Online Interview with Mark Watts about the Alan Watts Film Project

Our other website is alanwatts.org, and a new alanwatts.com site is in the works.

1. What is behind this recent outreach of encouraging people to re-mix your father's material?

It came out of the Southpark project originally, and the enjoyment of authentic responses to my father's works that have been appearing on YouTube and elsewhere. I'm not talking about someone posting a picture or two over our audio, but about the sincere dialogs that result when one takes his ideas in and they resonate and something fresh comes out. Personally I view every authentic response regardless of the cultural framework as vital to his work, and I'm very encouraged by the creative response that has sprung up around YouTube. Back when I was studying film and photography in the 70's this forum would have been a dream come true.

2. What are the copyright restrictions on the use of the material? (Creative Commons; Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License?) Do people need permission to re-mix, mashup, etc.and should people contact you?

We are posting clips on the alanwatts.ordg site with the intention that they be available for non-commercial creative use. All we ask is that you let us see what you've done, and let us post the end product on the org site as well if we like it. If you have a commercial project, idea, or want to use something else specific, just get in touch. We're ready to make things happen. The material is still copyright protected, so we aren't too happy when people just grab things and post them as we're trying to keep the energy focused around our sites to create a sustaining community for these works.

3. Why YouTube? It seems to be very 'low-key' -- are you promoting the fact that your father's video programs are available for free on the Internet? (It was a pleasant surprise to me)

Yes, we list our favorite YouTube posts in the Public Video section under Multimedia on the alanwatts.org site. We will ask YouTube to take down unauthorized postings of audio and video that have no creative components.

4. How did you get involved with GPGDS / Reflected Flicks ? Who else are you collaborating with... Trey Parker? Any comment about his work?

Peter sent us a link to the piece he'd done wit Radiohead's piece Videotape and we enjoyed it. Since then we've tried a few things with him, and they all worked out well. So now Peter is working on a full length doc with us. The SouthPark project was a few years back, but we hope to do a few more segments when the film goes into production.

5. Which of Alan Watts' audio lectures seems to be the most popular over the years?

There are too many to pick one, but Coincidence of Opposites which was the basis for Music and Life is always well received.

6. What does the future hold for Mark Watts?

In addition to playing around with my father's works I have a few projects I'm involved in, one having to do with 'rock art; and Native American cosmology (turns out they were way into pattern language in a slightly different vein than the Chinese) and another involving ecological architecture, which is figuring heavily with the Alan Watts Mountain Center. So these will all continue to move forward together as there are many internal connections between the projects.