Erik Stendebach
Leila Ling
Ashley Wright
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Describes a society
which allows and
encourages
derivative works
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A broad term that
refers to a wide range
of elements in nonmainstream society
 Grassroots political and
social activism
 Independent music
 Art
 Film

Appropriation: use of borrowed elements in
the creation of a new work
 Images, forms, or styles

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
 Recombinant appropriation
 Biology, mathematics, engineering,
and art

Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)
 Used newspaper to create forms

Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987)
 Campbell’s soup

Sherrie Levine
 Quotes entire works
 1979 “After Walker
Evans”

From French ‘coller’: to glue

An assemblage of different forms, creating a
new one

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Art created from the undisguised, modified
use of objects that are not normally
considered art, often because of their non-art
function.
Marcel Duchamp
 Fountain (1917)
 L.H.O.O.Q (1919)

Assemblage: art of
putting together
multiple found
objects

Man Ray
 Gift (1921)

Picasso
 Baboon and Young
(1951)

Latin: “to flow”

1960’s: artists, composers, and designers
blend different media and disciplines

Also called ‘intermedia’

Event Scores
 John Cage’s 4 Minutes and 33 Seconds
 Geroge Brecht

Fluxus Boxes (Fluxkits)
 George Maciunas
 Printed cards, games, ideas, poems

Jamacian dance hall culture
 Ska, rocksteady, reggae, and dub
 Ruddy Redwood, King Tubby, Lee
“Scratch” Perry

Called these early remixes ‘Variations’

Disco DJ’s in New York
 Discotheques
 Tom Moulton – invented dance remix

Jamaican variations meet New
York DJ

Grandmaster Flash, DJ Kool
Herc

Cutting: alternating between
duplicate copies of same
record

Scratching: manually moving
the vinyl
 “Real-time, live-action collage” –
Time

Also called Blends or Bastard Pop

Vocals of one song combined with music of
another

1956: Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goldman
 The Flying Saucer

Dj Danger Mouse

Frank Zappa

Eminem

Girl Talk

Negativland

1970’s – shift in awareness of commodity capitalism
 Corporations control media and economy

1980’s – Rise of information and government
 New discourses: semiotics, feminism, sociology, culture
theory and criticism

Backlash against consumerism
 Shift from passive consumer to consumer/producer

Rise of DIY and remix through new media

Professor of Law at Stanford Law School

On the board of:
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Creative Commons project
MAPLight
Free Press
Brave New Film Foundation
Change Congress
The American Academy
Berlin
Freedom House
iCommons.org
Author of Remix and Free Culture

Creativity and innovation always builds on the
past.

The past always tries to control the creativity
that builds upon it.

Free societies enable the future by limiting this
power of the past.

Ours is less and less a free society.

Free Culture - a culture that
promotes the freedom to
distribute and modify creative
works, using the Internet as
well as other media

The public domain is a range of
abstract materials which are
not owned or controlled by
anyone.

1769 – Miller v. Taylor made
copyright forever, but was
reversed in 1774

1774 – Free Culture is born (in
England), because copyright was
stopped

In 1790, free culture was carried
to America

"They've used their power to protect
themselves against innovation, which is
exactly what the copyright was originally set
up to guard against.” – Lawrence Lessig
 A documentary by Davis Guggenheim
 Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone

The Eldred argument: Congress violated the
Constitution when it passed laws that let copyright
owners renew the ownership rights to their works

The government and entertainment industry
argument: The Constitution allows copyrights for a
"limited" period and does not preclude Congress
from extending the terms of existing copyrights

Copyright regulates culture, it needs to
be changed, not abolished

Traditional creative work “Read/Only,”
creativity of the future is “Read/Write”

The hybrid economy: traditional
commercial enterprise with the
Internet-friendly ethos of sharing and
community

Lessig on the Colbert Report

Keep it short

Keep it simple

Keep it alive

Keep it prospective

Creative Commons, which aims to mark a
range of content that can easily, and reliably,
be built upon

Creative Commons
license
 No commercial use is
allowed but users are able
to:
▪
▪
▪
▪
Copy works
Distribute works
Transmit works
Remix or adapt works
▪ must attribute the work in the
manner specified by the
author or licensor

Greg Gillis aka Girltalk
 Argues that the lengths of samples are small
enough to be considered ‘fair use’
▪ Fourth album – Feed the Animals
▪ Made from samples from over 300 songs

Remix… It Yourself
 LoopLabs

"Is it worth spending the money suing people
for what will amount to nothing? Or is it
better to embrace it and say, our music is
being used in something pretty cool”
 Charlie Brusco – Styx Manager

The rise of Illegal Art

Henry Jenkins
 -“crystallizing one’s
political perspectives into a
photomontage… is no less
an act of citizenship than
writing a letter to the
editor of a local newspaper
that may or may not
actually print it.”

Photoshop allowed the
effectiveness of
DIY/remix satirists to
explode

Make
 Yourself famous
 Your cause known
 Your voice heard

YouTube
 Enormous avenue for
DIY culture
 DIY road to fame

Doritos “Crash the
Super Bowl” Band
contest

Kina Grannis

Henry Jenkins
 “We have seen… that consumers and fans are
beginning to take pleasure in their newfound
power to shape their media environment”

YouTube’s “The Internet Symphony”
 Hundreds of thousands of musicians from around
the world auditioned via YouTube vlogs
 Global Mash Up
This is relevant because it’s been ReMiXeD….ENJOY