Listentotheloop.com is a blog run by Christine Chatz. I had the pleasure of meeting Christine over the holiday break, this past December, in San Diego, California. She treats her blog as a type of curatorial venue where she “hand-picks” music artists much like a DJ would during a radio show. My favorite posts are the ones called “Throwback Thursdays,” in which she usually features a historical figure that may have been overseen in music history. Below is her snippet on the role Betty Davis (image above) played in the lives of Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, and Sly Stone:
Raunchy, gritty, and hugely influential, Betty Davis remains unsurpassed as the queen of funk. At the time of her debut in 1973, she was attacked by critics for her “obscene” demeanor. Davis refused to tone it down, reveling in the emotions that fueled the vigor behind her “woman on the prowl” lyrics. During her marriage to Miles Davis, she introduced both Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone to the jazz great, inadvertently laying the groundwork for the production of the legendary record Bitches Brew.
Minima Moralia Redux is a selective remix by Eduardo Navas of Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia. Starting on October 16, 2011, an entry a week will be rewritten until the 153 aphorisms of Minima Moralia become part of the blog.
Theodor Adorno’s aphorisms are carefully analyzed and reinterpreted in order to explore the principles of the selective remix, often found in music and video. The selective remix consists of adding to or subtracting material from a pre-existing source.
Minima Moralia Redux is the result of a long term post-doctoral analysis in cultural analytics performed for The Department of Information Science and Media Studies http://www.uib.no/infomedia/en at the University of Bergen, Norway, in collaboration with Software Studies Lab http://lab.softwarestudies.com/ at the University of California, San Diego.
I will be presenting my research on Remix and cultural analytics at the University of Lumiére in Lyon, France on November 24. Program and other information availlable.
A brief note on my presentation:
I will discuss the evolution of remixing in a three case study, with particular emphasis on when and how the video remixes were produced. This is done in order to reflect on the initial uploads of material and subsequent remixes as important vehicles of communication and creative practice.
What cultural analytics can bring to anthropology, and other fields that adopt it, is the ability to attain a balanced approach based on quantitative and qualitative analysis.
Kirby Ferguson took time off his Everything is a Remix project to explain why we should write to our representatives in Congress and tell them not to pass the Protect IP bill.
Paul Ramirez-Jonaz, “Another Day” (2003), video installation, image courtesy of the artist.
This essay, made available here in English and Spanish, was written for the exhibition Transitio _MX 03, which took place in Mexico City in October 2009.The text was published in December 2010 in Errata, a Colombian journal dedicated to art and culture.The text explores the concept of non-places (which is the foundation of my curation for Transitio), as a recurrent and pervasive cultural variable not only in Latin America but other parts of the world.
Above and below are images of the works curated in the exhibition, complemented with excerpts from the text.
Sabrina Raaf, “Translator II: Grower, 2004-2006,” Robot and Installation, image courtesy of the artist.
excerpt:
The works included in “Autonomies of Disagreement” were selected to reflect on glocality versus locality in Latin-American production in relation to the concept of non-place. Glocality is commonly defined with the saying, “act local, think global.” With this concept as a cultural foundation, my curatorial approach was developed to support what I consider a key element of Transitio_MX 2009’s theme of “Autonomies of Disagreement”, as evaluated in the Festival Statement, which is to keep in mind the relevance of geopolitical differences that shape the use of appropriation and technology in artistic practices.
Carlos Rosas, “GPS Pallet Series: (Coordinate) Paintings/ I Think I Got IKEA’d Project, Bulls on Parade: Protest Remixes y Step and Repeat Cycles: Live/ Networked Installation y Remixed Sessions,” Installation.
Excerpt:
The term non-place is applied here after the theory of supermodernity introduced in 1992 by Marc Augé in his book Non-places, Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Augé views non-places as areas of transition, such as airports, conditioned with a familiarity that is homogeneous. He also extends his concept to spaces that need not be visited, but named, or referenced through pervasive images. He argues that people eventually become familiar with such places by mere reference.
