http://www.elbehnon.de/themen/coher/c1urheb.htm

addition of 1610
 

note: this article appeared in Sound by Artists edited by dan lander and micah lexier, published by Art Metropole and Walter Phillips Gallery, Toronto, and it was marked as unrestricted. i hope the publication on my site (which follows the printed version) helps spreading the text and ideas of mcgraith.
Traditionally, copyright has been seen as a progressive reform, a cornerstone in the protection of the artist. Recently major corporations in the recording industry have pushed for more stringent copyright legislation to cope with the perceived threat to this form of ownership presented by new developments in reproduction technology and its accessability. The protection of artists has been a major propagandistic tool. Industry slogans endorsed by some artists such as 'Hometaping is Killing Music,' are attempts to legitimate the industry's control of duplicating mediums, and in fact, are part of a major campaign to extend that control. There is a real threat to this control, which I hope to make clear in the following.

Copyright is one means of commodifying cultural exchange. Modern secular culture was supported by a system of patronage where the artist was a vassal of the aristocracy, a purveyor of symbols of power and wealth. As the bourgeoisie became more and more dominant the aristocracy eventually lost its role as patron of the arts. Emphasis was placed upon separable and saleable performance or product. However, as a marketable commodity, art lost its verification of uniqueness that came from aristocratic power. The mystique of genius was transmuted into the trademark of authorship. In order to sell what is useless and free, since art no longer served to document and symbolize power directly, it became necessary to somehow distinguish true art from false art; a distinction that was really meaningless in aristocratic culture since, by patronage of the artist, the results were validated as art.

The rapid advancement of industrialization demanded an ever-increasing number of workers. Peasants were disenfranchised to fulfill this need and the traditional peasant culture was undermined. Peasant culture was amorphous, static and anynomous, but most of all free of charge. The debilitating reality of industrial urban life created a mass of spectators with, for the most part, no time or energy to maintain cultural autonomy. Despite the fact that the new proletariat received wages barely sufficient for life, they refused merely to survive and sought after pleasures they could not afford. This created a market for a popular commodity culture. And so, peasant culture was sold back to those who originally owned it. Broadsides are a good example of this.

These anonymous, free peasant songs were usurped by the same music printers who often controlled the printing of art music. These printers were those best served by the original copyright and performance right legislation. This is the genesis of the culture industry. Copyright is instituted for the protection of sellers, not artists, against other sellers. It is an agreement between the state and the sellers to rationalize the cultural marketplace and to entrench the control by the sellers over the industry. The state will, of course, police the cultural property of the cultural industry.

Royalties must be afforded to the artist in order to seal some economic bond between authorship and the commodity. Without this, mass marketing would be difficult if not impossible. Every consumer must get both the same item as every other and something that is somehow unique, something set apart from local self-generated music:

Royalties provided to the artist are fixed by law or contract. They in no way reflect any cost or labour of the artist or any value judged by the artist. Royalties buy out the artist, and if bought, exchange the artist's control for a form of payment that is such a small portion of the cost of the commodity it carries no real leverage. For instance, the common recording contract involves the following royalties: $0.10 per record for the performing artists (the band, title artist) and $0.10 per record for the songwriter and/or publishing interest. Though this may look promising, the artists must first pay back the advance made to them prior to production and, in addition, the record company will recover all recording costs before royalties are paid. In addition, the writer/publisher receives a radioplay royalty when a piece receives radio exposure. However, royalties are calculated my monitoring 'representative' radio stations. Because the monitoring is selective, only those artists with broad appeal will benefit. There are therefore enough preconditions to the distribution of royalties to ensure that only those artists capable of fungible commodification on a grand scale receive any substantial reward.

Royalties license the seller to use whatever personal value, inspiration or genius the arttist hopes is in their art that might transcend this debased transaction. The sellers are modest. They appear only to facilitate the transmission of cultural meaning. However, the buying and selling of art has never been an innnocent exchange. In fact, we shall see that buyers and sellers are formative with regard to cultural significance and that those transcendent values implied by the concept of 'original art' are actually used to cover up teh real functions of the art market.

Cultural commodities are represented in cultural theory as pure transcendent value, and as such, are open to wild speculation. Art is said to be priceless. This is ironic since it always carries a price tag. Whether a cultural commodity is a unique original or a mass produced item, its 'artistic value' is always liquidated, cashed in. The 'original art' market, in its crassness, provides the key to understanding the political economy of mass-produced culture.

