19. Invention, intellectual property and income

This week is about defining the idea of how my final project is spread.

In this case I’m used (since I have done illustration and comics) to intellectual property issues.

In this case the Final Project it’s something that, I think, by itself it’s not a product, but a masterpiece. It’s a prototype to work with. And maybe later, develop in the shape of a final product.

That final product can come with a brand of several works on series in the shape of artistic interventions, pseudo-videogame and/or pseudo-boardgames.

But, still the Monolith has several parts.

  • The physical object that I finally I’m going to fabricate.

  • The instructions and code needed to fabricate that Monolith.

  • The drawings and graphic design around it.

  • The story it’s going to be told.

The physical piece since it’s only an object it’s not subject about intellectual property, but physical propierty. So it’s out of this debate.

The instructions, shapes and code I’d like to have some atribution, but I don’t need the source it’s going to be open source because I don’t see any benefits to close it. Maybe someone can use it to make better Monoliths or other projects. I’ve used the knowledge of other people to do my assigments, maybe other people can use my work to improve themselves. I’m not discovering the wheel.

So for that I’m using a MIT licence, that would be this one:

Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

The drawings and graphic design I prefer to retain certain control. Specially because I don’t want my graphic work to be associated or be used by people with hate ideas or nazis in general. So for modifing it’s use I prefer just to be asked. So in this case I will use a Creative commons licence.

Creative commons has several licences and degrees of what do you want to grant to the public. It stills gives you the option to be asked and give you further permissions.

The basic shape is this summary text you can find in the creative commons page:

This is a human-readable summary of (and not a substitute for) the license. Disclaimer.
You are free to:

    Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
    Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material

    The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

    Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

    NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

    No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Notices:

    You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.
    No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.

This is not free culture, because for that I will have to grant commercial purposes. If I would that would be free culture. By the way this is the legal extensive form

For the Story I want also to keep that trace, so for the instance I will tell in the Masterpiece the same licence.

So in summary

Licences chosen

  • The physical object that I finally I’m going to fabricate. /not aplicable/

  • The instructions and code needed to fabricate that Monolith. MIT license

  • The drawings and graphic design around it. Creative Commons ATTRIBUTION/NO COMMERCIAL 4.0

  • The story it’s going to be told. Creative Commons ATTRIBUTION/NO COMMERCIAL 4.0

Future disemination

This Masterpiece can lead to other kind of projects.

First can be used to generate props for Escape Rooms. Now it’s a Monolith but it can be a bomb like the original one or an AI or any kind of “puzzle”

I can go also to miniaturize and make some kind of little game /board game.

I also can go big and create a big piece of interactive art.

Let’s try to talk about those posibilities a little further

Create an ecosystem of stories

This project allows to create an enviroment where you can have a barduino (or a commercial esp32 board) and tweak it yourself. That’s why I set the core system to be open. Then I can make other follow-up projects close or open for more specific objectives.

Go for the board game world

There is a year contest (that we, with my partner Hilda came to be finalist) of board games prototypes. It’s called Concurso de Protojuegos Verkami - DAU Barcelona. Verkami is a crowdfunding platform from Spain similar to kickstarter. DAU Barcelona is a board game con done in Barcelona every year.

Disemination

the bases are only in Spanish but I think they accept games in Spanish, Catalan and English

The Monolith can be tweaked into a smaller version of that and be more flat using a simplified version of what we have discovered (a esp32 board in a smaller cage with some inputs and outputs, maybe a comercial one with a custom shield)

Go for the video game world

In the video-game world the “maker labs” are done in gamejams. That’s usually where you can do networking and meet people and explore. Some part of the Monolith project comes from that world (that’s where I learnt the existence of twine!)

Also there is a Global Game Jam in January. Maybe this is the time to go back for it.

Disemination

Go for education

This is a game about empathy. About how things that it doesn’t seem sensitive they have feelings. Maybe I can connect to education and work with it.

The Path of the art installation

This also can grow big and be a part of an installation. I should contact with art galleries or fundations. I should research how to pitch it. This can grow with a specific room, maybe with a separation from the person that interacts directly with the monolith and the person who is watching it.