The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Carl Sagan + Sigur Rós

We’re big fans of “remix culture” — the mashing up of existing pieces of content (music, film, text, image) into an entirely original creative product. A couple of months ago, A Glorious Dawn — the Carl Sagan / Stephen Hawking remix — made major viral waves, and on Monday it was even released as a single on White Stripes frontman Jack White’s label.

But this actually isn’t the first remix tribute to the great scientist. This week, we saw the resurfacing of another fantastic mash-up, made in 2008 — a remix of Carl Sagan reading from his iconic book Pale Blue Dot to music by Icelandic post-rock outfit Sigur Rós, easily one of the most innovative bands of the past decade.

And while this is clearly a lovely tribute to two great innovators in science and art, the irony is that it’s illegal under current intellectual property legislature — yet another illustration of how dated and ill-equipped copyright law is to support, rather than hinder, modern creative culture.


Published November 12, 2009

https://www.themarginalian.org/2009/11/12/carl-sagan-sigur-ros-remix/

BP

www.themarginalian.org

BP

PRINT ARTICLE

Filed Under

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)