Pete the Box: Pixie Showdown

While scanning the newsfeed of Facebook yesterday, I couldn't help but notice a shared video that my two friends had posted.
Although they had posted it in hopes to promote this "Pete the Box", I was intrigued because the beatboxer was covering/remixing one of my favourite songs by the band, The Pixies.
When I had finally loaded the video on Youtube, I was shocked and amazed at his talent as a beatboxer, a singer, and a musician. Essentially, this was one of the most amazing remixes I have ever seen because Pete the Box is a one-man-band!
Perhaps a more confusing aspect of the video was that he did not attempt to alter the original text, but instead, remake it completely by being a human turntable. The sounds that he makes are in perfect unison with The Pixies verison of "Where is my Mind", and yet he gets more credit as an aspiring artist because he is able to regurgitate material that has already been used in that pattern. He does teach us that the mechanical reproduction actually gives more of an aura to his musical artwork than we might see in other instances. This is because he seems in complete control of his technical equipment and able to almost become one with the sound he produces.
Pete the Box might not be teaching us too much about what it means to re-create original pieces, however, he is teaching us that success can be measured on many different levels. He has taken something and made it his own, in hopes that we too can do, and appreciate the same.

Check out the video here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhjA2nvVD7U&feature=player_embedded#at=33

That's G

Today I saw a sort of Remix in a G2 Gatorade Commercial. For some reason I could not find the commercial on Youtube, but I will explain it. In the commercial they have ordinary people reenacting famous trademark moments by famous sports athletes in sports history. They used ordinary people to reenact:

Usain Bolt's famous two-handed point to the air, after he smashed the Olympic World Record:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By1JQFxfLMM

Micheal Jordan's famous foul line dunk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD54eF2XKJA

Sidney Crosby's Golden Goal in the 2010 Olympics to win Canada a gold in hockey:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muLw-_oSlNE

I just found it interesting that they would use these reenactments or remix to endorse thier product. Giving everyday people the idea that you can become this great if you consume thier product. When the reality is all these moments can never be reenacted except for the real athletes that actually achieved these trademark moments. In a way they are remixing the viewers and consumers into thier commercial making them think that they too can achieve the same greatness these amazing athletes have achieved (that if only they drink G2 Gatorade).

Sing a song, tell a story.

Here is an example of a remix that has combined words and songs to create a story. It's actually quite a funny little combination. I think that it is very creative that someone was able to make this up as well as they did. This is an example of storytelling remix and it was touched on earlier in the term, like when we took a set of ten individual words and put them together to make a sentence. As a result the two different groups were able to create two different sentences with different meanings. It would be the same case for this artist/author as they would be able to tell multiple different stories depending on the order of the song lyrics that they used.

Bible Part 1. Does the Bible have an Aura? Is it Pink?

Today was a case of personal life meets academic theory. I was on a regular outing fulfilling my role as a consumer when I went into a book store chain. It was there I ran into a cultural artifact that demanded my attention.... and it was bound in a florescent pink gell cover.

    Initially the color was what attracted my attention, however it was not just the color that remained significant in my mind.

The book was entitled "The Message //Remix 2.0 The Bible In Contemporary Language" by Eugene H Peterson.

I was very perplexed by the novel. Why is it bright pink? and more importantly, why did this irk me. Then I had another thought WWBT? As in what would Benjamin think?  Although Walter Benjamin wrote in 1969 I feel his work was relevant to my predicament. I was potentially experiencing the “contemporary crisis” which resulted from the “shattering of tradition” that goes along with reproduction. 

    As explained by Benjamin “the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition" (Benjamin II). Since the bible has a long history tradition it’s removal from this ‘tradition’ affected its aura. The intermingling of religious tradition juxtaposed with 'contemporary' style and the term ‘remix’ may have diminished my original notion of aura. 

   It was not the bright pink color that threw me. The color is not entirely important, the ‘crisis’ stems from the reproduction of the artifact, “which removes it from the history which it has experienced. And what is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object” (Benjamin II). It was the Remix’s removal from this context in space and time might have lead to my initial disturbance.

This left me with several questions about remix: What it’s goal? What role does the referent play if any? Why is this bible referred to as remix? Do other translations of the bible classify as remix as well?

Sheening and Fridays

There are two things that seem to have taken over the entertainment world: Charlie Sheen's "winning insanity" and Rebecca Black's "song" Friday. I will admit, that I have some interst in both of these cultural items, but what I can't seem to discern is if they are a parody or not.

