Saturday, December 15, 2007

Insights and quotes that relate to the Remix Culture

As Duchamp pointed out many decades ago, the act of selection can be a form of inspiration as original and significant as any other [Negativland].


Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied [Deleuze and Guattari 1980,tr. Massumi 1987].


Siva Vaidhyanthan, an assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University and the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs, believes that what we're seeing is the result of a democratization of creativity and the demystification of the process of authorship and creativity.
"It's about demolishing the myth that there has to be a special class of creators, and flattening out the creative curve so we can all contribute to our creative environment," says Vaidhyanthan [quoted in Rojas 2002].
Note here that the 'democratization of creativity' that Dr Vaidhynathan refers to is made possible by still relatively new digital technologies of information manipulation, transmission, and exchange.


souce:
"Postdigital Remix culture and Online Performance"
http://ethnomus.ucr.edu/remix_culture/remix_culture.htm

3 comments:

B said...

Provocations

Re: Negativland : we live in an age of over-production, somebody has to pick through the waste.

Re: Vaidhyanthan: There is a "flattening out of the creative curve" one also feels that there is something flat about today's creativity. Composting culture tends to flatten out the dramatic curve which we tend to need in a story. Is this emancipating us to tell new stories in a non-dramatic way (drama is manipulation)?
I believe we are now entering an age of useless creativity. A well-spring of possibility and potentiality for no known application. There are no masters and no virtuosos just you and I and the other guy and our computers (made by highly hierachical industrial systems) Frankly I don't believe in all this 'freedom' enabled by machines which are produced in very un-free conditions.
There is a freedom, but a very dependent and conditional one. I like to try to articulate or sketch the edges of these conditions.

ami said...

I meant to comment on this post but instead left it at the top. (you in a club posting)

To add: no virtuoso or genius. "compositing" and "reconstruction" like Baruch said.

But I sometimes feel the need for this virtuosity. I love handcrafted work that requires hours and hours of labor. I feel relieved to see such things. they make me feel soft again.

ami said...

I think this relates to my thesis topic:validating pastiche as a creative value-laden methodology in modern culture.

Roland Barthes also stated, in “The Death of the Author”(1968), that a “text is a tissue [or fabric] of quotations,” drawn from “innumerable centers of culture,” rather than from one, individual experience.

(okay I deleted the comment and moved it here)