Travels in Intertextuality: the autopoetic identity of remix culture more

TRAVELS IN INTERTEXTUALITY: THE AUTOPOETIC IDENTITY OF REMIX CULTURE by Joel Anthony Flynn Bachelor of Commerce, University of British Columbia, 1996 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF APPLIED SCIENCE In the School of Interactive Arts & Technology of Faculty of Applied Sciences © Joel Anthony Flynn 2006 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Spring 2006 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL Name: Degree: Title of Thesis: Joel Anthony Flynn Master of Applied Science, Interactive Arts Travels in Intertextuality: The Autopoetic Identity of Remix Culture Examining Committee: Chair: Title and Name Ron Wakkary, Graduate Chair, SIAT ________________________________________ Title and Name Senior Supervisor Mike Dobson, Assistant Professor, SIAT ________________________________________ Title and Name Supervisor John Bowes, Director, SIAT ________________________________________ Title and Name Niranjan Rajah Examiner Associate Professor, School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT), Simon Fraser University Date Defended/Approved: March 17, 2006 ___________________________ ii ABSTRACT Travels in Intertextuality aims for what John Berger would call “ways of seeing” digital media artifacts and interacting cultural texts. Using Lev Manovich’s Language of New Media, these “new media objects” are seen through the metaphorical “coordinated set of lenses” of Michael Cole’s Cultural Psychology. In addressing issues of “writing” and identity in the digital age at the intersection of technology, art, and commerce, this highly exploratory work looks for ways to perceive “value” in remix culture through ecological models of sociocultural systems. The thesis “follows the problem” of remix through “pioneering research”, “reflective practice”, and shifting contexts for expansive learning. Emerging from significant pools of digital media, “remix value” is analysed through cultural-historical perspectives, as well as through the autopoietic perspectives of “self-making” biological and sociolinguistic systems. iii DEDICATION This work is of course for my family, in all our ups and downs, especially in what has been a very difficult, though hopeful, year. And hopefully, all the efforts, passions, and joys – big, small, and growing – can find their way to that common ground that brings us together, whether through the luck of the Irish or at the end of a rainbow, or maybe even a bit of both. This work is also dedicated to a brother that we lost along the way. He was the biggest fan of the game. But for me, most of all, this work is for my wife Lorena. Every single word of it.1 1 …and then some. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It’s a kind of magnetic selection that you’re doing while you’re going. There’s a kind of journey you’re doing by yourself, then suddenly you discover that on the same direction you meet other people. You can meet a friend [and] they can do this journey [with you]. You can meet people that can be your guide for a portion of this journey. - Vitorrio Storano I’d like to acknowledge and thank everyone one of the friends that I’ve met along this journey, beginning with my supervisory committee and those I’ve worked with and who have helped me sort through the mix, pushing me in when needed, while pulling me out only when absolutely necessary. These acknowledgements and thanks obviously go out to my “official” supervisors in professors Mike Dobson and John Bowes for their patience in waiting for and wading through “The Neverending Draft”, as well as professor Niranjan Rajah as the external reviewer of this thesis. Special thanks also to Jim Budd, Ken Park, Henry Daniel, Jim Bizzocchi, Paul D. Miller, Martin Laba and Phil Graham, who have all offered and provided their support at one time or another as potential supervisors or examiners of the thesis. I’d like to also acknowledge and thank the many unofficial supervisors of former and current SIAT and SFU faculty for their direct guidance in my work, their intellectual trailblazing, or their invaluable assistance in helping me out in terms of finding gainful employment that has helped support my studies: Tom Calvert, Ron Wakkary, Monique Silverman, Chantal Gibson, Janet McKraken, Russel Taylor, Kenneth Newby, Carol Bonnani, Steve Dipaolo, Tecla Schiphorst, Suzan Kozel, Jane Fee, Paul Stacey, Arthur Fallick and any others from the old guard who I’ve inadvertently missed. Special thanks in regards to this unofficial supervision also goes to the Graduate Chair Rob Woodbury, and again to Jim Budd, both of whom I remember from my very first academic meeting in October 2001, on my very first day of work in some faraway land known as TechBC. What a crazy place! I’d like to thank the various scholars beyond SFU that I’ve been in contact with over the course of these travels and who have been nice enough to arrange a meeting with me, take a telephone call, or discuss an idea or two via email: Michael Cole, Larry Lessig, Matteo Bittanti, Marsha Kinder, Ze Frank, David H. Rosen, and to both Paul D. Miller and Phil Graham once again. Others that I haven’t met but who have been greatly influential and with whom I would welcome the opportunity to discuss their work further (wherever they may be): Yrjö Engeström, Lev Manovich, John Seely Brown, John Berger, Umberto Eco, Donald Schön, Jay Lemke, Mark Gover, Donald Norman, Julia Kristeva, Jean Baudrillard, John Thackara, Niklas Luhmman, Mark C. Taylor, Thomas Frank, John Seabrook, Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi, John Hagel, Martin Kretschmer, Jerry Hirshberg, Bonnie Nardi, and Giulio Jacucci. Intellectual debts must also be paid to the following scholars and influences, even though they’re no longer around to take credit: Gregory Bateson, Marx Wartofsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, Walter Benjamin, Dziga Vertov, Roderick Haig-Brown, Urie Bronfenbrenner, Jacques Derrida, Maturna and Varela, Marshall McLuhan, Lev Vygotsky, Alexander Luria, Raymond Williams, and Dr. Seuss (or course). In addition to these scholars, whether within or beyond SIAT and SFU’s faculty, I’d like to send my appreciation to the administrative work done at the school by, among others, Allison Neil, Joyce Black, Lynne Jamieson, Liz Konyari, Desiree Nazareth, Terri Chanyungco, as well the legal and ethical consultation and administration provided by Barb Ralph and Justine Bizzocchi at SFU and especially Doug Copland and Jessica Yeung at Borden Ladern Gervais. These individuals have all helped tremendously in v keeping the paper-based versions of my identity and my projects in order despite the ever-changing currents of SIAT’s ongoing development and/or my ongoing research. There are also my peers, i.e. those who I’ve worked with in teaching and developing numerous courses, papers, and projects over the years and who have helped get the job done on many occasions, not to mention have done serious time at the school, both physically and virtually. This would also include, on a first-name basis, the likes of Anthony, Eric, Jason, Camille, Cindy, James, Suzan, Yanna, Gilly, Mark, Malahat, So-Young, Sola, Herbert, Krys, Andrew, Dan, Chad, Milena, Terry, Jack, Arsalan, Denise, Kirt, Alain, Alex, Alecs, Douglas, David(s), Huaxin, Qi, Bailey, Phoebe, Nima, Drew, Lorna, Greg, Miraj, Ying, Dale, Davis – wow, there’s lots, and still more! The grad student association, especially the leadership work of present and past presidents Haizley, Doreen, Caitlin, and Robin has also been there to provide some needed sense of community when it often seems easier to simply tune out into “the Work”. Also not to be missed are the always important and often anonymous technical assistants and facilities folk at the other end of help-surrey@sfu.ca. You know who your are (though sometimes we don’t!). Of course, cheers to the exclusive group of students, many of which have now graduated, but were in one of my classes at some point or another over the course of their degree. You also know who you are. Thanks for “keeping it real” (Is that what the kids say these days?). More cheer goes to those who actually made it to class. " Outside of the academic space there have been individuals who have also been helpful in meeting and discussing ideas, sending links, if not building friendships. The first of these individuals has to be Nolan March, who has had nothing but guts and karma in tending to the streams of media and making for some great days of fishing. This group also includes the likes of David Bastedo of Ten plus One, Richard Eckel of Groove Networks, Jim Austin of Redsand, Jim Healy and Paul Hanlon of the Boston Red Sox, Jake Gold and Shelley Stertz of The Management Trust, Tina Chang, Gerry Moylan and Mmmerck at Sanctuary, Sarah at Big Hassel, Allan Best at Habbo Hotel, and again, Ken Park of Octopus Media who has helped make the city of New York an amazing place for me (and this is coming from a BoSox fan!), even though I don’t make it there often. Of course, I can’t forget the queen of college radio, Amber K. Miller. Definitely on of the top of the Halcyon Days guestlist for show #2 at the Commodore Ballroom!! I also have to thank all the bands and artists and venues, as well as their handlers, that have been influential in the direct or indirect development of this work over the years, most often by simply being on a performance stage, whether I happened to have a camera with me or not. This includes, but in no possible way limited to, The National, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Tragically Hip, Country of Miracles, Built to Spill, Six by Seven, Guided by Voices, Joseph Arthur, Joan as Police Woman, R.E.M., The Pixies, and, oh yeah, Cracker (“You guys are the best”!… except, that is, for The Catherine Wheel). Can’t forget my own band and our twelve-game run to the Cup final. Ahhh…. those were the halcyon days. Special thanks of course goes to guys from Swell, who really got this thing going way way back in the day through some emails, some visits to California, and even a timely and unexpected visit to Campbell River. Thanks to those back who’ve looked after me and whom I’ve learned from in the home river of the Campbell with its various schools of fish. I’m also grateful to the other river systems that have taken care of me over the years, whether playing ball down in San Diego, coming in for the cleanup shift at Overwaitea #205, driving the old Island Highway to catch the ferry back to another school of fish at UBC, to waking up in the Mac Lab at BCIT in time for a $.99 pizza breakfast, to travelling all manner of places not requiring physical movement, only a keen imagination and maybe an Internet connection. I’ve met and grown up with many fellow travellers along these roads and riverbeds, so whether it was in a pinch or for a pint… thanks! Whomever I’ve missed, my apologies, as this list is framed most through an academic lens (which will get into in much more detail). Just let me known and I’ll add you to the mix. This is an “open work” after all. At this point though, it’s been a long trip, and I should probably go to bed now. –jf (May 31, 2006) vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Approval.........................................................................................................................ii Abstract.........................................................................................................................iii Dedication .....................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................v Table of Contents ........................................................................................................vii List of Figures................................................................................................................x List of Tables .............................................................................................................xvii Introduction .................................................................................................................21 Travelogue: ..................................................................................................................23 A Slow Dance Through the Strike Zone of Proximal Development (Artifact 5.11)........................23 I. A strike to hit… ..............................................................................................................25 II. A story to tell… ..............................................................................................................26 III. A call to make… ............................................................................................................29 IV. A bell to ring…...............................................................................................................32 V. A trip to take…...............................................................................................................37 VI. A ride to catch…............................................................................................................40 VII. A band to hear… ...........................................................................................................43 VIII. A pitch to throw…..........................................................................................................45 IX. A plane to catch….........................................................................................................48 X. A show to catch… .........................................................................................................52 XI. A fish to catch… ............................................................................................................55 XII. A game to finish….........................................................................................................59 XIII. One that got away… .....................................................................................................61 XIV. A tale to weave… ..........................................................................................................63 XV. An appeal to the video judges…...................................................................................67 XVI. A view to flip…...............................................................................................................69 XVII. A show to see… ............................................................................................................71 An Epilogue for a Fishing Trip (a little early in the mix): .................................................................74 XVIII. A wave to catch… .........................................................................................................75 XIX. A zone to find….............................................................................................................79 XX. A selection to make… ...................................................................................................84 XXI. A problem to follow… ....................................................................................................88 XXII. A dialogue to engage… ................................................................................................91 vii 1. 2. Remixing Metaphors – The Issue to be Addressed ...............................93 Theoretical Underpinnings....................................................................117 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3. On aura, value, and intertextual travel .......................................................................120 On culture, history, and measuring “quality” ..............................................................141 On learning, reacting, and expanding ........................................................................150 On method and reframing...........................................................................................161 On metaphor and reflective practice ..........................................................................166 On dialogue, memory, and intertextual feedback loops ............................................179 On complexity, emergence, and ecological “flow” .....................................................182 On narrative, identity, and autopoiesis.......................................................................188 Theoretical recap and an alienated remix..................................................................203 A Journey Towards Appropriate Data ..................................................207 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 4. The problem of “the oak in the acorn” ........................................................................209 “Official” vs. “unofficial” data .......................................................................................217 Basic principles of an “ordinary” culture in the digital age.........................................222 Remix in “music and the media arts”..........................................................................232 Value at “the edge”......................................................................................................236 Selecting the data........................................................................................................241 Methods and Procedures of Analysis ..................................................245 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5. Adopting a framework .................................................................................................246 Creating a methodology..............................................................................................251 Finding an activity........................................................................................................264 Entering the process ...................................................................................................275 Considering evidence..................................................................................................283 Summary of Results ..............................................................................284 Artifact 5.1 “Fan of Yours” (July 16, 2005)....................................................................................285 Artifact 5.2 The Tragically Hip’s In Between Forgetting and Coldplay’s XYZ (December 2004 and June 2005) ..................................................................................................286 Artifact 5.3 Nightmare on Tern Place (August 2000)....................................................................286 Artifact 5.4 Ordinary Remix of Demo Reels (October 2000)........................................................287 Artifact 5.5 The Halcyon Days 5-song Demo EP (January 2000) ...............................................288 Artifact 5.6 The Multi-angle Halcyon Days DVD (March 2000 and July 2004) ...........................289 Artifact 5.7 Fan Experiments with a Movie Camera (June 2000 to present)...............................290 Artifact 5.8 Kid A With Movie Camera (December 2003 & May 2004)........................................291 Artifact 5.9 3-point Shooting: a User-Driven Split Screen Remix Technique (May 2004 to present)........................................................................................................................292 Artifact 5.10 The Swell Formula, a.k.a. How it Goes (May 2005)..............................................293 Artifact 5.11 A Slow Dance Through the Zone of Proximal Development (December 2004 – present) ...........................................................................................................294 Artifact 5.12 The Desolation Sound System (July 2005 and January 2006) ........................296 viii Conclusions and Future Works ................................................................................298 Conclusion #1: Remix. The same… but different. ........................................................................305 Conclusion #2: The method is appropriate ...................................................................................307 Conclusion #3: The method is not context-free ............................................................................308 Conclusion #4: Method is not a substitute for practical experience.............................................310 Conclusion #5: Autopoiesis becomes “autopoetics”.....................................................................311 Conclusion #6: Remix leads to questions of integrity...................................................................315 Conclusion #7: Fishing for an “official” red herring .......................................................................317 Conclusion #8: “The dream of a novelist and a scientist combined” ...........................................320 Conclusion #9: On finishing eighteen, and calling it a day… .......................................................324 References .................................................................................................................327 Appendices ................................................................................................................344 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Figure 2. Figure 3. Figure 4. Figure 5. Figure 6. Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss ................................................................. xviii Pacific Salmon by Roderick Haig-Brown, date unknown ............................................................................ xviii Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. T.S. Geisel) ..................................xix Screenshot from menu screen of the Halcyon Days multi-angle DVD, July 2004 .......................................xx Screenshots from the October 1st at bat between Tim Wakefield of the Boston Red Sox and Gary Sheffield of the New York Yankees, taken from game archives on the MLB.com website............... 24 Repeat of the screenshots from the October 1st at bat between Tim Wakefield of the Boston Red Sox and Gary Sheffield of the New York Yankees. For the results of this at bat, click the link to the archived video of the game. This approach keeping this document open to adding links to potential external media will used frequently..................................................................................... 26 Screenshot clipping of the notice of permission requirment for the use of MLB.com “Materials”) as seen on the website’s “Official Info” pages................................................................................................ 27 Images from video taken at Fenway Park on September 8, 2005, including the words of the late commissioner of Major League Baseball and President of Yale University, A. Bartlett Giamatti............... 28 Shot of Tim Wakefield (left) on the way to commercial break during Fox Sports Network’s television coverage of a game between the Boston Red Sox vs. and the Oakland Athletics at Fenway Park, September 16, 2005. The game was also broadcast on radio via Boston station WEEI (center) and archived on the MLB.com’s “Gameday Audio” feature (right). ..................................... 29 MLB.com’s “Gameday” feature (left) and ESPN.com’s version of the same idea called “Gamecast” both interfaces to the game of baseball are available free of charge, where as online radio and television feeds charge a subscription feed. ...................................................................... 30 MLB.com’s soon-to-be-launched “MLB Mosaic” feature which allows multiple streams of video content to be displayed simultaneously, giving the user the ability to navigate between various Major League baseball games taking place in various North American cities............................................. 31 Various pictures and posters from gigs at the Town Pump in Vancouver in the 1990s, including photo of Greg Duuli of The Afghan Whigs in 1993, a poster for a show by the band Negativeland and pictures of Michelle McAdorey and Colin Cripps of Crash Vegas in 1995. ................... 33 The English band Radiohead, pictured in a multi-screen video montage created in February of 2004 by Joel Flynn (right), played their first show in Vancouver at The Town Pump on July 9, 1993 in support of their album Pablo Honey (1993, left). No photos of this show are available................ 33 Screenshots from French film director Adrian Maben’s Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972) featuring the band playing in an empty Roman amphitheatre. ..................................................................... 34 Rock journalist from Creem Magazine, Lester Bangs (top left), as portrayed by actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman (top right) in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000, bottom right). Screenshot from Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap (1984), a satire of the “prog rock” genre that Lester Bangs criticized heavily. ....................................................................................................................... 35 A “very rare clipping” (center) from the Regent Street Poly magazine in the early 1960s referring to The Screaming Abdabs, consisting of mostly architecture students who would later form the band Pink Floyd. The band would later release “unofficial” Pink Floyd albums under this pseudonym, e.g. Rhapsody in Pink (1971, left) and Brain Damage (1972, right). ............................... 36 Photos from the film Awesome… (2006) featuring a concert by The Beastie Boys in New York City and filmed by over 50 handheld digital video cameras given to fans of the band. .............................. 38 Figure 7. Figure 8. Figure 9. Figure 10. Figure 11. Figure 12. Figure 13. Figure 14. Figure 15. Figure 16. Figure 17. x Figure 18. Figure 19. Figure 20. Figure 21. Figure 22. Figure 23. Figure 24. Figure 25. Figure 26. Figure 27. Figure 28. Figure 29. Figure 30. Figure 31. Figure 32. Figure 33. Figure 34. Screenshots from a video captures of performances by Gordon Downie and the band The Dinner is Ruined, July 30, 2001 – August 1, 2001. The middle photo, showing Joel Flynn as camera operator in the bottom-right corner, was taken by an unknown photographer but found on the World Wide Web shortly after the event.............................................................................................. 40 Screenshots from video artifacts of live performances by Joseph Arthur: January 17, 2003 at the Crocodile Café in Seattle, December 13, 2004 at the Troubadour in Hollywood, and March 17, 2005 at the Red Room in Vancouver. ...................................................................................................... 41 Screenshots from video artifacts of live performances by Joan Wasser in December of 2004 in Hollywood, San Diego, and Seattle................................................................................................................. 43 Interface for the Bowery Ballroom’s website (left) and picture from Canadian band Sloan’s performance at the venue in May 2004 (photographer unknown, from sloanmusic.com).......................... 44 Matt Berninger (left) of The National at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, September 9, 2005 (photo by Lorena Christensen) as well as the band’s Scott Devendorf (right) from an undetermined show (photographer unknown)................................................................................................ 45 The sign at the door of HyperCD, now Octopus Media (left), with company founder and CEO Ken Park (center) from an interview on July 26, 2001, and a shot of Madison Square Garden from his office window (right) featuring a giant billboard advertising a September boxing match between Bernard Hopkins and Felix Trinidad. Due to tragic events on September 11, 2001, the fight obviously wasn’t able to take place on its originally scheduled date.................................................... 45 July 30th, 2001 interview in Beverly with Richard Eckel, the V.P. of Marketing for Groove Networks, now a subsidiary of the Microsoft Corporation. ............................................................................ 47 Screenshots of performances by Jason Webley at New York’s The Living Room (left) and Mike Doughty at Boston’s Paradise Theatre (center). View from the .406 club at very rainy Fenway Park (right) for the “Baseball as Design Icon” symposium, September 15, 2005........................................ 49 Miscellaneous Tragically Hip fans filmed as part of the band’s DVD, That Night in Toronto (2005, left), Bill Barilko’s #5 jersey of the Toronto Maple Leafs (center), and sample Tragically Hip jerseys for sale through the band’s website (right), one being a remix of the old Vancouver Canucks logo, the other, a remix of the Canadian flag. ................................................................................ 50 Screenshot from video interview Jim Healy (left, center left) of the Boston Red Sox front office, July 29, 2001 filmed by Joel Flynn; Screenshot from video interview with Paul Hanlon of the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park, September 8, 2005 (center right, filmed by Lorena Christensen); digital still photo of Joel Flynn and Lorena Christensen at Fenway Park (right, taken by an unknown Red Sox fan). ............................................................................................................... 51 The AIGA Design Conference 2005 “Living Room” (left) as attended by future Vancouver Canuck defenceman Luc Bourdon… err… actually, no. It’s SIAT’s own Travis Kirton (right).................... 53 Screenshot of Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid’s presentation at the AIGA Design Conference 2005 (left) and image of his book Rhythm Science (2004).......................................... 53 Screenshots from video artifacts featuring Aberdeen City and The National, recorded at TT the Bear’s on September 16, 2005, with picture of Manny Ramirez getting the game-winning hit-bypitch in the 11th inning of the Red Sox vs. Athletics game that evening....................................................... 54 The multi-camera split-screen approach as used in examples featuring the band Halcyon Days and artist Joseph Arthur................................................................................................................................... 55 3-point shooting in an actual basketball game (left) with the line shown in a diagram of a standard basketball court (center). These spaces have also been mapped out into virtual environments such as the NBA All-Star 3-Point Shootout featuring a virtual representation of NBA legend Larry Bird (right). ......................................................................................................................... 56 Screenshots from various single-camera recordings from 2003 and 20044 of live performances by (in order), Built to Spill, Guided by Voices, R.E.M. and The Pixies. ........................................................ 58 Even though the history of the game of baseball spans over 100 years with Major League each team playing over 150 games per year, only 17 “official perfect games” have ever been pitched. Thumbnails above show each of the pitchers who have accomplished this rare task, most recently accomplished by Randy Johnson in 2004. ............................................................................. 60 xi Figure 35. Figure 36. Figure 37. Figure 38. Figure 39. Figure 40. Figure 41. Figure 42. Figure 43. Figure 44. Figure 45. Figure 46. Figure 47. Figure 48. Figure 49. Figure 50. Figure 51. Figure 52. Figure 53. Sony’s MZ-R700 MiniDisc player and recorder (left) and the standard RCA to minijack cable (center left) used to record soundboard stereo audio directly into the MiniDisc recorder’s microphone input. Picture of Joel Flynn (center right) performing at the Media Club where problems with the MiniDisc recording led to a remix using audio samples of Roderick HaigBrown from the film Fisherman’s Fall (1967, right) ........................................................................................ 61 Apple’s 4th generation iPod (left) which plays music but is and only recently has enabled fullquality stereo recording, the M-Audio's Microtrack CF-based recorder (center left), the Edirol R1 24-bit DAT/MD-recorder (center right), and Sony’s PCM-D1 digital field recorder (right) ...................... 63 Screenshots for live performance recordings circa 2000-2005 in demonstrating how Travels in Intertextuality (2006) will “follow the problem” from one side of the camera to the other, .......................... 64 Screenshots from Vincent Moon’s video treatments of songs by The National’s live performances at La Gigunette in Paris, France, December 13-14, 2005. ................................................... 65 iTunes Playlist of video recordings featuring The National compiled from work by both Vincent Moon and Joel Flynn, with title shot used in all of Moon’s Paris recordings................................................ 66 John Seely Brown in a December 10, 2004 presentation discussing “world building” using technology as a “magic lens” into our physical world, where we have “virtual artifacts” that create “a virtual overlay that has a life of its own over a physical substrate”............................................... 68 Screenshots from the multi-angle version of The National’s October 2nd show at Sonar in Vancouver. ........................................................................................................................................................ 69 Screenshot from Dziga Vertov’s 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera featuring Vertov’s brother filming between two moving trains (left), and Joel Flynn as a “fan with a movie camera” in 2005 performing much less dangerous work at the October 2nd show at Sonar (center). Names of the band members of The National shown near the end of the video (right). .................................................... 70 Screenshot from the video for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s song “Satan Said ‘Dance!’” from the October 2nd 2005 performance (left) and a still of Levon Helm from the Martin Scorsese film The Last Waltz (1978) featuring The Band’s final performance on November 25, 1976............................ 71 Screenshots from the multi-angle version of The National’s October 2nd show at Sonar in Vancouver. ........................................................................................................................................................ 72 Opening title for the October 2nd performance by The National at Sonar in Vancouver, BC...................... 73 Jim Austin (left) formerly of Redsand Clothing in front of the old newspaper building that served as Redsand’s headquarters prior to selling the brandname (center), and with his country band Bartender’s Bible (right). .................................................................................................................................. 76 Some of Sean Kirpatrick’s many surf-inspired paintings of the California coast. ........................................ 77 Interview with Sean Kirkpatrick (right) of Swell displaying the band’s first album in Santa Barbara on July 25, 2001, and a screenshot of Kirkpatrick (left) from a 1994 French television feature on Swell (right) where the band performed a version the song “A Town” from their selftitled debut album (center). .............................................................................................................................. 78 Frank Galasso’s Cartoon depiction of Roger Clemens, then of the New York Yankees, after winning the 300th game of his career. He is also pictured in uniform with three other teams that Clemens has played on in his career: the Boston Red Sox, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Houston Astros. ................................................................................................................................................ 80 The Tragically Hip, featuring singer Gordon Downie (left) with Gord Sinclair on bass (right) performing on November 14, 2004 in Vancouver. The entire band is pictured performing in a screenshot (centre) from their recent DVD That Night in Toronto (2005). ................................................... 81 Tragically Hip guitarist Robbie Baker, also shown in with his side project Stripper’s Union performing in both a hockey arena, a theatre venue, and at a small club. .................................................. 82 An “intertextual loop” based on a remix of the work of René Magritte’s The Two Mysteries (1966) as recontextualized for the digital culture iPod music players. ......................................................... 85 Jason Jennings of the Colorado Rockies displays the iPod Video player that he uses to scout opposing players and review his pitching mechanics.................................................................................... 86 xii Figure 54. Figure 55. Figure 56. Figure 57. Figure 58. Figure 59. Figure 60. Figure 61. Figure 62. Figure 63. Figure 64. Figure 65. Figure 66. Figure 67. Figure 68. Figure 69. Figure 70. Figure 71. Figure 72. Figure 73. Figure 74. Figure 74. Figure 75. Figure 76. Figure 77. Figure 78. Figure 79. Replacement image for materials where copyright status for use of the materials is in question due to pending permission, denial of use, or inability to locate the author or copyright holder of the material in question.................................................................................................................................... 89 Paul D. Miller demonstrating a remix of a Public Enemy song called “B-Side Wins Again” in his second presentation at the AIGA Design Conference in Boston MA on September 16, 2005 .................. 90 Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss, remixed with a natural multiangle split screen from the Robert Nichol film about Campbell River fisherman Roderick HaigBrown, Fisherman’s Fall (1967) ...................................................................................................................... 92 Screenshot from menu of halcyon days multi-angle DVD, screen pt.2........................................................ 93 Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. T.S. Geisel) .................................. 94 Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. T.S. Geisel) .................................. 95 Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. T.S. Geisel) .................................. 96 John Seely Brown PowerPoint slides from Scholarship in the Digital Age conference, December 10, 2004 .......................................................................................................................................... 97 Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go! was used as the basis for a strange introductory segment for Superbowl XL on February 5, 2006 ......................................................................................... 100 The remix of Seuss’s popular story effectively demonstrates a remix of pop culture texts for marketing objectives using new media authoring technologies where live action video is digitally inserted into a cartoon animation. ................................................................................................... 101 By mixing in video of former Superbowl icons such as Joe Montana and Franco Harris reading out lines from the story, adapting certain lines for the context of the football game, and featuring a bearded Harrison Ford providing wild-eyed narration, the puzzling and kitschy intro also demonstrates how remixing doesn’t necessarily lead to an effective end result............................... 101 Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (1990), illustration of the story’s main character by Dr. Seuss, as seen in the original work. ............................................................................................................................... 103 Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. T.S. Geisel) ................................ 104 Paul D. Miller from “Exploring a Media Ecology” WGBH-TV, Boston, MA and in performance as DJ Spooky in Fransen and McLeod’s Copyright Criminals (2005) ............................................................. 107 John Seely Brown PowerPoint slides from Scholarship in the Digital Age conference, December 10, 2004 ........................................................................................................................................ 108 John Seely Brown PowerPoint slides from Scholarship in the Digital Age conference, December 10, 2004 and Amazon.com’s “remix” of the cover of William Gibson’s book Pattern Recognition (2003) ......................................................................................................................................... 109 Sprite Remix Berryclear, Product Launch by Cossette/Fjord Interactive, as a Nobrow moment (2005 Digital Marketing Award Winners) ...................................................................................................... 112 Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. T.S. Geisel) ................................ 115 Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss, remixed with product shot of the Sony TRV-130 Digital8 camcorder ......................................................................................................... 116 Still from Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) also used in Manovich’s The Language of New Media (2001). ......................................................................................................................................... 118 The popular soft drink Sprite’s appropriation of the term “remix”, from a physical bottled product (left), to the virtual space as digital advertisement on a website ................................................................ 121 (center), back to its physical use as part of an actual vinyl record featuring the artist known as Redman (right)................................................................................................................................................ 122 Map of a “global mediatized marketplace” by Kline et al. 2003 p. 31......................................................... 123 John Berger destroys “aura” by cutting into a famous painting in Ways of Seeing (1972)....................... 125 Movie still from the film Casablanca (1942) ................................................................................................. 128 Movie still from Bryan Singer’s film The Usual Suspects (1995) ................................................................ 129 “Remixing History” in Wired Magazine’s “Remix Now!” cover story, Issue 13.07 ..................................... 130 xiii Figure 80. Figure 81. Boston’s Fenway park, still from video taken July 29, 2001........................................................................ 132 Boston’s Fenway park, represented through photosharing at SeatData.com and in a still from an EA Sports video game as examples of artifacts from the “global mediatized marketplace” (Kline et al. 2003, p.31) and as a way of showing Baudrillard’s concept of “the map precedes the territory” (1988)......................................................................................................................................... 134 Figure 82. A still from Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) that has also been used in Manovich’s Language of New Media (2001). ................................................................................................................... 135 Figure 83. A brief historical development of the “road” metaphor of ideas and information, e.g. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), the mid-1990’s “Information Superhighway” (Popular Mechanics, 1994) and Bill Gates’ The Road Ahead (1995)........................................................................ 139 Figure 84. Anonymous fisherman in the Campbell River, image from the Haig-Brown Institute and Roderick Haig-Brown’s A River Never Sleeps (1946/1974)........................................................................ 140 Figure 85. Wired magazine cover, July 2005 featuring “the Walkpod” by David Klugston as functional remix of two icons of the popular culture of music playing devices, and the infamous The Grey Album (2004) a remix of The Beatles’s The White Album (1969) and Jay-Z’s The Black Album (2003). ............................................................................................................................................................. 141 Figure 86. Title poster for the Tim Burton film Big Fish (2003, left) based on Daniel Wallace’s novel, with scenes featuring Albert Finney as Edward Bloom doing some fly fishing (center), and with his son William, played by Billy Crudup (right)................................................................................................... 142 Figure 87. The Cartesian duality between subject and object. Graphic by J.Flynn (2003)......................................... 144 Figure 88. Vygotsky’s mediational model (graphic by J.Flynn, 2003) .......................................................................... 147 Figure 89. Yjrö Engeström’s expanded version of Vygotsky’s mediational model, titled “the structure of human activity” from Learning by Expanding (1987) ................................................................................... 151 Figure 90. Yjrö Engeström’s expanded version of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development in Learning by Expanding (1987), graphic by Joel Flynn, created in March 2003 ............................................................. 157 Figure 91. René Magritte, This Is Not a Pipe © 2001 C. Herscovici, Brussels/Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York The Two Mysteries © 2001 C. Herscovici, Brussels/Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York......................................................................................................................................................... 162 Figure 92. Novelist, conservationist and fisherman Roderick Haig-Brown ties a fly for casting in the Campbell River, images from the film Fisherman’s Fall (1967) and the Haig-Brown Institute website. ........................................................................................................................................................... 167 Figure 93. Boston Red Sox knuckleballer Tim Wakefiled (left) pitching at Fenway Park in July of 2001 to catcher Doug Mirabelli or Scott Hatteberg.................................................................................................... 168 Figure 94. Screenshot of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) as commented on by camera operator Michael Chapman in the documentary Visions of Light (1994)................................................................................. 170 Figure 95. From the factory clock to the game pod: the machinic metaphor in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) and the game metaphor in David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999). ................................................. 186 Figure 96. Mark R. Gover’s depiction of identity’s formation over time with respect to the semiotic boundary between individual and environment............................................................................................ 191 Figure 97. An abstract representation of the dynamics of autopoiesis, leading to “the richness of the system's behavior” (Rudrauf et al. 2003)...................................................................................................... 195 Figure 98. The problem of self-reflection and the “strange loops” of recursive feedback, as depicted by Gordon Pask for Heinz von Forrester in The Natural History of Networks (1960, see Taylor 2001, p.73-88 and Hayles 1999, p.133). Similar ideas were adapted in Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay for the film Being John Malkovich (1999) by Spike Jonze ....................................................... 197 Figure 99. A transfer of information on a CD-ROM between “two undercover agents” in the demo reel On Her Majesty’s Impossible Mission (2000) by the BCIT New Media and Animation class (19992000) in Artifact 5.4 (see Appendix); and fisherman Roderick Haig-Brown “spying” on his fish by diving in the Campbell River in the Robert Nichol film Fisherman’s Fall (1967)................................... 202 Figure 100. The co-evolution of design culture and cultural psychology, as seen through a selection of books by Donald Norman. ............................................................................................................................. 205 xiv Figure 101. Vygotsky’s mediational model, as used to distinguish the pragmatic approach to method from the approach where method is “both prerequisite and product”, i.e. “tool and the result of the study” (Vygotsky 1978, p.65)......................................................................................................................... 213 Figure 102. Screenshots from the interfaces on the CHAT Circuits tool, developed in 2004 by Anthony Charles and Joel Flynn for the “Programming Multimedia” (IART 206/7/8 SIAT, Spring 2004)............... 