The final Jurassic Lounge for this season is coming up next Tuesday! Come down to see DJ/VJ sets by eightfilters and subpixel, and a hiphop flavoured set from Xav from Decoder Ring. Acid Stag will be DJing in the Indigenous Australia room. Also check out VJ Sustenance and her VJ guitar! Live V-tar AV set at Zeropoint, Oxford Art Factory, 4-8-2011 from vj sustenance on Vimeo.
More+eight filters are proud to present Parking Sun and Jean Poole at Jurassic Lounge tonight! rafter rat ball by parking sun
More+Tobias Buckell has a very measured look at ebook piracy. You should read the whole article, but this section interested me: Consider hoarders. These are pirates who literally attempt to find every single book online that they can. These pirates are well documented. They’re obsessive collectors, list makers, compelled by something other than a love of literature. They do read many books, but when you see someone in a forum bragging about acquiring thousands of books a month, you’re not seeing someone who was going to be buying thousands of books had you only figured out how to wave a wand and banish piracy. So assuming all downloads are lost sales is a very dogmatic position to take. Not all downloads are lost sales. As ebooks become more common, I wonder how much the performative and aesthetic aspects of book purchasing and display will change. I have an enormous bookshelf...
More+A List Apart: Articles: The Content Strategist as Digital Curator NYTimes.com Topics employs content managers who sift through The Times’ archive to create new meaning by grouping articles and resources that were filed away (or distributed to library databases). Apart from sounding like a dream job for a news nerd like myself, this is exactly the kind of 'sense-making' journalism I was trying to get at in my honours thesis. I really need to take that thesis and update it.
More+Actually a short prediction: I wouldn't be surprised to see a few pure digital ebook publishers - particularly in sci-fi, fantasy and crime genres - really take off this year. $2-3 novellas, $5 novels, fast fun stuff you can read on the bus. It'll also be a rich ground for film purchasing rights. By 2012 I reckon we'll see the first breakout author who's blown up via ebook publishing, probably young adult genre fiction. UPDATE Twilight is a possible model for the big ebook star. Find something that resonates with teen girls - doesn't have to be well written, but has to hit that sweet spot of teen longing without triggering parental outrage - sell it with minimal transational friction (no DRM) and let the teen market sell to itself. Make out like bandits on merch and film rights, sell micro-cost supplemental materials. Maybe even a submarket of approved fan-fic...
More+This is an interesting take on the future of editing and publishing, in the context of the move to digital publication and the associated business disruption that will come with it. These days, there is a debate going on about the value of the publisher in the larger scheme of things. Facilitated by the Internet, and the vast amount of easy-to-use tools at everyone's disposal, everyone can be a publisher. So, why do we need publishing houses to buy content, produce it, manufacture it, and sell it? What, at the fundamental level, does a publisher do that is worth the money they take off the top? Shouldn't the content creator reap all the financial benefits of their work? One response to this debate is that a publisher is a curator. While true in some respects, I don't think this is the ultimate response. In fact, the role of the publisher...
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