The idea of artistic originality is a necessary precondition of art market speculation. Speculation would be difficult, if the art market could be reduced to the buying and selling of, say, oil paintings, since they are abundant. An artificial scarcuty is created by their supposed originality. The functions of this speculation are to create finance capital through rapid amassing of assets or laundering money.

It is established that the historical development of a secular culture required usurping some of the sacred value that religious art monopolized. The bourgeoisie's original interest in art was perhaps an attempt to outdo the aristcracy by appearing forward-looking and modern. However, it rapidly became evident that these cultural commodities could be manipulated as investments.

For instance, it is now a well-documented fact that purchases of 'great paintings' are more often than not, fraudulnet. Owners of large collections of a particular artist will place a single painting on auction and will pay someone to stand in as a purchaser and have them buy it at an inflated price. They may even pay for phony bidders or manipulate the preconditions of the sale in some other way. The end result is that the perceived value of the collection rises and so therefore does the financial leverage of the owner. Even in the case where the auction is not tampered with, the common economic interests of buyers produce similar results.

Market value, however, does not remain separate from cultural value. Either as a result of the kind of sale mentioned above or as a preparation, books are published. Major monographs rarelyy, if ever, have sales that justify the enormous printing costs, fine reproductions and luxuriant paper. Reputable critics and historians are hired to write copy for these coffee table advertisements. The large expensive monographs seem to create a need for more inexpensive books. Museums and art galleries organize shows and retrospectives. This can make a hitherto unknown artist famous or revitalize and confirm a major artist's status. The new art histories will be compelled to take into account these developments. Many of those involved in this process may see what they do as making art more accessible to the masses, but what motors all this is money, and the art-historical process is a legitimation of this profiteering.

Copyright is not really a central issue for producers of original art work who usually only receive the first paid price of their work, except as it bears on forgery. Forgery is actually a very telling activity since it bears on all the issues surrounding the concept of originality. In order to command attention, great art must be, it is said, truly unique, a work of extraordinary genius. However, by simulating a masterpiece, the forger puts that uniqueness into question since the same effect can be duplicated 'inauthentically.' The forger is a theological problem. The question, 'If art is transcendent how can it be simulated?' parallels, 'If god is all good, how can evil exist?' In a sense, the forger is a devil who attempts to confuse the faithful. The forger is an inverted genius, and the exposing of forgeries is a process that merely reconfirms the concept of originality because it seems to prove the existence of the expert knowledge of the art police.

The basis of copyright is the notion of transcendent uniqueness in cultural productions and is fundamental to the understanding of the spheres more directly affected by copyright.

Copyright affects duplicating media. It pertains to books, records, photographs, printed matter, radio-play, video, film, as well as the performance rights of music, theatre, dance performance art. It declares ownership of such nebulous things as language, image, style. The new technology, though engendering many problems for copyright, has also created its own areas of authorship and ownership: computer programs, software and hardware, synthesizer patches and even the formulae and hardware for creating synthesis and now, because of the verisimilitude of digital sound sampling, copyright wishes to claim the 'sound' of an instrument as performed or recorded. Copyright attempts to restrain the free play of the imagination just as the church, via the Index, attempts to control the free exchange of ideas. One is made wary of trespassing upon someone else's intellectual or cultural property. In school we are prompted to put into 'our own words' what we understand from what we read. This to a child seems utterly inane but we will be punished if we don't try. In university, plagiarism is punishable by expulsion. A cottage industry is therefore created so those students who care about their marks can limit their level of boredom by purchasing essays that best mirror the mediocrity of their professors. Finally, in the 'real world,' trespassing against the laws of authorship becomes, with copyright, criminal.

The irony, of course, is that ideas, images and language protected by copyright are rarely 'original' at all. The boring mediocrity of most modern culture contradicts the ideology of copyright said to provide the author with protection against unscrupulous exploitation. A tame, safe culture of the most simplistic, inane and tedious commodities, easily packaged, trademarked and identified, as well as most amenable to corporate control, is that which is most vigorously protected by the watch-dogs of copyright. Whatever of value resides in this culture, and there is value here, is not protected from exploitation by copyright. In fact, copyright is one vehicle for exploitation.

