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Just speaking from a hip-hop perspective; Appropriation is stealing well. Good stealing is obvious, fair, resonant, clever, unexpected and pointed. Since the
by nonrandomstring 3y ago
Just speaking from a hip-hop perspective;
Appropriation is stealing well.
Good stealing is obvious, fair, resonant, clever, unexpected and
pointed.
Since the appropriation is part of the art it needs to be up front.
Don't be obscure, or try too hard to hide the grab. Even better if
it's audacious.
There is a sense of fairness amongst artists. Stealing a well known
icon is okay, but to take the riff of rival, little known artist is
plagiarism.
There must be a cultural or semantic resonance. Even if, as in
Dada/Surrealism it's an incongruous juxtaposition. Something needs to
link or amplify. Otherwise you've got a collage or mish-mash of
"found" stuff that doesn't hang together, and that is considered
immature.
A clever steal makes the thing you take feel like it always belonged
more in your piece than the original context. That's hard, but it
happens and its wonderful. Maybe you take a grab that forms the
perfect cadence to an entire song you wrote, or just a sound whose
harmonics make the perfect missing parts to another chord.
A completely leftfield steal borrows from a genre that is totally
unexpected. There's a balance to be struck with obscurity here.
Finally, all of these combine such that an appropriation has a
point. It communicates an idea, through juxtaposition, association
or whatever. It references. It's a homage.
I know that the hidden question behind this post is "Does AI
appropriate?"
I don't think it does, because it lacks the intentionality of the
above points. But humans are great pattern matchers, including seeing
patterns that are accidental, so we mat read into AI and see
"appropriation" - but only in its most mechanical sense.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wnkrshm 3y agoappropriation also includes a resonance and admiration of the original - you cannot admire if you don't know where you're appropriating from
- jiriro 3y agoBrilliant! Mind sharing more of your writings? :-)
- nonrandomstring 3y agoHey Jiriro, if you're serious please come and enjoy/support some of our cybershow.uk shenanigans, its all hacker related.
- thristian 3y agoDo you have some examples of hip-hop tracks that steal well?
- nonrandomstring 3y agoEntirely personal opinion and controversial but for example: I think for "Can I kick it?" Tribe Called Quest were pretty tasteful with such a very audacious lift of Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side bassline [0] and the Ian Dury lick, whereas, as a bad example, M.A.R.R.S really kludged everything from Eric B And Rakim into "Pump Up The Volume" that really didn't work for me. It's really just the slide and stop of course - besides there's quite a story behind the original bassline by Herbie Flowers the session musician who played on Transformer anyway!
- erklik 3y agoIt's controversial today, due to the artist but Power by Kanye West.
- looping8 3y agoIs it considered controversial to say he made great art? I don't know what he is seen as in USA, but many of my circle still play his old albums because they are modern classics. He's not liked as a person but it's hard to deny Kanye's influence and quality.
- BeFlatXIII 3y ago> Since the appropriation is part of the art it needs to be up front. Don't be obscure, or try too hard to hide the grab. Even better if it's audacious. Then how does one analyze The Orb and other similar acts that rely on tons of obscure samples? They make no pretense of not using loads of samples, but they can be quite obscured to those not in the know. Then again, they are an entirely separate genre from hip-hop.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago> Then how does one analyze The Orb and other similar acts that rely on tons of obscure samples? They make no pretense of not using loads of samples, but they can be quite obscured to those not in the know. Then again, they are an entirely separate genre from hip-hop. Good question, maybe it's not "appropriation" in the same way - by not making a strong feature of the appropriated part. Perhaps we'd simply say composition. Or as Orb would say "Layering different sounds on top of each other". Come to think of that track, indeed , Steve Reich (different trains was it?)was actually something I knew but didn't recognise until someone pointed it out. Edit: Sorry to come back to this in case its getting old, but I just popped up the Wikipedia to check myself (it wasn't different trains), but check this out: Asked about the sample in an interview years later, Jones referred to the Orb as "those fuckers." Reich was "genuinely flattered"^[10] by the Orb's use of his work and instructed his record company not to sue.^[11] Despite this, the Orb did receive a letter from Reich's lawyers several years later, but Paterson described Reich as "a proper gentleman: he wanted 20% from then on and asked us to do a remix of one of his tunes, which we did" What a world of difference. And yet for me that's the only context I have for Rickie Lee Jones and still think of it as one of the most beautiful vocals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Fluffy_Clouds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Fluffy_Clouds