Digital Appropriation
Appropriation, n. In the arts, the adoption, borrowing,
or theft of elements of one culture by another culture.
Taking over another culture’s style or way of expressing
itself for your own purposes.
Taking something created by another person and making
it your own.
Intellectual Property Rights
Speaking of love …
Did anybody read my blog entry that was assigned
reading last week: “It used to be about the music”?
Intellectual Property Rights
“The past always tries to control the future.”
A Remixer’s Manifesto, from RIP!
But is it really “the past” that we
see trying to control things in the
documentary?
Isn’t “the past” actually
powerless in this struggle?
Isn’t it actually corporate Big
Media that is trying to exert the
control?
Capitalist Appropriation Culture
(powered by profit)
Corporate appropriation
(eg. “recontexts”)
 Chinese knockoffs
 Russian “Harry Potter” books

Gap Ad (early 2000s)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNesa12IL-o
Audrey Hepburn dancing in the movie Funny Face (1957)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JGCktc_FXU
Digital appropriation and
postmodern de-contextualization
No one cares about the original creators or the
original context in which the work was created or
presented.
The intentions of the film maker or the scriptwriter
 What the choreographer was trying to do with the
dance
 Who Audrey Hepburn thought she was when doing
the dance – what either Audrey Hepburn’s character
or Audrey Hepburn herself was dancing for

Digital appropriation and
postmodern de-contextualization
No one cares about the original creators or the
original context in which the work was created or
presented.

The intentions of AC/DC in writing and performing
their song

Whether any of those people would like to be
associated with each other or would like to promote
The Gap
Every case of appropriation
involves an attitude toward the
original, and twists the intentions
and context of the original to a
new intention and context.
Do artists owe anything to the
people who came before them,
and those people’s intentions and
contexts?
Appropriation in the 21st Century
Here is a track I “created” in literally about two minutes.
I found a recording on YouTube of a Muslim muzzein
making the call to prayer from a minaret and I just stuck it
on top of a eurodub track from a producer I like (Tosca,
“John Lee Huber” (Rodney Hunter Dub)).
Should it be okay for me to do that?
• From a legal point of view?
• From a moral point of view? (ethically)
• From a cultural appropriation point of view? (politically)
What do appropriators owe to
the creators of the past?
 Nothing
 Royalties
 Acknowledgement
 Respect
 Knowledge, true understanding
The People’s Appropriation
(powered by love, ego, creativity,
political resistance & critique)
 Mashups
 Fan fiction
 Fanedits
 Culture Jamming
 Machinima
 Slash
 Etc etc etc.
Participatory Culture
Participatory Culture
Compared to
 Folk culture (participatory, but limited)
 Mass culture (publishers, radio etc, non-
participatory)
 Consumer culture (tv, movies, records,
etc, non-participatory)
Participatory Culture
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
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Mixtapes
Zines
Mashups
Fan fiction
Fanedits
Culture Jamming
Machinima
Blogs
YouTube videos
Photo and artwork sharing sites
Opensource software
Wikipedia
and so on…..
Participatory Culture
According to Henry Jenkins, a participatory culture is a culture
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and
civic engagement
With strong support for creating and sharing one’s
creations with others
With some type of informal mentorship whereby what
is known by the most experienced is passed along to
novices
Where members believe that their contributions matter
Where members feel some degree of social connection
with one another (at the least they care what other
people think about what they have created).
Jaron Lanier, “Digital Maoism” (highlighted
by Dr Jim)