By Matthew Guerrieri<\/p>\n
I wanted to delve a little deeper into the whole question of what
\nremixing means for aesthetics and culture; Lessig doesn’t talk about
\nit much (I didn’t expect him to, it’s not really the point of the
\nbook), but for me, perhaps predictably, it’s one of the more
\ninteresting questions around the whole topic.<\/p>\n
Part of the usual Personally, I doubt Zac Snyder has ever heard of Now, I don’t know how much Again, this is kind of a worst-case scenario, and I’m not Here’s another way of thinking about it. I spent I will reiterate The remixed cultural artifacts I find rewarding range Where this ties By Matthew Guerrieri I wanted to delve a little deeper into the whole question of what remixing means for aesthetics and culture; Lessig doesn’t talk about it much (I didn’t expect him to, it’s not really the point of the book), but for me, perhaps predictably, it’s one of the more interesting questions around the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-bookclub","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ndefense of remix culture involves citing one or more salutary remixed
\nworks, but I’m going to be contrarian and start off with a
\nparticularly inane example: director Zack Snyder’s use of Wagner’s
\n“Ride of the Valkyries” as background to a Vietnam War sequence in his
\nfilm version of Watchmen<\/i>. Tom Service, the classical music
\ncritic for the Guardian<\/i>, blogged
\nabout it<\/a> last week, making the connection with Francis Ford
\nCoppola’s famous use of the piece in Apocalypse Now<\/i>, and, I
\nthink, rather misguidedly complimenting Watchmen<\/i> for a
\nsimilarly trenchant use of the piece. Service was pretty handily
\npilloried in the comments for his suspect characterization of Wagner’s
\noriginal Valkyries, but one
\ncommenter<\/a> cut to the quick of the larger
\npoint:<\/p>\n
\nWagner or The Ride of the Valkyries. It’s just that helicopter piece
\nfrom Apocalypse Now, innit?
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nWagner Snyder does or doesn’t know–though I’d bet he didn’t sit down
\nwith Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft<\/i>. But at the very least, it’s
\nfair to say that, thanks to increasingly available modes of
\ndistribution, the number of people who have seen the “Valkyries” scene
\nfrom Apocalypse Now<\/i> vastly outnumbers those people who have
\nactually seen the entire movie, and that<\/i> group probably vastly
\noutnumbers those who have seen the entire movie in a movie
\ntheater<\/i>, as Coppola originally intended. For most viewers,
\nSnyder’s use of “Ride of the Valkyries” is a reference to a reference,
\nand a fairly contextually disconnected reference at
\nthat.<\/p>\n
\ntrying to condemn remix culture. But I think there’s a lesson for the
\nway contemporary RW culture transforms the RO culture it’s using.
\nCoppola’s use of Wagner is a gloss, but a fairly sophisticated one. (A
\nwhile ago, I got
\ninto it<\/a> at length.) Snyder’s use of it strikes me as a more
\none-dimensional moment of semiotic recognition–comparatively less of
\nWagner’s mythology is in aesthetic play. And I think that’s a
\nuniversal phenomenon: as cultural artifacts are more easily accessed,
\nthere’s a certain amount of contextual impoverishment that comes with
\nit–maybe not inevitably, but that is the path of least
\nresistance.<\/p>\n
\nmost of yesterday sitting at the piano practicing. That sort of
\nperformance–taking music on the page and realizing it–is, in one way,
\nan exemplar of RW culture. But, of course, there’s a fair amount of
\nwork that goes into it. (Which is why I have to practice.) In
\ntechnological terms, sheet music is an extremely lossy compression
\nformat, and it takes an awful lot of contextual and algorithmic
\nknowledge to convert it into something aesthetically usable. Digital
\nvideo and audio, on the other hand are, by comparison, virtually
\nlossless, and can be converted into something aesthetically usable
\nwith almost no knowledge of either context or the needed algorithm.
\nIt’s almost an inverse relationship–digital culture gets rid of the
\ngenerational loss in sound and picture quality, but in a way,
\nintroduces a generational loss in context.<\/p>\n
\nthat I’m not trying to portray contemporary remix culture as good or
\nbad–like any format\/medium\/practice, the results can be both. (In
\ncertain circumstances, the mass accessibility of culture can
\nforce<\/i> originality–as Paul Schrader once said about movies,
\n“Before video, it was a lot easier to knock things off because no one
\nhad seen them.”) But I am suggesting that the analogy that Lessig
\nmakes with Sousa’s RW culture–amateur singing societies and the
\nlike–is nowhere near as solid as he would have us believe.
\nPost-digital RW culture is vastly different than what’s come before.
\n(This is, for example, why my BS meter started blinking on page 104,
\nwhen Lessig calls sampling “a modern equivalent to jazz”–without
\ntaking anything away from sampling or jazz, that’s stretching the
\ncategory beyond the point where I find it has useful
\nmeaning.)<\/p>\n
\nfrom the sublime (Jonathan Lapper’s superb “Frames of
\nReference,”<\/a> or film critic Jim Emerson’s inspired 2007
\n10 Best List<\/a>) to the ridiculous (DJ Party Ben’s “Single Ladies (in
\nMayberry),”<\/a> which still makes me laugh harder than an essentially
\none-note joke probably should). In fact, I would say that, for me at
\nleast, the best remixes are the aesthetic equivalent of a well-told
\njoke, which is not to say that they need be funny, nor should that be
\nread as a backhanded compliment–I have a great appreciation for
\nwell-told jokes. But it’s indicative of the conceptual nature of
\nremixes–as the art form stands now, I respond more to the skill and
\ncleverness with which the concept is executed than to any transcendent
\nartistic purpose. An example: Kutiman’s much-celebrated YouTube
\nmash-up Thru-You<\/i>—“The Mother of All
\nFunk Chords”<\/a> is technically amazing, but independent of
\nits concept, is it musically on par with, say, the Famous Flames or
\nParliament\/Funkadelic in their prime? Not really. Given the nature of
\nits construction, should we hold it to that aesthetic standard? If
\nnot, what becomes of that aesthetic standard?<\/p>\n
\nback into Lessig’s argument, I think, is that his bias towards RW
\nculture–you can almost hear him gritting his teeth whenever he tries
\nto say something nice about RO culture–leads him to gloss over the
\nfact that the hybrid economy he describes, at least to my reading,
\nsignificantly disincentivizes the creation of new<\/i> RO culture.
\n(If Strong Incentives Will Increasingly Drive Commercial Entities to
\nHybrids, as the heading on p. 228 puts it, then RO culture will
\nincreasingly only be economically rewarded in as much as it can be
\nremixed.) If all culture starts to take place “Within the Context of
\nNo Context” (in W.S. Trow’s noted formulation<\/a>),
\nthat’s a significant change, both aesthetically and economically, from
\nthe pre-digital framework that Lessig references. But that’s probably
\nanother post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"