Lessig's Distance from Remix

My first foray into remix culture actually occurred a couple years ago in Dr. Andrew Mara’s English 275 class. One unit required that we remix the Phaedrus. I’ll be honest and say that I am perhaps one of the most uncreative people when it comes to arts and entertainment stuff. I have neither created a mixed tape nor written, much less thought, of placing myself in a novel or movie. Needless to say, Doc’s assignment was difficult for me. Since that experience, remix culture has come front and center in the nation’s spotlight via the SOPA/PIPA debacle.

The widespread panning by internet lovers everywhere led to the shelving of the bills SOPA/PIPA, for now at least. Had those bills not gotten the attention they did, however, I don't think Lessig's Remix would have packed the punch it did when I read it. It is interesting to note, however, that Lessig was largely absent in the debate. He was called out by Jeff Roberts as to why on paidcontent.org: http://m.paidcontent.org/article/419-why-is-lawrence-lessig-mia-in-the-great-sopa-piracy-debate/ . Lessig responded via his blog: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/13119510676/me-mia-on-the-sopa-soap-opera. Lessig’s response in essence stems from the fact that he feels there are deeper levels of corruption happening at the governmental level that require fixing before what he deems more surface level though still important things, like copyright and intellectual property, can be changed.

To go back to my English 275 class for a moment, part of the reason I think I had so much difficulty in Doc’s class is because I am too enveloped in the copyright culture of the West. My high school English teachers were sticklers about citation. I am an avid reader and vividly recall reading about the fallout of Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" illegally sampling from Queen and Bowie's "Under Pressure." These and other experiences have stuck with me through my time in higher education. It is therefore difficult, prior to the SOPA/PIPA hullabaloo at least, to remove myself from my historical and geographic context, again not being the creative type, and consider how to make changes of the scale Lessig talks about.

Now that the impact of what these laws would have done to the internet if they had been passed into law has been made clear by way of the myriad websites that either blacked out or ran their content as if under SOPA/PIPA regulations, Lessig's argument that we are turning our children into criminals for what they naturally, and harmlessly, do anyway can be expanded to include people who run some of the most popular and useful derivative and apropriation websites on the internet.

Question for class: Do you think the SOPA/PIPA bills getting the (largely negative) exposure they did has made the vast swath of America more invested in changing Copyright/IP laws.

Remix presents a conflict between creative expression and copyright law.  The right to create and incorporate work that has already been produced is an issue that concerns both executives involved in receiving financial gains, and the artists who wish to protect their art. 

John Philip Sousa argued that being an inactive listener would crush creative pursuits by individuals.  He believed that by simply listening, or becoming a part of the "Read-Only" (RO) culture, the practice of any art-form would dissipate.  Without closely studying the intricacies of musical technique, people would lose out of touch with creative expression.  Sousa's argument proclaims that in order to be creative, one must be active and not passive.  This statement remains to be true, but one can also participate in actively creating by first submerging oneself into the art of another.  Inspiration and influence must be triggered by some force, and it may come in the form of another work.  Many artists must first look to other sources for their creative ideas.  For example, Martin Cooper, the director of research and development at Motorola, credited the Star Trek communicator as his inspiration for the first cell-phone.  In another example, physicist Leo Szilard read H.G. Wells' The World Set Free, in which he first received the notion about atomic energy and to solve the problem of creating a nuclear chain reaction.  This eventually led him to push for arms control and the peaceful use of nuclear power after WWII.  These examples prove that listening/watching is not a passive act.  Lessig too argues the same point, and states that both being a listener and an actor involve acts of creativity. 

However, in order to add to an original work, the technologies of the 20th century prevented individuals from contributing in such a manner.  Individuals could only read,watch or listen to a work, but not add to it.  The Internet has stepped in and changed this model of creativity.  This can be seen through the work of Girl Talk.  Also, the work of Candice Breitz in which she had several of John Lennon's fans sing his songs is another example of how technology has changed the way creative ventures are pursued.  However, this work in particular was questioned by some, and required her to get special permission.  In a similar fashion, Eric Whitacre, the creator of the digital choir produced an original work in which he pulled in 185 different voices to sing an original piece that he wrote.  This required individuals to send in videos of themselves singing in various octaves of the song Whitacre wrote.  Whitacre then assembled these voices together and created the song.  The difference between Breitz and Whitacre is that Whitacre wrote an original piece, whereas Breitz used the work of an established artist.  Whitacre's practice of combining different voices to create a single song is an excellent example of inc operating technology and talent.  All of the participants were a part of one choir.  This example provides a stark contrast with the work of Girl Talk and other artists who use the content of other talent.  Whitacre put together various voices into one song, much like what mash-up artists do, but his own original work. 

Question:

Should amateurs who wish to participate in mash-up culture be held accountable if they choose to produce work of their own, even if they don't gain any financial benefits?       

   

Singing in the Reign of Copyright Law

The first part of Remix focuses on how we can regain today a culture of our past—amateur interactivity and creativity with expressive works, what Lessig characterizes as the Read-Write (“RW”) culture, meaning that the individual can do more than just read the content—the person can also “write” to it (28-29). Remix is one form of writing to content in which other people’s works are transformed in a new creation, but RW culture encompasses amateur or user interactivity with content more broadly.

Lessig uses the example of John Philip Sousa’s outcry against phonographs in 1906 as an example of our past culture that valued amateur engagement with creative works. Sousa believed that the ability of machines to play songs for people simply to listen to would dampen people’s singing of those songs and learning of music. As Sousa decried, “The child becomes indifferent to practice, for when music can be heard in the homes without the labor of study and close application, and without the slow process of acquiring a technique, it will be simply a question of time when the amateur disappears entirely” (26).

So what do kids singing songs have to do with remix today? According to Lessig, the connection is that, in both cases, “the RW creativity does not compete with or weaken the market for the creative work that gets remixed” or sung. Both activities of singing “the songs of the day” and remixing other people’s work involve acts of creativity for the person engaged in the endeavor that can complement the original work.

One might find it strange that the tech-savvy Lessig gives so much prominence to the old Sousa example throughout his book. To some, Sousa may sound like a Luddite, which Lessig is not. Lessig does not question the basic premise of Sousa’s attack against record players for allegedly dampening singing and the learning of music. The argument raises an empirical question that probably is unanswerable today for lack of data, but one might surmise that many people sang along with the record player (as they do today with the radio and karaoke machines) and with a greater number of songs at their disposal. And some people may have been inspired to become musicians or write music after listening to music played on the “infernal machines” that they might not have otherwise been able to hear. It is not so clear that Sousa himself would have embraced today’s remixing of music by DJs like Girl Talk.

Yet Lessig remixes the Sousa example. What Sousa feared was the amateur’s loss of active engagement with musical works: instead of singing or performing them, amateurs can just listen to them. That passive state of receiving content like an inert receptacle (read: couch potato) is what Lessig calls the Read-Only (“RO”) culture. People can only read the work, but not add to it. For much of the twentieth century, the technologies of content dissemination (phonograph, radio, tape recorder, TV, CD) really only allowed RO culture. In other words, the machines made people passive. But the Internet changed everything. It makes being passive passé.

Thus, the lesson of Sousa is still relevant today. As Lessig notes, “ironically for Mr. Sousa, [the] new infernal machines . . . will enable an RW culture again” and foster the kind of amateur interactivity with culture that Sousa lauded (33). Lessig picks up on a key part of Sousa’s testimony before Congress in which he said, “I have never known that it was unlawful to get together and sing” (32). The testimony was a not- so subtle rebuke of expansive views of the public performance right to reach even “singing in the streets” by the public (32). Even Sousa, a famous composer of copyrighted works, recognized the need for limits to copyright, so as not to stop such amateur activity and engagement.

In reading this section, I could not help but be reminded of the somewhat recent example of the  chorus of fifth graders from PS22 in Staten Island. Although the story of the PS22 chorus became famous after Lessig’s book, it is exactly what Lessig’s talking about.

The PS22 kids are led by Gregg Breinberg. Breinberg started teaching the kids pop songs, both oldies and recent hits. In 2006, he began posting on YouTube a few videos of the chorus’s rehearsals at school. He also blogged about the chorus on his own blog, with videos of the kids embedded. Then, at the end of 2008, the PS22 chorus had its “YouTube moment.” Gossip blogger Perez Hilton saw videos of the kids’ performances of Tori Amos’ songs and liked them so much he started blogging about them. Soon, Amos herself heard about them, and arranged to hear the chorus in person. Upon hearing the kids perform one of her songs live, Amos was so moved that she was brought to tears. Said Amos, “The fact that the children are so versatile—I didn’t expect this level of ability from a children’s choir and was really blown away, touched, thrilled and inspired all at once.” Stevie Nicks, of Fleetwood Mac, had a similar emotional experience hearing the kids perform her “Landslide” on video, as did Suzanne Vega in watching the chorus perform her “Language.” The accolades from the artists soon brought the kids huge media attention, appearances on Nightline and Good Morning America, and performances for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and U.S. Senator Charles Schumer. If you recall, this phenomenon by the end of September 2009, the PS22 chorus videos generated over 9 million views on YouTube.

The sheer joy the kids’ singing has brought to people and even to the artists of the music themselves would lead one to believe that the kids’ activity is all legal under copyright law. The only problem: it’s not, or at least it’s not clear it is legal. Technically, the playing of the music video on YouTube and any performances to the public or at a public place would constitute public performances of the song, which would require permission (whether express or implied) from the copyright holders unless it is fair use. Creating copies of the video would also implicate the right to copy. Although there is a clear exemption for singing “in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction” for learning’s sake, the publicly available videos of the kids’ singing on YouTube fall outside this classroom exemption.

My question for the class is: So is it fair use? How would Lessig have used this example if the book were written after these events?

