WRA 110: Lessig, Owning Culture, and Mashing stuff up

by Phill “DJ FunkyPowerPointz” Alexander

Today

1. Let me tell you ‘bout Larry Lessig2. Let’s talk about the Grey Album

A quick lead-in: Lessig on IP law

• Lessig declares that he has the following position:– He is anti-piracy– He is anti-war (meaning law vs. creators

here)– He is anti-lawyer and anti-lobbyist (he

includes himself here, so he’s anti-Lessig, too)

Lessig video here (if you’d like to watch later)

Lessig is like,

• “We need to hear less from lawyers and lobbyists and more from artists [about who owns culture].”

• " This is a relationship between technology and ownership, which is translated to digital technology and copyright.”

Pirate Technologies

player piano – “pirated” sheet music radio– “pirated” records cable TV– “pirated” network TV betamax– “pirated” TV and movies

But as these were regulated, the law always waited to see “the potential of the technology.”

We Didn’t Start the Fire…

• “...this is not the first time radical new technologies have appeared and changed the way that culture gets made and distributed. This is a constant theme...”

• But… The law favored the pirate in those old cases. It is now "fit the technology to the law" and not "fit the law to the technology."

"This architecture demands... the right to remix culture."

Enter DJ Danger Mouse. He felt that the Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s black album went together.So he created “the Grey Album” which you can DL here: http://www.illegal-art.org/audio/grey.html but don’t, because it’s totally illegal. *wink*

Or is it? Or… should it be?

RemixRemix

Remix is the act of taking one or more cultural artifacts-- in this case visual, though video, audio, and alphabetic texts are regularly remixed-- and deliberately mixing elements together to create something new that often specifically mimics one or more of the sources. Many remixes are meant to be satirical or overtly political, though satire is not essential to the genre.

Remix is the act of taking one or more cultural artifacts-- visual, video, audio, and/or alphabetic texts- and deliberately mixing elements together to create something new that often specifically mimics one or more of the sources. Many remixes are meant to be satirical or overtly political, though satire is not essential.

Remix

+ =

Remix

+

=

If you’re offended by profanity, plug your ears right about now

Whose song is this? Whose song is this?

Another Example

• The New Yorker ran a piece on Danger Mouse and the idea of mash-ups. You might recognize it.

• “Mashups find new uses for current digital technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-effect relationship behind almost every change in pop-music aesthetics: the gear changes, and then the music does.”

• So… whose song is this?

A Stroke of Genius

“In October of 2001, a d.j. named Roy Kerr, calling himself the Freelance Hellraiser, sent Temple-Morris [a mash-up show duo] a mashup called “A Stroke of Genius,” laying Christina Aguilera’s vocal from “Genie in a Bottle,” a lubricious pop song, over the music from the Strokes’ “Hard to Explain,” a brittle, honking guitar song. “

A few more remixes

• Shine• Brokeback

back to the visual while still looking at music…

• Is it “okay” for Nas to do this? • Is it okay for FOX to depict Nas in the ways

that they have?