What's the difference between a collage and a pastiche?
You might know the answer to that, but I still haven't quite wrapped my head around it. I think the core difference is that a collage is made up of actual pieces of other works/things (cut up magazine articles, photographs, bits and bobs like ribbons, etc) while a pastiche is made up of elements taken from other works (mimicking someone's brush-strokes or phrasing).
Consulting Wikipedia to gain more insight, I discovered that "pastiche" is closely related to the word "pasticcio", and a pasticcio just happens to be a musical term for an operatic work that splices together the work of several other composers (which sounds a bit like a collage, really)... but it also means "pie".
As in, actual pie. That thing we do where we grind up a whole bunch of ingredients into a mince or a stew or a paste and then stick a lid of some description on it and call it a "pie". It doesn't matter what the ingredients are, to be honest. Or even what the lid is. Meat and vegetables under a lid made out of mashed potatoes and grated cheese is a pie. Chopped up apples completely encased in a short-crust pastry is a pie. Thickened lemon curd on a crushed biscuit base, topped with a layer of meringue, is a pie.
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| "Apple Pie" by Didriks, CC-BY 2.0 |
I'm rabbiting on about pastiches and pies because I've been looking into the difference between a Collection and a Remix in regards to using Creative Commons works.
Works that have a Creative Commons license are available to be re-used by members of the public (and aristocracy, I suppose). Many of them can also be adapted. If you have given your song, photograph, short film, painting, epic poem or blog post a CC license that allows adaptations, then some enterprising soul could come along and use part of it in a collage (or a pastiche).
If the license doesn't allow for adaptations, it could still be used in a Collection - as long as the collection itself doesn't try to give that work a different license.
I'm probably making a meal out of this, so let's make an actual meal out of it.
Let's say we have a piece of steak that is licensed CC-BY-ND (attribution, no derivatives) - this means we can't adapt that steak in any way. But we could still serve it with a side of vegetables which had a CC-BY (attribution) license, as long as we made it clear the steak and vegetables were separate items with separate licenses. If we also had a glass of ale that was CC-BY-NC-SA (attribution, noncommercial, share alike), well we could have that along side our steak and our vegetables but then we couldn't sell it (we'd have to give it away freely, and not bundle it with the meal, or we wouldn't be able to sell the meal - we'd have to give away the whole thing). Once again, everything is being shared together, but kept separate - with separate identities so we can make the licensing conditions clear for all. This is a Collection, in Creative Commons terms.
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| "Steak & Ale Pie - The Cat's Whiskers" by Cross Duck, CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 |
If, however, the steak was under a CC-BY-SA license, we could mix the whole lot together and put it in a pie (a Remix). The subsequent steak-and-ale pie would still need to have all of its sources clearly acknowledged (that's why the BY is for), but it would be okay that you can't separate the steak from the ale without sorcery, as long as you didn't try to sell the pie (the ale is still NC licensed). We can only make this pie because the licenses are compatible - if they weren't then we wouldn't be able to mix all the ingredients together. The pie itself would need a CC license, by the way. And the license given to the pie would need to be the same as the most restrictive of all of the licenses. In this case, the ale is the most restrictive (CC-BY-NC-SA), so that's the best license to use for your steak-and-ale pie.
And remember, "there is no ND in pie". If any of your sources is ND, you can't use it, and if it's SA, you have to use it carefully. You can read more about that here: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses.
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| "Stevens pie" by CloW, CC-BY-SA 4.0 |
And since we're on the subject, I could also just mess with the steak by turning it into mince, or cutting it into strips for a stir fry. That would be a derivative (both derivatives and remixes are kinds of adaptations). There's no ND in derivative, either.
The really important thing to remember is that you still have to give full credit and license acknowledgement for any work you use, regardless as to whether or not you made something new and exiting and different with it by turning it into a pie.
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| "Key Lime Pie" by sk, CC-BY-ND 2.0 |
By the way, you might have noticed I have a collection of pies in this blog post (just to be a smart-arse, really). I have assembled a collection of pictures (of pies) with incompatible licenses, but you can clearly see what they are, follow them home and use the right license for each, should you choose to re-use them yourself. This means I also have to be careful if I want to apply a CC license to the contents of this blog post - because a collection also needs a CC license if you want people to share it, and that license has to be compatible with the spirit of the licenses of the individual parts of the collection. I cannot make this post available commercially, because one of my pie pictures has an NC license.
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