The Groove Issue 110 - Building the Case for the Creative Remix
BUILDING THE CASE FOR THE CREATIVE REMIX
When we embrace the fact that being creative and materializing our ideas of value in new ways also entails remixing and recombining what has already been done, then we can stop romanticizing the myth of absolute newness, original genius, and lone authorship.
What is important is to turn the cumulative experiences and skills that we have learned into our own thing. We are all stepping, to some extent, on prior works.
While we must respect copyright laws, we can always be the DJs of our own businesses and careers, remixing what sounds, looks, and seems best attuned to our needs and those of the market.
An Additive Creative Process
Emma Amos in 1967.
The career of Emma Amos, who passed away in 2020, was one of remixing and building upon cumulative experiences in her life as an artist.
Her work was distinctively her own and unlike anyone else’s. She was consistently praised by critics as a true innovator.
A consummate draftsman since early childhood, Amos specialized in printmaking while she was in art school at Antioch College in Ohio. She was excellent at intaglio, screen print and monotype and went to co-develop a multilayered process called silk aquatint.
Emma Amos, My Mother was the Greatest Dancer, 2007. Acrylic on canvas with African fabric borders and fabric collage.
Later, she lived in London and learned to work with textiles, which she fell in love with. Weaving also became a part of her practice and she developed a life-long interest in textiles.
Emma Amos, Flying Circus, 1987. Acrylic and fabric on linen.
Exploring self-referential topics, issues of race, gender, and politics, in 1992 she began experimenting with photo transfer on canvas. Her canvases were unstretched; she painted on top of the photos and added borders made out of multicolor African fabrics.
By and in itself, each of these mediums had been explored infinitely by other artists, but not remixed the way Amos did.
The Business of Remixing Everything
What is TikTok but the most relevant media platform to remix what has been done by someone else, to market products to viewers while also entertaining them?
Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Frozen are just a handful of examples of public domain works that don’t have any copyrights attached to them, and which Disney has altered and remixed to create their own movies, merchandise, plays and an entire empire.
Hip-hop songs from the 90s like “Mo Money Mo Problems” opened doors for thousands of remixes of genres and artists. Written by the Notorious B.I.G., Steven Jordan, Mason Betha, and Sean Combs, the tune contains a sample and an interpolation of “I'm Coming Out” by Diana Ross, for which Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers are also credited as songwriters.
Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, who considers remixing a desirable concept for human creativity, wrote in his book “Remix” a plea for legislators and courts to soften and readjust copyright laws in the United States, in an effort to encourage a system where artists and businesspeople can protect their creations while allowing them to build on previous creative works.
This whole free creative remix is what Andy Warhol did with his work, which is now being questioned in the Supreme Court.
In 1984, around the time Prince released “Purple Rain,” Vanity Fair hired Warhol to create an image to accompany an article titled “Purple Fame.” The magazine paid a rock photographer, Elaine Goldsmith, $400 to license the portrait as an “artist reference,” agreeing to credit her and to use it only in connection with a single issue. But when Prince died in 2016, Vanity Fair used the Warhol image again, paying a fee to the Andy Warhol Foundation for its use but nothing to Goldsmith. A lawsuit ensued.
In the past, the justices have considered the value of the remix when they said a work is transformative if it “adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message” but now there’s no consensus on whether the Prince-Warhol case is a transformative work or a copyright infringement.
And with all this, can you claim 100% originality, or would you aim to be a good remixer who has something new and transformative to say?
UNLEASH YOUR CREATIVE GENIUS
I’ve put together a free webinar for those of you who are not members of my online course, Jumpstart.
If you’d like to watch it, please register here (it’s on auto-repeat every 15 minutes once you have registered).
HOW CREATIVITY RULES THE WORLD
I am super thrilled that my book won the International Book Award in the Business/Entrepreneurship category!
Have you already gotten your copy?
It’s in three formats: hardcover, eBook and audiobook.
TEDX TALK
Have you already watched my TEDx Talk: “NFTs, Graffiti and Sedition: How Artists Invent The Future”?
I share three lessons I have learned from artists that always work for anyone in their careers. Watch it here.