Owen Mundy y Joel Dietrick, “Anemophilous Formula for Computer Art,” Wall Projection, real time animation.
Excerpt:
Auge’s premise was revisited in 2002 by Hans Ibelings in Supermodernism, Architecture in the Age of Globalization. Ibelings views the homogeneity of tourism initially examined by Augé to be best expressed in the spectacular architecture of Las Vegas, which metaphorically speaking, names or cites a place. In other words, Las Vegas is architectural simulacra of other places in the world.
Vicky Funari y Sergio de la Torre, Maquilápolis, video, 2006, Documentary Film.
Excerpt:
The Internet also has non-places of its own. Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Facebook and all other major portals and social networking sites help users navigate online spaces with interfaces that, like the airport, can be considered places of transition, of constant flow and change. Users in turn feel more comfortable with the material that is accessed because individuals are often allowed and even encouraged to customize their interfaces with bookmarks and various forms of tagging for ongoing access. Latin American art production is informed by such developments as well as the physical mobility of people from different countries.
The art projects I selected for Transitio_MX, in varying degrees, are informed by the current stage of networked culture; they also expose contradictions of global trends of migration. Given this focus, not all the artists are “Latin American” but rather their work has an intimacy with issues that are relevant to Latin America as a concept that moves across borders as a collective of complexities that are difficult to define. This approach opens up a space to discuss how cultural identification today is even more multi-layered than before, which is why the selected projects share questions on how locality and glocality are terms that may be interchangeable according to a person’s particular position in both class and culture–closely defined by education and accessibility to technology. “Glocality,” as the ability to function locally with a global awareness, is a term that only a certain number of people, unfortunately, are able to contemplate at the moment. This obviously needs to change, and the works chosen for Transitio_MX aim to demystify this elitism. Glocals are people invested in the actual production of a global culture at an informational level—the most important level in which meaning is currently produced and controlled. The artists participating in Transitio_MX are part of this small, selected group, and as such have to be conscious of their practice as a critical tool that can ultimately endorse the global system.
Within this critical framework, Another Day (three monitors) 2003, by Paul Ramírez-Jonas (Honduras/ United States) depersonalizes and universalizes the ongoing travel that takes place around the world, by making the sun the traveler. The video Maquilápolis 2006, by Vicky Funari (United States) and Sergio De La Torre (Mexico/United States) aims to expose the contradictions at play in the global economy on how goods are produced with unfair labor laws. Translator II: Grower, 2004-06, by Sabrina Raaf (United States) exposes the tension, or discord of dislocation that can be superceded if the migrating subject is willing to come to terms with the displacement of the body by way of mechanical labor. I THINK I GOT IKEA’D: Finish Fetish and other projects, by Carlos Rosas (Chile/United States) expose how location can become abstracted in terms of painting or sound, while still providing a sense of concreteness by mere citation of concepts. And Anemophilous Formula for Computer Art, by Owen Mundy (United States) and Joelle Dietrick (United States), literally takes apart the concept of non-place, by recontextualizing a paper-wall image of a national park located at an airport lobby.
I contributed an essay on my project Traceblog to the book publication Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and Design, edited by Xtine Burrough. I want to thank Xtine for the opportunity to share my ideas. Below are excerpts from my chapter contribution, which is titled after the actual online project as “Traceblog.” After the excerpts you will find the table of contents, which, in my view, includes an impressive list of contemporary new media artists. Excerpts from my chapter contribution:
[…] Traceblog was developed in reaction to one of my previous projects titled Diary of a Star (2004-07), a blog that appropriated entries from The Andy Warhol Diaries. As exciting as Diary of a Star was for me to produce, it consumed more time than I expected because entries had to be carefully written and took much longer to compose than average blog posts. Soon after I finished the Warhol project I began to think about the changes that had taken place with the shift to Web 2.0, and how blogging had changed since 2004. I realized that keeping track of people’s surfing activity had become an important element for private, public, and state organizations to data-mine patterns of communication and consumption online. The term “social media” began to be used more often when discussing the growth of early networks such as Orkut, and Friendster around 2004, the period when I began to develop Diary of a Star.
