Hello Jon,

Jon Ippolito said :
> On Oct 30, 2011 Aymeric wrote:
> > It is true that some licenses like the one you mention, require
> > the source of the file....But what sources are we
> > talking about?....What about the original photo?
> > Should it be provided as a separate file, which resolution is enough?
> > ...Not quite as simple as source code.
>
> Perhaps not quite as simple, because different media require different
> sources. But for artists familiar with born-digital media, the
> standards are pretty much common sense: whatever you need to remix the
> work in that medium.

The problem is that remix, in this context, is a specific use case. More
precisely it only operates at the level of the recipe used to combine
existing high level elements. To use one of your examples I can get a
collection of tracks (as in DAW tracks) from Trent Reznor and I can make
my own NiN alternative mix: from just a simple alternative mastering to
a more creative dub/club/whatever remix.

But, by doing so I am stuck in a creative walled garden, precisely
because ...


> > Of course nothing could prevent the author(s) of the license you use to
> > redefine "sources"...
>
> In fact, given that the Open Art License requires sharealike
> ("copyleft"), whatever sources the original author releases are by
> definition the kinds of sources that derivative works must expose too.

... such a license lets the author define what sources can be. As a
result I have been granted the right to "play" within an artistic
sandbox defined by the author, instead of having my creative freedom
ensured by the license.

As a musician, I would like to have access to more than just some tracks
as creative material, I do not necessarily want to play within a sandbox
set by someone else (beyond the playfulness of a constrained art
practice). I may find more interesting to directly tap into lower level
material such as scores, synth parameters, code, samples, creative
process, etc, so as to reveal the truly educational and inspirational
characteristics of someone else's sources, instead of being stuck in a
surface productive mechanism. 

What I find problematic here, is that it seems to me that, thanks to
Creative Commons, all the discussions around free culture and licensing
have became de facto a discussion around remix practices, which in my
opinion is just one facet of networked collaborative and publishing
practices within free culture.

I also think it is a poor parallel with software freedom. It is a bit
if if one would be able to share source code with others but you would 
not quite be able to modify it in its core elements or learn from it. As
if you would be able to re use some functions and integrate them in a
new piece of code while not being able to access their inner logic.

The challenge we face is that unlike source code, defining artistic
sources is virtually impossible. There is not limit to what can be
requested. Back to the cat + caption photo of the previous mail. If I
only have the flatten down image, I can probably reuse it, incorporate,
add or substract information from it (taken for granted the license
allows for this). If I have the .psd, I can "remix" it, move things
around, add remove layers, generally have a finer control over the
manipulation. If I have the font file provided, I can edit the caption
as well and start to make more drastic changes, arguably more
appropriate to my own artistic style. If instead of using a proprietary
format, you use an open standard, then it's more likely to be still of
interest for others and myself in a couple of years in a different
software environment. If I know what you ate for lunch before making the
photo, maybe then ...

So in a way it is a bit similar to the famous Carl Sagan's deadlock
where we need to invent the universe as a first step to make an apple
pie from scratch. 

Where to draw the line? What is an artistic source? This is why the
immediate material required to make the final outcome is really not
satisfying both in term of creativity and in term of freedom (as in
software freedom).

Maybe I should add that, in my own practice, I do try to provide as much
relevant "sources" as possible. For instance within 0xA, we breakdown
everything in smaller sources and try to pick relevant licenses for the
different components. A simple example is
http://www.archive.org/details/GOSUB10-004
where the tracks are published with a Free Art License, and the Pure
Data patches are GPL'ed. There are no DAW tracks because it was
recorded straight from Pd. But for other 0xA projects, we provide
Ardour sessions, Nintendo DS code, shell scripts, Jack sessions,
software synths parameters, etc. We believe this is more interesting for
other artists and musicians to have access to this than just the right
to mash up our tracks.

But this is still not satisfying, it's just a possible workaround to
the problem and I believe that any rational attempt to define artistic
sources is simply not working. That's why I find impossible to talk
about art within free culture without taking into account metaphors and
appropriation of the free culture lingo by artists which in turn makes
it very difficult to quickly draw parallels between source code and
artistic sources.


a.