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A Cultural Commons
Ben White and Eileen Simpson created the Open Music Archive to distribute music that no longer has copyright protection. Their project looks at ways you can distribute your work but still control some of its uses.
One of five short films, by Artquest's ArtlawTV channel, exploring legal aspects of contemporary artistic practice through interviews with artists and arts professionals.
Eileen Simpson and Ben White work at the intersection of art, music and information networks. Their projects are situated within the current discourse surrounding the porting of Free/Libre and Open Source software models to wider creative contexts. They seek to challenge conventional mechanisms for the authorship, ownership and distribution of culture - particularly through working with archive material.
Their ongoing project Open Music Archive is a collaborative initiative to source, digitise and distribute out-of-copyright sound recordings. The project collects works that are not owned by any one individual but held in common. The archive forms a site of exchange of material and is a vehicle for future collaborations and projects.
Recent projects include: Parallel Anthology for 17th Biennale of Sydney; Struggle in Jerash at Gasworks, London, The Brilliant and The Dark at The Women's Library, London; and Free-to-air at ICA, London and Cornerhouse, Manchester.
Their new film project Auditory Learning explores archive material and the tensions surrounding the multiple rights embedded within audio recordings. The project is in development with support from FLAMIN and MIRIAD.
Artists: Eileen Simpson and Ben White
Art lawyer: Henry Lydiate
Camera: Donald Bousted
Sound: Christian Burnett
Post production: Best Bits Media
Written and produced by: Lubna Gem Arielle
Commissioned by Artquest
Filmed at the English Folk Dance and Song Society
Artlaw TV
ArtlawTV is an ongoing series of short films commissioned by Artquest to explore many of the legal issues that artists face when making, showing, selling or distributing their work, presented through actual artistic practice.
First published: a-n.co.uk July 2011
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