keirdotnet . net | Projects | Oh so criminal

What, Why and How

Oh so criminal (4:26min 34.7Mb)

Oh so criminal was created as a response to the Australian Government's (in particular the Attorney-General's office) "Fair Use and Other Copyright Exceptions: An examination of fair use, fair dealing and other exceptions in the Digital Age" Issues Paper, provided in May 2005.

to quote: Some interest groups feel a copyright balance might be better maintained in a rapidly changing digital environment if the Copyright Act were to include an open-ended 'fair use' exception that would allow the courts to determine whether a particular use of copyright material is 'fair' and should be lawful. Others argue the present specific exceptions in the Act should be amended to make certain uses of copyright material lawful.

Instead of writing a wordy submission to the Government I decided to make an example of something that is currently illegal, but should be covered by 'fair use'.

This is done by explicitly abusing copyright of easily referenced popular culture audio and video icons. It features clearly identifiable content from Australia, UK and USA. Content such as commercial TV national news, pop music videos, anti-piracy propaganda, movies, pop songs, animations and even some b-grade TV acting I did.

The audio is greatly influenced by Michael Greene's speech about the death of music to the 2003 Grammy awards and the video by those ubiquitous MPAA anti-piracy ads.

Screenings/News

Oh so criminal was shown at Camera Obscura, Sydney's monthly experimental film and video night, September 2005.

Oh so criminal appeared in the Electrofringe festival's "ElectroProjections - The Remix Suite" screening, in Newcastle, Australia, 2nd of October 2005.

The video screened in Kinoki in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, September 2005.

Oh so criminal is going to be part of submedia's Molotov #2: "The Copyright Issues" DVD. Out some time in early/mid 2006.

Oh so criminal was selected by transmediale.06 to be part of their film and video programme. transmediale.06 was in Berlin, February 3-7 2006.

The Live Show

On Saturday the 16th of July, 2005, I performed a 35 minute "live" audio visual mashup show at Lanfranchi's Memorial Discotheque, in Sydney, Australia. Some 400 identifiable audio and video sources were used. The Oh so criminal video formed an intro to the A/V mashup of anime, music videos, movies, TV etc. A lot of which was lip-synced with strange and comic results. Download and DVD info below.

So far I've performed, somewhat improvised, versions of the live show in Sydney (Lanfranchis), Melbourne (303 in Northcote) and Newcaslte (Electrofringe Festival). If that interests you, email me.

Downloads

Here is the Oh so criminal (4:26min 34.7Mb) video, at a pretty good resolution. If you screen it somewhere, please let me know.

Thanks to the people who wrote in, here is the whole set at low-ish resolution:
Keir live at Lanfranchis (~35min ~160Mb)
All the downloads are mp4s which will play on any platform with VLC, or Quicktime7

The DVD

A DVD resolution version of the video, coupled with the live recording made on the 16th of July, is now available to buy. Please contact me on osc_dvd@keirdotnet.net to get a copy.

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