Freelance pianist David J. Hahn has written a nice article over at MusicianWages.com. Here’s an excerpt:
...we’re all concerned about how musicians are going to make a living with all this music flying around for free, and it’s definitely a legitimate concern.
But consider this – “professional musician” wasn’t a career created by the phonograph. The musician industry has been around as long as humans have, but recorded music is, relatively, a very new invention. Mozart never sold a record. Beethoven never released an album. Yet they made careers as musicians.
What if we’re just coming out of a prolonged, 100-year tech bubble for the music industry? What if the easy money of the record-selling days is gone, and we’re back to selling live performance and commissioned compositions just like things were before the bubble?
(Via @EFF.)
Welcome to the first issue of Metamorphosis, a blog carnival; it’s a fairly meager entry, as it is the first. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy the content that is rounded up below, and please do consider submitting your relative content for the next edition, which will be posted on or around the first of September. For submission guidelines and information, see this entry.
Art
The origami of Sipho Mabona @ David Airey
“Sipho Mabona, a young artist currently residing in Switzerland, was commissioned by ad agency Nordpol+ Hamburg to design and create the origami models for this stunning five-minute video.”
15 Examples of Awesome Automotive Art @ Web Urbanist
I think the title explains it all. Some of these are very creative!
Historical Tree House, Fort, Restaurant & Resort Designs @ Dornob
I don’t care if it’s childish. I still want a tree house!
Storyboarding @ Behind the Medium
Pictures from Andrew Archer’s personal storyboarding work.
New Media
DRM for news? Inside the AP’s plan to “wrap” its content @ Ars Technica
“The Associated Press, reeling from the newspaper apocalypse, has a new plan to ‘wrap’ and ‘protect’ its content though a ‘digital permissions’ framework. But there’s (way) less here than meets the eye.”
100 Tips and Tools to Reinvent Your Career @ Job Profiles
This huge lists contains categorized links to help you find jobs, organize your finances, go back to school, network and more. This is a good and practical example of how the web has changed the way we go about things. There are tools listed for everyone.
Education
A high school’s leap from so-so to special @ Las Vegas Sun
“Five years ago, only 44 percent of Valley’s juniors passed the state’s math proficiency test. This year nearly 80 percent did.” The reason? Smaller learning groups, after-school tutoring sessions and more work on fundamental skills.
How to Lick a Slug @ NYTimes.com
The 100 Best Open Source Education Resources on the Web @ Master Degree Online
While not a fan of the term “best” in lists like these, this link does provide an excellent roundup of some of the open source educational resources that are available. It might take some digging around, but if you’re wanting to find free educational materials for your classroom or for your own learning, you’re almost sure to find something within these sites.
50 Tips & Tricks for Researching with Bing @ Becoming a Computer Technician
I’m a self-proclaimed Googlephile, so I haven’t caught the Bing bug, but I do notice many are coming to this website through Bing. Considering that, I thought some of you might find this link informative.
I’m a pretty big fan of Michael Wesch, a professor at Kansas State University and the owner of the Digital Ethnography blog. Perhaps it’s his background in anthropology, but I feel Wesch is one of the few digital media professors who truly understands new media, simply due to his willingness to dive right in, rather than simply write reports. In my own media degree, I had far too many lecturers telling me things about new media that I knew were untrue. This was all because they’d only ever read about the tools in books, not experienced them.
Below is a video of Wesch’s recent talk at the Personal Democracy Forum 2009 (or PDF2009). Personal Democracy is an annual conference about how technology is changing politics. Michael Wesch’s 30-minute keynote speech at the forum discusses some basic sociological theories, history of the words “whatever” and “meh,” and how people use YouTube to connect to others and comment on the world. For those concerned, it also happens to be a funny and enjoyable talk, so don’t worry that your eyes will glaze over five minutes into it. I wouldn’t subject you to anything like that!
If you enjoyed this video, consider subscribing to Michael Wesch‘s or Personal Democracy‘s YouTube channels.
