CounterpointStimulating debate with the British Council

Counterpoint launched its book Cloud Culture: the future of global cultural relations, with a panel debate and evening of discussion at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts.

In these three video clips from the launch, the author delivers his thesis on the future of the internet as a space for cultural relations, the Artistic Director of the ICA is hopeful about the creative possibilities of that space, and Peter York gives his thoughts on the subject later in the evening, from a balcony overlooking Big Ben.

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Charles Leadbeater

“We’ll have more culture available to more people, more easily… we’ll have more tools to add to it, share it, amend it… so we’ll have this billowing of cultural expression, in all sorts of ways: more democratic, more bawdy, more commercial, but also, much richer, in many ways. If you make a cultural resource available in new ways, people will find meaning in it that other people did not see…..in a process a bit like open source software development…more eyes will see more meaning, and generate more value from it…this could change the way we relate to one another through culture internationally”

Ekow Eshun

A short excerpt from the Artistic Director of the ICA, where he asserts that increased access to culture in the cloud will create a more vivacious debate over “who we are” and “how we live” than ever before.

“What is Culture under the Cloud, what will we come to make?”

Peter York

Counterpoint talked to Peter York, author and cultural commentator, after the debate. He responded with some scepticism to the possibilities of this new cultural sphere.

“When people talk about music on demand, they talk about the number of things they’ve appropriated – ‘I’ve appropriated two zillion tracks’…and you think, what for?”