As I listened to your panelists yesterday, and then the vigorous audience participation by all types of artists, I was struck by how much emphasis the artists put on the powerful and inspiring experience of collaboration in terms of going from that solo nature of being an artist to working with another creative — and likely strong-minded — artist or artists.

We hear a lot about how in this wisdom-of-the-crowds digital world, art now is taking someone else’s work and creating a derivative of it. Sometimes that process can result in something creative in its own right. But the secondary artist isn’t working with the original artist; in fact, the whole call to expand fair use is so that the secondary creator doesn’t even have to alert the original artist of the repurposing. Each “creator” is operating in isolation. They are “speaking” to the original artist through their own creative expression, but the powerful and moving spirit and resulting wisdom of collaboration I heard at yesterday’s event doesn’t exist in this derivative mash-up digital culture.

What a tragedy for those who have decided to devote their creativity to repurposing others’ works on their own. They’ll never know what those artists have known, the joy and creative spark of bending yourself to another in search of something new.