Connecting the real world & the internet with CC: the C-shirt project
The third Creative Commons Japan seminar held on 26 September welcomed a diverse range of panelists. Heather Ford from iCommons announced the new phase of the Creative Commons movement where open business, culture and education emerge as the new contexts of our era. Chiaki Hayashi, from Japan’s biggest creators network Loftwork, described how and why the very notion of openness is not only a virtue but also a vital engine to sustain communication between Loftwork’s 6 000 designers and illustrators. Tadashi Nakanishi from ClipLife, a Creative Commons licensed video sharing portal run by the ex-national telephone company NTT, explained their interest as Japan’s infrastructural ISP in contributing to the growth of cultural heritage and independent new media. Finally, Larry Lessig discussed his ideas on why “hording” cultural goods, using examples such as iTunes Music Store and Youtube, will not nurture a creative culture in the long run.
During the second session, Creative Commons Japan together with Ken Suzuki, a young ex-researcher of artificial life and now the CEO of IT software company Sargasso, orchestrated a live demonstration of a brand new Creative Commons initiative: the C-shirt project. In brief, the idea is to offer a network of different online services so that a customer can find a C-shirt design worn by any other person, whether they are a random person they encounter on the street, or someone they know. The customer can either buy the original design or remix it on the fly and order the new version, all from the convenience of an internet browser.
Here’s the process a C-shirt user follows: first, the person finds someone with a Creative Commons “Some Rights Reserved” logo on their shirt ‘ this indicates they are wearing a C-shirt design. The person then takes a photograph using their cell phone, for example, of the QR code stuck to the C-shirt. When the photo is loaded onto the site the person is redirected to the URL where that particular design is stored. This page is hosted by a Flash-driven interactive webpage editing service called NOTA (developed by Ishu Rakusai), where anybody can freely paint raster images, add text and layout the design parts, or simply order the T-shirt. If the person wishes to add more details and remix the design, another web application called Willustrator (developed by Keisuke Kambara from Hatena.Inc) is made available. This software offers the basic features of a Bezier drawing tool such as Adobe Illustrator, the difference is that these tools are all made available on a browser, with a CC license embedded by default. Or, if the person wants to use some photographs or clip images, he or she can import CC licensed photos from Photozou (run by Unoh.Inc), a Japanese service somewhat similar to Flickr with a CC license chooser, which also offers access to movie files. All these additions are reflected on the original page in NOTA, and now the user can click on the ‘order now’ button, which takes them to the drop-shipping service Factio (run by Pied Piper.Inc) where a preview image is dynamically generated and set, ready to be drop-shipped to her home address.
In the future, the project will include an incentive model, so that if a design inspires many remixes that are sold well, the original designer will also profit from the sales. The amount to be returned to the designers and remixers is yet to be determined. We invite the reader to take a glance at our keynote presentation (PDF, 2.3MB) to find out more about the project, or to actually try out the demo site, which is only in Japanese for now.
During the panel discussion, Larry Lessig wore three C-shirts with the designs by a few of Loftwork ’s designers, which clearly demonstrated the chain remixing effect. Lessig evaluated the project as a great example of an open cooperative model that is focused not on “hording” culture within a single service but rather on augmenting the creativity of every service provider involved.
Suzuki led the diverse team to a successful presentation of this newly born project, within a very short span of 2 weeks. The next deployment of the project is already scheduled to be presented at Microsoft’s REMIX event at the end of October in Tokyo, where functional improvements will be presented and the participation of top-notch designers is expected.
As Toshihiro Anzai, one of the panelists and a professional artist who has been working on a chain-imaging workshop titled “Renga” (translated from Japanese as ’sequential images’) for over 15 years, pointed out that the notion of ‘copyright’ does not exist in the minds of those who believe in the ideals of ’sharing’ and ‘freedom of speech’. Let us remember, once again, that our universal effort to achieve a ‘free’ state of mind, a mind where the notion of copyright does not exist, will surely not be realized with a unilateral and mono-cultural doctrine, but rather with and only within a network of diverse nodes; and that is, we believe, the very definition of what “iCommons” means to us.
Photograph: “Wearing C-shirts”, by Chiaki Hayashi, CC BY 2.0