Note: I’m very happy to announce the release of a book publication titled Mashup Cultures in which I contribute a text titled “Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture.”  The text was previously released on Vague Terrain in June 2007, and has been revised and extended by over 15 pages for the book publication. I introduce a series of new terms along with a diagram, which I will be making available online in the near future.

Mashup Cultures, Sonvilla-Weiss. Stefan (Ed.), Springeren: This volume brings together cutting-edge thinkers and scholars together with young researchers and students, proposing a colourful spectrum of media-theoretical, -practical and -educational approaches to current creative practices and techniques of production and consumption on and off the web. Along with the exploration of some of the emerging social media concepts, the book unveils some of the key drivers leading to participatory engagement of the User.

Mashup Cultures presents a broader view of the effects and consequences of current remix practices and the recombination of existing digital cultural content. The complexity of this book, which appears on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the international MA study program ePedagogy Design – Visual Knowledge Building, also by necessity seeks to familiarize the reader with a profound glossary and vocabulary of Web 2.0 cultural techniques.

Book Link: http://www.springer.com/springerwiennewyork/
art/book/978-3-7091-0095-0

TABLE OF CONTENTS
•    Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss: Introduction: Mashups, Remix Practices and the Recombination of Existing Digital Content
•    Axel Bruns: Distributed Creativity: Filesharing and Produsage
•    Brenda Castro: The Virtual Art Garden: A Case Study of User-centered Design for Improving Interaction in Distant Learning Communities of Art Students
•    Doris Gassert: “You met me at a very strange time in my life.” Fight Club and the Moving Image on the Verge of ‘Going Digital’
•    David Gauntlett: Creativity, Participation and Connectedness: An Interview with David Gauntlett
•    Mizuko Ito: Mobilizing the Imagination in Everyday Play: The Case of Japanese Media Mixes
•    Henry Jenkins: Multiculturalism, Appropriation, and the New Media Literacies: Remixing Moby Dick
•    Owen Kelly: Sexton Blake & the Virtual Culture of Rosario: A Biji
•    Torsten Meyer: On the Database Principle: Knowledge and Delusion
•    Eduardo Navas: Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture
•    Christina Schwalbe: Change of Media, Change of Scholarship, Change of University: Transition from the Graphosphere to a Digital Mediosphere
•    Noora Sopula & Joni Leimu: A Classroom 2.0 Experiment
•    Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss: Communication Techniques, Practices and Strategies of Generation “Web n+1?
•    Wey-Han Tan: Playing (with) Educational Games - Integrated Game Design and Second Order Gaming
•    Tere Vadén interviewed by Juha Varto: Tepidity of the Majority and Participatory Creativity

The following is a presentation separated into two parts; it was produced for the conference Re*-Recycling_Sampling_Jamming, which took place in Berlin during February 2009.

Part One: Remix[ing]. The Three Chronological Stages of Sampling

Part One (above) introduces the three chronological stages of Remix, while part two (below) defines how the three chronological stages are linked to the concept of Authorship, as defined by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault.  Also see my previous entry “The Author Function in Remix” which is a written excerpt of the theory proposed in part two.

Part Two: Remix[ing]. The Three Chronological Stages of Sampling

Below is the abstract that summarizes the content of the two videos.  Total running time is around fifteen minutes.

———–

Text originally published on Re*- on February 2009:

SAMSTAG_28.02.2009_SEKTION IV_15-20 UHR

12_15:00 Remix[ing]. The Three Chronological Stages of Sampling
Eduardo Navas, Künstler und Medienwissenschaftler, University of California in San Diego (USA)

Sampling is the key element that makes the act of remixing possible. In order for Remix to take effect, an originating source must be sampled in part or as a whole. Sampling is often associated with music; however, this text will show that sampling has roots in mechanical reproduction, initially explored in visual culture with photography. A theory of sampling will be presented which consists of three stages: The first took place in the nineteenth century with the development of photography and film, along with sound recording. In this first stage, the world sampled itself. The second stage took place at the beginning of the twentieth century, once mechanical recording became conventionalized, and early forms of cutting and pasting were explored. This is the time of collage and photo-montage. And the third stage is found in new media in which the two previous stages are combined at a meta-level, giving users the option to cut or copy (the current most popular form of sampling) based on aesthetics, rather than limitations of media. This is not to say that new media does not have limitations, but exactly what these limitations may be is what will be entertained at greater length.The analysis of the three stages of sampling that inform Remix as discourse is framed by critical theory. A particular focus is placed on how the role of the author in contemporary media practice is being redefined in content production due to the tendency to share and collaborate. The theories on authorship by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault are entertained in direct relation to the complexities that sampling has brought forth since it became ubiquitous in popular activities of global media, such as social networking and blogging.

Image source: CBS 60 Minutes

Revising my evaluation of mashups led me to this journalistic piece from June 13, 2006 by Scott Conroy from 60 minutes.  It is mentioned here mainly for historical purposes, as some things discussed have obviously changed since the feature was produced.

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Teens don’t have to work very hard to be entertained anymore. Rather than trekking to the record store, they can buy their favorite music with a few clicks — and maybe try out something new while they’re at it. Reality TV, the preferred genre of many, is always on the air. They don’t even have to get up from their chairs to share photographs and gossip with friends.

American society has been assigning all-encompassing labels to generations of young people for a long time. The tendency to pigeonhole a diverse group of individuals is, in some respects, dishonest — not every Flower Child spent the ’60s tiptoeing through tulips, and many members of Generation X surely thought flannel best confined to the realm of the lumberjack.

Read the entire feature at 60 minutes.

