Idealist Idea List

Ideas to manage unnecessary production in the music industry for independent artists:

Screen print, heat press, or paint new designs on old merchandise.

Make patches with salvageable material from damaged merchandise.

Is that a broken guitar string or new wire for wraps?

Turn unused handbills into rainbow scratch paper for personalized promotions (handbills, homemade cd covers, invitations) using black paint mixed with a little dish soap.

Give a discount for shows people bring a handbill in for to be reused for the rainbow scratch paper.

Print one batch of posters for each tour with room to write specific details for each venue/date.

If any clout, have poster signing sessions so they are less likely to end up in the trash.

Offer personalized playlists and charge extra to burn CDs.

Donate unused instruments to schools or a kid near you.

Consider what art installations or repurposing could be done with any broken gear or extra office supplies.

Could busted speakers be gutted into themed furniture?

Can a broken guitar case be turned into a guitar stand?

Collect and loop used wristbands for handmade streamers.

Create ticket collages for home craft stage or photobooth backdrops.

Wrap/tie/knot old instrument cables into wall art.

Broken microphones make great balloon/decoration/paper weights for any entertainment themed event.

Drums that are no longer playable could become flower pots, foot stools, or end tables.

Even broken glass can be used for mosaics.

Look at what is lying around unused, find a way to make a new purpose for it.

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Links:

Music industry and climate change, Part 2: What can a musician do?

How can music fans be environmentally responsible in 2019?

Massive Attack to help map music industry's carbon footprint

Everything’s Gone Green: What can the Music Industry do to Combat Climate Change?

Cultural Time Capsules

TLDR:

1. Taking care of anything is easier said than done.

2. Documentation of a process standardizes the practice over time.

3. Archives serve as safekeeping for memories that could otherwise be lost.

4. Recordings show the evolution of how design and technology have influenced today’s work.

Artists have an inevitable need for archiving because art is communication. From storage to showcase, shelving ideas into archives preserves content for potential backup or later use.

Protocols such as Open Archival Information System are reference models to guide people in maintaining digital or physical assets that are flexible for specific needs. Sustainable documentation handles the continuation of practices through high quality file transfers (from person to person), exports (from file type to file type), technological progression (format to format), etc.

Art has evolved as both a reflection and through the mediums of technology, time, and people that have transcended into pieces of cultural time capsules. Progress is built off of the work of the past and ideas for the future. Reality turns into ideas through curation of learning.

If asking, once again, what do artists leave behind? Archive the journey for answers left to find.

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Links:

The Proof Is In The Standards Pudding

Audit and certification

Fundamentals of AV Preservation

OAIS Reference Model

What Do Artists Leave Behind?

How Artists Influence Communities: Biosemiotics

Artists are case studies for how meaning is created, aka biosemiotics. Art is a result of nature multiplied by nurture. The meaning of art is determined by artists with what is available to them: experience, tools, technology, material, etc.

How does communication share meaning? What are the roots to community?

Biosemiotics asks questions about the individual influence of a group. Organisms exchange or process information from a cellular level to ecological systems. The result of material sent back and forth is life: particular interactions affect entire outcomes.

Expression represents elements in a medium. Making sense of what matters.

If every action has an equal and opposite reaction, is living infinite repetition? Routines have use for developing functional systems. What about when systems are no longer functional? Cycles are broken when processes are changed.

Communication connects the motivation behind action. Conditions are impacted by the ability to share and interpret messages, from homeostasis to conflict resolution. How each aspect is perceived affects the perception of others.

Community stems from common environments. Synergy forms bonds that fuse energy together. Art stirs sensations. Artistic ability or creativity is the development of an innate sense of manifestation. Artists not only represent their own perspective, but also design possibilities of making a difference in the world.

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Photo of Paper Bison from their last show with Machine Kid 10/5/18 for Free Your Art at Howlin Wolf.

Links:

1. Medieval Semiotics

2. Semiotic Terminology

3. Elements of Semiotics

4. What is Biosemiotics?

5. Semiotics for Beginners

6. Peirce’s Theory of Signs

7. The Role of Art in Society

8. How do the arts reflect our culture?

9. The Most Important Functions of Art

10. Life and language: Is meaning biosemiotic?

11. In What Ways Does Art Influence Our Everyday Life?

12. Biosemiotics, Neurosemiotics, and Language Acquisition

13. What Kind of Impact Does Our Music Really Make on Society?

14. Music as Environment: An Ecological and Biosemiotic Approach

15. This means this, this means that: Semiotics — the study of meaning

16. Semiotics: WTF? Introduction to Saussure, the Signifier and Signified

17. Music and Semiotics: An Experiential Approach to Musical Sense-Making

18. Semiotic Thresholds, Between Arts and Biological Science: Green Technology and the Concept of Phytomining

19. Semiotics Inside-Out and/or Outside-In. How to Understand Everything and (with Luck) Influence People