Sunday, March 27, 2011

Blog 9 - LL, Remix

Lawrence Lessig's Remix comes to us in a small, hardback book. With a blank white cover, save for the letters 'LL' embossed ever so slightly, and a spine with just the title and author, there was nothing to differentiate the book from a paperweight. Not much was expected from me. Fortunately, my expectations were wrong and within the introduction I found Lessig's writing interesting and informative.

The Introduction is actually a series of four stories, with a conclusion that ties them together and identifies the significance of each section. There is Stephanie Lenz, a mother who faced a lawsuit for videotaping her child dancing to a copyrighted song. Next, a small exhibition where screens show several people singing a popular song. Greg Gillis, the artist who is Girl Talk, creates tracks where many many songs are ripped apart and pieced together, in a sort of audio collage. SilviaO is a Colombian artist who was faced with another artist taking her work and remixing it into a different song entirely.

These four stories talk about copyright and the way in which we negotiate rules of ownership. Lessig is arguing, however, that our initial understanding of copyright is misguided. He believes that there are two opposing ideas: anyone anywhere can take anything and resell it as their own, and each work created is protected from all forms of copy. These two standpoints do not have all the answers independently, but rather, he continues, there is an important balance that must be struck.

Continuing on, RW/RO culture is described as read-write and read-only culture. It is symbolic of how people consume media. RW tells of how people not only take in different art forms, but also create their own. RO is the opposite, where no creation exists. These ideas matter intrinsically to Lessig's argument, as they form the basis for understanding how people work with the abstract concept of copyright and idea management.

Lessig brings in Sousa, known well for his contribution to big band marches. But why? I believe that Sousa, and more specifically his viewpoints on copyright, mimic those of Lessig's. More importantly, these views are, at first, seemingly antithetical. Sousa says that we should protect the work of an artist, but also believes that machines that produce music are 'infernal,' as they take away from RW culture. It is a balance, with opposing sides, that produces the best outcome for all.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Blog 8 - More Miller; quotes and quips

Paul Miller's Rhythm Science is a short book (book isn't quite the right word, more like narrative flow) that attempts to address much about how we interact with the world around us. With most attention paid to our relationship to media and the similarities found within and without, the book doesn't offer the structure of, say Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous. There are, however, several sections near the end of Rhythm Science that contain interesting passages.

"Set your browser to drift mode and simply float: The sequence really doesn't care what you do as long as you are watching" (80). I feel that the idea here is to break free from some of the more classical frames of viewership. Actively controlling our media consumption is not so important, rather that consumption occurs regardless of our intent. As such, Miller seems to be saying 'don't worry.' I partially agree with the idea, but personally find more joy from choosing where I go online. Even offline, while I enjoy exploring, I view time as a finite resource, and going without a rudder seems to be a mistake. Then again, I am fairly analytical and rigorous, so the messages in this book are fairly contradictory to my outlook.

"I like to think of the kind of writing in Rhythm Science as script information - the self as "subject-in-synchronization" (the moving parts aligned in the viewfinder of an other), rather than the old twentieth-century inheritance of the Cartesian subject-object relation" (84). While mentioned earlier in different ways, Miller actually lays out in familiar language how his book is to be interpreted. Only 84 pages in too! Joking aside, the idea presented discusses, in a roundabout way, existentialism. Our outlook is consumed with objects and how they are related to one another. With a language full of prepositions, this interpretation works just fine, but can lack perspective from the personal. Knowing that we aren't reading an instruction manual or an opinion piece helps place the ideas given and, for me, helps organize the thought in a manageable way.

"I'm at the airport waiting for my next flight. That's about as existential as you can get in these days of hyper-modernity" (92). Connecting with my thoughts about existentialism, here Miller seems to be relating his current layover with something far bigger. Yes, he is just sitting around, waiting for the next flight, but that is, to go back a quote, relatively 'Cartesian.' If anything, he is in-between. Neither here nor there, but rather at a place of transit. We put in comforts, such as a coffee shop, or nice chairs, but really the airport is 'noplace,' and when even the abstract has a place in today's world, being nowhere is as good as it gets.

"...we move through dispersed networks of culture and the cards we play are icons on a screen" (96). Miller is running off the scenario described immediately preceding, where cards with musical phrases were selected from a hat to create something like a song, but not quite. This is, in essence, hip-hop. The cards do not possess some quality or trait unknown to the world, but it is their combination that is the art. Bringing the example into current day form it is easy to compare how our connectivity online allows us to create something new from something old.

"Once you get their basic credit information and various electronic representations of that person, who needs the real thing anymore" (101). Like reverse homeopathy, Miller is trying to distill essence. In this quote, he is bringing up the idea that our person, our being, can be fully represented digitally. This is, of course, directly the result of a digital world, but begs the question 'who are we?' I think that Miller doesn't truly believe we can be written down completely, that there is still some left over parts and bits and pieces. He does, however, show that because so much of our self is based on those before us, there is little room left over.

