Sophie Adams

3078452

Digital Culture Production Project 2010

Reeeeemix CulTuReexplored....

DIGITAL CULTURE IS ART

Overview

Digital Culture has allowed many avenues for producing and publishing different artefacts within society

This presentation explores ideas surrounding how the ‘digital moment’ or technology has increased the concept of remix culture with a look at manipulation of photography and areas of sampling within the music industry

Within the creative context where does copyright sit when the ‘digital revolution” has allowed people all over the world to go from simple consumers to producers in the digital age?

The Digital movement formed through out the 1980s into the 1990s and has evolved and continues to develop rapidly in present day.

It allows people to share ideas, information and expressions over vast distances in virtually no time. It connects people to a network and has empowered people like never before.

Through the digital movement or culture, the way people produce and consume within society has also been altered.

The way someone gains access to, uses and often making copies of a work is much easier, affordable and faster than ever.

To an extent, in an online environment, copying a piece of work is as simple as clicking on a web page to view the content as when one clicks on a page, automatically a copy of that link is made on a computers system and memory.

Copyright was designed to regulate copying and productions of work, but not simply viewing, yet with the digital age, programmes and web pages available, the distinctions of copyright are becoming less clear by the day!

(Vaidhyanathan 2001:152)

In the digital world a click of a button and create, recreate and unlimited amount of productions!!!

Giving individuals access to being able to remix a piece of art with out needing to possess the traditional idea of ‘talent’ or experience that is often associated with artists!

Any Warhol -Pop Art, Marilyn Monroe, 1962

With the click of a button, and the help of different programmes found on the internet, I be considered an artist too?????

Sophie Adams, 2010Karina FretwellThanks to Big Huge Labs online photo editor!

Clicking a button and recreating art or culture is seemingly what remix culture is about.....

So in this digital world art and technology work together

Within digital culture, technology increases the possibilities for modifying original work or even reproduce or imitate different elements of art (McCourt 2005: 251)

Even with the simple click of a button in most editing programmes you can make a simple photograph look like it has been painted or immense effort has been put into it.

Before Photoshop After Photoshop

Changes in the production and manipulation of photography are increasingly leading to production of new products, stimulating new desires and evolving through communication and digital culture (Wells and Price 2003: 24).

“Mashups involve the reuse, or remixing, of works of art, of content, and/or of data for purposes that usually were not intended or even imagined by the original creators” (Lamb 2007:14)

Intertextuality seems to be the key within mashup or remix culture, taking one thing into something else and making it new again or turning it into something else

Thanks to the Mp3 and digital technology, music can be more easily and rapidly transferred across global networks. As well as this, music can be reconfigured, re-contextualised, altered and reproduced on the world wide web..........

You only need to search “lip sync” on you tube to discover the million videos individuals have posted lip syncing to their favourite song or parody’s incorporating different videos or different contexts........

An extreme example of changing the context or idea of something on you tube can be seen with different voice over clips such as this one.....take the time have a laugh and see what remix culture can provide!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaPepCVepCg

Music is the prime example of this...........

MP3, an abbreviation of Motion Picture Experts Group One Audio Layer Three

BASICALLY a programme which shrinks the size of the music file that reduces the amount of space required for its storage and increases the possibility for transfer between devices across networked communications systems. (Beer 2008: 73)

In this day and age people can have music where ever they go!

One device that can fit all this……..

One device.......so much music condensed to fit......

Open your eyes, and see how they listen! The head phones go every where............................ Taking their play lists and accessing music where ever they roam.....

The digital revolution, and being able to condense music files has enabled individuals to make their own mashups in forms of play lists, edit their own music at home and then upload it them selves onto the internet...

Within society consumer’s is are faced with a range of cultural offerings that have beenpre-selected by the companies of the culture industry and the media (Tschmuck 2009:253), in a way this is an alternative way of consuming music on their terms and digital culture has turned the consumer into a producer.

Girl Talk is the pseudonym of DJ and re-mixer Greg Gillis.

Known for sampling artists from all over the world, and remixing them to create his own music

Re-contextualising and creating another aspect of remix digital culture.......

