You Have Entered the Public Domain

ensemble violin, percussion, and fixed media
written spring 2024
duration 10 minutes

Written for Aliayta Foon-Dancoes and j clancy

No art exists in a vacuum. Everything owes its existence to something earlier, and this cycle forms the backbone of creativity. The public domain - the body of work free from copyright restriction - is one of the most important fixtures of today’s creative landscape, providing a rich library of source material for artists of any medium.

The Disney Corporation has long had a difficult relationship with the public domain. Most famously, when their copyright on Steamboat Willie was set to expire, Disney aggressively lobbied the US government to pass the Copyright Act of 1976 (derisively called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act by its critics) to dramatically extend copyright term limits for all intellectual property.

The law’s worst effect was to cast the public domain as a villain to be guarded against, a stance that could not have been less prescient. The world was on the cusp of the digital era, a time of unprecedented availability of information, and such a newly protectionist approach to IP would eventually lead to the kinds of headaches artists of all kinds face today - from remixes getting ‘copystruck’ by content monitors to exclusivity restrictions that vary confusingly from country to country.

In 2024, Steamboat Willie finally ran out its copyright limit. Hundreds of thousands of memes sprang up to crassly mock Disney, and this piece - a joyous celebration of the public domain - is proudly suffused with that same kind of over-the-top, meme-worthy contempt.

It was an absolute delight to create this piece, and I must also give credit to Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, and John F. Kennedy for providing such wonderful source material to supplement Mickey with. Finally, this piece is dedicated to Nicolas Berge, whose work inspired me with its wild humor, creative use of visual media, and brilliant musicianship.