**** please spread ***

_Degradarte
_Call for submissions

1.
choose a copyright protected artwork (video, images, music, text...)

2.
degrade it, applying one or more digital processes to reduce its
qualities (resolution, sampling frequency, text readability, depending
on the media type)

3.
make sure that the original object is recognizable in the finished work,
and that it is suitable to be shown on a webpage

4.
send it to us!


We invite all new media artists to participate, exhibiting and
discussing their degraded works of art at the lab

DegradArte
[http://lab.nova100.ilsole24ore.com/degradarte]



_What is 'Degradarte'?


A work of 'Degradarte' is a work of art (images, music, poetry...)
created in conformance with the Italian proposed law S1861.

[ http://www.interlex.it/testi/s1861.htm ]


This new law, formulated with the consulency of a permanent advisory
committee on copyright (composed by politicians, academics, rights
management companies such as the italian SIAE and FIMI, and, for the
first time, members of the panorama of the digital associations,
represented by members of the Frontiere Digitali network), states, at
the article 2 comma 1-bis:

'The publishing of low resolution or degraded versions of protected
images and sounds is allowed in the Internet Network, free of charge,
for scientific and educational use, as long as this use is not aimed at
profit'

The legislator states, in this way, a principle of 'negative
aesthetics': the degrade is the constraint to bear for the free
diffusion of a work of art.

But the degrading process imposed by this law can be used as a euristic
creative process, giving life to freely avaliable works of art:

from degrading art, to the art of degrading!

And it's not all. The only apparently simple statement affirmed by the
italian legislator is a truly problematic one.

On one side the problem is the evaluation of the level of 'degrading' of
contents, keeping an eye on the technological evolution (eg.: what was,
only a few months ago, 'high resolution', can easily be, today, in 'low
resolution'), the compression technologies, the possibilities offered by
the new media in terms of reproduction of digital contents, and in
video, image, sound and text processing.

On the other side we need to look at artworks in their essence: music,
image, and text require specific degrading processes, and each of them
is connected to specific aspects of their communicative and
informational processes.

This reform attempt performed by the italian institutions puts us in the
conditions to start a debate on the 'degradability' of a digitally
reproduced work of art. A work of art that is digitally distributed is,
as a matter of fact, 'degraded' in nature (compressed, sampled,
scannerized...)

A brand new aesthetic and semiotic research movement is born. We want to
investigate on the methodologies, techniques and theories to create
and/or re-elaborate works of art to produce new ones conformant to the
requisites for degradation needed for their free circulation on the
Internet.

As required by the law.


_How to participate

To participate, send an email to contatti@degradarte.org containing your
degraded art work (or a link so that we can download it ) together with

- a short description of the work and of the degrading processes used
(about/maximum 200 words);
- a short personal presentation.


The works will be hosted at the 'Degradarte' laboratory

[ http://lab.nova100.ilsole24ore.com/degradarte ]


they will be collected and published on the website

[ http://www.degradarte.org ]

they will be judged and presented in a public event in Italy (jury, date
and location are being determined in these days)

Source : NetBehaviour