The story of the hurricane

History repeats itself. That’s the one thing I remember from high school history (that and “Et, tu, Brute?”). In RIP: a remix manifesto, filmmaker Bret Gaylor puts his authorial spin on the ethics of sampling in music. It’s a little hard from the get-go for me to accept what I’m fed: when he asks who the author of a song is, and it’s clearly Michael Jackson’s voice I hear, and he says “it’s not the Jackson Five,” I feel a little bit of resentment. But then, I’m a huge Michael Jackson fan. I wore his “Thriller” t-shirt to my second-grade class picture. So is sampling in music ethical? An author in the movie (is it Lessig?) tells us that “the answer will always be ‘it depends,’ and it depends on who it is and how upset they are.” But I don’t think that’s really the issue for the “kids,” as Lessig puts it. I think it’s simply an issue of cool factor.

Lessig tells us that an entire generation has been criminalized. He tells us all the kids are doing it: creating their own spliced songs and movies via they’re computer. But for this to be true, three other things have to be true: 1) that the kids have the technology, 2) that they know how to use it, and 3) that a cooler counter-movement doesn’t exist. For let’s face it: I know one person who works with samples (you know who you are). I still have students who need help logging into Blackboard and Campus Connection and navigating their way through those systems. And the “my computer messed up my homework” excuse? Well it’s used so much that maybe they are all criminals. But I don’t think so. I think that technology is simply a different form of hierarchy. Quite obviously, I am on a pretty low end of this hierarchy. The kids don’t all have the technology and they don’t all know how to use it. Or is it less of a hierarchy and more of a pendulum? Interestingly, Gaylor points out that Girl Talk’s parents were “back-to-the-earth” types. I bet a lot more of us know people that are unplugging than are plugging in, at the moment. This all says nothing about the music; how much knowledge and practice (20,000 hours, right?) it takes to become proficient at something could be the same for a cello or a laptop as far as I know.

Lessig mentions Bob Dylan several times in part one of Remix. I kept waiting for him to talk about Dylan’s history in music, and how he was the criminal. Oh wait—everyone was a criminal. Because Dylan was a folk artist at first. Folk songs are traditional; passed on to keep the old stories alive, and a lot of these stories were about underdogs who were unfairly prosecuted. Sounds familiar. Gaylor and Lessig are saying the same thing about remix culture. And the scenes from the movie would seem to support that. When Dylan started putting his own spin on folk songs, people were upset. You don’t mess with a person’s story. You don’t rewrite their words or change their melodies. When Dylan’s technology changed and he started playing the electric guitar, people were more than upset. Dylan, in effect, remixed and then morphed into his own artist. Though he made those concerned with tradition mad, his cool factor went up. So it doesn’t matter so much after all who gets upset; as long as someone is upsetting tradition, they are participants in the trajectory of the conversation of culture, and, god help us all if that ever ends.

Questions:

If the author is the collector, why does Gaylor put credits at the end of his movie?

This movie is highly stylized and politicized. What does that do in the Burkean Parlor?

Thoughts on Remix

In a sequence of serendipitous timing, I found myself reading Lawrence Lessig’s Remix over the course of NDSU’s Red River Graduate Conference, where I presented a paper that addressed what I now think can be framed as a genre of remix: literary tattoos, wherein readers take selected passages from literary works and incorporate them into their bodies via the act of tattooing.  Over the course of my presentation I mentioned some authors who have gone on record expressing their concern—and, in some cases, outright disapproval—of fans taking too much creative leeway with their texts.  An author I mentioned specifically was George RR Martin, creator of the Song of Ice and Fire series, currently taking HBO by storm.

Martin is an interesting man and a talented writer, with an active website and an extensive record of ‘Con appearances.  He is NOT a fan of fanficiton: a genre consisting of fans (book fans, TV show fans, movies, anime, etc) using the universe and characters of a published author to write their own stories.  Martin speaks to fanfiction directly in the Q & A section of his website:

Q:  I want to be a writer. Can you give me any advice?

A:  The most important thing for any aspiring writer, I think, is to read! And not just the sort of thing you're trying to write, be that fantasy, SF, comic books, whatever. You need to read everything. Read fiction, non-fiction, magazines, newspapers. Read history, historical fiction, biography. Read mystery novels, fantasy, SF, horror, mainstream, literary classics, erotica, adventure, satire. Every writer has something to teach you, for good or ill. (And yes, you can learn from bad books as well as good ones -- what not to do)

And write. Write every day, even if it is only a page or two. The more you write, the better you'll get. But don't write in my universe, or Tolkien's, or the Marvel universe, or the Star Trek universe, or any other borrowed background. Every writer needs to learn to create his own characters, worlds, and settings. Using someone else's world is the lazy way out. If you don't exercise those "literary muscles," you'll never develop them.