Although Charlie Sheen seems certifiably insane in his actions, he may be playing it up. Why? Fame? Fortune? It's hard to say. I remember reading somewhere that the viewership of his show sky rocketed following another public drunken binge on his part, so perhaps he is playing up his actions for increased fame, and the perks that come with it. I just don't know. But I do know that if we examine Charlie Sheen through a cultural studies persepective, he seems to be parodying his world, the entertainment world we find so addictive.

In the case of Rebecca Black, many people do not know her song Friday is a remix of a Bob Dylan song (and it sounds a little more sincere when he sings it) I cannot help but wonder if her horrible rendition of Bob Dylan's song is poking fun at the direction our main stream music culture is heading, or if she is being sincere. I mean, the girl can actually sing, and well too. But she chose to make her song one which is digitized, mostly monotone, and auto-tuned to the max. If the former, then there is a chance that she her remix of Bob Dyan's song may be helping us see how complely digitized and "synthetic" our current music culture is. If the later...well I really just don't know how I will feel about that.

Culture Jamming on a Global scale?

The following video was shown to my Adolescent Development class the other day, and I thought it perhaps an interesting point of discussion in terms of 'remix' and what may be suggested by it about culture jamming. It's a quite TED Talk worth a gander.




There is a lot to be said about globalization, and it's kind of hard to remain objective when discussing the matter. What kind of implications do you think arise when Eastern, more traditional collectivist cultures are jammed with Western individualist cultures? Where do you think discrepancies arise in terms of generational differences? I think if you were to ask a younger person what their accessibility to all kinds of information has meant for them, it would mean a great deal, and a positive lot, more than say to the elders who perhaps view these media as altering or changing their traditional cultures.

We can't deny the impact that globalization has had on the new ever present forms of media that are springing up all over the world. Is this a form of culture jamming? Would you consider the comic books presented a kind of remix, and if so, a remix of what? What about the Barbie doll? Is this a remix or a culture jam? In short, I think yes, but discuss away!

I found another similar website to hypem.com that allows you to add your favourite songs out of the songs presented on the site to your own personal playlist. Though this one has a 'remix' section, showing only songs that are remixed. Very good music selection and awesome remixes you would maybe not have stumbled upon otherwise. It's very easy to use and I'm pretty sure I just found my newest distraction.

Explore and enjoy here.

Continuing Questions on Ownership

Here's a great CBC radio 3 podcast on the topic of "Who Owns Music?"



In it, there are three suggested 'owners'; the labels, the artists, and the listeners. There is also a question of whether or not ownership is transferred from producer to consumer at the time of purchase.

The final comment that ownership is a legal matter while sharing is for everyone is interesting. There's no doubt that piracy in no way benefits the producer, but 'sharing' is still more inclusive than 'ownership'. I'm not defending piracy, but the notion of owning something that we cannot actually hold is kind of strange, despite the fact that we can still interact with it and engage with it.

My questions are then, who do you think owns music? Do you agree that ownership is a legal matter while everyone should be able to share? How do you feel about the ownership of physically intangible digital media?

Film Adaptation: A Form of Remix? Part 2...

Back when I had used the example of film adaptations as a form of remix, there was some discussion and hesitation about whether or not this was correct. I seemed to have recently stumbled upon a video (actually a four-part series) entitled ‘Everything is a Remix’, written and produced by Kirby Ferguson, a New York-based filmmaker. Of this four part series, I found part 2 to be the most interesting, as he actually discusses the remix techniques involved in producing Hollywood blockbuster films.

In fact, Ferguson claims that most box office hits rely heavily on existing material – using examples such as Pirates of the Carribean, Hairspray, Transformers, Julie and Julia and Kill Bill (which, if you keep watching after the credits, he reveals is the closest thing to a Hollywood mashup… didn’t know that!). Films from previous generations are continuously told, retold and referenced by other newer films, whether viewers are aware of it or not.

He goes onto argue that even films that claim to be original can also be considered remixes, as they borrow from traditional genres and subgenres. Elements of particular genres (that we have become so familiar with) are appropriated and transformed to make so-called “original” films. Ferguson uses Avatar to illustrate this point, claiming that the film borrows the ‘sorry about colonialism’ subgenre that we see in so many other films that precede it. This is a very interesting point of view and I definitely agree. Thinking back to films that I’ve watched, they all seem to borrow certain motifs and traditions of previous films. However this being said, claiming that no films are in fact original is a bold statement.

Although I’ve pretty much told you exactly what you are about to see, watch it and let me know your thoughts!

Everything is a Remix Part 2 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Appropriating Culture Jamming...

