Video + Sound Week 1: Recording the sounds

Link to recordings made for the adaptation of “Bloodchild.”

Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism and Kirby Ferguson’s Embrace the Remix

The Harper essay reminded me of Brion Gysin’s aphorism: “Writing is fifty years before painting.” Which, if anything, is an understatement. Even though appropriation has been an established practice in fine art for a century, and the most influential artform of our generation (hip hop) is built around sampling other people’s work, there are very few people who would consider a piece of writing made with the cut-up method to be acceptable in a professional, non-experimental context.

Lethem’s solution of “gift economies” for the intellectual ownership problem, though prescient for something written in pre-Kickstarter 2007, does not seem very realistic. The problem with “open source” culture, crowdfunding, etc. is that they usually only help the already moderately affluent and provide inadequate support to underprivileged creators. Most contributors to open source enjoy steady employment and income, and a significant number of emerging artists enjoy the support of their families and immediate communities. Even in the age of the crowdfunding and micropayments, it’s still really hard to make a living on the kindness of strangers.

East Village Poetry Walk