The bootleggers who provide 'more of the same' for sale, areeasily contained by their own greed which they share with the corporations. They admit too easily to being illicit and thus confirm copyright rather than challenging it. However, it is those who provide copies of any or all materials for free who the corporations fear and who provide the real threat.

Copyright is theft because it claims ownership of a common cultural heritage. It loots ideas, images and sounds from the naturally free-flowing cultural milieu. To copyright something is to deny sources. Copyright presents as the property of one, that which is taken from the lives of many. Authors imperialize their influences when their work is copyrighted.

This imperializing of common culture is made evident by the legitimatizing machinations of modernist historiography. We have already seen how cultural values are driven by cultural exchange. This certainly goes some way in explaining why artists such as Picasso, Joyce or Stravinsky have the particular historical position that thay do. Though this pivotal position may have been established and secured by economics, its historiographical significance goes beyond mere economic clout.

Picasso with regard to his own contemporaries is historically transcendent. Picasso seems to be forever prior to even those closest to him, such as Braque. Even though many movements similar to Cubism, such as Futurism, Vorticism, Suprematism and Constructivism were virtually simultaneous with Cubism, it is always read as historically first. This is because Picasso is first, the original, the cubist among cubists. All other are derivations, and therefore of lesser value. This of course more or less corresponds to the dollar value of the various lesser lights. They may jockey somewhat for position but Picasso is basically secure.

The justification for Picasso's position is his supposed originating genius. But why is Braque less than Picasso? Has the money sought out truly higher value when it pays more for Picasso? It is difficult to argue this point because all art history has faith in the transcendence of Picasso. Braque is less than Picasso because Picasso is the standard by which Braque is measured. Circular logic has never troubled the faithful. Picasso, as the great god Pan, is a little less than ironic. The humble Basque beginnings of this art star only make him more like the carpenter's son.

Good art historians will point out many influences Picasso brought to his work, but the flattery really only works one way. The influences are important only because they arre influences on Picasso. Thus the cultural value and exchange value of Cezanne and African Art are enhanced by their relation to Picasso and not vice versa.

Picasso comes before African Art because Picasso made African Art a commodity. This recalls the broadsides that sold the new proletariat their own prior peasant culture. Afracan Art could not be sold back to the Africans until they were separated from their culture. Generally speaking, the trinkets pilfered by colonialists have been elevated from exotica to great art not by a realization of the value of primitive culture but by a greed, fulfilled by the opportunity for exploitation, provided by Picasso.

This commodification of primitivism wasn't solely the responsibility of the Picasso cult, but the way in which Picasso, the original, usurps his influences is exemplary. The same is true, say, of Joyce, who used techniques which predated him. Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy is often given as an example though Sterne's importance is always read from Joyce's vantage point. Sterne becomes what Joyce makes of him. Joyce seems to derive less from Sterne than vice versa. Similarly, it doesn't seem to matter whether Virginia Woolf is doing the same thing Joyce was doing. She will nevertheless seem derivative.

Another denied source is everyday life. It is well documented that the source of Molly Bloom's monologue at the end of Ulysses is Nora Barnacle Joyce. It is also said that D.H. Lawrence read his wife's diaries and that this provided the basis for his ability to write from a woman's viewpoint in some of his novels.

The fact that both these cases involve women is undoubtedly not coincidental. Certainly this is part of the process described by feminist cultural historians whereby women's writing is submerged. However, in addition to this, it also may show that authorship is the real area of male control since much of the content is stolen and therefore belongs in some way to the history of women's culture. Of course, it is not only women's culture that is usurped. Zola's portayal of the new proletariat belongs certainly to the latter, despite distortion or whatever. The idea that the portrait belongs as much to the portrayed as the portrayer is anathema to modern culture. It is, however, accepted in feudal and sacred cultures and is the very basis of oral culture.

By examining the legitimating processes of modern culture we find a curious dilemma. The culture that bases itself upon authorship and originality is in fact stolen from those without a voice. It is ironic that plagiarism is the sin that modernism is most guilty of. Copyright allows the thief to claim ownership and make those who were robbed pay to get back their property.

