:: "All dreams spin out from the same web."

-- Hopi wisdom

First and foremost we believe in the need for art in the world, and in the artist's right to create. We believe art expresses and represents the awakening of Gaia, the spirit of the world, and as such needs to be stimulated, supported and rewarded.

:: the creative process

In the West, we tend to think of art, as we do of much else, as objects; we confuse art with its expression. We think of art collections, of auctions and monetary value; we think of owning art.

But art is a creative process; it is an additive, transformative operation that changes the artist and the very shape of our world and its participants. To create art, it is not sufficient to merely replicate something that exists - that is called manufacturing. Artistic creation requires that we inject something of ourselves into the results - which after all, is requisite in all forms of expression. What we add, what we embed into the art we create, is our consciousness in its many forms: inspiration, memory, imagination, emotion... the whole gamut of qualities present in us, which are themselves Gaia's art and her expression.

Furthermore, as a creative process, art is also a feedback loop: to create art we take from the world, and the art we create becomes part of the world. For, what is consciousness if not taking in the world? taking from the world? internalising it through our senses and synthesizing it within ourselves into what we call experience? and is it not out of this experience that we create the would-be's and might-have-been's, the were's and will-be's, and all the kaleidoscope of perspectives that make life what it is?

:: intellectual property

By now, it is surely evident that the creation of art occurs within a context. Nothing exists in isolation and the creation of artistic content is no exception.

But the prevalent zeitgeist dictates that we divorce the process from its product for the sake of ownership. Hollywood wants to own; it wants to control art and artists; it would love to reduce the creative process to property - something from which it alone could profit.

There are however, fundamental problems with the concept because processes are not objects and creativity is dynamic, not static like property.

In their wisdom, our Founding Fathers clearly did not consider copy-right in the same sense they did our unalianable rights - they did not include copyright in the Bill of Rights. Rather, they defined copyrights and patents as temporary, government-backed monopolies whose only justification was the stimulation of creativity in our society. In his recent book "The future of ideas - the fate of the commons in a connected world", professor Lawrence Lessig, presents in much greater detail, an excellent analysis of the problems related to propertising the creative process.

Such problems have given rise to much conflict in modern history, even driving renowned artists as T.S. Elliot, Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Picasso to conclude that "stealing" is a virtue of the great. ⁽¹⁾.

:: consequences

By converting the output of the creative process into property we sever its relationship to the rest of the world, disrupting the feedback loop and denying artists access to the very stuff needed for their creativity.

These effects can be seen across the whole range of artistic activity. The successful film director Davis Guggenheim expresses it thusly (as quoted in Prof. Lessig's recent book):

I would say to an 18-year-old artist, you're totally free to do whatever you want. But - and then I would give him a long list of all the things he couldn't include in his movie because they would not be cleared, legally cleared. That he would have to pay for them. [So freedom? Here's the freedom:] You're totally free to make a movie in an empty room, with your two friends.

In essence then, the propertisation of art results in stiffling of artistic activity, yielding control of the creative process to the economically powerful, and generally slowing down humanity's awakening.

:: getting rich

From a pragmatic perspective, perhaps much of the artist's motivation has less to do with art than it does with personal gain i.e. it is few that would eschew fame and fortune. We don't certainly think there's anything amiss with that, and in a way the memiki network will strive for precisely that: the rewarding of artists and promotion of their work.

Our philosophy however, focuses on transitioning the public from the commercial consumerism that dominates our broadcasting systems, to a higher-awareness level where individuals take it upon themselves to become patrons of the arts. Today the public is seen as a market, individuals are not seen as people but as consumers, and art becomes degraded to nothing more than a sales tool.

The aim of the memiki movement is to repersonalise both the artist, and the art lover. We want to help establish a greater connection between these participants in the art process, restoring art from the mere consumable it has become, to the very human form of communication that it is.

We envision a world where an enlightened public is passionate about its artists and supports their living and sense of aethetics by giving back in spades.

(1) Variations on a theme: "theft" quotes.
A good composer does not imitate, he steals.
- Igor Stravinsky
Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.
- Pablo Picasso
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
- T.S. Elliot
When you steal from one author, it's plagarism. When you steal from many, it's research.
- Wilson Mizner, U.S. Dramatist