Authorship
Interaction

&

RIP! A remix manifesto is a video arguing against the restraints of copyright laws which are aimed at controlling 'Intellectual property' and to stop others from using it themselves. The documentary follows a music producer 'Girl Talk' who chops and samples existing songs to create entirely new tracks. It uses this as an example as to why the barriers that copyright imposes limit creative people and how in reducing these barriers it will create more freedom for people to use old work as inspiration for remixing to create new exciting works.

This idea of remixing is popular especially in modern music, sampling is becoming one of the more prominent ways creating music.

MAIN 
ESSENTIAL
THEORIES

4

Culture always builds on the past

The past always tries to control the future

Our future is becoming less free

To create free societies you must limit the influence from the past

The videos on left demonstrate how this idea of remixing is so prominent in todays culture, by reducing the current legal barriers which are in place we can help to motivate this kind of creativity. Kendrick Lamar used the main sound of Jet ages track as the beat for his own song, however it was not considered a remix instead was considered an entirely new song.

A famous case of this control was the legal battle between Richard prince, an appropriation artist, who uses others work to give new life and meaning by visually transforming it, and Patrick Cariou, a photographic reporter/documenter. Prince used 35 Carious images of native african tribes to create his own work for his Canal Zone exhibition.

Cariou exercised his right as the author to take Prince to court over the allegation that Prince used the images without permission, Prince admitted that he used Carious images with the intention to the sell them after and without getting consent from Cariou. Because of this Prince was ordered to destroy the images and lost around £6 million pounds in sales. This legal control that the author can possess has installed a fear in creative people which can potentially suppress the ideas we have and stop people from expressing themselves. This has placed the author in a very authoritarian role at the top of the heriarchy and given him/her complete power.

When looking at remixing user interaction is a big part of this culture, how we as an audience can come up with our own ideas and interpretations about the story. In one of our workshops we looked at creating a non-linear narrative using Hotglue.
The link on the left takes you to my non-linear narratives page.