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

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?

“The past always tries to control the future.”A Remixer’s Manifesto, from RIP!

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

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-contextualizationNo 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

Digital appropriation and postmodern de-contextualizationNo one cares about the original creators or the original context in which the work was created or presented.

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?

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)

Appropriation in the 21st Century

Nothing Royalties Acknowledgement Respect Knowledge, true understanding

What do appropriators owe to the creators of the past?

Mashups Fan fiction Fanedits Culture Jamming Machinima Slash Etc etc etc.

The People’s Appropriation (powered by love, ego, creativity, political resistance & critique)

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

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. With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement

2. With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others

3. With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices

4. Where members believe that their contributions matter5. 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).

Participatory Culture

Jaron Lanier, “Digital Maoism” (highlighted by Dr Jim)