Culture Remix

Photography has been a topic that has sprung up quite a bit in the discussion of today’s remix culture.  We’ve had multiple readings that go into how modern photography has changed the emotion behind the picture and how reproductions in general are changing the culture of art.  We’ve also looked at how free use can be used to create new, albeit controversial, art in itself.  With all of these readings and discussions in mind, I decided to try and flip it around a little for my first remix.  I wanted to make pictures that focus more on how the art is being consumed rather than the art or reproduction itself.  Also, I wanted to look at free usage of images along the way.  So, I believe that looking at the consumption of art rather than the art itself is creating new art all its own and restoring the feel or emotion behind the original pieces in the process.

            To execute my remix I used images from two different sources.  Primarily, I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art downtown and tried to make my own pictures.  My plan was to casually walk around the museum and take pictures of people looking at the art on the walls on my iPhone.  This worked for a while until I noticed that some people saw that the casual pictures I was taking were focusing on the people instead of the art.  I started getting some odd and sometimes offended looks and decided my time at the museum was probably up for the day.  I pulled in seven pictures at the MCA.  After that, I decided I needed more.  So, I thought back to when we talked about Penelope Umbrico and how she pulled images off of Flickr to create new art.  I went onto Flickr and searched for “people looking in museums” and pulled some more off the site.  Not only did this provide me with some more actual material in my remix, but it will also let me take a look at fair use in addition to the emotion and feel behind the art itself.

            The first reading that I applied to the remix was Benjamin’s “The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”  Benjamin says that “the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space.”  I can understand his point and believe that the essence of a piece of art, regardless the medium, is the emotion and thought that the artist puts into it.  That can be lost when a piece of art is reproduced over and over again.  I wanted to take this point and correct it in a way.  I think that taking pictures of people enjoying the reproductions they are seeing in a museum is putting a new essence into the art.  It’s no longer the artist’s feelings alone that are shaping the art.  Now, we have the reactions and expressions of those consuming it.  It almost adds a second essence to the piece that wasn’t there before.  It’s taking the art a slight step further and adding something to the reproduction that I think makes it a piece of art all its own.  Viewing it as a new piece of art, though, raised a question that I didn’t anticipate in my mind: should I feel any certain way about using someone else’s art to create a new piece of my own?

            That question led me to look back at the reading from Aoki, Boyle, and Jenkins and look at the point they made with the documentary filmmaker.  Even though the film’s intent was to capture a story all its own, it ended up also catching other people’s work as well.  They raised the question of whether or not that should be used without consent.  I think that if you’re taking the focus away from the original piece and putting a spin on it or simply using it to get your desired effect, it shouldn’t matter.  As long as the art that was captured wasn’t the only thing in the reproduction, I think people should be free to use whichever pieces of art they please.

            When we read Flusser, he said that modern photography and reproduction stifles some of the freedom in imagination and creativity.  Essentially, since reproductions and photography is becoming so advanced, the quality of the reproductions leaves little to no room for a viewer to imagine their own telling of the story being shown to them.  I think he’s overlooking the imagination of the viewer.  Sure, the viewer won’t have the same story as the author of the photo, but that story will get infused with a little piece of the viewer.  When they go to tell someone about something they saw in a museum, they won’t just tell them about the picture, they’ll talk about what they gathered from it as well.  That is their own story.  It’s a new story layered onto the story originally presented by the author and it presents something very new and slightly more complex.  The piece is suddenly becoming the conglomeration of the people who are consuming it.  To me, that’s the point of art in the first place; creating something that people can identify with and form their own experiences around.  The art shouldn’t only speak for the artist, but for a wide range of people in different ways.

            The final point that I wanted to make with this remix was similar to what Umbrico did with the sun photographs she pulled from Flickr.  I pulled roughly half of the pictures in my remix from Flickr.  I think the site lends itself to being included in other people’s projects in addition to the people who upload them onto Flickr.  I feel like pulling pictures from the site adds an interesting new dimension to pieces of art.  It shows the same thing from many varying perspectives.  It not only shows you what one person thinks represents the point they are trying to make, but it extends to the views and opinions of many others.  It adds a deeper layer and one that isn’t as visible on first glance as the immediate message from the artist.

