BBC’s The Beauty of Maps

What cartographic creativity has to do with the limitations of copyright law.

More than a year ago, I featured BBC’s excellent program, The Beauty of Maps: Seeing Art in Cartography, at the time only viewable on BBC’s highly restrictive iPlayer. The series has since been pulled from iPlayer and is unavailable on DVD — a shame of media obsolescence, since it was a remarkable celebration of creativity in cartography. But its presence on YouTube, more than a clandestine treat for map-lovers, makes a powerful case in the copyright debate on having “illegal” content online, even if it’s unavailable elsewhere. It breaks my heart to think about the invaluable knowledge and insight rotting away in siloed archives and, in my book, any law that enables this is a broken law and one that begs breaking. Enjoy.

Our love affair with maps is as old as civilization itself. Each map tells its own story and hides its own secret. Maps delight, they unsettle, they reveal deep truths, not just about where we come from, but about who we are.”

Hereford’s Mappamundi is many things — an encyclopedia of all the world’s knowledge, a memento mori, a remarkable piece of medieval art. It remains a unique testament of a vanished world and a vivid illustration of the depth, complexity and artistic genius of maps themselves.”

For more on the genius and charisma of cartography, don’t miss these 7 must-read books on maps.

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Everything is a Remix

From hip-hop to Hitler in the bunker, or why skilllessness is no obstacle to creativity.

We’re big believers in the importance of remix culture as a petri dish for creativity. You may recall the excellent Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy panel with Shepard Fairey and Lawrence Lessig we covered last year, some striking proof that originality is not all it’s cracked up to be, the fantastic Walking On Eggshells documentary about intellectual property in the age of remix, as well as RIP: A Remix Manifesto — the ambitious feature-length documentary about copyright and remix culture. And evidence for it is everywhere — most recently, in yesterday’s rather amusing tornado autotune remix.

This week, we bring you Everything is a Remix — a compelling four-part video series by filmmaker Kirby Ferguson about the evolution of remixing and collaborative creation, from folk art to today’s most cutting-edge tech-assisted multimedia creations.

[Today] anybody can remix anything. Music, video, photos, whatever, and distribute it globally pretty much instantly. You don’t need expensive tools, you don’t need a distributor, you don’t even need skills. Remixing is a folk art — anybody can do it. Yet these techniques, collect the material, combining it and transforming it, are the same ones you use at any level of creation. You could even say that everything is a remix.”

The first part of the series was released this month, with the remaining ones coming by the end of the year. [UPDATE: Per Kirby's comment, only part 2 will be out this year, the remaining four will be released within the first half of 2011.] To support the project — an important voice in the dialogue about creativity and intellectual property — consider making a donation. (And, while you’re at it, we aren’t turning those away either — Brain Pickings is funded almost entirely by reader donations.)

UPDATE: Part 2 is now available and, unsurprisingly, it’s excellent.

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Street Art: From All Sides & Five Continents

The urban anthropology of creativity, or why copyright law is a sad case study in swimming against the cultural current.

In 2008, Beautiful Losers — a documentary about contemporary street art culture from director Aaron Rose — made serious waves at SXSW. This year, the film is finally making its full-blown national screening tour — and we think it’s a must-see.

Based on the eponymous and equally excellent book, the film explores the creative process and cultural influences of iconic artists like Barry McGee, Jo Jackson, Mike Mills, Brain Pickings darling Shepard Fairey, and many more.

The greatest cultural accomplishments in history have never been the result of the brainstorms of marketing men, corporate focus groups, or any homogenized methods; they have always happened organically. More often than not, these manifestations have been the result of a few like-minded people coming together to create something new and original for no other purpose than a common love of doing it.

We think Beautiful Losers is important for two reasons: For one, it’s a genuine piece of cultural anthropology that captures some of the rawest, most powerful creative genius of our time.

But, more importantly, it’s a brilliant testament to the importance of the cross-pollination of ideas — you begin to see the influences of various subcultures, from skateboarding to street fashion to graffiti to indie music, on these artists’ original creative output. And this matters, because it’s real-life proof for the power of remix culture — something essential to the ability to harness our collective creativity, yet unfortunately hindered by current copyright law.

For an even deeper perspective on the global, cross-cultural influences in street art, check out Street World: Urban Culture and Art from Five Continents — another excellent book, exploring the emergence of a new global creative culture driven by the advent of the Internet as a cross-pollination platform for wildly diverse subcultures and modes of self expression.

Thanks, Amy!

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