FOR EVIL!

Or you know, capitalism! Following up our class presentation today I was thinking the entire time how the advertising/marketing world is taking the trends happening in popular culture (think of what Adorno was saying with any sort of resistance is just put back into the cycle) and tries to use it to their advantage. In this case, with the explosion of the internet, there is a lot of user generated content that gives people a chance to express themselves and sometimes, if the content strikes a cord, blast them into internet stardom. As I mentioned in class, these videos are typically made famous by accident, and normally the people creating them do not intend to garner 30 million hits on Youtube, but it happens.

Then we have big marketing agencies pick up on this and re-appropriate the idea, and create successful campaigns based on this idea of unintentional, quirky, placement or ideas. I found a website that showcases 20 creative guerrilla marketing campaigns which are the epitome of this idea. What is interesting is how many of these campaigns take the idea of the original and remix it in order to be effective. Here are a couple I saw that caught my eye:

What's all the Hype?

I am sure many of you music lovers are familiar with the music blog, ‘Hype Machine’, but if you’re not then I suggest you become familiar with it. Basically it is a database for certain music blogs that circulate the Internet. It is explained on the web site: “We are creating tools that empower independent voices that write about music. We think a select group of passionate people can produce more engaging conversation than a huge social mob, or a rigid hierarchy of editors. We amplify their posts and the audio they choose, to help this vibrant culture spread.” (Check out the FAQ to find out more info about the site here).

You can search any song, and if the song you’re looking for has been uploaded onto a selected music blog, it will come up in your search. If you create an account, you can start making your own playlist by clicking on the heart that appears beside each song. These ‘favourites’ become your playlist – one you can access anywhere there is a computer so you don’t need to bring your iPod to parties in order to DJ and share your music with your social network. You can follow your friends and other hype m users that have similar music tastes as you, and search other people’s. What I really like about this blogging site is that it is all about sharing – you cannot download off of the website, only listen. As stated on the web site, “The Hype Machine does not offer any tracks for download. We provide a list of tracks that are currently being discussed on blogs, not the files themselves. If you discover a song or artist you like, we encourage you to support them by purchasing their music”. What this makes the web site is a collaborative sharing database compiled by the people for the people, serving as a promotional tool for certain artists and bloggers as well. You can make your own page your personal collection of favourites, which I see as a personal remix of all of the available songs - and no two playlists will be the same.

I encourage you all to make an account and start your playlist! You'll be surprised at how many new songs and artists you can discover in a matter of minutes that might just become your new favourite thing to listen to. Here's my playlist, if you care to check it out!

Remixing YouTube

When we talk about remix culture, we often talk about how remixes are created and shared, but we rarely talk about the media platforms upon which these remixes are produced and distributed. Programs such as Garageband, Final Cut Studio and Photoshop, as well as websites like MySpace, YouTube and Flickr allow users to create and share their remixes, yet we hardly ever consider the media we use to do so. You can go to a website like YouTube, which encourages users to create, upload, share and explore content, and see millions of instances of remixes. Although professionals also use YouTube to promote and share content, the majority of videos on YouTube are user-generated, from videos like stalking cat and David After Dentist, to Double Rainbow and Chat Roulette Piano Improv, most of the videos on YouTube are created and uploaded by everyday users. YouTube now hosts millions of user-generated videos, creating a network of content that I would argue constitutes a remix, because it brings content together in unexpected ways and allows users to make new and unintended connections between videos.

One YouTube user, kutiman, has made this remix more visible by actually remixing together user-generated music videos that he has come across on YouTube. His remix illustrates the variety of videos created by users and how we put them together in a cohesive narrative when we watch video after video on YouTube.



The website Yooouuutuuube.com also provides a remix of YouTube, but instead of remixing content, it remixes the website itself. You can go to http://yooouuutuuube.com/ and insert in any YouTube video URL, which allows you to manipulate the video by moving your mouse as you watch it.

I decided to remix Justin Bieber's "Baby" music video, which looked a little something like the picture to the right.

Yooouuutuuube.com allows users to interact with videos and YouTube as a media platform in new ways, creating a useful and valuable remix of YouTube, a popular platform used to produce and distribute different forms of remix.

Tool on many Koto

A friend of mine brought a really cool interpretation of this song, by Tool to my attention;



(I apologize for the fan video).

Before I show the really nifty interpretation of this song, I'd like to point out that this song plays a lot with the Fibonacci sequence, which harked back to a class a few weeks ago where paintings by Escher were shown with relations to Baudrillards simulacra and hyperreality. Both this song and the Escher paintings are very much based on mathematical patters.