While reading Remix, I immediately thought of Martin.  Lessig talks about Souza’s tendency to “romanticizing culture” (27), about his fear that “people would be less connected to, and hence practiced in, creating that culture” (27) with the advent of the phonograph and copy-able music.  Similarly, lawyer Charles Sims is quoted with regards to his feelings on “original creativity” :

“I can’t say strongly enough that I think what Larry is really fundamentally focused on…[-]this parasitic reuse[-] is such a terrible diversion of young people’s talent…I think that if you have young film people you should be encouraging them to make their films and not to simply spend all of their time diddling around with footage that other people have made at great expense, to create stuff that’s not very interesting.  There’s a fundamental failure of imagination…” (91). 

Lessig’s point with regards to Souza is that the man was correct to fear the loss of RW culture, but wrong to assume that technology will always be the force keeping it down.  Remix, the artform of RW culture, is possible only through the use of digital technology, which will change us from a RO consuming culture to one capable of creating anew.  Lessig’s point with regards to Sims and others like him—I am going to include Martin in that category—is that they erroneously believe “original creativity” does NOT include the act of remixing.  This has obvious ties to the authorship definitions we’ve studied all semester, particularly the romantic, single-author, creative-genius-working-in-solitude view, which many argue does not truly exist.  

So for that reason, I find it interesting to compare Martin’s attitude toward fanficiton with his own work.  For example, here’s an article from The New Yorker on the origins of Martin’s series:

“In 1996, he published a novel of seven hundred pages, “A Game of Thrones,” the first volume of a projected trilogy called “A Song of Ice and Fire.” The series chronicles the struggle for power among several aristocratic families in the Seven Kingdoms, an imaginary medieval nation. In a genre crowded with stale variations on what Joseph Campbell called “the hero’s journey,” with plots distilled from ancient legends, Martin took his inspiration from history instead of from mythology; he based his tale, loosely, on the Wars of the Roses, the bloody dynastic struggles in medieval England. Compared with most epic fantasy fiction, Martin’s story contained relatively little magic, and it felt dangerous, lusty, and real.”

And in this interview, Martin himself speaks to the influence of history and historical fiction on his work:

“It's definitely a fantasy novel. It has dragons and so forth in it. It does have the feel of historical fiction. I love history. I wanted to get a lot of sense of history in A Storm of Swords and the other books and some of the feel of historical fiction. Historical fiction is wonderful to read, but the only problem I have with historical fiction is that I know too much history. So I always know what's going to happen. So you're reading a novel about the War of the Roses and no matter how good or bad it is, you know who is going to win. With this sort of thing you can take people by surprise. It reads like historical fiction, it feels like historical fiction but you don't know how it's going to come out.”

So for Martin, taking elements of history like the War of the Roses (Lancaster = Lannister; York = Stark) does not violate the principles of original creativity—it’s not “lazy,” in his mind.  But his work is read-only, and his fans must not attempt to interact with it by writing.  I suppose we are all fortunate that nobody’s yet found a way to make history RO.    

Don’t get me wrong—I love Martin’s work.  But I do not support the distinctions he is drawing.  One would think he would welcome fan interest in his work, particularly given the lengthy waits between novels.  And, as Lessig asks: what is remix hurting?  Fanfiction is never going to take money out of Martin’s pocket, nor do I buy the idea of readers abandoning his work in favor of a fanfiction-only diet.  And I disagree with the idea that a young writer exploring Martin’s world via fanfiction is not exercising a literary muscle.        

Question For Class:

Do you find yourself more aligned with Lessing’s “legalize it” take on remix, or Martin’s “it’s lazy” perspective?

A Confusing Contemplation on the Ethics of Authorship

As we've been reading, the implications of our understanding and construction of the Author are far-reaching and potentially severe. Jaszi (who has a sweet DJ name) examines just a few of these implications in his discussion of Jeff Koons and his legal battles and offers an ironic view of Foucault's observation that the author arose in part as a way to punish author-criminals--the irony being that authors are now being punished for taking/borrowing from authors (that is the justification by prosecutors, i.e. publishers, anyway). Like Koons, other writers/Authors/authors have run into similar problems; but unlike Koons, I know more about others' stories.

In the 1960s, Lenny Bruce started to combine an interest in free-flow, improv jazz--something he'd picked up from the Beat poets--with observational, stand-up comedy. Comedy, as most of you know, tends to exploit audiences' fears and taboos for the sake of eliciting laughter. This has just been how comedy has worked for a long time. Bruce didn't invent that aspect of comedy--see Rabelais, Chaucer, etc. hundreds of years before; or the recent discovery of what many are calling the world's oldest Yo Mama joke (it involves her sexual activities and it comes from Babylon 1500 B.C.).

However, because Bruce's setups were longer and more complex than the older style of insults or setup-punchline, and because he fused those older comedic tropes of sexuality, death, and the body with profane language, he was labeled a "sick" comic, arrested multiple times, charged with obscenity and indecency, and spent most of his later years as a broke alcoholic in and out of court.

George Carlin, considered a Bruce protege, also had his nights in jail and days in court--and a response to one of his acts made its way to the Supreme Court and ultimately established the primetime family hour, i.e. no sex, profanity, etc. when kids might be watching/listening.

