Shepard Fairey et al @ NYPL

Attended a Panel at the New York Public Library today, entitled “Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy” with Shepard Fairey, Lawrence Lessig and Steven Johnson.

This is my second event in this series, first one was with Zadie Smith, and I think it’s starting to be a trend. I certainly enjoyed Tonight, it’s super nice to be in a room full of smart people and be part of an intelligent conversation on important topics.

The important topic of the night being copyright and everyone’s right to be creative and remix. The panelists were generally in favor of intellectual property rights but also agreed that our current system is failing us and the legal system is really following the money and not at all looking out for the public good. I also learned Lawrence Lessig will never run for any public office, Shepard Fairy aims to make populist art with accessible metaphors, and Stephen Johnson introduced me to some underground writings of Thomas Jefferson and we all tried to figure out where to draw the line of acceptable use when making a remix.