Neal Gabler has a very interesting essay in the LA Times today about communal culture in art – from collage and Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes to music and film sampling, and the fine line between collaboration/sharing and appropriation. He fears the loss and intangibility of authorship, while recognizing the seemingly limitless freedom allowed through new technologies.
One currently active example of internet collaboration is The Johnny Cash Project (called a “global collective art project”), where contributors are given one frame of a video to re-interpret through online drawing tools. The finished video will be made up of hundreds of individual frames and will accompany the release of “Ain’t No Grave,” Cash’s final studio recording.