But taking elements of other artist’s creations and using them in a new piece of music, thanks to the digital age,

Girl Talk is an example of a DJ who has used the technique of sampling to create mash-ups of different musicians and re-contextualise it into a new art form.

Each of his songs are built on recognizable samples of hit singles, re-contextualized into an entirely new piece.

In a documentary addressing the gray area of sampling with a focus on Girl Talk’s work presents ideas that address where sampling and copy right issues should merge. He does not pay the artists he samples and the documentary “Good Copy Bad Copy” 2007 explores this area

“Based on the notion that some sampling of copy righted material, especially when manipulated and recontextualised into a new art form is legit a deserves to be heard”

Girl Talk:

“I do my own work (remixing different samples) but I do owe all of them (sampled artists) a little credit because they are blatantly on the album. Why go after some one who is simply trying to make music?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBD98Oeim4k

In the featured example you can here many different samples of artists and already well known songs put together to make a new production of work

Through the digital age these productions have been possible, evolving creativity through appropriation of music.

Where the issue lies in this example of remix culture is the gray area that is copy right.... Digital culture has challenged the ‘traditional’ music industries three pillars on which they are based on: control over publishing rights, marketing and promotional power, and control of distribution networks (Tschmuck 2009:254)

The idea of copy right is designed to prevent the unauthorised use by others of a work, that is, the original form in which an idea or information has been expressed (Attorney General Dept. 2008)

To it is clear to see that copy right is there to protect authors and artisits from their work being misrepresented or appropriated,

However....

Within the music industry, it can be seen that copyright law enables record companies to control the commercialization of the authors’ and musicians’ creative work, which leads to monopolistic competition in the music industry (Tschmuck 2009:261)

Yet the corporate side of the music industry has been said to be

“a ruthless corporate machine that continually attempts to control creativity, compromise aesthetic practices and offers audiences little real choice” (Negus,1995:36).

To an extent, Girl Talk has broken copy right laws, but as Keil and Field (1994) has suggested that “Everybody’s music belongs to everybody else” (321) and if the music industry is evil, isn’t he just doing justice which is facilitated by digital culture?

So!

We have now seen how Digital Culture enables re-mix culture which has allowed the development of popular music within society and can encourage individuals to explore their creative side by becoming a producer themselves......

Remix Culture, Fair use is your friend.

The use of something else or a remix or re-contextualisation of an artefact should be seen as a positive thing within society!

From photos to music, the production of one thing always comes from another and re-mix culture is becoming part of the digital generation way!!

We have the whole world in our hands thanks to digital culture…

Reference:

Beer, David (2008) 'THE ICONIC INTERFACE AND THE VENEER OF SIMPLICITY:MP3 players and the reconfiguration of music collecting and reproduction practices in the digital age', Information, Communication & Society, 11:1, 71 – 88

Keil, C. Field, S 1994) “Commodified grooves! Music Groove, University of Chicago Press: Chicago

Lamb, B. (2007). Dr Mashup; or, why educators should learn to stop worrying and love the remix. EDUCAUSE Review, 42(4), 12-25.

McCourt, Tom(2005)'Collecting Music in the Digital Realm',Popular Music and Society,28:2,249 — 252

Negus, K. ‘Where the Mystical Meets the Market: Creativity and Commerce in the Production of Popular Music’ in The Sociological Review, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995, pp316-341.

Tschmuck, Peter(2009)'COPYRIGHT, CONTRACTS AND MUSIC PRODUCTION',Information, Communication &Society,12:2,251 — 266

Vaidhyanathan, S. ‘The Digital Moment’ and ‘Epilogue’ in Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity, New York University Press, New York, 2000, pp. 149-189.

Wells, L and Price, D (2003) ‘Aesthetics and Technology’ in Liz Wells (ed) Photography: A Critical Introduction 2nd ed., Routledge, London, pp12-24.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4323661317653995812#‘Good Copy Bad Copy’ (2007) Directed by: ANDREAS JOHNSEN RALF CHRISTENSEN HENRIK MOLTKE Editor:ADAM NIELSEN