How to use New Media to revive existing work

How to use New Media to revive existing worksubstack.com
How to use new media to revive existing work
by mishaderidder.eth13093 🥝 • 2y
AI summary of the linked article

Metalabel reissued three of its past works as a New Media experiment, reframing older work with new context and forms instead of letting it stay on platforms it does not control. The three pieces are Introducing Metalabel, its first manifesto released with the unpublished essay that inspired it; After the Creator Economy, a sold-out zine co-published with co—matter and preserved as an editioned digital download; and The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet trilogy, which includes the private email sent to a small audience five years ago. The reissues are free to collect as handmade download packages with the original work and credits for early supporters, and collectors can optionally financially support the creators. The team used the Chrome extension GoFullPage to save webpages as images and PDFs, then uploaded them to Metalabel release pages with release notes.

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It's so wild. I checked out Metalabel the other day, and it really is indistinguishable from any EFAN NFT platform. They have ENS-like avatars, and you can "purchase" a work with... Stripe :D

(For those out of the loop, here at Kiwi, we read basically every of Mr Strickler's posts, including the one where he quit crypto [1], for example.)

Somehow, I find something amusing in observing him. Truth be told, every word I read from him, I kinda wish him bad fortune. ...this is so bad, I shouldn't write this.

Anyways, he had this post a while ago [2] where he tried to tell us how to talk about his project at a party and, put in the context that he faded NFTs, it's actually so funny. Here are some quotes from the article. He's at a party and tries to explain his project to people:

“I’m a writer and I have a project I’m working on called Metalabel,” I gasped.

“What’s Metalabel?” she asked.

“A new space to release and collective creative work,” I answered too fast.

“Oh, okay,” the woman said, unsure. She kept looking at me, waiting for me to say more.

I felt overwhelmed by an impulse to get away from the conversation. “Well it’s nice to meet you,” I said, waving and wandering off, every atom of awkwardness clinging to my skin. I could feel how poorly that had gone.

and then later with another woman:

“What about you?” she said. “What are you doing these days?”

“I’m working on a project called Metalabel. It’s a new space for releasing and collecting creative work.”

Not sure why I find it so funny, but I think it's because I somehow respect his grind. But also because I totally know that situation. If you pay close attention to his writing, you get the impression that he actually kinda believes in NFTs, but he wants to do it in his way, but the pitch is REALLY hard at a party because people so easily gloss over the idea and categorize it as total nonsense (like they do with NFTs too!). And I just want him to be loyal... come back to us :D

In today's post, he talks about preserving the work people purchase on Metalabel, he calls this New Media, and he's like: "Screw NFTs, if you really wanna archive creative work, we've created a Chrome extension" that... drum roll please... "let's you download files from the internet!"

New Media experimental toolkit
To execute this experiment, we combined a handful of free tools and simple steps:

We used a Chrome extension called GoFullPage to download and save complete webpages of our work as images and PDFs in their original visual context. There are similar tools for downloading media.


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Btw. the ultimate irony will be when Stripe ads so much crypto support that you'll be able to buy Metalabel stuff with crypto again hahahahah
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Haha, yeah, he surfed the NFT wave, but when the wave dropped, he tried to change the strategy. I think the better path is to just not mention the word NFT at all, but use it under the hood. With L2s, good onramp, and embedded wallets, it's quite doable.
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