Creating in a Commons: Conversations with Creative Commons and Disquiet Junto

Kat Walsh from Creative Commons joins us to talk about the history of Creative Commons as a 'hack on copyright.' Marc Weidenbaum speaks on the history of the Disquiet Junto, a long-running online distributed community creating new music in response to a weekly online composition challenge.

Episode notes, credits and transcript

In this season of the podcast we’re working in collaboration with the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at NYU Law. In addition to our usual crop of artists and programmers we’re adding in legal scholars to help us unpack some of the thorny issues for those working in art and code as they unleash their work into the world.

In this episode we dive into the world of Creative Commons, which is now over 20 years old. It is both an organization as well as a collection of copyright licenses used by artists, musicians, writers, directors and creators worldwide to communicate to the world how they want their work shared and potentially to be used as a source to build upon.

We also speak to Marc Weidenbaum, founder and steward of the Disquiet Junto, an online “community of practice.” Each week Marc sends out an email newsletter with a creative prompt, consisting of a title, and instructions. These instructions may read like a Fluxus event score, a recipe in sound, a concept or technical description. Those who choose to participate create a single piece of music, then post it online, to be shared, listened to and potentially discussed by the online community. Marc has been leading Disquiet Junto since 2012, and from the beginning has encouraged participants to share their work with Creative Commons licenses. In fact the creative re-use of Creative Commons licensed sound and music has often been an integral part of Disquiet Junto creative prompts.

Guests

Kat Walsh is the General Counsel at Creative Commons. She has a nearly 20-year history in the free and open culture movements, including many years on the boards of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Free Software Foundation, and has previously worked in library policy, technology startups, and online community management. As General Counsel, she oversees the legal support for all aspects of CC’s activities, provides strategic input, leads the stewardship of CC’s legal tools, and advises the organization on new programmatic initiatives.

image description: a black and white image of Marc looking to the right. He has dark hair and a close cropped beard, wearing a high collared knit sweater and black frame glasses.

Marc Weidenbaum founded the website Disquiet.com in 1996 at the intersection of sound, art, and technology, and since 2012 has moderated the Disquiet Junto, an active online community of weekly music/sonic projects that explore constraints as a springboard for creativity and productivity.

Links

Creative Commons Licenses and Tools

Creative Commons talks with Marc Weidenbaum

Email announcement list for the Disquiet Junto

Marc’s website Disquiet, on the intersection of sound, art and technology

Credits

Our audio production is by Max Ludlow. Design by Caleb Stone.

Our music on today’s episode is all taken from Creative Commons licensed music created as part of the Disquiet Junto.

all at fives, sixes and sevens by wasabicube, CC BY NC SA. three euclidean rhythms, CC BY NC SA, by Lee Evans/Hippies Wearing Muzzles, both from disquiet0567 Three Meters.

Ways, CC BY NC SA, by the artist analoc for disquiet0482 Exactly That Gap.

Little Green Aura, CC BY NC SA, by he_nu_ri and lako by Ohm Research, for disquiet0566 Outdoor Furniture Music

four voice folly by caustic_gates, CC BY NC SA, part of disquiet0565 Musical Folly

much too young to…, CC BY, by NolanVerde for disquiet0066 Communing with Nofi, a posthumous collaboration with the artist Jeffrey Melton, aka Nofi, who passed in 2013.

This episode is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0