216 Figure 103. Stills from Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) also used in Manovich’s The Language of New Media (2001). ......................................................................................................................................... 220 Figure 104. Slide from thesis PowerPoint presentation depicting a collage of images from digital media artifacts that were developed through the convergence of expression and practical activity. These artifacts have informed both the research in Travels in Intertextuality (2006) and indirectly in the design and deliver of cultural studies curricula. ................................................................. 221 Figure 105. The basic mediational triangle in which the and object not only as ‘directly’ connected but simultaneously as ‘indirectly’ connected through a medium constituted of artifacts (culture).” (Cole 1996, p. 119)......................................................................................................................................... 225 Figure 106. A “rip-off” of The Matrix (1999) in a video piece produced by kids playing and creating with digital technologies [see “Chapter 5: Summary of Results” and Artifact 5.3 “Nightmare on Tern Place”] contrasted with a screenshot from the game Enter the Matrix (2003) by video game icons Atari. ...................................................................................................................................................... 227 Figure 107. Excerpt from Bill Simmons’ February 16 interview with NBA Commissioner David Stern in ESPN Magazine. Image features Stern (right), Patrick Ewing (middle, the number one draft choice in 1985), and former New York Knicks general manager GM Dave DeBusschere (left).............. 230 Figure 108. Video footage from fifty digital video cameras given to fans at a Beastie Boys concert at (Madison Square Garden, New York, October 9, 2004) was pooled, synchronized and remixed into a feature film (premiered March 18, 2005)............................................................................................ 231 Figure 109. A screenshot of recorder producer and sound artist Brian Eno from an interview in Jeffrey Piesch’s The History of Rock n' Roll: Up from the Underground (1995) .................................................... 234 Figure 110. A screenshot of John Haley and John Seely Brown’s website for the book The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization (2005)...................................................................................................................................... 237 Figure 111. Screenshot of ftp access to the Intertext-1 database on the karma-projects streaming server ............... 244 Figure 112. Screenshots of the official Grammy website, featuring the Madonna and Gorillaz, and the “strange loops” of an oddly synchronized clip of the same performance, as posted on YouTube.com.................................................................................................................................................. 248 Figure 113. Club Silencio in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) ............................................................................. 249 Figure 114. 1920s avant-garde film editing environment contrasted with a screenshot from Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro editing environment. These help to depict the idea of “building blocks” of film reels that were eventually edited into Dizga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929), while the film itself as a whole was used as a “building block” in the Kid A With Movie Camera remix (2003) Artifact 5.8................................................................................................................................. 255 Figure 115. Homer Reciting His Poems (1790) by Sir Thomas Lawrence; James Joyce’s appropriation of Homer’s The Odyssey as a structure for his novel Ulysses, and Ethan and Joel Coen (with Roger Deakins) considering how best to remix The Odyssey into their 2000 film O Brother Where Art Thou? ............................................................................................................................................ 256 Figure 116. DJ Spooky pointing to where imagination is found? Is it “in the head” or is it “distributed” across remix culture? John Berger may have a different “perspective”. ................................................................ 257 Figure 117. Lawrence Lessig remixes the “clinical anecdote” of Awakenings (1990) into the introduction of his Scholarship in the Digital Age presentation, December 11, 2004. ....................................................... 259 Figure 118. Alan Cross’s “The Ongoing History of New Music” logo (1993-present) as context for a remix in the above version of The RockXchange® logo (based on the graphic representation of the Nasdaq stock exchange’s historical rise and fall). ....................................................................................... 266 xv Figure 119. A “strange loop” of a photo of Joel Flynn using a TRV-130 to capture of the performance of Gord Downie and The Dinner is Ruined in Cambridge MA on July 30, 2001, as pictured in the screenshot from that video. This scenario demonstrates how digital media assets could be contributed to an artist’s development just as much as the financial assets raised by CD sales, merchandise, or door receipts. ...................................................................................................................... 269 Figure 120. 3-point shooting prototype for a multi-camera split screen video artifact from Joseph Arthur’s performance at the Red Room in Vancouver BC, March 17, 2005. ........................................................... 270 Figure 121. Posters for George Orwell’s novel 1984 and Peter Weir’s film The Truman Show (1998), as well as an image of Arthur C. Clarke’s HAL 9000 computer as depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) ............................................................................................. 274 Figure 122. Three Circuits of Interactivity model by Kline et al. 2003, ........................................................................... 279 Figure 123. “Three Circuits of Interactivity” model by Kline et al. 2003, modified with exhibition, exchange, and cult value associations as part of our approach of coordinating lenses. ............................................ 280 Figure 124. Transformation of metaphorical perspectives, i.e. from toolkit to tacklebox. ............................................. 309 xvi LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Yjrö Engeström’s expanded version of Vygotsky’s mediational model, titled “the structure of human activity” as a table, from Learning by Expanding (1987)................................................................. 151 Yjrö Engeström’s comparison of Bateson’ levels of learning and his levels of instruments in Learning by Expanding (1987) ...................................................................................................................... 159 Use of Wartofsky’s levels of by Cole and Engeström.................................................................................. 253 Engeström’s and Cole’s hierarchies, following from Bateson’s levels of learning, now considering the addition of Maturana and Varela’s autopoietic orders. The question: Does remix fit this design?....................................................................................................................................... 263 Applying the perspective of the musician to the coordinated lenses method ............................................ 271 Applying the perspective of the “writer” to the coordinated lenses perspective ........................................ 272 Applying the perspective of the filmmaker to the coordinated lenses perspective .................................... 273 Applying the fisherman’s perspective to the coordinated lenses method. ................................................. 278 Initial set of artifacts that apply theory to data .............................................................................................. 285 Relating theory to data by incorporating the coordinated lenses approach in the analysis...................... 288 Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.5 .................................................................................... 345 Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.6 .................................................................................... 346 Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.7 .................................................................................... 347 Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.8 .................................................................................... 348 Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.9 .................................................................................... 349 Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.10 .................................................................................. 350 Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.12 .................................................................................. 352 Table 5 Table 6 Table 7 Table 8 Table 9 Table 10 Table 11 Table 12 Table 13 Table 14 Table 15 Table 16 Table 17 xvii Figure 1. Figure 2. Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss Pacific Salmon by Roderick Haig-Brown, date unknown xviii Pacific Salmon River-born fugitives, red muscled under sheathing silver, Alive with lights of ocean's changing colours, The range of deeps and distances through wild salt years Has gathered the sea's plenty into your perfection. Fullness is the long return from dark depths Rendering toll of itself to the searching nets Surging on to strife on brilliant gravel shallows That opened long ago behind the failing ice. In violence over the gravel, under the blaze of fall Fullness spends itself, thrusting forth new life To nurse in the stream's flow. The old life, Used utterly, yields itself among the river rocks of home. Roderick Haig-Brown Figure 3. Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. T.S. Geisel) xix Travels in Intertextuality: the autopoetic identity of remix culture NOTE: This version of the thesis is known as The Director’s Cut. The version where all the images have been replaced by a default copyright notice is known as The Permission Culture Remix. Figure 4. Screenshot from menu screen of the Halcyon Days multi-angle DVD, July 2004 xx INTRODUCTION The screenshot depicted in Figure 4 was taken from an experimental, interactive, multi-angle, concert DVD that is a key artifact referenced in this work. I had originally authored the DVD in May of 2004, and then added an update later in July after the original work had inspired a series of additional, interrelated DVDs that add more pieces to what was already a deep pool of content, i.e. a growing “intertextual system”. [NOTE: this intertextual system has apparently grown well beyond the requirements for a Masters thesis, in case any frightened Masters students may be reading!]. The updated version of the DVD may or may not have already been engaged by the reader - or the “user”, in the interaction design sense of the term. It may or may not have been included with this text. It may even have been lost somewhere along the way. Yet the DVD serves as a key “text” in this thesis, as do a number of other artifacts that enter and pass through the work. Depending on the user’s interaction with the DVD, this text may have even prefaced their reading of the thesis presented here, or may conclude it at a later stage. The digital media artifact in question emerged from a pool of live video footage and audio recordings from a performance by the group Halcyon Days, an independent rock band which I helped form and play with from 1998 to 2000. While the DVD was created in 2004, the concept for this multi-angled work had been simmering for several years. Similarly, the footage used to produce the DVD was originally shot on March 10, 2000 at Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom, but for the most part had literally been sitting in a shoe box ever since. Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom has a storied history and important role in the music culture of the city that this author calls home, even during the venue’s unfortunate four-year closure in the late 1990s. In turning our lens in the direction of the Commodore’s history, the unlikely performance from March of 2000 took place shortly after the famous live music venue had been renovated and reopened. In terms of a narrative of four guys who played there that March night, “The Halcyon Days Project” was just coming to a close, and the show that night would turn out to be the band’s “swan song”. The work that is about to be presented is not based on the performance mentioned above, nor is it based on the digital media artifacts that have resulted from this performance. While the DVD may serve as a useful example of the ideas and issues presented in this work, it has simply been selected from a very large database of material because of its usefulness for this context. Like many of the other pieces of digital media in this database, it can be used as both as a starting point and as a conclusion in what has developed into an extensive and expansive journey through the complex and engaging feedback loops of contemporary digital culture. In other words, the DVD is just one of many examples of a new media object (Manovich 2001) that has been created through a process of mixing and re-mixing within a larger system of cultural artifacts. Rather than focusing on any particular example, this thesis instead will move through a number of works, i.e. in the sense of travelling through a number of cultural texts. What I am attempting to demonstrate here, in alluding to the inspiring work of novelist and art critic John Berger, are “ways of seeing” these digital media artifacts (Berger 1972). Or, to use cultural psychologist Michael 21 Cole’s metaphor, what I’ve attempted to develop in this thesis is a set of “coordinated lenses” for looking at such artifacts in the world around us (Cole 1996, p.338). The point that will be argued in this work is the potential usefulness of these perspectives in looking at any number of digital media artifacts, whether from this body of work or elsewhere. This thesis will therefore provide the needed context on the research question, the theory behind the investigation, the data to be analyzed, and the method used to do so. In terms of this method, since methodology is often focused on when assessing a research project, it is important to note early on that an appropriate analytical approach has emerged from the author’s practical activity in remix culture over an extended historical timeframe. This emergent method has been applied in the analysis of a set of twelve remix artifacts that I’ve had a hand in developing. Additionally, extensive effort has been made to demonstrate both the theoretical and the practical grounding of the method and the artifacts in the author’s day-to-day activities as both a participant and analyst of the remix phenomenon. Taking place at the intersection of technology, art, and commerce, Travels in Intertextuality is a highly exploratory work, but one that represents a conceptual advancement in an interdisciplinary field. This advancement is potentially useful in practically engaging the issue of remix from a variety of angles. The “reframing” and shifting perspectives involved throughout this work lead it towards what John Seely Brown describes as “pioneering research”, i.e. research which is “radical and grounded” in an attempt to “follow the problem” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.104). The thesis grounds its insights in a wide range of theoretical influences, as well as in the “life course and ecology of human development” of the self-reflecting researcher and writer (Moen et al. 1995, p.6). As such, it represents the writer’s approach to a “Romantic Science” (Luria 1979) described by Oliver Sacks as “the dream of a novelist and a scientist combined” (Sacks, in Luria 1987 p.xii). So where do we start with this research? Or better yet, with this novel? At first, of course, it wouldn't be a novel so much as a haiku. But that doesn't matter. The important thing is to make a start. (Eco, in Marshall & Eco 1997) While cultural research is an inherently “messy” proposition, “the important thing is that there is a desire for discussion” (N'Diaye, in de Barros 2005). This desire for discussion is our starting point in following the problem of remix. While I have attempted and continue to follow this problem as best I can, I must similarly “make a start” in my own desire for discussion (Eco, in Marshall & Eco 1997). As a result, the development of this thesis is an attempt to communicate the research and establish a dialogue – i.e. to “write” about my experiences with this problem – in whatever new and used cultural forms it my take. Therefore, how it starts is with a “Big Fish”, a cliché, and a “pitch” for a story about a journey, perhaps on the way to McElligot’s Pool (Figure 3). Think of it, if you will, as a travelogue… I didn't forget. I was just working on a tangent. See, most men, they'll tell a story straight through, and it won't be complicated, but it won't be interesting either. (Albert Finney as Harold Bloom in the film Big Fish, 2003) 22 TRAVELOGUE: A Slow Dance Through the Strike Zone of Proximal Development (Artifact 5.11) As the reader of this travelogue, feel free to move with it, skip past it, or revisit it from time to time. It can be the starting block or the end point in your journey through this text, and in that respect, let’s start off with a cliché that will hopefully have some value down the metaphorical road… And the end of all our searching shall be to return to the place where we started and know it for the first time. (Elliot 1942, in Parker 2002) For some, October of 2005 started with bang... or maybe a whiff. In his final start of the year, Boston knuckleballer Tim Wakefield was locked in a first inning battle with wild swinging Gary Sheffield of the New York Yankees at the plate and Jason Giambi on base. “Wake” had been one of the few solid pitchers on an up-and-down Red Sox rotation that year, going 8-2 down the stretch with a 1.99 ERA in the month of September (Snow 2005). This included a notable pitching duel on September 11, 2005 with future Hall of Fame lefthander Randy Johnson. Another battle in the historic rivalry between Boston and New York teams, this afternoon affair at Yankee Stadium saw Wakefield pitch a complete game with a career high of twelve strikeouts, only to lose by the score of 1-0. It was a game described by Yankees skipper Joe Torre as “a classic… like a throwback to the old days” (Torre, in Browne 2005). Also comparing it to “a heavyweight battle that lived up to its advance notice", Torre’s comments would only further set the tone for an October rematch between polar opposite pitchers: Johnson throwing 95 mile per hour fastballs and hard breaking sliders; Wakefield sending slow, dancing knuckleballs that move towards the strike zone, though don’t necessarily stay there (for better or worse). Ironically, the lone run in the game came on a weak, first inning homerun by slugger Jason Giambi on a high pop fly that was just inside the right field pole. Further adding to the irony, it came on a pitch that wasn’t a knuckleball. For a knuckleballer, the conventional approaches of pitching are essentially flipped around. The typical mix of pitches, speeds, and locations used by big league pitchers is replaced almost exclusively with a single pitch – the knuckleball. There are very few pitchers who have been able to consistently and effectively throw a 65-70 mile per hour pitch with no spin. With little or no spin, the pitch confusingly bobbles and weaves with the chance dynamics of air currents and pressure systems. Yet with too much spin, it becomes batting practice for the hitter. Due to this unconventional approach, the standard “bread and butter” pitches of most big league hurlers – fastballs, curveballs, sinkers, sliders, etc. – therefore wind up as the knuckleballer’s “trick” pitches, i.e. the pitches you try to sneak past a hitter while living and dying on your “bread and butter” stuff. These pitches are used rarely, or, only in appropriate contexts when the pitcher suspects the hitter is “sitting” on a particular pitch. Like most knuckleballers, Tim Wakefield throws his knuckleball around 90% of the time, but realizing most hitters are sitting on this pitch, he’ll on occasion try to sneak a curveball or a “fastball” in to the mix. 23 The anticipated rematch between Johnson and Wakefield would come on the final weekend of the 2005 season. In the first inning of the October 1st game between the Red Sox and the Yankees at Fenway Park, Sheffield had been sitting on and fouling off a series of Wakefield’s floating knuckleballs. With the division title on the line for the winner of this game, and on the eighth pitch of the at-bat, Wakefield decided to sneak a full-count fastball past “Sheff”. Figure 5. Screenshots from the October 1 at bat between Tim Wakefield of the Boston Red Sox and Gary Sheffield of the New York Yankees, taken from game archives on the MLB.com website. st Of course, being a knuckleball pitcher, Wake’s “fastball” is not all that fast. So when he goes to the rarely-used pitch, he has to make sure that he gives the hitter something tempting to swing at, but hopefully not in a good enough location to hit well. Or, he’ll throw it when the hitter isn’t likely to be swinging, such as on a 3-0 count. If the hitter has seen nothing but knuckleballs for the entire atbat, this can be an effective strategy, i.e. trying to catch the hitter off-guard by unexpectedly throwing him what appears to be a “gift” to swing at. If set up properly, the hitter might foul it off, only to be left wondering if it was the last straight pitch he sees all day. The hitter may be so surprised by the “fastball” that he swings and misses at a ball that is out of the strike zone, or, he may be unable to pull the trigger on what is essentially a batting practice pitch left out over the plate. The alternative, of course, is when the pitch doesn’t fool the hitter. This is an alternative that has a good chance of being hit out of the park. For anyone who is familiar with the game of baseball, the act of hitting is often understood as a matter of timing. Conversely, pitching is understood as an attempt to disrupt the hitter’s sense of timing. Since the speed of Major League pitches leave little opportunity to adjust, a slight disruption in timing can affect both the hitter’s power and his ability to make contact with the baseball. As the great lefthander Warren Spahn summed it up: “Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.” (Spahn, unknown). Whether looking at the game of baseball through the lens of the hitter or the lens of the pitcher, this sense of timing all comes down to the context of the pitch. This context for this sense of timing goes beyond imply how fast the pitch is thrown or how much it breaks on the way to the plate. As Wakefield commented after the September 11 duel with Johnson: It just goes to show you [that] you don't have to throw 95 mph to get guys out. The whole objective is to get outs, no matter how you do it. (Wakefield, in Browne 2005) 24 I. A strike to hit… At this point, there has not yet been a resolution to the baseball narrative described here, i.e. was Wakefield able to get Sheffield out on the pitch? Of course, there are a number of contexts interacting and in play with respect to this pitch: / an at-bat between a knuckleballer and a power hitter / / within the context of a pitching duel between Tim Wakefield and Randy Johnson / / within the context of the long-time rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees / / within the context of a deciding game on the final weekend of the 2005 season / / within the context of the game of baseball as it has been played for over one hundred years, etc., etc / With all of these stories within stories taking place, part of the beauty of the game of baseball is how contexts can synchronize and focus on a particular out, or a particular pitch, or a particular moment in the game. The focus might take place at the time that a pitch is about to be delivered. Or, it may take place in retrospect, such as when trying to figure out what went right, what went wrong, what to let go, and what to learn from for the next time. Furthermore the focus can take place simultaneously from the perspective of “the game” as an individual competition between two teams, as well as “The Game” as in the whole of baseball culture. So what was the result of this battle of power swinger vs. crafty pitcher? Did “Sheff” hit it the ball over the Green Monster, sending it right out of the park, past the light stands and out onto Lansdowne Street? Was he caught flat-footed on a called third strike? Did “Wake” groove a batting practice pitch that, luckily for him, was only fouled off, thereby starting the process all over again? Or was the hometown crowd silenced by a run-scoring extra base hit by its New York rivals, the hated Yankees team, and one of its most despised players in Gary Sheffield? That is, in the context and the silly idiosyncracies of the famous rivalry, the most despised Yankee until that ARod character comes to the plate (Note: recent turncoat Johnny Damon is making a strong case). The answer is… it doesn’t matter. But if the reader is curious on the outcome, he or she can find it online in the massive archives of Major League Baseball’s MLB.com, where one can even watch a digital video stream of the entire game for a fee. 25 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 6. Repeat of the screenshots from the October 1 at bat between Tim Wakefield of the Boston Red Sox and Gary Sheffield of the New York Yankees. For the results of this at bat, click the link to the archived video of the game. The approach of creating an “open work” by linking this thesis to potential external media will be used frequently. st I’m a Red Sox fan and a Tim Wakefield fan, and therefore had an emotional stake in the outcome this game as I was watching it. But as much as I’m a fan of both the player and the team, and as focused as I was when watching the game on television, the result of the at-bat is by and large inconsequential to the thesis presented here. The practical results of a baseball game, or sporting season, or a particular player’s statistics have little to do with remix and intertextuality, i.e. the main concerns of this thesis. The relevance of such information is tenuous, except, that is, in terms of the key ideas of culture, history, narrative, and context. II. A story to tell… What does actually matter, in a very practical and in fact a fundamental way, is the context of this story within this larger body of work, as it is situated in the networked digital culture of the “mediatized global marketplace” (Kline et al. 2003). Specifically, whether we’re dealing with the context of finding some result from an at-bat on October 1st, 2005, or whether we’re dealing with a similar context involving other digitally-recorded and archived events (see Figure 5), what is relevant here is the simple idea of being able to connect to a network in order to delve into the digital archives of video recordings and other cultural-historical materials. What is also relevant with this baseball-related story is that I can build it into my academic thesis as an illustrative example of interactivity in digital culture, i.e. I can remix it into and as part of my own expression. While I have the ability to express this story in written form, as I’m doing here, I could also improve upon this work by blending in some digital elements – e.g. images, statistics, audio, and/or video from the game. Integrating these elements right into my thesis could make for a more compelling and engaging argument, and a more useful piece of research for others to work with and build upon themselves. As an author, I could therefore decide what information to include, and what information to leave up to the imagination or research skills of the reader. Such decisions are therefore part of the author’s creative process, part of his or her writing activity, if not part of establishing an identity. However, this type of creative writing may now be a questionable activity in the environment of digital culture, 26 with decisions of what to include and what not to include having been moved well beyond the author’s intentions or control. Through the World Wide Web, there is now an unprecedented resource of digital content available to the online baseball fan (or the creative writer for that matter). However, in order to actually do something active with MLB.com materials, such as writing a story based on images taken at the ballpark on a particular day, or building an entire video game that incorporates such media and information into its interactive environment, or even in providing a “description” of the game’s events, I apparently would need “the express written consent” of Major League Baseball” (Baltimore Orioles v. Major League Baseball Players Association). The following screenshot clipping from MLB.com’s “official info” pages demonstrates this express need for permission: Figure 7. Screenshot clipping of the notice of permission requirment for the use of MLB.com “Materials”) as seen on the website’s “Official Info” pages Without this permission, I’m currently unable to properly frame this potentially compelling material within the context of my own work. Or, I am at least unable to do this if the work is to be published later on. Yet the question arises as to what happens when the work is not to be published, but is just being made for play. These materials, through legal or technological restrictions, could therefore be unavailable to me despite their potential value as a key part of my own work, or my own learning, or my own play activities. They may be cut off from becoming an important expression of my own personal experiences, i.e. as a baseball fan, as an academic researcher, or whatever the case may be. While I might be able to engage with these materials and weigh their usefulness when included as part of my work, without the necessary permissions, they would likely be viewed as “inadmissible”. They would thereby require a re-evaluation on the value of the work – as a whole – without their inclusion. But again the question arises, reworded slightly: Are such calculations and value judgments really appropriate when simply playing around creatively with bits of culture that are apparently part of the American social fabric? In other words, are these calculations appropriate for a culture and a history that former commissioner of baseball A. Bartlett Giamatti describes in Figure 8 as “expanding with the country like fingers unfolding from a fist”? 27 Figure 8. Images from video taken at Fenway Park on September 8, 2005, including the words of the late commissioner of Major League Baseball and President of Yale University, A. Bartlett Giamatti. The imposition of technological restrictions, legal codes, or social norms on an author’s efforts are reasonable for when the material is to be published and sold commercially, or when the limited rights of an author and his or her contribution to a work need to be respected. However, it is important to remember that these restrictions come at a social cost. Specifically, this cost is the lost opportunity of new works and ideas that could’ve been developed out of these existing pools of culture when the works can’t be fully engaged by audiences. Without official permission, it’s unclear whether as an author I can officially experiment or play with these restricted ideas and materials in order to see if something new could be generated. This “something new” might be publishable or marketable one day in one form or another and to the benefit of more than just the individual author. More likely, this “something new” could simply be the result of some imaginative play activities that don’t consider issues such as long-term publishing implications, potential measures of profitability, or discounted net present value. When focused on a game, or involved in play, participants are often just trying to find that “zone” that in the process makes the outside “noise” less of a concern. For example, consider the simple process of just trying to “get your facts straight” when trying to write a story. Then consider trying to put these facts into the context of the story by tying the results of a key event into the narrative. In the example presented here – a sporting event of a baseball game – without official permission from Major League Baseball, in some form or another, it’s uncertain that I’d even be able to research the details of the Sheffield vs. Wakefield at-bat that were provided in the opening this travelogue. Therefore, without this access, I’d potentially be unable to add additional depth of context and historical accuracy to the narrative. Even though many spectators, both in person and by media channels, had witness this game and the at-bat between Wake and Sheff, the official records of the event may not be accessible to me. The process of finding this information on MLB.com’s archives or on similar sites was reasonably 28 easy to do through simple searches. However, imagine if the process of engaging with the culture and the history of the sport, or engaging in a dialogue with its fan community, were so heavily administered that the requirements for getting clearance to use these official materials basically killed off any drive to write a story about the event in the first place. Figure 9. Shot of Tim Wakefield (left) on the way to commercial break during Fox Sports Network’s television coverage of a game between the Boston Red Sox vs. and the Oakland Athletics at Fenway Park, September 16, 2005. The game was also broadcast on radio via Boston station WEEI (center) and archived on the MLB.com’s “Gameday Audio” feature (right). As a result, in order to continue writing the story in the face of these restrictions or administrative delays, I’d have to rely even further on my own subjective recollection of the event, rather than being able to ground these recollections in the artifacts and archived information that reverberate from the event’s original time and place. In the process, I might also lose the ability to connect with an existing audience who perhaps were at Fenway that day, or, with others who had watched or listened to the game on television or radio (Figure 9). More importantly, I may lose the ability to connect with others who may have their own interrelating narratives that develop from this same event, regardless if they happen to be writing about these experiences or not. III. A call to make… Further still, there may be other segments of the audience who may have been following the game in an alternate format, such as through “live score” updates on a cell phone, or pitch-by-pitch Flash-based Internet applications such as MLB.com’s “Gameday” feature or ESPN’s “Gamecast” (Figure 10). These applications present an entirely new, but completely viable, method for experiencing the unfolding development of a baseball game. While MLB.com doesn’t charge a fee for access to this service (yet), it is still technically only available for those with a computer and network connection. For the rest, there’s the newspaper box score the next day. 29 Figure 10. MLB.com’s “Gameday” feature (left) and ESPN.com’s version of the same idea called “Gamecast” both interfaces to the game of baseball are available free of charge, where as online radio and television feeds charge a subscription feed. While the “Gameday” and “Gamecast” features present a different experience than either watching the game live or on television, or even listening to it on radio, they are simply new interfaces to an existing cultural environment and community dialogue. They are interfaces that support fan discussions before, during, and after the game, which can also take place through a variety of media, e.g. online message boards, radio talk shows, video games, or post-event libations at a local watering hole. Participatory subcultures of for the game of baseball, which on the negative side can include gambling subcultures (as with other sports), can also exist more positively in the form of “fantasy leagues”. While they’ve previously existed as tabletop board games, these are now mostly-online simulations of sporting seasons, including baseball seasons, that let fans select and exchange fictional versions of pro athletes to compete on fictional teams. The same approach can be seen in video game versions of the sport, where players in these virtual worlds are based on the actual statistics of their current and past performance. These cultural spaces all feed off of the games that take place daily over the course of a baseball season and that are followed by those who have some sort of stake in the outcome of games (financial interest or otherwise). More precisely, they feed off of the information generated from these regularly scheduled events. This information, in the case of Major League Baseball, is all available through MLB.com’s digital archives. Not only does the MLB.com store statistical information while also streaming live games on both audio and video through its site, it also archives these multimedia materials for future access. Furthermore, it archives all of the highly detailed “Gameday” information as well. In the process of creating this massive database of various kinds of media, new ways for fans to engage with the culture and history of the sport have emerged. In terms of a game’s broadcast, the boundaries of time have effectively become blurred by creating a full digital archive of games from recent seasons as well as archives of an extensive number of games from the sport’s past. 30 Interestingly, MLB.com is about to go a step further than simply blurring the separation of past archives with the present context. As noted in a press release from April 10, 2006, about to be offered is what they call “a revolutionary new way to watch the game” (MLB.com, April 10, 2006). For the first time ever, fans are able to watch six live games simultaneously on one screen with selectable audio, statistics and the ability to click to any one game on full screen. The new MLB.com application also alerts fantasy baseball league players when live games involving their fantasy players and teams are available. During times when live games are not available, fans can watch ondemand games, outtakes from the previous night's games and interactive longform advertisements.(MLB.com) LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 11. MLB.com’s soon-to-be-launched “MLB Mosaic” feature which allows multiple streams of video content to be displayed simultaneously, giving the user the ability to navigate between various Major League baseball games taking place in various North American cities. Through an initiative called “MLB Mosaic” (see Figure 11), baseball fans with paid subscriptions to MLB.TV will soon be able to mix together the broadcasts of six games of their choice to play simultaneously on their computer. Fans will therefore be able to navigate from game-to-game and from city-to-city across the Major Leagues, essentially remixing live baseball cultural content (as well as advertising, apparently) while blurring the boundaries of geographical space. All this will theoretically take place through a single interface, in real-time, as the games are playing out. While the applied technology of MLB Mosaic has yet to be fully launched on MLB.com, subscribers to this service will also be able to actively mix together streams of past games in addition to the live game streams taking place at the time. As a result, in providing a new way for a fan to travel through the game’s extensive records of past and present games, the interactive possibilities of such initiatives present a potential qualitative shift in how a person can now experience the culture and history the sport (baseball or otherwise). 31 IV. A bell to ring… But let’s consider again such situations as writing a story, making a film, or building a video game that is in part based on incorporating bits of culture from these past and present events. Consider the situation of intentionally or inadvertently making reference to these materials in the creation of a new work. Despite all the potential to be an active participant in the development of new cultural works or interactive applications around the game of baseball, without the “express written consent” of Major League Baseball, the creative process would be resigned to a passive engagement with the materials as they are presented and made accessible. While the materials can be engaged through various media interfaces, the actual use of these same materials in building something new is still a questionable cultural activity. The assumption from this perspective is that permission must be cleared for any use, and until it is cleared, it becomes a question of what one is allowed to do. Looking at the world through this perspective of a “permission culture” that constantly requires asking what is allowed to be done (Lessig 2004), we could apply it to the context of digital cultural content of Major League Baseball, Specifically, we could apply it to the context of writing a story from a baseball game that took place on October 1st 2005 and is based on having access to the information that forms the basis of the story. In a worst-case permission culture scenario, I would be unable to use such information as the game score, pitch counts, names of teams and players, etc., In this case, the story that began this travelogue could effectively end right here. Perhaps an even worse scenario would be one where, in anticipation of the burdens of this “permission culture”, the story is never even started to begin with, or, is left out of the document entirely. Immaterialized or unable to be used in anyway, it is as though the work does not exist. Yet despite this uncertainty over whether or not the story will officially exist in the worldview of such a permission culture, we’ll still continue on with it. However, we’ll adapt it slightly by moving in a different direction, and into a different “arena of non-practical, or ‘free’ play or game activity” (Wartofsky 1973, p.208 in Cole 1996, p. 121). Conveniently, we simply move to the following day and to another venue. In another corner of the world of popular culture, the evening of October 2nd, 2005 featured a visit to Vancouver by two up-and-coming “indie” rock bands: one called The National and the other Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. While the Red Sox and Yankees played at Fenway Park in Boston earlier in the afternoon, the two New York bands would play Vancouver’s Sonar nightclub, a long-time live music venue formerly known as “The Town Pump”. The club is described in a Sonar is a popular nightclub located in Gastown, in the north-east corner of downtown Vancouver on Water Street. Before the late 90's, it used to be a popular live-music venue called "The Town Pump". Ask any music fan who was in Vancouver during the 1990's and earlier, and they'll tell you fond memories about shows they saw in the Town Pump. Often people called it the best place to see a live band. However, in the mid-90's, live music venues were no longer money-makers in the entertainment industry as DJ'ing and "electronica" was the next big thing. So the Town Pump shut down and "Sonar" opened up in its place. Sonar originally focused on live DJ music and anything electronic. Slowly but surely, live acts were re-introduced to the venue, and it's definitely one of my 32 favourite places to see a live band or a live touring DJ, whoever is in town. (Carhmana 2005) Figure 12. Various pictures and posters from gigs at the Town Pump in Vancouver in the 1990s, including photo of Greg Duuli of The Afghan Whigs in 1993, a poster for a show by the band Negativeland and pictures of Michelle McAdorey and Colin Cripps of Crash Vegas in 1995. As a “music fan who was in Vancouver during the 1990’s”, I can personally attest to having “fond memories” of the venue and the various show’s I’ve seen during its time as the Town Pump or since it took on its present name of Sonar (Figure 12). One of these gigs was the first Vancouver performance on July 9, 1993 by a band that was generating significant “buzz” at the time from a single called “Creep” (Almeida 2005). The band is still together, has grown tremendously in popularity, and is known as Radiohead. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 13. The English band Radiohead, pictured in a multi-screen video montage created in February of 2004 by Joel Flynn (right), played their first show in Vancouver at The Town Pump on July 9, 1993 in support of their album Pablo Honey (1993, left). No photos of this show are available. To my recollection, the show was moderately attended but very short, the singer with the long bleach-blond hair wasn’t particularly fond of crowd surfers, and I’m pretty sure they finished with the song “Blow Out” from their only album at the time, 1993’s Pablo Honey (Figure 13). However, while I’m confident of these observations, subjectively I can’t be absolutely certain of their accuracy since I can’t find any documentation of this performance – official or otherwise – other than ticket 33 stubs and word of mouth. In fact, its status as Radiohead’s first visit to Vancouver was at one point even in question, with the Vancouver Sun newspaper having reported in 1998 that the band’s first travels to theses parts of the globe (i.e. the Pacific coast of Canada) did not take place until April of 1995: When Radiohead revisits Vancouver Monday, it will be almost three years to the day since the band first played here – April 4, 1995. That first show took place at the Railway Club, where after seeing "some pissed up bloke abuse his girlfriend," Radiohead singer thom Yorke began to hurl insults at the drunken audience member. A brawl ensued as the band, the drunk and the railway club bouncer hurled insults and a bit of shoving ensued. (Vancouver Sun, April 1998, in Austin 2003) Many years later, the problem of documenting these sorts of events and performances has seen a dramatic shift, which I can also attest to from my own experiences, as discussed thoroughly in this thesis. In the dozen years since this early Radiohead performance, I seemed to have developed a not-so-uncommon interest in using digital video technology in order to capture live performances of various bands (Furnish 2004), some of which are lower profile artists that are seen as “up and coming”, just as Radiohead was in 1993. Whether the performances were in front of large crowds or a few observers has not been a concern, at least for me. Rather, it was simply part of the context of the performance as it was unfolding, whether in a large concert hall, an intimate club, or some other venue. Looking back at my own cultural historical influences, I can attribute a great deal of this interest to a unique concert film from the early 1970s featuring the rock n’ roll icons of Pink Floyd. The film featured the band playing in a Roman amphitheatre in Pompeii. It was of course called Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 14. Screenshots from French film director Adrian Maben’s Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972) featuring the band playing in an empty Roman amphitheatre. Having reached the “when I seventeen” portion of story, to invoke a line from a famous Frank Sinatra song (Drake 1961)2, back when I was seventeen and going through what seems like the inevitable adolescent phase of interest in 1970s rock n’ roll, there were a number of “supergroups” that appealed to me. Obviously, these included bands such as Led Zeppelin, the Who, Cream, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, etc., i.e. groups that were mythologized very entertainingly in Cameron Crowe’s 2000 film Almost Famous. It also included bands of the “prog rock” genre of the 2 http://users2.ev1.net/~smyth/linernotes/thesongs/ItWasAVeryYear.htm 34 mid and late 1970s, bands such as King Crimson, Yes, Jethro Tull, Genesis, and of course (though with some debate) Pink Floyd3. As the late rock journalist Lester Bangs described this “Rock-asTheatre” movement: You know, Rock-as-Theatre is the same old music, the same old gunk, dressed up in new clothes, you know. I mean I saw Jethro Tull where they had one member of a band get in a bunny suit and hopped across the stage. The audience sits there in gapes, you know I just felt really alienated watching this because… whatever that bunny rabbit… was supposed to represent, it just didn’t communicate to me… Let’s take Emerson Lake & Palmer. Here is musical sterility at its pinnacle. A band that has no soul, there’s nothing, there’s no feeling in the music. The objective is to play preset solos as fast as you possibly can at breakneck speed and do it for about five hours. (Bangs, in Crowe 2000). As indicated by Bangs in the interview included as a special feature on the 2001 DVD of the film, these artists were known to perform elaborate and theatrical concerts and were often presented as elite virtuoso players with highly intellectual music and lyrics. The “prog rock” that Bangs found alienating would be credited with providing a context for the “punk rock” backlash of the late 1970s. The attitudes and performances of these artists were also satirized very entertainingly in Rob Reiner’s 1984 “mockumentary” This Is Spinal Tap, another movie that I enjoyed during those formative years in the late 1980s. