Blog 12

RIP:  A Remix Manifesto, Remix Lessig

Both the documentary and Lessig express an idea that Intellectual property laws slow down society by not allowing anyone to touch the intellectual ideas.  The control of creativity by copyright harms health, preventing progress, and benefiting in the documentary Greg Gillis, better known as Girl Talk states that if intellectual property was not copyrighted we could be more advanced with medicine. 

The movie provides an investigation into how culture builds upon culture in the digital age, Lessig pretty much, states the same and how it cannot be stopped.  We build from past cultures and past ideas combining them to create something new to take a further step into the future. 

The documentary showed how certain bands released their album and other works completely free. This approach allows people to innovate from their work to remix it, and eventually to create something new.  Lessig describes Lonely Island as taking this approach of allowing people to take and share and remix their work.  This eventually allowed the group to cross over to a commercial economy (227-28)

I think that they both take on the idea that we all need to share because it will happen either way.  “But when artist want to create for the sharing economy, increasingly they use signs that makes them as members of this economy,  Tools such as the Creative Commons “ Noncommercial” license enable artist to say “take and share my work freely.  Let it become part of the sharing economy.  But if you want to carry this work over to the commercial economy, you must ask me first.  Depending upon the offer, I may or may not say yes.”  (Lessig)

Sharing/Commercial Economy Blog 11

Describe the difference between a sharing and a commercial economy. Why does this distinction matter to Lessig's main argument?

“Sharing Economy of all the possible terms of exchange within a sharing economy, the simgle term that isn’t appropriate is money.  You can demand that a friend spend more time with you, and the relationship is still a friendship.  If you demand that he pay you for the time you spend with him, the relationship is no longer a friendship” (118)

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Some quotes that explain what “sharing economy” is:

 Money in the sharing economy is not just inappropriate; it is poisonous (119).  

“…access to culture is regulated not by price, but by a complex set of social relations” (145).  “relations are insulted by the simplicity of price” (145).

“-the one way in which it cannot be defined is in terms of money” (146). 

“they establish relationships, and draw upon those relationships” (146). 

“Sometimes these motivations are “me-regarding”- the individual participates in the sharing economy because it benefits him or other.” (151).  

Why is important:

“It benefits the community in many different fields: Information about the market, computer resources to make VOIP work better, the network effects from a popular network. The source is shared independent of price” (154).  It helps the community grow and open new windows to new innovation. 

He talks about his examples of open source and shared technologies; “have increased the role of (sharing) production” (176). 

Commercial Economy economy in which money or “price” is a central term of the ordinary, or normal, exchange.  His example:

Local store:

You buy the latest Lovett CD for $18.  The exchange is defined in terms of the price.  This does not mean price is the only term, or even the most important term.  But it does mean that there is nothing peculiar about price being a term.  There’s nothing inappropriate about insisting upon that cash, or making access to the product available only in return for cash (118).  “helping  out? Is not just rare in a commercial economic.  It is downright weird (119).  

Here are some quotes from Lessigt hat explains what a “commercial economy” is:

“Price is how things are negotiated in a commercial economy” (120).

“The business of business is to make money” (120). 

Where we’re not insulted when someone mentions money, where we meter the relationship with price, then we’re within a “commercial economy” (121).

“The market is the engine that drives this commercial economy; if well designed (meaning regulated to protect participants from force of fraud). The market is an extraordinary technology for producing and spreading wealth” (121).

Why is important:

The internet is a commercial economy; “the internet has caused an explosion in the opportunities for business to make money by making old businesses work better” (121).

“Also has made possible new businesses that before the Net weren’t even conceivable” (121).

“….this new bit of social infrastructure offers a staggering potential for growth and innovation” (122).  

Blog 10 ReeeMIx!

After reading Lawrence section on his favorite clip from “Read My Lips”, created by Soderberg I had to check out his work.  I wanted to check out the mixed Hitler song “Born to Be alive” that resulted in a lawsuit, though this was not his favorite mix I just wanted to check it out to see why it turned to a lawsuit.  When I got to the page on Youtube I was checking out other mixes of Hitler and I clicked on “Hitler Freestyle” it featured clip that was taken from an Adolf Hitler 1934: Closing Ceremony-Triumph of Will speech ant it is remixed with a Biggie and Tupac Live Freestyle.  Lessig states “Whether text or beyond text, remix is collage; it comes from combining elements of RO culture; succeeds by leveraging the meaning created by the reference to build something new (76)”

The video clip starts with a black screen and the title of the ceremony and as it plays you hear Hitler saying “Es spricht der Fuihrer” then the Biggie and Tupac Live Freestyle start playing.  The clip is a parody to Hitler and Biggie more than Tupac the author meshes up two very influential figures.  The author creates something different by meshing two different things together to make something new.  When you “mix these symbolic things together” with something new, you create, as Soderberg put it, “something new that didn’t exist before” (75).  This holds true to what this video created we see Hitler a very symbolic strong figure being meshed up with Biggie a very strong influential figure in the rap game. 

Their meaning comes not from the content of what they say; it comes from the reference, which is expressible only if it is the original that gets used.  Images or sounds collected from real-world examples become “paint on palette” (74). The remix uses clips from the actual speech and it somewhat relates to the actual video of the freestyle performance done by Biggie.  On the Hitler clip you can see that he is talking behind a podium the camera also shows an audience clapping and moving in a way that agrees with whatever Hitler is say.  The clip of the actual free style performance by Biggie it shows him performing in front of a large crowd.  He’s holding the mic and you can hear the crowd (the same sound of crowd on the remix), meshing perfectly to the video representing the cheering crowd of the video.  The stage presence in front of Hitler and his body language match the lyrics of the freestyle.

Blog 9 Remix Intro.

