I’ve been away on a small internet free holiday but I’ve been reinvigorated by the doco I watched on SBS tonight – RIP: A Remix Manifesto. It’s a film all about copyright, remixing, culture fair use, the power of corporations over consumers and, possibly most frighteningly, the power of corporations over ideas and how that will negatively impact our culture.
(check out the trailer here)
The Remixer’s Manifesto is this
- Culture always builds on the past
- The past always tried to control the future
- Our future is becoming less free
- To build free societies you must limit control of the past
Artist’s (in terms of painters and sculptures and the like) have been doing this for centuries – as have musicians (as you will see when you watch this film). All ideas build on those which are before them. You could only come up with a fresh completely new idea if you knew nothing of anything ever – otherwise you are interpreting things you have heard, read, seen, etc. etc.
This film looks at culture being used to comment on itself; where it has been or where it is going. In a world of youtube and other filesharing sites we can all be producers and consumers almost concurrently. It’s also got a lot of Girl Talk in it and that dude is amazing.
Anyway… this is an extremely interesting movie – if you’ve got some time give it a look. Brett Gaylor, the director, says at the end of the film “take this movie, rip it, and remix it”: after watching it you can recut the movie and post it back to him at www.opensourcecinema.org – he wants you to use what he has created to meld with your own ideas and build something new.
enjoy your holidays
Here’s an example of one a friend of mine from uni did when he though Beck made a terrible filmclip for his song Nausea - he’s not the only person who thought this and there are quite a few remixes of this out there.
January 30, 2010 at 4:56 pm |
I really want to watch that documentary–it does sound interesting and really puts things into perspective. It’s true–everything you’ve ever done (write, create, build, etc) have always been an influence of something else. Therefore, no idea is completely original because it has always been based on your interpretation of something else you have come across in the past.