the dotmatrix project

Photo by Stephen Charles

The exhibit… is up.

That was only a few months in the making.

This Friday night @ The Green Bean is the exhibit’s opening, featuring the music of past DMP performers: Laurelyn Dossett, Mr. Rozzi and Eating The Invaders. We’re also going to screen a slew of DMP music videos created by the ever talented All Aces Media, Ioannis Batsios, Jason Marc Pierce, Jennifer Graves, Bret Jones and Michael McQueen.

As far as the exhibit goes, we have 29 large format photographs on display, shot by 9 local photographers across 8 monthly shows, which will stay on the walls until September 27th.

Friday night, the entire month… it’s our way of both celebrating and promoting the talent found within our own community.

We do hope you can come out and enjoy it with us.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t introduce our featured photographers, so here they are:

DMP PHOTOGRAPHERS (These are the folk who signed up with us to shoot specific shows and then uploaded their high-res shots to the DMP flickr photostream under a Creative Commons license, which in turn furthers our mission)
		Kevin Belton flickr account Email | Voice: 336.816.8571 Kevin is a professional product photographer for the High Point furniture industry, second camera for John Leonard Photography for weddings and special events. He has been shooting themed based ideas in the last year or so featuring addiction, fashion, and music. Art is his passion and the camera is his medium.
		Stephen Charles CharlesMedia Photography Email | Voice: 336.682.9517 Stephen Charles began taking photographs in 1983 with a 35mm Canon Sure Shot. With the advent of Digital SLRs he has pursued photography as a growing passion, with a desire for letting candid captured moments tell the story.
		Jessi Hagood Jessi Hagood Photography Email Jessi Hagood is a native of Eden, NC and works primarily in the Greensboro area as a Wedding and Portrait Photographer. Recently her work has involved photographing Bodybuilding and Figure Competitions, soon to be featured in Muscle and Fitness Magazine and in an upcoming episode of MTV Made.
		Doug Klesch Doug Klesch Photography Email | Voice: 336.542.3071 Doug is a refugee from the cubicle farms of corporate America. Failing to have sapped all creative energy from him over more than a decade, his overlords released him back to the world. He gratefully returns wielding a camera.
		Elizabeth Lemon Elizabeth Lemon Photography Email | Voice: 719.244.3518 A recent graduate from the photography program at Randolph Community College, Elizabeth is adjusting to life outside a classroom. She is pursuing fine art and documentary photography with rediscovered inspiration and a tool box of new knowledge.
		Alex Maness Alex Maness Photography Email | Voice: 336.707.6121 Alex Maness, local boy done good, likes to travel and explore, but keeps Greensboro, NC as his center of gravity. He runs a photography business shooting for magazines and advertisers, as well as his own documentary projects.
		Mark Smith flickr account Email | Voice: 336.414.4721 Mark’s first inkling that photography could be fun was when his parents brought out the dreaded slides of their jaunts overseas. Once Mark could afford it, he bought a Pentax ME Super and “that was that.” These days, Mark happily takes sports and beach pictures as well as the live music events at DMP.
COMMUNITY PHOTOGRAPHERS (Talented, local photogs who came out to shows and documented the evening)
		Carolyn de Berry Carolyn de Berry Photography | Email Monkeywhale Productions | Email A Connecticut native and graduate of Guilford College and the Commercial Photography Program at Randolph Community College, Carolyn is a freelance photographer and assistant living in Greensboro, NC. She is also the production photographer and studio manager for Monkeywhale Productions.
		Allen Martin MartiniVision Email | Voice: 917.687.1912 Greensboro native Allen Martin is a photographer and designer who has recently relocated back to his home town after 18 years in NYC. A camera owner since adolescence, for the last several years Allen has focused on fashion, fine art and entertainment photography.

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

• Katie Southard, Owner of The Green Bean
• Elizabeth Lemon, for matting, framing and curating the show
• Laurelyn Dossett, Mr. Rozzi and Eating The Invaders, for generously donating their talent at the exhibit opening
• Don Ravon for running sound at the exhibit opening
• Don Ravon & Dan Bayer for mixing the music video tracks
• Ioannis Batsios, Blake Faucette, Michael McQueen and Bret Jones for scrambling to produce their music videos on time
• Andy Coon for helping prep the music video DVD
• Allen Martin for the beautiful show poster
• All of our talented photographers, many of whom aren’t represented in this show. You can see their all of their work at our flickr spot

A SUPER SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR FRAME SPONSORS:

• Mark Wagoner Productions
  Email | Voice: 888.854.0406
• 243 Framing
  243 E. Salisbury St., Asheboro, NC. 27203
  336.629.5101
• Martin’s Frame and Art
  336.274.2426

Photo by Mark Smith

After two wild months of hard-rocking and hell-raising tunes, the dotmatrix project got a little mellow for the month of February.  The audience buzzed with a cool anticipation as Bruce Piephoff and a small orchestra of musicians took the stage to kick off the eleventh DMP show.