I evaluated the changes in online activity since 2004 and decided to develop Traceblog to reflect on the new stage that global culture was entering in 2008, during which millions of people around the world willingly shared information about themselves online, via social networks such as Facebook, Flickr, and Myspace, as well as YouTube, not to mention thousands of blogs, which by such time were conventional tools of communication for average Internet users. The result of the social media frenzy is an attitude of sharing that is ubiquitous in 2010, the time of this writing.
[…] Traceblog is a direct result of my ongoing practice as artist and media researcher. It makes the most of the default state of works of art in new media practice as informational forms, not defined by physical presentation. Traceblog and similar online works function in a state of flux defined by the growing archive and its relation to the ever-present: the now.
Everything is a Remix is a four part web-film series directed and produced by Kirby Ferguson. It has been about a year since the first segment (above) was released. Since then, Ferguson has released parts two and three. The fourth and final installment is scheduled to be released this Fall of 2011, and I look forward to viewing it.
When I viewed part one, I really liked it, and thought that the title, while it may sound polemical to some degree (in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way), somewhat falls along the lines of how I view and have been discussing Remix as a form of discourse during the past few years. However, once I viewed the other two segments, I realized that the way some of the material is presented begins to water down the very foundation of the term “remix.”
For this reason, while I do like very much Ferguson’s series, and often share it as a reference with anyone who wants to get a sense of Remix as a form of discourse, I find the need to write down some of the issues that may be overseen in Ferguson’s series.
This oversight perhaps may be in part because short films cannot possibly cover in-depth analysis as a series of texts or a book would. On the other hand, it may be inevitably tempting to make an ever-expanding megamix about culture and media with a generalization that one cannot fully embrace (though in the spirit of remixing can truly like and admire). With both of these possibilities in mind, I briefly share my views on this series.
The main issue about remixes that comes up, even in the first video, is that there is no explanation of the relation between material sampling and cultural citation. as I previously explained in Regressive and Reflexive Mashups, there is a difference between a Medley and a Megamix: the former is played by a band, while the latter is composed in the studio usually by a DJ producer, who understands how to manipulate breaks on the turntables.
What this means is that a remix in the strict sense of its foundational definition has to be materially grounded on a citation that can be quantified, in other words, measured. This is one of the reasons why DJ producers quickly ran into trouble with copyright law: a lawyer could play a sample from a Hip Hop song, in direct juxtaposition with the originating source of the sample and make evident on purely material grounds that the sample was an act of plagiarism.
But this is not exactly what happened with Led Zeppelin. What happened with Zeppelin, as the example given in Ferguson’s first segment, was straight forward plagiarism within the tradition of covers and knock-offs. Two terms that are also mentioned in the first segment as forms of “legal remixes.” What these forms of recycling content do share with remixes is intertextual citation–the embedding of ideas by way of direct or even indirect reference, which often is not materially grounded, but rather made possible through well calculated emulation.
The best example of intertextual citation in the postmodern sense would be Quentin Tarantino’s films, which are also mentioned at the end of the credits of part two. Tarantino does not sample directly from the films he references in his own work, but rather recreates the scenes or shots to develop his own narratives. This allows him to claim autonomy of the material, much in the way that Zeppelin (in my view unfairly) can still keep their credibility, perhaps on the ground of reproducing material in a unique way that is their own–even if they failed to cite the sources from which they blatantly stole.
In other words, because, both, Tarantino and Zeppelin don’t materially take, but rather emulate with great precision, their productions are not remixes by definition, but rather informed by principles of Remix as a form of discourse. Their actions are cultural citations. These details are missed, unfortunately, in the first three parts of the series by Ferguson.
Now, as it is already obvious above, I do extend the concept of remix as Remix (with a capital “R”) to pretty much all the areas of culture that Ferguson mentions in his series, including the Apple computer. But when I do this, it is to emphasize that we are functioning under a paradigm ruled by acts of material appropriation and recyclability.
