Today, I received a dmca notice on my livestream (dreamweirdodanceclub.live) from Kick for a video on demand, which I never asked to be saved in the first place. I reached out to them to express my upset at this stating since I can't turn off the auto-save this fundamentally violates my consent because my livestream is intended to be just that a live performance, and now I get punished for something I didn't opt into? This incident is right on the heels of soundcloud refusing to distribute my AI created glitch noise concept album and highlights a broader issues many face in digital performance art, where platforms' moderation systems often clash with artists' rights and intentions, leading to unintended or intended suppression.
Yes, I livestream all sorts of music I want because this is an ongoing live performance piece that is not going to end anytime soon. For a few months now, I have left my livestream on 24/7 on my desktop even when I'm not actively using it and intentionally not using it as much as possible when I'm working in my dual monitor setup. This is a combination of passive promotion, censorship protest, privacy commentary, and protection, more so protest I polished up as promotion in hopes I won't be censored more. The protection comes from being a woman artist who lives alone in a major world city during a time of great political turmoil and violence. Leaving the livestream on serves as a passive indicator that I am okay to people who may care.
Since I put my desktop through a mosh audio reactive live filter that painstaking I crafted live on stream, glitching what is on my desktop in time to the music, it is a statement about censorship and privacy rolled into one. As an artist known for AI, glitch art, identity driven works, and CC0 licensing, often focusing on destigmatization and feminist themes, I've used this stream to showcase experimental visuals that don't get exhibited, including audio-reactive Hydra code pieces and community-submitted art, turning it into a neo-pirate radio of sorts that challenges traditional media gatekeeping. The setup allows for real-time interaction, like chats and tipping to feature user-submitted videos through the mosh filter, emphasizing collaborative art creation. This all is akin to digital busking...with layers.
The empty desktop rotating art is part of the art as well. In a world that so much is demanded from an individual to be able to just live, let alone thrive as an artist, along with my personal battles with censorship, shadowbanning and the pesky, persistent issue of centuries of inequities and erasure in the art world for people from my identity ~ this all starts to be an echo within this current technological iterations of the same issues women have had for centuries.
My art, espcially including my livestream, is an attempt to have a conversation directly addressing historical patterns where female artists have been systematically denied they even exist, like Marietta Robusti (1560-1590) or Judith Leyster (1609-1660), and where the female body has largely been shaped by male artists, reducing women to symbols of male privilege rather than creators of culture. In the current context of the world, as a woman to just play music, make the art I want, which yes includes the nude feminine form, transact freely, and a lot of times seem like I'm doing nothing (when in fact I'm working my ass off) is a protest.
It falls in the same vein of Lennon's famous protest bed-ins or Hsieh's "one year performance 1980-1981 (time clock piece)" where every hour on the hour punched in on a time clock to do nothing and took a photo of it. Not saying my livestream is on their level, that's not really for me to decide, but more so to express this is a long standing prescident and accepted form of peaceful protest. My livestream also mirrors broader uses of digital protest art by marginalized artists, who leverage online spaces to resist inequities, amplify voices, and combat erasure during crises like the pandemic, where art becomes a tool for human rights advocacy and community building. This form of online activism has proven effective in channeling outrage into productive, persuasive and peaceful rooted messages, highlighting how digital tools can positively foster resilience and dissent amid global challenges we all face.
In a world that is hostile to some people because of their identity, mere prescence and existence becomes a radical act due to the broader environment we have to try to survive. Now, mixing in all the music stuff, I know is opening a can of worms, but it's a can that maybe needs to be opened. As a creator, the spirit of copyright laws was intended to protect me, the individual creator, but a lot of times, now for decades, the same laws designed to protect us are used to suppress us.
This is seen in how algorithmic content moderation on platforms, intended to create secure environments for everyone, relies on machine learning to automatically detect and shadowban content, often leading to the removal or de-prioritization of valid and in historical context highly valuable artistic expressions, resulting in ethical questions about creative freedom and economic losses for artists. In the context of livestreaming, this suppression is exacerbated by DMCA policies that treat live performances as potential infringements, even when artists argue for fair use in transformative, protest-oriented works, leading to calls for legal reforms to accommodate the rise of digital collective creator economies.
