Anyone who knows me knows that I’m addicted to music. The consumption, experience and discussion of music are part of my daily existence. Whether it’s listening to one of the greatest albums of all time or discovering a new band that no one seems to know about, music makes life a little bit happier for me.
Music, to me, is something that can’t be owned. Once the music leaves the speaker and you start to hear it, the music becomes yours. The images, thoughts, feelings it makes inside of you are yours. The music is, if it’s good, a catalyst. Music, at its worst, is background noise. At its best, it’s a package of time that can remind you of something that was great, terrible or sentimental.
Because of the argument between the record industry and the general consumer, including lawsuits, discovering new music isn’t as fun as it once was. It used to be that I’d be an album on an independent label and be happy about having something that was undiscovered. Now I buy the album and say, “Ha! Screw you, RIAA. This label isn’t a member. Ha!”
However, the joy of discovery is mine once again. Because of a website known as Opsound. Opsound is an “open source” record label that publishes music under the Creative Commons License, which allows artists, writers, musicians and more to publish their works with “some rights reserved”. Through this creative arrangement, artists can put their work out for consumption, and more.
The greatest achievement of the Creative Commons is that it allows artists to collaborate on work, without knowing it. You could post a photo of your painting under the CC and another artist could one day contact you with a “remix” of your work. They could have taken your painting and turned it into a mosaic, a fresco, 3D art or more. It isn’t stealing, plagiarism or ripping off. It’s living art. Your art does not stop the moment you complete it under the Creative Commons License. Rather, it becomes an organic entity.
For example, guitarist and composer Colin Mutchler recorded a track known as “My Life”. It’s a lovely acoustic guitar melody. Colin finished his work and posted it to Opsound under the Creative Commons License. One day he received and email from a violinist named Cora Beth. Cora heard “My Life” and loved it. But when she listened to it, she heard another melody that provided a counter to Colin’s guitar. So she added her violin melody to Colin’s song and called it “My Life Changed”. She took an already beautiful song and built upon it by reacting to what she heard in the song, making it a more organic entity. Colin was thrilled. He hopes that someday the music can be taken even further.
Both songs can be heard here.
Three people can listen to the same song and hear different things. One can hear a child laughing, another can see an elephant marching and another can hear a full orchestra behind it. With Opsound, and the Creative Commons, art doesn’t stop at consumption. It takes a life of its own, ever-changing, ever-morphing, ever-living.
Opsound is filled with talented song-writers, musicians and remixers. I plan on spending quite a bit of time listening to the offerings there. But more importantly, I’m excited about what Opsound means. That I can hear music from the source and enjoy it, and then find out that someone else heard the song differently, altered it to reflect their ideas and experiences. Some may think that it would take away from the original artist’s work, but that’s far from the truth. It is not unlike a director looking at a play’s script and seeing a tension that another director didn’t see, or a theme that was not apparent on the first read. You can see the same play a thousand times, by a thousand different directors and get a different experience each time. Because it’s always open for interpretation. If anything, this application of the Creative Commons shines a light on that work by drawing out elements I wouldn’t have noticed, adding nuance that I wasn’t aware of or a counter-melody that seemed to be buried just below the surface.
Living art may not be for everyone, but I’m certainly intrigued by it. The artist and the listener can work together, creating an ever-evolving piece of art.
And I find that amazing.
Discuss Living Art
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