The Art of Sampling


I first became aware of the art of sampling while producing/hosting radio shows in New York City in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I conducted interviews with John Oswald and Negativland and produced shows around their works. Both John Oswald and Negativland came to influence the visual sampling I do today on Illumination Gallery. Oswald's work pointed toward the similarities between sampling and the found art of Marcel Duchamp, Negativland laid down the ground rules for the copyright law wars still being waged over the right to process and post online sampled art based upon previously produced sounds and images.

The animation running above was sampled from a Helmut Newton photograph posted by my MySpace friend Valtron. Incidentally, John Oswald and Negativland have MySpace profile pages. Click here to visit John Oswald's profile page and here to visit Negativland's profile page. Even Marcel Duchamp has a tribute page on MySpace that you can visit by clicking here.


© 2007 Peter Schmideg

Illuminated Sketchpad Index