In 2002, I was part of the planning group — along with Robert Ransick, Katie Salen, Marina Zurkow, and a few others — for the conference Blur 02: Power at Play in Digital Art and Culture, co-developed by NYC’s arts org Creative Time and the New School University. (Visible in the CT photo: Clay Shirky, Meg Hourihan, who went on to found the ur-blogging company Blogger), and Natalie Jeremijenko, among others.) At the time, my constellation of interests was pretty unusual — notably European arts activism and US telecoms policy — so I brought an unusual group of people to the conference, among them the activists Alan Toner and James Love. With Jamie J. King and Richie Hawtin (who then worked under the name Plastikman), we formed a group that sought to radically rethink the relationship between music and money at the dawn of P2P sharing. Sara Diamond, an important curator at the Banff Centre in Canada later invited us there to further develop and present the idea. Jamie Love’s documentation of the proposal and its later circuitous influence can be found here:
- “The Blur Banff proposal” (2013)
- “Blur 02 | Power at Play in Digital Art and Culture (April 11-13, 2002) User Experience” (at Blur, 2002)
- “How should musicians be paid to create digital works?” (at Banff, 2002)
- “An Essential Health Care Patent Pool” (Barcelona, 2002)