First, describe what you see as Lessig's key argument in the Introduction.

On Remix by Lawrence Lessig, he argues “the copyright wars” through his examples of artist and creators that were targeted by large corporations that set out to make examples of them.  He states that the extreme of regulation that copyright law has become makes it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for wide range of creativity that any free society-if it thought about it for just a second-would allow to exist, legally (18).  

Second, describe the difference RW and RO culture and why it matters to Lessig's argument.

The difference between RW and RO culture:

“Read/Write” culture in Sousa’s world ordinary citizens “read” their culture by listening to it or by reading representations of it.  This reading, however, is not enough.  Instead, they (or at least the “young people of the day”) add to the culture they read by creating and re-creating the culture around them.  They do this re-creating using the same tools the professional uses-the “pianos, violins, guitars, mandolins, and banjos”- as well as tools given to them by nature-“vocal cords.”

“Read/Only culture: a culture less practiced in performance, or amateur creativity, and more comfortable (think: couch) with simple consumption (28).  A culture of recording, or performances captured in some tangible form, and then duplicated and sold by an increasingly concentrated “recording” industry ….player –piano rolls, then quickly phonographs” (29)

It matter to Lessig because of the competition they created a competition that drove products to be in higher demand creating better quality of products at a cheaper price.  He states “by the twenty-first century, this competition had produced extraordinary access to a wide range of culture (30).  RO had come to define what most of us understood culture, or at least “popular culture” to be. 

Third, why does Lessig use Sousa?

Lawrence used Sousa because Sousa was romanticizing culture in a way that might remind the student of American history of Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson romanized the yeoman farmer.  He would sicken by the modern corporate farm that has displaced d his yeoman hero. Sausa’s take on culture was similar to that of Jefferson.  His fear was not that culture, or the actual quality of the music produced in a culture, would be less.  His fear was that people would be less connected to, and hence practiced in, creating that culture.  Amateurism, to this professional, was a virtue-not because it produced great music, but because it produced a musical culture: a love for, and an appreciation of, the music he re-created, respect for the music he played, and hence a connection to a democratic culture (27).  He celebrated a “Read/Write” culture and feared that this RW culture would disappear, be replaced by- “Read/Only” culture (28).  He was also was a critic of the 1906 relatively lax United States copyright system (23).

Blog 8 Miller/Sampled Beats

First, pull 1-2 quotes you find appealing from each section and explain what they mean

By far this book’s content is hard to grasp and understand.  I found some interesting quotes but just couldn’t really put my finger on what exactly he was talking about maybe someone else would like to take a crack at it?

Rhythmic Cinema

“ ….any shift in the traffic of information can create not only new thoughts, but new ways of thinking.”  We can think of this when an artist or anyone samples an old material to that to their own work that creates new thoughts and new ways of thinking about that newly created material thus adding to something completely different.  

Rhythmic Space

“Speaking in code, we live in a world so utterly infused with digitality that it makes even the slightest action ripple across the collection of data bases we call the web” (89).  I agree with his statement it seems like we cannot live without anything that is digital nowadays. 

Errata Erratum

“When he was talking about his mix of Errata Erratum project he continues with what I think are his ideas of originality and making something your own work out of something already made or old. “Whatever mix you make of it, it can only be a guess – you have to make your own version, and that’s kind of the point.  With that in mind, I ask that you think of this as a mix lab – an “open system” where any voice can be you” (93).  Then he later states “the Errata Erratum remix is a twenty-first-century update on the idea.”  The idea that “Dj-ing deals with extended kinship system of rhythm-one beat matches or doesn’t match a sound-flow, and it’s the interpretation of gestures that make up the mix that creates the atmosphere in a room” (96).

The Future is Here

“We’re probably the first generation to grow up in completely electronic environment” (101).  

I’m just happy to be alive in this era.  It’s truly exciting to travel around just checking out how strange it all is.  I’d say this is going to be a century of hyper-acceleration, and I just get a kick out of seeing it” (100).  I thought he was just going to leave it there but I like his mini stories explaining his opening statement to this section.  I find it interesting because I have travelled to a few places and everything new always seems strange. 

The Prostitute

“Enter the keyword “truth,” and the search engine brings you conflicting meanings.  That’s the prostitute’s revenge: so many people, so little time.  In the network, you can’t take a bite.  The prostitute in the conveyor belt.  It’s a simpler one.  In both cases you must realize that it’s not about a person, but the locus of intent and the negative dialectics of a role playing where your demands of a person are based just as much on their willingness to play a role as on the basic fact that the money being handed over is an emblem of your time and energy.” 

“-the transfer of information between them is an Interrelationship between music and art and writing.”  He is talking about his work later he states “the paradox here is that you have a culture founded on unceasing change and transformation-“  I find this quote very true, everyone is always borrowing (sampling, mixing) old stuff to make new and he uses prostitution as the oldest profession as a metaphor to this view of what is going on this culture of borrowing. 

Second, spend some time at Who Sampled Choose a song and notice the samples, the related songs, possible covers or remixes

One of all time favorite songs is Slippin’ by DMX in the album Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood Def Jam 1998. The song's music video portrays DMX's youth. Slippin' is also known as one of DMX's most poetic songs created and it's also a song that has influenced a lot of people suffering from depression. I never knew that he had sample the melody (not sure what else to call it) from Grover Washington, Jr’s Moonstreams from the album Feels So Good Kudu 1975. 

When I listened to the original beat, first thing that come to mind was boring in 1975 Jazz and blues seemed to play a major role in the music scene but the producer of the beat of Slippin’ took that old, dull beat and added a few more drum patterns and turned it into something new.  He remixed and sampled the beat of the song onto DMX works made it more hip….Creating a Hip-Hop beat that would sure capture the ears of the new generation something new.