Chris O’Shea points us to Ben Hanbury’s project Recycle TV, which combines an old TV set (well, actually, he substituted a picture of one for ease), a Max/MSP patch, and Eric Singer’s real world-to-MIDI interface, the MidiTron. Via copyrighted and open source clips, you can mix together musical phrases constructed from miliseconds-long clips. The beats created are even cooler, perhaps, than the VJ effect of the clips; check out the video. (I especially like those Wookie moments. You’ll see what I mean.)
Best of all, Ben has shared his Max/MSP code; see the project blog. I always like to see how people patch in Max; it’s like a window into different personalities.
As for Ben’s underlying statement about copyright, I’m not entirely sure — he claims the copyrighted text would be public domain because of their age, though I don’t know of any copyright law under which Top Gun would be public domain. On the other hand, Star Wars creator George Lucas (remember him?) was originally inspired by avant-garde filmmakers who raided old film stock. Copyright violations have long been part of the creative process, that’s for sure.
Peter –
I brought this same topic up a few weeks ago on one of the composer's web forums, shortly after I read about this "feature" in a gaming magazine.
I think it might be a good topic for another article, and with the contact base I've built up, I could likely get some game composers to throw in their two bits.
Let me know if that is something you're interested in…
Also – is there any way for me to change my login ID? I'm thinking it might be time for me to "delurk"…
-b
Also thought you may be interested in this audiovisual treat in store for XBox 360 customers:
http://www.totalvideogames.net/forums/showthread….
thanks very much for the post! with regards to your question about copyrighted material my point was that when copyright legislation was originally passed the length of copyright was 14 years after that material went into the public domain for others to use – therefore if this had stayed the same, works like top gun, star wars would now be free for anyone to copy, create with etc. As it is this period has been extended numerously (including eleven times in forty years) and now stands at 95 years with various people pushing for it to be unlimited.
I assume you're referring to the Copyright Act of 1790. Point taken, but even the first revision in 1831 extended a term that was clearly too short. And many of the term extension revisions were requested by actual content creators, as in authors. I agree that there ought to be some "reasonable" cutoff point, but I think if you're going to look at the revisions, you ought to be clear about the fact that you're talking about 18th Century law. Yes, the Constitution was also 18th Century law, but it was purposely vague about details, and ironing out details is an ongoing process (which, ironically, right now probably needs more revision). By showing that Star Wars would now be public domain, I'm not sure if you're making an argument for reducing the term, or keeping it long enough that creators don't wind up losing their royalties faster!
(Just playing devil's advocate — and it only further illustrates that what you did does nicely frame the debate!)
Peter