Popular music is the ultimate example of this hypocrisy. In terms of American popular culture, the main source of exploitation was Black folk culture. Certainly Native and European peasant cultures formed integral parts of the mix but what makes American culture unique is the Black influence. With recording technology this common, free, Black culture was sold back to the Blacks in race records and whiter hybrids were sold to both Black and white. Because of the association of ragtime, blues, jazz, rock'n'roll, rhythm'n'blus, soul, funk, rap, with Blacks, these musics were considered somehow dangerous, sexual and forbidden. Hence the source of the subversive element of many musical subcultures. White musician's association with the 'primitive' Black culture implied promiscuity. However, for the audience it became symbolic of their defiance of the established culture. From the Berlin cabaret through beatniks, hippies and punks, musical subcultures provided an image of sexual and other freedoms.

In general, the popular music industry is involved in fans exchanging this image of hedonism (sex, drugs and rock'n'roll) for records, ultimately commodity exchange. From the elaborate network of T&A videos to the incessant repetition of the hits on radio, the pop music industry is fundamentally about selling the idea of the exchange value. We only accept this exchange because of the unfulfilled promise of guiltless sex and endless intoxication. However, this enticement runs counter to our everyday lives and the price we pay is the interminable boredom and physical pain of work. It is certainly a sick trick that we pay for simulation of freedom and ecstasy with lives which are insufferably boring. This is undoubtedly why we try very hard to intensify the rock'n'roll experience and why the audience threatens to get ugly and sometimes does. This is why we very much want to riot and loot the streets after the concert and sometimes on the weekend. We realize we will soon enough have to bear the indignity of wage slavery.

All these musical subcultures contain within them the seed of revolution. Not a coup d'etat but a constantly shifting movement to create more space from the working life. What we discover as we look at some of the recent musical subcultures is an attempt to create a shadow economy outside of the culture industry. And with this unfolding, we may see more space for the pleasure we lust for, subverting the distortions of the culture industry.

The 'sixties', as that conjunture of rock and radical politics is called, did generate a fairly extensive network referred to as the 'underground.' A wide proliferation of psychedelic garage bands was supported by local, national and international networks that fell outside of regular corporate culture. Certainly much of the 'underground' was recuperated by mainstream culture, however, it did demonstrate that other socio-cultural relations besides those made pervasive by capitalism were possible. The punk movement in the late seventies initiated a new underground, which whas had more lasting results. Here a whole sub-culture was built outside of the culture industry's hegemony.

The punk movement maintained an overt critique of the culture industry and the aging dinosaurs of arena rock. The music itself propagandized the do-it-yourself (d.i.y.) attitude and a rejection of the seventies fetishization of technique. This devaluation of musical expertise made the form available to any number of participants. Even though many of its most famous artists were co-opted by the music industry (they were famous because they were co-opted), the punk scene remains intact over ten years later. The punk movement has remained open and regional with questions of musical quality bracketed in favor of group concerns and ritual behaviour.

In the beginnings of the punkt movement, a divergent musical subculture was created by combining elements of the punk aesthetic with a more sophisticated political and cultural viewpoint. In a way similar to the sixties, the late seventies brought about a meeting of the art world and popular culture. The Glass-Anderson-Byrne-Eno connection is merely the most superficial aspect of this cross-over, though Eno's anti-musician stance and many of his poses were very influential. Besides this rather staid group, the new musical subculture drew upon those new forms of art that attempted to by-pass the corporate music industry.

The heritage of art practice from the late sixties that eschewed art objects, was a primary influence. Mayo Thompson, for instnce, of the Art & Language Provos associated with the influential Fox magazine, became a member of Red Crayola, an experimental punk group that at one point fused with Pere Ubu. As one moves away from the most recognizable art world to the nether regions of industrial culture, the distinctions between High and Pop cultures disappear. The members of COUM Transmissions, extreme mail artists, became Throbbing Gristle, which became Chris and Cosey and Psychic TV. Despite their attempt to move from the obscure to some sort of pop cult status, this connection between mail art and music is very important to later developments.

Taking cues from many of these figures a new group of sound artists came to the fore in the early eighties. At this point, with the new advances in cassette technology, it was possible to make very high quality duplications at home very inexpensively. By the early eighties, a miniaturization of tape recording technology allowed for four track mini-studios complete with mix-in, mix-down and overdub capabilities. Now there are units with these features selling for under $500 Canadian. As well, many expensive features of recording studios, such as reverbs, delays, compressors, noise gates and equalizers, have all been made available in inexpensive home versions. With the low cost dubbing decks now available, the means of production for audio is well within grasp of many. This facilitates the developments to be discussed below. However, the technology did not determine the course of events. These 'toys' have just as much diversionary potential as any other consumer product.