Image capture, July 11, 2009, http://hulu.com

The following text was originally published during the month of August, 2009 as part of Drain’s Cold issue.  The journal is a refereed online journal published bi-annually.  The text is republished in full on Remix Theory with permission.  Drain’s copyright agreement allows for 25% of the essay to be reblogged or reposted on other sites with proper citation and linkage to the journal at http://www.drainmag.com/.  I ask that their agreement be respected by the online community.

In 1964 Marshal McLuhan published his essay “Media Hot and Cold,” in one of his most influential books, Understanding Media.[1] The essay considers the concepts of hot and cold as metaphors to define how people before and during the sixties related to the ongoing development of media, not only in Canada and the United States but also throughout the world.[2] Since the sixties, the terms hot and cold have become constant points of reference in media studies. However, these principles, as defined by McLuhan, have changed since he first introduced them. What follows is a reflection on such changes during the development of media in 2009.

McLuhan is quick to note that media is defined according to context. His essay begins with a citation of “The Rise of the Waltz” by Curt Sachsk, which he uses to explain the social construction behind hot and cold media. He argues that the Waltz during the eighteenth century was considered hot, and that this fact might be overlooked by people who lived in the century of Jazz (McLuhan’s own time period). Even though McLuhan does not follow up on this observation, his implicit statement is that how hot and cold are perceived in the twentieth century is different from the eighteenth. Because of this implication, his essay is best read historically. This interpretation makes the reader aware of how considering a particular medium as hot or cold is a social act, informed by the politics of culture. McLuhan’s first example demonstrates that, while media may become hot or cold, or be hot at one time and cold at another, according to context, the terms, themselves, are not questioned, but rather taken as monolithic points of reference. To make sense of this point, McLuhan’s concepts must be defined.

(more…)

Image: Paul Ramirez-Jonas, Another Day 2003
Jonas’s project is one of five selections made for Transitio_MX 03.

I am very excited to share information about a curatorial selection I made for Transitio_MX. This year’s event appears to be just as ambitious as its predecessors, if not more.  I’m on my way to Mexico City, to participate in the opening events and symposium.  The next days will be overwhelming.  I will write about things as they develop, and post them here for future reference.  Some information about my selections below:

First Disagreement: *Dissidence. Non places & Device art*

Curators: Eduardo Navas / Machiko Kusahara

http://en.transitiomx.net/programa/eventos/4

This curatorship deals with techno-artistic praxes. In it, disagreement revolves around the artists’ usage and reshaping of devices and how the latter lead critically towards a stance different from that in which they originated.

Image: Last Session of “Chess and Duchamp” a four part class led by Chess Master Mick Bighamian

On August 12 I dropped by Telix Arts Exchange to participate in the Public School’s class titled “Chess & Duchamp.”  I was not able to attend the previous three classes as I was not in Los Angeles at that time.  However, being a former Chess aficionado, who also developed quite a few art projects around the board game in part influenced by Duchamp, I was almost immediately in tune with the discussion that ensued around one of Duchamp’s better known games against E. H. Smith in the International Tournement Hyeres, in January, 1928.

The analysis of the game was led by Chess Master Mick Bighamian, founder and director of the Los Angeles Chess Club.  It was quite a treat to have a game analyzed in detail.  Bighamian explained every possible option for each move on both sides of the board and theorized on how and why Duchamp won.

While I was at the Public School, I had the opportunity to catch up with its founder, Sean Dockray, who explained to me how activities at Telic have taken a life of their own.  What I found most fascinating was that the Public School is becoming a true resource with an unconventional spin on the education, at a time when more and more commercial educational institutions are being launched.  The Public School is a true antidote to both traditional university education as well as for-profit private universities.  Sean mentioned that The Public School now has landed a series of workshops with a few institutions, including UCLA’s graduate program as a way to teach practical skills, such as Adruino and Processing programming to students who would not have access to this type of instruction in their own institutions.  “It’s more like a form of outsourcing certain areas of education, to us” Sean commented.  This activity is actually presented and contextualized by Telic as a form of performance, a work of public art that takes place as exchange of knowledge and information.

The model has sparked such interest that now the Public School is developing satellite activities in Chicago, New York, Paris and Philadelphia. I asked Sean if The Public School had some form of manifesto, or mission, and he responded “no.” And he explained that the basic drive to share information was at The Public School’s core, as simple as that sounds.

By not having a specific mission, except to have an open platform to share information based on proposals by the community that supports Telic Arts Exchange, The Public School so far has avoided the usual conflicts that modest collaborative projects experience as they turn into a full on institution, such as how much to charge (the public school figures out a fair fee for each class from the very beginning).  It has been over a year at this point since the Public School started, and so far it appears to work as an organic set of activities, where people with diverse interests are encouraged to come up with subjects for classes. All they have to do is propose a class and if the proposer cannot teach the subject, then a search for a teacher takes place (this was the case with Chess and Duchamp); then, people can sign up and upon the discretion of Telic’s directors, the class is scheduled.

The Public School takes much further gestures and strategies explored in the past by artists such as Tom Marioni and his Bar, where beer was served while people socialized, which he went on to call “art.”  However, The Public School does not even need to be called “public art” or even “art.”  Yet, anyone invested in public practice would do a disservice to themselves if they did not look into the evergrowing series of events taking shape at The Public School; a project that I’m more than certain will become an important part of the history of public art.

Image and text source: ReadWriteWeb

Netscape founder Marc Andreessen is backing a new browser dedicated to browsing Facebook, called RockMelt, according to rumors we’ve heard from reputable sources. A semi-independent desktop client for Facebook? Doesn’t seem far fetched at all.

The software isn’t publicly available or being discussed yet, but we’ve gotten our hands on an early build and had a look at the front door after download. Robert John Churchill, who was the principal engineer for Netscape Navigator, is the principle engineer for RockMelt as well.

Read the entire article: ReadWriteWeb