Saturday, May 16, 2009

Music, Video and Creative "Mixing"

I originally wrote this entry on October 3, 2004, and published it on blogs.sun.com.


Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School, whose weblog is always worth a diligent read, points to some recent mixes (including this video mix by DJ Spooky and some musical mixes) and reports from the Wired Magazine's Creative Commons Concert. In the meantime, it may be worthwhile to check out some other pieces of music, particularly these songs. I'm not sure if these songs are released under CC, but still they sound quite wild and full of mixing of the Brechtian style.


One of the main arguments of Lessig's most recent book, Free Culture, is that burdening creative mixing with prohibitively strict copyright laws will have seriously adverse effects on all kinds of ceativity, particularly of the artistic kind. Ultimately, such a burden will stifle "free" evolution of culture. (I've written a short and still unfinished critique of the "free" in "free culture" here. Elsewhere, I have written regarding Lessig's view on the operating taboo against political discourse.)


Friday, May 08, 2009

Cat Stevens, Terror Suspect


I originally wrote this entry on September 22, 2004, and published it on blogs.sun.com.


My wife (my best source of news) informs me that Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) was denied entry to the U.S. today.













Photo from: www.kyaz.com


Reports of this incident appear on Reuters, The International Herald Tribune, the BBC, The Malaysia Star, CNN, Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News, Seattle Post Intelligencer, The Australian, Gulf Daily News, NBC, U.S. Newswire, The Independent, Guardian, Culcutta Telegraph, Billboard, Houston Chronicle, Cat-Stevens.DE. . .


You may find more on this incidence on Yusuf Islam's web site: www.yusufislam.org.uk.


This should be about "Art," and I'm posting it under that category, but it belongs in its real unfolding to my "Society" category, a mismatch which simply demonstrates the limits of categorization.




When we deal with real-world events, they can only be understood in their totality and fail to fit into artificial digital divisions.


In the aftermath and in a wonderfully written essay for Asia Times Online, Maliha Masood, a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University started with Yusuf Islam's story and moved onto Rumi's popularity in the U.S.