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Post-post production: Remix Culture
(aka assignment 4)
Assignment Intro (in short)
You will be using the free audio editing program Audacity to edit an audio mash-up.
What is a mash-up?
A mash-up is a term used for the blending of two or more songs to create a new song. Often the pieces of songs used relate to each other in some kind of way (technically, as in bpm, or conceptually). By mashing two or more songs together, it also transforms and changes the meaning of the original songs.
Stayin’ Alive In The Wall(double click the image to be taken to youtube)
To begin…
The best mash-ups combine songs that may seem to be totally unrelated- imagine that you take two pieces from two very different friends’ mp3 collections. The more vastly different the selections, if combined well, will create a transformative new piece of music.
The Museum like the City itself constitute a catalog of forms, postures, and images for artists - collective equipment that everyone is in a position to use, not in order to be subjected to their authority but as tools to probe the contemporary world. There is (fertile) static on the borders between consumption and production that can be perceived well beyond the borders of art. When artists find material in objects that are already in circula- tion on the cultural market, the work of art takes on a script-like value: "when screenplays become form," in a sense. -Nicholas Bourriaud
“Re-mix culture”, Mash-ups and otherwise borrowing already produced forms to create new pieces is a huge component of living in the era of the internet, and is actually an extension of several important artists’ work dating back to the first half of the 20th century.
The Fountain
“Since the early nineties, an ever increasing number of artworks have been created on the basis of preexisting works; more and more artists interpret, reproduce, re-exhibit, or use works made by others or available cultural products. This art of postproduction seems to respond to the proliferating chaos of global culture in the information age, which is characterized by an increase in the supply of works and the art world's annexation of forms ignored or disdained until now. These artists who insert their own work into that of others contribute to the eradication of the traditional distinction between production and consumption, creation and copy, readymade and original work. The material they manipulate is no longer primary. It is no longer a matter of elaborating a form on the basis of a raw material but working with objects that are already in circulation on the cultural market, which is to say, objects already informed by other objects. Notions of orig- inality (being at the origin of) and even of creation (making something from nothing) are slowly blurred in this new cultural landscape marked by the twin figures of the DJ and the programmer, both of whom have the task of selecting cultural objects and inserting them into new contexts.”-Nicolas Bourriaud
So really, a mashup is using objects (in this case, music) that is already in a cultural market to create a new work.This is different than the first two images of Duchamp’s ready-made, which used everyday objects to create new meaning in the context of the Museum.
However, this image is even more of a pre-curser to what we know as “re-mix” culture
today- this painting was already in the art market when
Duchamp added facial hair and a new title.
“…artists' intuitive relationship with art history is now going beyond what we call "the art of appropria- tion," which naturally infers an ideology of ownership, and moving toward a culture of the use of forms, a culture of constant activity of signs based on a collective ideal: sharing. The Museum like the City itself constitute a catalog of forms, postures, and images for artists - collective equipment that everyone is in a position to use, not in order to be subjected to their authority but as tools to probe the contempo- rary world. There is (fertile) static on the borders between consump- tion and production that can be perceived well beyond the borders of art. When artists find material in objects that are already in circula- tion on the cultural market, the work of art takes on a script-like value: "when screenplays become form," in a sense.”Nicolas Bourriaud
So, rather than simply appropriating objects, which is often a critique of power relationships (the Mona Lisa being a monlith of art history, for example), this new era of re-mix culture (or what Bourriaud calls postproduction) happens more as a phenomenon because there is so much information available, and these works are often shared just as the original works were shared.
For Tuesday April 23rd
• Read the introduction, as well as pages 17-32 to Nicolas Bourriaud’s PostProduction (link is on the class blog) and write a 200 word reaction to it.
• Find an audio mash-up that you like and write 150 words outlining the technical, aesthetic and conceptual ideas behind it, keeping in mind the cultural and historical references that interest you.
• Come to class with two songs, ready to work. You don’t have to start editing, just find two songs. More details about downloading music to work with follows.
Resources
A list of resources for mashups will be posted to the blog, including some how to’s and resources for finding/downloading music.
About Copyright
Many people interpret mash-ups to fall under the “fair use” clause of copyright law, meaning that if a work is transformed enough, it is fair use.This is the same kind of interpretation used in visual art, like our montage assignment.
Downloading audio
The easiest way to get music is through the website keepvid.com. If you can find the music you want to use on youtube, you can use keepvid to get it.
If you have problems, please email me and I can help you remotely.
