[Reader-list] music sharing enhances creativity

[Arun Mehta]

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/arts/20ARTS.html?todaysheadlines (but you 
need to be registered there -- well worth it)
Why Just Listen to Pop When You Can Mix Your Own?
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL



"I like taking someone else's ideas, bringing them into your own head and 
trying to make sense of them through your own interpretation," Mr. Kenniff 
said. Judging from Bjork Remix Web, a remarkable site at www.arktikos.com, 
he has plenty of company. Mr. Kenniff's remake of "Hidden Place" is one of 
10 "Vespertine" tracks on the site. Overall it contains nearly 800 remixes, 
submitted by about 160 different Internet contributors, of songs taken from 
Bjork's five solo albums. If transferred to compact disc, the fan-made 
music would fill about 50 albums.

The site's growth demonstrates how digital technology, abetted by the 
Internet, is turning fans from passive acolytes to active participants in 
the artistic process. In postmodern culture, in which existing elements are 
routinely cut, pasted and blended into new works, computers are providing 
handy tools for these transformations, and the Internet is supplying an 
eager audience for the results.

Music is just one realm where this is happening. There are hundreds of "fan 
fiction" sites, where amateur authors have taken popular characters from 
television shows like "Star Trek" and "The West Wing" and written new, 
sometimes smutty stories about them. In film, a shorter version of the 
"Star Wars" movie "The Phantom Menace," digitally edited by a supposedly 
impatient fan, is rumored to be circulating in cybers
pace