Is Slice and Dice Music?

I was talking with my friend about how easy it is to construct a song by slicing and dicing live snippets. It got me to thinking: Is slice and dice really music? I mean, would you call such a work a performance?

In today's picture perfect world of music recording, anything less than flawless is, well, less than flawless and gets slammed as such. So how far should one take the digital tools at one's disposal when working on a tune? Can you keep the integrity of the song if too much of it is re-recorded and spliced to perfection?

A tough call. I'd like to say that a performance should essentially stand on its own, with as few fixes-in-the-mix as possible. Not always a mean feat.