Another writer, Salman Rushdie, went into hiding in the late-1980s because a death sentence was issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in response to one of his novels, The Satanic Verses.

A few years ago, an Indian politician offered an $11 million bounty on the Danish cartoonist who depicted Muhammad in a position he didn't appreciate.

A few weeks ago, American media reported the deaths of Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik, two journalists covering the violence in Syria.

I could go on, but the point I'm trying to make is that writing and Authorship are very corporeal--as LeFevre (still and also a sweet name) has pointed out, describing writing as a social act. It does not merely take place in the textual record. And I think that this needs to be taken into account when we examine and redefine our constructs of postmodern authorship. So, my question is this: If writers live to write; brave death, injury, and exile to write; and sometimes experience death, injury, and exile because of what they write, how should this be considered when we define postmodern authorship? Do these dangers change how we view the Author-text connection, or how we assign the benefits of authorship (including ownership) to those who write or author?

conjunction junction: language as posthuman object

In this week's reading from LeFevre, we are introduced to some Kantian philosophy as related to language. Unfortunately for you, Kant and Latour have some interesting intersections that I cannot resist exploring here. But first, let's revisit LeFevre's buildup. She asks us to consider the eternal question: what is language? A reflection, distortion, metaphor, medium, obstruction, tool, or reality itself? A pretty ambitious question, one that thinkers have been trying to answer for some time. And perhaps there is no answer that satisfactorily answers that question.

Yet Kant, and later Latour, come as close to answering that question as possible, in my estimation. As LeFevre notes, Kant makes some valuable observations regarding the relationships between humans and objects, notably that it is the relationship between the two that is important, not the anthropocentric point of view that even considers whether or not the fabled tree falling in the woods makes sound. Kant argued that it would be "an absurdity if we conceded no things in themselves or set up our experience as the only possible mode of knowing things" (107). In other words, the tree does make a sound. Of course it does, because the world is not centered around and dependent upon a human's presence.

Yet meaning--and indeed language--is still made by humans, but it is made via a series of a priori categories that comprise our epistemologies and ontologies, and lead us to evaluate the world in a system of shared symbolic meaning. Ideas, then, become objects in themselves, and, as Bronowski notes, "the world is not a fixed, solid array of objects...it shifts under our gaze, it interacts with us..." (109-110). So we are interacting with the world and making our own meaning, yet that meaning is dynamic and dependent on the networks of objects/actors in which we find ourselves entangled.

So what is language? At least according to Kant and Latour, we might frame language as objects. In an elementary way, this makes sense. We teach language as a series of building blocks (words) that do different things when used in different ways, right?

So can we talk about language as a Latourian actor? This is complex, of course, because I would have to prove that language can be separated from the user. But language has been disembodied since Gutenberg, and it is increasingly disembodied as our words and language systems are uploaded, downloaded, remixed, and hacked in digital spaces.

Q: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Q: What is language's relationship to reality? With whom do you most closely align yourself?

Q: If we consider (even for just a moment) that language is an actant on the same ontological footing as its users, how can we reframe the idea of authorship?

Interaction in Invention

As I continued reading Lefevre, there was one section that really sparked my interest. The section “Inventing by Interaction” discusses the importance of interaction as a means of creation. Lefevre talks about how this method has been useful for composition teachers to teach writing, she brings in Carl Rogers’ and his notion of “client-centered therapy” and how that relates to the reader helping the writer realize his or her potential as well as the writing’s. Lefevre states further on, “the writer is the principal discoverer, with others serving as catalysts that make discovery possible,” I found it very interesting that Lefevre uses the exact same word that Eliot uses to describe the function of an author (68). There is a clear difference in their purposes for using the term, but Lefevre’s use, that the reader is a catalyst for the writer to realize how he or she can make a piece of writing better, and Eliot’s, that the author is the catalyst for reworking old ideas in a new way, create a nice balance for each other. If the writer and reader can both be catalysts, what other roles can they both take on?

            Immediately in this section of her book, Lefevre describes interactive invention as,

“a writer interacts with others (teachers, peers, colleagues, editors) in the course of writing and revising. Generally this type of relationship, one person (writer, teacher, boss) has the right to make final decisions about which ideas are to be kept or changed or omitted. The principal role of others is to help the individual to generate and evaluate ideas and information” (68).

As soon as I read this, I started thinking about how this translates to gaming culture. A gamer interacts not with other people, but the environment created by other people. Further, the gamer has the “final decision” to invent, not writing but what the meaning of the surroundings and the overall game through their interaction with it. The game environment created by others gives the gamer the context from which the gamer then creates the meaning. Interactivity is a key component to consider in gaming studies and this concept situated in the realm of composition helps to explain to those not familiar with gaming the importance and implications interaction has.

Questions:

On 76, Lefevre mentions to concept of the salon or parlor, she does so to demonstrate places where regular and ongoing contact with others can take place so ideas and concepts don’t “die or disappear” (75). Given our previous discussion about the parlor, how does this idea change, if at all, our thoughts towards the concept?

