We all know that BitTorrent and other P2P software have transformed mainstream media distribution but, something that has hitherto gone unnoticed is how it has changed the way that independent art is distributed as well.
In an article by Michael Pick, Peer-To-Peer Art: How P2P Networks Are Transforming The Creative Landscape, he points out how “Hard copy media – CDs, DVDs, magazines and newspapers – are going the way of the dinosaurs.” He furthers, “The inefficiency of overpriced plastic disks, or advertising-heavy print media light on content and free of links are being blown away by the speed and flexibility of direct digital content delivery.”
CDs and DVDs both are increasingly reduced to little more than frisbees or beer coasters in today’s MP3, XVID tech savvy society. No more monolithic CD towers standing as odd bedroom obelisks, towering memorials of a defunct technology.
BitTorrent and other P2P networks have brought about a paradigm shift in all manners of communication and expression. As Good notes, they have changed the “…way we do business, communicate, the way we think, and now the way that we make and distribute art.” Who would’ve ever thought that art, our purest creative instinct, would be altered by P2P distribution as well but, it is happening before our eyes.
Sure the “big boys” like Warner Bros have tossed BitTorrent Inc. a few scraps of movie “leftovers” like Night of the Living Dead or The Brain that Wouldn’t Die(?) but, as their movies simultaneously make it to the web as they do the cinema they will have to eventually take heed and change their business model accordingly. 
iTunes has been a new means for Disney to squeeze dollars from Walt’s sacred and expansive vault of movie magic, and other movie studios continue to discuss following in their steps.
Why the turnabout in Disney thinking? Well as Torrent freak recently pointed out, piracy is a business model that it now recognizes and that content providers should compete rather than fight it.
Anne Sweeney, the president of the Disney-ABC television group, noted:
We understand now that piracy is a business model, it exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates compete the same way we do – through quality, price and availability.”
This time two years ago, Disney was congratulating themselves at the end of a season that saw lost and Desperate Housewives make it big. But at the end of the meeting, the head of operations and engineering presented a high-quality, ad-free version of DH that had been put online less than 15 minutes after the show aired. That was a defining moment for the business. We we don’t like the model but we realize it’s competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward.”
Yet, in the meantime we are seeing independent artists in the field of art cinema use BitTorrent and other P2P networks as a method to cheaply and efficiently get their art into the public sphere and bypass the MPs at the movie studio fortress gates.
An example is Anders Weberg, a “Human, Mixed Media Artist and Filmmaker” who lives in the small coastal town of Ängelholm in the south of Sweden. He does this thing called “P2P Art – the aesthetics of ephemerally,” which is basically art that is “made for – and only available on the P2P networks.”
It sounded pretty interesting when I first read this, and even more so when he furthers:
The original artwork is first shared by the artist until one other user has downloaded it. After that the artwork will be available for as long as other users share it.
The original file and all the material used to create it are deleted by the artist.
So the guy really is a true “P2P artist.” His artwork lives and dies according to the whims and desires of the P2P community, Who knew that we had our very own art gallery in the wild-west that is P2P. While we weren’t looking somebody hung a painting over the saloon piano and it is now slowly being noticed for what it means and represents.
To give Weberg his due credit I’d like to point out that his experimental film, Filter, is still available for download on the Pirate Bay.
He describes Filter as being “…fully based on the emotions that I experienced in the beginning of 2006 when I woke up one night and found my son unconscious on the floor.” He goes on, “A couple of minutes passed by until I could bring him back. The fear and desperation I felt during this time is what the film is all about.” To prove his dedication to P2P art he even notes that he deleted all the files used to create it on September 15th, 2006..
I haven’t seen the film yet myself but, to show some support for the artists in our P2P community I guess I have to. Now let the naysayers at the RIAA and MPAA say were a bunch of “uncultured thieves and pirates.” The new art wing of the P2P community awaits.
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