Cory Arcangel's Paganini

Niccolo Paganini's Fifth Caprice in A minor for solo violin, performed by Nathan Milstein:

Here is the original manuscript of all twenty-four caprices, published in 1820, and here is a modern edition of the score.  Cory Arcangel, who curently has a solo show at the Whitney Museum, wrote this computer code enabling him to edit together clips from a lot of YouTube videos of guitarists into a complete performance of the caprice:

This seems to effect an interesting Cartesian reversal: the Caprices, which are typically regarded as a spectacle of physical virtuosity with relatively little aesthetic merit or intellectual substance, are refashioned into basically a display of conceptual ingenuity involving no technical instrumental prowess whatsoever.  Rather than being dazzled by a performer's dexterity, agility, and the labor expended in mastering the work, we're dazzled by the idea and the technological expertise involved in writing the computer code.  At any rate, Arcangel sure does get you thinking.  Just imagine: around the world at any particular time, millions of musicians are collectively playing all the notes of every possible piece of music—everything that's ever been composed, and everything that ever will be (here's Arcangel's earlier Schoenberg/cat piece).  I wonder whether, with speech recognition technology, somebody could write some computer code that would edit together individual words spoken on youtube videos of people talking to recreate works of literature?  The bible could be recited by hip hop MCs; newcasters could recite Ezra Pound's Cantos...

Here's a filmed interview with Arcangel.