remix culture

Something that I have so far given short shrift to in my analyses has been art and music. Yes, that’s two things, but bear with me and their unity will make a certain sort of sense.

I started my investigations (although that’s a bit of a pompous word) by looking at representation of gender over time, I then moved to stories across borders and through time, next I started looking at texts over borders, and more recently still I’ve started looking at repetition over time and more generally repetition in media. In this progression I’ve moved from art to myths to cinema to gaming. In this progression I have definitely moved away from the realm of ‘art’ with little desire to go back. In fact, I think I’ve had a bit of a fear of going back. That really shouldn’t be the case and need to do something about it. One of the things I’ve been doing is inserting references to art or music work that I’ve never really fully considered. This is because I know it’s important, but also because I’ve been lazy and taking advantage of footnotes. One such rather constant reference has been Cory Arcangel.

Yesterday Alex told me that I needed to consider Cory’s iPod work, unpublished and unreleased on the net, but very much a demake. From five years ago. I happened, through incredible luck, to meet Cory today at Eyebeam and got to a) be informed of Grand Theftendo, a demake from 2004, b) see/experience the iPod (a great demake), and c) be schooled in the 8 bit midi music arena that more than likely started what I am have been calling the demake. It doesn’t map on perfectly, but it certainly has important similarities.

So, now I have to incorporate the idea of artwork and artistic switches into the logics of the remake and demake. Thankfully, I also have a greater understanding of how I plan on doing that as well as how I plan on rewriting the paper.