Mediaboss Marketing

Earlier this month, Christies auction house announced the sale of a digital portrait of the Bitcoin code for more than $130,000 when the first estimated price was $12,000$18,000. It was the first time a nonfungible token was auctioned at one of the major auction houses for traditional art.

One of the last events, Bridge to Metaverse, presented by Snark.art, showed tokenized artworks by both established and emerging contemporary artists. A group exhibition brought leading artists of our time the Kabakovs, Kendell Geers, AES+F, Recycle Group and others to the blockchain space, and a series of panel discussions worked as a bridge between the traditional and blockchain-based art worlds with its own systems of distribution.

One criticism of the crypto art market has been the perceived naivety of the works. Although people were being distracted by the emergence of memes and CryptoKitties, there have also been some serious artists who have made their presence felt in the crypto world.

The traditional position of arts has been a commentary on the current state of affairs. A way to subversively criticize and, at the same time, to magnify the truth of what we are living through.

This is a perfect match with the emergence of the anonymity of blockchain technology in the new climate of being constantly tracked by our everyday gadgets.

Related: Painting a different picture: How digital artists use blockchain

Will the emerging artists in the new field of crypto art be influenced by traditional artists bringing their works into a shared blockchain space? With strong voices raising political, race, gender and inequality issues, their influx in these current times may create a shift in the way art is created, collected and viewed.

The traditional art market brings with it not only artists but also gallerists and curators who are naturally also drawn to growing markets. In fact, we are already seeing a move toward more classic ways of buying, with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles purchasing works from artists to exhibit them in its own permanent collection.

Of course, this will also open the door to Crypto Art Basel, Biennale and other curated events whose crypto artworks will break sales records at Christies or Sothebys.

Fifty years from now, those first NFT artworks by world-acclaimed artists could become highly valuable, just like what happened with the first animations of John Whitney, the father of computer animation, who created the first animated art on his computer back in 1960.

Serious contemporary artists mirror and even magnify the truth of our reality without censorship. In the current political world, a marriage between the established artists and crypto art with no censorship is virtually a perfect match.

Misha Libman, co-founder of Snark.art, certainly believes this is a challenge to not only take on but to relish in, and he stated that:

Therefore, is the crypto art audience ready to be challenged with serious statements of shifting toward digitalization? Especially as established artists now find themselves with a new technological medium and a way to reach audiences they never had before.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Alexandra Luzan is a Ph.D. student researching the connection between new technologies and art at Ca Foscari University in Venice. For about a decade, Alexandra has been organizing tech conferences and other events in Europe dedicated to blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. She is equally interested in the relationship between blockchain tech and art.

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NFT and crypto art can magnify the truth of our reality without censorship - Cointelegraph

from the no-signal dept

It's common knowledge now that the Chinese government heavily censors the access its population has to the internet and information writ large. It's been a decade since China first proffered that its Great Firewall of China was not actually censorship, but was merely a method for "safeguarding" its citizens. Safeguarding them, it seems, primarily from any international criticism of the Chinese regime itself, which sure seems like it's more about safeguarding the government, rather than the citizens. In the subsequent decade, whatever skin China had to weather criticism further sloughed away such that the government is now not only actively pressuring groups and companies within Chinese borders, but actively attempting to affect its censorship outside those borders as well.

Whatever else we might want to say about Chinese censorship, it most certainly is not subtle. This was on full display when the government essentially pulled the plug on streams for the American Vice Presidential debate precisely during a segment discussing China's actions on COVID-19.

Chinas censors cut off Vice President Mike Pence mid-sentence during the debate with Sen. Kamala Harris when he called out the Chinese Communist Party for its mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

As Pence Wednesday night began to criticize Beijings response, saying China is to blame, CNNs feed in China suddenly cut out and the words no signal please stand by appeared over a test pattern.

Again, not subtle. And that's actually kind of important, because if you put yourself in the shoes of a Chinese citizen, it's difficult to imagine that you wouldn't know precisely what is going on here. The real question is whether the transparent censorship in cases such as this is a feature or a bug. If a bug, it doesn't serve Chinese government purposes. It will be clear that the censorship is to mask criticism of the ruling party. If a feature, well, the idea is that China doesn't mind the transparent nature of this exertion of control. It's a muscle flex, in that case.

The question is how long can this authoritarian approach expand before the rubber-band reaches its limits and snaps back on the regime. In an increasingly connected and global world, and with China very much wanting play a lead role on that stage, it's own thin-skin may be a high barrier.

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Filed Under: censorship, china, free speech, kamala harris, mike pence, us, vp debate

The rest is here:
China Micro-Censors The VP Debate In The Most Hamfisted Way - Techdirt

America was founded on defianceAt least, thats what Patrick Morgan, an English professor at ULM believes. So he, along with Sigma Tau Delta, hosted a banned books reading last week as an act of defiance against censorship.

Students, faculty and staff gathered on a cold, rainy day in October to share their love of literature by reading books that have been banned in multiple countries.

The annual reading was hosted in the Chemistry and Natural Science Building. Together, attendees read excerpts from books that were all banned at one point or another due to controversies. Some of the pieces of literature referenced were Moby Dick, Red Azalea and several poems from Shel Silversteins A Light in the Attic.

Its a chance to celebrate the freedom to read, the freedom to read any text, even the pieces of literature that have been barred throughout history, Morgan said.

Morgan said that he loves to see students share their interest in literature and learn about their relationships through literature. In the past, some of the books included Lord of the Flies, 1984 and Huckleberry Finn.

Kaylee Sadler, a junior and member of Sigma Tau Delta, said, I enjoyed listening to passages from banned books in history, and the discussions centered around the absurdities of censorship.

Sadler also read passages from Red Azalea, a novel that was banned in China due to its themes of homosexuality and anti-communism.

I hope more people will show up at the next reading, Sadler said. I think some people would be surprised with whats been banned.

A similar event that takes place in the spring is the Ides of March, an event where poetry lovers, students, faculty and staff alike, gather around a tree on campus and read their favorite poems.

Sadler encourages more literature lovers to attend the next banned books reading to celebrate their passion for literature together.

Continue reading here:
Students fight censorship with banned books reading - The HawkEye

Joe Rogan has weighed in on employees of Spotify allegedly pushing to censor episodes of his podcast,Joe Rogan Experience.

On Wednesday, September 16th, Spotify hosted a town hall meeting at which employees raised concern over content in theJRE archive.

A number of employees took umbrage with an episode that featured an interview with Abigail Shrier author ofIrreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. During the episode, Shrier associates transness with autism and explores her theory that YouTube and social media are influencing young people to transition.

Many LGBTQAI+/ally Spotifiers feel unwelcome and alienated because of leaderships response in JRE conversations. What is your message to those employees? one employee raised during the meeting.

When The Joe Rogan Experience first landed on Spotify at the beginning of September, a select few notably controversial episodes were omitted. Episodes that saw Rogan interview Gavin McInnes, Chuck Johnson, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Alex Jones the latter whos own podcast was removed from Spotify for hate content.

In a statement, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek expressed that the company had reviewed the episode featuring Abigail Shrier, ultimately deciding against removing it from the platform.

In the case of Joe Rogan, a total of 10 meetings have been held with various groups and individuals to hear their respective concerns, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said. And some of them want Rogan removed because of things hes said in the past.

Others have concerns specifically over a recent episode, Ek continued. And Joe Rogan and the episode in question have been reviewed extensively. The fact that we arent changing our position doesnt mean we arent listening. It just means we made a different judgment call.

Read this article:
Joe Rogan has weighed in on Spotify employees looking to censor JRE - The Industry Observer

Rob Fahey

Contributing Editor

Friday 9th October 2020

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On the scale of grand industry scandals, a few short phrases being censored in the in-game chat client of a free-to-play RPG seems like it ought to be in real "storm in a teacup" territory.

Indeed, it's deeply unlikely that very many of the millions of players of Genshin Impact -- a Breath of the Wild inspired RPG for PC, PS4 and mobile, which is quickly shaping up to be one of the most internationally successful titles to have been developed in mainland China thus far -- will ever really notice that the game does the text equivalent of bleeping them out should they choose to mention places like Taiwan or Hong Kong, or a number of other phrases, some of them surprisingly innocuous. Even among those who do notice, the vast majority will shrug it off; it's not a major imposition for most, and it's not like developer miHoYo seemingly had a choice in the matter given China's censorship rules.

For the specifics of those rules and why this has happened at all, Niko Partners' Daniel Ahmad wrote a succinct thread on Twitter (cited in this previous GamesIndustry.biz story) that's worth reading. Taken in isolation, this is explanation enough -- and will certainly be more than enough to sate the curiosity of almost any gamer who wonders enough about the censored terms to try googling about the whole affair.

What we're seeing here is the thin end of a wedge that's going to become a very serious headache for a lot of games companies in the coming years

However, it's worth stepping back from this single instance of China's censorship creeping into the media and communications of people beyond its borders, and considering the broader context -- because this isn't the first time this kind of issue has popped up, and there's a strong possibility that what we're seeing here is the thin end of a wedge that's going to become a very serious headache for a lot of games companies in the coming years.

Unless you follow developments in Chinese politics and geopolitics relatively closely, the first time something like this appeared on your radar was probably last October -- when Blizzard banned a pro Hearthstone player, Hong Kong resident Ng Wai "blitzchung" Chung, and fired two presenters who had interviewed him on a post-game livestream during which he made remarks supporting democracy in Hong Kong. Blizzard's knee-jerk kowtow to China's censors (jerking your knees and kowtowing at the same time being the gutless executive's version of the childhood challenge of rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time) earned it an unusually bipartisan rap on the knuckles from the US Senate and House of Representatives, not to mention some noisy protests from the company's own consumers. Tellingly, however, Blizzard only walked back its decision a few steps at best, almost visibly scrambling to find some convoluted form of words that would appease critics outside China without actually annoying China's authorities.

