I can has cheezburger

Lolcats using Foucault?!?

Appropriation and Fandom

NB I got so annoyed with the lack of word-wrap on the original incarnation of this post that I re-posted, but in the process lost all of the embedded videos. Fera not, however, for i valiantly went through YouTube and re-retrieved all of the embed codes for your listening and viewing pleasure. Sweet joy.

I wanted to add something on here about fandom and appropriation. I wonder if, in this glorious postmodern age of new technologies and tinternet, fandom represents a new form of appropriation.

Watch this in a dark room:

What does this video mean? Is it possible that this video has any meaning at all?

????????

I'm not interested, however in engaging with the text itself, but rather with the text as an object/ phenomenon.

Click through to YouTube and you'll see the video's had over 2.5million views. As the person who showed me this video said, "what will you ever do in your life that is seen by 2.5million people?".

What do we make of this?

Secondly, notice that the video is not actually their work (according to the notes left by SexyPuerto by the video on the YouTube page); it is that of someone else. They have appropriated the work of someone else which appropriated the work of someone else (Peter Jackson).

What does this say about appropriation?

Now it gets messy:
It seems 'Isengard' is actually part of (or maybe the start of) an entire genre of YouTube appropriations:

A version using the American version of The Office:


A version using Star Wars:

Then there's an entire range of films that appropriate these appropriations:



What does that mean? Some sort of postmodernism2

Now watch this:


And this:


best of all:


I guess there are some conclusions that could be drawn about authorship. Discuss.

Appropriation

Within the visual arts it could arguably be said that Appropriation started within Cubism and the use of found materials. However, these elements were then incorporated in to new pieces. In 1917, Marcel Duchamp showed a piece called 'Fountain' for the first time. This piece involves the display of a urinal as a work of art. The only modification to the factory model was the addition of the signature 'R. Mutt 1917' (an assumed named used by the artist).

This piece is pivotal within the history of art as it is the first example of an artist taking an object and displaying it, as found, within a gallery context. This is appropriation in its purest form within the visual arts. Where the art comes is that by experiencing the object out of its normal context the viewer is invited to consider it on different terms. This may be the consideration of the aesthetic value of something that is considered to be simply practical. It also poses the question of artistic originality and authenticity. It asks the question 'do you have to make something yourself in order for it to be your own work of art?'. With this one step Duchamp opened up the possibilities of art. Art was not just about hand eye coordination but about the adept or poetical choice of objects and ideas.

Appropriation has now become an established part of many artists' methodologies. The history of which can be traced through Dada and Fluxus to Pop Artists such as Andy Warhol. Another example of what could be called a 'pure' form of appropriation is the work of Sherrie Levine in the 1980's. She took specific photographs by Walker Evans and displayed them herself. Here it is demonstrated that a female artist in the 1980's displaying these photographs has very different connotations to Walker Evan's initial reasons for taking the photographs. Here again the 'art' of the work happens 'behind the scenes' as it were. A shifting of values for a fixed point - in this case a photograph. This is akin to a word thats meaning changes over time.

This is evident in all media from the visual arts through to music and commercial culture such as advertisements. Within the music industry sampling is often used to take a small part of one song to create another. However, to find the 'purest' form of appropriation the cover version is more effective. For example, the Sex Pistol's cover of 'I did it my way' by Frank Sinatra brings with it many new connotations. In the original version Sinatra's rendition of the lyrics can be seen to be a comment about his struggle to reach the top of the music business. In the Sex Pistol's version we can not help but reflect on their struggles with substance abuse. Again we see a shift in meaning attaching itself to a single cultural reference point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIXg9KUiy00


Within commercial culture the use of particular styles and fonts are used to create a particular awareness within popular culture of iconic images and the assumed connotations of certain styles and fonts. There is a growing use of irony that relies upon the history and cultural understanding of these visual techniques. For example, the use of the Barbara Kruger piece 'I shop therefore I am' by Selfridges. This act of appropriation seems to invite an attitude of knowing decadence to the stores shopping that is in direct opposition to the questioning nature of the originals. This is particularily interesting to us as the original Barbara Kruger work appropriated fonts and stylings from earlier advertising imagery.