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 15. Rock journalist from Creem Magazine, Lester Bangs (top left), as portrayed by actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman (top right) in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000, bottom right). Screenshot from Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap (1984), a satire of the “prog rock” genre that Lester Bangs criticized heavily. 3 http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2622304 35 Around this time, I came across an old copy of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii in the video department of a local grocery store where my big brother worked (a good “in” for getting free movie and video game rentals). While Pink Floyd are also known for their elaborately staged performances, even in the late 1980s “The Floyd” were somewhat regarded as a “cult” band. Or, at least their earlier material was considered in this way, and the obscure Live in Pompeii film was part of this earlier catalogue, as opposed to their more popular and iconic later works, e.g. albums such as 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon or 1979’s The Wall when the band had gained mass popularity. By finding this old film in the old Overwaitea Foods video department – and for the record, if it still existed, I’m sure I could point exactly to the spot on the wall (no puns intended) where one would find the video – it felt as though this “discovery” provided some sort of “secret value” and exclusive insights that were known only to the band’s “true” fans. This “intensive reading” of a favorite’s band’s “texts”, as M.I.T. professor Henry Jenkins theorizes in his work on participatory cultures (Jenkins 2001), would later develop into a personal activity of paying for overpriced records and tapes of rare bootleg recordings by bands such as Pink Floyd (Figure 16). In the case of “The Floyd”, these recordings were sometimes released by the band members themselves for “unofficially sanctioned live bootleg recordings” under the name used from their days as architecture students: The Screaming Abdabs (Wikipedia). Figure 16. A “very rare clipping” (center) from the Regent Street Poly magazine in the early 1960s referring to The Screaming Abdabs, consisting of mostly architecture students who would later form the band Pink Floyd. The band would later release “unofficial” Pink Floyd albums under this pseudonym, e.g. Rhapsody in Pink (1971, left) and Brain Damage (1972, right). 4 Yet with respect to Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, what was just as compelling for me as the cult appeal of finding rare recordings – and just as influential it now seems – was the filmmaking approach used by French director Adrian Maben to present this unique performance. The setting of a Roman amphitheatre, with its effect of a “sacred architecture” for situating the performance (Burckhard, 1967. p 17 in Rajah 1999), was tremendously fascinating. Adding to this was the effect of having an audience that essentially consisted of nothing but the filmmakers and the sound crew (Figure 14). The amphitheatre was otherwise empty, and when combined with long sequences of 4 http://www.rogerwatersonline.com/who.html 36 uncut filming, this context added to the “aura” of the event as “a strange web of space and time” (Benjamin 1936), while producing a sort of paradoxically intimate experience in a wide-open venue. During the time since I first watched this film, and then over the course of watching numerous live performances in a variety of venues – e.g. that early performance by Radiohead at the Town Pump – I’ve been able to observe changes in the dynamics of these events and their recorded reproductions. Specifically, I’ve observed changes in the emphasis that fans place on recordings that that essentially become the “reverberations” of a live concert performance (see Turner 1987 and Scheiffelen 1997 in Jacucci 2004). According to Turner performances are not generally “amorphous or open-ended, they have diachronic structure, a beginning, a sequence of overlapping but isolable phases, and an end.” (Turner 1987, p. 80) Schieffelin (1997) argues that performance is ephemeral and alive, “they create their effects and then they are gone – leaving their reverberations (fresh insights, reconstitutes selves, new statuses, altered realities) behind them” (Jacucci 2004). A performance may be “alive”, but once delivered or recorded, it of course does not change as a performance. We therefore wouldn’t consider the performance as being open once it has taken place. However, its “reverberations” and the interpretations of these reverberations – as a shared common experience – can effectively change over time. So rather than an emphasis on finding the recording of an event, as in, the definitive bootleg from the concert, there has arguably been a shift towards finding – or even creating – the best mix of multiple recordings of the event. Contributing to this reframing has been the shift from analog audio recordings of events to the explosion of digital video documentation, itself a result of digital recording technologies that are now able to store the vast amounts of raw audio and video that is increasingly being captured in live performance settings, not to mention in the day-to-day activities of a networked, digital culture (Flynn 2005, unpublished). V. A trip to take… Of course, I’ve hardly been the only one to notice these changes, or the only one who has been influenced by Pink Floyd’s live performance in the ruins of Pompeii. Notably, what is perhaps the most effective and relevant example of the potential to create innovative new works by opening up of the process of documenting live performances can be found in the recently released concert film Awesome… (2006). Featuring an October 2004 performance by The Beastie Boys at Madison Square Garden in their hometown of New York City, Awesome… was filmed by over fifty members of the audience who were given digital video cameras by the band and simply told to film (Figure 17). 37 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 17. Photos from the film Awesome… (2006) featuring a concert by The Beastie Boys in New York City and filmed by over 50 handheld digital video cameras given to fans of the band. In other words, the shooting of the film was completely unscripted. Later edited together by the band’s Adam Yauch (using the satirical pseudonym “Nathanial Hornblower”), the eldest Beastie Boy claims that while Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972) is one of his favourite concert films, “it’s basically the antithesis of this movie” (Yauch, in Manly 2006): "Live at Pompeii," filmed in 1971 in a 2,000-year-old amphitheater devoid of fans, is filled with languid shots without a cut, some shots lasting five minutes. The longest cut in "Awesome" barely breaks a minute. Many shots clock in at less than a second. All told, the hour-and-a-half "Awesome" contains 6,732 edits. (Manly 2006) The stark contrast of these polar opposite films, for me, speaks to how wide open of a genre the concert film or video can be despite its otherwise narrow limitations of plot, story, character, etc. It also speaks to how approaches within this creative environment can shift and swing from one end of the spectrum to the other. Having noticed the technological developments and the changing cultural norms of everyday concertgoers as part of this shift, and having put in my fair share of time in business school and marketing-related courses, I couldn’t help but see some opportunity in these changes. Looking now at the cultural-historical developments that have been going on in a timeframe that moves from Pink Floyd: Live in Pompeii (1972) to the Beastie Boys’ Awesome… (2006), the opportunities that I saw emerging from these technological and cultural changes would eventually transform into a problem or a question to look into. Essentially taking shape during the tech boom the mid-1990s, and moving in all kinds of directions since, these technological, cultural, and marketing concerns have presented a problem that I’ve been trying to follow ever since. This problem eventually and essentially developed into the formal research project called Travels in Intertextuality: the autopoetic identity of remix culture. This path in more recent years has moved into research areas in interactive arts and applied sciences, where my interest in the interactive possibilities of technological and cultural changes has become concerned with far more than just opportunities to market a product and make money (for better or worse). Rather, I have found multiple perspectives at play in this digital context, each with their own notions of worth, or, using the terminology that is most appropriate to this thesis, notions of value. Prior to any formal academic work as part of a Masters degree, earlier explorations of these ideas had led me to Boston, Philadelphia, and New York in the summer of 2001. In following what was 38 essentially the same problem - i.e. situating a search for value within the context of remix culture – I would eventually end up back in Boston and New York four years later. This time, however, it was a more formal affair, as I was signed up for the AIGA Design Conference held from September 1518, 2005 (AIGA.org). Describing this trip, I hope, helps to provide some very useful context that actually helps to situate much of the written work, the methods, and the digital media artifacts that have emerged from my research activities. In preparing for the conference in Boston, since it was not an ordinary occurrence for me to be able to get to the east coast, I wanted to make the entire trip as worthwhile as I possibly could. The first consideration was for my wife Lorena’s birthday on September 10. The timing of the trip would make for a pretty unique experience, that is, being in New York City that particular day. Fortunately, we could arrange it with her work schedule to be on the east coast earlier in the week, though she’d be returning to Vancouver while I stayed behind for the conference in Boston. As part of these arrangements, she would need to fly out of Newark on the return trip home on September 12th in order to make a stop in Minnesota to meet with work clients. Given these constraints, we planned to arrive in Boston on the 8th, then head down to New York for the 10th and 11th to spend some time in the big city prior to Lorena’s flight back. After this, I would head back to Boston for start of the AIGA conference sometime later in the week. And so travel arrangements would begin to be made. There was another major reason for this trip to the east coast. In fact, the reason that the trip was even considered had to do with a feature presentation at the conference by Paul D. Miller, perhaps the expert in remix culture, and better known through his alter ego of “DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid”. I had met with Paul earlier in the summer and wanted to follow up with him on a potential advisory role in the development in my thesis. While his schedule is always notoriously packed, I figured it was worth the effort to try to get to Boston to meet up with him. Worst-case scenario would be that he’d have little time, which would then leave me to check out other presentations at the event. For example, in looking further at the event’s line-up, I was shocked – shocked! – to see a symposium called “Baseball as a Design Icon” that was to be held in the .401 Club of historic Fenway Park (AIGA.org 2005). This one event alone was too good for me to pass up, as I’m sure it was for other conference participants. So if anything, I’d at least try to document some of these presentations on my trip with my trusty video camera, a beat-up old Sony Digital8 TRV-130 that I had purchased four years earlier, coincidentally, to also shoot some film in the Boston area. Taking a step back, I had personally used a video camera to purposefully film an event exactly twice prior to purchasing the TRV-130 in July of 2001, specifically, in filming two concerts by the Tragically Hip in London and Brussels in June of 2000. A year later, I planned a brief but extensive trip to California and the U.S. east coast that would require video documentation. This was essentially a job-hunting and portfolio development project involving some video interviews with key individuals at several companies in the U.S. These included Redsand Clothing near San Diego, HyperCD in New York City, as well as Groove Networks and the Boston Red Sox in the Massachusetts area. Some of the video documentation on this 2001 trip also concerned a set of highly informal live performances by Canadian rock n’ roll icon Gordon Downie. 39 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 18. Screenshots from a video captures of performances by Gordon Downie and the band The Dinner is Ruined, July 30, 2001 – August 1, 2001. The middle photo, showing Joel Flynn as camera operator in the bottom-right corner, was taken by an unknown photographer but found on the World Wide Web shortly after the event. Flanked by his informal band of guest musicians from Toronto and Montreal, at the time known as The Dinner is Ruined, Downie’s shows were set to take place in late July and early August of 2001. Without official confirmation on being able to film, I headed east that summer to Boston, Philadelphia, and New York in order to try and catch some good shots at these performances (Figure 18). The first of the three took place in Cambridge, near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at a small club called TT the Bear’s on July 30th 2001. There would be another show on following two nights, including a show at a small restaurant and live music venue called the Tin Angel in Philadelphia. Wrapping up this east coast trip would be one more show by Downie and company at what is no longer The Fez Under Time Café in New York’s Bowery district. Despite being able to drag along a couple of key HyperCD people to Downie’s show at the Fez show on August 1st, I had to leave early in order to catch a couple trains to the airport later in the night for a late flight back to Seattle and a ride back to Vancouver with Lorena. VI. A ride to catch… Four years after its first use at TT the Bear’s, and after numerous bouts of documentation since then, the TRV-130 that was purchased for this trip is starting to show signs of its age. However, when planning the trip to the AIGA Design Conference 2005, one of the first things that I did was to find out what bands were playing at TT’s during my stay in Boston. Of course, checking out the local music scene is an ordinary practice for me when going to another city, just in case there is something good to see, or even something to film. In checking out TT’s calendar, I saw that a band called The National was playing on one of the nights of the conference (September 16th). I decided to check into their music via the band’s website. From listening to the songs and audio streams on their site, I was quite easily taken in by the guitar sounds, drum rhythms, and Leonard Cohen-like lyrical dimensions. I soon purchased a couple of tickets to the show, one for myself and another for a colleague, Travis Kirton, an interaction design student at SIAT who would also be attending the AIGA event. While later looking at the New York music events for the same time frame, I also saw that The National were playing a show at the famous Bowery Ballroom on September 9. Set to open for The National that night was a band that was getting a bit of hype in the indie rock community with the interesting name of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. 40 I didn’t know much about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and hadn’t yet heard their songs, but because Lorena and I share a passion for live music, I did want to take her to the Bowery Ballroom on the eve of her birthday. Of course, the show was sold out because of the buzz for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and the few tickets that were listed on various online auctions and Craigslist had prices of upwards of five times the ticket’s original $15 face value. Even compared to ticket prices for other more high-profile music events (which for the record, seem to have become ridiculously costly in recent years), the scalper costs for the Bowery show were a little much. Not only were they too pricey when considering the cost of the trip already, but they were also too difficult to arrange for pickup given our tight schedule between Boston and New York. Despite this, I was still intent on finding a way into the show. I needed a favour, maybe from someone in New York who knew the clubs and might have what is often referred to as an “in”, which seem to usually require money, as in, financial capital. However, on other occasions, the “in” can come simply from “who you know”, i.e. through cultural capital. Fortunately, I did have some contacts in the New York “scene”, some cultural capital I guess, that might be helpful with respect to getting into the Bowery. These contacts included avant-garde musician and artist Joseph Arthur and his manager Lauren. I had met Lauren and Joe first through email and then after having filmed some of Joe’s performances on several occasions. The first of these filming situations was in Seattle at the Crocodile Café in January of 2003, a show where I had inadvertently left the wrong camera settings on the TRV-130 in the rush to get to the club. In the process (again, no pun intended), and because I had degraded the video by having the wrong setting on the camera, I’d end up experimenting with some filters in order to try to fix the problem. What this experimentation led to was the black and white style that I’ve since used for most of my concert filming productions. More recently, I helped film one of Arthur’s show when he came to Vancouver on March 17, 2005. With the help of several colleagues, I was able to put together a 3-camera angle prototype from this more recent performance that was used in a paper on interaction and participatory design methods (Figure 19). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 19. Screenshots from video artifacts of live performances by Joseph Arthur: January 17, 2003 at the Crocodile Café in Seattle, December 13, 2004 at the Troubadour in Hollywood, and March 17, 2005 at the Red Room in Vancouver. Joseph Arthur normally performs on his own by creating digital loops and sample of his vocals and guitar playing in order to create the effect of a multi-person band. At the Vancouver show in March of 2005, he even added a bizarre but fascinating twist to the experimental approach by creating a 41 wall-sized painting while singing over top of these loops and samples. Months later, it was proving difficult to get a hold of Joe, who had taken his travelling road show to Europe, and at the time had just finished a tour with the popular rock band R.E.M. The chances of Joe and Lauren being in New York in September I therefore assumed would be unlikely. However, my video work with Joe’s performances had turned up another lead. While he’s known for this unique approach as a solo artist, musician, and performer, Joseph Arthur arranged for the extremely talented singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Joan Wasser to accompany him on violin for his 2004 touring (Figure 19). Joan is from New York and did her music training at the famous Berklee College of Music in Boston. She goes by the stage name of Joan as Police Woman (in homage to Angie Dickinson of the 1970s TV show “Police Woman”), and as part of filming Joseph Arthur’s shows in Seattle, San Diego, and Los Angeles in December of 2004, I had also filmed several of Joan’s solo performances as the opening act. Later in December of that year, Joan called me up for a favour. She would return this later on, and in a fantastic way, by helping to get Lorena and myself into the Bowery Ballroom. The exchange of favors originated from Joan needing to have something for an exhibit at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMOCA) in January of 2005. Since I had let her know after the December shows that I might have some reasonable footage of her opening sets, she called me up later in the month to check into this. Having just put together some work on the Joseph Arthur performances, I thought that the Seattle performance on December 8, 2004, again at the Crocodile Café, had some potential for a Joan project. Of course, if there were soundboard audio recordings from this set, it would significantly improve the potential for this footage. I asked Joan if it had been recorded. One of the “revolutionary” approaches that Joe Arthur was using in early 2003 was his live recording of every one of his shows, which were then burned to CD and sold after the gig. This practice has since been adopted in more formal and systemized ways by other artists, for example, The Pixies’ 2004 reunion tour through “pixiediscs.com”. Joe continues to provide these recordings after his shows and was of course doing so at the December gigs. Since he already had the recording capabilities working, Joe’s soundman (Morgan Taylor) recorded Joan’s opening set at the Crocodile prior to Joe’s set. Therefore, she was able to upload an MP3 recording of her set, which I was then able to edit together in a performance that mixed the camera’s audio with that of the soundboard. Mixing these two audio recordings together obviously helps the video presentation in that it provides a clear sound from the board mix, but with some added depth from the camera’s microphone (depending on the volume levels of the performance). The result is usually a much more engaging and immersive soundtrack that is added to the video presentation as part of the mix of multimedia that is transformed into a DVD or a web movie, etc. 42 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 20. Screenshots from video artifacts of live performances by Joan Wasser in December of 2004 in Hollywood, San Diego, and Seattle. While the video editing required for Joan’s performance was minimal, I was able to produce what I felt was a reasonable version of her show on DVD that she was then able to use for her exhibit in January 2005. Months later, I emailed Joan on a return favour, having run out of ticket options for the show at the Bowery. I was hoping that she might have a lead on purchasing tickets for the show, given that she’s performed at numerous New York venues and has played with a number of artists in town. It turned out that Joan did have a friend, Tara, who tended bar at the Bowery Ballroom, so there was an off chance that she could get us in. The catch was that Tara didn’t know if she’d be working that night and wouldn’t actually know until quite close to the day of the show. So when Lorena and I arrived in New York on September 9th, I hadn’t yet heard back from Joan as to whether it looked like we had a shot of getting in or not. Fortunately, the news turned out to be good, as Tara was working that evening and was able to get us in, otherwise the story could effectively end here… [Note: So a big thank you to Joan and Tara!] VII. A band to hear… So with some luck we were able to get into the Bowery Ballroom for The National show, but the help of Joan and Tara would not be the only good fortune that night. After watching the loose but entertaining set by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, with the notable and highly unique vocal stylings of singer Alec Ounsworth, Lorena and I went to stand outside in the muggy New York evening while waiting for The National’s set to begin. 43 Figure 21. Interface for the Bowery Ballroom’s website (left) and picture from Canadian band Sloan’s performance at the venue in May 2004 (photographer unknown, from sloanmusic.com) According to the venue’s website, the Bowery Ballroom “was completed weeks before the stock market crash of 1929, replacing a three-story brick theatre” (www.boweryballroom.com) that was unused or occupied by high-end retail concerns, only to be reopened as for live music in 1997. Out in front of the venue on Delancey Street (Figure 21), Lorena and I found ourselves with other patrons who needed a break from the club’s very chilly air conditioning system. While there, we saw one of the two brothers from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and said hello, only to overhear some dialogue going on behind me, something to the effect of a girl asking “are you excited for your show tonight?” I assumed she was posing this question to someone who was in The National, since, logically, they were the only band still left to play. Turns out it was someone from The National, specifically, bass player and guitarist Scott Devendorf who I doubt I would have recognized if not for the conversation going on behind me. Soon after, we were chatting with Scott about the band and their albums and all the places they would be touring, etc., (essentially, the ordinary artist-audience banter that takes place when discussing a band’s work), which then led to the question of recording of these performances. With respect to this question, about a week before heading to Boston and New York I had sent an email to The National’s management which had inquired about filming the show at TT the Bear's on September 16. I had also asked about the New York show, but had no tickets at the time and had not bothered to bring my camera with me to the Bowery. Recalling this, and since I hadn’t heard anything back from the band’s management, I asked Scott if they wanted some filming of their show the following week when they were to play in Cambridge. Since I was going to be at the show anyway, I told him I was happy to oblige, as was he in trying to get it set up on the band’s part. Scott also mentioned that the band was going to be in Vancouver in early October, and asked me to contact Sarah at his management company to make the needed arrangements for recording it, as I suggested doing a recording involving multiple cameras. I would of course get in contact with Sarah later on to set up the filming of the Vancouver show, but with the New York show about to start, I thanked Scott for his help and said I’d see them in a week. The group standing outside of the Bowery began to make its way in, some to watch, some to play. Listening, however, was a given in any event (Figure 22). 44 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 22. Matt Berninger (left) of The National at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, September 9, 2005 (photo by Lorena Christensen) as well as the band’s Scott Devendorf (right) from an undetermined show (photographer unknown). VIII. A pitch to throw… The following Thursday I was still on the east coast, and had been fortunate in the previous week to be able to meet up with Ken Park, an old friend, multimedia guy, and Yankee fan from my previous visits to New York. I had met Ken by phone and email while in early 2001 in the process of trying land a job with his company, HyperCD, in the days when the technology sector was only beginning its freefall. While the prospect of working in New York was both exciting and intimidating, the circumstances never came about for such a move to happen, for one reason or another. Regardless, when I made a trip out east in 2001, and then again in 2003, I would make sure to stop by Ken’s office in Manhattan, located across the street from yet another famous sports and music venue, Madison Square Garden (Figure 23). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 23. The sign at the door of HyperCD, now Octopus Media (left), with company founder and CEO Ken Park (center) from an interview on July 26, 2001, and a shot of Madison Square Garden from his office window (right) featuring a giant billboard advertising a September boxing match between Bernard Hopkins and Felix Trinidad. Due to tragic events on September 11, 2001, the fight obviously wasn’t able to take place on its originally scheduled date. 45 At the time, HyperCD had developed a hybrid approach to the distribution of digital media where full quality CD-ROM and DVD content was playable only when opened within a specific website. The HyperCD approach, when launched in 1997, originally attempted to solve the problem of having to work with the low-quality downloaded video that was common on websites at the time. With HyperCD, sites could offer full quality video that played off of CDs and DVDs but incorporated within the frame of a standard web browser. Since then, however, both bandwidth and compression technologies have improved significantly in being able to deliver real-time streams rather than disc-based content. Furthermore, full-quality video is generally played on DVD home theatre systems or laptops being used in transit rather than on web-connected computers. The need for CD and DVD-based website solutions therefore becomes questionable, especially when access to the disc’s content is contingent upon the availability of missing pieces that have been pulled from the whole work. So while it was initially designed to address aesthetic issues caused by low bandwidth limitations, the HyperCD model would later be pitched to concerned content producers as an approach to discourage the un-licensed duplication of CD’s and DVDs. By removing key pieces of metadata that rendered the disc unplayable, that is, unless opened within a specific website, the approach could theoretically track the use of the HyperCDs and HyperDVDs as legitimate or duplicate copies. When copyright concerns later shifted from illegal CD duplication to online file sharing through the explosion of the Napster phenomenon, HyperCD would again need to be re-evaluated and re-framed. In recent years, the company (now known as Octopus Media) has since pushed the HyperCD approach as a direct marketing tool for online businesses and web-based promotions. HyperCD wasn’t the only company that I visited on this east coast trip in 2001. Another company straddling the boundaries of technology, culture, and marketing that was of interest for me on this visit was collaboration software developer Groove Networks of Beverly, Massachusetts. Because of the peer-to-peer buzz that had developed in the previous year with the rise of Napster and other P2P systems, Groove struck me as highly interesting for how it was attempting to turn this decentralized P2P model into a productive shared space for people to collaborate online. Given that I had an interview with a V.P. from the Boston Red Sox organization (Figure 27), in addition to the fact that I would at least attempt to film some live music performances in situ (Figure 18), I had some particular ideas in mind with respect to Groove’s potential in these contexts. Specifically, I was interested in how such decentralized spaces might be picked up on in terms of, for example, fan communities in music or in sports and what kind of interactions, or ideas, or content might emerge from such shared environments. At the time, I was envisioning something similar to what MySpace.com has now become for bands, but with the collaborative tools offered in Groove’s P2P model. I had fortunately been able to schedule an interview with Groove’s V.P. of Marketing Communications, Richard Eckel, during the day of July30, 2001. So with these questions in mind, and with the Gord Downie show to film later that night at TT the Bear’s, I hopped the Newburyport/Rockport line at North Station in Boston for the forty-some minute ride to Beverly Depot. 46 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 24. July 30 , 2001 interview in Beverly with Richard Eckel, the V.P. of Marketing for Groove Networks, now a subsidiary of the Microsoft Corporation. th From the extensive video interview that Richard provided at the Groove headquarters in Beverly, there were a couple of key points that emerged from this discussion that are worth mentioning here. The first is simply to note that Groove’s decentralized approach was based on the company’s observations that the far more interesting and productive work activities were taking place “out at the edge of the company network” (Eckel 2001). In today’s peer-to-peer worldview, this may not come at a surprise, but at the time of the interview, and especially coming shortly after legal issues had shut Napster down in July of 2001 (RIAA.com), enterprises were not necessarily comfortable with a system that did not operate on the principle of centralizing information through a clientserver model. Even more interesting was the story of how Groove, and its founder Ray Ozzie, came to this approach. Since Ray was a key player in the development of the Lotus Notes groupware applications in the 1990s, he couldn’t help but notice how his two kids were making use of instant messaging applications and networked online video games, such as Quake, in order to communicate and solve problems in a very decentralized way. Essentially, by noticing how kids were adapting their play activities to the affordances of interactive technologies, future technologies such as Groove would become driven by these practical uses rather than how Ozzie and company thought a product like Lotus Notes ought to be used in an organization. From these observations, so the story goes, came Groove Networks in 1997. For HyperCD, now Octopus Media, in the nine years of its operation since 1997, the company has shifted from aesthetic and cultural concerns of website design – i.e. how to feasibly incorporate fullquality video into a website – to technological concerns of digital content protection, to marketing concerns of finding ways to attract users to company sites through disc-based media. In response to these interacting dynamics, the HyperCD model has been seen as offering both “web-enabled” and “encrippled” discs (hypercd.com). Along this same time frame, according to Eckel, Groove Networks grew to over two hundred employees and had raised $60 million in funding as of the July 30, 2001 interview from investors interested in the P2P model. Interestingly, Groove would later be acquired by Microsoft in April of 2005. While it’s easy to look to Apple’s iTunes Music Store as a successful model in the legal distribution of online content, or MySpace.com as a virally popular peer-to-peer networking system, to put these successes into context would seem to require looking at the numerous initiatives, such as HyperCD and Groove that offered similar potential solutions. There have been and will continue to 47 be numerous other initiatives offering models that hope to solve the riddle of how people are going to be able to interact in a digital culture, but the “traditional” worldview of technology ventures has been one of a “winner-take-all” scenario (Metcalfe, in Downs & Mui 1998). IX. A plane to catch… In the intense dynamics of a digital economy, the first company to reach a critical mass of success in its market will have a strong chance of surviving as its markets dominant player, such as Hotmail or the iPod. This venture’s success then creates the frame for looking at how future business will operate in this market, always in relation to the dominant player’s worldview. As result, the questions raised in new ventures shift towards “business model”, for example, does Google’s model challenge Microsofts? And then, how does “Company X” challenge Google’s model, etc. In other words, it’s matter of relationships and competitive advantages. Before leaving New York to head back to Boston for the AIGA event in September 2005, I was able to meet up with Ken briefly over breakfast. We discussed our resigned frustrations in trying to figure out the puzzle of how to distribute digital content through discs, the web, or both, i.e. the changing relationships and competitive advantages in the digital environment. These discussions included the theoretical positionings and the practical realities of both our experiences in and around the swings in the multimedia industry over the last ten years. What was frustrating for both of us was the way we’d keep seeing similar versions of ideas and concepts that we had been discussing, but seemingly little ability to do much with these insights. I had presented a number of such emerging ideas to him in my original job application in early 2001, in a document that in a sense was a much smaller version of this one, that I called “The Pitch” (Flynn 2001, unpublished). Since writing it in January of 2001, I’ve found the ideas and concepts that it touches on seem to pop up again and again, moving from being in vogue to out being of step and then back again in extremely short cycles, i.e. from killer app, to failed technology, to next big thing, to…? Of course, that would be my perspective of the environment, through my available lenses. From our meetings since 2001, Ken and I seem to share some of these perspectives (even if he is a Yankees fan!). Our breakfast meeting on September 13, 2005, recalled the last time I had been able to meet with Ken in New York. This was at Yankee Stadium in the summer of 2003 where Red Sox ace Pedro Martínez was throwing a 1-0 shutout against the Yankees on a July 7th afternoon game. After five innings, I had to leave for the airport while making sure I had enough time to catch my flight, jokingly telling Ken and his friends that since the game was basically over anyway, I might as well get on my way. When I got back to Vancouver later that night and checked the baseball results, the Yankees had won the game in the ninth inning by a score of 2-1. Of course, a couple of years later, sitting in the .401 Club waiting for the “Baseball as Design Icon” symposium, it also occurred to me that both sets of Sox also had a won the World Series since then (doesn’t happen very often). Even though the official start of the AIGA conference (for me) was the event at Fenway Park, I had been able to get some additional and unexpected filming done in the previous week, including a couple of live music performances (Figure 25). The first was on September 12 at the Living Room, which was again in New York’s Bowery district. The performance featured a friend of a friend, Jason Webley, who was in town delivering what I can only describe as – in a good way – a young 48 Tom Waits doing pirate songs. The following night, after having returned to Boston, the ex-singer from 1990s cult band Soul Coughing, Mike Doughty, was appearing at the Paradise Theatre near the campus of Boston University. After asking a few questions at the venue, I was able to get into the packed house with my camera and get something out of it despite shooting from behind the glass of the soundman’s booth. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 25. Screenshots of performances by Jason Webley at New York’s The Living Room (left) and Mike Doughty at Boston’s Paradise Theatre (center). View from the .406 club at very rainy Fenway Park (right) for the “Baseball as Design Icon” symposium, September 15, 2005. Sitting in Fenway a couple of days later, watching and filming torrential downpours on the covered field, the camera’s focus again shifted to baseball and the “aura” of the old stadium, its culture, and its history. In front of this rainy backdrop, a group of speakers presented, as best they could, ideas that related to both baseball and design practice. For the most part, this discussion related to graphic design topics such as sports team logos, uniforms, and baseball cards as design objects. Of course, during these presentations there was obviously going to be a specific focus on Fenway Park as an icon of design in sports stadiums. For example, there were discussions on the role of the venue’s quirky architecture, its history, and its place in the community as all playing important parts of Fenway’s appeal. Not at all known for its slickness, comfort, and sightlines, Fenway’s appeal came rather from the almost century-old ballpark’s museum-like effect, as well as its cultural and historical significance in the game of baseball in general, and, more specifically, to the subculture of the “Red Sox Nation”. The fan culture of the “Red Sox Nation”, because of my own identification with it, presented what I felt was an interesting point of comparison for sports fan culture with respect to music subcultures. The similarities between the die hard fans of particular hockey teams, such as the Toronto Maple Leafs or the Montréal Canadiens, is noticeable whenever these teams came to Vancouver to play the local Canucks squad. These fan subcultures always reminded me of days when a big concert event was taking place in town, when there was always an influx of T-Shirts, hats, and jerseys bearing the symbols of team or the artist while identifying the fan as part of a particular subculture. One of the more striking examples of this effect, much to the chagrin of many critics of the band, has been the overlap of music fan culture and hockey fan culture with respect to The Tragically Hip, a band from the Ontario town of Kingston with a particular association with the Toronto Maple Leafs. At any Tragically Hip show, in Canada or elsewhere, one will invariably find a number of fans wearing hockey jerseys (Figure 26). Sometimes these are specifically designed Tragically Hip hockey jerseys marketed by the band, but they can also be Team Canada jerseys, or Maple Leaf 49 jerseys. In the latter case, these Maple Leaf jerseys sometime bear the number “5” of the legendary Bill Barilko, whose story was appropriated and transformed by lyricist Gord Downie into one of the band’s popular songs, a hard-rocking elegy called “Fifty Mission Cap”. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 26. Miscellaneous Tragically Hip fans filmed as part of the band’s DVD, That Night in Toronto (2005, left), Bill Barilko’s #5 jersey of the Toronto Maple Leafs (center), and sample Tragically Hip jerseys for sale through the band’s website (right), one being a remix of the old Vancouver Canucks logo, the other, a remix of the Canadian flag. The Tragically Hip have been both loved and criticized for the nationalistic pride they seem to produce in their Canadian fans, a double-edged sword that can create both a sense of unity for those who feel part of this culture and a feeling of alienation for those who don’t play hockey, aren’t from Ontario, don’t drink Molsons or Labatts beer, or maybe aren’t even Canadian for that matter. There are sometimes even deep tensions that develop within this cultural space, i.e. between those who feel that a Tragically Hip show is best experienced on the floor in front of the stage, dancing, and singing along passionately to all of the songs, and those who would rather keep clear of any potential elbows from a “Captain Canada” flailing away in a hockey jersey without regard for fellow concert goers. I happen to be a tremendous fan of the Tragically Hip, and have been influenced heavily by their creative efforts and approaches in my own practice as a songwriter, a performer, or a filmmaker. Prior to picking up a camera, I’ve even followed many of theirs shows as they move from tour stop to tour stop in various cities in Canada and elsewhere. The motivation for such trips were primarily an exploration of creative writing ideas that tended to move between material for a dark psychological thriller and the black humour of an ironic take on fandom, jingoism, and the rock n’ roll dream of life “on the road”. Whether it is because of the richness of their songs and lyrics, their unusual longevity in the increasingly high-turnover music industry, or even because of the incredibly interesting dynamics that can take place in their fan base (as described above), I find something uniquely improbable about the band. In other words, it really shouldn’t work, but somehow it does. Despite being a fan, I don’t consider myself a “Captain Canada”, as often referred to when stereotyping “Hip Fans”. I don’t play hockey, I’m not from Ontario but rather the west coast, I rarely drink Molsons or Labatts (well, I should say that I don’t prefer to consume either of these brands), and don’t find any inherent pride in being Canadian as opposed to American. Yet I do have a strong attachment to fan culture, whether it’s being a fan of a particular band or artist, or a fan of a favourite sports team or player. Specifically, I’m a fan of the cultural-historical development of fan 50 culture, and given my background, have long been fascinated in particular by the changing dynamics of fan culture and its interactions with technological and marketing forces. This interest in the potential effects of technological changes on fan communities was a driving motivation in making my fist trip to Boston in July of 2001. As part of this trip, and prior to filming the previously mentioned Gordon Downie show at TT the Bear’s, I was fortunate to be able to do a brief interview on this topic with the Red Sox V.P. of Marketing at the time, Jim Healy. I was even more fortunate to be able to get into the game against the Chicago White Sox that day and experience the “aura” of Fenway Park on the return of star shortstop Nomar Garciaparra to the line up. As Healy commented in our interview, the Red Sox ownership at the time was in favour of replacing Fenway because of its age and lack of comfort for the fans, but what struck me on my two visits to the park during this first trip east was how integral the venue was to its community, i.e. the cultural-historical development of the “Red Sox Nation”. Four years later, sitting in Fenway’s .401 Club and filming parts of the “Baseball as a Design Icon” symposium as best I could, it was apparent that the new ownership group that took over the Red Sox in 2002 held a very different worldview of the ballpark’s role in selling Red Sox culture to its fan community. Again I was fortunate to be able to get a follow-up interview earlier in the week with Paul Hanlon, the team’s Ballpark Planning and Development Manager, to talk about this change in perspective (Figure 27). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 27. Screenshot from video interview Jim Healy (left, center left) of the Boston Red Sox front office, July 29, 2001 filmed by Joel Flynn; Screenshot from video interview with Paul Hanlon of the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park, September 8, 2005 (center right, filmed by Lorena Christensen); digital still photo of Joel Flynn and Lorena Christensen at Fenway Park (right, taken by an unknown Red Sox fan). From the interviews, combined with the presentations being given at the AIGA symposium, this shift could be seen in terms of placing value in the cultural and historical aspects of a venue, i.e. valuing Fenway’s “aura” rather than simply looking at its aesthetics and comfort. This was a shift where despite Fenway’s numerous flaws, the stadium was now being treated as an historical landmark, even as a “sacred architecture” (Burckhard 1967, p.17 in Rajah 1999), not only in the city of Boston, but also in baseball culture as a whole. Essentially, Fenway Park was now being recognized as being just as fundamental a part of the identity of the Red Sox as the players that currently play or have played on its field or have sat in its dugout. 51 X. A show to catch… The cultural-historical perspectives that were being touched on at Fenway did not end when the symposium finished up. After getting a tour of the entire stadium and heading back to the conference center, I met up with Travis for some of the other pre-conference events and keynote addresses, but the big attractions were not scheduled until the following day. In what reminded me of going to a large music festival with multiple stages of performers, Travis and I both filled out our line-up cards with speakers and presentations we wanted to attend over the following two days, Travis and I had a number of key interests at the event – e.g.design icons such as Ze Frank, Stefan Sagemeister, John Maeda, Paula Scher, Catarina Fake, etc. – but some choices required splitting off on different paths. For example, I wanted to follow up on the “Baseball as Design Icon” symposium from tshe previous day so I went to Todd Radom’s “Graphic Design for American Professional Sports”. Travis, on the other hand, wanted to know more about the M.I.T. Media Lab and the work of Hiroshi Ishii in his “Tangible Bits: Beyond Painted Bits” presentation. So different paths were taken, only to meet up again to compare notes, so to speak. Some of these presentations were engaging, but others didn’t pan out, and Travis and I would compare our notes afterwards in beer-fueled evening discussions (while I of course kept one on the Red Sox game). We both found there were surprisingly good presentations, such as Bill Strickland’s powerful “Design for Leadership” speech, or U.S. Congressman Barney Frank’s “Design and Civic Leadership”, which didn’t seem to have much design relevance, but was highly relevant in the wake of what was taking place at the time with the flooding in New Orleans. There was also the unfortunate surprise of documentary filmmaker Errol Morris’s absence, one of the bigger attractions for my interest in the conference. But of course, the main attraction for both of us, as was for many at the event, was the rockstar “aura” of having DJ Spooky on the bill, who, as author Paul D. Miller, was promoting his book Rhythm Science (2004, see Figure 29). With a good deal of “buzz” surrounding his appearance at the event, Paul D. Miller made two presentations at the AIGA Design Conference on September 16, 2005. The first was a “Mainstage” presentation that could only be attended in person if you had paid the full conference fees, but was available to the rest of the attendees via the large screen projections in what was referred to as “The Living Room” (AIGA.org, 2005 see Figure 28). 