RYNSA: WORDS

According to this Boing Boing post from last week, ccMixter is now planning on leaving Creative Commons to reform as an independent project of its own, and they’re looking for someone to lead the team. They’ve graciously opened up the project coordinator search process to include us everyday folks. So get those brilliant project proposals in quick! 

If you didn’t already know, ccMixter is a great website for finding legal and entirely downloadable music and music samples. It’s a tremendously helpful resource for media-makers trying to obtain some fairly high-quality tunes to support their various multimedia productions. I’ve used ccMixter a number of times for this-and-that video soundtrack, and I love it. It’s especially helpful in you’re in a pinch, and you need something interesting but not-too-distracting to play under the imagery.

Actually, I really hope ccMixter can find a suitable candidate for the job. On the FAQs page they blandly self-describe as a “community music remixing site,” though it’s really much more than that. Some feel, myself included, that ccMixter might just represent a prototype of what’s to come in mainstream media sharing–a kind of public platform for dynamic, transparent and almost amoeba-like flows of information between creators. It would be a digital ocean, if you will, wherein artists share, trade and build upon each other’s work outside the rigid boundaries of the land-locked, stagnant and corporate controlled intellectual property rights system.

Perhaps that’s a little naive, I don’t know. I’m still working on the theory…

Lately, I’ve been volunteering at a number of community organizations around town. I suppose I’m attempting to insert myself into the local non-profit scene, maybe meet some new folks, learn some new things, and generally be of assistance. Fortunately for me, Melbourne is chock-full of community groups, be they state-sponsored or entirely independent.  The Aussies really appreciate quality social vocations, I guess.

One of my favorites is TRAX, a youth media organization that is currently working on a “Market Value” project in the Preston Market, a series of inexpensive stalls in an open-air bazaar located just north of Melbourne. The goal is to create a multimedia exhibit featuring the work of local youth and others that addresses the changes happening at the markets themselves. It’s especially impressive given the challenges youth-made media projects face in the context of ‘economic development’.

I encourage folks to check it out. Bring your kid to the market or something! Download this flier and tell your friends. I think we really need to support these kinds of grass-roots, DIY media initiatives. A true community-led arts program!

Hopefully, someday soon, I can post an interview or two with the organizers of TRAX. It’ll inevitably show-up on the vlog half of the site. Be looking out for those in the future.

Today I started a week-long volunteer gig at the North Richmond Community Health Centre (notice the inverted the ‘er’), a well-known free/inexpensive health clinic in a predominantly low-income and minority neighborhood.  It’s a temporary position whereby myself and a handful of other civic-minded locals, including Xu Yan, donate our personal time to distribute and administer questionnaires to clinic patrons.  Ostensibly, the surveys are intended to serve as a kind of quality assurance review against poor public health care; it’s a series of questions, required by the state, which try to gauge user satisfaction, knowledge, etc.  According to my supervisor, however, there is an ulterior motive: to prove to certain unnamed governing bodies–in real, quantitative terms–that there is indeed a value for this sort of social welfare program in North Richmond. 

Given the close proximity of the center to our house, Yan and I figured it wouldn’t be such a burden to throw a few hours their way.  I’ve been encouraging Yan (and myself) to think of our current unemployment as an opportunity.  My professor at the VCA has said on a number of occasions, “You’re time rich, if not money rich.”  Admitedly, this kind of thinking only goes so far in capitalistic societies like Australia (you gotta pay the rent), but I appreciate the sentiment none the less.

It turns out, I really like hearing people’s stories.  Asking questions, soliciting survey participants, etc., it was all very exciting and invigorating.  My Spanish and Mandarin leave much to be desired, of course, and my Aussie-English is weak, but generally speaking people responded kindly to me and my American sensibilities.  Every now and then we’d come across a guy with a terrible tooth ache or something, get rebuffed, and then have to slink back to our corner of the lobby.  But that was definitely a rarity.  Most folks, regardless of their background, like having their voices heard, if even through a three-page questionnaire.

Also, the NRCHC serves an especially diverse group of people.  The clinic is situated in a series of high-rise projects (what the Aussies antiseptically call ‘public housing’), and its inhabitants naturally reflect a wide variety of ages, languages, cultures, and nationalities.  Most come from East-Asia (China, Vietnam, etc.), but I also ran across some Italians, Greeks, Timorese, Indonesians, Sudanese, all kinds of Aussie natives, and one single-mother from Syria–a vibrant young woman who, upon hearing my accent, promptly disparaged president Bush and then implored me to visit Syria whenever possible.  ”We’re good!  We’re good people,” she said while nursing her young son.  

Yes, ma’am.  You are good people.