I'm a #cc0 artist at the core. Everything I put in the world, I want everyone to have the right to create from it. People say I'm giving my rights away when I'm cc0, but I disagree. I think I am actually protecting my rights because no one can take the IP away from me. By giving it to everyone, everyone includes me btw, I protect myself from people who would want to exploit me, and so far, it's proven true.
So all of these layers go into dreamy weirdo dance club, a livestream where I'm just trying to carve out this space for myself and others to exist in the digital world that demands my energy 24/7 to stay relevant. A vibe of come chill, listen to some weird music, no pressure to engage with anything. This push for inclusive digital environments is crucial, as algorithmic censorship disproportionately affects marginalized artists who challenge traditional inequitable values, with scholars arguing that biases in AI moderation amplify the male gaze and restrict freedom of expression for those portraying themes like feminine nudity as women themselves. My own experiences from curating art that has been censored to facing exhibition restrictions on nude works underscore how digital spaces can both empower and silence queer, feminist artists like myself, who use a vast array of digital tools to build communities and resist traditional art world gatekeeping.
Places like X, Twitch, Retake.tv and Kick (until this point) have welcomed this or at least not suspended me. I started the livestream on X specifically because most of mine and other crypto business happens there and I know I get shadowbanned there for various reasons. My perceived shadowban goes inline with a study by Giulia Taurino in "A Techno-Feminist Perspective on the Algorithmic Censorship of Artistic Nudity," which highlights how shadowbanning on platforms like X (Twitter) stems from biased algorithms that replicate long entrenched patriarchal values, disproportionately impacting artists from marginalized identities and reinforcing historical inequities in the art world. Further research supports this, showing how "black box gaslighting" undermines users' confidence by denying the existence of shadowbans while algorithms secretly demote content, particularly from vulnerable creators engaging in protest or feminist expression.
In my case, as an artist who've faced repeated hard or soft censorship, multiple exhibitions challenges, or outright erasure, these mechanisms perpetuate the same inequities I've protested against in physical shows at Sotheby's or TED Talks or Superchief or Billboards in Times Square. Ultimately, this livestream is a nuanced act of digital resistance, bridging protest art traditions while pushing again modern inequities, demanding platforms evolve to protect rather than suppress creator's ~ especially those traditionally erased ~ voices.
So, after a couple months of only streaming on X, I decided to multistream just to see what the wider world is like outside the immediate cryptoart bubble of the same five people listening. My stream has been dmcaed on YouTube and FaceBook because they have live monitoring of audio, which I wholly disagree with because again, there is no nuance in their policy, and do not livestream there anymore nor will I be keen to in the future. I also was suspended from Trovo for "being inactive" which is the whole point as I've just explained. Additionally, I let Kick know if they do not change their policy about VoD to not just auto publish them, I may need to reconsider streaming there.
Also to be clear, I was not making money off my livestream directly for months. I think people have bought art I've shared from me and other artists and even started listening to new music artists they discover from it, but tips were non-existent. It wasn't until Retake.tv onboarded me and I started streaming there, that I started to receive tips, which I'm so grateful for because the more tips I get the longer I can sustain and grow this project.
I'm a big fan of Retake.tv because they take the time to listen to me and even weathered me getting hot headed a little bit but with firm compassion. Of course, it being crypto native and integrated at it's core makes me even more a fan, and as I write this (I put this disclaimer because companies and people change sometimes) I would encourage any creator who cares about their creative rights and autonomy to consider adding them to their multi-stream.
dreamweirdodanceclub.live will keep streaming and evolve. I have featured and will continue to feature works from artists in my collection, my works, and also group exhibitions I'm involved in like the ones I've done with Weird Klub or Zora Mafia. I'm also very excited about Audius and plan to build out playlists there to share the web3-native music being created in possible "Audius hours" to further amplify undiscovered and emerging musical artists along with the eclectic mix I play now of historical and current music.
Tune in here: https://retake.tv/live/14515
Thank you for taking the time to read my words -- <3
Until next time, stay real and curious
Empress Trash 🖤
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