Now I present a very impressive interpretation of the song;



I really love this interpretation of the song. What I find most intriguing about interpretations done on non-western instruments is that the Koto is usually tuned to the Pentatonic scale, while Western music is usually played on instruments that are tuned to classical scales. However, the instruments used here are easily tuned to many different scales, permitting an interesting interpretation and remix that injects new meaning that bridges cultural gaps in music, but that still maintains the original Fibonacci sequence and the changing 9/8, 8/8 to 7/8 time signature sequence, thereby maintaining Tool's original thoughtful placement mathematical meaning.

is this remixing?

this is something i literally stumbled upon today, weavesilk.com

It is an interactive site which allows anyone to create a different work of art with the same tools. The user creates lines which, when finished, produce waves which the user can control by pressing shift and moving the mouse. the waves stop when they fall off the page or when the user presses s on the keyboard.

Once it is finished, you can share your work with your friends wither on facebook or twitter

This kind of participatory art results in many different images from the same tools and elements. With the sharing capability, friends and family members can participate in these works together and interact with the site and with one another.

SO,

here is mine!

http://weavesilk.com/?1zrh

post yours in the comments! (click the share button to get the url)

To Glee or not to Glee: The Debate Continues

I can't resist sharing these comments from Dave Grohl (Foo Fighter/Nirvana/Probot/Queens of the Stone Age) addressing the Glee vs. Kings of Leon debacle.

Highlights include:

"It’s every band’s right, you shouldn’t have to do f---ing Glee, [...] [a]nd then the guy who created Glee is so offended that we’re not, like, begging to be on his f---ing show… f--- that guy for thinking anybody and everybody should want to do Glee." (Grohl)

"The Glee guy, what a f---ing jerk. Slash was the first one. He wanted to do Guns ‘n’ Roses and Slash is like, ‘I hate f---ing musicals. It’s worse than Grease.’ Then [Murphy's] like, ‘Well, of course he’d say that, he’s a washed up ol’ rock star, that’s what they f---ing do.’ And then Kings of Leon say, ‘No, we don’t want to be on your show.’ And then he’s like, ‘Snotty little assholes…’ And it’s just like, Dude, maybe not everyone loves Glee. Me included." (Grohl)

Read here for a lengthier version:

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/dave_grohl_you_shouldnt_have_to_do_f-cking_glee.html

The Drag Queen Remix

Last week, I went to UW's "Drag me to the Bomber", an event to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their gay and lesbian alliance club. I had never been to one before, and besides wanting to support my friends in the gay community, I was also rather curious about what a drag show would entail.

Well, I loved it! And as I was watching, I started viewing these talented men and women as individuals remixing gender. They not only bend traditional views on femininity and masculinity, they sometimes do this through the use of such clever devices as satire.

For example, the drag queens in this show not only take stereotype of "flamboyantly feminine" that is commonly thought to be a characteristic of gay men (not to infer that all the drag queens were gay), and they turn it into something over the top and fantastic. All of this to convince us that gender performance is not a constrained thing--what makes a woman with a pony tail any more of a woman than a cross dressed woman with a peacock head dress? According to the drag community, not anything at all and I can't say I disagree with them. Satire in this case is put to great use--by poking fun at the flamboyant stereotype by taking it to the extreme, drag queens have in fact changed the way I view gender performance. It's fantastic!

A Trailer of Epic Proportions

Judging by all of the AMAZING project proposals thus far,
I've decided to reconsider my concept, and offer a medium that has not yet been touched upon.
The material that we have been working with so far in this course has completely reshaped my views on the world around me, and since I believe that visual representations can have such a strong effect on our brain, I have chosen to focus my project on video/film/sound.

The idea of transformative storytelling has been one of my favourite topics in this class, and since film is a very important, and an obvious way to convey meaning through multiple images per second I have been researching both genres, and popular films to create an idea that will be understood to great degree by every classmate (hopefully). Essentially, I plan on creating an "recut" movie trailer for a film involving two very well-known movie characters, where the concept of the original footage will be reinterpreted on a completely new level. My hope is that I will learn, as well as you, that film genre, and character development can be manipulated on very different levels, with endless subjective views.

My project will also relate well to the cut-up method, where remixing image and sound can actually provide new material all together, while still relying heavily on the original. Essentially, I am hoping for you to see a brand new piece, with the origins still shining through. I am going to leave both the film, and the two main characters as a secret, so that reactions and expectations can be both honest and spontaneous, as I feel that remix works best in this light. The fan fiction counterculture will also be influencing my choices and decisions during production. Throughout my research I have noticed that fan fiction is actually a legitimate practice where members of our culture are able to freely express what they see beneath the original text, and take control, in order to provide alternatives to previous remixes and originality.

