Filesharing, remix and … orchestra?
In an interview from last fall with The Rumpus filmmaker Brett Gaylor describes what he took away from his encounter with an anti-piracy lobbying effort by the Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA] during the filming of his ‘open source’ documentary RiP: A Remix Manifesto:
This was an industry that was really out of touch with not just what was going on, but actually with its place in the world.
I have found this to be true of my experience with much of the classical music industry as well, and it’s the reason why I post so frequently about our need to embrace what Gaylor explores in his own work [just replace ‘film’ with ‘orchestra performance’ and you’ll see what I mean]:
It’s not piracy I need to be afraid of; it’s obscurity. The problem is not that people are ripping off my film, it’s that nobody’s heard of my film, it’s a tiny little film. And that’s why I was very insistent that my film … be free to travel through networks.
Gaylor bases his entire approach on a fundamental notion of cultural influence which also underlies all of music history – that art springs from conversation with other art. Open sharing of recorded musical product doesn’t seem so dangerous from that perspective, does it?
