Heavyset

Vandalized picture of Pol Pot on Flickr by Kasel. Context is everything.

Faris Yakob, who is becoming to remix posts what Andy Weatherall is to remixes, made some interesting points last week in his aptly-titled Beats and Pieces:¹

We make stuff out of other things – poems out of words, paintings out of colors, metaphors out of disparate ideas, complex ideas out of simple ones, music out of sounds and so on.

So why is it that remix culture is so much more relevant obvious discussed now?

It’s because media has become much easier to reproduce thanks to the radical decentralisation of the economics of cultural production.

…these complex building blocks have the added cultural weight of being part of pre-existing artifacts, which means you can, if you choose, use the web of associations that were built into the original artifact as foundations for your own.

…When you sample Obama saying hope – it doesn’t mean exactly the same thing as just using the word hope.

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Amber over at Naked² posted last week on the proliferation of white bicycles in store windows, and the eerie cultural references associated with bikes of that color:

Around Valentine’s Day, I noticed a few stories pop up about some displays in Macy’s stores that featured bikes painted white.   Their similarities to Ghost Bikes — bikes painted white, and installed as a permanent memorial to bikers killed on city streets — were the topic of debate, and reactions ranged from incredibly offended to indifference.  (DKNY had a simliar installation – bikes painted neon orange around the city, but their was intended to support cyclists). If you live in New York, you’ve probably seen Ghost Bikes around town – for me, the visual of a bike painted white is synonymous with mourning and sadness now.

…People are our Partners, which we means we should not only be in touch with what’s out there, but also that we need to understand that some of these things are already rooted in meaning, and that meaning should be respected.

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So how do we reconcile the ability to recontextualize…anything…with the inherent meaning of objects? The fact is that a sample of Obama saying ‘hope’ means exactly the same thing as using the word ‘hope’ to someone for whom Obama carries no meaning, just as the chinese characters inked into your torso scream ‘hip’ to some, and ‘insert General Tso’s chicken here‘ to others. Cultural weight, indeed.

Issues of copyright aside (far too complex for this venue, I think), is there a distinction to be made between Negativland’s ‘The Letter U and the Numeral 2‘ or Evolution Control Committee’s ‘Rocked by Rape‘ and Thru You? I’m not sure that there is.

What is, though, increasingly relevant is the need to understand the ‘web of associations’ that define the artifacts we use, particularly as our remixes propagate channels that are geographically decentralized. One cannot reasonably expand on something until one understands it.

Failing that, we run the risk of making not, as Faris says, ‘complex ideas out of simple ones’, but rather ’simple ideas out of complex ones’.

1. I am embracing the secret pleasure derived from utilizing a Coldcut single title in reference to a post whose name was derived from another Coldcut single that spawned the former. Confused? Doesn’t matter. If you were going to get the joke, you already did [↩]
2. Also enjoying referencing Faris’ former colleagues in response to his own post [↩]

Related posts:

1. Ambience as Ambiance
2. Even Yet Still More Coldcut and Thru You
3. Using Weather to, Apparently, Preoccupy the Entire British Planning and New Media Apparatus
4. Saved (and Hidden) by Science
5. Inventing a Market: Tubular Bells