John Oswald

John Oswald is a Canadian electronic music composer, mostly working in the medium of found sound. His best known project is Plunderphonics, which is copywritten found sounds used to comment upon themselves.

A good example of this would be his piece, "Pretender", in which a recording of Dolly Parton singing Buck Ram's song, "The Great Pretender," has been electronically manipulated, slowed-down, and sped-up. The overall result of this might leave the listener thinking that Dolly is pretending to be a man, African-American, or both. At least, she seems to be what she's not.

He released a compact disc collection of his manipulations and collages, which was sued out of existence by Michael Jackson's lawyers and a Canadian record industry group. The cover art of the disc was an altered photograph of a nude woman's body with Mr. Jackson's head, which was the provocation for the lawsuit.

If creativity is a field, copyright is the fence - John Oswald