52 Figure 28. The AIGA Design Conference 2005 “Living Room” (left) as attended by future Vancouver Canuck defenceman Luc Bourdon… err… actually, no. It’s SIAT’s own Travis Kirton (right). Since both Travis and I couldn’t afford to spend the extra money on the full ticket price ($800 USD), we were left to watch the event through this video feed, though, much to our satisfaction, we could do so in the comfort of the much softer furniture and informal lounge environment available in this space. DJ Spooky’s second presentation was not televised, but took place in a packed conference room where Miller extended on his ideas relating the DJ’s worldview, i.e. of open culture and methods of appropriation and transformation and how they can be applied to design. In keeping with this idea of open culture, Spooky passed around copies of his various DJ mixes and requested that people in the audience share them amongst themselves. In keeping with similar cultural perspectives, I filmed both of his presentations and remixed the “screen within screen” televised presentation with higher quality “podcast” audio that was made available after the event. Ideally, these recordings or mixed versions of them would be available at some point for the audience to share as well. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 29. Screenshot of Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid’s presentation at the AIGA Design Conference 2005 (left) and image of his book Rhythm Science (2004). 53 The first day of the conference “officially” wrapped up for both Travis and myself not long after Spooky’s second presentation had finished. Yet there would still be more work (or play) ahead since The National’s show at TT the Bear’s was scheduled for later in the evening. I tried to pry Miller away from his schedule in order to come check out the gig, since, as expected, there was little opportunity to talk with him at the AIGA event. However, he was unable to do so in terms of time and probably didn’t know who the band was and why it might be relevant to check out. It was a long shot, and arguably would not have been a very good use of time, since I’d be tied up filming anyway. We therefore headed over the Charles River, up to Cambridge and to Brookline Street where TT the Bear’s was located. While I set up at the venue, Travis went off on his own investigation of the M.I.T. Campus and some post-AIGA multimedia art exhibits taking place there. As I was charging camera batteries and waiting for Tim Wakefield to begin his rain-delayed start for that night for the Sox against the Oakland Athletics (Figure 9), I noticed one of the opening bands setting up their merchandise table for the upcoming show. I asked the band, who identified themselves as Aberdeen City, if they wanted some footage recorded of their show since I’d be filming The National anyway later on the night (Figure 30). They were surprised but more than happy to oblige. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 30. Screenshots from video artifacts featuring Aberdeen City and The National, recorded at TT the Bear’s on September 16, 2005, with picture of Manny Ramirez th getting the game-winning hit-by-pitch in the 11 inning of the Red Sox vs. Athletics game that evening. Recording Aberdeen City’s set turned out to not only be a good practice activity for The National’s set later that night, but also allowed me to capture a surprising and impressive live performance of a band that I had no clue existed a few hours earlier. While I didn’t end up filming the other two bands who were performing that evening (Pela and The Octopus Project) due mostly to lack of batteries and tape. Of course, I also had an ever-so-slight desire to watch the Red Sox game against the Athletics, which by that point had developed into a tense, extra-inning affair that ended up being won by the Sox on a bases-loaded pitch that landed in Manny Ramirez’s oversized, pyjama-style uniform (Figure 30). Later in October and back in Vancouver, I would put together a brief clip of Aberdeen City’s last song of their set. Despite only having low quality audio from my camera’s microphone, the band liked it enough to request a copy for potential use in their press kit. Of course, I would also do a bit of brief editing of The National’s material from the TT the Bear’s show in order to see whether it turned out despite the audio and in order to prepare for their upcoming show in Vancouver on 54 October 2nd. While I was happy enough from what I saw from my single-camera recordings, I definitely wanted to take a slightly different approach to the Vancouver show, one that I had experimented with previously. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 31. The multi-camera split-screen approach as used in examples featuring the band Halcyon Days and artist Joseph Arthur. For The National’s October 2nd visit to the Pacific coast of Canada, I wanted to incorporate three cameras and soundboard audio for this recording, and from there, pull a mix out this pool of media. Though not necessarily an end result, I did want to at least attempt collecting these various media pieces in order to apply the split-screen approach that I had been experimenting with in both the Halcyon Days show from March 10, 2000 and the more recent Joseph Arthur show from March 17, 2005 (Figure 31). The objective seemed reasonable and clear, but in practice, producing this remix of digital media artifacts turned out to be far more challenging than expected as events unfolded on October 2nd, 2005. XI. A fish to catch… Despite losing out on the American League East championship with a loss at Fenway the day before, the Boston Red Sox would still make the 2005 playoffs with their 10-1 win over the Yankees on October 2nd. Since both teams were assured of playoff spots when other contending teams failed to win earlier in the day, the lopsided score of the game only added to a dramatic letdown in what could’ve been an intense finale to the 2005 season. Regardless, I was still happy my team would get a chance to defend its World Series crown (though, as it turns out, the Chicago White Sox juggernaut would soon wipe away their Boston countersocks with a sweep in the first round of the playoffs). Furthermore, I had additional things to think about besides baseball, specifically, the show later that Sunday at Sonar featuring The National and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Traditionally, Sundays are days where sporting matches and other forms of leisure and recreation often take place. They are a somewhat odd night for live music shows, since Friday and Saturday nights are most preferred for concert events. However, I’ve always enjoyed Sunday music events, mostly because I infrequently do a solo acoustic show once a year (or so it seems), and Sundays are usually the only nights that are available to book. Rather than performing on stage, this 55 particular Sunday in October seemed to be an appropriate day for filming what was happening on stage at a live music performance. At this point, my concert filming experiments had transformed into what was, for me, a “game activity” (Wartofsky, 1973 p. 208, in Cole 1996 p.121). The challenge for this “game” of filming a concert is of course to catch the best possible shots over the course of the performance, or, to produce the best possible shot selection, if you will. There are different approaches for this objective, one of which is the single-camera technique that I had used almost exclusively over the five years I had been doing such work. However, for this particular show I wanted to involve more than a single camera’s perspective by incorporating three cameras. Theoretically, these extra cameras would provide a way to open up the floor, so to speak. Figure 32. 3-point shooting in an actual basketball game (left) with the line shown in a diagram of a standard basketball court (center). These spaces have also been mapped out into virtual environments such as the NBA All-Star 3-Point Shootout featuring a virtual representation of NBA legend Larry Bird (right). Metaphorically, this approach of opening up the floor can be seen as similar in intent to the introduction of the 3-point shot in the game of basketball. This rule change was initially implemented by the American Basketball Association (ABA) in the late 1960s as “a marketing tool” or a “gimmick” to position the upstart league as offering a more entertaining version of the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) more traditional product. The 3-point shot has become the most significant element of basketball: It's more necessary than post play, it dictates the pace of the game and the way teams play defense, it's changed the significance of offensive rebounding, and it has altered the relative street value of almost every player in the league. Which is all the more interesting because… This was never supposed to be the case; the 3-point shot was never supposed to be as consequential as it now is. And this makes me think about how things evolve (and about why things evolve), and how most meaningful concepts are inevitably due to other people's mistakes… So how did this happen? How did a disrespected gimmick become the most critical component of how pro basketball operates? (Klosterman 2006) 56 Through this rule change, which was has since become incorporated across the sport as a whole, teams were able to tap into the speed and shooting skills of smaller players. This created an incentive for mixing in more outside shots in a team’s game plan, rather than relying heavily on the ability of taller players to shoot exclusively from close range. Similarly, the mix of angles and audio feeds through the use of multiple cameras, theoretically, created an opportunity to tap into the mediational and collaborative potential of (1) digital media technologies for recording cultural events, and (2) the skills and abilities of the individuals filming the event. While the 3-point shot has often been employed in basketball for its “ability to stretch out a zone [defence]” (Wikipedia, Three-point field goal), the 3-point shot in the filming context has the ability to stretch out the zone of participation in the live music performance. At least this is my argument. So with this mindset and objective in place for the October 2nd show, I would of course require two additional camerapeople. I was able to enlist good friend Nolan March to run his Canon XL-1 as one of the two extra cameras, since he had significant experience in such events through his video webstreaming production company, Karma Projects (http://www.karmaprojects.com). For the remaining camera, I approached Travis Kirton for his help, as he was a big fan of The National and had already seen the band at the show in Cambridge a few weeks earlier when we were both in Boston for the AIGA Design Conference. By combining these three recordings with the soundboard audio recorded through Nolan’s Sony MiniDisc player, I was expecting to get a reasonable mix of media that could be presented Nolan’s webstreaming system. While the filming of The National show was already approved in advance, we didn’t know whether Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were interested in having their set filmed as well. When they gave their approval to do so prior to The National’s set, it seemed this additional content would further increase the odds of getting some reasonable recordings. As mentioned, I had been filming live music events for over five years at this point, and knowing the time involved in editing these recordings, my philosophy towards this activity has developed during this time in a way that I find appropriate for such experiments. Initially, the idea in expecting to work with footage from multiple cameras was to capture clips of songs that could be later edited down to the really “good” bits and finally creating a finished sequence of a mix of shots. However, I had eventually grown frustrated by the process of editing out camera work that I didn’t like, or what combination of shot might work better, or of constantly thinking of what other material to mix into the performance. In response, I found myself considering the challenge of essentially trying to capture a performance on a single continuous shot, thereby significantly reducing the onus on editing the material after the fact. This approach also came in useful when it was only my camera that was available at an event, and therefore had no other shots to edit with. The mindset of this scenario would basically develop my filming approach to where I would shoot continuously, while using the ability of a monopod to essentially “set up and tear down” very quickly when needed. At the same time, this approach would have the camera’s perspective in the viewfinder constantly “moving”, even though once settled in place, I would physically stay in the same spot for most of the performance. By only interrupting the flow of the capture when necessary (i.e. to conserve batter power or in order to change video tapes), and with the assumption that it was the only camera that was filming in the 57 venue, my goal was to have the recording able to act as a base layer for adding additional recordings to build off of, should those recordings up at some later date. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 33. Screenshots from various single-camera recordings from 2003 and 20044 of live performances by (in order), Built to Spill, Guided by Voices, R.E.M. and The Pixies. Therefore, even in the case where my camera was the only one that was able to record the event, the recording (or at least parts of it) would hopefully still be just engaging enough to watch without needing to do excessive and time-consume editing. This mindset put more focus on filming as a “game activity” that require a measure of patience and concentration as the live music event was unfolding in real time. However, it also lent itself to the notion of the “reflective practitioner” (Schön 1983), where the process of editing the material later on offered the opportunity to reflect on directions taken with the camera’s movement and shot selections during the performance of particular songs. Despite being quite comfortable with the single-camera approach at this point, my main interest in filming the October 2nd show was to see how my single camera approach would work in response to two other cameras. I was anticipating that I’d create a split-screen that could compare the three angles simultaneously in order see how they would interact dynamically (or not) in the presentation of the recordings. In other words, I wanted to see if the combination and coordination of lenses somehow created more than the sum of the parts. The idea of creating such a video mix was similar with respect to mixing together the soundboard audio with audio from the cameras or from room mics in order to create a sense of depth in the listening experience. This approach to audio mixing was also planned for the recordings from the Sonar show, where the soundboard audio would act as the base layer and then enhanced dynamically by the camera mics. By only needing the camera audio to enhance the soundboard mix, it therefore frees up the cameras to be less concerned by how close they’re situated to the stage and/or speakers, rather than staying at the back of the room in order to avoid mic distortion. This was the plan for the filming activity and editing of the resulting content, yet when it came time for the show, some unexpected circumstances would effectively change the work in what, both for filming process and then later on during the editing stage. For me, the unexpected developments have led to a far more interesting outcome than if everything had gone just as planned. 58 XII. A game to finish… The first minor setback that would occur in this “game activity” was that, nearing show time, Travis would call to let me know that he was not going to be able to make it in to downtown Vancouver that night. As a result, I asked Lorena if she could fill in on one of the cameras. I wasn’t concerned about her having to work the camera, as she had done so when another cameraperson was late for the 3-angle Joseph Arthur show we had done earlier in the year, as well as briefly at a Tragically Hip show when I was stuck in a ridiculous beer line up. So even though Lorena mostly takes digital still camera photos while at live concert performances, she did have some experience with digital video. However, experience wasn’t really required for this experiment anyway since the point was for unscripted shot selections. Furthermore, Lorena’s camera was set up with a tripod positioned in a relatively uncrowded part of the room, so she didn’t have to worry about being in anyone’s way. More importantly, because of our mutual interest in live music and the fact that Lorena had seen The National before at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, I knew she had a good sense of what was going on in terms of the performance that the band was going to put on. With the two other cameras that were also filming (i.e. Nolan from the balcony and myself from the back corner of the stage), I was confident that there would be enough overlap and redundancy in the recordings for the final result to work out somehow. Again, since the filming approach wasn’t designed to have any pre-scripted shot selection, switching camera people at the last minute simply meant replacing one intuitive and improvised shot selection with another. At the very least, as my thinking goes anyway, there should be enough content in this pool of media to get one good song from the evening, and that, in theory, would be enough. At the end of the day, and in the context of my work overall, getting this one key clip of a place and time in the culture and history of “music and the media arts” (Krestchmer 2004) is my bottom line goal that keeps the recording process from being a total write off. As techniques and tools have improved over time, my expectations of this process have changed as well. Basically, my expectations have increased to where I’m confident that my camerawork in conjunction with any additional cameras should be able to produce, in using the baseball metaphor again, at least a “quality start”, i.e. where a pitcher meets a certain level of performance in innings pitched and runs given up. To continue with this metaphor, a “perfect game” in baseball occurs when a starting pitcher retires each of the first 27 hitters in order. 59 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD x Figure 34. Even though the history of the game of baseball spans over 100 years with Major League each team playing over 150 games per year, only 17 “official perfect games” have ever been pitched. Thumbnails above show each of the pitchers who have accomplished this rare task, most recently accomplished by Randy Johnson in 2004. For a perfect game to be considered “official”, the pitcher would need to finish the game by getting all of the outs. If the score were somehow tied at the end of the nine innings, the pitcher would still need to pitch perfectly until the game is finished in order to get credit for an official perfect game. For example, while pitching for the Montréal Expos, Pedro Martínez pitched nine-innings perfectly by retiring each hitter he had faced in order. But since the game was scoreless tie and went to extra innings, he did not get credit for a perfect game once he gave up leadoff hit in the 10th inning. Yet even though Martínez isn’t officially listed as having thrown a perfect game, his unofficial perfect game is often mentioned as a notable pitching achievement along with other “hidden” perfect games that have occurred over the history of the sport (Wikipedia). Applied to the context of concert filming, the “perfect game” could be considered as the production of an artifact that starts with a performance that is being filmed. This would be a performance that essentially hits on all the performers strengths in a way that it represents the best expectations of the event. While the performance must therefore be powerful in its own right, the recording of it also would have no shots that seem out of place or are poorly positioned, and where the audio would be clear and effectively mixed to the point where the viewing experience is immersive and affective. Such a “perfect” recording would be highly improbably, even with the improved tools and methods that we have currently, though technically not impossible. Nor would the “perfect game” in a concert recording environment be any more unlikely than one of the seventeen instances of such an event in the history of baseball (Figure 34). The “perfect game” therefore becomes a “dream” rather than a practical goal to be performed. In this way, and as Jacucci argues in his thesis Performance as Interaction (2004), performance is a “contingent process” not only because of changing cultural circumstances, but also in how well the performance is seen as having been “successfully carried out”: 60 Moreover any performance is “inherently a contingent process”. Contingency resides in the socio-historical circumstances in which it takes place. It is a contingent process because it is also made unique by its quality, for example the extent to which it was successfully carried out in aesthetic or practical terms. Performance, in this sense, is interactive and risky as it may always fail (cf. Schieffelin 1997). (Jacucci 2004, p.53) While the recordings from the October 2nd show at Sonar were not considered to be “perfect game” material, I did feel that we would have the basis for a highly effective document of both performances, once this material was pooled together. I would soon encounter the second setback from this evening, which was far more of an issue than simply finding someone to film on short notice. As opposed to the filming of the show, the second problem had to do with the audio recording taking place off of the soundboard. In demonstrating how interdependent the live setting can be between participants, the second problem was partly the result of solving the first issue, though mostly had to do with a technical glitch. XIII. One that got away… The audio from both The National and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s sets was recorded to Nolan’s portable Sony MiniDisc player, a technology that neither of us has ever liked using. Whether it is a common problem with the device or simply with the particular unit we had available, the recordings from this MiniDisc player often cut out for short and sometimes extended periods of time. I had experienced this issue on two separate occasions previously, one time which produced frustrating gaps in the recording, and another time where the first half of a performance was lost all together. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 35. Sony’s MZ-R700 MiniDisc player and recorder (left) and the standard RCA to minijack cable (center left) used to record soundboard stereo audio directly into the MiniDisc recorder’s microphone input. Picture of Joel Flynn (center right) performing at the Media Club where problems with the MiniDisc recording led to a remix using audio samples of Roderick Haig-Brown from the film Fisherman’s Fall (1967, right) In the case where the first half of a performance was lost altogether (a solo performance from Sunday April 4, 2004), since I was the one on stage performing, it was only when the soundman 61 noticed the problem midway through my set that prevented the entire performance from becoming lost. However, because the recording only captured the last five songs of the set, an introduction was created that made use of some additional content in order to try to establish some context and flow for the listener. As a result, I mixed some sound clips from the 1967 short film Fisherman’s Fall featuring Roderick Haig-Brown as a way of framing the idea that a number of “fish” – i.e. songs – had metaphorically “got away” during the recording. While its small size allows the MiniDisc to be placed conveniently out of the way of the soundman, and in addition to it providing a relatively inexpensive recording option (which is of course fundamentally important when you’re trying to operate in a “lo-fi” approach), I was reluctant to use the technology again, given past problems I’ve experienced with it. I was originally planning on using the school’s seldom-used DAT machine, but on further inspection, it turned out that this device was some other kind of tape player for an unknown video format. Therefore, I decided to give the MiniDisc one more attempt and had it plugged into the soundboard using an RCA-tominijack cable, all cued up and ready to go. The problem that arose on the October 2nd 2005 recording began when Gabe the soundman for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah asked if he could use the same RCA cable to plug in his iPod to play music over the house sound system while the bands weren’t playing. This would require a quick switchover from iPod to MiniDisc at the start of each band’s set, while also switching the cable off of the iPod and into a line feed from the soundboard to the Minidisc recorder. This wasn’t that much of a problem except that we were down to three people – Nolan, Lorena, and myself - all of whom were required to be at their respective camera positions once the performances and filming began. Ideally, we would’ve have a fourth person available to relieve any of the three cameras or to monitor the sound recording, but even with this fourth person available, the venue was so crowed at this point that getting from one camera position to the another was pretty much an impossible task. Therefore, when the MiniDisc player cut out and shut down shortly into The National’s set, no one was available to monitor it and get it back up and recording. As it turned out, I didn’t realize that soundboard audio for The National’s set had been lost until I went to listen to it the next morning. While this was certainly frustrating and disappointing, I had been able to get the soundboard audio recorded from the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah performance that took place after The National’s set. However, while the entire Clap Your Hands Say Yeah performance was captured to the MiniDisc, the recording unfortunately suffers from the previously mentioned short gaps during songs. In retrospect, these gaps may have been caused by high audio levels that “clip” in a number of spots, and this clipping may explain why The National’s set had cut off after a loud burst of feedback, i.e. perhaps causing the MiniDisc to shut down completely. 62 Figure 36. Apple’s 4 generation iPod (left) which plays music but is and only recently has enabled full-quality stereo recording, the M-Audio's Microtrack CF-based recorder (center left), the Edirol R-1 24-bit DAT/MD-recorder (center right), and Sony’s PCMD1 digital field recorder (right) th Whatever had caused the issue in the audio recording, the fact of the matter was that our MiniDisc player had created enough problems in its practical use that it essentially required a person to monitor the recording, which was not available to us at the time. What made this technical problem even more frustrating, in retrospect, was the potential solution already in place. Specifically, while Gabe the soundman was setting up his iPod to play over the house sound system, I thought to myself that it would be extremely useful to be able to record straight to such a device rather than worrying about the MiniDisc. On my own 40-gigabyte iPod, I had significant extra disk space to be able to perform such a task, and I was aware that the device has built-in technical capability to record full quality audio. However, at the time Apple had not activated this feature, perhaps fearing copyright related issues in its potential use in duplicate song libraries. If this speculation on Apple’s reasoning were in fact the case, it would be a prime example of how potentially long-term design solutions made possible by technological developments are undermined by cultural norms and marketing objectives. Of course, in the intense interdynamics of digital environments, any of these forces could effectively support the others, as much as undermine them, For example, after the competitive pressures of iPod-like recording devices and the cultural pressures of Linux hacks to the iPod software5 began to take hold later in 2005, Apple would eventually make officially available the full quality stereo recording capabilities that were built into its architecture. Regardless of the potential of the ubiquitous iPod to now perform such recordings, at the time of the October 2nd event, what we had available was a poorly functioning MiniDisc recorder, which then resulted in technical errors that would need to be worked around. XIV. A tale to weave… Compiling some of the media together in the week following the Sonar show, I attempted to quickly edit a sample 3-angle split-screen of a couple of songs from The National’s performance. In this way, I could both test out the 3-angle concept and get a sense of how problematic the audio issues might be. Putting the three video angles together for these two songs was not an issue, and the interplay between angles even on these two songs alone produced some interesting results. Even 5 http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/10/new-ipod-does-proper-stereo-recording.html 63 with a lack of any explicit choreography between the cameras on the part of the three operators, there seemed to be, in a sense, a sort of “dance” in the cameras’ movements as they try to follow the “lead”, so to speak, of the song. In editing this random clip from the show into a small demo, I was extremely interested in whether the rest of the performance had similar dynamics, though the remainder of the footage was still on tape and not available for editing at the time. The lack of soundboard audio, however, did result in an unfortunate loss of clarity in the vocal mix and this loss had an important influence on my perception of whether the performance had been “successfully carried out in aesthetic or practical terms” (Jacucci 2004, p.53). Again, even though the whole intent of this project was not to produce a highly polished piece, the loss of this base audio track was still frustrating to deal with, especially because the singer’s strong lyrics and baritone delivery were often buried under the intensity of the other instruments. Yet the situation did force much more attention towards trying to find the best mix of audio from the three cameras. As a result, there’s was a subtle shift in focus of the performance in these two songs towards the dynamic interplay between drums, guitars, bass, and violin that is so important in The National’s overall sound. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 37. Screenshots for live performance recordings circa 2000-2005 in demonstrating how Travels in Intertextuality (2006) will “follow the problem” from one side of the camera to the other, In contrast, the Clap Your Hand Say Yeah soundboard was intact, but with small gaps in a number of places. The recording had clear vocals, however, which were perhaps even more important to producing a work from this band’s material, if only due to the singer’s highly eccentric vocal approach. I suspected that there would be a major problem in trying to properly synchronize the audio and video of this material because of the infrequent gaps in the soundboard audio, and as a result, the project loomed as a potentially time-consuming effort. Due to serious time constraints from my own involvement in teaching classes and trying to catch up from my earlier trip to the east coast, I decided to leave any further work on these performances until after writing my thesis, which was scheduled for the upcoming spring semester. Though I would stop actually working on The National video material from the September 16th and October 2nd shows (at least until very recently), the work would in a sense still continue to develop 64 without my direct involvement. Specifically, a set of downloadable MPEG-4 movies was made available on the web in late December that had been produced from European performances by The National earlier in the month. These works allowed me to recontextualize the MPEG-4 versions of my own work with The National’s performances. In fact, it was this development that was the key reason for addressing and including Artifact 5.11 as part of the original version of this thesis, i.e. at around the time of its defence on March 17, 2006. The artifacts in question were a set of three songs performed live, recorded, and edited by avantgarde French filmmaker Vincent Moon. They emerged from footage shot during two performances by The National in Paris on December 13 and 14, 2005 by Moon and his colleagues Gaspard Claus, and Jean-Manuel Goett. The approach to the filming and editing has a very “lo-fi”, handheld camera feel to it. In this sense, Moon’s work is similar to my own approach to filming the concert environment, but doesn’t not involve the monopod in steadying the camera at a specific location. Furthermore, Moon also takes the editing of this material in a radically different direction. As explained, my own approach towards filming the live performance space attempts to minimize, as much as possible, the editing and remixing of shots while also limiting the use of filters and distortion to a simple de-saturation of colour. The idea is that the lack of edits and the black and white perspective provides the viewer with a reasonable representation of what the filmmaker is looking at through an inexpensive digital camera, i.e. with only a black and white viewfinder, as is the case with my Sony TRV-130. Not only is this approached designed to help produce an immersive experience for the viewer, but it also has two other practical functions: (1) since the material is not in full colour, it helps to present it as “lo-fi” documentary footage in a way that fits with the camera’s “lo-fi” audio recording when it provides the only available audio, and (2) when multiple cameras are used, the black and white filtering provides and instant and easy colour correction between these multiple angles. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 38. Screenshots from Vincent Moon’s video treatments of songs by The National’s live performances at La Gigunette in Paris, France, December 13-14, 2005. In contrast, Moon’s approach uses numerous edits, overlays, and filters, while almost disregarding the synchronization of the shots to the actual soundtrack. In fact, it’s hard to tell if the shots being used for a particular song are actually the shots that were taken during the performance of that 65 same song. In this case, Moon’s view of how to produce individual works from a pool of live performance recordings would treat all the footage as building blocks for any of the pieces he produces, rather than being limited to only the shots that were available at a particular moment in the unfolding performance. While he uses both colour and black and white filters to provide additional effects to the video treatment, what Moon’s approach consistently requires are numerous edits and transitions from camera to camera. While these edits result in significant material that is cut from the final product, this cut material can theoretically be reused in other parts of Moon’s editing process. Furthermore, with the expectation of edits, Moon’s approach also frees the cameras from being required to shoot in one long and continuous take. All in all, the approach is radically different than my own, but very engaging and effective in its presentation of The National’s live performances. In fact, in watching this set of videos – which had literally come from the other side of the world – I found the works highly complimentary to my own clips, which suggested presenting them in a compare/constrast manner. I was able to do this upon, upon acquiring an iPod Video device early in January, with the result being a video playlist that moved between Moon’s work and my own. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 39. iTunes Playlist of video recordings featuring The National compiled from work by both Vincent Moon and Joel Flynn, with title shot used in all of Moon’s Paris recordings. In contrast to the audio playlists that later became remix artifacts that were used for analysis in other parts of the thesis, what this video playlist represented in my developing work on remix culture was not only the shift in variety and quantity of artifacts, but also the notion of “distributed collaboration” (Brown, 2005). In other words, here was a compilation of artifacts – i.e. a playlist of 66 videos as its own artifact – which had emerged from work being created around a performer or event. This playlist artifact essentially emerged in a distributed fashion, in separate parts of the world, and without a requirement for those who were essentially “collaborating” on the material to have even met. What also fascinated me in Moon’s work, given his cultural situation as a French filmmaker, was wondering if they’re were similar influences in his work to mine, specifically, but not limited to, the work of French filmmakers Adrien Maben, Reiner Moritz, and Michèle Arnaud on Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972), as well as Dziga Vertov’s avant-garde masterpiece Man with a Movie Camera (1929). While I have myself attempted to build off of these particular influences in a very explicit manner, I personally find it very interesting to see how similar influences produce both similar and dissimilar works, as show in the example of the recent Beastie Boys film, Awesome… (2006). In particular, I’m curious as to the journey that another “lo-fi” filmmaker such as Moon has taken on his way to those Paris performances by The National in December of 2005. Or, for that matter, in the development of works by other videographers or documentarians for live performances, for example, Martin Scorsese’s detailed explanation for his approach to filming The Band’s final concert that became the film The Last Waltz (1976), i.e. a highly scripted and polished piece of filmmaking that is also radically different than my own approaches but a compelling background narrative for the work. XV. An appeal to the video judges… While some might find this narrative concern irrelevant to the aesthetic effectiveness of final work, for better or worse, this sort of context on how the work came about is clearly a fundamental aspect of my arguments. It is an aspect that has been addressed in this thesis thoroughly, as will be seen in the upcoming set of chapters and analysis of artifacts, and it has been applied specifically to the very current topic of remix. Further still, the issues or narrative strongly relate to ideas that were presented on this topic by an icon of interaction design, former Xerox PARC head, John Seely Brown. Interestingly, in a December 2004 presentation, Brown discusses ideas of shifts in social dynamics and creative processes. Brown provides the notion of “accretion”, as seen in virtual environments such as an online game world like Everquest (Brown, December 10, 2004): A shift in power from usually the small sets of authors and artists to networks, sometimes vast networks of co-creators, and now where the creation of personal meaning comes as much from the acknowledgement within your networked community of practice, as well as this notion of accretion, which is part of the reason why people become kind of afixated to playing [video games] like Everquest, which turn on the notion of accretion, things happen when you’re not there, things you did are still there when you come back, and things have been built upon. And so there’s this sense that you are part of this world-building, and everything is being accreted. (Brown, December 10, 2004) 67 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 40. John Seely Brown in a December 10, 2004 presentation discussing “world building” using technology as a “magic lens” into our physical world, where we have “virtual artifacts” that create “a virtual overlay that has a life of its own over a physical substrate” Following this line of thought, we could argue that similar transformations are possible in the cultural world of popular music and its live music performances, and it was this argument that was key to the development of Artifact 5.11, i.e. the travelogue. The original idea for this artifact was to present this playlist that combined my own work of The National’s performances with that of Vincent Moon’s by treating all of this work as a whole system, i.e. as a combined pool of artifacts that had accreted over time. The notion of “world-building” activities taking place through the development of cultural artifacts has an obvious connection to my thesis, and is addressed in several parts of the work. However, after my oral defence on March 17, 2006, there still remained a large hole in the work with respect to Artifact 5.11, which had only been sketched out and not actually written as a complete piece. In attempting to address this unfinished area, I wanted add some important pieces to my accreting pool of multimedia content. This would take place by either producing a couple more songs from The National’s October 2nd performance on my own, or, alternately, by opening up this pool of content to colleagues who were fans of the band or who had an interest in working on a collaborative project. A similar approach was also going to be taken with the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah material from the same night. In order to get started on this process, I ended up compiling all of The National’s video from that night into the 3-angle split screen model. In doing so, I noticed that there were some spots in the opening parts of the show where I had not yet started filming, as I was setting up the MiniDisc player to record. As it turned out, I would only to come in with my camera about mid-way through The National’s opening song, called “The Geese of Beverly Road”. To quickly fill in this gap where my camera’s footage was supposed to be, I grabbed some of the extra footage from Nolan’s balcony camera at the end of The National’s set while also leaving in a brief test shot I had done during the band’s sound check earlier in the night. This “drag-and-drop” approach was completely experimental, providing more of a workaround than anything actually calculated to produce a particular aesthetic effect. 68 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 41. Screenshots from the multi-angle version of The National’s October 2 Sonar in Vancouver. nd show at When these clips were dropped into the gap at the beginning of “The Geese of Beverly Road”, they had a surprisingly effective synchronicity that I thought merited an attempt to at least put together a finished piece of this opening song. Before long, I found myself trying to put the entire show together as an engaging performance from start to end (Figure 41). I was pleasantly surprised by the ability of the three cameras to keep the eye engaged with the dynamics of the performance on stage as well as in the dynamics of the cameras’ combined movements. XVI. A view to flip… Shooting a live performance is essentially a parasitic activity. In other words, it feeds off of the performance being recorded, for better or worse. However, the overall role of the recording activity can be useful opening up perspectives of the performance during and after its delivery. With respect to this idea, and in response to how the combination of shots and the interdynamics of the camera operators with The National’s musical performance as it was unfolding at Sonar on October 2nd, 2005, I thought it was appropriate to attempt a slightly different approach to presenting this particular work. Most concert films begin by identifying the band that is performing, for example, Martin Scorsese’s concert film masterpiece The Last Waltz (1978) which featured The Band’s final performance (including many guests) on November 26, 1976 in San Francisco. In this way, the filming process is generally deemphasized, so as to not get in the way of the viewing experience. In the case of The Last Waltz, this attempt to keep the cameras out of the attention of the viewer led to elaborate scripting of shot selection and coordination of lighting during the show (Scorsese 2002). However, the opening combination of shots unfolded over the montage of footage from The National’s show suggested a radically different approach than the traditional concert film style, especially when I had only casually thrown these pieces of media together in a very uncalculated manner. Specifically, the opening sequence of the montage would use an unconventional focus on presenting the three camera operators while the band was performing, as well as addressing the likely outcome that the work would be streamed off of Nolan’s “Karma Projects” server. The titling of this sequence was therefore added to reflect this information, as well as to create an unusual 69 perspective and presentation of the work, i.e. by identifying the camera operators before moving into short titles that focus on each of the songs in the performance as they appeared in the set. Only as the performance was wrapping up were the band members introduced, but this was in no way out of disrespect to the band. In fact I would challenge anyone to attentively watch and listen to a performance by The National and not come away with respect for what they’re doing as a band, whether it is on this recorded performance from October 2nd 2005, some other documentation of their shows, or even live in person. Therefore, in addition to directing focus to the songs rather than the band members themselves, the approach of featuring the camera operators first was taken in keeping with the idea of attempting to flip the conventions of the genre of the concert film. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 42. Screenshot from Dziga Vertov’s 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera featuring Vertov’s brother filming between two moving trains (left), and Joel Flynn as a “fan with a movie camera” in 2005 performing much less dangerous work at the October nd 2 show at Sonar (center). Names of the band members of The National shown near the end of the video (right). Additionally, the way the introductory footage played out – i.e. having been thrown together experimentally – it created a point of interconnection with a key work in this thesis, specifically, Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929). This film is notable for how it shifted the perspective of the cameraman’s role in a movie, transforming it from the perspective of invisible observer to featuring the cameraman – if not the camera itself – as a key character in the film’s narrative. How this concept plays out in the work presented here is a shift, if only temporary, to those recording the event rather than those who are staging the event, i.e. “people with movie cameras” versus “band in front of movie cameras”, so to speak. To point out the contrast of these kinds of shifting perspectives in a video treatment, a clip from the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah performance was also produced. This one-song video clip features the traditional approach to introducing of band members in a concert film, as in The Last Waltz example. For the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah clip specifically, this involved listing the names of the band members and the name of the band at the beginning, while effectively downplaying the role of the camera operators in capturing the performance by not including their names at all. Again, the idea with this standard approach is to not draw attention to the recording of the show, or, who happens to be recording it, in the case that it interferes with the viewing experience of what is taking place on stage. 70 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 43. Screenshot from the video for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s song “Satan Said nd ‘Dance!’” from the October 2 2005 performance (left) and a still of Levon Helm from the Martin Scorsese film The Last Waltz (1978) featuring The Band’s final performance on November 25, 1976. Regardless of the video treatment, the main issue for The National’s recordings once again was the audio quality as a result of the loss of the soundboard audio. Fortunately, many of the songs offered quieter dynamics that allowed for, with some audio filtering work, a mix of the audio from the three cameras that not only captures much of the band’s live energy, but also in a way reinforces the “lo-fi” aesthetic of the production. In effect, I would argue that even without the soundboard audio, the work demonstrates just how little is needed for an effective end result when viewed in these terms, i.e. when there are just enough pieces to create a mix that somehow holds itself together and in the process gains its own identity. XVII. A show to see… While I can only guess at how the performance would’ve sounded with the additional audio pieces in place – as in, how close to a “perfect game” it might have turned out to be, given the dynamics of the band that evening – it’s obviously not the end of the world that it turned out the way it did. Since there are multiple perspectives to consider in mediated environments such as the recording of a live performance, it follows that there would be creative workarounds and ways to frame design problems such as these when they unexpectedly encountered. For example, had the soundboard audio not been lost, the unconventional approach in presenting the work may have gone in a different direction altogether, such as with the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah clip that features higher-quality soundboard audio. The show may have been produced in a series of smaller clips rather than an entire performance. It may have been edited down into a standard concert film that mixes sequence of shots between multiple cameras. In other words, because the audio was already somewhat of an issue, it opened up some room to experiment. 