The attitude of remix made possible with the technology first introduced earlier in photo-collage and tape loops and eventually music samplers, has now become an attitude, an aesthetic that informs the way cultural material is produced. But this does not mean that “everything is a remix.” This may appear to be so, but as much as I myself would like this to be the case, it is not. What one could say is that “everything is intertextual,” which is closer to the tradition of sharing ideas in conceptual and material form, prior to the time of modernism. Historically all the material covered by Ferguson is certainly relevant in terms of recyclability, but it does not validate the catch-all statement “everything is a remix.”
Understandably, “everything is intertextual” (which could also be contested if one gets really picky) is not as catchy as “everything is a remix.” To go viral, one must use what is in vogue and quickly understood. Intertextuality had its time in the postmodern period. Now, it appears that remix is the catch all phrase.
And why is it important to point out such nuances that in the end a person enjoying Ferguson’s short films may find too nit-picky? Because if we actually take the time to differentiate the referencing of ideas in conceptual and material form (ideas, and actual products reused) then copyright law may actually be changed. If we keep referencing intellectual production in general fashion as Ferguson’s work unfortunately does, we will not be able to change laws on intellectual property. It is for this reason, only, why I write this entry, because I find that the film series could benefit from understanding the important differences between material samplings and cultural citations.
I should add a note to explain that my concern here is not academic by any means, even though I make a living by working with research institutions. I have been invested in remix culture long before the very term was coined. Before investing myself professionally as a media researcher and artist, I was a DJ for over fifteen years. And for this reason, as much as I would like everything to be a remix, I have to admit that this is not the case. To be blunt, from the point of view of cultural critics who are wary of hegemony, “Everything is a Remix” can be understood as a flip-on-the-script of diversity, paradoxically, to become a totalitarian statement–that anyone who is invested in difference is compelled to resist. I say this understanding that Ferguson probably does not mean it this way, which is why I do share his work as much as I can. Kudos to Ferguson.
In the above video, Hitler rants about the iPad’s lack of features.
I learned about the Downfall remixes while doing research for the Charleston Style remixes. For a good assessment of its development, read Know your Meme’s blog post of August 1, 2011. These parodies consist of various excerpts from a not so well-known film titled Downfall, released in 2004, about the last days of Hitler and his inner circle before they all committed suicide. There are a few scenes that have been used for the remixes, but I chose the most popular, which is also the longest excerpt remixed, of about 3:59. The footage presents Hitler being told by key members of his inner circle that Berlin is surrounded and that it is only a matter of time before the enemy reaches them in the city. Hitler is upset about the fact that he was not told the truth sooner and rants for quite sometime to eventually come to terms with his certain defeat.
In the above video Hitler rants about not getting the role as the Joker in Batman.
The parodies consists of taking the original footage, and implementing subtitles in English that have nothing to do with what Hitler is actually saying in German. Instead, the subtitles present him ranting about the lack of features of the iPad, his realization that Pokemon does not exist, and his disbelief that Kanye West was extremely rude to Taylor Swift when West interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech at an MTV video awards to tell her that Beyonce was a much better music artist, among many other remixes. I made a definite decision to focus on the Downfall remixes after I ran into one that showed Hitler upset about the “fact” that the Lotus Flower remixes had surpassed the Downfall Parodies’ popularity on YouTube.
In the above video Hitler rants about the Lotus Flower remixes.
I consider this reference a way of coming full circle between the memes. With the Downfall parodies I was unable to find remixes before January 2007; and, therefore, I am not sure what the first parody may have been (check know your meme’s entry for a parody of 2006 that is no longer available); many which have been featured on articles by newspapers are no longer available on YouTube. Nevertheless, new ones keep showing up, as reflections and commentaries of current events.
Montage grid of Downfall video, with proper English subtitles.
View 2200px wide version Note that the resolution of the grid montage I make available does not allow for the subtitles to be read.