Photo by Mark Smith

Bruce has been around a while and he’s got plenty of music to show for it.  He dipped into his collection and pulled out several great tunes for us here at DMP.  His set included a song referencing his time in Texas (Rosalita), one about a local basball hero (Big Foot In The Door), and a tune about a one-time Tate St. staple known as the Nightshade Cafe (Old Crow).  Check them out, along with the rest of Bruce’s live album, on Amiestreet or Last.FM.  For the newbies, here’s our promo entrance page to sign up for an account with Amiestreet and receive free money to support our local artists.

One more thing…

This is the first DMP album to be mastered thanks to the gentlemen at Studio 4.  Bruce likes it.  We like it.  I’m pretty sure you will, too.

ALBUM CREDITS
Recording Engineers: Don Ravon, Dan Bayer
Mixing Engineers: Dan Bayer, Cesar Oviedo
Mastering Engineers: Cesar Oviedo
Cover Design: Sean Coon
Cover Photograph: Elizabeth Lemon

We here at DMP are stoked to announce a partnership with Prez (owner) and Cesar Oviedo (chief engineer) at Studio 4, also based here in Greensboro, NC.

Looks like Cesar is happy too.

Here’s the press release:

Greensboro, N.C. – Local music media group, the dotmatrix project, is teaming up with Studio 4. This relationship will combine the recording and mixing expertise of DMP engineers, Dan Bayer & Don Ravon, with the mixing and mastering expertise of Studio 4, all at an exclusive discount to the featured musicians.

The DMP is a collective of musicians, photographers, videographers and sound engineers who put on and document live shows. Each month they rotate in original acts from Greensboro and surrounding counties in North Carolina. To date, the media team numbers more than 40 all-volunteer participants.

“The partnership falls into our plan of establishing relationships with local businesses that share our vision of building community around local, original musicians,” says Sean Coon, the executive producer for the dotmatrix project. “Until this partnership, the best live album we could produce was a high-quality, multi-track mix. The staff at Studio 4 brings 20 years of mastering expertise to the table with chief engineer Cesar Oviedo and, along with our engineers, a deeper, more fine-tuned final mix. We want our participating artists to be able to use their live album to book gigs or sell at shows, so the pressure is always on us to replicate the sound and vibe of a live show the best we can.”

Owner of Studio 4 Prez is excited about this effort, as it will increase the amount of local musician recording at his studio. “Our studio looks to be a thriving source of recording, mixing, and mastering for local and non local musicians alike,” Prez says. Studio 4 is a professional music recording and film production studio based out of Greensboro.

For inquires about the dotmatrix project, contact Sean Coon: sean@dotmatrixproject.com
For Studio 4 inquiries, contact Prez: prez.psyoptic@gmail.com

There are two specific elements of this partnership that I want to explicitly highlight for past and future bands:

1. Quality
   We were proud of our recordings prior to this arrangement, but quite honestly, the potential quality of our live albums has now been drastically improved. Don’t just take my word for it, listen to the difference yourself in these two versions of Bruce Piephoff’s track, Notes From Knoxville (live @ DMP):
    

   The original DMP mix:

   Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

   Mix collaboration with Studio 4 w/ album mastering:

   Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

   The differences in vocal levels, the new found twang in the guitar, the violin’s sweeping song, the umph of the upright bass — it really is an amazing improvement.

2. Cost
   Prez is a big supporter of local independent artists, so he was willing to provide these services at a ridiculously low, bargain basement price that allows each and every DMP musician to participate, from the veteran players to the garage rockers. As long as the artists are serious about the project and invest studio time to get the mix/master done right the first time through, the cost stays nominal. Guaranteed.

   It really is a sweet deal.

If you have a partnership idea that could serve you/your company well while positively adding to our project, definitely hit me up.

Yes, the DMP is about putting on shows.

We’ve packed the house many a night while exposing the talents of kick ass local musicians playing their originals — no matter the perceived popularity or status of the act, we get them on. Within this process, we’ve also been able to create participatory opportunities for local photographers and film makers and sound engineers to do what they do best; documenting and crafting the world around them in ways that only they can.

