As much as people may speak of art reflecting its creator, once it gets into the outside world, it becomes an interaction with everyone it contacts. There are a million new perspectives formed, and plenty that could be done to extend the work.
I could imagine taking software principles and applying them to art in many ways:
* Bugfixes-- from simple grammar flaws, to finishing dangled story threads, why aren't we patching and re-releasing novels?
* Technical improvements-- I could imagine, for example, a speaker manufacturer remixing songs so they sounded better on their hardware.
* Customization -- if you've made an attractive image or song, and it hasn't been repurposed to sell Diet Pepsi, you haven't really arrived.
The limit to these visions is that they run headlong both into the literal principles of copyright law, and the philosophy that art is somehow sacred as-is, rather than being a baseline for better and better things. Shorter copyrights and mandatory licensing can make it happen.
> Bugfixes-- from simple grammar flaws, to finishing dangled story threads, why aren't we patching and re-releasing novels?
This is pretty similar to what’s happened with Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo. He’s repeatedly reworked it, tweaking the production and verses and in one case adding a whole new song.
> Customization -- if you've made an attractive image or song, and it hasn't been repurposed to sell Diet Pepsi, you haven't really arrived.
https://youtu.be/zxyTk3ligAc – a band playing a very close copy of their hit song Winchester Cathedral as a coke ad.
"He" being the operative word. Third parties aren't doing their own custom distributions. This becomes a big deal if you can't convince the original creator that something needs fixed.
If you've got a big enough vision that you lock horns with Linus Torvalds on the Linux kernel, you fork it and release anyway. If you have a different vision than Kanye West for the album, good luck getting your version through the courts.
As much as people may speak of art reflecting its creator, once it gets into the outside world, it becomes an interaction with everyone it contacts. There are a million new perspectives formed, and plenty that could be done to extend the work.
I could imagine taking software principles and applying them to art in many ways:
* Bugfixes-- from simple grammar flaws, to finishing dangled story threads, why aren't we patching and re-releasing novels?
* Technical improvements-- I could imagine, for example, a speaker manufacturer remixing songs so they sounded better on their hardware.
* Customization -- if you've made an attractive image or song, and it hasn't been repurposed to sell Diet Pepsi, you haven't really arrived.
The limit to these visions is that they run headlong both into the literal principles of copyright law, and the philosophy that art is somehow sacred as-is, rather than being a baseline for better and better things. Shorter copyrights and mandatory licensing can make it happen.