71 Furthermore, since the recording of The National that I have from the September 16th show in Cambridge is limited by only having the audio from my camera’s microphone, the less-thansoundboard quality of the October 2nd show at least provides a measure of consistency between these two “lo-fi” events themselves. Perhaps even more importantly, it further provides some aesthetic consistency with numerous other artifacts that I’ve worked which also have no access to high-quality soundboard audio. So while I can reflect upon this high quality audio of The National’s show that was supposed to be on the MiniDisc and consider it – to again use a fishing metaphor – as yet another “fish that got away”, I can also find a way to reframe the situation in a more positive light. Perhaps the most positive case would be to look forward to filming another set by this band at some future date and in a venue yet to be determined (though without the need for a MiniDisc recorder!). Figure 44. Screenshots from the multi-angle version of The National’s October 2 Sonar in Vancouver. nd show at Regardless of the variety of twists and turns in this particular journey, what has emerged from the October 2nd show are some digital media pieces that I find extremely fascinating, whether I’m watching them though a computer, a DVD player, or through their intended platform of the iPod Video. The National’s set in particular is my favourite work, at least for the moment, out of all the artifacts presented and discussed in Travels in Intertextuality. Therefore, given the extent of the efforts put into this thesis and all its related artifacts, we can further reflect upon what has come out of this project. In doing so, I think it is important to ask the question of if there is one thing that I’m happy to get out of this process, what it would be? To answer this question, I have to go back to particularly low points a year ago this time, as happens in the writing process. At this time I was having a serious difficulty in figuring out how to open what I was working on to more collaborative possibilities, if only to stop the feeling of detachment and isolation that can happen when you get lost in your own work. Having experienced the highly collaborative process of being in a rock n’ roll band (or at least was the case in the band that I was part of), I thought this was what was missing in the “mix”, so to speak, i.e. playing live music. So I was always looking at figuring out how to get back to song writing and live performance, yet by now this is old news. A year later, there’s still no band to fill that gap of the live music experience, at least from the performance angle. However, I have been able to collaborate with numerous people in writing up this travelogue, in a sense, by building it from this large pool of content that relates to Travels in 72 Intertextuality. In particular, and to literally put it in another perspective (or several), I’ve been able to collaborate directly two great people in creating the video artifacts from October 2nd, 2005. Specifically, I’ve been able to work on this project with my good friend Nolan, who has basically created an online environment for all these media artifacts to flow and interact in a variety of digital mixes. By setting up a streaming server operation that gives these performances new life through their “reverberations”, Nolan’s role in the artifact development is quite essential, even beyond running one of the cameras on that October evening. More importantly (and no offence to Nolan), I’ve been able to collaborate on this project with my amazing wife, who I love dearly, and who was able to do a fantastic job running the third camera on ridiculously short notice. It’s impossible to put a price tag on this kind of activity and these kinds of spur-of-the moment collaborations. Through the contributions of the three camerapeople, over to the six guys playing on stage, then fed back to the soundman at the booth, to the managers in New York and local promoters in numerous cities who have been able to get the band on the road in the first place, these varying levels of participation all contribute to what, I feel, is a highly unique digital media artifact. This is a piece that I believe hits the “strike” zone that is able to “reconcile two elements, which are art and entertainment” (Downie, in Stevenson 1996). In alluding to the work of Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, it may even be able to reconcile a “multiplex” of elements (Miller 2004). Regardless, the multi-angle split-screen video artifact from The National’s show on October 2nd 2005 at Sonar in Vancouver is a work that I find best represents this travelogue (i.e. Artifact 5.11). It is a piece that I can watch while taking the Skytrain to work in the morning, one which features a band that I can listen to endlessly, one which features this same band playing a live music venue that is part of the culture of my home town. What is also encouraging about this piece is the response to the work’s limited screenings so far, including feedback from others who do similar live performance documentation, e.g. “I like the way you setup the 3 screens, you have given me some ideas for my stuff” (Adrian, email communication, June 6, 2006). So... to put it in perspective… there are credit card companies who make ads based on this kind of stuff. You’d have to believe that, at some level at least, there is value being developed here. And sure enough there is! LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 45. Opening title for the October 2 Vancouver, BC. nd performance by The National at Sonar in 73 An Epilogue for a Fishing Trip (a little early in the mix): Since the thesis has now been written and was successfully defended on March 17, 2006, it should be pointed out that the “travelogue” provided here has been added as part of the revision process for submitting the work to the library. As the thesis had been originally constructed, all the narrative material and detailed analyses of artifacts was to be moved into the appendices of this work, leaving what one reader commented as “an interpretive gap” (Graham 2006, email communication). The gap has only become more of an issue after later removing these narrative and detailed analyses from the appendices for future development in related papers. As a result, the travelogue has been added as an attempt to fill this gap. The travelogue, as Artifact 5.11, is one of twelve artifacts that are referred to throughout this thesis and later analysed either in the appendices of this document or are addressed in related papers that deal directly with each artifact. The works vary in form and content, ranging from a simple demo recording of a song (e.g. Artifact 5.1) to more elaborate remixes of audio and visual recordings sampled from a variety of cultural environments (e.g. Artifact 5.12). Adding this section was not required on the advice of my supervisors, but I feel that it is necessary to provide this context to the reader up front and early in the mix, if only to provide some indication as to the material located in the appendices and related works, especially in the case where the appendices are discarded or are not included with the main thesis document. As an artifact, the travelogue is somewhat unique with respect to the other eleven. This is not only because of its place at the very front of the thesis, but also because it best represents an artifact that frames an environment rather than addresses the specifics of artifacts that exist within the environment. For example, there are more tangible artifacts that exist within this framed space that are discussed and analysed in terms of their own development and dynamics, such as sound or video recordings that have been remixed with other pieces of digital media in the creation of a new work. In contrast, the travelogue Artifact 5.11 looks at how these artifacts are viewed through the lens of an individual’s developmental journey. In doing so, it uses the mostly-unrelated lenses of baseball and music, essentially filtering these two perspectives through the overlapping lens of performance. As will be explained in detail the later chapters of this work, and a key theoretical concept in the overall thesis argument, the travelogue presented here as Artifact 5.11 can be seen as a tertiary artifact (Wartofsky 1973, p.208, in Cole 1996, p. 121). Such artifacts involve ways in which we perceive an environment. For example, this artifact contains numerous building blocks of stories, images, references, or other artifacts. These pieces have been mixed together in a particular way. They interweave times and places, though not-necessarily in a chronological fashion. Various people are mentioned as characters, and while no dialogue (in the sense of spoken interaction) was explicitly used in weaving this particular mix of narratives threads together, it may be useful for other mixes that more closely resemble the form of a novel or a script. Yet Artifact 5.11 is less concerned with particular pieces culture or their arrangement in this mix. Rather, the point of this artifact is to show how these pieces and arrangements are presented, or framed, from particular worldviews, lenses, or “ways of seeing” (Berger 1972). 74 Within and around these lenses we can find other angles for looking at the same space in order to find insights or ways to communicate concepts across contexts. For example, we can look at the game of baseball in the larger context of sports in general. In doing so, we find a point of connection with the sport of basketball in order to illustrate an argument. This approach of expanding the context was done explicitly in comparing the 3-point basketball shot to the 3-point camera angle approach for filming a concert performance. In this way we find a useful metaphor to describe the effect of rule changes in a dynamic environment. A similar rule change in the game of baseball, such as the introduction of the designated hitter or addition of wild-card playoff teams, may be more appropriate for a baseball context, but is arguably less useful in discussing the approaches to using three cameras in the recording of a concert performance. Through a lens of music and musical performance, we’ve discussed Artifact 5.11 in terms of the cult value of artifacts and practices that identify someone as part of an exclusive group. For fans of a band or an artist, these exclusive groups can consist of people with insider knowledge and access to “secret” sources of content and insight not available to the general audience. The topic is discussed frequently in this thesis, as it is the focus of another key artifact in this work relating to the cult band Swell (Artifact 5.10). As with this travelogue artifact, the remix of Swell albums in Artifact 5.10 (see “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”) also provides a useful example of how various lenses in our perception of the world can come together and overlap at times. When these overlaps suggest a window of communication, the approach in this thesis has been to try to find or create an artifact that can somehow negotiated those shared spaces. Part of the motivation for writing this travelogue has been just such a window or an overlap between music and baseball lenses. Specifically, the travelogue has been designed and written in part to send to some friends who I was able to interview in the summer of 2001, during a leg of the trip that had me down in southern California. For a variety of reasons, some of which are addressed in the analyses of other artifacts related to this work, I was visiting a town I used to live in during much younger days when summers were not for fishing but for pursuing dreams of Big League baseball. While down there, and long after these dreams had “reframed”, I was able to catch a couple of interviews with key individuals. Both happen to play music in “indie” bands, surf the southern California waves, and at least one of the two also happens to play baseball. XVIII. A wave to catch… I left San Diego on July 24th, 2001 to make trip up to Santa Barbara in order to meet with an avid surfer and painter for a video interview. This individual would be Sean Kirkpatrick, who at the time was formerly the drummer and graphic designer the band Swell, previously mentioned as having cult value as an “indie” band during the 1990s (and also one of my favorite bands ever). This interview took place a few days prior to heading out to the previously mentioned visits to Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. In addition to the interview with Sean, I had been down in southern California also to do another video interview with clothing design icon Jim Austin (Figure 46). Jim’s surfwear company Redsand was located in Encinitas, a small beachtown just north of San Diego, so on my way to Santa Barbara to meet with Sean I stopped by the Redsand headquarters for a visit. 75 I had met Jim on earlier trips to the area, and in earlier explorations of the same cultural-historical ideas that have been developed in this thesis. This development time dates all the way back to August 28, 1997, after dropping by what was the company’s headquarters, a old newpaper publishing building along the Pacific Coast Highway in Encinitas (Lau 2005). A couple years later, I was on the way to see a Tragically Hip show at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on April 10, 1999, when my bus made an unexpected stop in Encinitas not far from the same publishing building. Strangely, there was a full street fair taking place that day with Redsand sponsoring a live music stage in front of the building. Stranger still, there was Jim Austin, playing upright bass with his country band Bartender’s Bible, who were opening up for an obscure country band of punk rocking brothers from Vancouver called Cowboy Nation. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 46. Jim Austin (left) formerly of Redsand Clothing in front of the old newspaper building that served as Redsand’s headquarters prior to selling the brandname (center), and with his country band Bartender’s Bible (right). I saw Jim after his set, happily letting him know how completely strange it was to be dropped in the middle of the sleepy little beach town of Encinitas with all this street fair and live music going on. Unfortunately, at that time I had no interest in packing a digital video camera around with me while on road trips that may or may not have involved concerts by The Tragically Hip and/or other artists. There was just no practical way to pack a camera around at the time, and because my lens at the time was that of a musician and performer rather than a cameraman, the filming activity would take another year yet to develop. So two years after the Encinitas street fair, I would drop by the Redsand headquarters once again – this time armed with a camera lens – on July 24, 2001 for the aforementioned video interview with Jim Austin. During this interview, Jim provided a tour of what he called one of the few remaining “independent” clothing labels still operating. Since this time, however, he and his partners wound up selling the Redsand brand to Perry Ellis International in 2003. However, they still partly own the building and are proposing to renovate it into a focal point for the Encinitas community, which he calls “his neighborhood”: It's my neighborhood. It's missing something like this… No one thinks of downtown as retail yet. They think of it as a place for restaurants. I want the whole thing to be a very inviting public space… This is more like an art project for us. (ibid.) 76 The interrelationship of Jim Austin’s narrative in this space is partly because of its elements of culture and design. Specifically, we can look at it in terms of the fashion design for the surfing subculture of southern California, which Redsand markets as a “youthful, coastal lifestyle”6 (Austin 2001). This cultural environment is now playing a central role through Austin’s involvement in the redesign of the old Redsand building as a key public space in Encinitas. Austin’s narrative also interconnects with this journey in terms of his active participation in an “indie” music subculture through his band and with other bands, thereby providing another overlapping perspective in this cultural context that plays a key role in the thesis and its development. However, where this narrative thread is of particular relevance, especially in relation to Sean Kirkpatrick, is in terms of surfing. Jim Austin, himself a surfer, helped to build Redsand into a successful company by targeting the surfing communitiy of southern California that he knew very well because he was a part of it. He and his company were then able to create a clothing brand around this culture, and eventually a record lable as well, that was able to extend beyond Redsand’s coastal context. Like Austin, Sean Kirkpatrick is also an avid surfer, and lives near the California coast because of this passion. His perspective of the coast and the waves can be seen influencing the scenes that he’s often known to paint. The surfing activity may even influence his perspectives of music and the drumming approaches used in his work as a key member of the band Swell. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 47. Some of Sean Kirpatrick’s many surf-inspired paintings of the California coast. Both individuals therefore have a surfing context to draw from as a lens that can frame their perceptions of activities taking place around them. However, since I’m not a surfer myself, this lens does not provide a strong enough perspective that I personally can put it directly into play in this work as a metaphor to help explain key aspects of what I observe taking place in remix culture. In what Michael Cole calls “a toolkit of metaphors” (Cole 1996, p.335) that can be employed in a cultural analysis, my toolkit does not include a lens of “surfing” that I can naturally use to draw insights into remix culture. While I may be able to gain insight into the surfing activity from other perspectives, as way to frame an environment, metaphorically, it is not a wave that I could’ve caught at the time. The surfing activity and surfer culture may well provide a valuable angle for investigating remix culture, and had this worldview been available to me, it may well have taken the work in different directions than what has developed and is presented here. In terms of the interview with that I did with Sean Kirkpatrick shortly after my interview with Jim Austin, if it were the case that I had approached the interview with a surfer’s lens of interest rather than primarily coming from the 6 http://www.transworldsurf.com/surf/surfbiz/article/0,19929,342782,00.html 77 perspective of a musician and music fan, I might have perceived a whole different value to the interview. Even the questions asked in the interview or the location where it took place could have been vastly different. Again, this speaks to the notion of having multiple approaches to frame out an environment, i.e. multiple tools to use from a – “toolkit of metaphors” – depending on their appropriateness at particular times in the development of a person or a work. In any event, my concern for the interview with Sean at this time was with respect to his involvement with the band Swell, not his surfing activities. What I had wanted to get from the interview was some of the band’s earlier history, its grassroots success with fans (especially in France), the internet, and his role in the as the drummer and graphic designer, i.e. when he was one of the three key members during its early tours, mostly in Europe. The content of this interview produced some interesting insights, as are also seen in other rare video interviews featuring Swell from French television programs (Figure 48). For example, one of these interview has Sean’s comments on how he values the performances his band would play in those early days of Swell’s career: To play a concert where you have a couple hundred people there, caring about your music, that’s definitely what success means to me. It’s what makes me the most intense. I mean, it’s terrible to have to play a show for fifty people, and those fifty people don’t know anything about your music. (Kirkpatrick et al. 1994) LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 48. Interview with Sean Kirkpatrick (right) of Swell displaying the band’s first album in Santa Barbara on July 25, 2001, and a screenshot of Kirkpatrick (left) from a 1994 French television feature on Swell (right) where the band performed a version the song “A Town” from their self-titled debut album (center). This is an important idea of how value can be seen not just in terms of the artifact that is produced, or the performance that is delivered, but rather the idea of value emerging from the context of the audience’s engagement with this process. I had hoped to follow up with Sean on these ideas in a recent trip to California, but we were unable to work the scheduling. Interestingly, it is worth noting that this follow-up interview was going to take place at a day game between the Athletics and Angels baseball teams at Anaheim Stadium in early May of 2006, further situating the baseball context. Since Sean had mentioned that he was a baseball player who still plays competitively, I thought there might have some valuable insights from these perspectives, i.e. if and where he finds an overlap between lenses of music, art, baseball, and performance. A Major 78 League stadium seemed an appropriate location. While the interview didn’t take place this time around, it will obviously need to be rescheduled, hopefully with a game going on in the background. While notions of value are obviously a key concern of the thesis and are an important focus in the overall worldview on remix that is being presented here, we’ve also taken an important step back as well through a wider lens of activity. This has been done by reframing the notion of performance as going beyond what is solely taking place between musicians on stage or players on a field, court, rink, etc. As a result, we’ve expanded the context – i.e. our perspective of the situation – in order to view performance as being able to include, for example, those who helped to stage the event, those who were there in attendance to experience it, and the people and techniques used to capture it for posterity and potential future development. Essentially, we’ve been looking at performance as an ecological system. The roles and activities involved in creating future reverberations of the performance, as well as the ways in which to engage with these artifacts, is currently being transformed through growing archives of digitally networked content. Switching lenses, and looking to the digital archives of Major League Baseball content, the focus shifts from a focus on just a particular game or statistic or media object, to an expanded consideration of how these pieces of culture can be situated in the cultural-historical context of the game. In this respect, Artifact 5.11 has been used to look at performance in terms of narrative, as a cultural-historical artifact with “a beginning, a sequence of overlapping but isolable phases, and an end” (Turner 1987, p. 80). By seeing performance through this perspective, it allows us to consider the narrative aspects of both musical and sports performances as they develop over time. XIX. A zone to find… Just as importantly, we’ve been able to look at these performances in their social contexts and through the complex interactions taking place in overlapping social spaces. For this thesis, such spaces have been considered in terms of the intersection of technology, marketing, and culture (Kline et al. 2003), or in the Nobrow space that is both “the culture of marketing [and] the marketing of culture” (Seabrook 2000). Similarly, we can see these overlapping spaces through what has been described by singer Gordon Downie, in anticipation of a live performance by his band The Tragically Hip, as the reconciliation of “art and entertainment”: Ultimately what you're talking about is trying to reconcile two elements, which are art and entertainment, and I think we're going to do that… You're going up there to experience something, you're going up there to ideally commune with the crowd -- and I'm fond of saying this too -- but when the stage and the audience sort of fall away, that's when it's fairly ideal, 'cause then it becomes like Peter Pan or something where you're flying around and it's cool. (Downie, in Stevenson 1996) 7 7 JANE STEVENSON Toronto Sun Sunday, December 1, 1996. Article no longer found on the web (canoe.ca), but fortunately had been previously copied and saved by the author. This copy can be found in the appendices of this document. 79 The intense interactive dynamics that take place when, as Downie describes, the stage and audience fall away” can be seen as moments where the semiotic boundaries (Gover 1996) between performer and spectator become blurred in a “collective experience” (Randrup 2002). Whether referred to as “the 10th man” in a baseball game (Dewey 2004), or the space where the performer is able to “commune with the crowd” (Downie 1996), or the state of “flow” that involves “a narrowing of attention on a clearly defined goal” (Csikszentmihalyi 1991, pp. xii-xiv), we again find a number common qualities through this lens of performance when looking at a variety of contexts. These overlapping concerns can be viewed in terms of both the physical and the mental preparation prior to the activity, the focus during the activity, and even the notion of performance as simply being able “to get the job done” in completing the activity: The way I prepare, the physical work I do, my mental approach is pretty good. But if I'm scuffling with my location, seeing things I shouldn't see, or hearing sounds I shouldn't hear, I know my focus needs to be sharper and I can regroup. It's all a game within a game. You're 60 feet 6 inches from home plate. The game is between you and your catcher and somewhat the hitter. But you are focused on everything that enables you to get the job done. (Clemens, in Lally 2002)8 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 49. Frank Galasso’s Cartoon depiction of Roger Clemens, then of the New York th Yankees, after winning the 300 game of his career. He is also pictured in uniform with three other teams that Clemens has played on in his career: the Boston Red Sox, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Houston Astros. By focusing in on the game of baseball we can look specifically at different – and sometimes polar opposite – approaches to pitching, such as in the previously discussed case of a hard-throwing pitcher versus a knuckleballer. In doing so, we can gain a greater sense of the dynamics taking place both prior to and during the “game within a game” (described above by future Hall of Fame pitcher Roger Clemens). Yet the above description of preparing for pitching a baseball game can apply in similar ways to preparing for a musical performance. Coming from a quite different, perhaps even a polar opposite context, Canadian Hall of Fame musician Gord Sinclair offers the following description of just such a “zone”: We've definitely found that our best shows are those where we're essentially oblivious of the audience. We're just playing with each other. And that really translates to the crowd as well. They just totally respond to that. You put your 8 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00E1DD133FF930A15755C0A9649C8B63 80 head down and get into a comfort zone and dig in and play like you're in a hot sweaty club and hopefully you're reaching the people who are in the back seats of the hockey rink. (Sinclair, in Ross 2004) When Sinclair is talking about the “back seats of a hockey rink”, he’s meaning exactly that, since he’s referring to the fact that The Tragically Hip play shows that regularly range from small club venues to large indoor and outdoor stadiums. So his argument is that the band’s performances try to get into a “zone” where they can still be engaged with members of the audience who are far away from what is taking place on stage. In other words, the success of the band’s performances can be seen in terms of their ability to create a “zone” that can act as an effective interface between artist and audience, despite the physical distance that may be involved. Their performance may also be able to overcome the virtual distance involved in a recorded performance that is engaged by the audience after-the-fact using analog or digital technologies, i.e. a media artifact, or “reverberation” of the event, can also be seen as part of such a zone of artist/audience engagement of a live performance. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 50. The Tragically Hip, featuring singer Gordon Downie (left) with Gord Sinclair on bass (right) performing on November 14, 2004 in Vancouver. The entire band is pictured performing in a screenshot (centre) from their recent DVD That Night in Toronto (2005). For the performers within this zone, and perhaps for the audience as well, the outside noise and distractions that Clemens describes as “seeing things I shouldn't see, or hearing sounds I shouldn't hear” (Clemens, in Lally 2002) produces a paradoxical tension. Specifically, the performers find themselves in a space where they are “essentially oblivious to the audience” (Sinclair, in Ross 2004) while simultaneously able to “commune with the [audience]” (Downie, in Stevenson 1996). Another member of The Tragically Hip, guitarist Robbie Baker, offers similar observations on what he considers a “good” performance, or “gig” in his words: There is a thing that happens to musicians, artists, athletes, perhaps everyone at sometime in which you cease to exist - there is no thought of who you are, where you are or what you are doing...there is just the doing, and it is in those moments that you are completely open and great things can happen. You are not forcing or seeking - you are ready to receive and channel. I know this sounds quasi religious or perhaps it is purely a biological matter of shifting one lobe of your brain into neutral and the other into 4th gear. I just know that when it happens 81 you feel that you are one with the music and everything else. That is a good gig. (Baker, in Levy 2006) Interestingly, Baker’s description also raises a key point of contention that is discussed (at length) throughout Travels in Intertextuality, i.e. the cultural vs. the natural explanations of a phenomenon. In other words, he points out that the sense of “flow” during a good performance could be as much of a result of biological conditions as cultural-historical contexts. Even more interestingly, Baker recognizes that in a practical sense of the performance itself – i.e. “the doing” – this question and all its related discussions are essentially irrelevant and is simply just moved past. In contrast, Baker also offers the description of a “bad gig” as involving situations where such questions are not able, at least momentarily, to be put aside: A bad gig is when you get caught up in the 'imperfections', are trying to force something to happen, or some trivial or trying element of your day keeps insinuating itself into your onstage conciousness - you become painfully aware of who you are, where you are and what you are trying and probably failing to do. Bad. It doesn't happen too often as the rush that the audience provides can make you forget about almost any physical or emotional distraction. (Baker, in Levy 2005) LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 51. Tragically Hip guitarist Robbie Baker, also shown in with his side project Stripper’s Union performing in both a hockey arena, a theatre venue, and at a small club. In part echoing the previous comments of Roger Clemens, as well as the descriptions offered by his bandmates, Gordon Downie offers the following advice on how get into that zone, on the mental approach to a performance: But as far as doing something to conjure that up, it's impossible. And ultimately, the only surefire method I can think of to come up with that is just becoming a little more disciplined about what we do. Approaching the music in a fairly workmanlike fashion. (Downie, in Stevenson 1996) This discussion of the “zone” of a performance, and how it can produce an experience that simultaneously goes beyond the performer and the audience, presents a particular worldview of human interaction and cultural mediation. This artifact is in fact designed to demonstrate the practical aspects of this worldview in the development of new cultural works that would not be 82 possible without such social interactions in such a “zone”. This worldview is one that recognizes what Soviet psychologist referred to as a zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978). These interactive social spaces, sometimes referred to as ZPDs, present an important concept in thinking about how the interactions between individuals and their activities leads to the possibility of a higher level of development – or “scaffolding” – that is not attainable through an individual acting alone. According to Vygotsky, this view of social spaces is important in the sense of “play” being seen as a zone of proximal development in child development: “In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself" (p. 102). The relevance of the “scaffolding” metaphor for a zone of proximal development is significant, whether it is intentionally designed through a supervised environment or if it is informally developed through play activities. In a zone of proximal development, the individual can therefore be seen as having the ability to go beyond his or her normal capabilities. Vygotsky defines this zone as: The distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. (Vygotsky 1978, p. 86) While the theoretical underpinnings of this concept are discussed in the body of this thesis, it is important to recognize that the development of this travelogue of Artifact 5.11, the works on which it is based, if not the entire scope of this thesis can be argued as being fundamentally situated amongst various zones of proximal development. In other words, I argue that the work presented here would not have developed without the collaborative efforts of others, without the ability to build upon the “scaffolds” of the works of others, nor without keeping the work open enough to adapt to unexpected developments taking place in complex and highly dynamic environments. For example, consider my involvement in filming several performances by avant-garde musician and artist Joseph Arthur, which itself emerged from early filming activities of performances by The Tragically Hip and their singer Gordon Downie, but with no connection to these performers. Through this evolving activity came some unplanned filming of Joan Wasser’s performances prior to Joe Arthur’s shows, followed by a DVD of this material that she used for an art show. Through the establishment of these various zones of proximal development, some chance happenings would wind up pushing the work in new directions, often with the help of others who were within these same zones. Thus, the work can be seen as being “a head taller” than it would be if it had developed without such interactions within zones of development. As a result of these fortunate developments in zones of proximal development, I’d later help film and produce media artifacts for The National and Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah. Both of these artists are unrelated to Joseph Arthur and Joan Wasser, aside from being musicians working out of New York. Further, they have no relationship at all to The Tragically Hip or Gordon Downie, as far as I know, or Radiohead for that matter. Yet the entirety of this work can be seen as having emerged from the various narrative threads and artifacts involving these artists, as well as other threads that relate to contexts outside of music and the media arts. 83 XX. A selection to make… Recognizing these emergent developments as a part of an overall zone of proximal development requires seeing them as part of a process, or a “journey”, if you will. Famed cinematographer Vitorrio Storano describes this “journey” as a “magnetic”: It’s a kind of magnetic selection that you’re doing while you’re going. There’s a kind of journey you’re doing by yourself, then suddenly you discover that on the same direction you meet other people. You can meet a friend [and] they can do this journey [with you]. You can meet people that can be your guide for a portion of this journey. (Storano, in McCarthy 1994) As mentioned, the zone of proximal development taking place through this travelogue could have been demonstrated through a particular focus on a variety of other angles, i.e. by describing a number of other friends and guides who have helped the development of this work along the way and from a wide variety of contexts. For example: • • • • • Meetings with various owners and managers of entertainment, multimedia, and technology organizations; Interviews with artists and musicians; Emails and meetings with professors whose reseach efforts are key to this thesis; Instant messages with webmasters for these artists and musicians that led to the discussions with key professors; Or simply local colleagues who have simply shown up to help out at an event here or there. Each of these situations could be broken down and analysed in terms of the activities taking place in a particular environment, the interrelationships and dynamics between these activities, their participants, and the works or texts produced in the process. These situations could further be analysed in terms of how this intertextual system adjusted or failed to adjust to planned or unexpected changes. In short, there is no loss of useful and interesting material to work with here, which means that, as Michale Cole points out in relation to his own methodological in developing a cultural psychology, “you will never run out of interesting things to do” (Cole 1996, p. 350). Many of these “interesting things” will be addressed throughout the thesis, whether in terms of the theoretical depth of this work, or in the analyses of various artifacts that inform the thesis through practical experience. The thesis, in its individual pieces and as a collective whole, may have come about through collaboration involving explicit working relationships, informal favours, lucky breaks, dialogue, or playing around with the works of others as a way to guide the expression of this new work and its various components. What is important is to consider the work as situated within zones of social interactions – or ecologies – that are fundamental to individual development. The point in seeing the work contextualized this way is the idea of a worldview, i.e. finding value in the work developing in this way requires a certain perspective that will be discussed and argued at length in the thesis. 84 This worldview that situates Artifact 5.11, as well as the other eleven artifacts, is not a given, and as a result, the artifact is not necessarily seen through this ecological perspective. However, it is regardless a worldview that recognizes the following key ideas: (1) An intertextual backdrop, (2) The ability to travel or move through these works, or texts, (3) Movement through the works by way of various levels of focus, i.e. from details to big picture, and finally, (4) The creation of a new work or text through these travels, with its own identity in relation to its intertextual backdrop. Where this journey has led to presently is a full version of the multi-angle show by The National at Sonar on October 2nd, 2005. This recently authored work from April 2006 remixes and recontextualizes the two songs from this performance which had been tested out previously in October of 2005. Furthermore, a sample “component” from this larger artifact has also been produced (the opening song of the performance) for a local video art contest. Because the artifact was developed very recently, it has been heavily informed by all the work that had been put into the thesis document, the thesis defence presentation, and the analyses of the eleven other artifacts. Figure 52. An “intertextual loop” based on a remix of the work of René Magritte’s The Two Mysteries (1966) as recontextualized for the digital culture iPod music players. The multi-angle video was produced specifically for the iPod Video format, a very recent technology that was heavily influential in the writing of the thesis. In fact, the defence presentation that took place on March 17, 2006 was delivered entirely through an iPod Video player, using slides exported from PowerPoint that were operable in the iPod environment. I had written previous papers in 2003 that related specifically to the long-term potential of the iPod as a creative tool, 85 especially with the potential for an iPod that plays video, which at the time was unavailable. Therefore have been strongly influenced and interested in the devices cultural dynamics just as much as its technological capabilities. The iPod Video’s use in actually defending the thesis has pushed my own perspectives the reassessment and revision of this work since its defence (Figure 52). Apparently, the creative use of the device has also made its way into areas beyond entertainment or concert filming, in particular, with respect to an activity that has served as a framing device in this work: The [Colorado] Rockies' video staff has downloaded every [Florida] Marlins hitter into [pitcher Jason Jennings’] iPod, and Jennings is figuring out how to pitch to them. He watches frames of himself delivering the pitch, followed by the result of the play. Everything else is weeded out. The [Colorado] Rockies have taken the iPod beyond entertainment. And the idea has caught on -- teams such as Florida and Seattle have called the Rockies to explore their innovative use of the iPod. (Associate Press, June 16, 2006) Figure 53. Jason Jennings of the Colorado Rockies displays the iPod Video player that he uses to scout opposing players and review his pitching mechanics. The reassessment and recontextutextualization of the iPod even includes an intertextual tie-in to the baseball lens that has been incorporated in the work through this travelogue artifact, as seen Press shows players repurposing the new video-based entertainment medium as part of their dayto-day preparation for job duties, i.e. by watching video of games to scout pitchers and hitters for their upcoming games. The Rockies have downloaded video clips into the iPods of 14 players so far. For the hitters, they'll store every at-bat and download performances of upcoming pitchers. A 60-gigabyte iPod can hold roughly five seasons' worth of a player's at-bats. Pitchers can get all their performances, along with opponents' at-bats. (ibid.) The day-to-day life of a Major League baseball player involves significant travel as teams go from city to city over the course of a 162-game season. Furthermore, baseball games involve significant “downtime” of inactivity for players who aren’t on the field on in the dugout during play, thereby giving an opportunity for players to use the device to look at opposing players they are about to face, or compare their own pitching or hitting mechanics from past years to their current performance. Once again, this new activity is predicated on the capturing and archivization of digital media that is interoperable in new media environments such as the iPod. This content is accessed and effectively remixed, for example, by selecting only parts of entire games relating to particular players as a way to do a historical review of performance. These digital remixes delivered via the iPod Video are new uses, or at least, are uses that have been recontextualized in new ways, e.g. baseball players watching video while travelling or in the dugout during games for preparation to play as opposed to watching the video in the clubhouse before or 86 after the game. It is unclear as to what permissions are needed by individuals such as Jennings and those in the Rockies’ video staff to create these remixes, or whether it is assumed that their employment with Major League Baseball allows them to experiment and innovate in this way, for example, by putting video content on new devices and formats such as the iPod. Regardless, the practical aspect of Jennings’ use of the device requires being able to effectively navigate a massive database of multimedia from Major League Baseball’s archives. It requires creating a remix of video pieces that specifically allow him to reflect upon his own past performances within the culture of baseball, whether in terms of his general pitching mechanics or in more specific contexts such as against particular players on in particular stadiums. The important point here is to realize that the activity involves creating particular mixes in response to particular cultural-historical perspectives and purposes, thereby implying an ongoing reassessment as to which “lens” – or even a mix of lenses – is most appropriate for achieving a desired result. With respect to Travels in Intertextuality, adding the travelogue to the work has similarly involved a reassessment of what lenses or mix of lenses are most appropriate for the purpose of communicating the ideas in this work. As a result, the journey that has taken place in creating the travelogue has also led towards two separate “mixes” of this extensive thesis document as a whole. Like the Rockies’ video staff creating a mix of video material for a specific training purpose or relating to a particular player’s performance, the reason for the two “remixes” of this work is again the result of a very practical concern. Quite simply, it has to do with the alternate perspectives of a “free culture” versus a “permission culture”: A free culture supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by granting intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limiting the reach of those rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain as free as possible from the control of the past. A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a “permission culture”—a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past. (Lessig 2004, preface) Essentially, the entire Travels in Intertextuality document is highly informed by images and multimedia materials that have either been referenced in the work, or, on a significant number of occasions, have been included in illustrating key ideas and adding visual depth to the work. However, in order to have this thesis published in the school’s library, each of these images requires express written consent of the copyright holder, who may or may not be the original creators or innovators of the work. As worded in the library’s policies, situations involving “the direct reproduction”, the “reproduction of substantive portions”, or “material where use is expressly prohibited” are unable to be included in a published thesis “without permission of the copyright holder” (Simpson 2003, bold in original –jf). Obviously, these requirements situate the thesis in the context – or worldview – of a “permission culture” (Lessig 2004). This presents a major problem for the work. Given that its topic is on the issue of remix, this topic in itself presents a worldview that is in many respects the antithesis to that of a “permission culture”. It is a worldview that legal scholar Lawrence Lessig calls “free culture” (ibid.). The tensions between 87 these two ideological positions are significant, but were by no means unexpected in the development of the thesis. In fact, because of these lingering and potentially overwhelming copyright issues, I had essentially abandoned the project on several occasions throughout the course of its development, only to return to it because of a need to “follow the problem” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.104). Over time, I’d realize that it was a problem that fundamentally interested me a researcher, as an artist, as a user of technology, and even as a marketer looking for an opportunity. XXI. A problem to follow… The tensions between these clashing worldviews have direct, practical outcomes, the least of which is this particular document. Therefore, in order to work around the copyright requirements for its publication, and in keeping with the topic of remixing pools of cultural content, the approach that I’ve taken here is to create two separate “mixes” of Travels in Intertextuality: the Autopoetic Identity of Remix Culture: (1) The version that contains all the images and media materials that I argue make the work a much more valuable scholarly effort – i.e. Travels in Intertextuality: The Director’s Cut – has been relegated to my personal research, thereby becoming an ideal version of the work. (2) In contrast, the alternate version of the work, which we’ll call Travels in Intertextuality: The Permission Culture Remix, has been stripped of all images that may or may not require the “permission of the copyright holder” (Simpson 2003). Given the time and financial resources required to clear every one of these images where the copyright permission or whereabouts of the author is even remotely questionable, the second mix and its approach seems to be the only practical response for the goal of publishing the thesis and all the work that has been put into it. The reality of the situation in terms of publishing is that Travels in Intertextuality builds extensively off of the works of others, but has not been able to generate income off of this work. As a result, it lacks the resources to do further research into the copyright status of its components or into the requirements of having these components cleared for “official” use. 88 Figure 54. Replacement image for materials where copyright status for use of the materials is in question due to pending permission, denial of use, or inability to locate the author or copyright holder of the material in question. What’s left to the reader in The Permission Culture Remix is a document and argument with numerous holes, i.e. the instances where the images that were part of the original “mix” were replaced by the image seen above in Figure 54. What will be up to the reader in this case is whether the argument still holds, despite the loss of these integral components. Or, the reader may actually consider the loss of these components as indirectly supporting the argument, i.e. by presenting the potential increase in value of the work when able to see it (and all its components) through the lens of a “free culture” rather than the repetitive imagery of a “permission culture” worldview that replaces an item of contention with a generic replacement. Regardless, in the event that permission requirements do become problematic, these constraints can lead to creative possibilities. In a relevant example from his second presentation at the AIGA conference, Paul D. Miller demonstrates an example of how he essentially had to remix technologies and skills to manoeuvre around the inability to use a voice that was already in a song that he was remixing. Specifically, it was the voice of Flava Flav – an MC in the hip-hop band Public Enemy – that became “indadmissable” for Miller’s album Drums of Death (2005) because he could not get the needed copyright clearances. 