After looking at the pictures pulled from Flickr, another thought occurred to me.  Just like Benjamin said, the photograph’s presence in time and space seems to have been lost.  All of the Flickr photos seemed very posed to me.  It was as if they weren’t even taken in a museum but a studio designed to make a statement about art rather than capture people’s reaction to the images they’re seeing on the wall.  It was more like the photographer told the people to pretend to be looking at art rather than capturing them in a natural state of consumption.

            Seeing how people consume art is a way to see how the heart is conceived by the masses.  What pieces are people dwelling on?  What does their expression say about the essence of the piece?  These are questions that can’t be answered unless we see how people are taking in the art.  Plus, seeing people in museums gives a foregone assumption of silence.  Museums are peaceful because of the quiet.  To me, that knowledge adds to the beauty of a photograph.  It’s almost as if you’re taking in a serene moment being experienced by someone else.  In a way, you’re experiencing it through them.  That’s what remix should be.  Remix pieces should take people somewhere that they normally couldn’t go and open them up to an experience that was previously never even thought of.  Remix is opening up new worlds.  Or, as we’ve said in class, remix is like opening a door into something unknown and seeing where it goes.  That’s the beauty of remix.

Works Cited

Ayoki, Keith, James Boyle, and Jennifer Jenkins. “Bound By Law?” Duke University. Web. 15 

Mar. 2011. <http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/zoomcomic.html>.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Marxists   

Internet Archive. Feb. 2006. Web. 17 Mar. 2011. <http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm>.

Flusser, Vilém. “Towards A Philosophy of Photography.” Archive Filter. Web. 15 Mar. 2011.

<http://www.archivefilter.net/luc/flusser.pdf>.

Remixing Consumption

Facebook is huge.  I don’t need to say that.  With Facebook Open Connect you can use your Facebook credentials to log into other third party sites.  Not only that, but you can like things on websites and it’ll bounce directly to your news feed.

As far as the reading goes, based on the Dan Holt selection, Facebook Open Connect is a mashup by integration since it allows your information from Facebook to be used on other sites around the web.  It also weaves a connection through the sites you visit.

The obvious pro to this mechanism is the fact that you can access a lot of information using one login and share it almost at will.  However, at what point does the connection become too much?  Should we always have the ability to repost something instantly?  Shouldn’t it take more care?

Open Connect almost makes information too easy to move around.  You don’t need to go seeking out information anymore; you can fall into the tendency of just waiting for the big stories to pop up on Facebook.  Shouldn’t there be more effort put into knowing what’s going on around you?  And shouldn’t our news come from professionals who focus on the truth instead of anyone with access to a laptop and a Facebook profile?

And just for funsies: Watch this.

The reading this week that I found most interesting and appealing was the comic by Aoki, Boyle, and Jenkins.  Their look at documentary film making was a concept that I’ve never heard brought up in the realm of legality before. 

It raises great questions though.  If you’re filming a subject and there happens to be something that is copyrighted that gets caught, is it legal to use it?  Is it legal to use it for profit?  Documentaries are designed to be a true telling of an issue or subject, basically capturing life and putting it on display to give people a context to think about it in.  But with all the legal restrictions these days, is it even possible to document something without your phone blowing up with lawyers? 

If documentaries can’t observe how things actually happen due to legal reasons, how can they capture how life really is?  A lot of times when people think of legal issues when it comes to fair use it revolves around music.  I’ll admit, despite my involvement in music, I still from time to time pull something off the internet if it leaks early, or an album that I just can’t commit to buying.  While illegal, I don’t think it causes too much harm.  I’m not selling the music or burning tons of copies for friends, I’m just listening to what I consider and incredibly high art form. 

In the comic, the film maker says that it’s like a mine field when trying to work through the legalities of fair use.  For a documentary, I think this is absurd.  All the documentary is trying to do is capture life or culture and put it on display, usually with a commentary analyzing it.  It’s crucial that it happens.  I’ve watched a good number of documentaries recently and they always open you up to a new way of looking at things or at least a new subculture that you had no idea existed.  Check this one out.  Before seeing it I had no idea that there was actually a culture surrounding parking lot workers.  Should the director have to pay for whatever tracks she uses to back her points?  Or for any logos or businesses that get caught by her camera?  She shouldn’t.  She’s not profiting off of those things.  She’s profiting off of her observations and commentary regarding the subculture or parking lot attendants.  This is where the law goes to far.  It’s not hurting anyone and it’s stifling learning if they’re putting this many restrictions on things.  Just let it be.  It’s for the best.

