ArTechLaw Minecraft Summit 2021
Limited by the global lockdown, we decided to host our first conference entirely in Minecraft in Spring 2021. The ArTechLaw Minecraft Summit brought together a core group of academics, artists, technologists, and practitioners as an interdisciplinary and international cohort of creators and learners.
Why Minecraft? Minecraft has a learning-friendly and non-combative “Creative Mode” in which players not only avoid the risk of mob attacks or death by lava, but also find a Pandora’s box of materials in their backpacks and can fly around to explore the game world and its possibilities for creativity. Players also enter the game as avatars, wearing “skins,” which provides a more immersive experience for remote participation.
We wanted participants to meet in the virtual world of Minecraft to examine pre-selected cultural and creative works for the purpose of remixing them or making new derivative works together. In collaboration with Cybernauts and artist Antonio Roberts, we selected certain themes and legal issues that we wanted participants to critically explore and set up servers, provided training, and imported the works into Minecraft.
Session 1
In Session 1, participants remixed 3D models of existing cultural heritage artefacts with colonial contexts that had been made by cultural institutions or tech organisations. While doing so, they explored themes of exploitation concerning cultural artefacts at the intersection of art, technology, and law. The 3D models included:
- Hoa Hakananai’a of the Rapa Nui peoples, scanned by the British Museum and published CC BY-NC 4.0 on Sketchfab
- The Arch of Triumph of Palmyra, produced by the Institute for Digital Archaeology
- The Bust of Nefertiti, scanned by the Neues Museum in Berlin and released CC BY-NC-SA
Session 2
In Session 2, participants remixed an early internet viral meme which had recently been minted by its creator as an NFT and sold to capitalize its value. Examples included Me Gusta, Annoying Orange, LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!, Grumpy Cat and Nyan Cat.
Format
For each session, groups were asked to consider what type of license to apply to their creations and to reflect on the systems of ownership, exclusion, monetization, access and collaboration for which licenses are designed. They also considered how the terms of use for Minecraft provided constraints for their creative work and its exploitation. Using playfulness and co-creative environments to explore these and adjacent questions in a controlled space enabled participants to have open and frank discussions of the impacts of colonization, possession, knowledge production, and control that extend to IP and (digital) innovation, including our own engagement with them.
2023 Minecraft Installation at Critical Legal Conference
Following on from the 2023 Critical Legal Conference theme of ‘sanctuary’, we installed an exhibition of the ArTechLaw Minecraft Summit at Durham University. Visitors could explore the Minecraft Summit world and creative works via a computer or engage analogue-style with printed images, artists’ books and other visual components that captured the creativity – and chaos – of our event.