89 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 55. Paul D. Miller demonstrating a remix of a Public Enemy song called “B-Side Wins Again” in his second presentation at the AIGA Design Conference in Boston MA on September 16, 2005 For this album, Miller collaborates with Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo in creating a number of remixes, one of which is Public Enemy’s song “ The B-Side Wins Again” (Figure 55). The resulting remix uses a “computer voice” sound effect that processes Flava Flav’s vocals. While “inspired”, so to speak, by a legal constraint, this creative workaround produces an aesthetically effective new work. The “B-Side Wins Again” remix nevertheless questions the integrity of the work that Miller produces in changing the original song in this way. This is especially the case if Miller were basically stuck having to replace more than just Flava Flav’s voice with a computer generated simulation in instances where permission could not be obtained for numerous vocal tracks, e.g. Chuck D’s vocals, or for other songs. Soon the entire remix, or even Spooky’s catalogue of work as a whole, would lose the distinctive vocal elements that gave the various songs their identity in the first place. The example of Miller’s Public Enemy remix helps to inform why a “remix” of this thesis has been created. In knowing that the integrity of the original work would be fundamentally compromised by the loss of significant visual and multimedia materials, what I’ve tried to do here is reframe the problem so that in the case of having to strip out all the audiovisual and multimedia elements, the resulting remix can still have value in the overall context of the work. This may not be the ideal outcome, but at least it can be a material outcome of all the effort spent here, one that can still help to communicate the main argument of thesis, though in an indirect way. As a result, all the copyrighted images that were used in the construction of the original work were therefore treated as part of the work’s “scaffolding”. These supports can then be seen as needing to be removed in the “permission culture” version, i.e. the version that is to be submitted to the library. In this way, not only does the resulting work relate to the issue of value from remix activities, which will be addressed in the first chapter of this thesis, the images can also be seen as acting as a part of a zone of proximal development. Applied in this way, Vygotsky’s ideas on individual development can be seen in terms of the work being able to reach beyond itself and, ideally, being able it to reach a point where it can now stand on its own with its own identity. 90 This “scaffold” is of course a metaphor, a framing device used to help communicate this key idea of a zone of proximal development. It relates to the notion of finding value through different perspectives, for example, the metaphorical perspective of a garden and of looking for what the work needs to be able to grow beyond itself. The metaphor of the scaffold also relates to issues of autopoiesis, i.e. in the sense of how to keep the work adaptable to changing environments while maintaining its internal logic or structure. Finally, the scaffold can be seen in terms of the reasoning behind why the reader will, if faced with The Permission Culture Remix, encounter nothing but the same image of Figure 54 over and over and over again. XXII. A dialogue to engage… Conveniently, both versions of Travels in Intertextuality begin with a discussion of metaphor and its importance in framing the issues to be addressed. Most of these issues have already been alluded to in this travelogue of Artifact 5.11 and will be extended upon in the remainder of this work. Here, we’ll find that the metaphor of music will remain in place by further exploring the ideas of DJ culture, specifically in the ideas of Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. However, in showing how different lenses can be used for different moments of an investigation, the baseball metaphor that has been used in describing this particular artifact will be replaced with what is arguably a more valuable metaphor for the overall context of the thesis. Specifically, we’ll be invoking the metaphor of fishing and will apply it to digital authoring environments. The reasons for this approach will be explained extensively through out this work, with the use of copyrightcleared images or not. If the loss of images and multimedia is a problem for the reader at this point, and after the above explanation, all I can do is offer my apologies for this inconvenience, my invitation for further dialogue on this subject, and my assurance of what appears to be the only viable strategy at this particular point. In this case, think of The Permission Culture Remix, using a couple of baseball metaphors. We could think of it as having let a passed ball get by while trying to catch a dancing knuckler. We could also think of it as either hitting or giving up what looks to be an extremely long homerun, only to have the wind catch it at the last minute, pushing the ball back just barely into fair territory (as in “fair use” or “fair dealing”). And in case you’re wondering, Wakefield’s fastball strategy didn’t work out so well in the first inning of that October 1st game that begins this narrative. Regardless, he’s still managed to pitch some pretty good games this season. If the baseball metaphors don’t quite cut it, you can think of this as a really big fish that somehow got away. After all, even a fish that gets away can nevertheless make for an interesting story … 91 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD “Young man,” laughed the farmer, “You’re sort of a fool! You’ll never catch fish In McElligot’s Pool!” Figure 56. Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss, remixed with a natural multi-angle split screen from the Robert Nichol film about Campbell River fisherman Roderick Haig-Brown, Fisherman’s Fall (1967) 92 1. REMIXING METAPHORS – THE ISSUE TO BE ADDRESSED The context and specifics of a cultural-historical description are unique to the artifact. In the language of media theorist Lev Manovich, such a digital media artifact would be called a new media object (Manovich 2001). When viewed as a new media object, the artifact interconnects with discourses ranging from art and design to database architectures to spoken and programming languages to the Russian and German avant-garde movements of the 1920s (ibid.). The interactive, multi-angle DVD artifact from my band’s performance in March of 2000 (originally referred to in Figure 4) is just such a new media object, as is the lengthy travelogue of Artifact 5.11 that is situated at the crossroads of interconnecting discourses. While the circumstances that surround these very different artifacts are unique, such things as venues, bands, and the scenarios involving live performances and media capture are increasingly common in the digital age. The DVD artifact depicts one particular place in time in the culture and history of music and the media arts. The travelogue artifact, in contrast, depicts a number of such moments in a narrative that is sometimes sequential and other times non-linear. Because of these contexts, the artifacts in question reflect the general issue addressed in this thesis: what “lenses” can provide appropriate “ways of seeing” new media objects? LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 57. Screenshot from menu of halcyon days multi-angle DVD, screen pt.2 93 Live music, performance spaces, and media capture have been and continue to be an ordinary aspect of popular culture. They provide a common environment for the creation of diverse forms of creative content, if only in terms of the music of the performers. Such content may focus on the performances, the people, the places, or the events taking place at a particular moment in time. It may concern a work of art, or it may be considered a scientific breakthrough. It may have a persuasive angle and used for publicity purposes, or it may be research and technical documentation that has been standardized and designed to communicate with minimal ambiguity or chance of error. Alternately, the content may seemingly be personal or experimental artifacts that, for the most part, are known only to their authors or communities of interest. What is clear in all these potential uses is that, given the capabilities of today’s technologies, the objectives for developing new media content are varied and plentiful. “The pool is too small, And, you might as well know it, When people have junk Here’s the place that they throw it. Figure 58. Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. T.S. Geisel) The flexibility described above, specifically, the ability for new media objects to be used in multiple ways and contexts, leads to deep pools of digital content. Significant archives of such content already exist and continue to expand as the capture, collection, and publishing of content becomes an increasingly common activity in the 21st century9. Some of this content is already digitized and accessible by communication networks and social software applications, while some of it is backed up on hard drives, compact discs, or other media storage devices. More still is likely sitting on analog or other physical media (tapes, film reels, etc.) that have been archived in warehouses, storage cabinets, garages, or even shoeboxes. And there is likely even more content that has simply been forgotten, unpreserved and deteriorated, or rumored to exist but unable to be located and essentially lost to our cultural heritage. Regardless of the form and location of this content, the capabilities of cost-effective media capture, storage, and recombination have become increasingly accessible to the participants of the same 9 Numerous photo and video sharing sites/services are developing on the internet, such as Google video, flickr, vimeo, YouTube etc. 94 ordinary, everyday culture on which Raymond Williams theorized in the late 1950’s, i.e. a culture “that it is always both traditional and creative; that it is both the most ordinary common meanings and the finest individual meanings” (Williams, 1958/1997). While the perspective of culture that Williams offered in 1958 has not fundamentally changed, the tools of expression have shifted radically as we’ve moved into a digital age. The capabilities of these new tools – i.e. new media objects – encourage a form of expression that has been called “digital creativity” (Lessig, December 11, 2004). These expressions, when permitted, are by no means guaranteed to become “official” voices of the “official” culture as described by Phil Graham in the forthcoming paper Monopoly and Monopsony, and the Value of Culture in the Digital Age (in press). Current digital technologies – video and still cameras, portable music players/recorders, editing and authoring software, high-bandwidth servers and network storage drives – are changing the potential for individuals to express themselves, interact with others, and participate in an emerging and global digital culture. The digital media artifacts these technologies produce are significantly altering our traditional notions of “writing”, “voice”, “audience”, and “communication”, as we’ll see through the ideas of Brown, Lessig, and Miller, amonst others. As Graham suggests, and as will be discussed here, these new media objects also require another perspective on what has “value” in such cultural environment. These artifacts may be only barely edited – if edited at all – and viewed as raw materials for future works. Or, they may be artifacts that are sufficiently tied up in legal or technical limitations that they cannot be viewed except by select individuals. They may be artifacts that are used as stock footage for commercial projects, or scrap materials that are found on the cutting room floor of Time-Warner, Viacom, or Disney’s studios. Whether it is “junk” from one project, collected and later reused, or simply random creations never intended for any future purpose whatsoever, there are significant amounts creative material developing through what has become ordinary, everyday activity in the digital age. But the questions around these creative materials persist: do they have value? “You might catch a boot Or you might catch a can, You might catch a bottle, But listen young man… Figure 59. Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. T.S. Geisel) Disregard for a moment the fact that there is already significant content available through the “official channels” of the “creative industries” (Graham, in press). The point here is that vast pools and streams of creative potential have been opened up by global communication networks and by the digital technologies that enable such networks. These untapped pools and streams of culture 95 flow outside of the “official channels” of the culture industries and are therefore unable to realize “cultural worth” (ibid. pp.12-13). However, when seen from view of the producers, the “one buyer, many sellers” model – what is essentially an inverted oligopoly – that currently shapes “official culture” essentially drives the value of this creative potential towards zero (ibid, p. 2). This situation presents a major challenge for a more “participatory” culture, one that has resulted in the “wager” made by those looking to provide “widespread, open access to rich media resources that will a) add value to “junk” material by promoting the adaptive repurposing of those materials; b) provide the basis for developing new content forms suited to new media environments, especially in the context of broadband networks; c) promote new authorial and technological literacies; and d) entail new conceptions about the value of cultural materials, and about the expectations that people have about being able to consciously and actively participate in the production of their cultures” (Graham in press). Yet this wager hinges on a value judgment from the perspective of the content producers. If you sat fifty years With your worms and your wishes, You’d grow a long beard Long before you catch fishes!” Figure 60. Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. T.S. Geisel) The wager described above is based on a shift in perspective, where creative potential is seen in artifacts that currently have no “official” cultural value, and by default, no financial worth (ibid). From the economic perspective of the producers of “official culture”, there is obviously a natural desire to keep the costs of resources as low as possible in order to maximize profitability. These resources are created and supplied by a number of potential “sellers” of cultural content, who can also be viewed as producers in their own right. From the economic perspective of these potential suppliers of “official culture”, there is a natural desire to have their works used by others and to be compensated for this work in some way. In other words, the goal is for these works to have value – commercial or otherwise. The producers of “official” culture, as “buyers” in this system, will value these works, but will of course hope to pay the lowest possible price for the value they acquire. The most compelling way to do this is to separate off the works of the many potential “sellers” into resources that are acceptable for “official culture”, which then leaves the remainder of “human cultural activity” viewed as unacceptable for any further development within the “official” cultural system. According to this argument recently put forward by Graham, “official culture” is a “miniscule percentage of human cultural activity [that is] commodified, bought, and distributed by the small 96 group of corporations [consisting of] Viacom, General Electric, Disney, Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, Bertlesmann, and News Corp” (Free Press, 2004, cited in Graham, in press). Obviously it is in the economic interest of an organization for its assets to be seen as more valuable relative to other organizations. Therefore, the producers of official culture are concerned in making sure that their official cultural resources have value by being usable in ways that other cultural materials are not (e.g. commercial use). By devaluing any non-official culture by making it technically or legally unusable, the producers of official culture can effectively ‘buy’ the cultural resources needed for their materials at a minimum cost. The “many sellers” of cultural resources are therefore left with a choice between low value and no value for their creative output. There is a value distortion proposed in the above argument, one that results from cultural materials becoming unusable from a technical, cultural, or economic standpoint. For example, consider an unsupported codec in a multimedia file causes a design problem in a commercial product that uses the file as a component. To resolve this issue, either a supported version of the file must be found or acquired, or a different file is used altogether. The end product, the one that is actually commercially viable, may end up quite different from its original design because of the substitution of “acceptable” components for the ones that are viewed as “unacceptable”. The development of a product in this way is not inherently a problem, but only if there is a diverse system of replacement components to draw from, so as to not diminish the integrity of the original design. Such development raises the important question: To paraphrase John Seely Brown, even if unusable ideas can “leak out” of a system, what will be allowed to “leak in” (Brown, December 10, 2004)? LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 61. John Seely Brown PowerPoint slides from Scholarship in the Digital Age conference, December 10, 2004 The fear that many experts and practitioners have with respect to this situation is not just the possibility that the integrity of the work becomes compromised from replacing the original components of the work with less effective alternates (Heinz and Bickle, 2006, Center for Social Media, 2005), In fact, a design that can allow for replacement of components could also allow for the inclusion of more effective components, leading to a stronger eventual product. Instead, the more problematic concern would be the scenario where innovation comes to a standstill until issues of usability are completely resolved. 97 In other words, in terms of John Seely Brown’s corporate context above in Figure 5, ideas are not allowed to “leak” into a corporation’s innovation process. Or, in the cultural sense, new works aren’t able to develop when questions of ownership make it difficult to know what can and can’t be used. In either case, the concern is for the creative process becoming separated from its practical environment, as in, no longer “being connected to the world” (Brown, December 10, 2004). When this happens, innovation becomes driven by distorted values and abstract, idealistic objectives rather than actual real-world concerns. As a result of such concerns, the creative potential of “human cultural activity” (Graham, in press), not to mention any commercial potential that could subsequently follow, is now considered to have reached a “crisis”: Lawrence Lessig on "writing" 12.11.2004, 6:17 PM Closing the USC conference "Scholarship in the Digital Age," Lessig spoke on "free culture" and the current legal/cultural crisis that in the next few years will define the constraints on creative production for decades to come. Due to obsessive fixation by a handful of powerful media industries on the issue of piracy, the massive potential of networked digital culture that has briefly flowered in the past decade could be destroyed by draconian laws and code controls embedded in new technologies. In Lessig's words: "never in our past have fewer exercised more legal control." Lessig elegantly picked up one of the conference's many threads, multimedia literacy, referring to the bundle of new forms of cultural and scholarly production – remixing, reusing, networking peer-to-peer, working across multiple media – as simply "writing." This is an important step to take in thinking about these new modes of production, and is actually a matter of considerable urgency, considering the legal changes currently underway. The ultimate question to ask is (and this is how Lessig concluded his talk): are we producing a legal culture in which writing is allowed? Posted by ben vershbow at December 11, 2004 06:17 PM | file under: Copyright and Copyleft | Remix Technorati tags (Vershbow, 2004) Following this question and as suggested in the above blog entry from “The Future of the Book” website (ibid.), let’s take a “significant step” and give a familiar label to these new forms of cultural and scholarly production. Let’s simply call these activities writing and the works and discourses created through this process – i.e. “artifacts”, “new media objects” – as texts. In contemporary media studies, intertexuality has come to mean that any individual text (whether an artwork like a movie or novel, or more commonplace text like a newspaper article, billboard, or casual verbal remark) is part of a larger cultural discourse and therefore must be read in relationship to other texts and their diverse textual strategies and ideological assumptions.” (Kinder 1991, p.2) This “writing” is the overall activity from which, according to Lessig, “digital creativity” emerges (Lessig, December 11, 2004). When contextualized for the digital networked age, such a notion of “text” expands greatly in terms of quantity and variety of artifacts. For example, we could simply look at the quantity and variety of artifacts involved in producing and engaging with both the print and the online versions of the New York Times as “written” documents. This increased quantity and 98 variety of artifacts can thus be viewed increasing the diversity of the textual strategies and ideological assumptions involved in the “larger cultural discourse” (Kinder, ibid.). Obviously, the notions of “writing” and “text” in this discourse are in large part metaphorical and operate far beyond the direct context of a pen and paper. Similarly, new ideas on what is creative writing and authorship in this context have also moved well beyond the limitations of analog tools such as the typewriter. These new notions of “writing” in a digital context will thus be a significant focus of the ideas we will be exploring throughout this thesis. Furthermore, we’ll also be exploring the idea of “tinkering, learning, sharing, extending and improving”, as mentioned by John Seely Brown, and how they are key to understanding questions of “new forms of authorship”. For example, we are asking similar questions on the value of cultural works as Brown does when he asks: “How do we interact with material and how do we create new meanings through this? [i.e.] through a “new twist on ‘Rip.Mix.Burn’” (Brown, December 10, 2004). Part of answering such questions may come down to the notion of reframing the question, as Ted Nelson does in the following statement: The standard question has been, "How do we prevent infringement?" If we reframe the question as "How can we allow re-use?", the solution may be simpler and more powerful than everyone thinks, with benefits for everyone. (Nelson 1997) This reframing of digital culture, writing, and authorship raises many questions and possibilities. While these are explored in greater depth throughout the thesis, significant ground is covered through this exploration. In the process, our explorations raise a number of related questions, for example: • What do these views of writing and creativity have to do with a DVD of obscure audiovisual material captured at the Commodore Ballroom several years ago and alluded in the DVD screenshot depicted in Figure 4? How do these views of writing and creativity relate to the travelogue presented earlier as Artifact 5.11. In other words, is this work about the artifacts or is it about the processes that led to their creation? More generally, what does it mean for a “written” work to be in a form other than a book? In other words, “what is the future of the book?” When looking at the overall discourse of the thesis, it seems to “travel” back and forth between the areas of cultural psychology and complexity theory. What do these subject add to “the future of the book?” There is significant density of meaning packed into the title of the thesis, with terms such as “intertextuality”, “autopoiesis”, and “identity”. Why do these terms and ideas matter in a digital environment, for a music venue, for a band, or for some other artifact or context yet to be discussed? • • • What is important to remember in terms of these introductory questions is that they are not the research questions of this thesis. Rather, they are questions designed to provoke the reader into 99 generating context around this work, to consider what it is about, and alternately, what it is not about. For example, this thesis is not about the Commodore Ballroom. It’s not about any band with the good luck of having played on the stage of this icon of Vancouver’s local music culture. It’s not about fishing, either in a very real Pacific Ocean or a very imaginary McElligot’s Pool. It’s not about the writings of Larry Lessig, Lev Manovich, Phil Graham, Roderick Haig-Brown, or any other author that may have been mentioned or alluded to so far. And while it would make a wonderfully interesting research topic, this thesis is not about the digital implications of the collected works of Theodor Seuss Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss!). But “oh, the places you’ll go…” LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away! Figure 62. Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go! was used as the basis for a strange introductory segment for Superbowl XL on February 5, 2006 What this thesis is about is an activity and artifacts that have both come to be called “remix”. Remix can be looked at as any activity where culture is re-expressed by reusing and repurposing existing artifacts, “where everything from personal identity to the codes used to create art or music are available to the mix” (Lessig 2004, Miller 2004). Remix can also be looked at as the artifacts produced in this very activity. This thesis is therefore about what we can, for the time being, call the phenomenon of “remix culture” (Wired Magazine, Issue 13.07), i.e. as both the activities and artifacts involved in the re-expression, reuse, and repurposing of culture. Recently the subject of a cover story issue in 2005 issue of Wired magazine (ibid.), remix culture has been described as an environment where “everyone in the life of producing and creating engages in this practice of remix” (Lessig 2004). Such a description obviously paints a very broad picture of what is essential to this phenomenon, what activities and artifacts constitute it, and who engages in these activities. However, as demonstrated here and in upcoming chapters, the broadness of the remix phenomenon is precisely what makes it an increasingly relevant issue in terms digital technologies and contemporary culture. 100 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go. Figure 63. The remix of Seuss’s popular story effectively demonstrates a remix of pop culture texts for marketing objectives using new media authoring technologies where live action video is digitally inserted into a cartoon animation. As a result, the discussion here will invariably – and intertextually – pull other contexts into its perspective, sometimes in unexpected ways. For example, an exploration of interaction design concepts becomes a discussion on fishing; a “self-producing” biological system becomes a metaphor for the “culture of marketing”; a rock n’ roll show becomes anything from an interaction design model, to an ecological worldview, or just simply a publicity vehicle for brand exposure. In this way, the notion of “remix” becomes an increasingly popular buzzword, an interdisciplinary object of study, and even a contemporary approach for navigating the “deep pools” of content or the “information superhighways” in our networked, digital culture (Kellner 1994). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care. About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there." With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street. Figure 64. By mixing in video of former Superbowl icons such as Joe Montana and Franco Harris reading out lines from the story, adapting certain lines for the context of the football game, and featuring a bearded Harrison Ford providing wild-eyed narration, the puzzling and kitschy intro also demonstrates how remixing doesn’t necessarily lead to an effective end result. 101 This thesis is concerned not only with interchangeable terms such as culture, artifacts, and new media objects, but how we human beings – as the only species with awareness of culture and history – make sense of our environment through mediated interaction. So it is a thesis that draws on cultural studies, history, and other areas of the humanities for its insights, but also on social sciences such as psychology, anthropology, and cognitive science for its grounding. Michael Cole, whose cross-cultural research has helped to establish cultural psychology as a discourse and whose work in cultural-historical activity informs much of this research project, sums up both the problem and motivation for doing cultural research as follows: It has long been recognized that culture is very difficult for humans to think about. Like fish in water, we fail to ‘see’ culture because it is the medium in which we exist. Encounters with other cultures make it easier to understand our own as an object of thought. (Cole 1996, p.8) This thesis is motivated by a desire to gain some understanding of the complex role of “remix” in networked digital culture. While a theoretical overview of key ideas in investigating this cultural phenomenon is further developed in “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings”, the development of the research question requires some discussion of particularly relevant aspects of these theoretical underpinnings. For example, Graham suggests in Monopoly and Monopsony that a globalization is currently taking place in digital networked culture through the “one buyer, many sellers” model (Graham, in press, p.2). If this is the globalizing model is indeed the case, we could use Cole’s suggestion of learning from our increasing “encounters with other cultures” as a way to help understand our own. We could look for processes similar to “remix” taking place in other cultures and find ways to communicate these common processes in ways that aren’t bogged down by cultural “baggage”. As readers and as authors, as users and as designers, as both observers and observed – or, more generally, as “writers” – we could hypothetically try to put the immersive marketing slogans and technological ubiquity of networked digital culture aside, if only momentarily. Putting this cultural context aside, we might then try to find an objective perspective – a clear “lens” that is free from cultural biases – in an attempt to reflect and focus on the research implications presented here on the issues of “remix”. However, if we were to somehow find this ideal viewpoint, we’d also find a paradoxical situation: it is psychologically impossible and historically impractical to simply put culture aside. As Cole advises, “there is no such thing as an allpurpose (context-free) tool” (Cole 1996, p.335). 102 And you you'll In that you'll head may not find any want to go down. case, of course, straight out of town. It's opener there in the wide open air. Figure 65. Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (1990), illustration of the story’s main character by Dr. Seuss, as seen in the original work. Why would this be considered psychologically impossible and historically impractical? Cole suggests the following short answer: “Because when psychology treated culture as an independent variable and mind as a dependent variable, it broke apart the unity of culture and mind and ordered them temporarily – culture is stimulus, mind is response” (Cole 1996, p.327). He then argues that the history of cross-cultural psychology can be viewed as a long struggle to fix this impractical split. To put the unity back together, Cole prescribes removing the division in the “humane sciences” between the social sciences and humanities. In reconstructing this unity, and in setting up continuing discussions on methodology and theory, Cole’s aim is to help psychologists “keep culture in mind” rather than treating it as an independent factor that must be accounted for (ibid). To invoke a multimedia metaphor, the approach for working with culture that Cole is arguing against can be seen as analogous to studying a film by turning down the volume and treating sound as irrelevant. The problem with this approach is that the absence of sound only invokes the entire culture and history of silent film as a frame of reference. As Roland Barthes would say in reflecting on the “bizarre medium” of the photograph: “not only the absence of the object; it is also, by one and the same movement, on equal terms, the fact that this object has indeed existed and that it has been there where I see it” (Barthes, 1981 p.106). Much as we try to “purify” the frame of view of an object by removing the variables of culture, the more culture seeps into the picture. It is equivalent to saying to someone, to use the colloquial example, “don’t think of the white elephant!” (Walker et al. 2004 p. 5). Or, better still, it’s like asking someone close their eyes and not visualize anything when listening to a piece of music. 103 “Hmmm…” answered Marco, “It may be you’re right. I’ve been here three hours Without one single bite. There might be no fish… “But, again, Well there might!” Figure 66. Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. T.S. Geisel) Such paradoxes in “objective” scientific investigations into cultural objects have caused many researchers and scholars to formally address culture’s problematic aspects in their investigations and in their writings. A common concern is the treatment of the mind simply as a machine that can be observed in a mechanistic way, using the well-established scientific laws and methods of the natural sciences. Or, alternately, using a “tool-centric” view of human interaction that favors a focus on the technology and its functionality at the expense of human concerns. In both cases, culture is put off to the side, so to speak, and treated as independent of what is being observed. As a result of these practical tensions, an ecological paradigm for culture has emerged through the discourse of developmental psychology (see Bronfenbrenner, 1979, Engeström, 1987, and Cole 1996). As Cole notes, this ecological view presents a challenge to come up with methodologies that attempt to address the ongoing schism and ensuing contradiction between the sciences and the humanities: That contradiction – between the evidence through the lens of my discipline’s methodology and that through the lens of my commonsense response to live in [a cross-cultural] environment – posed the challenge: come up with a methodology that could reconcile the two different views. (Cole 1996, p. 338) Similar concerns and contradictions have been addressed in the law and technology discourse of legal scholars James Boyle (1997) and Lawrence Lessig, whose aim is to have the legal community look beyond the technicalities of the law in order to see how laws and technologies are actually used in society (Lessig 2005). In addition to this legal perspective, another important variation of this ecological discourse relates to the intense interaction between programmers, artists, and marketers in the dynamic network of users, markets, and audiences in the historical development of the video game (Kline et al. 2003). Additionally, and most relevant in among researchers in areas of interactive arts and technology, many design disciplines have emerged that are concerned with the user’s role in technology use and their participation in the design process. This includes, especially in the next chapter, the work of Donald Schön, John Seely Brown, Donald Norman, John Thackara, among others, where much of the work varies on a central theme: consideration of the user as a central participant of the design process. 104 This “user-centered design” discourse is one that interconnects with Bronfenbrenner’s cultural ecology paradigm of “reciprocal interplay” (1979) and Cole’s “vision for a cultural psychology” (1996). This can be seen in the seminal work of Donald Norman, whose influential book The Design of Everyday Things (1990) was originally titled The Psychology of Everyday Things (1988). It also has connections to the fields of literary analysis and semiotics, for example, in looking at the “role of the reader” (Eco 1978). Here, the issue of audience in a literary work becomes as fundamental to the writing activity as the user would be in the design process, where it follows that as a reader may bring unanticipated meaning to a text, the users in a digital culture may take artifacts and technologies in new and creative ways. These new developments may be unanticipated by the original authors and designers, and may even effectively blur the boundary between author/reader and user/designer. Speaking directly to the notion of boundaries in ideas, artifacts, discussions, and audiences that are presented here, and while reflecting on my own role in developing a thesis, I recognize that I am a writer who is also both researcher and participant in the production of cultural artifacts designed for an “interconnected and personalized media universe” (see Figure 4). This database of cultural artifacts serves as the basis of the analysis that will be done in this project, and will be further explained in “Chapter 3: A Journey Towards Appropriate Data”, specifically, the “constant, reciprocal interplay” between observer and observed in my research environment (Moen et al. 1995 p.6). To extend McLuhan’s aphorism, we shape the tools and the tools shape us within socio-political, socio-cultural, socio-historical and socio-economic contexts. According to McLuhan, the tools that humans create, whether for basic survival or to fulfil the deepest desires or most frivolous wants, in many ways, knowingly or unknowingly, shape who we are as individuals and the societies within which we create them in (M. McLuhan, 1994). At the same time, however, these tools are created because of specific societal, cultural, and historical contexts. Within this convergence of human agency and the societal structures human actions function within, the notion of the self emerges. (Vieta 2003) This pool of new media objects can also be viewed as artifacts produced by “convergence of human agency and the societal structures” that situate human activity (Vieta 2003). This agency takes place on a number of levels, whether through an individual’s activity in playing a particular role, or through the actions of multiple participants in the environment. As argued above by Vieta, following McLuhan’s notion of what is essentially a reciprocal interplay between the human agent and the cultural environment (McLuhan 1964), these interactions with the tools, the signs and symbols, and other mediating artifacts present the cultural environment from which identity emerges. This idea of performance as a form of human agency where one plays a “role” in engaging with an environment begs the questions of: “What if the individual is playing multiple roles simultaneously? What if that role is based on another individual or multiple individuals? Who’s identity then emerges?” In terms of the digital realm, where individuals are often “multi-tasking” in “multi-user” network environments, according to Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid), the connection of identity (or “persona”) to performance can be viewed as “role consolidation”: 105 Remixing my own DJ-ing with more aesthetic-historical references opened up my performing and recording to new zones, including museums and galleries, and allowed me to create DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid as a conceptual art project. Although this persona was embraced by the art world and the critical establishment, I’m not really concerned with the academy per se. Frankly, by the start of the twenty-first century, the academy is such a reflection of class structure and hierarchy that it tends to cloud any real progressive contexts of criticism and discourse. By DJ-ing, making art, and writing simultaneously, I tried to bypass the notion of the critic as an authority who controls narrative, and to create a new role that’s resonant with web culture: to function as content provider, producer, and critic all at the same time. It is role consolidation as digital performance. (Miller 2004, p.48) Multiple roles were required to develop the numerous artifacts in my system of “interconnected and personalized media”. By creating, collecting, and repurposing these artifacts – i.e. by mixing and remixing – I’ve developed what Mark Gover describes as a self-reflexive semiotic boundary: “[an] interface, constituted by the enactment of gestures, symbols, signs, etc. [that] comprises the bridge between personal identity and one’s own social and cultural context” (Gover 1996). For example, I am aware that I am a writer who uses a variety of analog and digital technologies in attempting to write about the world in which I live, one that is heavily situated in areas of “popular culture” such as music and film (Storey 1997). Therefore, much of my personal identity is situated in relation to this pop culture context, whether in the role of “provider” (i.e. as a writer or performer), or as a “producer” who edits and remixes these texts and performances. However, as an academic whose research and teaching duties often involve this same context of popular culture and digital environments, I also act in the role of “critic”. My personal identity, in reflecting this semiotic boundary, therefore echoes Miller’s notion of “role consolidation as digital performance” (Miller, ibid.). Perhaps more importantly, I am also acutely aware that my work predominantly builds upon the works of others, whether in remixing artifacts of popular culture or in quoting an academic reference in a paper, or, in this thesis for that matter. As a result, I continually face the question posed by one of the writers whose work I build upon extensively, Paul D. Miller, who asks his readers the same question his mom used to ask him: “Who’s voice speaks through you?” (Miller 2004, pp.37 and p.113). While both the richness and reliability of such voices are of equal concern in such a situation, the truths “and and” errors of one voice are easily carried into the next (see Figure 68). What is of greater importance though is simply asking this question, i.e. engaging Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of “dialogic fabric” of multi-voiced discourse and the dialogic nature of human life itself” (Bakhtin 1984, p.293). Asking “who’s voice speaks through you?” is simply a first step in such dialogic participation. 106 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 67. Paul D. Miller from “Exploring a Media Ecology” WGBH-TV, Boston, MA and in performance as DJ Spooky in Fransen and McLeod’s Copyright Criminals (2005) Through an ecological extension of this perspective shared by Miller on imagination and the “media ecology” (Miller 2006), I am also aware that as I contribute to my environment through my activities – or my “voice” – I end up changing this environment in the process. This in turn changes me – as observer, or practitioner, or reader – to some questionable degree. By “questionable”, I mean that while I subscribe to the view of culture as an ecosystem, in the Marshall McLuhan-inspired sense of “we shape tools and they in turn shape us” (McLuhan 1964), I also attempt to take a critical – i.e. a questioning – view of any rush towards techno-determinist visions of the future. McLuhan’s views on technology and media are often regarded as techno-determinist through a rose-colored vision of the “global village”, thereby “enabling popular writers such as Alvin Toffler and Frances Cairncross to convert his tentative probes into dogmatic, formulaic charts of the information revolution” (Kline et al. 2003, p. 36). In fact, the techno-determinist pop culture text Wired even named McLuhan as it “patron saint” in the early 1990s (Shachtman, 2002). Yet despite sharing an optimism for the potential positive effects of the “profound cultural shift inherent in our new media environments” (Graham, in press, p. 25), I don’t accept the utopian argument that any positive outcomes from the intense dynamics between technology, culture, and marketing in the contemporary moment can emerge without a strong self-reflective and self-critical function within what I’ll later argue as a potentially totalizing system. 107 Figure 68. John Seely Brown PowerPoint slides from Scholarship in the Digital Age conference, December 10, 2004 Faced with such a potential totalization, we could choose to resign our identity to digital networked culture and be shaped completely by its intense and interactive dynamics; we could simply allow the technological, cultural, and marketing forces currently driving consumer society, through mass marketed “experiences” like the Apple iPod or Hollywood films, to “shape” us and our view of the world. But are there other, not so cynical views available when faced with this situation? What sort of critical-yet-positive outlooks can be found instead for the individual’s role in a digital environment? An environment where, as John Thackara proposes, “every object around us is ‘smart’ and ‘connected’ … and where you step into the garden to look at the flowers – and the flowers look at you?” (Thackara 2001) The cultural consequences and psychological effects of such pervasively interactive and technologically ubiquitous environments would suggest the need for new perspectives that can help make sense of these rapid changes. John Seely Brown suggests just such an outlook where “Digital life, Remix & Voice/Identity” develop into a “new kind of social capital”, perhaps one that is inextricably tied to Pierre Bourdieu’s notion cultural capital (1973). Such social capital is based on the idea that “I am what I create [and] what others build upon” rather than on consumerist models of identity through purchasing power (Figure 68). It shifts away from the single “author/artist to networks of co-creators” (ibid.) at varying levels of networked digital culture. In intertextually summarizing this developing social capital, both Paul D. Miller and John Brown, who, it should be noted, come from radically different backgrounds, point to science fiction writer William Gibson’s quote: “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed” (Gibson 1999, cited in Miller 2004, p.100 and Brown 2004). 