Month: March 2009

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Yesterday Alex told me that I needed to consider Cory’s iPod work, unpublished and unreleased on the net, but very much a demake.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.

Baudrillard and the remake

Baudrillard writes of the real, the hyperreal, representation and simulation. Pomo pastiche has led away from real and representation into a world of cyclical hyperreal and simulation. We’re in it and we can’t get out. This is all well and good.

But what does it mean for the remake and the demake?

If one were to take a complete Baudrillardian take on the remake and the demake there would be nothing different. They both mix up the past and the present, techno-fetishism (whether it’s positive or negative), and nostalgia. But because there’s no difference between directionality in the fourth phase of the image there’s no difference between demaking the present and remaking the past.

This is unsatisfying. Sure, if you believe the full extent it’s where we are, but it ignores the additional logics at play (economic, pleasurable/nostalgic, et cetera). And it is these logics that I want to focus on, because they are logics that matter. On a different scale logics of nostalgia and playing with the past are important when you incorporate the economic element of either doing it for money or doing it as a fan. textual poaching on one level is important, even if it is just one level. Similarly, the phenomenological interaction with one’s own past and a directed return to that past is different from an interaction with the past that is mediated by a company’s economic policy that remakes and redoes as part and process of making and doing.

Meaning matters; particularities matter; the pre-incorporation of an unsettled thing matters.