Mad theory about musical history: audio sampling was inspired by a monstrous musical instrument.
[I]nstead of pipes, there were sixteen cat heads each with its body confined; the tails were sticking out and were held to be played as the strings on a piano, if a key was pressed on the keyboard, the corresponding tail would be pulled hard, and it would produce each time a lamentable meow. The historian Juan Christoval Calvette, noted the cats were arranged properly to produce a succession of notes from the octave…
You see, this isn't just horror, but a Gothic anticipation of remixing and sampling:
cat-calls that are not merely cat-calls, but something more—a form of music semiotically reassembled from the distinct voices controlled by the device...
[T]he cat organ functions symbolically, based on the association of cats with devils and an immaterial, supernatural order where normally antithetical animals come together in a peacable kingdom
Betancourt runs with this to Autotune and the housing bubble. And, naturally, to a nice glance at contemporary IP isues:
A consideration of this early example of semiotic reassembly offers insight into contemporary ethical questions that could be asked about the use of sampling in digital capitalism.
Here's Google's copy of the Weckerlin book.
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