#freedom

"Oh when I improvise I am so free!"

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“Some people tell me it is very utopian or naïve to think that one can get rid of copyright and intellectual property, but to a certain extent it is already happening in practice.  …  Because of its rigid and bureaucratic structure, the law is always left behind by the questions posed by new technologies.”

“To be open, receptive and exposed to the dangers of making improvised music, means exposing yourself to unwanted situations that could break the foundations of your own security.  …  You must engage in questioning your security, see it as a constriction.  You are aware and scared, as if you were in a dark corridor.  Now you are starting to realise that what you thought of as walls existed only in your imagination.”

“While nobody might recognise the importance of what you have done, you need to keep your confidence.  It is difficult to be alone in working toward something and yet not know where it will take you…”

“It seems that Locke had in mind rival goods when he developed his theory .  What happens to non-rival goods like ideas?  George Bernard Shaw famously said that if you and I have an apple and we exchange apples, you would only have one apple but if you and I have an idea and we exchanged them, we will have two ideas.  So, how is it possible to treat ideas as if they were apples i.e. to make them into commodities?  It is only through copyright that it is possible to produce scarcity out of ideas and this of course can produce serious benefits for some but not all”

“No other type of music-making contradicts itself through its recording like improvisation does.”

“If you turn up the volume to your computer, and set the the little microphone inside to maximum level it will feed back, just like any other type of microphone.  I just put it through some filters and add some white noise or pink noise.  For me, the thing was to use elements that were marginal in other types of music, take something of no real value and use it.”