With all of this in mind, I am posting a link to an recut movie trailer of Mary Poppins, which actually inspired my decision quite heavily, and lead me to my production today.

ENJOY! check out all the other related videos as well, they are both hilarious, as well as extremely creative!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5_0AGdFic

Remix on Television?

While listening to the radio the other day, I overheard an interview with Randy Jackson regarding his hit show, American Idol. As we all know, American Idol has been appearing on prime time network television for years (too many if you ask me). However as Randy was being questioned, he claimed that this season was different, this season would be called “the remix”. This is what immediately caught my attention. Rather than attempting to recreate episodes from the past Simon Cowell era, the producers have decided to create a new version. Here is what is different about Season 10’s ‘The Remix’:

New judges

Online auditions

More movement/stage presence by participants

Participants no longer singing outside of their genre, no ‘themed shows’

Coaching participants between performances

Can this ‘new version’ be truly considered a remix? Can producers call it a ‘remixed’ program even though it is merely enhancing certain aspects or adding what was not present in previous seasons? What do you think Lessig or Benjamin would say about this type of remix? What about other television shows that have been remade or altered?

Bon Jovi vs. Steve Jobs

I heard an interesting blurb on the radio this morning about Bon Jovi accusing Steve Jobs of "killing music". I didn't actually read the original article because that would require a subscription, but a Google search of the topic brings up various sources that paint a pretty decent picture of the situation.
As interesting a topic this may be from all perspectives, I'm interested in discussing what these implications mean for the active participant and the remixer. On one hand, I understand Jovi's suggestion that being able to download music and take it with us everywhere we go on iPods has changed how we listen to music, but I'm not sure that his claim that we no longer put the time aside dedicated solely to listening to our new musical investment has changed the 'magicalness' of the musical experience holds water. I think the act of remix may prove a bit of a counter to his claim. Although the way we listen to music may have changed, in order to be able to remix and interpret music, there still needs to be active participation. The ease by which people may now remix and the vastly growing number of remixes out there, regardless of medium, would suggest that there is still a pretty decent amount of active participation. By no means am I suggesting that Steve Jobs has been the sole provider of this opportunity, but I certainly don't think that his empire has impeded this at all, either. The only thing is, that these modes of participation have changed, and this is what Bon Jovi seems to have a problem with. They have changed in the past, and they will continue to change well into the future.
I'm curious to know if anyone else has any thoughts about what iTunes and iPods have done for music. Has the way that we interact with our music changed so much that we are totally disconnected from what we're consuming? Or have these modes given us new ways of sharing and obtaining? Have they given us the potential to remix or have access to new music that we may have never otherwise had the opportunity to be exposed to? Is music really dead?

Mosaic remix

Working with my group on our remix mosaic project this week made me think about all the things you can say with a mosaic. you can use the message of the images you are putting together to create a whole new image. This way you can use the meaning of the images you're remixing to create a new meaning for the image you're creating.
A quick google search brought up this flickr account and in particular this image:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bumper314/477501/

the image of George W. Bush is created out of pictures of soldiers who have died in Iraq since the American invasion in 2003. Using these images creates a whole new meaning in a simple portrait of Bush. It invokes strong ideas of responsibility and blame.

Similar to the way that my group used different images from the KW Art Gallery to create a message of participation in local art and community.

Remixing Time

What do I mean by remixing time? It sounds like a really obtuse idea. And you may even say, "thats crazy"! But allow me to present:

EXAMPLE ONE:


Where photographer Irina Werning takes pictures from people's childhoods and uses the original photo (ie, the referent)to recreate the same image with the people only as their present day selves. She goes to great lengths to reproduce the tone, perspective, clothing, everything from the original to create this remix of the image as a really identical modern version. I think its a very different spin on what we see as remix, because really she is remixing the past, into the future.

In a very similar vein, I offer

EXAMPLE TWO:


This series takes the same idea as Werning adopted above but is interesting in the sense that it is a picture of a photo in a different time. So here, we have the photographer taking the referent image (the original old image)and remixing it with the current location that it was taken in today.

I feel that Walter Benjamin would have a lot to say on this idea of reproduction and remix, in regards to mechanical reproduction of the photo. Not to mention what Baudrillard would say about the idea of the real.

