A first draft of my research paper is still spread into pieces all over my blog - I am still working on how to structure it to make sense! This is how I plan to do it (but after The Network as a Space and Medium for Collaborative Interdisciplinary Art Practice conference it might also change a bit):
- Remix and remix art- Collaboration in general and on-line collaboration
- Some examples that would be explained through the text
And now, few words on Maria Engberg's lectures! We started with a remix – famous graphic advertisments, showing young people dancing and enjoying their life when listening to their iPod, where put into completely another context. Instead of word iPod new image uses iRaq to spread a strong political message against the war in Iraq. As Maria explained, in order to decode the right message, you need to know where does the idea come from. That means that you need to understand its historical and social context, including the current situation. Basically, remixing is all about making something new out of something that has already been made – but to label it with a new meaning, to make a new interpretation of it, to look on it from a new and different point of view. I wonder if a remix has any sense at all if we do not know what has been remixed? If we do not know the origins of a remix, we may not get the idea what the remix is all about.
The artists of the Avant-garde wanted to create something new. Their main tool was college, meaning to glue different pieces together. Today's more common montage is just another, moving version of gluing different shots into a video. If this kind of remixing (and in my opinion this, in fact, is an act of remix) really means creating something new is a question of another matter – what might be more important here is the message and concept of art itself. Maria talked about art as a life practice. But when is art and its cultural practice going too far?
Whatever the right answer might be, from the Dadaists, the Futuralists, and the Situationists towards today's artists, a collaborative art has become very popular, and cultural-valued also. Although many people argue that no skills are needed to make such pieces of art, we should rather look at the purpose which is mainly artistic. But then there is also fun, creative pleasure, and the questions like how something was put together (when we talk about so called (re)combinatories).
Some expamples of collaboration:
- The T-Mobile Dance Commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3d3KigPQM
- You and We: A Collective Experiment from Born Magazie: http://www.bornmagazine.org/youandwe/