This week we looked at what it means for a free distribution of art.  I think that a free culture benefits the society in the fact that art that may have otherwise gone unseen.  However, it’s detrimental to the artists themselves.  Their art is now available without them hauling in any profit.  Is that just a risk you take when you decide art is what you want to do?

Without making profit, many artists can’t even afford to produce new art.  When this happens, it goes against what a free culture should do in theory.  A free culture should serve the purpose of fostering creativity and getting art out to the masses.  In music, it lends itself the the creation of new remixes and new styles emerging from the work of others, which I believe is a good thing.  But should this be legal?

The main point that I gathered from the readings this week was that modern photography and reproduction stifles some of the freedom in imagination and creativity.  Reproductions are becoming so advanced that there’s no longer room to imagine it in your own context.  There is now presupposed background to the image.  You know exactly what it looks like. 

Flusser argues that the essence behind the photograph is lost.  While this is true, I think he’s putting more emphasis on the fact that there’s no retelling freedom.  If someone tells you a story about an experience and then you go to retell the story to someone else, the story gets infused with a little bit of you.  There’s no way for you to remember each detail of the story completely, so, you formulate it to your memory inserting a little bit of your own creativity.  The same thought goes for fictional characters.  Everyone has a presupposed notion of them done by their own imagination. 

Does a picture take away the freedom of imagination?  How do you imagine your favorite fictional character?

Just a little follow up to the 10 Things I Hate About You fan fiction.

Let me start by saying researching fan fiction for class may have been the best time ever.  Moving on.

Fanfiction.net is an online archive of tons and tons of fan fiction.  They have fan-generated content relating to hundreds of movies, television shows, books, comics, everything.  Coming into this week I had no idea what fan fiction even was.  Even after I got a vague idea of the definition, I had no idea it was such a well developed community of creative individuals. To me, it was striking the amount of time and detail that went into most of the fan fiction stories.  People really have a vested interest in the work.  It was interesting to see how people kind of formulated their own spin-off storylines or continued the story past where the movie or story ended.

In the reading, I was most interested in the fact that J.K. Rowling was suing someone for a fan produced Harry Potter book.  It brought up an interesting question of just how much of the Harry Potter world she owns, or at least thinks she owns.  After she’s finished with her stories, shouldn’t dedicated fans be able to continue it in any way they wish?  Most fan fiction isn’t for profit, so does profiting from the original work of others come into play in the debate?

While browsing, the most interesting piece of fan fiction I found was a compilation of stories surrounding the movie 10 Things I Hate About You.  I completely remember the movie and most of the fan stories finish off plot lines that I remember wishing the movie would have done a better job of tying up.  Here’s a great example.

The part I latched onto the most in Benjamin’s essay was his point that “the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space.”  I think a large portion of art comes from the mindset and emotion the creator puts into it.  A reproduction loses that emotion.  Granted, it could very well have emotional weight for whomever makes/purchases the reproduction, but that simply isn’t the same.

Seeing Luxemborg’s “remix” of Benjamin’s actually made me think back to that point.  I consider Benjamin’s essay art.  So, if Luxemborg, in a way, reproduced it, does it still hold the same credence? (personally I think it does)  It’s an interesting look at remixing though.  How should we look at remixes?  Should they be art in and of themselves or should the “feel” of the piece tie back to the original?

Does this make you think of da Vinci or the guy who you’ll see next time you walk past a construction site?

First time tumblin’!

I jumped into this party to post snazzy remixes and reactions to studying Remix Culture for a class at Loyola.

Besides the remix related madness, I’m hoping to eventually post “podcasts” of my radio show. (Tuesdays 4-6 pm 88.7 FM or wluw.org)  That’s of course if I can figure out how. 

Anywho, here we go…