If nothing else, this is a really cool photography endeavor, but I really do think its a bit more of a traditional way of remixing time, images, and ideas.

We Are Remix

"Look around you. Look at the posters on your wall. Look at your computer. Look at your clothes. Look at your hair. Everything we are surrounded by is remix. We are living within a whirlwind of reinvention, reinterpretation, and repurposing. Remix is a part of the way we speak, the way we think, the way we live and it has redefined pop culture in ways unimaginable. But is remix a powerful tool of innovation or has it stifled creativity and discouraged new, original ideas from thriving?"

- dividingnights on Tumblr

This post pretty much speaks for itself. I found this great little blurb by someone on Tumblr, and I thought that I would share it with you all and see what you thought. I definitely think that "dividingnights" has a point, and I never really thought of my hair or my computer as a form of remix. In relation to his last statement, I think that remix is a tool of innovation, and it has NOT discouraged new and/or original ideas from thriving. Thoughts?

Remixing Video Games: Viral Marketing Campaigns and Fan Culture

Before the release of Resident Evil 5 in 2009, the latest installment in the Resident Evil zombie video game franchise, Capcom started a viral marketing campaign to fuel the excitement and interest of fans. It was all centred around the fictional village in Africa where Resident Evil 5 takes place called Kijuju, which Chris Redfield, one of the main characters from first Resident Evil game, is having hallucinations about, brought on by traumatic stress of surviving the first outbreak of the zombie virus, the T-virus. Capcom made five viral videos called “Fear You Can’t Forget” and then contacted Resident Evil fans and fan sites and challenged them to find and the share videos online. The videos then directed fans to a Resident Evil website entitled “Kijuju”, which offered fans videos, screenshots, wallpapers and gameplay from the new RE5 to share with other fans. The official Resident Evil 5 website boasts that the Kijuju website was discovered by over half a million people, 190,000 of which were directed there by their friends, with an average of 24 shares per person. Capcom rewarded 100 of the top sharers by getting their name in the official RE5 instruction manual and some of the top sharers had their pictures transformed into a majini (zombie) and become part of the official Resident Evil 5 website. The viral campaign's mission is to get the RE5 community to come together to unlock exclusive RE5 assets including screenshots and videos which will ultimately flesh out some of the story.

Resident Evil 5 was one of the first video games to have a viral marketing campaign which directly involved fans and fan communities and depended on their participation to create new content. As a result, fans have become more invested in the Resident Evil universe, as they get to co-produce what they also consume. Fan culture and fan communities work as a collaboratively embodied knowledge base and a network for making new stories, which changes how they interact with the Resident Evil narrative and produces new forms of meaning-making.

The Resident Evil 5 viral marketing campaign gave fan communities the opportunity to not only create new content and narratives to support the Resident Evil universe, but also to change the game by being able to insert those narratives into the actual game itself. I would argue that the ability of fans to actively influence the Resident Evil 5 video game is a form of remix, as they are remixing the content of the game to include their own interpretations, narratives and meanings of the text. However, some would argue that the viral marketing campaign only serves to exploit the social energies of existing fan communities as a source of free marketing using rewards such as being included on the website or manual to motivate fans to share the videos with as many people as possible. While this is certainly true, does this make the remix of Resident Evil 5 any less meaningful for fans? Is the process of remix still significant for fan communities if Capcom is profiting from it? Being a Resident Evil 5 gamer myself, I can tell you, with certainty, that it definitely is.

Check out the fifth and final video, "Back" in the "Fear You Can't Forget" viral marketing campaign for Resident Evil 5 below.

Video Games | Resident Evil 5 | Viral Campaign Episode #5: Back

Xbox 360 | PlayStation 3 | Nintendo Wii | PC Games

Nine Inch Nails

Recent Oscar winner and sole member of Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor, has publicly championed new ways of marketing and distributing his music, culminating in his giving away NIN’s last record, “The Slip”, online for free (which you can download here http://dl.nin.com/theslip/signup).

Reznor has also endorsed the Creative Commons approach to remixing music and set up this site http://remix.nin.com/ to coincide with the release the release of NIN’s remix album Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D, mentioned by Calendar Girl here: http://remixcultures.blogspot.com/2011/02/remix-story-of-love-and-hate.html

This site is amazing for any NIN fan as it encourages another level of engagement with their music.

