One of my favorite authors, the so-called “father of cyberpunk,” William Gibson wrote a short piece for Wired magazine last month discussing art production, ownership and the link between the two in the creative process:
Today’s audience isn’t listening at all - it’s participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital.
Today, an endless, recombinant, and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of creative product (another antique term?). To say that this poses a threat to the record industry is simply comic. The record industry, though it may not know it yet, has gone the way of the record. Instead, the recombinant (the bootleg, the remix, the mash-up) has become the characteristic pivot at the turn of our two centuries.
As always, Gibson’s insightful and right on the money. Dig it, baby.
And, as an extra blog bonus today, while you’re digging Gibson, check out David Byrne’s podcast. Gibson and Byrne go together like beef tips and awaze sauce.
