Foucault’s Fault

clipped from digitalphilosophy.wordpress.com But don’t get confused by this romantic description of the philosophical work: if someone is recognized as a philosopher only by the new concepts that he has introduced into the philosophical discourse [D&G], and if new and original are nothing but an illusion [Barthes], then philosophy is not the art of creating concepts but rather the art of rebranding preexisting concepts. The philosopher doesn’t have much choice but to refurbish and rebrand old concepts and present them as original ones. This is a tough situation: if you don’t quote you are accused of plagiarism and of the hubris of being original; if you quote (explicitly – by referring to philosophers; implicitly – by reusing known concepts) you’re accused of not being original, hence – not a philosopher. The game is, therefore, to quote all along your thesis until that point where you bring up your own rebranded (yet necessarily preexisting) concept – that which you present and pretend to be your own.

The Death of the Author; the Birth of the Voice

clipped from digitalphilosophy.wordpress.com “Given that the human history of ideas, progress, art, etc. is the history of remix, i.e. the unexpected association of different, seemingly unrelated memes, should “remix” be classified as an authentic voice or an unauthentic one?” In “The Death of the Author” (1967) Barthes states that “the writer can only imitate a gesture forever anterior, never original”. Any text, therefore, be it an “original” or a “remix” is deemed to be the reincarnation of older texts. Let’s forget, than, the illusion of authenticity [, or of truth, or of reality etc.] – there’s no such thing. “We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single “theological” meaning (the “message” of the Author-God), but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture. Like Bouvard and Pecuchet, those eternal copyists, both sublime and comical and whose profound absurdity precisely designates the truth of writing, the writer can only imitate a gesture forever anterior, never original”. Here’s an excerpt from Barthes:

DJ Spooky’s Remix Simulacrum – “Today, the voice you speak with may not be your own”, DJ Spooky

clipped from digitalphilosophy.wordpress.com It can refer to the pessimistic Baudrillardian Integral Reality theory, in which anything is a simulacrum, a fake, including our “self”, our voice. [OR] It can be understood as an optimistic, web2.0 share-all style, in which the right to remix and to appropriate others’ voices goes mainstream.

WHAT COMES AFTER REMIX? by Lev Manovich

clipped from remixtheory.net It is a truism today that we live in a “remix culture.” Today, many of cultural and lifestyle arenas – music, fashion, design, art, web applications, user created media, food – are governed by remixes, fusions, collages, or mash-ups. If post-modernism defined 1980s, remix definitely dominates 2000s, and it will probably continue to rule the next decade as well. Remixing originally had a precise and a narrow meaning that gradually became diffused. Although precedents of remixing can be found earlier, it was the introduction of multi-track mixers that made remixing a standard practice. With each element of a song – vocals, drums, etc. – available for separate manipulation, it became possible to “re-mix” the song: change the volume of some tracks or substitute new tracks for the old ounces. Gradually the term became more and more broad, today referring to any reworking of already existing cultural work(s).

The Coke Side of Life

Visit http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/cokesideofliferemix/ to ‘remix’ your very own Coke poster!

QT: King of Thieves

clipped from www.wired.com When it snuck onto the scene in 1992, Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs was hailed for its radical blend of raw violence and pop culture banter. Part of the appeal was the way Tarantino eagerly lifted themes and scenes from so many other movies: There’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three! There’s City on Fire! There’s A Clockwork Orange! His shout-outs announced a new school of filmmaking, one that admits that movies are bastard beasts, their themes and characters easily swapped into new scenes and circumstances. And if the geeks in the audience can spot the references, even better.

Creative Commons: A Field Study In OpenSource

clipped from www.txdb.net I’ve been trying to explain the ideas of OpenSource recently in terms not specific to programming code or some other technological jargon. I’ve been having a bit of a hard time trying to create an image of OpenSource as a model, but I think I’ve come up with a few examples that will help outline the basic principles. I’ll do this by using CreativeCommons.Org as an Operating Platform. From this platform I’ll demonstrate how OpenSource principles begin to take affect, and how real world examples are utilizing these. Keep in mind that OpenSource is not dependent on CreativeCommons, nor visa versa, they are a way to practice OpenSource, not The Way. CreativeCommons: “…Creative Commons has developed a Web application that helps people dedicate their creative works to the public domain – or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions.”

foundtracks: an experiment in remix culture

clipped from foundtracks.blogspot.com foundtracks melbourne, vic, Australia foundtracks is a third year media project collated by sarah bell of rmit university, melbourne australia. it is a collaborative venture which invites savvy home-producers & artists to create music utilizing a paintbox of found sounds. the tracks will then be made available for download & further remixing. this is a creative commons project. for more information email me at s3107861 at student dot rmit dot edu dot au.

the remix and the exquisite corpse

clipped from www.networkedcollab.org The whole notion of the remix as it relates to participation is very post-modern and very American. “The older American folk culture was built on borrowings from folk culture; the new convergence culture will be built on borrowings from various media conglomerates” (Convergence, 137).� Like Umberto Eco comments, it’s all been done before: “…no film can be experienced with fresh eyes; all are read against other movies.� In such a world ‘cult has become the normal way of enjoying movies’” (Convergence, 98).��

File Sharing & Meaning

clipped from copyriot.se A kopimist Walpurgis ritual, and a letter from Bill Drummond File-sharing has a potential to create meaning, community and context – a bigger potential than most other forms of reproduction. We want to keep talking about how that potential can be realized in the best manner possible, how cultural circulation can be organized and how the unleashed forces of the open archives can be used for more than stacking a pile of objects we care less and less about. /…/ The files are already downloaded. The files are already uploaded. They’ve been going up and down and in and out in abundance. Instead of discussion how the forces of winter are going to sell snow to Eskimos, we want to talk about how to extract meaning from this abundance.