Legal and technological frameworks for music culture – pirate radio in London

28 June 2016, 19:30

This Music Pool evening examines today’s legal and technological frameworks of music culture and discusses in which way these frameworks encourage musical, artistic, and creative practices. Where are legal frameworks in favor of creative practices, and where are they not? What are the conditions that shape whether artists and creative communities actually benefit from laws and technology? Where do laws and technological developments discourage music culture? Where and why do illegal and also non-digital practices in music persist?

DJ Ripley aka Dr. Larisa K Mann will present her findings of an in-depth study of the still flourishing pirate radio scenes in London. Through a deep, engaged analysis of one of the world’s vibrant and influential music scenes, we will learn how legal institutions, architecture, and community struggles for cultural survival all contribute to illegal broadcast radio’s relevance even in the digital era. The talk will examine the key factors that make a technology relevant (or not) to a creative community. Having around 80 pirate radio stations broadcasting on the air in the city of London, even in the era of digital radio, raises many questions. It’s striking that unlicensed broadcast radio is still commonly found, well after the rise of digital radio, cell phones and other networked technologies that we might have expected to supplant it!

In a Q+A after the talk together with DJ Ripley and Rike Maier we will also localize some of the questions raised and think about in what ways law and technology limit or expand flourishing music cultures, as well as independent radio here in Berlin and in Germany.

Dj Ripley (HEAVY/Dutty Artz NYC) aka Dr. Larisa K Mann, Assistant Professor of Emergent Media, Dept of Media Studies & Production, Temple University: DJ Ripley plays global street bass music, playing music to celebrate people’s stories across race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality while highlighting the beauty of interconnecting global narratives. Dj Ripley mixes music to highlight difference rather than seamlessness. In her academic career, she is a a legal ethnographer with a PhD from UC Berkeley Law School, examining legal and technological conditions of creative practices. https://larisakingstonmann.blogspot.de/,

http://www.ripleydj.com/

Rike Maier studied law at Humboldt University Berlin and is now doing research in copyright and media law at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. Her research focuses on exceptions to copyright for creative reuses of preexisting material such as film remixes or music sampling. http://www.hiig.de/en/staff/rike-maier-2/

Music before and after the conversation: DJ Ripley

https://soundcloud.com/ripley

Free entry, just come by.