For the project, more than 30 audio artists captured speech and music samples from commercials, public service announcements, campaign ads and other promotional spots, then rearranged them into short sonic collages that often subvert the source material's original message.
Viewers hear from artists like Speech (Arrested Development), super producers Jermaine DuPri, Dallas Austin and DJ Toomp, marketing guru Shanti Das and Hip-Hop game changers like King Edward J, and yet it is striking that the documentary does not adequately locate Atlanta rap into a larger tradition of black musical production in Georgia.
But religion was a more popular theme than politics in artists' acceptance speeches, with many of the winners, including Missy Elliott and Ludacris, thanking or acknowledging God.
Potter, associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), was the most vocal champion for artist free speech during the 1980's and 1990's when public funding for the arts was being challenged by conservatives.
The multimillion-dollar, multiyear renovation of 305 Degraw commenced in 2007 after Gary Pollard, formerly a documentary filmmaker, and his wife, Jessica Pollard, a textiles artist and speech pathologist, bought it late in 2006, despite its decrepit state, for what they considered a bargain price: $1.875 million.
Ali blazed the path for hip-hop artists, placing vernacular speech in the service of truth, though such speech is always at first seen as a mockery of taste and pedigree.
Donald Kissinger started to fear it was the end of Venice Beach's era as a haven for artists and free speech when a rival stallholder whacked him on the head with a skateboard.
In her short time as minister, the former army brigadier-general responsible for the military's media relations has been criticised for her attacks on artists' freedom of speech, the latest being her proposal to give government funding only to art loyal to Israel.
In mid-sixties America, being a much more staid society than one would think, the ensuing legal battle became a cause celébrè for First Amendment rights with the effects of their victory ultimately occurring six years later, reverberating to this day in the form of greater freedom for artists and free speech.
In a video by the British artist James Richards, a speech instructor delivers a soundless lesson in lip reading.