ThePublicRecord.com

For all of you remixers out there, check out this site: www.thepublicrecord.com

This site serves as a hub for musical collaboration. It launched a little over a year ago as a site where Tommy Lee (Motley Crue/Methods of Mayhem) uploaded the multitracks for songs that were to be included on his upcoming Methods of Mayhem record. The point being for fans and musicians to download the multitracks, create their own musical parts to fit into the songs and submit them back to the site. Submissions were reviewed by Lee, and his producer Scott Humphrey, for inclusion on the final album. The results materialized with Methods of Mayhem’s “A Public Disservice Announcement” which featured submitted parts from around the globe.

While the musicians whose parts were included on the album were not financially compensated, they did receive credit on the album (as well as prizes like guitars and recording equipment). Interestingly enough though the most current project on thepublicrecord.com is offering musicians a chance to make money by contributing parts which thepublicrecord.com will then attempt to license for commercials. It will be interesting to see what other projects materialize out of this site.

Digital Dummies?

Tonight, I was talking to my roommate who is in Business at Laurier and she told me about this new documentary she watched in class today.

It's called Digital Dummies and is a documentary put together by the CBC. You can read about the documentary HERE and watch the full-length video (for free!!) HERE! It runs about 45 minutes long and is very informative!

It pretty much asks whether the new technology that has evolved is a good or bad thing. Although this technology, like cell phones and laptops, helps us to become more productive, this documentary argues that this technology is proving to be more of a distraction that encourages multi-tasking.

Relating to remix culture, this documentary immediately reminded me of discussions about convergence culture. Is what Henry Jenkins talks about actually a good thing that helps consumers, by giving them more ways to express themselves? Or, is convergence culture actually proving to mute our expressions by preventing deep thinking and instead promoting fast, superficial ways of finding information?

This documentary also asks questions on how all of this new emerging technology is affecting personal relationships. The main question that Digital Dummies asks is, are actually able to manage the technology around us or is the technology overpowering us? This question is definitely something that applies to remix culture as well and needs to be considered in order to figure out whether the technology that remix culture requires is actually helping or hurting us.

The Walking Dead

Remixing Mediums

In KS205: Comics and Cartoons last term, we discussed adaptation of comics to film and other mediums. Though we didn’t discuss this as a remix, I want to bring attention to this medium adaptation as a form of remix in the means of what we discuss in KS400. I was inspired by kayy_g's post on Bedtime stories remixed!

Now all special effects from drawing comic art can be replicated onto film. (For example: DC is owned by Time Warner.) Hollywood has found it easier to forge old myths rather then come up with new ideas. Comics in the film industry are valuable because they’ve already made a name for themselves, they are a brand with a rather large following. So filmmakers take advantage of that. Since print media is threatened because of film and computers, a positive look on this is that comics will always be up to date because of film technology that keeps them alive. The negative aspect is that print culture is losing value, but it is reassuring to know comics will be available online and in film.

Instead of seeing this as negative we can look at it in terms of Remix culture. Filmmakers can add new meanings and re-write parts artistically. There is also many ways montage keep this an artistic remix, montage means editing, camera angles, and movements. Using Benjamin’s theory “The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. This does not diminish its importance, however; if anything, it underlines it. Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert. Such fusion is of great social significance (Benjamin).”

So the reaction, for example, the X-Men movie gets is a much different and progressive attitude towards it then the comic did. Not saying one is better then the other, they should both be viewed as their own separate entities according to their medium. The expert filmmaker can characterize X-Men movie in a way that differs from the comic, attaching different emotional enjoyment to it that the comic might lack since it is illustration vs. actors.

My last point is that although directors and filmmakers can take advantage of an existing piece of popular work and turn it into film for an almost guaranteed success, and many critics have scrutinized this for not having any creative value, I believe different mediums have their own artistic value. Yes I agree this is a profit motivated medium remix but at the same time every medium has something they do best and they should take advantage of that, and exploit its advantages to create a new product of art. X-Men probably took on a more adult sensibility with the movie, and even a bigger audience since films are much more popular medium for the masses rather the niche comic market. Remixing comics to film form can be very helpful and useful. So in turn the movie might have made the original comic much more popular. An Example of this is when The Walking Dead comic, was made into a television show, and the show made the original comic much more popular. Though the tv show deviates from the comic and only the first comic was faithfully re-created it still made the comic much more popular!

“Madagascar”

While we often think of sampling as being central to Hip-Hop, the techniques of sampling and remixing have been adapted to other genres as well. I present to you “Madagascar” by Guns N’ Roses. The song features an extensive collage of samples from speeches by Martin Luther King, as well as dialogue from the films Braveheart and Casualties of War.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbFmXK5I0rc

This live version of the song is from 2001, a full seven years before the recorded version would see the light of day on Chinese Democracy (2008). The sample collage remains the same on the recorded version as it does on the live version.