"The prostitute scenario is about an end of definitions - breaking the loops and watching the role collapse in on itself" (109). This is the endgame. For everything that Miller leads up to, it seems that in his narrative, in his 'Side B', he does have a final argument to make. Everything that has come before leads to the prostitute. This idea that, good things are dirty and things are dirty because they are good. For talking so much about cycles and repetitions, we see a glimmer of hope that with technology breaking down so many barriers, maybe the oldest cycle of all will go like the dodo. It is only a hope though, to Miller. It is a tale of things that may come, but I find the quote happy, of all things. Not only because it provides good ideological conclusion, but because it offers something like hope.

Looking at WhoSampled.com was pretty interesting. Only a cursory exploration revealed that everyone samples everyone. You simply can not find artists that are islands of creativity. Everyone samples! Even Yanni, an artist I find interesting with new age music and unique time signatures, has been sampled. Looking at this website, I start to understand Miller far better. Academically, it is easy to show how we need a foundation of knowledge to grow and reach new heights, but when it comes to creativity, in the musical realm especially, there is no true foundation common to everyone. With this site, I must set my browser to 'float,' as actively searching and identifying all the links of the music I know (which is very little, at that) would take far too long. The best way I can enjoy these sounds and relationship is through passive exploration.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Blog 7: Forming a broad base for understanding media and communication in a digital age

Marguerite de Bourgoing offers seven 'laws' about transmedia. While I initially thought that breaking down each of these laws would give the major points of the article, I think that we can take a step back. Primarily, the author is only arguing for communication. Certainly, the ideas are far more specific, but to get an overall view, we need to realize that transmedia will always be about communication.

     Our author has three main points: individuality, commonality, and communication. Individuality is who we are to the world. Hip-hop is constantly changing, with different themes and ideas, all vying for attention, each changing the game in their own way. Who we are is important to de Bourgoing, as she sees that without a firm understanding of the internal, external forces could shape us beyond our desire (What makes a river bend, the water or the banks?). Commonality is that which is external to us. De Bourgoing describes how by working in a collaboration or by addressing the interests of a larger group, one can broaden themselves. It is a delicate balance, however, between individuality and commonality. Too much of one and the other is lost, limiting ourselves unnecessarily.

     Finally, and most importantly, communication is the crux upon which all of de Bourgoing's arguments lie. There are mediums, such as language, sound, photography, or video, and orthogonal to these are channels, like radio, television, and the internet. Certain mixtures work well together, so well, that we often conflate the two. With the internet today, speed of communication is near instantaneous and now an artist now must have two-way discussions, not simply produce material and expect success.

     Considering earlier posts and discussions, de Bourgoing comes closest to relating through the idea of two-way communication. That exact phrase is not particularly common; the concept is based in the fact that consumers are now creating. Not just individually, or with the internet and it's plethora of software (although that is also true), but through the act of consumption we are creating. The simplest act, such as watching a YouTube video, is contributing through view counts. We are individually acting, sometimes louder at times, but collectively we are creating.

     Related to the consumer/creator relationship, we have the ideas of crowd-sourcing and wisdom of the crowds threading through the article. In an example of circular logic, a performer is popular because people attend a show or follow them online, but people also make these actions because an artist is popular. Like a reverse whirlpool of sorts, the power an entertainer has grows in all directions.

     Paul Miller, in 'Rhythm Science,' tells (in part) a complex story of how communication is the result of previous interaction and that we are always remaking the old into the new. The idea of copying is one of contention, not only visible to current matters such as copyright and file-sharing, but also to an example Miller cited, where two factions went to war over the copy of a text in 6th-century Ireland. Miller goes on to discuss quite extensively the relationship between the past and present, even going so far as to describe how the future is, to be cliché, now. The second key point to the reading we are no longer singular beings. Using the phrase 'multiplex consciousness' to describe the idea, our personas are, by a matter of necessity, forced to fracture. This can best be seen through how we represent ourselves online and in the real world. It is easy to be rude and cruel online, due the anonymity, most programs and services offer, but such actions are far rarer in the real world.

     This major theme of reworking knowledge in multiple formats ties to previous discussions (in this post and others) only marginally. In my opinion, the idea of remediation had little to do with either the organization of knowledge or the dissemination of the knowledge. Furthermore, this 'multiplex consciousness' is also not directly addressed either. Although there are no direct and easy arrows between these papers and articles, I believe that we are establishing a wide base for the interpretation of both media and communication. As is the case with DTC, creating distinction between the old and new can be difficult, since there are no hard and fast lines of demarcation. The rise of the internet may be one such line, but even then, there was no one switch that ushered in this area of knowledge. To this day, we are still working to understand how instantaneous communication and media creation are affecting both the digital and real world.