Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, un pionnier des musiques électroniques
Le 5 décembre dernier, le monde de la musique s’est soudain retrouvé privé d’un de ses plus grands contributeurs de ces cinquante dernières années.Compositeur visionnaire, Karl-Heinz Stockhausen a été l’un des tout premiers à sentir l’importance créative du médium électronique dans la musique contemporaine du XXème siècle et à l’utiliser dans des compositions souvent singulières, parfois risquées mais toujours en avance sur leur temps.
The fourth global summit dedicated to the Creative Commons licenses (CC) was held from the 29th of July until the 1st of August in the Convention Center of Sapporo, Japan. Recently, this city of two millions residents had welcomed the G8. The Mayor, Sir Fumio Ueda, has made all the city’s infrastructures available for the iSummit participants, showing that the summit has become the incontrovertible world-wide event concerning the rights management’s future.
A Qwartz delegation has attended the summit and presented the Qwartz project, thanks to the French government [Prime Minister François Fillon and Culture & Communication Ministry]. Alexandre Grauer, the founder, Clémence Seurat, his assistant, and Patrick Aglaé, international development’s representative, were present.
First of all, we’d like to thank the Creative Commons organization and the City of Sapporo for their welcome and the event organization.
The summit has gathered the international network of Creative Commons, national satellites (United States, Australia, South Africa, Brasilia, Japan, Korea, Taïwan, Netherlands, Danmark, France, Germany, Serbia, Russia and so on) as well as the people involved in free culture (artists, searchers, jurists, businessmen, visionaries).
Conferences dedicated to free culture, CC licenses, their development and their implementations in various domains such as music, video, education, society, technology, were held every day. An important part of the days was dedicated to labs that permitted to bring a small group of people to think about a precise subject related to CC licenses: workshops, think thanks.
All pictures CC licenced by-nc-nd
II Qwartz: intervention and networking
Qwartz took part during the whole week the open business lab. This was the frame to exchange points of view and have interesting discussions in small group about the open business. We tried to define and understand what the open business is, that is to say, its mechanisms, its values, its implementations.
Alexandre Grauer introduced Qwartz during the lab, as an economical implementation of open business and Creative Commons (CC) licenses. We were pleased to observe the good welcome of our project. Our model, as a world-wide network and a support to independent artists and labels throughout the organization of an Award Ceremony and an international Market, has sounded original and relevant.
During the whole summit, we were glad to meet people more or less from Qwartz network. Our journey to Sapporo sounded even more relevant!
David Jimenez & Luis Patron from the Mexican label Discos Konfort, former winners of the Qwartz compilation (Edition 1)
Friends of Lawrence English, former Qwartz nominee. That is to say: CC Australia members, Rachel Cobcroft and Elliott Bledsoe, and Andrew Garton, Australian artist who performed many times with him.
Jon Philipps, CC US member and musician, is a close friend of Taylor Deupree, Président d’Honneur of the fifth Qwartz edition, a colleague of Christian Virant of FM3, prize-winner of the 3rd edition (Qwartz Max Mathews) and of Matmos, nominees of the 3rd edition.
Vladan Jeremic, working for Indietronic and the Slobodna Kultura in Serbia, knows Enki Bilal, President of the current Jury, and Goran Vejvoda, Qwartz’ Advisory Council member.
Terre Thaemlitz, American musician and performer based in Tokyo, has released on the German label Mille Plateaux. The label participated to the international Forum last year and won a prize (Qwartz Album).
We were also very honoured to meet Lawrence Lessig, the world-recognized law professor who founded the CC licenses.
III Developments
All the meetings and connexions we made during the summit permitted us to consider various developments for Qwartz.
A Qwartz satellite in South Africa
We have recently opened a branch in Perth, Australia, run by Alexis Courtin, former Qwartz collaborator. He will benefit of all the Australian connexions we made at the summit and he will be able to work closely with CC Australia.
Following this model, Qwartz is going to create a satellite in South Africa. James Cairns and Lanon Prigge, of CC South Africa, want to take part the project. They have already started to contact potential partners and they study the opportunities to materialize the idea.
Reinforcement of the relationships with Japan
Qwartz is already ‘Official Event of the 150th anniversary of the relationships between France and Japan’. Last year, we have invited four Japanese labels on the international Forum in the Cirque d’Hiver. Qwartz organizes for next April a Japanese village in the frame of the international Forum that will be held on the 3rd and 4th April 2009 in Cirque d’Hiver in Paris. iSummit permitted us to connect with new Japanese actors: artists, labels, festivals, who might be interested by the village. The goal is to organize a duplex between Paris and Japan in April 2009.
CC village
The international Forum will welcome a village dedicated to the Creative Commons licenses. To meet the coordinators of the different CC national satellites was of course very relevant. Presentations, conferences and practical examples of CC economical implementations will take place during the two days.
iSummit permitted us to measure the efficiency of our project, by listening different implementation models. The discussions about the music’s economy with Japanese actors confirmed our idea: in Japan, the global sales of independent labels are still growing unlike the majors’ sales. The reason is that Japanese labels almost publish limited editions (often 3000 copies), on the contrary to majors.
