I just announced over on the CC site my job change. I will still be on the books with Creative Commons, but will not be a full time staff member any longer. While I have been a human interface for Creative Commons to people, businesses and organizations, particularly in the technology space, my role will change to be Business Development and Community Liaison.

I have been working for Creative Commons for the past 3 years. In that time, I’ve fully devoted myself because I wanted to “scratch an itch,” as its called in open source development circles. Over the last few months I have felt that I sufficiently scratched the itch. Through my contributions to Inkscape and Open Clip Art Library I met the best boss and coolest person in the world, Mike Linksvayer. I wanted to make CC easier for the free and open source world by creating a library to make CC licensing easy: Now we have liblicense and LicenseChooser.js. I wanted to see the expansion of an international public domain dedication that worked globally, as Open Clip Art Library wanted: Now we have CC Zero Waiver and soon a Universal Public Domain dedication.

Of course, along the way, there have been other projects which I’m massively happy I contributed to, such as brewing the ingredients for CC Salons, working on media sharing web engine ccHost, and then efforts to provide simple solutions to help people, businesses and organizations to use CC licensing: Case Studies, http://creativecommons.org/projects/metrics”>Metrics and Documentation project.

After August 2nd, the world will continue to be in great hands with new and ongoing staff members that are supporting the efforts of Creative Commons around the clock. The international community of CC Jurisdiction Projects has an amazing line-up of individuals globally that are handling relationships amazingly. And, I’m still on the books to keep facilitating when possible.

If you are curious what I am immediately working on, then you kind readers of my blog might realize that I’ve been spending a lot of time on the upcoming art exhibition, Cantocore, an international contemporary art project between San Francisco and Guangzhou, China August 30 - September 6th near the Guangzhou Triennial. I am also planning a large art show in San Francisco for Overlap, which is Overlapping Networks of Experimental Media and Culture with Free Tools, Releases, News and Events” at the Gray Area Gallery starting Sept 13, 2008 through Sept 27, 2008. There is much work associated with the above projects which will require most of my time. This includes websites, projects for the shows, wrangling of participants, producing books, and more.

Cantocore ping pong space in Guangzhou

Beyond these immediate plans, I am of course entertaining various consulting projects, speaking engangements, writing for various magazines, trying to finish my book CVS (maybe should be renamed SVN ;), and then set-up my own solo art show somewhere in the next year before I turn 30 next May 28! If you would like to talk about these projects, are interested in working together with me on them, and/or hiring me for various gigs, contact me!

Cantocore Container

Lu and I will be primarily living in Guangzhou this August, then I will be in Beijing this fall. Of course, I’m traveling much around the globe. I’m particularly interested in working with more projects and companies in China and Asia.

Regardless, I’m more than ever committed to Creative Commons as an idea and set of practical tools. I am super committed as well to building up the projects I’ve been working on for some time with new vigor and knowledge gained from experience over the last few years in working with people, companies, and organizations.

Here is more as well from the post on the CC site:

Photo by-sa Freddy B. Used with permission from Photographer.

I’m in Sapporo for the CC Legal Day, Commons Research Mini-conference which the Metrics Project is but part, and to
further promote the CC Case Studies project. As Greg outlined so clearly last week and I presented at the launch of CC Singapore a few days ago,
this project is doing quite well with 112 submissions from around the world assisted by
a great system for supporting this community project, and even better brilliant people adding case studies daily!

Also, you kind readers might have noticed that we have launched and/or refreshed several projects over the last few weeks to prepare for a coming change. As of August, my role with Creative Commons will change from managing community and business development to being liaison in ongoing similar affairs. This also means that I will be spending most of my time on projects outside of Creative Commons — most still involve using Creative Commons licensing and technology.

I’m not leaving the culture of free and open, nor Creative Commons, both of which I have been involved with for some time. Rather, I will be, as of August 2nd, devoting most of my energy to projects I’ve been delaying or couldn’t do as effectively since I have been living and breathing Creative Commons. My job and peers at Creative Commons are amazing and working for CC, in my capacity at least which I can speak to, is a dream job. If anything, I will be pushing Creative Commons even more by action, projects, and facilitation in another capacity.

Thus, if you want to find out more about what I will be doing, you know where to find me. And, if I’ve been working with you, your business, your community, and/or organization, jon@creativecommons.org still works (and will so). I am continuing work on a couple of projects that have not launched in relationship to Open Library/PDWiki project. I also am on-demand still for speaking at events and conferences globally - particularly in Asia since I will be spending most time in China from August - December 2008. I’m still on the books and will facilitate any discussions to the appropriate people. I’m more excited that ever to keep growing the commons!

I’m revealing too much and revealing personal aspects that most will never care about. I was emotionally autistic as a youth. I like to suggest that I’m no longer that way… I was however up until my teens. It basically entailed a few things. I had a hard time with eye contact, I was afraid to touch people, and I developed late, the ability to speak (I was 5 years old). One day though, my mother and I decided to bring a simple little cat into our lives and it was profound for me. Whether it was a matter of the qualities and gentleness of the creature or a matter of timing and therapy that I was in desperate need for — it had a profound effect on me.

It provoked me. Allowed me to finally communicate emotionally. I felt sensibilities I had never felt before. Such as, I hope she’s okay, What the hell is she doing?, I don’t feel too lonely with her around, This is actually kind of fun, and She seems to like me.