China's authorities seem to have decided that censorship pools once restricted to its own population can be applied internationally

The lesson anyone in authority in China would have taken away from that affair -- and several other individually minor run-ins with western media and gaming companies over various kinds of content or censorship -- is that the size of the Chinese market and the extent of the nation's stakeholdings in overseas firms means that it's now open season on discussions or statements it doesn't like, even outside its borders. Within China, of course, censorship of users' discussions on digital platforms has been standard for years; the government's control, however, mostly stopped at its borders.

As the country's economic and geopolitical conflict with the United States has expanded, however, so too has its desire to control or suppress narratives and discussions overseas. This has resulted in the removal or hiding of statements or symbols with which China's authorities take issue, often from platforms owned or controlled within China (such as WeChat and TikTok, and games like Genshin Impact) but also on platforms which aren't China-based but rely on keeping the authorities there happy for a major part of their revenue and potential growth -- from Activision Blizzard's games through YouTube and Microsoft Bing, all the way up to major international organisations like the WHO.

Genshin Impact is a relatively minor case of Chinese censorship, but the number of examples is steadily growing

A good example of this kind of censorship creeping out beyond China's borders can be found in games, in fact. As Daniel Ahmad noted in his thread on this topic, many Chinese game operators used to run two versions of their games, disabling censorship filters in the one aimed at overseas players. This practice appears to be in decline, with Genshin Impact being just one high-profile example; generally speaking, China's authorities seem to have decided that censorship pools once restricted to its own population are quite handy to apply internationally as well, especially now that some of its major tech companies are doing so well overseas.

As the strain between China and the US increases -- something that's likely to happen regardless of who wins next month's US Presidential election, although a change at the top may at least make the process more predictable -- companies which operate tech or media platforms, like games, in both China and abroad, or which have welcomed large investments from Chinese firms, are going to increasingly find themselves dragged into this fight. Asked to police the speech of their users (and employees) in ways that are going to play increasingly poorly to consumers and governments elsewhere, the value of China's market and investment is going to have to be constantly balanced against the power of the backlash elsewhere.

There's a very real degree of commercial and political pressure being brought slowly to bear on game companies

Absent a pretty major shift in approach from consumers or governments, that's a balance that's not often going to favour anything other than capitulation to China's demands most of the time. The country's authorities have plenty of leverage left in the tank and haven't experienced any real pushback to these moves thus far. Protests against companies complying with censorious demands have been small-scale and relatively muted, and overseas governments certainly haven't shown any stomach for waving around big sticks on this kind of issue.

There has even been a small but vocal counter-backlash movement in some instances, largely based on taking Blizzard's conspicuously awful "we just want people to stop talking about politics and focus on the games" excuse and turning it up to 11. In these people's reality, Chinese censorship is actually good, you see, because it stops terrible people from ruining games by mentioning political things -- when as any fool knows, "games" and "politics" are the opposite of one another and should never be put together.

Of course, games have never existed in a vacuum away from geopolitics and some forms of censorship have been a reality all along. It would be pretty intellectually dishonest to condemn China's growing pernicious influence on in-game content and communications without acknowledging that the whole world has spent decades with its games being quietly tuned and, yes, censored in such a way as to minimise the pearl-clutching of middle America. There's a reason games continue to be vastly more comfortable with an exploding skull than with an exposed nipple, or that anything that lies along America's cultural faultlines -- like the existence of LGBT people, or any kind of nuanced discussion of racism -- is generally avoided or pushed to the fringes of the medium.

But holding up this kind of commercially-driven self-censorship to match the whims of the US market alongside government-ordered filtering of media and communications is a false equivalence. We cannot and should not pretend that "if we don't make this regressive creative decision, we'll risk selling poorly in America" is remotely the same thing, morally, as "if we don't follow this censorship order, we'll probably have our Chinese joint venture shut down".

So yes, the Genshin Impact scandal really is a storm in a teacup. Something as (arguably) minor and (certainly) dumb as Taiwan and Hong Kong being added to a game's naughty word filter isn't really anything game consumers are going to worry about in the long term, given that it doesn't impact the game, is easily circumvented, and well, why are you discussing politics in a game chat channel anyway -- or so the logic will go. Put enough stormy tea-cups together, though, and a pattern starts to swirl out of them.

This wedge is still thin, but it's been sliding in for a long time, and far away from the ground reality of a censored game chat channel there's a very real degree of commercial and political pressure being brought slowly to bear on game companies and other firms with influence over culture and media around the world. I'm not sure we'll ever see Genshin Impact's chat censorship as a watershed, but be certain that it's a little taste of a sour flavour we're all going to get very used to in the coming years.

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Gaming will be a frontline in China's censorship drive | Opinion - GamesIndustry.biz