With the Downfall remixes, the result is similar to the Charleston Remix. In the Charleston, it is only the music that is switched, and for Downfall, only the subtitles are changed; therefore, the only major shift takes place with the formal placement of translations on the screen: sometimes on the middle of the screen, but for the most part at the bottom. For this reason, I’m only showing one montage grid visualization (above).
Visualization of Downfall with original English subtitles (no longer available on YouTube). View 2000px image. The thin horizontal white bars near the bottom of the frame are the subtitles. To former link of this video is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bmkUlXp5sk&feature=related.
Visualization of “Hitler’s Reaction to the new Kiss album,” a video remix in which Hitler rants about the album’s title “Sonic Boom.” View 2000px image. The subtitles (the thin horizontal white bars) in this case move all over the frame. To view this video visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwOLfppXhsk&feature=youtu.be.
Visualization of “Hitler Rejected For Joker In Batman 3.”
View 2000px image
Another shift we can notice with the subtitles is that they may crossover from one shot to the next based on the emphasis of the content that the remixer wants to make. But none of the Charleston and Downfall videos are heavily edited as the Lotus Flower remixes. I will compare at length the three case studies in part four of this series.
This is part 2 of a series of posts in which I introduce three case studies of YouTube video remixes. My first case study is the Charleston Style remixes.
Radiohead uploaded their original official music video on February 16, 2011. The video consists of Thom Yorke, the band’s lead singer, dancing and singing in an empty garage-like space. The footage includes close-ups, mid and long shots of Yorke improvising his dance. When viewing the original video it is evident that Yorke’s quirkiness in part is the reason why the footage was a readymade for a viral meme. The remixes began to appear, just two days after the original was uploaded, on February 18. The range of songs that replaced Radiohead’s original include well known musical classics from Zorba the Greek, pop songs from the Venga Boys, as well top ten hits by Lady Gaga, among others. Below are some of the videos analyzed.
This remix consists of footage taken from the original Radiohead video, which was re-edited to match the song “All the Single Ladies” by Beyonce, uploaded on February 18, 2011.
This video is titled “Thom Yorke Goes Bananas.” In this case, the video footage of Lotus Flower was selectively re-edited to match a samba composition. It was uploaded on February 18, 2011.
This video is titled “Thom Yorke Does the Macarena!” In this case, the video footage of Lotus Flower was selectively re-edited to match the Macarena song and video. It was uploaded on February 18, 2011.
Following the method of analysis of my first case study on the Charleston Style, I first looked at the montage of the videos.
This is the video grid montage of “Thom Yorke Does the Macarena.”
When viewing these grids it becomes evident that the remixers, from the very beginning, took the liberty to edit the footage selectively to match particular songs. This is a different approach in contrast with the Charleston remixes, which, for the most part, leave the video footage intact. The exception is the occasional time adjustment to match the beat of a song.
When slicing the video frames, it becomes clear which video sections are remixed. Compare the slices of the original video (above) with the slices of the three other videos, which follow below.
These are slices of “Thom Yorke Does the Macarena.”
The slice visualizations have been adjusted to fit this blog’s design. Many of the remixes are much shorter than the original video by Radiohead, this is because the footage is re-edited to match the length of the songs selected. One of the shortest is the Macarena remix, which is just over a minute.
As mentioned before, this is my second case study. After the introduction of my third case study, I will compare the three memes in order to evaluate the patterns of the remixes.
Note: I met Elisa Kreisinger during a panel presentation at the OVC in 2010. I find her work to be quite interesting for various reasons which are explored in the following interview by Vicki Calahan.
My initial foray as NAMAC blogger can be seen as a parallel text or a continuation of the conversation initiated by Patricia Zimmerman’s fine posting the other day, Film Studies as Social Media 2.0, or the New Media Ecosystems of Virtual Cinephilia. In this instance I want to look specifically at one context within the emergent forms of digital scholarship known as “remix.” I have been fortunate the last two years as a visiting scholar at USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy to focus my praxis based undergraduate seminars around this topic with assorted permutations.