These are small gestures. Small aspects of life but for someone who was lacking, these little things actually meant the world to me at the time. Family members noticed the change in me. Even my friends. I fear no one will ever understand the desperation and need I had and the void that small animal filled. I’ve always considered Winnie, the cat, my saving grace. Bless her.

Videos de femmes dans le parc

samedi 26 juillet

20h30

Theatre de Verdure, Parc La Fontaine

presented by Groupe Intervention Video

a new book i made. it's black and white 26 pages.

"start from zero*"
4, 5, 6 July 2008
Contemporary video art screenings in Kalamata / Greece

(* "miden" means "zero" in Greek)

Many artists, groups and video creators from all over the world will participate in this year's screening program of Video Art Festival Miden, which will take place in public spaces of the historic centre of Kalamata, from the 4th to 6th of July 2008 (Amfeia's Square, 9.20pm).
In its 4th realization Festival Miden will present 205 works from various artists from over 40 countries, aiming to a global presentation of the most interesting contemporary video art practices and trends. The program includes thematical screenings and tributes, interactive projects, student works and a special tribute to Manthos Santorineos, As. Professor in Athens School of Fine Arts and a pioneer Greek media-artist.

Festival Miden is a production of "Sea Level" (urban, non-profit company).
Co production: Municipality of Kalamata
With the support of Kalamata's Historic Centre Organisation and the Messinia Chamber of Commerce.

Art Director: Giorgos Dimitrakopoulos
Art Curators: Gioula Papadopoulou-Margarita Stavraki

www.festivalmiden.gr
info@festivalmiden.gr


As the World Goes by my Window with Thurston and Kim will be shown at the festival Miden

Friday 4/7/2008

Amfeia's Square, 9.20 p.m.


Program: Headlines

1. Simon Chang, Evaporation, (Taiwan & Chech Rep.-2007) 12.22
2. David Yun, The Pain with Being Thirsty, (USA-2007) 6.30
3. Donny Correia, Anatomy of Decay, (Brazil-2008) 5.18
4. Morteza Akoocheklan, The Gaze, (Iran-2008) 1.40
5. Kevin Logan, Recitation, (UK-2007) 4.29
6. Andreas Zingerle, Wild West Reloaded, (Austria-2007) 1.15
7. Feargal O'Malley, Violets, (Ireland-2005) 2.51
8. Stephen Eakin, The Sidewalk, (USA-2007) 3.56
9. Kate Walker & Jennifer Beth Guerin, Elsewhere, (USA & New Zealand-2007) 2.06
10. Tina Willgren, Wood Report, (Sweden-2006) 1.57
11. Kim Kielhofner, As the world goes by my window with Thurston and Kim, (Canada-2007) 2.51
12. Eleni Papadaki-Dafni Mitsiou, The forgotten season, (Greece-2008) 1.47
13. Sylvia Winkler & Stephan Koeperl, But The Customers Like It, (Germany-2006) 2.00
14. Monika Pavlechova, Get A Taste Of Life, (Slovakia-2006) 1.48
15. Nikolaos Pastras, for j.g. ballard, (Greece-2008) 2.46
16. Michael Beauvent, Meditation, (Belgium-2007) 3.30
17. Jonas Nilsson, Passing by, (Sweden-2007) 2.17
18. Andrew Eyman, The End, (France & USA-2000) 5.00

Total duration: 65 min

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This video was debuted as a looping video installation included in the Uncharted show at Hayes Valley Market, May 2008.

I just finished building, or rather stitching together my first complete wearable device, the Whisper audio wristband. I have researched and experimented with soft electronics, interactivity, sensor technologies, and conductive fibers for some time now, but this is the first standalone device that I have created that incorporates all of these concepts. Whisper was conceived as a simple wearable audio device that would be lightweight, comfortable, and provide an engaging and simple interface that was capable of producing interesting noises. I had recently been working on AVR code for sound synthesis for my Whispering Islands installation, and saw this as a good opportunity to try and create an interactive and wearable unit.

Heather Brubaker and Marie-Claire Miesels recently curated me into a group show called “Uncharted: Imaginary Landscapes” at the Hayes Valley Market in SF. I found out about the show the day after my daughter Djuna was born, and convinced myself that I could put together a video, site specific sound installation, and some paintings by the time Djuna was a couple of months old. After having focussed so heavily on painting this last year, I really wanted to spend some time experimenting and doing a multi-disciplinary project. I had also been working on some code to run various synthesis techniques on tiny AVR chips, and wanted to try incorporating that into one of my felt and thread installations. Originally, I was going to make stuffed island forms with embedded circuitry and have them floating on the thread meshwork. However, after playing around with that I determined that it looked to plushy and instead developed the felt island structures by handstitching together bits of felt to resemble forms from some of my paintings. An attiny26 chip provided 7 channels of randomly dispersed chatters and noises that were played through tiny cellphone speakers embedded in each of the islands.

I also installed a 3-minute video loop that I recently finished, and a pair of acrylic-on-paper works.

I got back to US for a few days now. Today is the US Memorial day. But my morning is tribute to the victims in Sichuan earthquake. The last three days when I was in China it was the three days national-wide morning for lives taken in the earthquake. All entertainment services and TVs programs were shut down for three days. Before, this kind of national morning only happened for the death for central governors, and this was the first time for the people.

Right now, the death toll is still rising and the earthquake and thousands of aftershocks had left nearly five millions people homeless…

Here are some images from US and Chinese press:

Image from New York Times.

Image from Sohu

Image from Xin Hua Net.