Initially, my idea for Pirate Cinema came from the works of the Graffiti Research Lab in New York who have recently focused on projection technologies with projects such as Laser Tagging. This involved graffiti writers using laser pens to project their tag or message onto a nearby building which would be visible to anyone in the vacinity. The groups idealogies are based on creating open source technologies to aid in ‘getting up’ (a graffiti term for becoming known and getting your name out).
The thing that inspired me about this project was that the work was very accessible, being in the public eye as it was taken to the streets.

In various cities all over the world such as Berlin, Copenhagen, Knoxville (but starting in Berlin, Germany) there is an existing movement called ‘Pirate Cinema’. This is a regular event that involves screening copyright mainstream films to a large audience for free in a counter movement against the ‘war on piracy’ which they believe constricts the monolopy on the film and media industry in order to open it up to an open public for inspiration and ideas to thrive without having to pay.
These events would often take place in squat buildings with an audience of about 20. For even such a small audience, there has been police interest even with arrests of copyright infringement.

Although the idea is fairly similar, I didn’t like the idea of how they restrict themselves to a small building, where the streets would have a potential wider audience where people didnt have to sit in a shabby room to watch a film. However, these projects bring up a huge issue of copyright and broadcast law and what it means to certain people which is very interesting.

Drive In Cinemas to an extent are quite a big inspiration for the idea as, even though they seem to be an extinct event, the premise of having people anonymously come together to watch a film in an area, then go away again seems almost poetic.

Pirate Radio is the last but very benificial inspiration to the idea. I’m a big fan of Rinse.FM, a popular pirate radio station based in East London, however having to listen to it online rather than via a radio, you lose the realness of pirate radio, but still get a feel for the community and interactions that you don’t get with commercial radio stations. This inspiration plays a huge part to the audio side of the project where the audio is transmitted by radio waves to nearby receivers whether they be car stereos, mp3 players etc.