Lefevre includes the idea of synectics which is, “a systematic procedure intended to enhance creativity in small groups” (71). One key component to synectics working is that criticism is absent from the group discussions so that members do not need to censor their ideas for fear of judgment. How would it be possible and would it be beneficial to bring this into our classrooms for our students?

Interpreter and Repurposer ---Jaszi

Peter Jaszi in “Is There Such a Thing as Postmodern Copyright?” looks back at a 1992 essay he wrote where he discussed the Rogers Vs. Koons court case to look at how copyright views have changed, again using a Koons case as one of his examples. In his 1992 article, Jaszi articulated the reason Koons lost his case was because he wasn’t seen as an author, but looking back Jaszi feels that this isn’t the case as much as views on copyright have changed.  For instance, in the second case (Koons v. Blanche) Koons now uses the defense that the way he uses images are “transformative” in nature. Koons paints himself as an “interpreter and repurposer of existing content” (419). Jazsi articulates how it was through these arguments that Koons won his second case. And though it may be easy to argue this happened because of a postmodern view of copyright, Jazsi feels that copyright isn’t old enough to be labeled postmodern and furthermore our culture has changed in how it views the “romantic author.”

My first experience with the notion of copyright occurred because of the Livejournal blogging community. When Livejournal first started, it was a site that many writers and visual artists used to post their work (late 90s, early 2000s). I remember one instance where a LJ “friend” wrote about how we all needed to make our posts private as she had found out a high school student had “stolen” a few photos she had taken and “repurposed” them for a class project (she obviously did not use the word repurposed.) I remember her also discussing how we all should copyright our works to make sure our art was protected. (As a high school student, I felt this was incredibly unrealistic for me, much less not particularly worth it. Now I realize that Livejournal itself may have had some fine print about postings made to their site, just like how Facebook today does.)

At first, I was with the angry poster. How awful to steal something from someone and not give credit. But when I thought about it more, I felt a bit differently. For one, I like art in part because art can be shared and repurposed, like Any Warhol did and like Girl Talk does now. (I think most people know where things come from and if they don’t they will eventually find out. Plus, that “original” art was probably repurposed from somebody else. At the same time, I also find it hard to leave the romantic author notion where credit should be given where it is due.) Secondly, I kind of commended the high school student for going to LJ to find a piece of work he or she could use since I felt there were some talented individuals there. It certainly was a smarter thing to do considering the situation. I also wondered how this artist had found out about her work being “stolen” as she never explained it to us. She just wrote a rant about ownership and art and accused some nameless high school student of “stealing from her.” (I admit that I felt bad for that student. I certainly wouldn't have felt so great after reading that if I were the student who had "stolen" the photos from her.) 

I think that it is a positive thing that we are having discussions about copyright and authorship, especially considering the internet. I remember liking the internet immediately because of the sharing aspect of it and the fact I could talk to people without having to go outside and talk with them. (I was very shy.) At the same time, it is hard for me, as a writer, to leave that author construct behind because even though I know I repurpose and transform my work from other models, I am also the one who sits down to write. 

Questions:

1.                    When did you first learn about copyright and what did it mean to you at the time? Basically, how did you understand it?

2.                    Do you think there are other reasons why Koons won the second case that Jaszi discusses?

Science/New Critic Revelations

There are two things that popped out at me while reading LeFevre’s “Invention as a Social Act.” The first occurred in her introduction, when she is discussing how her study draws on “theories and examples of processes of invention in a variety of fields” (4). Later, on pages 6-7, she layers quotes from contemporary scientists who seem to argue both for and against a concept of invention that views “scientific inquiry as an ‘uncovery’ of what is supposed to exist objectively in nature,” and she sides with the idea that discovery is an “active function” (7). This led me to question whether she meant all scientific research, for example anthropological ethnographies, where a researcher goes into a “field” of sorts with, to my thinking, the sole purpose of observing and reporting?

My question stems from the fact that I had taken a qualitative research methods class in the Anthropology department as an undergraduate. My instructor for that course was Dr. Sather-Wagstaff, and she discussed with the class her most recent work with memorial sites like The World Trade Center and the Holocaust Museum in D.C. Later, LeFevre clarifies somewhat by asserting that there is a different, dynamic view of invention where creation is “new for the individuals or groups who have not previously thought of it, or new in that it has not previously been conceived by anyone at all” (7). My impression of Dr. Sather-Wagstaff’s work on memorial sites is new, or at least covers new sights that mark new tragedies, so LeFevre’s conclusion appears to be applicable in this case. Ultimately, her (LeFevre’s) connections between rhetoric invention and the sciences is not one that I had made before. Despite the differences that I had thought existed between English studies and at least some of the sciences not being as expansive as I had previously thought, the question still lingers as to whether LeFevre means all scientific research, or only those that have obvious connections to English studies?

