Gossamer Park in Leeton

Gossamer Park is in Leeton's outer suburb of Wattle Hill and was one of the last to be recorded in 2012 for the For 100 Years album.

Schmewound remixed it as a percussive workout.



Now another fantastic playground remix from Belgian producer KlanKman, who has previously reworked Dinosaur Park.



Hear the original Gossamer Park track here



Below is a track I made when I returned to the material in 2013 with my partner Jo.

Give It Up for Kutiman

Kutiman does phenomenal work with material from Youtube, such as the example above. It's the sort of collaboration that never existed before the internet and a remarkable demonstration of the power of Creative Commons, which is the copyright alternative that facilitates these kinds of transformative use.

Bikini skill

Love seeing my work remixed. This illustration of Kathleen Hanna is by Sara Stode of Sweden. Original pic can be seen at First Three Songs, No Flash -- a blog of gig pics that I've been meaning to update.

Embrace the remix

Copyright has gone wrong

Last year I screened Metropolis as part of the Leeton Art Deco Festival and one of the reasons I chose the film was knowing it was out of copyright. As the screening approached I decided to double-check whether it was really out of copyright and discovered it was actually under consideration to return to copyright.

Earlier this year Metropolis returned to copyright. The Golan v Holder decision of the US Supreme Court saw a range of works yanked from the public domain, including Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf -- which will impact on the opportunities for orchestras to play this popular piece.

Copyright and its enforcement is out of control. Recently there have been reports of a video uploaded to YouTube that was taken from the owner on the basis of a spurious claim to copyrighted material within the clip.

Copyright currently exists for a minimum of 70 years beyond the death of the author, which seems over the top if it's meant to exist to ensure authors benefit from their creations. But, of course, contemporary works are complex creations with multiple 'authors' and many of these seem to be corporate entities if you believe Alex Cox:

It's so corrupt. Now they want to have longer copyright periods because they say the young artists are relying on this money. The young artists never see any money because they sign away that money to big media corporations, like Universal and Viacom. We, the artists, lose all of our rights to these massive corporations, who then come down heavy on these kids for downloading films and music that we never see a penny from. It's complete bullshit. I want to encourage your audience to go and pirate a bunch of my stuff right away.

Laws are meant to reflect the societies they govern and I don't think copyright law reflects contemporary usage of copyrighted materials because copyright extensions have rendered them irrelevant.

If you consider the secretive way in which copyright laws like ACTA are written then I think more people should be concerned at the way governments have been lobbied by business interests to create laws that don't reflect social attitudes.

However, it's great to see that more people than ever are created content via the internet these days because there are alternatives to copyright available with many of these services. Creative commons is one very adaptable alternative and the beauty of it is the way it encourages people to extend your content. I've been very flattered by remixes that others have done of my recordings, although sometimes I've appeared less than flattering in my remixes of others.

Mashed Up

The line separating artists from their audience has always been a bit blurry. From that moment during the Renaissance when someone first decided that a painter was more than just a craftsman with an easel, the whole idea of the Artist-with-a-capital-A has required an entire mythology just to make it seem plausible.

The biggest myth of all is the Romantic notion that artists somehow create their work uniquely and from scratch, that paintings and sculptures and songs emerge fully-formed from their fertile minds like Athena sprang from Zeus. Running a close second is the myth that only a handful of us possess the raw talent – or the genius – to be an artist. According to this myth, the vast majority of us may be able to appreciate art to some degree, but we will never have what it takes to make it. The third myth is that an artist’s success (posthumous though it may be) is proof positive of his worthiness, that the marketplace for art and music functions as some kind of aesthetic meritocracy.

I think Aram Sinnreich makes a good point. The term artist always seems a bit precious to me, like their work needs the tag to make it legitimate or something.

Jared Diamond has a chapter in Guns, Germs and Steel about the myth of the creator because inventions rarely spring from one mind. More often one mind is remembered for having adapted the preceding ideas into a workable form.

This is true of art. Very rarely is an artist working in isolation when they develop their trademark. Yet we're marketed the line that their genius is unique.

It's why I like Creative Commons because it promotes the idea of adapting existing work.

Remix challenge

Let the music flow through your computer and share your interpretation of this track about copyright and music.

All the parts are available for download here or you can hear the version sent in for the RPM Challenge. Give it a go - share your style!

Hear Dazzleships' gentle remix
Hear The Oxygen Tent's garage-style remix
Hear our acapella live over aeolian harp
Or hear bassling's electro-style pulsing wires remix

And click the picture above to watch our video of an acoustic live interpretation and a bit about the aeolian harp that's something of a motif.

Song for Creative Commons

After reading The Culture Club, I was encouraged to read further and got Audio Culture, edited by Cristoph Cox and Daniel Warner, a collection of readings. One of the most potent essays in it
is Bettered by the Borrower by John Oswald. As I read it I jotted down ideas and later thought they would make good lyrics.

I'm in the process of recording the song but thought I'd share the text:

We share in ears
vibrations in air
it's more primal than blues
this form we share

I am a sound
a song that is true
this music that flows through me
can flow through you too

Gentle borrower
transform me
gentle borrower
transform me

Brainstorm elation
marks transformation
save condemnation for
straight imitation

There are more than these notes
there are more than these keys
an infinite soundscape
needs your diversity

Gentle borrower
transform me
gentle borrower
transform me

For me the lyrics pick up on my enthusiasm for Creative Commons as much as my desire to see everyone make music. I often say that music is too much fun not to have a go. And then there's the strength that can be taken from music, not to mention its application for purposes of propaganda like advertising.

What I like about Creative Commons is the idea that every endeavour relies upon building on existing ideas. Jared Diamond has an awesome chapter in Guns, Germs and Steel (I think it's called Necessity's Mother) that discusses how much we seem to like the idea of a single creator when the truth is more often the case that progress relies on developing existing research. He gives a bunch of examples, like James Watt's improvements to the steam engine.

Anyway, I'm drifting off track. The thing with music is that, of all the possible combinations of notes, only a limited number sound good together. So, really, we have no choice but to recycle (at a fundamental level) and some of the ideas that get promoted to protect copyright are really petty. Like, can you imagine being taken to court for making a video of someone singing Happy Birthday?

Post script: I've put the song I recorded with these lyrics up for remix. Grab the parts and have a go.