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.)

Auctioning Master Painters' Drawings

Souren Melikian of International Herald Tribune reviews Sotheby's and Christie's recent auction of work by master painters such as Goya, Federico Barocci, Camillo Procaccini, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Aelbert Cuyp, Hans Baldung Grien and Rembrandt: "Old Master drawings have at last fully come into their own as an independent art form. Sadly, this is happening at the very time when they are about to make a final exit from the market."

Goya's young maid sweeping a tavern sold for $1.04 million at Sotheby's.