Following on from my previous post, I’m still thinking about a “remix” unit for an art class. I’m leaning more towards a still image approach, but am keeping an open mind. The video work of Christian Marclay (“Clocks” info, Telephones video) would be great, but complicated. I’m thinking more about how the combinations of items/images can create new meanings. How do we perceive appropriation? What and how can we “sample?” What and how can we transfer?

We live in such an overcrowded visual culture with advertising, the internet, social media, TV and numerous other experiences. What would be an artist’s intention to sample work? How is it easier or difficult to appropriate work? What are the physical acts involved in creation versus the digital? How are they separate and how can they overlap?

It’s a lot to consider and raises more questions, which I like. So, similar to the tech unit planned, I am leaning towards “How can existing works (images/items) be used to create something original?” as a unit question. With the concept I am thinking of including how context and the manner of appropriation is used (i.e. juxtaposition). Naturally, I still need to refine these areas.

Some activities and artists I would include are:

• An introduction on how artists transformed everyday items into art (Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Jeff Koons)
• A comparison between Warhol’s “Birmingham Race Riot“ (1964) and Kelly Walker’s “Black Star Press” (2006) and then perhaps further investigation with some of the work by Banksy
• Collage (Richard Hamilton’s “Just What Is It that Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?“ and various collage activities involving images and text, including the work of Jacques de la Villeglé
• Image Transfer techniques
• The sculptural mashups of Brazilian artist Barrão
• JUNE 5 UPDATE: I forgot to mention Culture Jamming

So that’s where I’m at so far.  The title of the unit, “Image Transfer” or “Mashable”. Remember, everything is a remix and Steal Like An Artist.

If you have further ideas/resources for me, please do drop a comment below. I’d appreciate it.

Kirby Ferguson just released part 2 of his of his 4 part production, Everything is a Remix. Part 1 tackled music sampling and here in part 2, he looks into “the remix techniques involved in producing films.” Very entertaining, informative and great if you teach film.

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

I can’t get enough of these from Pogo (MySpace).

RiP: A remix manifesto is a documentary film about copyright and remix culture. You can contribute to the film, and follow the conversation on social networks.

Read a detailed blog post here.

Kutiman must have gone through YouTube with a fine comb to search for these musical clips. He mashed them all together to create this song. Is this guy for real? It’s hours and hours of time. Remember, he had to look for clips that had a similar tempo and that would fit together musically to create this. We’re talking about finding a drum track, vocals, horns and more. I’d love to know how many clips he watched and if he had any assistants. This is a musical and video mashup. Unbelievable. His website has more videos and all the links and video clips he used. My jaw is still open.

I don’t really like stuff put out by Microsoft (I know, I know, sorry), but is their new service ‘Songsmith’ going to be able to contribute to mashups (video above)? I have written about mash-ups before here.

Songsmith generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice. Just choose a musical style, sing into your PC’s microphone, and Songsmith will create backing music for you. Then share your songs with your friends and family, post your songs online, or create your own music videos.

With it, you can add acapella versions and replace them with cheap Casio sounds instead. Yipee! Call me crazy or old fashioned but I think GarageBand is much better. (Songsmith examples below.)

What do you think? Just let me take out the cotton from my ears first. Haven’t you all been waiting for this? Ouch.

Though around for a few years now, mashups and remixes appear to be going more and more mainstream. I am a big fan or mashups and started to rethink these this year with the successes of bands like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead (Coldplay too). They are all high profile recording artists and have given away music free this year. Some have also offered their music to the general public to be remixed freely or in contest form.

First of all, what is a mashup? Basically, a digital mashup is a new creation containing files from previous sources. These can include text, graphics, audio, video or animation. Some of my favourites have been where an ‘artist’ will take two previous songs and combine them to create a new song. Thousands are available on YouTube. Most are popular songs set to anime clips.

One of the best ones was done by Go Home Productions combining Madonna with The Sex Pistols:

Anyway, back to my point. Nine Inch Nails digitally released his new album (The Slip) in May this year without promotion and for free! It has been downloaded over 1.4 million times. Nine Inch Nails also offers fans multitrack files for remixing. These themselves have also become very popular and a mini fan industry.

Now Radiohead as well offered multitrack files for remixing back in April 2008 for their single ‘Nude.’ (They also released this full length album digitally via donations. Fans could pay what they wanted! Even zero dollars was an option). Over 2,000 remixes were submitted according to the band. They are doing it again for new single ‘Reckoner.’ This time, some big name producers have also submitted remixes to the cause (Diplo, Cadence Weapon, Flying Lotus). Anyone with a computer can remix these songs and upload them to the remix site where listeners can vote. Who is feeling creative? I guess the whole point is to see what other people can do to their music. Or is it?

Fans were also asked to submit video creations for the same song. Clement Picon won and his video creation was then actually chosen as the official video for the song. Yes, this is neat. Giving fans the chance to contribute. But I then started thinking, is it a clever way to cut production costs? Are we being duped? (Hopefully not.)

All these contests, mashups and remixes reminded me of all the issues regarding intellectual property and copyright. I then remind myself of Lawrence Lessig and ‘permission culture.’ Of course I am referring to Creative Commons (CC). Are there ways that this can be incorporated into the classroom? If you have done so, drop me a line.

Here are a few of my favourite mashups since it’s Friday: