iGeneration 08

The remix project that I have undertaken is designed to investigate various notions of community, participation, the relationship between producers and users of content and the effects of digital technology on all of these. Over the course of the project I have compiled raw material from three primary sources – original art (used with explicit permission) from artist Michael “Ziksaur” Allen, music (again used with explicit permission) from The Large Hadron Collective and various photographs sourced from the photo sharing website flickr, released through the Creative Commons system. Using these to create a video, I have effected a fundamental change on the original pieces, through re-contextualisation and remediation, or otherwise put, fundamentally remixed them.

Michael Allen is primarily an illustrator, whose work I have adapted here for several reasons. Partly because his visual style suits and ambience for which I was aiming, but more importantly because he is himself a remix artist, in that he superimposes plain line drawings on photographs taken by photographers that aren’t himself. This idea of remixing a remix is one idealized in academia, notably by Lawrence Lessig, and practiced in pop culture, notably by musician Girl Talk. (Johnsen, Christensen, Moltke. goodcopybadcopy, 2007) Furthermore, my remixing of his original works extends to re-mediating them – namely, through animation of his static drawings. Again, this represents a fundamental change in the way his creations are consumed. This recontextualisation extends beyond this remediation however. The original drawings are an unconnected album, whose only real point of connection is a love/loss dichotomy. Some are even found as artwork to CD jackets, completely separate from any others. My work has, however, attached a linear narrative to these otherwise unconnected points. It has also changed the themes from love/loss to community and participation, contrasted with isolation. Finally, Michael is a resident of Sydney, and we exchanged materials using the digital technologies of the Internet.
It is with a similar mindset that I chose the work of the Large Hadron Collective to form the soundscape for my project, the LHC being a group of musicians who encourage remixing of each other’s work, as well as large-scale collaboration. Furthermore, the LHC typically produces ambient music designed to complement ideas of space and, unsurprisingly, particle science. The result of my work on two LHC tracks is a less ambient, more percussive sound. This was achieved using nothing other than sounds already existing in the original pieces, with minimal modulation. Finally, the backgrounds, sourced from flickr demonstrate further attention to the facilitating nature of the Internet, for content distribution.

As can be seen, I have approached this project attempting to articulate various aspects of participatory culture before even beginning my own work. All content has been distributed using the Internet, in the form of jpeg images and mp3 sound files, highlighting the idea that despite my work, the original content remains intact and discrete. My choice of content, particularly the work of Michael Allen is representative of a desire to show the depth possible with second or third generation remixes. That is, content that has already been shown in multiple contexts.

The primary themes of the animation are as follows: a rejection of the producer/consumer dichotomy as the only means by which content is distributed; the value of participation in creation of an environment; the increase in quality of life when engaged in a community and; the ease of distribution of data without loss in this new world. These are all important aspects of participatory culture, as defined by J.D Lasica in the online introduction to his book Darknet (Lasica, J. 2005.) This new form of participatory culture is facilitated largely through the ease of distribution and reproduction afforded by the Internet.

The video begins with a disembodied hand holding a spray-can. It paints a bleak picture of urban decay, in black and white, then a low quality outline drawing of a person sitting down within this. A brighter, more well-defined person moves into view and takes the spray-can away, before moving up to the line drawing person. She breaks open another spray-can, that has until now been a part of the background, or the environment in which these people find themselves. She dips her hand into the paint that issues forth from this, and uses it to draw the sitting person. He then comes alive, to take the question mark from her face, and throw it into the can. It explodes with colour, and washes away leaving a river of paint, on which the people can now sail away. Thus far we see the disembodied hand/spray-can representative of a producer, disconnected from its consumers. The producer is also the entity that holds the power in this situation, as it has created the (cultural) environment in which the consumer finds himself, a reference to the history of litigation to protect the status quo used by the producers of dominant culture at the time. (Doctorow, 2008, pp. 3-27.) In this case, the consumer and the product are the same thing. And, good though this product may be, as it matches its environment very well, it is improved (given bolder lines, brighter contrast, and brought to life) when it is adjusted by its peer (the woman who also has bold lines, a white body and the ability to move). With his newfound empowerment, the man immediately takes the opportunity to interact with the woman, by remixing her, that is, removing the question mark from her face. This question mark is emblematic of the anonymous nature of the Internet, as well as the current situation in which user generated content is at the fringe of society, and many of its proponents are simply anonymous people in a sea of other contributors. Indeed, an idealised notion of this user generated content movement is that people are making things for themselves, and the notion of a superstar becoming well known to many is not necessarily the main aim. (Discussion, iGeneration Honours group, 2008) In engaging with the woman, and remixing her he has made her known to him, and the audience. The man has also by now blown open the paint can, casting colour everywhere. He has now remixed the environment given to him by the original producer, and arguably made it better. The people, having empowered each other now leave and begin to engage with the world at large.

They first encounter a man sitting alone and looking downcast. Upon sailing up to them the man looks over to them, and gives a copy of his face to the man in the boat. He then smiles, and the couple sail off. The main themes of this scene are again, the value of the remix – the original man is now a third generation remix, his appearance coming from three different sources. Keen eyed viewers will notice that the face given to the man in the boat is different from the face of the man on the bench. It is to be assumed that the face itself has undergone a remix, so it is better suited to the new man, rather than being an unadaptable production line stamped entity – a relic of the producer/consumer dichotomy. Secondly is the sense of community fostered by participation – the man they discover sitting on the bench is sad and lonely, and when given an opportunity to engage with his community (of white outline people) he becomes happy. These themes are again explored in the third scene, in which the couple come across a giant, again without a face, who takes a face from them and puts it on himself. The face is again remixed to suit the giant who is using it. The face is now a third generation remix, and can be thought of as a cultural meme propagating itself throughout society, adapting itself as necessary. Obviously it is a useful piece of information, as everybody begins without it (except the lonely man, who seeds it) yet by the end everybody has it, and has wanted it. The people here are arranged in what can be described as a peer-to-peer network, with information flowing between people as nodes. (Jensen, 2003, Chapter 1) This situation is one that is mutually beneficial to all involved, even if they do not necessarily contribute the network in the same way. The lonely man shares his face, and receives companionship in return. The giant is given a face by the boatists, and in return throws them to where they wish to go, something they couldn’t otherwise achieve.
The final scene again looks into the relationship between peers and their environment. When the piano is struck by the two people, the music changes; they are in effect playing it, and at the same time changing the harmony of the scene, or changing the climate in which they are. Beside the credit roll is a final image of the couple, this time seen to be sharing legs and feet, and looking the happiest they have yet. They are symbolically and literally entwined and together, and it is through their travels throughout the world creating each other that they have become this way. It indicates the fundamental interconnectedness of people, and how this can be brought out through participation in the exchange of ideas, for a mutual gain.
Choosing Flash animation for this project was done because of the suitability of the medium for adapting my chosen source materials – hand drawn pictures and photographs, particularly with the attempt of bringing them to life. Thematically, Flash was a good choice because it is a wholly digital tool, and defines itself as such. (Adobe Advertisement) In portraying the value of digital technology, using a technology other than digital to create this portrayal could be construed as insincere. It is not without its drawbacks however – some animation frames definitely skip and jump about in a way that is distracting to the eye, and continuity between the static images and their animated counterparts is at times sloppy. This was not an anticipated problem. Similarly, it was somewhat difficult to mix the sound with the video in a satisfactory manner. My original intention was for notes of to be struck as the characters jumped on the piano keys, but the timing of this proved too difficult, and I settled instead for a simple harmonic shift. However, these problems are negligible compared with the benefits of the medium, particularly when such a fundamental reworking and remediation of the source material is necessary to my aims for this project. I believe I have remixed these works in a meaningful manner, both in terms of medium and in terms of context. Whilst remaining recognisably similar to the work of the original authors, these artworks are transformed through my efforts.

Primary Sources:
Allen, M. a_mixtape? (2007) [picture] Used with explicit permission from the author.
Allen, M. Also Newish (2007) [picture] Used with explicit permission from the author.
Allen, M mixtape_september_2006 (2006) [picture] Used with explicit permission from the author.
Allen, M. Real Old (2004) [picture] Used with explicit permission from the author.
Allen, M. Real Old, Again, Again (2003) [picture] Used with explicit permission from the author.
Allen, M. St James Park, London (2004) [picture] Used with explicit permission from the author.
Allen, M. [untitled] (2008) [picture] Used with explicit permission from the author.
Allen, M. ZiksauR (2008) [picture] Used with explicit permission from the author.

Quirk, J. Europa (2008) [audio] Used with explicit permission from the author.
Quirk, J. it’s time to go home (2008) [audio] Used with explicit permission from the author.
*These audio tracks have since been made available at www.myspace.com/thelargehadroncollective

Alley Piano – BrianWarren. Uploaded September 18 2008
http://flickr.com/photos/vistamonster/2868180078/ (CC AT NC SA)
Urban Decay – stop.down. Uploaded September 13 2007
http://flickr.com/photos/stopdown/1376260505/ (CC AT)
Mountain Creek Lake Sunrise-3 – MelRick. Uploaded August 30 2008
http://flickr.com/photos/melrick/2811818730/ (CC AT NC SA)
Rock in the River – DanielJames. Uploaded May 21 2007
http://flickr.com/photos/revjim/507568161/ (CC AT NC SA)

*CC = Licensed under the Creative Commons
AT = Attribute
NC = For Non-Commercial Use only.
SA = Share Alike

Secondary Sources
Doctorow, Corey (2008) Content. San Francisco: Tachyon.
goodcopybadcopy (2007), dir. Andres Johnsen, Henrik Moltke, Ralf Christensen, prod. Rosforth
Jensen, Scott (2003) The P2P Revolution. http://www.nonesuch.org/p2prevolution.pdf First accessed Sept. 21 2008.
Lasica, J. D. (2005) Darknet http://www.darknet.com/2005/05/darknet_miniboo.html First Accessed July 27 2008.
Lessig, Lawrence (2004) Free Culture. New York: Penguin.

In addition comments by the members of the iGeneration Honours group 2008, both in the course blog (http://igeneration.edublogs.org) and in personal discussions have been of invaluable assistance.

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