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:
- All media (photographs, recordings, music videos) must be made available somewhere online — in high-resolution form, downloadable and for free
- 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?
Whatcha Think?