The second thing that stuck out for me was her discussion of three major factors that contribute to the Wests’ favoring of the Platonic view of composition.  LeFevre states that those factors are: “the influence of literary studies on composition; the persistence of the romantic myth of the inspired writer; and the widespread effects of capitalism and individualism” (15). Of those three, the one I was least familiar with was the influence of literary studies on composition. LeFevre’s discussion of the role New Criticism has played was fascinating. Prior to starting my graduate studies, I had taken a literary theory course, so I was already familiar with New Criticism. Though the theory is no longer widely in use, academics still focus on doing what New Critics call a “close reading,” “looking at individual details or characters…occurring in a self-contained text,” whenever we start looking into a text (16). This leads me to question what other influential, theoretical lenses have had an impact composition/invention/authorship?

Arguments of invention and whether it is an individual act or a collaborative one are discussed within Invention as a Social Act.  As Plato has stated, original ideas can only exist within the realms of reality if only explored inside the individual. According to the individualist, invention is a private act, brought about through introspection.  Upon unfolding one's inner being, the ideas, feelings and one's true voice emerges.  This is a traditional mode of thought, as many writers in history and teachers think of writing to be an isolated action.  

The counter side of this argument proclaims that invention is a social act.  Creative thought is influenced by work that has come before, and to create a new work, one cannot completely isolate themselves from what has been already established.  Therefore, whether it is intentional or not, an "original" work will be influenced by either work that has come before it, or through the countless number of revisions and suggested additions made by trusted peers.  

It is my belief that invention functions as a dual personality.  The creative process may begin as a sole venture but can quickly turn into a collaborative activity. This idea can be seen through the English language.  Historically, the English language came about through the integration of several languages and dialects.  These languages were brought by Germanic settlers that came into England.  In addition, a fair amount of words are rooted in Latin, due to the fact that Latin was the lingua franca of the Christian Church.  English was then influenced by the Old Norse language brought in by the Vikings.  The greatest influence the English language experienced was during the Norman invasion in 1066.  This invasion gave rise to Norman-French vocabulary, spelling and grammar conventions were utilized  in English.  Anglo-Norman, a dialect spoken in northern France introduced a mass amount of French words in the English language.  As we further investigate this phenomenon, we see that English is the most linguistically diverse language in the world.  English has influences from Arabic, Hindi, Greek, Latin, French and Germanic languages.  Such a linguistic impact would not have been possible if not for the global societies that came into contact with one another.  Due to invasions, colonialism, and trading, significant individuals in each culture came together to change the course of a single language.  At times, this interaction was not welcomed, but it definitely occurred.  

In modern times, we see interactive and collaborative efforts taking place on the internet through computer mediated communication (CMC), otherwise known as text language.  CMC first arrived on the scene when individuals wrote in shorthand, but eventually appeared in internet chat rooms. Users abbreviate words to cut down on time.  Expressions like "lol" and "g2g" were created, and thus influenced further creations that have led people to completely abbreviate their sentences when communicating on the internet.  These creations were not the work of one individual, but a group of people.  The work of a few individuals have allowed millions to embrace or reject these expressions.  

Question:

How does collaboration change the individual's original intent?                    

Invention as a Social Act

Karen Burke LeFevre’s comprehensive work Invention as a Social Act establishes a continuum of perspectives on invention that describe influences on the writer and his or her invention processes. Perspectives on the continuum include the Platonic, the Internal Dialogic, the Collaborative, and the Collective. LeFevre notes that these positions represent “degrees of emphasis and overlapping views” rather than “adversarial and mutually exclusive camps” (49). I would argue that points on her continuum more specifically describe ways of understanding the inventor, specifically views of the autonomy or interdependence of the inventing writer.

LeFevre’s Platonic perspective describes the writer as working alone, reflectively searching within for the as-yet undiscovered truth. The Internal Dialogic perspective views invention as a conversation carried on with an imagined other self, bridging the gap to the external social world. The Collaborative perspective places invention outside the writer’s mind and situates it in genuine interaction between people, recognizing that both parties contribute to the invention process. Finally, the Collective perspective views society as the “locus of invention” and the inventor as product or even victim of abstract socio-cultural forces. These various perspectives resonate in theorists who discuss the role of audience in invention and in the theories that inform our electronic invention environments.

LeFevre’s ideas seem to fit in well with the postmodern challenging of the Romantic version of the genius inventor/author such as Bakhtinian idea of author as orchestrator of ideas and language. This metaphor emphasizes how authors exist in a realm that is saturated with texts, images, films, arguments, and narratives. In this realm the writer is rarely writing in a vacuum and is therefore not creating something entirely new and is instead working with the discursive sources at hand taking bits and pieces here and there to form a work.

The implications for writers, or scholars and researchers generally, seem significant. There is an implied need for a dramatic redefining, or rethinking of attitudes towards collaboration, both purposeful and unintentional – by this I am referring to our previous class readings and discussions about collaborations and how it is clear that it occurs often without the writer’s acknowledgement. Composition researchers could/should shift the attention from writer as sole creator to a broader definition that allows for the inevitable collaboration that she argues occurs for writers.  It also seems an organic fit for the classroom and therefore as teachers we need to be implementing this perspective into how we teach because it seems more accurate to what really happens as our students write.