While music is absolutely where the heart of the project lies, as the people come out first and foremost to both hear and see the musicians cut loose, the active involvement of the media crew does serve as an experience layer of both professionalism and intrigue to our audiences.

It really is something different.

Once the stage is broken down and the crowd goes home, the documentation of the evening’s performance serves as a memory seal of sorts, keeping the freshness of the night intact for all to experience down the road. And whether a music video is discovered by a teenager surfing YouTube on South Elm Street or a lawyer who stumbles across a sick shot while accessing flickr at his flat in the UK, the talent within a small venue in a small town receives the legs for global discovery.

Photo by Elizabeth Lemon

As exciting as the concept of documentation and exposure might seem when community begins to form around artists, such a degree of community still only speaks to a linear exchange of bytes and bits across the web. Or to be metaphorical, similar to the download of experience from performer to audience.

Now, what if the audience could join in on the performance itself?

With the current advancement of this internet — where “2.0″ has already become a ubiquitous descriptor for the sharing and re-contextualizing of data across brands — and with access to media creation tools at an all-time high, such a binary metaphor as above only serves as a first definition of “community” within a netizen-driven dictionary that’s still being written.

So where to next?

Creative Building Blocks

The most interesting angle of this project, as far as I’m concerned, is the potential for building community (i.e. fans, interest, attention, etc.) around these amazingly talented creators in ways that you or I would never even dream of. That said, my interest isn’t in defining how that community forms or ensuring that the building occurs in a specific way… or even at all.

We make DMP media available at specific spots around the web for download, but our control ends with that point of accessibility.

By licensing all of our work under a Creative Commons (CC) license — one that allows non-commercial share-alike reuse and remixing with attribution — DMP participants are continuously contributing creative material, with structured data of attribution, location and subject matter, to the commons; material that is optimized for discovery (check out the results for a “greensboro music” search on flickr), to then be enjoyed and potentially shared and/or re-purposed out of a person’s connection with both the media and its subject matter.

If you’re not familiar with Creative Commons, this short video will fill in the gaps:

Essentially, we’ve designed the parameters of our project to allow 16-year old Billy Nelson in Austin, Texas to mashup a track by The Bronzed Chorus with one by Laurelyn Dossett, while using DMP show pictures to use as b-roll for the music video.

Now will that exact scenario ever happen? I don’t know. But why on Earth would we want to license against such creativity, especially when the newly crafted creative work would point more people in the direction of the original musicians and photographers involved in the piece?

I want to welcome a “Billy” with open arms into the DMP collective without even a hint of stodginess or protectionism. The same goes to a blogger who embeds our media in a post to expose the talent of the artists involved.

As a result of such an open approach, we have two primary rules for participating with DMP:

1. All media (photographs, recordings, music videos) must be made available somewhere online — in high-resolution form, downloadable and for free
2. All media must be licensed with the aforementioned CC terms to define usage rights and to protect our creators’ rights

This doesn’t toss out the right of the media creator or band to sell their work, but it does give the rest of the world the ability to share the work within different contexts.

And The Audience Goes *Snap!*

Some people — especially those who have have made a living shooting over the years — tend to find these two rules to be game stoppers of sorts. They consider everything they shoot to be a monetized effort, so there isn’t much middle ground when it comes to redefining copyright, freeing up access, etc… which is actually ok.

We’re more than happy to see photographers who hold these beliefs come out to shoot shows without participating in the upload part of the project. We consider them to be “audience plus” — music lovers and media creators who are benefiting themselves and everyone involved. While we can’t include them in on the promotional perks that participating photogs enjoy, we welcome them just the same.

As a matter of fact, we encourage everyone at a show with a cell phone to a DSLR to participate and spread the media love within their own networks. We want as many people as possible shooting and uploading to the web, making it clear that Greensboro has a music scene to check out.

Because, in the end, what else do we have but the communities that we are a part of?

Chuck Folds on bass with Tim Poole filling… Amplify This.

For more of Alex’s work, check out his photography site.

Amplify This, people.

More of Jason’s work can be see at his flickr spot.

Shayne O’Neill letting it rip on the mic.

Check out Doug Klesch Photography for more of his work.

If you don’t know Durham’s The Wigg Report, well, you’re missing out.

For more of Jason’s work, check out his flickr spot.

Shayne O’Neill, the man behind FKoN, belts out another classic.

Check out more of Alex’s work at his website.

Ben, Stephen & Christine are The Wigg Report.

Check out more of Alex’s work at his site.