another musing on originality [or] "by my own thoughts I am betrayed..."

I saw a thing tonight that made me question my own thoughts on 'originality' in art. Something that initially made me angry, and when I thought about it made me angry for being angry. I'm not sure yet how I feel about the whole thing, let me talk you/us/them through it...

While reading about the pieces in an upcoming exhibition of experimental music in the US, I came across a new piece, written in 2010 by a composer whom I shall disguise by naming him Z, which had a single simple idea, (this is pretty common in experimental music). But the idea in question was very similar to a piece by a UK composer from 1995, I shall refer to this composer as K. At this point I found myself annoyed at this 'rip-off', the two pieces seemed to me very similar, too similar. I continued reading through the programme note expecting to find some twist that made it different, or an acknowledgement of the K's work, but nothing. There was however a reference to the work of a 1960s sculptor that was related in concept, but nothing like the similarity between the work of Z and K that had annoyed me so much.

I did some research to make sure I wasn't missing anything (I still could be...). Z's piece, and Z himself, I could find no more information on, while K's piece had an interesting backstory about its genesis that mentioned nothing about the 1960s sculptor. It seemed clear (by virtue of their being next to no information to go on...) that this was a rip-off, some chancer trying to pass off seminal work as his own. I was in the middle of trying to figure out a non-confrontational way to 'out' this charlatan when I found myself annoyed with myself for even considering this move.

The encounter with this piece had turned me into someone I wouldn't recognise. You only have to go back a few blog posts here to find me cheerfully arguing against concepts of authorial authority. I firmly believe that creation in art involves working with a commons of materials and concepts, that individuality arises out of the way particular artists interact with this material and set it off on different paths: I'm not saying there are no new ideas, just that they never spring from the ether, they can always be traced, even if only obliquely, to a collection of sources.

The case of Z and K is interesting but unreconcilable due to lack of information, and I don't really care anymore about them anymore, just bothered by my own annoyance. It's possible that they both knew the earlier work and were influenced by it, but more likely that the two pieces came from completely different places, like Leibniz and Newton's independent development of calculus in the 17thC. There's a book on my reading horizon that covers this exact disconnect in thinking, Lewis Hyde's Common as Air. The disconnect is that a new idea must 'belong' to someone, that it must have been discovered by the genius of one person: there's a certain colonial quality to this, like the braying of great explorers as they 'conquer' exotic mountains that the indigenous peoples had been wandering around for centuries. Hyde sets about destroying the myth of the lone creator by exposing how much work is built on the commons of ideas and through communities who discuss these ideas, even if they are then brought to fruition by one person. There's a great video here of Hyde giving a presentation on this in relation to Benjamin Franklin, whom he describes in the book as the 'founding pirate'.

To go back to Z and K, it's worth mentioning that the idea for both pieces is so clever and simple that it's amazing more people haven't thought of it, and in fact they almost certainly have. This idea probably pops into some brain somewhere once a month, but as Feldman once said, ideas are easy, it's carrying them out that's hard. And when you remove from the equation all the people who already know about K's piece, or who the know the 1960s sculptor's work (and other similar nodes on the network of this particular idea that I don't know about), you eventually whittle the idea's fecundity down to the once per decade manifestation that we see here. Is Z's piece a rip-off? I doubt it, coincidence seems more likely, when an idea is good enough it just keeps on happening.

For me, I suspect that the whole episode (the part in my head at least) is the result of a combination of mundane emotional factors. K is a composer I quite admire, so was I defensive that K's creative honour was being besmirched? Maybe, but no, in all probability I was really driven by the fact that I had submitted a piece for this exhibition myself and was rejected *cue tiny violins*: though in fairness, my submission really wasn't great, I didn't think I was bitter about it... So this amplified the similarity in Z and K's work into something that could be attacked, I had generated my very own little right-wing 'moral panic' in order to (subconsciously) bolster my ego by attacking someone else. I suppose I'm just annoyed/humbled at my own pettiness really, ah well, onwards and upwards.


For anyone who's interested, the pieces in question are Benjamin Thorp's Black Box, and Janek Schaefer's Recorded Delivery, and the 1960s artist was Robert Morris, referring to his Box with the sound of its own making. Originally I didn't want to mention the protagonists directly as I thought it was unfair to unleash the accusation of artistic plagiarism, but I think it's a moot point really, coincidences happen all the time, we're just not always receptive to them.

BTW if anyone's in the New york area in october they should really go and see the exhibition, it opens on oct 1st, then every saturday in october has something on from 2pm-8pm. There's some great sound-artists/composers involved, and curator Seth Kim-Cohen has an interesting essay on the site also.

UPDATE: Brian Eno commented on the Schaefer piece that, 'Recorded Delivery [...] makes me wish I'd thought of it first.' It is that kind of idea.