Remix

“A free culture supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by granting intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limit- ing the reach of those rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain as free as possible from the control of the past.” Lawrence Lessig

How much do we really know? Conspiracies and coincidences have surrounded groups of people for decades, sometimes forming groups that could be referred to as “believers”. Although no personal agenda is behind this image, I do want to offer an interesting thought point of how much knowledge about our exploration and advancements is publicly available.

Due to the recent advancements in space exploration, I had a desire to focus the remix around the outer universe. The recent transfer of thousands of photos into the public domain by NASA aided this desire. To perform the remix, I took multiple photos off of Archive.org and Creative Commons, cut and overlaid these images using Pixlr, and then added a few touch ups at the end.

My goal with this image was to conceive a possible conundrum, where the moon is in the background, yet there is a spaceship landing also shown. The pinning of the flag would represent America, yet the creeping darkness from the right of the photo also hints at something larger. The quote itself is to add to the darkness and mystery around the present situation in the photo. Why is he alone? Where is he?

Clyde Stubblefield

Most famous for his drumming for James Brown, Stubblefield has become one of the most sampled drummers due to his heading of “funky drumming”. The reason he was featured in the film Copyright Criminals is due to this sampling. The film discusses the legality of sampling and how his work has helped shape the current copyright laws and restrictions.

Creative Commons

This image of Bryan Hall is allowed to be shared and remixed, but under the conditions of attribution and share alike.

Image taken from Wikimedia Commons, user lidxplus , created the 5th of May 2007.

Public Domain

http://ebookbees.com/the-war-of-the-worlds-free-ebook/

“The War of the Worlds”by H. G. Wells, originally published in 1897-1898 by William Heinemann.

Public Domain

Lawrence Lessig describes “public domain” in his work titled Free Culture. Public domain is work or property free of copyright and ownership. His best example of this is Walt Disney in the 20’s, since copyright around that time was only about 30 years. This meant anything in the public domain was rather fresh and new. However, that is a material thing.When it comes to intellectual thoughts and ideas, copyright and ownership can become fuzzy. If someone voices an opinion or an idea for the purpose of money or fame, yet someone claims to have had that idea first, how does ownership become settled? How can co-ownership be claimed when an idea can be shared with thousands of people unknowingly. This is where it varies against material objects. “I made that” is must different than “I thought that first”. Digital technologies can fall right in the middle though, since thoughts/ideas can be shared instantly on a social media platform, yet you can now claim ownership of, well, words. If you share an opinion or thought on a personal platform, for someone to use those words verbatim must quote you and give you credit.