Remixability and The Pulitzer Prize

April 18th, 2006 · No Comments
by Booksquare

We don’t normally cover awards and such, what with so many being, well, awarded that it’s hard to keep up. But the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded to Geraldine Brooks for her book March, and the very notion of this book highlights a favorite topic of ours: art building upon art.

March tells the story of the father from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (official BS) hero). Alcott’s book focuses on the family at home during wartime — a domestic novel, if you will; Brooks writes about the war. Two sides of a story. Whether they create a whole or not, they expand the view.

Why does this fascinate us so? Well, it highlights the way art is created. One artist has an idea, another artist looks at the work and asks, “What if?” From there, notions are stretched and twisted and new ideas emerge. Remixing art is a key component of our collective creative process, and we find it disturbing when this natural process is held hostage to laws that refuse to acknowledge the way artists work.

Protect copyright, yes, but don’t strangle artistic expression.

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File Under: Our Continuing Fascination With Copyright