With the ease of access to computer technology over the last two decades it is easier than ever before for anyone to obtain the work of others. Just as popular culture has become more accessible in terms of the ability to produce, so to appropriation has become a far more accepted part of the way popular culture expresses itself. This can be evidenced across the internet on sites such as Youtube and My Space. Here it is easy to take a pop song or image and show it within your own page or site. Instead of a bedroom wall as the site of the consumption for this iconography it is the internet. With this comes instant networking and publication to allow the imagery to be reinterpreted once more. One example is the adaptation of a song with new images as a way to personalise it. Whilst this is not a pure example of appropriation as the original has been altered the song itself has been given a new more personal meaning. Here we can see the same shift in meaning from a single cultural reference point - in this case a pop song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvS90FLE1oE

Through the history of appropriation we can see the process go from controversial large scale public statement through to a proliferation of reinterpration on an ever more personal scale.

Private Property is theft: Appropriation in the post-Marxist age.

"Appropriation is first recorded 1393, "the making of a thing private property;" sense of "setting aside for some purpose" (esp. of money, etc.) is from 1789." It says so here so it must be true.

You're right - we need a proper post on Appropriation.

i publish, you publish, he she or it...

This is the interesting thing about sites like Twitter. On the one hand they allow access to publishing for people that may not have access to that ability before. There is no need for a big printing press just a mobile phone! There are definitely examples of this freedom with people supplying information from places like Iraq and Iran and areas where information is more closely controlled.

I feel hesitant to use the word 'publish'. A dictionary definition is 'to prepare and issue (printed material) for public distribution or sale'. Many blogs, whilst having public access, do not have many if any readers apart from the authors. This blog is just such an example at the moment! This is an area where the idea of empowerment seems to me to be closer to the idea of distraction. Power over the means of production no longer means power. Democratisation of the ability to publish creates information overload as much as it does information empowerment.

Of course this depends on the intended use of the blog (and i include Twitter in this). Is it a way of building and binding a small community that already exists in the 'real' world or a way of disseminating information to a larger audience? The answer is both. It comes down to the relevance and interest of the information and it is up to the the people who read them. Some capture the public's imagination and gain a cult following. This suggests democracy, the people decide what information is relevant.

However, it is undeniable that consumer culture is rising to the possiblities of these new media. A prime example is the battle that Facebook had to have the right to use information posted by its users to focus advertising and examine trends. The internet is a two way street, and as such far easier to monitor than that of television etc. And from this to hone the services and advertising that come with it. With this comes the ability to influence what inform does reach us. Which blogs and posts get noticed, or which trend is picked up by the mainstream, be this on a concious or subconscious level.

Lexicon

Twitter and empowerment

What does Iran and Twitter mean?

I guess the easiest interpretation of this (media) event is to examine Twitter as a tool of empowerment, a democratising force that utilises post-structural communication to organise protest like some sort of rhizomic organic democracy plant, growing under the ground of mainstream politics/ traditional political and media structures. Is this right?

But this seems to have been problematised a bit. Suggestions that Twitter's rescheduling of their downtime for maintenance was prompted/ requested/ directed by American/ western governmental intervention raise questions about the political/ ideological independence of Web2.0 sites. Are these sites (liable to be) part of the state apparatus after all?

(In my possible naivety) I'm not convinced by the ccuracy of the argument that the outage was rescheduled in response to govt intervention and feel it's a bit too Illuminatus, if that's not too inaccurate an anaology. However, I would argue that perhaps the western dominated Web2.0 phenomenon is inherently ideologically slanted and works as some sort of digital-age cultural imperialism which uses enlightenment concepts such as democracy and empowerment to legitimise the colonisation of online intellectual activity. Web2.0 thus becomes some sort of cultural hegemony, owned as it is (increasingly) by the powerful. Google's beanbags seem more ominous now.

OR maybe this can be interpreted differently. Maybe Twitter/ Web2.0 utilises and perpetuates the illusion of empowerment/ democratisation as a mode of offering a false-democracy. Rather than the politics of democracy, it is actually a politics of distraction.

Discuss, using pseudo-academic language that slips just out of reach of the meanings you originally intended but can not quite articulate.

Diversification in the music industry

REM are releasing (purchaseable) typefaces that have been used on their last few albums. Presumably this is a reflection of the way in which the music industry is required to change in the online age. Whilst Radiohead have used all sorts of alternative business models to generate revenue (regular touring, with huge gigs; new distribution methods for music), I haven't heard of anyone else selling typefaces.

What does this mean?