These days, it's commonplace to create out of other people's creations; to gather, cut up, and paste together pieces of already existing works of art. In the field of music, hip-hop, rap, jungle, and drum'n'bass artists all have cultivated the art... [more]

These days, it's commonplace to create out of other people's creations; to gather, cut up, and paste together pieces of already existing works of art. In the field of music, hip-hop, rap, jungle, and drum'n'bass artists all have cultivated the art of appropriation, composing songs out of sampled rhythms and sounds. But the art of appropriation is taken a step further by John Oswald, the creator of Plunderphonics. Oswald distorts. Oswald doesn't assemble samples together; he works with singular songs, and, by means of modulations of speed, makes audible the unheard features of songs you thought you knew down to the last note. Oswald's original "Plunderphonics" recording consists of songs by Dolly Parton, Elvis, Count Basie, and Michael Jackson. Armed with a high-speed cassette duplicator, an infinitely variable speed turntable, and a hand-controlled reel-to-reel tape, Oswald accelerated and decelerated sections of songs, then edited each seamlessly together. It's true that he makes Dolly Parton sound like a man and Michael Jackson sound like a chipmunk, but this is not mere mockery (though it might also be that). Oswald's compositions are actually pleasant to listen to; they stand on their own. They may be humorous, but "Plunderphonics" is much more than a gag; it is about how to listen to music, about the sounds that lay hidden within sound, sounds that we can be made to hear by Oswald's exquisite manipulations of speed. Plunderphonics (both the album and the movement) practices the art of sampling differently than hip-hop or rap. While these genres generally exploit samples for their referential value, maintaining the identity of the sound bytes they sample, Plunderphonics artists tend more often than not to distort samples to the point of unfamiliarity or even unrecognizability. Rather than banking on a recognition-effect, Plunderphonics seeks to render the familiar strange. Both Bob Ostergag and Yasynao Tone, for example, distort their samples in such a way that the identity of the sample is distorted if not destroyed. Of course, Plunderphonics is a controversial endeavor. Copyright laws are often infringed. Judicial definitions of plagiarism, creativity, and originality are put to the test. Every Plunderphonic artist at some point comes up against the limit of legal appropriation. The result is that many Plunderphonic creations - Negativland's music is a good example -- become political reflections on copyright laws and their relation to free speech and creativity. Oswald himself has relentlessly pontificated on the benefits and pleasures of appropriation. "If creativity is a field," he says, "copyright is the fence." [show less]