensed broadcast of copyright-protected songs (notwithstanding the
fact that the songs being broadcast are derivative versions). This
points to a deficiency in copyright law as it stands.

BIOGRAPHY

Victor Liu's work explores the expressive possibilities of computation.
In recent work, his focus has been on the intersection of computing and
cultural production, through the performance of computational transforms
on cultural datasets. These datasets have come from diverse sources, yet
all are chosen for their qualities as cultural touchstones: video clips
from television commercials and computer game cutscenes; Ronald Reagan's
famous "Evil Empire" speech and Google images; the Linux source code.
Liu received a 2004 Turbulence commission; his work has also been shown
at the American Museum of the Moving Image, and the Whitney Museum's
Artport.

For more Turbulence Spotlights, please visit
http://turbulence.org/spotlight/index.html

–
Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director
New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org
New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856
Turbulence: http://turbulence.org
New American Radio: http://somewhere.org
Networked_Performance Blog and Conference: http://turbulence.org/blog