Sheen's Done it Again...

Searching the web today, I seemed to have stumbled upon a rather humorous remix created by Questlove, recently airing on ‘Late Night with Jimmy Fallon’. The video hilariously puts together various footage of drug-addicted-gone-wild actor Charlie Sheen, remixing catchphrases such as “bi-winning”, “tigerblood” and “Adonis DNA”. Judging by the popularity of the interview with Sheen, this remix was sure to spread around the Internet like crazy.

It seems that Questlove has interpreted the hype around Charlie Sheen’s crazy antics in his own unique way, taking a serious situation in mainstream news and turning it into a humorous remix. Therefore, fans of Jimmy Fallon, Charlie Sheen, or fans in general are able to view the actor’s story in an alternative (and entertaining) way.

Is Questlove simply creating a funny video? Or making a comment on what is occurring in the world of popular culture? For example, by repeating ‘winning’ is it meant to make fun of or embarrass Sheen? Say something about what he’s done? A tribute to him? Let me know what you guys think!

http://theurbandaily.com/tv/theurbandailystaff2/uestlove-remixes-the-best-charlie-sheen-soundbites-video/

The Fulgurator

Some may think that this is remix while some may argue that it is not. With the ongoing amount of inventions that are constantly being recreated, this one BLEW my mind.

The Fulgurator can be used anywhere around the world if there is another "normal" camera nearby that is being used with a flash. (Normal meaning digital or professional cameras.) It operates through a kind of reactive flash projection that enables an image to be projected on an object exactly at the moment when someone else is photographing it. (Watch the video for controversial examples.)

This has raised many problems as you can see in the video the issues that it has caused, mostly confused among other photographers. The intervention is unobtrusive because it takes only a few milliseconds. Every photo another photographer takes of an object at which the Fulgurator is also aimed is affected by the manipulation. In all, the visual information can be remixed and unnoticed into the images of others.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxPALCpBR8o&playnext=1&list=PL9EC9FC6D5837CF87

Do you think that this a type of remix?

Skinny Puppy

Canada’s Skinny Puppy are a unique breed (pun intended). Pioneers of the industrial genre, they sampled and remixed sound from film and television into their gothic dance music. For years I listened to Skinny Puppy’s “Worlock” without knowing that it sampled the opening guitar riff from The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter”… Or that it sampled infamous serial killer/cult leader Charles Manson singing The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter”! Check it out here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukhpbcZy0wM&feature=related

For those that don’t know, Manson believed that The Beatles' White Album (containing the track “Helter Skelter”) contained many messages directing him to lead his followers to commit a series of murders to incite a race war between blacks and whites.

What does it mean to mash together Manson and The Beatles? What is the cultural commentary?

Also, see if you can recognize any of the films that are incorporated in the video.

Bedtime Stories Remade

I would like to comment on the recent release of classic fairytale stories being remade in a different form of film than what we may be used to seeing. The stories I am referring to is the Little Red Riding hood story (watch the “Red Riding Hood” trailer here) and Beauty and the Beast (watch “Beastly” trailer here). These stories are not being remade in the cute, cartoon, Disney-style way that we grew up with and know and love. They are being made to appeal to adults - they are presented with real actors. Without singing and talking animals. Without magic. Without balancing out the actually quite dramatic and even horrific story lines with comedic and fun, entertaining songs, jokes or repetitive verses which make them appropriate for children.

These two fairy tales have been appropriated to appeal to much different demographic, and honestly, I think that they will be very successful at the box office. I personally am interested to see how the filmmakers turned a move like the Beauty and the Beast, a movie I have seen in cartoon version hundreds of times, and a story like Little Red Riding Hood, a classic tale that I have had repeated to me countless times as a child – to films with recognizable actors and an overall haunting feel to it.

This is a modern example of appropriating culture into contemporary remix culture, just like the Disney movies were appropriated re-makes of these classic tales in order to reach our generation when we were kids. The popularity of these "re-make" films comes out of the need for the morals of the stories to reach an older audience. The messages in both of these tales are helpful to children growing up: you know, like beauty is from within and don’t be lured into strangers’ houses and stuff. Kids seem to be growing up faster these days and with the classic Disney cartoons pretty much obsolete from our culture, (Although I suppose Vanessa Hudgens is the “Disney character” of today, which makes a lot of sense that she’s in the “Beastly” movie), this is the next, new way to get these stories out there and have this youth generation listen to them.