Questions of Copywrongs

Colbert's Remix

* What are the advantages of an "open source" and/or "open content" approach to remix culture in general, and consumer culture at large? Do we really need a "free culture" or is it in our best interests to restrict rights?


Umberto Eco says in his essay The Open Work, "the author offers the interpreter, the performer, the addressee a work to be completed." He is referring to what I see is a major advantage to open content or open work. If when we as artists see our work as finished for us, but rich enough to possess the ability to be continued by others not only does that free the artist from the pressures of feeling that their work is complete, but it frees (as Eco argues) the audience to interpret and reinterpret works.

Obviously for art that is remix-heavy, open source and open content is its life-blood; and yet sometimes remix is just good old fashion copyright violation (Girl Talk?-What I mean here is that Girl Talk does not use Open Content). But by giving remix artists the green light to legally use any content they would like to make a new work, is something I can certainly see leading to artistic progress (whatever that means). At the same time, where do you draw the line? Wouldn't people with self-serving, non-remix, rip-off tendencies who do not re-frame existing art in an interesting way also have access to this open content? This is why I like the viral licensing ideas of copyleft and creative commons. It feels like a compromise. You the artist still has rights to the original work so no one can claim they were the original creator, but others can still build upon it and change it in the name of art. Just cross your fingers that they do something good with your source material...


* Does the idea of copyright and intellectual property become more obsolete in digital/networking culture? Must the effort to protect intellectual property be valiantly fought in cyberspace as in other (more material) spaces? Why or why not?


What makes copyright and intellectual property obsolete in a digital culture is the ease of access an individual or groups of individuals have to sites like RapidShare, isohunt (or any torrent site) etc. Comedian Mindy Kaling does a great job explaining this kind of digital access and how it translates into the real world: Comedy Death Ray (first minute and a half only). This is great because now am I technically stealing the intellectual property of Mindy Kaling now as well, right? Anyway, if I can theoretically steal the entire Adobe CS4 suite from a torrent site, why would I buy it? Especially when I will not be accountable, I am stealing it in the name of art, and I don't feel like am I hurting anyone because no one loses the programs from my stealing it and I would never have actually bought the program myself to begin with so Adobe really isn't losing money. Remember, this really is an entirely hypothetical situation (so Adobe don't come after me!)

The intellectual property battle online therefore, is in my opinion a losing one. We keep finding ways (thanks Switzerland) to access free content that not long ago we would have had to pay for.

* What about an artist's labor? Where is the balance in protecting ones "original" creative output versus opening up the collective's creative output imagined by some as freely accessible source material for active reconfiguration?

I think I discussed this in the first question...

* Give an example of a work of visual or media art that you personally value where the artist(s) were clearly remixing / postproducing / reconfiguring source material from other visible sources. Was the final result for the betterment of culture in general? At what risk/cost?


This Nest, Swift Passerine is a book a poetry by Dan Beachy-Quick that came out this year ( I just introduced him when he read here at CU on Monday). This is actually a very traditionally written book of lyric-experimental contemporary poetry but it is constructed by taking source material from other writers them mixing his own language in between. I value this book as art immensely, the issues of ownership and self that the book addresses is incredibly valuable in my mind to the progression of and commentary on our real and artistic worlds.

But the question was about visual or media arts and because I am not regularly exposed unfortunately to much work like this on a regular basis, I will go with the last two I saw which were DuBord's Society of the Spectacle and DJ Rabbi's remix of it. The remix especially (which is a remix of a remix) is of great value, even if you only consider the impossibilities of ever reaching a finished experience of it. It seems to me to be a great example of what Eco is discussing in The Open Work as a work in progress because the audience will derive endless meaning from it. How do we make sense of a world with infinite meaning? Does this mean ultimately the absence of meaning? Who is I, and therefore what is 'eye' as the the vehicle of perception? I think these are compelling questions evoked by DeBord, DJ Rabbi and Beachy-Quick alike.


* Give an example of how you recently sampled and remixed source material from the general culture into something that you felt was an original form of expression (not including what you have created for this class).


Almost everything I write is sampled. Ok not everything, but recently I sat down with a Google books (added layer of source material issues) copy of a book called Skin. It is a non fiction work entirely about what skin means, including any covering of any space like buildings, humans, electronics etc. I took the language from this book and wrote into it and around it. The authors of this book would recognize the terms I stole/borrowed/recycled but I doubt they would see this as stealing-it is using this language in a completely different way. Language is social, it belongs to all of us and I feel as though my expression is just as creative and original as theirs.