Arising simultanous with these developments was a magazine called OP. OP, the organ of the Lost Music Network, reviewed all records, cassettes and magazines that were sent to it. This magazine drew from the punk fanzine but its editorial direction was more in the spirit of mail art networking with a strong populist bent. OP made available to the reader hundreds of addresses of people looking to contact like minds. Many new forms of distribution were created to meet the needs of the network.

The magazine's open format facilitated the intermingling of approaches and genres. The 'audio artists' were indistinguishable from the punk undustrialists. Tape collage, improvisation, musique concrète, sound poetry, polemics and other forms of extreme sound were made available to a non-passive group who would respond with their own work rather than applause.

This odd-ball grouping of punks, students, poseurs, radio programmers, audio artists, poets, writers, anti-authoritorians and other marginals shares a common distaste for the culture industry's protocol. They have no mainstream distribution and the vast majority are not available at the retail level. Trade of tape for tape is a very popular form of distribution, though others make their tapes available for a modest sum, which usually covers no more than the cost of a tape and postage.

This new model of cultural interchange is reflected in the form and content of much of the sound. As the culture industry's methods are eschewed, so are values of modernism. If the music is instrumental it shows little respect for musical technique whether in performance or composition. Much of the music is made of sounds derived from recorded music or the ubiquitous media barrage. These sounds are lifted from their sources without regard for copyright or politeness. However it never simply apes its sources, nor does it attemp to generate a commodifiable style out of its processes. This method of direct appropriation of cultural material, through tape dubbing, sampling or simulation, was conceptionalized as 'détournement' by the Situationist International, a political-cultural group from France in the fifties and sixties. Their short piece Definitions includes the following passage:

Many situationist ideas have filtered through to popular culture via May '68, which the Situationists anticipated, participated in and, finally, condemned. May '68 ofcourse had impact throughout the world but particularly in England and in the U.S. student movement. Recently Malcolm McLaren has spouted half-digested Situationist ideas. His early confrontational ideas were no doubt derived from the Situationists. More generally, Situationism has infused the British and American anarchist movement and, through that, the punks. The Situationist's analysis of the Watt's Riot as the appropriate response to commodity society and as precursor to the revolutionary street festival, as well as their critique of contemporary culture referred to as The Spectacle, would endear them to the punks. The Situationists decried copyright citing Lautréamont's infamous axiom, 'Plagiarism is necessary, progress implies it.'

In that this sound exchange network offers its product freely, or at least, in a shadow economy outside of the capitalist marketplace, in addition to challenging the ideology of copyright, it represents a potent political threat to the culture industry's hegemony. Whether the individual's own position is for or against copyright and the industry, their practice is in conflict with it.

This practice has more success in resisting co-optation because of its polymorphous eccentricity and its acceptance of dilettantism and fakery. It provides no easily identifiable sound or image with which it can be co-opted and marketed. Any practitioners who move from the 'underground' to commodification do no serious damage to the existing network since the form of exchange is so different. Since this new product is available in a completely different space it cannot overshadow the network. Those involved in the network have other forms of access, and those who are not will possibly become involved in the network, and if they don't, so what?

This new cultural practice is not another style on the modernist fahion runway. Though it may be post-modern it is not Postmodernism. Postmodernism, as an art movement, is sometimes infatuated with commodities and at other times a pose for the art gallery and the museum. Although Postmodernism, as a theory, may partially understand the critique of Modernism and Postmodernism, as an art practice, may attempt to play tricks with modernist historiography / hagiography (for example, Sherry Levine), this is all directed toward the sacred emptiness of the chapel of art, akin perhaps to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a corpse. In a similar way, a distinction can be made between this cultural practice an 'Audio Art.' Though really influential on this new practice, 'Audio Art,' by definition involved itself with the official culture of museums and galleries. However, many audio artists got directly involved in the new network and despite their high culture connections, this involvement is not inauthentic.

This new harmony of form, content and socio-economic relations seems to confirm many of the visionary utopian aspects of Jacques Attali's book Noise. Attali divides the history of musical economics into four phases, each phase having corresponding social structures: