How has the American tradition of intellectual property law understood the relationship between originality and tradition? What rights do artists and educators have to draw inspiration from or comment on existing works in existing media? What habits, beliefs, legal and policy decisions threaten the emergence of a more participatory culture? What have people done, and what can we do to protect the Fair Use rights of artists, educators, and amateurs so that explore the opportunities created by new media and a networked society?

How has the American tradition of intellectual property law understood the relationship between originality and tradition? What rights do artists and educators have to draw inspiration from or comment on existing works in existing media? What habits, beliefs, legal and policy decisions threaten the emergence of a more participatory culture? What have people done, and what can we do to protect the Fair Use rights of artists, educators, and amateurs so that explore the opportunities created by new media and a networked society?

Digital visionaries such as Yochai Benkler have described the emergence of a new networked culture in which participants with differing intentions and professional credentials co-exist and cooperate in a complex media ecology. Are we witnessing the appearance of a new or revitalized folk culture? Are there older traditions and practices from print culture or oral societies that resemble these emerging digital practices? What sort of amateur or grassroots creativity have been studied or documented by literary scholars, anthropologists, and students of folklore? How were creativity and collaboration understood in earlier cultures? Are there lessons or cautions for digital culture in the near or distant past?

"Collective Intelligence" and "the wisdom of crowds" have become central buzz phrases in recent discussions of networked culture. But what do they really mean? What do we know about the new forms of collaboration that is emerging as people work together across geographic distances online? Are we working, learning, socializing, creating, consuming, and playing in new ways as a result of the emergence of our participation in online communities? What have we learned over the past decade that may help us to design more powerful communities in the real world? What lessons can we carry from our Second Lives into our First?

"Collective Intelligence" and "the wisdom of crowds" have become central buzz phrases in recent discussions of networked culture. But what do they really mean? What do we know about the new forms of collaboration that is emerging as people work together across geographic distances online? Are we working, learning, socializing, creating, consuming, and playing in new ways as a result of the emergence of our participation in online communities? What have we learned over the past decade that may help us to design more powerful communities in the real world? What lessons can we carry from our Second Lives into our First?

Digital visionaries such as Yochai Benkler have described the emergence of a new networked culture in which participants with differing intentions and professional credentials co-exist and cooperate in a complex media ecology. Are we witnessing the appearance of a new or revitalized folk culture? Are there older traditions and practices from print culture or oral societies that resemble these emerging digital practices? What sort of amateur or grassroots creativity have been studied or documented by literary scholars, anthropologists, and students of folklore? How were creativity and collaboration understood in earlier cultures? Are there lessons or cautions for digital culture in the near or distant past?

It is possible that live performance is not so live any more. In this talk, Sharon Mazer looked at the ways that audience “performances” may be seen to challenge the live-ness of the onstage action in the Road to Wrestlemania 23, which the WWE takes to New Zealand in early 2007, and in Te Matatini, the National Kapa Haka Festival, a biennial Maori cultural performance competition happening that same weekend. Mazer is head of the Department of Theatre and Film Studies at the University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand). Her book Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle was published by the University Press of Mississippi, and her current research is focused on Maori performance.

It is possible that live performance is not so live any more. In this talk, Sharon Mazer looked at the ways that audience “performances” may be seen to challenge the live-ness of the onstage action in the Road to Wrestlemania 23, which the WWE takes to New Zealand in early 2007, and in Te Matatini, the National Kapa Haka Festival, a biennial Maori cultural performance competition happening that same weekend. Mazer is head of the Department of Theatre and Film Studies at the University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand). Her book Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle was published by the University Press of Mississippi, and her current research is focused on Maori performance.

Recent trends in music composition push bounds by creating pieces which are either more complex or simpler than works of the past. And yet, our ability to understand and be interested in the compositions at these extremes has kept pace. In this talk, Michael Cuthbert shows how simple minimalist processes give rise to highly ambiguous structures, while many of the most complex moments are reducible to easier to comprehend processes. The effect of potentially endless works—including sections of Beethoven symphonies–will generalize the talk to other musical styles and other media. Cuthbert, visiting assistant professor of music at MIT, has worked extensively on fourteenth-century music and on music of the past 40 years. A recipient of the Rome Prize of the American Academy, Cuthbert earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2006.

Recent trends in music composition push bounds by creating pieces which are either more complex or simpler than works of the past. And yet, our ability to understand and be interested in the compositions at these extremes has kept pace. In this talk, Michael Cuthbert shows how simple minimalist processes give rise to highly ambiguous structures, while many of the most complex moments are reducible to easier to comprehend processes. The effect of potentially endless works—including sections of Beethoven symphonies–will generalize the talk to other musical styles and other media. Cuthbert, visiting assistant professor of music at MIT, has worked extensively on fourteenth-century music and on music of the past 40 years. A recipient of the Rome Prize of the American Academy, Cuthbert earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2006.