Question:

How does, say, peer-review fit into the idea of collaboration/collective invention?

MK on Rhetorical Invention

Invention as a Social Act advocates for a change in the way we view rhetorical invention, favoring a shift away from the culturally dominant Platonic view to a more socially grounded definition.  LeFevre spends the opening sections of her book outlining a continuum of possible invention perspectives.  I thought it might be interesting to see if I could find a corresponding example for each major subsection of the continuum within the framework of modern American popular culture.  Why pop culture?  I offer two reasons: one, I believe LeFevre has already done an excellent job citing examples from within academia and the professional arena, and two, I think that pop culture informs the rhetorical definitions of a large portion of the population, and is therefore an important medium to take into analytic consideration.    

The Platonic View

LeFevre’s Definition:      
“Western thought has emphasized…a view of rhetorical invention founded on a belief that truth is
accessible by purely individual efforts…Invention, according to this view, occurs largely through
introspective self-examination”  (11).

“In the romantic tradition, the inspired writer is apart from others and wants to keep it this way, either to
prevent himself and his creations from being corrupted by society, or to maintain a necessary madness
(in the style of Poe) that is thought to be, at least in part, the source of art”  (17).

Pop Culture Example:         

              

The Phantom (real name: Erik) is a monster-genius who lives in a set of elaborate catacombs he designed and built beneath an opera house—because in addition to being a musical prodigy, he is also a brilliant architect.  The Phantom is the quintessential “truth from within” inventor: no music lessons, no architectural apprenticeship, nobody to work with or even talk to.  Just as he was born with his facial deformity, he was likewise born with his genius (which his appearance doomed him to practice in solitude).  While I suppose one could argue that poor Erik is inspired by Christine, and therefore more in line with an inner-dialogic, Elliot-type of inventor, I would counter that Erik was inventing beautiful art long before she showed up in the chorus line.  

The Internal Dialogic View

LeFevre’s Definition:      
“The internal dialogic view holds that the individual invents by carrying on an inner conversation or
dialectic with another ‘self’ that also functions as a bridge to the rest of the social world.  This internal
partner often acts as a monitor and guide; it may function as a construct embodying features of one’s
audience”  (54).

Pop Culture Example:

John Padgett, an exceedingly eccentric typewriter-clacking novelist, showed up in a sixth-season episode of The X-Files called “Milagro.”  His inner dialogic with “another self” is so well constructed that the other self literally becomes a real person, capable of physically interacting with the social world.  When Padgett is struck with writer’s block or is unsure of what his characters should do or say or how they should behave, the other self appears before him as a physical person (not Padgett, but a different man) with the answers.  Padgett is helpless to oppose this other man’s dictates because the other man speaks the “truth.”  Unfortunately for the social world (and poor Agent Scully), Padgett’s inner self is homicidal and by the episode’s end, has murdered three people and nearly strangled Scully to death.    

The Collaborative View

LeFevre’s Definition:          

“With a collaborative view of rhetorical invention, we begin to be concerned with overt social relationships.  People become partners in the process of creating ideas” (62).  LeFevre goes on to detail three kinds of inventive collaboration: invention by interacting, joint invention, and social contexts for invention. 

Pop Culture Example:

Dr. House is a misanthropic medical genius with a crippled leg and a Vicodin addiction.  He makes heavy use of the Eureka Moment trope, ending nearly every episode with a flash-from-above moment of medical breakthrough that saves the Patient of the Week.  Except that the flash-from-above more often comes in the form of collaborative invention.  Dr. House has a team of doctors who serve as catalysts for his ideas, providing feedback, acting as sounding boards and ethical guides, and giving House a social context to interact his way to brilliance.  This is, I think, a good example of what LeFevre describes as “people contributing ideas to assist someone identified as the primary agent of invention” (69). 

The Collective View: 

LeFevre’s Definition:       
LeFevre’s explanation of collective invention is based on the theoretical framework of Emile
Durkheim: “When individuals live together, orienting their behavior to one another and harmonizing
their actions, they give rise to society, a collective unit that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.
Society emerges from the interactions of individuals and in turn influences them to act in certain ways”
(80-81).

To make the connection to invention: “Forces exerted by social collectives prohibit some inventions
and promote others” (78). 

Pop Culture Example:

 There is a character in 1984 named Syme who works with Winston at the Ministry of Truth.  His job is to aid in the creation of a NewSpeak Dictionary, which will contain considerably less words than any standard English dictionary that came before.  Why?  Syme (who will soon be vaporized for his intelligence) speculates that a language without words describing seditious activities will produce a society who cannot behave in seditious ways.  If there is no world for “revolt,” then actual revolution becomes impossible.  This of course serves the aims of the Party, the ruling institution of the novel, and by attempting to control the language they are attempting to prohibit unwanted forms of invention. 

Questions for Class:

Do you think the Platonic view of invention is as prevalent in today’s society as LeFevre suggests it is at the time of her book’s publication?