108 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 69. John Seely Brown PowerPoint slides from Scholarship in the Digital Age conference, December 10, 2004 and Amazon.com’s “remix” of the cover of William Gibson’s book Pattern Recognition (2003) Paul D. Miller speaks of this future as “a worldview that definitely ain’t linear” (Miller, 2004, p.100). He suggests that, like switching fonts on a word-processing document, “modes of expression [are] utterly pliable”, while also noticing how “echoes” of prior technologies show up the way he writes. He also suggests that when shifting from lower-level contexts to higher-level metatexts, an “enframing process” takes place that ultimately serves as an aesthetic of “pattern recognition” (ibid). Miller credits the work of scientists Alan Kay, Douglas Engelbert, and Ivan Sutherland whose “pioneering graphical user interfaces more than three decades ago, [that allowed] users to interact with icons and objects on a monitor’s surface [now] lets us move into the screen world itself” (ibid). Brown similarly suggests that this same profound shift has led to a refocus from the “narrativetelling” of linear stories towards the “world-building” of games. These environments offer “persistent worlds” where personal meaning happens through “accretion”, i.e. an incremental growth through the acquisition or self-production of new components (Brown, ibid.). Consistent with the notion of “accretion” described by Brown, the pool of content at the heart of this research project has grown steadily in the past years through the contribution of new materials to an increasingly online database, or, alternately, through the remixing of existing artifacts into new ones that are re-contributed to the database system. This development has become a highly dynamic process of interaction between technology, culture, and marketing concerns, and, as also suggested by Brown, it has required paying attention to “the edges” (i.e. the boundaries) of: • • • • • Myself, (e.g. the self-reflection and introspection of the writing activity) My cohort group, (e.g. colleagues at SIAT, other cohorts, help frame research interests) My experiences, (e.g. performance in music or as a cameraman, other experiences) My industry (as a Commerce-grad with stake in digital culture industries) My own culture (e.g. fishing culture of my hometown and other interests) 109 • “And especially kids as digital natives” (e.g. the students I’ve had as a TA or instructor). Therefore, with these strong ecological, critical, and self-reflective considerations in place, I argue that it is therefore impossible for me to remove myself from the cultural-historical context that has produced the works, the texts, the artifacts, or the new media objects that provide the foundation for this research project. In doing so, by removing my identity from the work, it would distort far more of the research than it would clarify. However, in recognizing that there is a “constant, reciprocal interplay” between my research object and myself (Moen et al.1995, p.6), it does not mean that the research is flawed from such a relationship. In fact, acknowledging this situation, as will be further explained in “Chapter IV: Methods or Procedures of Analysis”, is part of the method itself: There are four broad components to research: the question or issue to be addressed, the theoretical underpinnings, appropriate data, and methods or procedures of analysis. Bronfenbrenner’s ecology of human development paradigm not only furnishes a theoretical model, but also becomes a catalyst, inspiring a redefinition of the problems to be studied. In framing their research designs, he reminds researchers to explicitly acknowledge that individuals and environments are in constant, reciprocal interplay. (Moen et al., ibid.) The opening screenshot from July 7th, 2004, presented in Figure 0.4, speaks to a cultural artifact that I had previously designed prior to and during this research project. This new media object – an experimental, multi-angle, concert DVD where I am one of the performers on stage – is a now an important component of my overall thesis argument, even if it only serves to preface this work. This is because the ideas presented in the screenshot, the work that follows the screenshot, and the work that is referenced in the opening screenshot, all reflect upon past historical situations, activities, and artifacts that have affected me both personally and in terms of my work. They must therefore be situated, as best possible for the purpose of my thesis, in the cultural-historical context of a self-reflective design researcher concerned with the following three key ideas: 1. Cultural Psychology, with a specific interest in mediated interaction and “multi-person joint activity”; 2. Complex Systems, specifically in terms of emergence and autopoiesis, as well as in ecology and identity in sociolinguistic systems; 3. Remix Culture, specifically in terms of narrative, intertextuality and agency in a high-tech consumer society; These three concepts and the issues they raise are fundamental to the research being described in this specific piece of writing, as well as fundamental to my identity beyond the research, for example, as a writer, as a designer, as an artist, as a performer, or through various other roles in my ordinary, everyday activities. There have been tensions experienced through the “multiplex” of these roles (Miller 2004, p.60), and these situations have often been difficult, if not extremely challenging. However, in the long term role of searcher, and in the more recent role of researcher, I can attest to the notion that these difficult experiences are also the ones that provide “fullness” described by Roderick Haig-Brown in the following manner: ““Fullness is the long return from dark 110 depths, Rendering toll of itself to the searching nets” (Haig-Brown, date unknown, in the introductory poem Pacific Salmon, Figure 2), and as described in his 1959 book Fisherman’s Summer : Fishermen are searchers. It is true we search for fish, at times with great diligence. But we search also, as men always have, for experiences; and there are no greater experiences than the seasons, varied and repeated year after year in our special comings and goings.” (Haig-Brown 1959, preface) These experiences, as they’ve repeatedly unfolded over time through various “seasons”, are therefore integral to what has become a long-term development of an “interconnected and personalized media universe”. In conjunction with the three key concepts mentioned above, these experiences speak to the notion of the “feedback loop” when discussing cultural activities in the digital age, as well as the corresponding “closed yet open” systems that are both self-reflective and self-referential in their organization. And, given my background as a new media artist with a commerce degree doing technology-related research, it follows that these experiences – not to mention my own sense of identity – are situated fully within the “contemporary issues and dynamics of Art vs. Commerce in the media-saturated digital age”. In keeping with these ideas, all quotations in this paragraph refer to the screenshot artifact that opens this work (Figure 4). This research has been a long-term development process for me, one that involves “building identity thru creating something” (Brown, December 10, 2004). It is a developmental process that dates back to well before I began considering it as formal research work, when instead I considered it simply as “writing”. As will be further discussed in “Chapter IV: Methods or Procedures of Analysis”, the context of “writing” becomes “an activity setting where you can be both participant and analyst” that is part of Michael Cole’s method for cultural psychology as is his use of metaphors as “tools of thought” (Cole 1996, pp. 349-350). While a more appropriate metaphor might be that of a film or digital video “montage”, thereby calling to mind Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) as another key text in this thesis, the material presented here is equivalent to a “snapshot” of where the work sits presently (albeit a rather panoramic snapshot). So with the work now contextually situated to a reasonable degree, the remainder of this thesis will be structured along the lines of Urie Bronfenbrenner’s “four broad components to research” as previously mentioned (Moen et al. 1995, p.6): 1. THE QUESTION OR ISSUE TO BE ADDRESSED: This first chapter will focus on the phenomenon in its context and the question or issue that it raises. From this initial historical perspective, the research question will naturally emerge. Specifically, “Are their appropriate models with which to explain the cultural, aesthetic, and economic value of remix?” 2. THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS: The second chapter looks specifically at the theory behind this cultural-historical view of the discipline of psychology, as well as its connection to issues of complexity and ecology when applied to social and linguistic systems of organizational communication. Of course, this chapter will also look at theory behind “remix culture”, not as a new phenomenon, but having emerged from a long cultural and historical development of artifacts and activities in areas such as art theory, literary analysis, and cultural studies. 111 3. APPROPRIATE DATA: The third chapter makes a case for the use of artifacts from “popular” or “ordinary, everyday” culture (see Williams 1958/1997, p.5-14) as relevant in communicating the phenomenon and theory to a more general audience, and as valid data for analysis in the thesis. Specifically, this chapter will argue the validity of considering a database of networked digital media developed by the researcher as appropriate for this study. 4. THE METHODS OR PROCEDURES OF ANALYSIS: The fourth chapter will address the issue of methodology and how its methods have been applied to the above data. This includes a discussion on the implications of “mixing” complexity theory with a cultural-historical framework, followed by a thorough deconstructive analysis (“close reading”) of one or more artifacts using this framework. It should be noted that this deconstructive reading will not be done in an attempt to uncover the symbolic literary meanings in the texts, as usually happens in a close reading. Rather, the artifact(s) will be deconstructed in an attempt to visualize the multi-layered cultural-historical processes taking place in the remix activity, so as “to make the not seen accessible to sight” (Derrida 1976, pp. 158 and 163). In keeping with Bronfenbrenner’s ecological human development paradigm and the notion of situating the work in its context, a motivation for the research has been what I perceive as its interconnections with the numerous design-related disciplines at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT), a design-focused academic environment at Simon Fraser University’s Surrey Campus (e.g. “user-centered design”). The numerous “angles” presented by each discipline on issues of design within the school often lead to what could be described – in the terminology of this thesis – as a “remix” of views on design practice. This is a “remix” if only in the sense of the ordinary activity of putting existing ideas together in order to create a new idea. Or, more tangibly, it is “remix” as the process of actually combining elements of physical and digital artifacts, texts, and new media objects when putting ideas into practice. As a result, the reader will notice numerous examples of “remix” taking place directly in the development of this text and its arguments, for example, the periodic Dr. Seuss quotes and the visual artifacts presented in this chapter. “But, again, Well there might!” Figure 70. Sprite Remix Berryclear, Product Launch by Cossette/Fjord Interactive, as a Nobrow moment (2005 Digital Marketing Award Winners) In addition to these examples of “remix”, another example taking place in this text expresses an even stronger motivation for my research work, can be found through the following excerpt from Paul D. Miller’s book Rhythm Science (2004): 112 Why do I write? Why do I want to make a track? Why do I want to do this installation? They’re all hobbies, which keeps the fun. If I were a dead serious artist guy who wanted to just strictly be in all the right collections, that’s easily done. Same with the DJ circuit. But by being a hobbyist, a kind of flaneur, or somebody who jumps around, it keeps things fresh and new. I can only imagine what kind of mentality most people must have doing one thing all their lives. Because I grew up with books, I always wanted to write them, to add my own contribution to the mind’s bookshelf. At the end of the day, I write because I want to communicate with fellow human beings and forestall subjective implosion. (Miller 2004, p. 60) Paul D. Miller’s writing in Rhythm Science has been criticized as “utterly baffling” (Walters 2004), and this criticism is appropriate in terms of the fast and loose style and language with which he presents his ideas. Yet despite this criticism, I find that it contains some tremendous insights on remix, for example, the idea of “phono/graph” as “sound/writing”. Of course, this would be expected from an expert in this “field” of DJ-ing and turntablism, though I may disagree with him on how “easy” the DJ circuit or art collection circuits are if they’re anything at all like being in the independent rock band circuit. Further, I don’t have any background as a DJ in order to identify with his ideas from that specific context. However, the same argument can be made in terms of my identification with the perspectives of a fisherman, yet I can still “connect” with both Miller’s description of the motivations for writing and communicating, as well as Haig-Brown’s insights on angling in his role as a nature writer. Regardless of the perspective and whatever forms this expression may take, I would agree with Miller that the objective of the writing activity – whether or not it is viewed as “remix” – is to “forestall subjective implosion” (Miller, ibid). This “subjective implosion” could be seen as Freud’s “death instinct” which Derrida associates to the notion of the archive, i.e. it “incites forgetfulness, amnesia, [and] the annihilation of memory” (Derrida 1996, in Taylor 2001, p. 64). For Miller, writing books or any other form of content “keeps things fresh and new” by actively playing with these archives of media. To paraphrase from my own position: “Because I grew up with hooks, I always wanted to write them”, and this applies as much to the activities of a novelistfisherman contemplating the life cycles of a river system as it does to writing or remixing songs or other media artifacts in the massive archive that Miller calls the “Great Sea of Pop Culture” (Miller, ibid. p.21). In this regard, it may be apparent to the reader at this point that in order to communicate the idea of remix across several of discourses and disciplines, I have invoked a number of metaphors. Some of these are my own, most others are borrowed: discourses and artifacts as “texts”, engagement as “travel”, perspectives as “angles”, moments as “snapshots’, humans as “fish”, culture as “water”, databases as “pools”, digital creativity as “writing”, and of course “fishing” as “writing”. The rationale for this approach, outside of it being a natural inclination for this writer in particular, comes from Michael Cole’s experience in using metaphors as “useful tools of thought” and his observation that “there is no such thing as an all-purpose (context-free) tool” (Cole 1996, p. 334). 113 [I]t is natural to invoke different metaphors depending on the task at hand… One requires a combination of at least two metaphors to represent the process of culturally mediated activity… different metaphors provide access to different properties and moments of the overall process of sociocultural and individual change. One of the attractive aspects of a cultural-historical approach to constructing a second psychology is its underlying assumption that to understand behavior one must study the history of behavior. This same feature introduces a significant complication as well, because it requires a breadth of knowledge about different developmental domains that spills beyond the limits of existing disciplines or the competence of single individuals to master in a lifetime of work. (Cole 1996, p. 335) This work is obviously not without the “significant complication” mentioned by Cole above. It has difficulty fitting nicely into any particular discipline, which ironically helps it to fit nicely with the intended (and emerging) interdisciplinary discourse of SIAT. And although it has pushed beyond my competence as a single individual who is able to master the culture and history of “remix” or the complexities of complexity theory, I obviously find this research highly motivating. Perhaps the most driving motivation for the work and ideas expressed here is to find some way to give an extensive body of experimental new media “junk” some sort of value, financial or otherwise. In fact, the research question itself is motivated from this problem, while a growing database of new media objects has been the material result of trying to “follow the problem” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.104): If you look at physics at the turn of the century, much of the great work was done with physicists working on real problems and then having the freedom, if not the responsibility, to follow the problem. And when the problem led you to suggest reframing radically some fundamental hypotheses about how the world works, you did it. Now what we’re looking for is what we call pioneering research, which is radical and grounded. When research is grounded, you find that multiple disciplines can often come together and focus on that, and the grounding in the world itself pulls people’s views together. [With pioneering research] a research philosophy merges with our appreciation of the context, the power of honoring the context, the power of listening to the world and working with diversity, with different points of view, on real problems. (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p. 104) The “pioneering research” that I am arguing for here – make no mistake – is not science in the sense of the early 20th century physicists mentioned above. Nor is it attempting to portray itself as part of the natural sciences, in the pseudo-scientific manner of the suddenly newsworthy theory of “intelligent design” (Shulevitz 2006). This research is a study in culture and history that, in a number of areas, interacts quite intensely with scientific discourse. It does so, at least from the position of a writer and digital artist, in the same manner as approached by Michael Cole in Cultural Psychology: a once and future discipline (1996). In his book, Cole argues that in order to unite the natural and cultural halves “into a single scientific enterprise”, the domain of natural science needs to be “reinterpreted as discourse and its facts as text” (ibid p.327). As suggested in the title of this project, as well as in the title of Paul D. Miller’s book Rhythm Science (2004), the scientific discourse is treated here as a “text” – and a 114 metaphorical “road well-travelled” – in researching concepts and models for any insight into remix culture. The specific set of twelve artifacts that have been discussed and analysed in this work have been summarized in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results” and potentially included in the appendices of this document, or may be published separately pending copyright permissions. The DVD, the travelogue, and other digital media artifacts that have been discussed and may or may not have been included with this document can act as entry points into the “pioneering research” being put forward in this thesis. Hopefully, this will also be the case with the many of artifacts that act as “intertextual frames” for this work but have not been included, or may not have even been mentioned in this work (Eco 1984, p. 199-200). My research has formally or informally undergone several instances of radically “reframing” its points of view in looking at the problem at hand. Since Cole’s version of cultural psychology and his view of methodology as “a coordinated set of set of lenses through which to interpret the world” is at the heart of my work (ibid, p. 338, further explained and applied in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis”), I’ll now metaphorically invoke the following points of view in leading into the remainder of this thesis: the filmmaking metaphor of “the cameraman” and the fishing metaphor of “the angler”… “’Cause you never can tell what goes on down below! “This pool might be bigger Than you or I know” Figure 71. Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. T.S. Geisel) 115 Figure 72. Clipping from McElligot’s Pool (1947), illustration by Dr. Seuss, remixed with product shot of the Sony TRV-130 Digital8 camcorder NOTE: All Dr. Seuss quotations from McElligot’s Pool (1947) and Oh, the places you’ll go! (1990) 116 2. THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS Because I have learned so much of the river through fishing and watching fish, it is difficult to write of it without thinking of fish. From a fisherman's point of view almost everything about a river is related to fish and fishing...the interrelationships are so far reaching and complicated that it is really comprehensive; if anything is not included, the fisherman is almost certain to include it because observation is one of the keenest pleasures of his sport. (HaigBrown 1950, pp. 255-256) The difficulty with any research project dealing with culture is the very real risk of becoming “submerged” in it, so to speak. When you fold the multiplier effect of “remix” culture into the frame, the cultural perspective deepens to fathoms where, as writer, web publisher, and NYU teacher Clay Shirkey puts it, “we swim in a remix culture” (Shirkey, in Heins & Beckles 2005, p.26). Alternately, we sink. Or we float. Or perhaps the metaphor doesn’t “hold water” at all. Regardless of the lens, when we’re looking at culture we’re dealing with complexities that have awed and frustrated fishermen, scientists, and philosophers alike for far longer than the coming of the digital age10. When nature writer and angler Roderick Haig-Brown speaks of the river in terms of “interrelationships that are so far reaching and complicated that it is really comprehensive” (Haig-Brown, ibid.), he may as well be talking about culture. Similarly, scientific philosopher Michel Serres’ may as well be discussing either a river system or a cultural system when describing the increasing complexity of self-organizing, open systems within a universe that increases in entropy as a whole: Within this all-encompassing system, however, there are countless open systems…Serres describes these [open systems] as “quasi-stable eddies,” which are “the erratic blinking of aleatory mutations” that form a “local flow upstream toward negentropic islands – refuse, recycling, memory, increase in complexities” (Serres 1982, in Taylor 2001, p.119). In both cases, the river provides a metaphor for “the emergence of order out of chaos” (Bohm and Peat 1987, pp.138-140). The process that has been my formal and informal research into remix culture in the past several years has often felt like a similarly difficult swim “upstream”, often “at the edge of order and operat[ing] far from equilibrium” (Taylor 2001 p.97). And of course, even if particular events and developments have been surprising, it’s not surprising that the overall process has felt this way. New ideas, new works, and new methods are bound to be challenging, if they are worth reflecting upon later. In this reflective activity, which can call to mind notion of Walter Benjamin’s “aura” as a “strange web of space and time” (Benjamin 1931, in Trachtenberg 1980, pp. 199-216), key moments or artifacts begin to surface in the process, sometimes with surprising effect. For 10 note the unexpected connection here to James’ three kinds of thinking: common sense, science, and philosophical critical (see Cole 1996 p. 174) 117 example, when the rhythms of musical beats and film edits synchronize through an improvised and unplanned remix of media artifacts, it can have the effect of a “strange web” (see Artifact 5.8: Kid A With Movie Camera in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 73. Still from Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) also used in Manovich’s The Language of New Media (2001). In such examples, part of the challenge of my own reflective process with respect to my work has been to simply settle upon the term “remix” as a way to not only adequately describe the object of my research, but in a larger context, as a way to connect and exchange ideas within larger communities of interest or practice. Taking such a step becomes even more challenging when the work isn’t necessarily seen as remix, at least initially. Or, when the term remix becomes so much of a marketing buzzword that its meaning and usefulness in an academic setting, if not its credibility, start to slide (see Figure 70). In other words, while I can argue that my work can be called “remix”, it is not as obviously apparent and requires more rigorous explanation than when compared to the way that a DJ’s musical works are viewed – or more appropriately – received in terms of “commercialized information” (Miller 2004. p.61). Would a DJ be a DJ without the process, or method, of remix? The simple answer, I argue, is no; whether a DJ spins a record from start to end or blends a song from one record into a song from another, the difference is only one of style and the technical means available to execute the activity. The far more complex answer is one that can be followed all the way to the heart of this research project: how is the ability to express through remix, whether it is Miller’s “sound/writing” or Lessig’s “digital expression” (Miller 2004 p.64), seen in terms of value? This “expression” can be seen in Hegelian terms as the “objectification” of “Self”, but not confined to a particular category of Hegel’s major forms of fine art and culture: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry (Paolucci 2001). Give the DJ another term – such as “appropriation” or “dada” or “collage” – and you still have an individual performing the same essential activity: taking cultural artifacts, or, the found objects that Marcel Duchamp described as “readymades” (Duchamp 1966), pulling them apart, putting them together, and transforming them into something new: Looking at the whole last thirty years of how things become more and more digital, the evolution of that to me was a parallel of what was going on in the 118 music. So hip-hop, as above, so below. It’s about certain kinds of public performance; it’s about people rhyming over records. There are no [backing] bands anymore; the bands became the records, and as a DJ I’m a one-man-band. I play records, I sample them, I remix them, I transform them. So it’s a kind of an open-source culture of memory. (Miller, September 16, 2005) So given Paul D. Miller’s (a.k.a. DJ Spooky’s) reflection on his own work, would a performer be a performer without “remix”? Would a writer be a writer without it? Not so, if we accept Lawrence Lessig’s contention that “everyone in the life of producing and creating engages in this practice of remix… we all do it… remix is how we live” (Lessig, November 11, 2004). He claims that not only are authors and performers engaged in this remix practice, but so are readers and audiences when simply critiquing a work: “You are consuming your culture in a particular way and constructing your culture differently through these [expressive] acts” (ibid.). These ideas are echoed in documentation taking place through blogging culture, as seen in entries such as those on Dana Boyd’s Apophenia blog: “What we're remixing is culture and the active consumption of culture is part of identity development and living as a social creature in society” (Boyd 2005). So to extend this view that remixing is just an ordinary part of everyday life, a DJ without remix couldn’t even be identified as a living being, at least in terms of social beings in living, cultural systems. To reiterate the ecological comment made earlier by Shirkey, “we swim in a remix culture” (Shirkey, in Heins & Beckles, ibid.). For the research design in this thesis, remix and identity all help form the theoretical underpinnings of this work, whether it addresses the interrelationships of culture, complex living systems, metaphorical worldviews, or methods of “writing”. This non-exhaustive body of theory will be explored as best possible in the upcoming sections of this chapter, and revisited or extended in later chapters relating to data and method. In this regard, the late cultural ecologist Urie Bronfenbrenner’s major suggestion on research design has been for the incorporation of the contexts that shape the researchers’ lives into their processes, where he notes “a striking omission in most studies in the failure to document the proximal relationships that embody ‘process’” (Moen et al., p. 9). For the record, literally, the travelogue that opens this work is an attempt to document these proximal relationships. Bronfenbrenner describes this process as the “exchange of energy between organisms and their environment” (Bronfenbrenner, in Moen et al., p. 9), a description which suggest issues of entropy and “the emergence of order out of chaos” (Bohm and Peat 1987, pp. 138-140). Such views of cultural ecologies and processes of exchange are just some of the many “ways of seeing” culture, once again to invoke the discourse of art critic John Berger (Berger 1972). In coordinating these points of view, and in again acknowledging my own “constant, reciprocal interplay” with the research environment, I’ll now begin describing the theoretical undercurrents of the “quasi-stable eddys” found in a “far reaching and complicated” remix culture that hopefully stays just deep enough to “swim”11. 11 see the metaphorical perspective of Serres and Shirkey as related to Haig-Brown’s practical perspective of fish and water. 119 2.1 On aura, value, and intertextual travel In my role as a “course developer for cultural studies-related curriculum at SFU’s School of Interactive Art and Technology” (see Figure 4), specifically for a course that deals with consumerism and popular culture of the digital age, one of the most valuable artifacts that I’ve found for discussing the issues of commercial branding in contemporary art and design has been the 4-part television show Ways of Seeing by John Berger. These shows aired on BBC Television back in 1972, and when watching them today on old VHS tapes, they’ve essentially become the copies that are “the only way of knowing the original” (Eco 1984, p.30). This situation produces a tension – Benjamin’s “strange web of time and space” (ibid.) – between the datedness of the program’s look and the relevance of Berger’s discourse at this contemporary moment of a networked and digital culture. The overall argument that Berger builds across the four episodes connects the art theory discourse of the traditional oil painting to the art and design discourse of modern advertising. Specifically, and in reference to the title, there are “ways of seeing” the role of oil paintings from the 16th to the early 20th century that can effectively be used to look at the world of advertising and “the publicity photograph” at the time of the show’s broadcast. Berger raises questions in these episodes regarding the shifts in perception through technologies of reproduction. These approaches are already very effective in comparing an oil painting to the representation of this same painting in a photograph. His critique, however, takes on new life when contextualized in terms of the shift from mechanical reproduction of images to the “unlimited perfect copies” signified by digital reproduction (Motion 2002, p.35). Following the ideas of Walter Benjamin and applying them to the media-driven consumerism of the early 1970s (Przyblyski 1998), Berger provided an extremely prescient critique of consumerist society by comparing oil paintings of the past with modern photo advertisements. In creating an intertextual dialogue between the discourses of art and commerce, Berger argued that before being works of art, the primary role of the oil painting was no different than the modern photo ad. Specifically – and importantly – this role was to produce both a reverence for the world of objects depicted in the oil painting (and later in the “publicity photograph”), as well as to produce the desire to move into this representation, which was always just out of reach. According to Berger, “publicity appeals to a life we aspire to, or think we aspire to, but have not yet achieved” (Berger 1972). In essence, both the representations in oil paintings and modern advertisements are inherently based on a value proposition, as well as an offer – real or imagined – for access to this value. Of course at least part of this value always remains inaccessible, and Berger’s arguments in this way recall Marx’s “fetishization of commodities”, i.e. where value is determined not only in terms of the actual usefulness of the object, but also in terms of the social significance of having access to it, possessing it, or even owning it (Marx 1906, p.85). Fetishization was used to describe the desire to reacquire aspects of one’s self that have become external and separated, in other words, “objectifications” or “expressions”. Ludwig Feuerbach originally developed this idea in relation to the objectification of Hegelian “Spirit” which becomes the basis for religious objects (Feuerbach 1841/1957); Karl Marx took Feuerbach’s ideas and repurposed them in order to explain the desire for commodities, when commodities are seen as externalizations of working class labour in the industrialized world (Marx 1845/1970). 120 Yet in both cases, even if the individual reacquires the externalized object, when looking at “the importance of time in terms of continuity and change in the developmental life course and the environmental contexts of development” (Bronfenbrenner 1979), a “distance” between the individual and the externalized object is revealed, one that can never be overcome. This distance can produce what Benjamin describes as “aura”: What is aura? A strange web of time and space: the unique appearance of a distance, however close at hand. (Benjamin 1931 in Trachtenberg 1980, p.199216) Both the work of Benjamin and Berger would provide the footing – however temporary, in the postmodernist sense – for Jean Baudrillard’s theories on simulacra, hyperreality, and hypercapitalism (Baudrillard 1983, p.3-47; Baudrillard 1976, p.16). Baudrillard in effect created a continuation – a “reverberation” or an “echo” – of this same intertextual dialogue, even using, as Berger did, the “lens of fashion [to observe] the structural revolution of value… where exchange value replaces use value in a play of signs whose worth grows as the speed of trading increases” (Taylor 2001, p.70 italics added). Though radical in their time, these ideas have become increasingly appropriated in the discourse of popular culture and critical theory. While Baudrillard initiated much of this discourse of value and consumerism with his book The Consumer Society (1970), a more recent term has been used to discuss this contemporary hyperreality of popular culture: Nobrow. Coming from the title of John Seabrook’s book Nobrow (2000), this is a space where “the culture of marketing [becomes] the marketing of culture”. In Nobrow, Seabrook builds on writer George Trow’s notion of “the grid of 250 million and the grid of intimacy” in Within the Context of No-Context (Trow 1981). He describes a culture of “psychographic” consumer analyses and marketing “mixes” that isn’t confined to either the high taste of the social elite, nor the popular culture of the masses. It is a space where job prospects in the culture industries don’t necessarily increase with age and experience, but are rather determined by the ability to identify with a demographic (“demo”) that has potential value as a target market and revenue stream (Seabrook 2000, pp. 84-94). The multifaceted design strategies in today’s mediated and networked consumer culture aim for what could be seen as the “’holy grail’ of branding” (Dolak 2001) in a Nobrow environment: brand aura. Figure 74. The popular soft drink Sprite’s appropriation of the term “remix”, from a physical bottled product (left), to the virtual space as digital advertisement on a website 121 (center), back to its physical use as part of an actual vinyl record featuring the artist known as Redman (right) Benjamin’s description of aura in the 1930s was originally concerned with effects of looking at objects in physical spaces, for example, “the unique appearance of distance” when looking at a famous painting hanging in a museum. In this way, aura was tied to the work’s cult value, i.e. the value that “would seem to demand that the work of art remain hidden,” and is “accessible” on to a privileged group, such as the curators and patrons of a museum (Benjamin 1935/1968, p.217-251). Others are left to revere the work from a distance, only knowing of its existence from stories and secondhand information. As opposed to the exhibition value inherent in the widespread accessibility of a work, such “hidden” cult value can be associated to Marx’s “fetishization of the commodities” – i.e. the “secret” value of the object as a “social hieroglyphic” – in that the value only exists if it is inaccessible to some degree, i.e. aura as the exchange value of uniqueness, secrecy, or simply obscurity (Marx, ibid.). When looked at in terms of today’s Nobrow environment of culture/marketing, a brand can similarly have cult value through its exclusiveness to a select few who can access it, or who are able to buy it, as the case may be. For example, it could be associated with a luxury clothing item that is only within reach of those who can (economically) afford to wear its brand, or a high-end sports car or antique vehicle that draws attention due to its differentiation from other, more common, vehicles. Alternately, a “backstage pass” might only be available to an event or exclusive location if you happen to (culturally) know the right group of people. Even on the technical end, an example of cult value can be found in the bonus material on a DVD that is only accessible through what’s known as an “easter egg,” i.e. exclusive content that can only be opened with a special code, or if you’re one of the few with the (technical) know-how in a particular programming language to “hack” the system. In contrast to cult value, there is on the other extreme what Benjamin calls exhibition value (Benjamin, ibid.). Here, it is wide accessibility that gives the work its value. While mass and networked media were still several decades away when Benjamin made his observations, his example was that of a sculpture that can be transported and exhibited in a number of locations as compared to a statue that must remain fixed in one place. In today’s context, when digital objects can be sent around the global communication networks almost instantaneously, exhibition value is analogous to the “network effect” of technology products that require a critical mass of adoption (Metcalfe, in Downs & Mui 1998). Without this critical mass, the efficiencies of scale from mass adoption are not reached and the potential value of the “network effect” for the entire environment is lost, e.g. communication systems such as telephone networks, email protocols, operating systems, etc. In terms of the works of art that Benjamin was addressing, exhibition value can currently be associated with the notion of celebrity or fame, which has appropriated its own version of aura. In this case, it is an aura associated with a work or an individual that is, in the Andy Warhol sense, “famous for being famous”, i.e. a new, exhibition-based aura as “the exchange value of celebrity” (Shaviro 2005). In this Nobrow space, the cultural aesthetics of art and commercial objectives of branding meet the psychological effects of aura. The resulting economic exchange value – i.e. the ability for an object to be commodified and exchanged in a market – which drives the interactions between culture and 122 marketing. Well before Seabrook’s Nobrow (2000) went on sale, John Berger argued that the consumer society was unique in history because there had never been such a concentration and density of visual images: “Publicity is the culture of the consumer society…[it] is the life of this culture… and at the same time, publicity is its dream” (Berger, ibid.) Decades later, the space re-branded as “Nobrow” has apparently changed little. As Paul D. Miller notes: “From the construction of time in a world of images and advertising, it’s not that big of a leap to arrive at the place the Wu-Tang Clan described in their song ‘C.R.E.A.M’ – ‘Cash Rules Everything Around Me’” (Miller 2004, p.24). We can see this in the video game industry, where it is argued that the design decisions of a game title are not driven by what the technology is capable of doing, nor does it come from the vision of the artists and game designers. Ultimately, it is the marketing department that makes the determining decisions on what games are to be produced and what games are too risky to fund or continue developing in what is represented through a “map of the global mediatized marketplace, [a] complex interplay between the three circuits of culture, technology, and marketing” (Kline et al. 2003, p. 31). Figure 75. Map of a “global mediatized marketplace” by Kline et al. 2003 p. 31 While the interactive dynamics between marketing and culture are particularly intense, as described and represented in the video game-related model depicted above, let’s not forget the role that technology plays in this dynamic (ibid.). As pre-digital and digital cultures have undergone a “multiplication of media” (Eco 1984. p.155) through the technological development of 123 communication networks and new media objects, they have contributed numerous “voices” to this information economy. The expression of these voices may have been archived in the form of digital artifacts, or may have only been available temporarily and ephemerally through an undocumented live performance. Regardless, with a multiplying number of voices interacting in this dialogic system, identity – or “brand recognition” in the marketing sense – becomes a “scarce resource” according to Paul D. Miller (Miller 2004, p.37). Miller reflects on his own identity in this cultural space and the role of technology and marketing in its development, for example, his archive of vinyl records: I have somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 records. I inherited my father’s collection (he died when I was three years old) and have been building it over the years. I have a wall of records at home that I use; the rest I keep in storage. Sometimes when I look at them or even think about them I get dizzy with all the voices and potential mixes I could make. It’s infinite and it’s heady, and in a sense, all the technology that I use to make my art is corporate. We’re so involved with software and hardware that the old notions of left wing–right wing need to be remade, because in an information economy, it’s all about how information creates identity as a scarce resource. As my mom used to say, “Who speaks through you?” (Miller 2004, pp. 36-37) So the question of identity in a Nobrow space, from Miller’s perspective, is a complex relationship between the artifacts in his collection, the voices contained in the artifacts-as-expressions, and the agency of creating a “mix” by recombining these artifacts/voices in a way that results in his own “voice” and “identity” being expressed. Identity is a key theme throughout Miller’s Rhythm Science, especially the idea of “role consolidation” of the performer and the “multiplex” consciousness of simultaneously looking at the world through multiple perspectives (Miller 2004, p.60). While the topic of identity will be revisited in closing out this chapter, the point to be taken from Miller’s contextualization of identity and artifacts in the above citation is its relationship of “voice” and “mix” to the “mosaic of quotations” that characterizes the notion of intertextuality (Kristeva 1980). Because intertextuality plays such a considerable role in the identity of this thesis – and by extension, my own voice – we can find a natural “loop” back in my “collection” to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing for insight into the development of the term and its relationship to remix. 124 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 76. John Berger destroys “aura” by cutting into a famous painting in Ways of Seeing (1972). In the first episode of Ways of Seeing, Berger demonstrates the effect of juxtaposing, mixing, reframing, deconstructing, and reconstructing various cultural artifacts in order to produce new cultural meanings, For example, in a key segment of the first of the four episodes, Berger shows paintings by Monet and Van Gogh with alternating soundtracks, a well as with no sound at all. While the term still had yet to emerge at the time of Ways of Seeing, such demonstrations could be aptly called “remix” in today’s digital context. Furthermore, Berger also juxtaposes the images being broadcast from his own show that evening with images supposedly being broadcast simultaneously on “the other three channels” at this time in 1972. He then asks the viewer to consider the effects of changing these mediated contexts in terms of the message being presented by the original works, and by the mixes and juxtapositions. He asks the viewer to question the aura that has given the oil painting its value, and by extension, also asks the viewer to question the aura of publicity’s “dream” (ibid.). Following these ideas over the course of the next three episodes, Berger stresses the notion that any work of art or any advertisement – or any cultural artifact for that matter – must be considered in relation to the other works, texts, objects, etc, that surround it. In contemporary media studies, intertextuality has come to mean that any individual text (whether an artwork like a movie or novel, or more commonplace text like a newspaper article, billboard, or casual verbal remark) is part of a larger cultural discourse and therefore must be read in relationship to other texts and their diverse textual strategies and ideological assumptions. (Kinder 1991, p.2) The above definition of intertextuality by Marsha Kinder is from her book Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1991). Much of her argument in this book concerns the “consumerist interactivity” that takes place in video games and the interconnections of the video game to other objects in the larger consumerist discourse, for example: feature films, Saturday morning cartoons, cereal promotions or other “texts” relating to the video games overall brand (ibid.). The dialogue surrounding both consumerism and user interaction could similarly be seen in the emergence of the video game industry. As argued by Kline et al. in Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and 125 Marketing (2003), Kinder’s “consumerist interactivity” has become an increasingly heated conversation between the “interactive circuits” of technology, marketing, and culture in an age of “hypercapitalism”12. In his discussion of oil paintings and the consumer society at the dawn of the hypercapitalist, information age, John Berger was in effect applying this same notion of intertextuality, both in its literary sense, and its later use in contemporary media studies. What is important to note here is that Berger described these same ideas of intertextuality and consumerist interactivity by using the historical development of the oil painting as the focus of his conversation. In this way, he would use the oil painting of the 15th to 19th century European world as a metaphor for the “publicity photography” of the 20th century’s consumerist society. While video games, especially when compared with film and television, were far from a realized product or text at the time of Ways of Seeing, Berger was effectively having an intertextual dialogue – a “conversation” if you will – with these same emerging ideas. With the discourse around the notion of intertextuality spanning several disciplines and traceable to such literary and cultural theorists as Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Umberto Eco, it was Russian linguist and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin’s notions of dialogue and dialogism that set the intertextual discourse in motion. Bakhtin’s work in particular serves as a key source in tracing a brief historical overview of these ideas: The linguistic significance of a given utterance is understood against the background of language while its actual meaning is understood against the background of other concrete utterances on the same theme, a background made up of contradictory opinions, points of view, and value judgments. (Bakhtin 1981, p. 281) Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism, as touched on in the above quotation, can be seen as the idea that language must be contextually situated for its signified meaning, not simply its intended meaning, to be revealed. In looking more closely at Kinder’s contemporary definition of intertextuality as compared to Bakhtin’s statement above, we can see noticeable similarities: Bakhtin’s “given utterance” becomes Kinder’s “individual text”; ‘the background of other concrete utterances” becomes “the larger cultural discourse”; “contradictory opinions, points of view, and value judgements” become “diverse textual strategies and ideological assumptions”. Intentionally or not, Kinder has basically repurposed Bakhtin’s early anticipation of intertextuality from his writings on dialogue in the novel by updating the definition for use in the analysis of video games in contemporary media studies. So where did the actual term intertextuality originate? Bakhtin never used the term, but his work focused on literary discourse and how the novel acquires meaning to the reader through the interaction with its context. However, semiotic and literary theorist Julia Kristeva applied these ideas throughout her writings in the late 1960s to show how the author’s intentions are invariably 12 Baudrillard, 1976, Rifkin, 2000 and Graham, 2001 Note: Graham’s doctoral thesis was on hypercapitalism: Graham (2001). Hypercaptalism: An investigation into the relationships between language, new media, and social perceptions of value. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology. 126 undermined, to some degree, by the work’s extra-textual and informal relationships when engaged by the reader. [A]ny text is constructed of a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another. (Kristeva 1980, p.64) Kristeva first coined the term intertextuality in a 1969 essay called “Word, Dialogue, and Novel” that analysed Bakhtin’s 1968 work, Rabelais and his World (Kristeva, ibid.). She therefore echoed Bakhtin’s notion of the “double-voiced discourse”, where any utterance carries traces of its previous uses in different contexts (Allen 2005). While Bakhtin’s work is carried into Kristeva’s intertextuality, the term has since moved into contexts that are even more relevant to this thesis: the hypertextual productions of networked, digital culture. These works and their intertextual possibilities move past the linear, consumerized approach to reading and writing that was the norm with pre-digital technologies. They do so by providing the notion of “remix” in new media objects, whether this is through reconfiguration, reuse, remediation, or any other sense of active engagement with the building blocks of language and expression: Any text is a new tissue of past citations. Bits of code, formulae, rhythmic models, fragments of social languages, etc., pass into the text and are redistributed within it, for there is always language before and around the text. Intertextuality, the condition of any text whatsoever, cannot, of course, be reduced to a problem of sources or influences; the intertext is a general field of anonymous formulae whose origin can scarcely ever be located; of unconscious or automatic quotations, given without quotation marks. (Barthes 1981, p.39) Roland Barthes, who was Kristeva’s colleague and mentor in semiotics in the 1960s, extended her discourse in a way that is particularly relevant to this particular text, i.e. Travels in Intertextuality: the autopoietic identity of remix culture (2006). His definition above suggests the idea of language as a complex system viewed through metaphorical lenses, which presents a topic that will be further discussed in upcoming sections of this thesis. Barthes describes the text using the metaphor of a “tissue” other texts that act as components in its system, i.e. as part of a larger textual fabric. Combined with the notion of the “intertext” as a general, linguistic universe of anonymous texts, the idea of ways of looking at complex systems has profound implications here. Not only does Barthes suggest that intertextual complexity is a feature of any work, but he also supports the idea that the meanings produced from the intertextuality of a work are, at best, only traceable to a limited degree (ibid). According to Barthes, the origins of a work “can scarcely ever be located” by looking for any fixed meanings in its components (ibid.). In contrast, and in a similar respect to the “quasi-stable eddies” of open systems described earlier by Michel Serres (Serres 1982, p.75), a text viewed in this way is a complex system of “bits of code, formulae, rhythmic models, fragments of social languages” whose meaning emerges through the interactions of these components, and with the reader, the author, and the general background of the “intertext” (Barthes, ibid.). Therefore, while a text, especially if it is in physical book form, may appear to be stable and closed, it is actually part of a dynamic, contextually-situated “living system” that takes in new meanings 127 through the active process of reading. And here is the key point to reflect upon in terms of this discussion: even if the words on the page remain static, the text can be seen to mutate – or unfold, depending on your metaphor – through the numerous acts of interpretation in its sociocultural system. So to turn this intertextual reflection inward, and in metaphorically “turning the camera on itself” (Taylor 2001, p.78), the question now arises as to where the term intertextuality originated for me and the research presented here? In this regard, I can point directly to the work of semiotics professor and novelist Umberto Eco, whose novel Foucault’s Pendulum (1989) has been a text that I’ve always wanted to “remix”, and actually have remixed in several cases. This infuence can be seen in the analysis relating to the the cult band Swell (Artifact 5.10), found either in the appendices of this document, or in a separate paper that focused exclusively on this artifact (see “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”): I think in order to transform a work into a cult object one must be able to break, dislocate, unhinge it so that one can remember only parts of it, irrespective of their original relationship with the whole. In the case of a book one can unhinge it, so to speak, physically, reducing it to a series of excerpts. A movie, on the contrary, must be already ramshackle, rickety, unhinged in itself. A perfect movie, since it cannot be reread every time we want, from the point we choose, as happens with a book, remains in our memory as a whole, in the form of a central idea or emotion; only an unhinged movie survives as disconnected series of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on, and because of, its glorious ricketiness. (Eco 1986, p.198) The quotation above is from Eco’s book Travels in Hyperreality (1986), a collection of articles he wrote for various newspapers and magazines. It is obviously a significant influence on this project, given the appropriation and slight adjustment of its title in it use here. Specifically, the above quote comes from the article called “Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage“, a discussion on the emergent and unplanned nature of one of Hollywood’s screen classics, the 1942 film Casablanca (Bogart et al. 1992). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 77. Movie still from the film Casablanca (1942) 128 Eco’s writings, both fiction and non-fiction, have provided a significant pool of ideas for various approaches to “writing” in a digital context, even going back prior to the start of this formal research project. Prior to investigating Eco’s academic writings, and consequently, prior to having any background in semiotics, in “reader-response” theory, or in Eco’s notion of “the open work (Eco 1968/1989), I was engaged by the style and the content of his novel Foucault’s Pendulum (1989), since it suggested the role of the reader as a question, as an active process, rather than the role of detached and passive observer. After having looked at Foucault’s Pendulum as an open and developing text, it became easy to look at other texts and cultural objects also as open and interactive. Futhermore, literally, was the view that beyond the written text was a much larger system of interacting “texts” regardless if they happened to be in novel form, including songs, movies, games, etc. As a result, after reading Eco’s essay on Casablanca, it would often become an early reference point whenever I tried to put my own approaches into context. I hadn’t seen the 1942 film Casablanca when I first read this article, and therefore lacked some of the “intertextual frames” Eco describes in his argument. Yet I could still pull together enough of the references in order to gauge some potential connection of these ideas to my own work. For example, the title of the 1995 cult film The Usual Suspects was an intertextual reference to the line “Round up the usual suspects!” near the end of Casablanca (Singer et al. 2002). My own interest in the cultural dynamics of intertextual connections developed in part because I didn’t have to actually see the original reference in Casablanca to understand Eco’s descriptions of intertextuality, and then be able to make an intertextual connection between this film and the film The Usual Suspects (which I had seen). This “openness” at least in terms of the process of being able to make connections between “texts” interest has since has driven much of my research and my writing ever since (even having led to the title of the thesis). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 78. Movie still from Bryan Singer’s film The Usual Suspects (1995) What is interesting about Eco’s view of a book or a movie that gains cult value, especially in relation to the “coordinated lenses” and philosophical positions of this thesis, is not just his statement that the work should not reveal a coherent philosophy. What is also of interest is in Eco’s apt description of “reducing the work to a series of excerpts” – i.e. the components of a system – so that it can be remembered in bits and pieces. Or, to use Barthes’ terminology, seeing the 129 system as “bits of code, formulae, rhythmic models, fragments of social languages, etc.” (Barthes, ibid.). These ideas have already been partly addressed in this work, as components of this system, and will be further addressed in later sections of the thesis. What is most relevant to this thesis in the Eco’s quote is how digital technologies, in the time since Eco wrote the article, have significantly altered the way texts can be engaged by readers. Conversely, these same technologies have altered the texts can be authored by “writers”, even in the process of reading (Eco 1978). Consider the following lead-in to a recent Wired Magazine article: Have you noticed? Everywhere you look, pop culture has been digitized, resequenced, and reassembled. Remixed. It started in music with hip hop samples and extended dance versions. It moved to movies, with director's cuts and Tarantino-style swipes from other films. Now it's spread to TV, games, music videos - even cars and fashion. From Kill Bill to Gorillaz, from custom Nikes to Pimp My Ride, this is the age of the remix. (Wired, July 2005) In the above excerpt we can see how the phenomenon of remix can be viewed as “part of a larger cultural discourse and therefore must be read in relationship to other texts” (Kinder ibid. p.8). In fact, this is exactly what were are doing with these quotes and images, however more explicitly it may be taking place in this context. In other words, it is not only a remix artifact that must be situated in this way, but the activity of remix as a whole that must be considered in relation to its cultural-historical background of artifacts and discourses from which the phenomenon emerged. This background includes the dialogism of Bakhtin and the intertextuality of Kristeva. Figure 79. “Remixing History” in Wired Magazine’s “Remix Now!” cover story, Issue 13.07 From this background alone, which will be further addressed in “Chapter 3: A Journey Towards Appropriate Data”, we can see that remix is not a new phenomenon; rather, it is simply provides terminology that is much more marketable in the contemporary Nobrow environment than the 130 overly-academic ““intertextuality” of Kristeva and its predecessor of Bakhtin’s “dialogism”. Remix could similarly be called “cultural repurposing”, or “object reuse” in software engineering, or in some contexts by the more dubious language of “cultural re-engineering”. Alternately, the term could “go green” by calling it “cultural reuse” or “recycling”. However, none of these terms have the same cultural and marketing appeal as “remix”; none of the other words used to describe the same or similar activities have the “brand aura” that remix currently has. There’s a reason why soft drinks have “appropriated” remix as part of their brand strategies rather than the other terms just mentioned: remix is marketable. But what of this “brand aura”? Does remix, despite or because of its breakthrough as a cultural phenomenon, produce what Benjamin considered aura? Does a remix lead to a “strange web of time and space” or a “feeling of distance, no matter how close at hand” (Benjamin 1931)? If so, how is it produced, and how is it similar of different than other situations that have aura? As a point of departure, we can first consider an example closer to Benjamin’s definition of aura in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936/1968): The concept of aura which was proposed above with reference to historical objects may usefully be illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones. We define the aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch. (Benjamin 1936/1968) We can use the example of Boston’s Fenway Park as a historical object that produces an aura that is often referred to as “mystique” (Neyer 2000). In this case, the context is of a baseball field and stadium built in the early 20th century, but enjoyed by many on a “summer afternoon”. Fenway Park has been home to the Boston Red Sox baseball team of the major leagues since its construction in 1912 and subsequent renovation in the 1930s. It is the oldest and one of only two remaining stadiums from this era, with Chicago’s Wrigley Field being the other. The stadium’s quirky designs and timeworn cultural and historical characteristics are often described in terms of the aura that is experienced upon visiting the park, regardless of whether the home team happens to be winning. As described in the article “The Significance of Fenway Park” by the Save Fenway Park! Association, a second application for “National Landmark Status” speaks to Fenway’s cultural-historical significance in Boston and for the American “national pastime” (Save Fenway Park! 2001). 131 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 80. Boston’s Fenway park, still from video taken July 29, 2001 As a cultural icon of the game of baseball, Fenway Park is not only featured in television broadcasts of Red Sox games every year, but it has also been the setting for scenes in books, films, and songs of popular culture13. This image makes it easy to comprehend the social bases of the contemporary decay of the aura. It rests on two circumstances, both of which are related to the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life. Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things “closer” spatially and humanly… (Benjamin 1936/1968) Benjamin thus argues that aura will decrease because of mass desires for more direct engagement with the previously inaccessible objects, whether through spatial interactions or cultural interactions. Having visited Fenway Park on a few occasions, most recently when it hosted an event called “Baseball as a design icon – at Fenway Park” as part of the AIGA Design Conference 2005 (Nash 2005), I can attest to its ability to produce what Benjamin described as “a strange web of time and space” (Benjamin 1931/1980). I attribute this aura to the cultural-historical aspect of the stadium’s long tradition as a cultural icon for the game of baseball, as well as for my own “reciprocal interplay” with the environment, as Bronfenbrenner would describe it, in being a fan of the game, and the Red Sox team in particular. [This desire to bring the object ‘closer’] is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction. (Benjamin 1936/1968) 13 E.g The motion picture Field of Dreams (1989), Stephen King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (2000), Gordon Downie’s 2001 song “Yer Possessed”. 132 Wrigley Field in Chicago is a vunue that is very similar to Fenway Park in its cultural-historical context as a ballpark built at the turn of the century. While I’ve never visited Wrigley Field and I’m not particularly a fan of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, so I can’t speak of personal experience with respect to this venue. However, I would imagine the historical aspects of Wrigley Field provide visitors familiar with the game of baseball a similar feeling of aura. Yet it is important to recognize the “reciprocal interplay” between the individual and environment, as Bronfenbrenner maintains through his paradigm for “ecological” human development (1979). Because I’ve long identified with the game of baseball and the Boston Red Sox, this “reciprocal interplay” of my interaction with the environment of Fenway Park would allow for Benjamin’s sense of aura in a way that a would not likely occur if I were visiting a famous soccer pitch in England. Unmistakably, reproduction as offered by picture magazines and newsreels differs from the image seen by the unarmed eye. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the latter as are transitoriness and reproducibility in the former. (Benjamin, 1936/1968) Now consider our ability to engage with such spaces outside of their actual physical locations. Predigital technologies currently allow us to mechanically or digitally reproduce and “visit” such environments – through photos, models and replicas, television and radio broadcasts, story settings, etc. – however, the ability to navigate these spaces using pre-digital technologies is constrained by interaction issues. While interactive experiences could be created using, for example, a series of photographs or film clips based on a set of predetermined paths through the space, these approaches are much more limited than simply imagining making a visit to the space based on existing imagery one might have of the environment (whether accurate or not). To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose ‘sense of the universal equality of things’ has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction. (Benjamin 1936/1968) Digital technologies potentially offer new experiences. For instance, large databases of photographs taken at Fenway Park can be found in such photo-sharing websites as Flickr (www.flickr.com). Some web-based applications can even build off of these database in order for potential ticket buyers to get a perspective of the seats they’re interested in purchasing (Figure 81). Media from film and video captured at the venue can similarly be pooled, whether it is from the ordinary patrons with digital cameras, or through professionals shooting film and taping interviews, or broadcasting live from the field. These archived pools can then be drawn from to create the needed base of materials to support, say, a retrospective documentary on a championship season that the user can interact with in a non-linear fashion using standard DVD technology, such as the 12-DVD collectors edition of the Boston Red Sox 2004 Championship season14. 14 http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/press_releases/press_release.jsp?ymd=20050721&conten t_id=1139454&vkey=pr_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb 133 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 81. Boston’s Fenway park, represented through photosharing at SeatData.com and in a still from an EA Sports video game as examples of artifacts from the “global mediatized marketplace” (Kline et al. 2003, p.31) and as a way of showing Baudrillard’s concept of “the map precedes the territory” (1988). In the more immersive examples of such new experiences, there are virtual environments of these physical spaces, as is the case with Fenway and other baseball stadiums, in video games that have digitally mapped the 3D characteristics of the environment in order to provide “realism” in the game (Figure 81). As such, the example of Fenway can provide a point of intertextuality between the interacting discourses of technology, culture, and marketing that is central to the work of Kline et al. on the historical development of the video game industry (2003). Furthermore, it is a potential point of entry into the discourse presented here, i.e. remix culture and its digital artifacts that exist in this very same “global mediatized marketplace” (p.31). Considering that each “frozen” frame of a digital video or animation sequence is essentially an artifact of its own, there has been a dramatic increase in the number and variety of digital media artifacts since John Berger discussed aura in Ways of Seeing (1972). In terms of cultural-historical activity, it is argued that the quantity and variety of the artifacts and interactions in these new digital environments eventually reaches a point where a qualitatively new experience results: In short, according to this view, culture undergoes both quantitative change in terms of the number and variety of artifacts, and qualitative change in terms of the mediational potentials that they embody. As a consequence, both culture and human thinking develop. (Cole 1996, p.114) The view described above by Michael Cole is the instrumentalist, “Man the Toolmaker” view of human development that was common among scholars leading up to the 1930s, especially in the cultural-historical psychologists of the early Soviet Union. Such a view, where “‘Man makes himself’ through the conversion of nature into culture” (ibid.) is not without controversy, as disputes persist on whether language should be viewed as a “tool” and whether the context of the “toolmaker” is a constructed or a given environment (Cole 1996, pp. 333-334). Yet this time frame is key in the development of Cole’s cultural psychology, as it is in this thesis. It marks the point at Cole begins his attempt to resolve some of the “crisis” in psychology that continues to this day and which will be discussed further in the following section. It also marks, 134 through a remix of Soviet director Dziga Vertov’s 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov and Nyman 2003) a key point of “re-entry” into remix culture in the development of the this thesis, further discussed in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis”. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 82. A still from Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) that has also been used in Manovich’s Language of New Media (2001). As far as the theoretical underpinnings of remix, as well as the ideas, contexts, and artifacts that have been addressed so far in this thesis, we can safely argue there has been a “quantitative change in terms of the number and variety of artifacts” in the development of networked digital culture. This change helps to explain what was described in the previous chapter as the “profound cultural shift inherent in our new media environments” (Graham, in press, p. 25), and the reason for considering remix as an increasingly relevant cultural phenomenon that is a worthy object of investigation. You have to remember, so much of the material in hip-hop, and contemporary techno, ambient, drum n’ bass… all of these styles are puns on sampling as kind of a “permutation machine”, sampling as kind of a collage-driven aesthetic. So we’re all children of Andy Warhol in this notion of “the copy has displaced the original, the original never existed anymore”, and the world of the copy has become a media landscape that your average kid is running along like a primitive in a forest, you know, man-made nature, artificial culture. (Miller, September 16, 2005) The transformative activity of remix, as implied in the term itself, depends on the availability of a “number and variety of artifacts” – or “mixes” – to fuel its “permutation machine” [pun intended]. The DJ requires a collection of records, of mixes to sample from in creating a remix; the filmmaker requires film stock to edit into a final cut. Both kinds of “writers” express their ideas and identities through a dialogue with the works of others, whether intended or simply in the intertextual relation 135 to “the larger cultural discourse [of] other texts and their diverse textual strategies and ideological assumptions” (Kinder 1991, p.2) In the same way that some avant-garde filmmakers of early Soviet Union attempted “to wrest, through the camera, whatever is most typical, most useful, from life; to organize the film pieces wrested from life into a meaningful rhythmic visual order, a meaningful visual phrase” (Vertov 1985, p.88), the DJ performs a similar role in what Paul D. Miller calls “an open-source culture of memory [made of] terrains of multiple visions” (Miller, September 16, 2005). Existing in this space becomes, as he suggests in Rhythm Science, an activity where you “[m]ove into the frame, get the picture, re-invent your name” (Miller 2004, p.101) The web is the dominant metaphor for the way we think. It’s a living network made up of “threads” of information moving through the world at any given moment. The emphasis for mobility creates a continuity between the techno-hype for the internet and everything from nineteenth-century’s obsession with railroads to the Beatnik’s mythological automobiles on the road. Information and beats and rhythms never stay in one place. (Miller, 2004, p. 24) If intertextuality implies relationships between works, which is “the condition of any text whatsoever” (Barthes 1981, p.49), remix can be seen as the activity of moving through these “threads” of relationship, from one text to another, or to several texts simultaneously. In other words, and in invoking the a metaphor used by Michel de Certeau, we have the ability to travel through these digital texts just as we’ve been able to intertextually travel through the threads of texts prior to digital media (de Certeau 1984). With this metaphor, consider travelling from Miller’s “terrains of multiple visions” (Miller, September 16, 2005) to somewhere in Baudrillard’s hyperreal, which he describes as “an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere” (Baudrillard 1988, p.166). In this space, so the argument goes, “the territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it” (ibid.). Is a traveller’s experience of unexplored territory any less authentic than the experience of “natives” who call the land home? Is the experience of reading the map of this land any less authentic than travelling there, especially if as Baudrillard claims, “it is the map that engenders the territory” (ibid.)? As a lightening rod for criticism of postmodernism, Baudrillard’s difficult writings and the controversy they have created can run the danger of obscuring more than revealing; however, as argued throughout this thesis, the repurposing of these same ideas in a practical, design-related context does have value. When Baudrillard’s idea of the “map” becomes the design proposal, the “territory” becomes the future product. The danger in this sense is where focus is turned so heavily towards the aura of the design proposal (i.e. the “map”, “plan”, or “tool”) and the perspective of the designers (see the “Man as Mapmaker” or as “Toolmaker” in Chandler 1995) that the end product, the user, and the result of the products actual use are neglected (i.e. its practical effects and repercussions in the world). What Baudrillard’s discussion therefore provides is an intertextual relationship, or, a means of travelling between abstract philosophical concepts in the texts of the postmodernists, to the application of these ideas in texts of popular culture. For example, we can see Baudrillard’s ideas as foundational to such late 1990s films as The Matrix (Wachowski et al. 1999) and eXistenZ 136 (Cronenberg et al. 1999), i.e. the “hyperreal” worldview being remixed into the films’ stories and aesthetics. As such films become touchstones for academic discourses, especially in the case of The Matrix because of its recent popularity, they also become useful texts in design-related discourses. In this sense, consider Baudriillard’s simulacra in the context of designing virtual 3D spaces for computer simulations of real, physical spaces (Baudrillard 1983, p.3-47). Or, consider computer-aided design environments that are to be mapped into real space, or even a game world that only has grounding as some fictional world. This “mapping” activity can lead to serious questions, as suggested by Brown, as to whether a particular design considers multiple user perspectives is are “grounded in real phenomena” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996). This is not necessarily an easy path to wander; however, by travelling these routes and investigating these interrelationships, the participatory aspect of working through other perspectives, or pulling apart texts and evaluating internal and external relationships can help a designer – in the postmodernist sense of Derrida’s deconstruction – “make the not seen accessible to sight” (Derrida 1976, pp. 158 and 163). This perspective would therefore see the designer in the role of the reader of a text as a metaphor for the design object. It implies a journey through a developmental process in the design space in the same way de Certeau claims that readers move through the textual space (DeCerteau 1984). In Transpacific Displacement: Ethnography, Translation, and Intertextual Travel in TwentiethCentury American Literature (2002), Yunte Huang discusses de Certeau’s view of reading as “wandering through a text, not observing the laws of ownership (meanings owned by untouchable texts), but rather inventing new relations between the text and the act of reading” (Huang 2002, p.102). Reading intends neither to reestablish nor to occupy the space of meaning promised by the text; instead, the reader moves through the textual space the way a traveller does through a landscape. And such a fascinating story about a reader’s travel through texts—“drifts across the page, metamorphoses and anamorphoses of the text produced by the travelling eye, imaginary or meditative flights taking off from a few words, overlapping of spaces on the militarily organized surfaces of the text, and ephemeral dances”—remains, as de Certeau laments, in large measure untold. (de Certeau 1984, p.170 in Huang 2002, p.102) Provocatively, de Certeau called the activity of reading as “poaching”, and compared readers to “nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write,” thereby invoking both the metaphor of texts being seen as fenced-off pieces of private property, and the text as part of a larger ecosystem where imposed and unnatural borders are not recognized by some cultures (de Certeau 1984, p.174). In extending this metaphor, we can see that the activity of travelling through texts has not fundamentally changed, though the vehicle certainly has. What de Certeau has described as both “travelling” and “poaching” has been given a flashy new name – i.e. remix – where both cult and exhibition combine to produce an “uncertain” aura. In terms of the DJ and the tools of turntables and records, Miller calls this activity “sound/writing” as the literal translation of the word “phono/graph” (2004, p.64). At various points in his writings, 137 whether in the book Rhythm Science (2004) or in other articles that are part of the text’s development, Miller asks us to “think of the scenario as Walter Benjamin's ‘aura’ become a sound wave of syncopated fragments dancing at memories edge” (Miller 2002). To paraphrase John Cage, sound is just information in a different form. Think of DJ culture as a kind of archival impulse put to a kind of hunter-gatherer milieu textual poaching, becomes zero-paid, becomes no-logo, becomes brand X. It's that interface thing rising again - but this time around, mind/brain interface becomes emergent system of large scale economies of expression. (Miller 2003) The cult value of a remix object therefore depends on being “able to break, dislocate, unhinge it so that one can remember only parts of it, irrespective of their original relationship with the whole” in applying it to Umberto Eco’s requirements for a cult movie (Eco 1984, p.198) It’s exhibition value requires the object to be part of a system that Phil Graham argues should be based on “widespread, open access to rich media resources” (Graham, in press), creating what Miller calls an “emergent system of large scale economies of expression” (Miller 2003). Alternately, Miller claims the remix object is part of “an open-source culture of memory” (Miller, September 16, 2005), where active participants take up Marcel Duchamp’s notion of “irreverence towards the found object”: When I first started dj'ing it was meant to be a hobby. It was an experiment with rhythm and clues, rhythm and cues: drop the needle on the record and see what happens when this sound is applied to this context, or when that sound crashes into that recording... you get the idea. The first impulses I had about dj culture were taken from that basic idea - play and irreverence towards the found objects that we use as consumers and a sense that something new was right in front of our oh so jaded eyes as we watched the computer screens at the cusp of the 21st century's beginnings. I wanted to breathe a little life into the passive relationship we have with the objects around us and to bring a sense of permanent uncertainty about the role of art in our lives. (Miller 2002) Does remix destroy aura of an object’s cult value in the same way the photograph destroys the aura of untouchability surrounding a painting hanging on a museum wall? Specifically, we can look at remix in terms of Benjamin’s claim that the “authenticity” of the work, it’s authority in claiming to be unique in its experience, is no longer tied to a ritual that is largely inaccessible to “the masses” (Benjamin 1936/1968). In other words, remix becomes a critical question of what objects are culturally “out of reach” and must be passively revered from a distance, rather than treated as readymade “found objects” to be played with (Duchamp 1966). When “the desire of contemporary masses [is] to bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly” (Benjamin, ibid.), what happens when the object is placed in hands that are ready to pull it apart and put it back together as something new? This is the “uncertainty about the role of art” that Miller mentions (Miller, ibid.), and it is an uncertainty that is compounded by the found object as a copy, or even a “copy of a copy”. The question in this case is one of what really is destroyed when creating with copies? Benjamin saw the mechanical reproduction of the photograph and the phonograph as “emancipating” or freeing the work of art from its ritual as a cult object, a privileged experience 138 available only to few. These technologies, in his view, thereby destroy the aura which keeps the work of art “unapproachable” (Benjamin 1936). Writers who have attempted to write the “Great American Novel”, such as Beat poet Jack Kerouac and his novel On the Road (1957), might see remix, or “dj culture”, through the metaphor of the freedom of the “open road”, in the context of interconnected highways of information (Gore 1994). Figure 83. A brief historical development of the “road” metaphor of ideas and information, e.g. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), the mid-1990’s “Information Superhighway” (Popular Mechanics, 1994) and Bill Gates’ The Road Ahead (1995) For anglers and nature writers such as Roderick Haig-Brown, a “river system” might provide an apt description of a remix culture where the “fish remain in some measure unpredictable” and where “new conditions [and a] new method open up a whole new field of exploration” (Haig-Brown 1959, p.252). If legal scholar Larry Lessig were to look through theses metaphorical lenses, he would in all likelihood have to stop to ask the question: “Who owns these roads and rivers?” (see Kottke 2005). The DJ, on the other hand, would simply begin wandering – like one of de Certeau’s “nomads” – just to see where the roads and rivers may lead. 139 Figure 84. Anonymous fisherman in the Campbell River, image from the Haig-Brown Institute and Roderick Haig-Brown’s A River Never Sleeps (1946/1974) The point here in trying to pull these ideas together in terms of the theoretical underpinnings of this work is that remix implies “small pieces, loosely joined” that come together to form something new, and in this sense it is similar to Eco’s description of the “unhinged movie”. Therefore, in further transforming the small pieces of Eco’s work through remix culture described in this thesis, it “should display not one central idea but many” (Eco, ibid.), even in the case where “openness” seems paradoxically to be a “central theme”. And while we can look at remix through a number of metaphorical lenses – and in fact we are doing exactly this – there’s no ultimate combination of perspectives that can “reveal a coherent philosophy of composition” in remix culture (ibid.). As Miller hoped, remix instead reveals a provocative “sense of permanent uncertainty about the role of art in our lives” (Miller 2002). His alterego DJ Spooky puts it this way: “code is beats is rhythm is algorithm is digital. Precedents for thinking about DJ culture are out there, especially if you’re open to different interpretations of art and process” (Miller 2004, p. 24). Eco might see remix culture as having a “glorious ricketiness” (Eco, ibid.) taking place not only in film or music or digital environments, but also in physical objects. 140 Figure 85. Wired magazine cover, July 2005 featuring “the Walkpod” by David Klugston as functional remix of two icons of the popular culture of music playing devices, and the infamous The Grey Album (2004) a remix of The Beatles’s The White Album (1969) and Jay-Z’s The Black Album (2003). Consider David Klugston’s remix of the Sony Walkman and Apple’s iPod that not only builds on two cultural-historical icons, but is still functions as a music player that is protected in a retro-style casing (Figure 85). There is a “glorious ricketiness” in the combination of these two pieces, but such a mix or a remix is not a random occurrence any more than it displays a central theme. It is an artifact that has been transformed with a certain intention in the mind of the DJ (or designer), and this may or may not play out in its uncertain performance (or materialization). Even if the artifact of remix culture is “glorious” by being “ramshackle, rickety, unhinged,” as anticipated by Eco, at the same time, in order to be valued, “it must have some quality” (Eco ibid. p.199). 2.2 On culture, history, and measuring “quality” At this point in the description of the theoretical underpinnings of this research, it is clear from such discussions of intertextuality, aura, and various kinds of value, that we’re dealing with very qualitative approaches to inquiry. Furthermore, the attempt to follow the problem of remix in this 141 research journey has been taken from a cultural-historical perspective. Therefore, it is not surprising that the issue of how to consider “quality” experience – whether in remix, or some other context – would enter the picture. What has to be understood is that the quality of sport is all-important. And the quality of sport is not something that can be readily measured; it is the sum of generations of tradition, ethics and restraint. The quality of sport is in what anglers themselves have imagined, developed, tested and proved over hundreds of years. It is something that has evolved, not something that has been imposed. It is in what a man dreams of by the fireside at home and goes out next day or next year to try and realize on his favorite lake or stream. Even the unsophisticated fisherman dreams, and his dreams are not of being bullied into taking the crop. (Haig-Brown 1959, p. 163) Haig-Brown’s attempt to convey the difficulty of assessing what is “quality” sport fishing in measured terms is compelling and incredibly relevant for this thesis. For example, what would be considered a good remix? What is a bad remix? How can such determinations be made when the activity of both creating and interpreting a remix is argued to be highly contextual on account of the intertextual field of meanings that situates the cultural object? Fishing for Haig-Brown is not about the number of fish caught in a day, nor is it necessarily the size of the fish, but rather the difficulty involved in landing the fish. This mythological object – i.e. landing the “Big Fish” – has set the metaphorical framework for novels, films, and stories based on this same romantic premise, e.g. Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish: a novel of mythic proportions (1998), later a film by Tim Burton (released in 2003). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 86. Title poster for the Tim Burton film Big Fish (2003, left) based on Daniel Wallace’s novel, with scenes featuring Albert Finney as Edward Bloom doing some fly fishing (center), and with his son William, played by Billy Crudup (right). Regardless of the time between “bites”, Haig-Brown argues that for the fisherman, it is the difficulty of the fishing circumstances that inspires a “romantic” pursuit, with no guarantee the fish will bite, take, or be able to be landed. This perspective, which is in fact a worldview for many fishermen, is the core of Haig-Brown’s “quality” fishing. It is a perspective he claims is lost on many biologists, who are also looking at the very same fish and river systems, though with the lens of a strictly rational worldview: 142 “So,” [the biologist] says, “these people want to go fishing. Now why would anyone want to go fishing? To catch fish, of course.” And he begins to measure the angler’s success or failure – and his own success or failure – in terms of fish per fisherman per hour… The only trouble with this conception is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the sport of fishing. Few things concern a fisherman less than the length of time between “bites”. If asked he would probably say: “Lengthen the time if you like. But give us bigger fish and more difficult fish, under more romantic circumstances.” (Haig-Brown 1959, p. 163) Here, in mentioning “romantic circumstances”, Haig-Brown’s ideas on tensions in measuring fishin success hint at what will develop into a key part of this thesis in later chapters, specifically, the issue of needing to give proper context to measurements, numbers, and discoveries that led to Alexander Luria’s notion of “Romantic Science” (Luria, in Cole 1996, p.343-347). Haig-Brown further describes this tension as “the awful pressure of numbers”: The biologist believes he can have no time for this sort of thing. He is burdened with the awful pressure of numbers: hundreds of thousands, millions of Americans who want to go fishing and who must all catch fish unless he is to fail in his job. The answer of course is efficiency and a quick turnover; lots and lots of fish in readily accessible places, to be attacked promptly, if possible all the time and with the most efficient machinery that can still give some illusion of sport. The drill is pretty much that of the public pool in a trout farm: You’ve paid your money (bought your license, that is); now get in there fast, catch your fish, and give someone else a chance. (Haig-Brown, ibid.) Haig-Brown’s description of the contradiction between the lenses of scientific methods and commonsense responses to what is “good” fishing in the above two paragraphs not only summarizes the fundamental tension between scientific and cultural worldviews that led to Michael Cole’s work in cultural psychology; it also makes the connection of the scientific drive for efficiency in measurement to the economic efficiency high turnover of paying customers. This drive has been described in the cultural terms of Hollywood movies as “the marketing objective” (Byrne 2002), and a further layer of potential contradiction with its additional worldview. The fascinating aspect of this tension between perspectives – in terms of the discussion on remix presented here – is the question of whether the perspective of the biologist is equivalent to a cultural focus on providing “widespread, open access to rich media resources” that is central to the “wager” discussed earlier in this work (Graham, in press). If such pools of rich media exist and are open and widespread, does the act of “writing” by remixing multimedia content in such an environment simply become “the drill [of a] public pool in a trout farm”? (Haig-Brown, ibid.) In other words, to use the terminology of the DJ, does it effectively kill the “sport of sampling”? (Franzen and McLeod 2005) Or, alternately, does this “widespread, open access” allow for certain ecological conditions to be taken as a given, thereby allowing for a reframing of the activity – or the sport – with less focus on concerns that are not essential to its appeal: The real truth is that sport is made and exists in just three things: tradition, ethics and restraint. Reduce, remove, or destroy these and nothing useful is left. It may be enough to satisfy newcomers to the sport for a while, but it cannot hold 143 them long – there will be nothing to grow on, nothing to advance to. In the end, if any real efficiency could be attained, the sport itself would die and be forgotten. There is neither sport nor challenge, nor the sense of generosity to the quarry that goes with sport, in wide-open seasons, wide open bag limits, wide open size limits or wide open tackle regulations. The sportsman soon realizes he is simply being maneuvered into increasing the biologist’s apparent efficiency. (HaigBrown 1959, p. 163) The connection to be made here between fishing and remix, or to at least the connection to be considered, is how secondary the concerns of “bag limits”, “size limits”, “tackle regulations”, etc. are while engaged in actually trying to land an undermined and uncertain fish. The argument by proponents of “widespread, open access” in producing cultural materials is that concerns that have little to do with creative activity ultimately undermine the quality of the experience, for example, the need for “efficiency” (Edwards 2001). In relation to this, concerns of culture in psychology have similarly been “maneurvered into increasing the [scientist’s] apparent efficiency” (ibid.). Whether through attempts to study culture and the mind using the structures and approaches of natural science, or by dismissing the validity of alternate approaches for such study, the scientific worldview can be seen as an ideology that essentially marginalizes culture. This position, as argued to varying degrees by scholars such as Geertz and Cole (Geertz 1973, and Cole 1996), is where the field of psychology presently finds itself. Let’s consider then for a moment this discussion of “efficiency” for the biologist’s scientific thinking, and how the intangibles of sport such as fishing might tie into our discussion of both remix and Cole’s cultural psychology. A useful starting point for discussing the role of culture in modern psychology is of course René Descartes’ Discourse on Method. This landmark work from the mid17th century, as Cole argues, provides links between Descartes and the rational approach for understanding the human mind that have become well known and credited to the influential philosopher (Bakhurst, 1991 and Gardner 1985 cited in Cole 1996, p.20). The fundamental basis – and bias – of a worldview which has become known as Cartesian dualism is of a split between subjective experience and objective reality, also seen as a mind/body separation, or the distinction between “Self” and “Other”: Figure 87. The Cartesian duality between subject and object. Graphic by J.Flynn (2003) Influenced by the methods behind the physical discoveries of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, which had established the foundations of natural law, Descartes wanted to further the scientific method 144 that was key to these successes, however, he wanted to apply this knowledge beyond the world of physics. The successful methods of the physical world were based on the ability to quantifiably measure properties of matter in motion, thereby producing measurements which could then be applied to mathematical laws. With data applied to mathematical models, a scientifically objective view of the physical world and its phenomena became possible. Central to the methods of the natural sciences was the process of repeated experimentation. From this scientific method would come precise definitions, quantifiable data, axioms, and clear rules of evidence that could support the deduction of general laws (Cole, ibid. p. 19-22). No one owes more to fish and game biologist than I do, no one has more respect for their skills. And I think I have done my little share towards bringing them to some of the honoured positions they hold today. Scientific thinking has done wonders for them in their researches and explorations. They have already learned more than I expected would be known in my lifetime. But when they come to dealing with the intangibles of sport, which are a sizable section of human psychology, scientific thinking utterly betrays them. (Haig-Brown, 1959, p. 162) While Descartes proposed that natural laws and the scientific method could be applied to all organic life, including the human body, he also famously claimed that the mind – more specifically, the soul - was not part of such a natural science. Since other animals are not viewed as possessing souls, or what Russian neuropsychologist Alexander Luria described as a “double world” (1981, p. 35), the Cartesian dualism of mind/body was considered a characteristic of a uniquely human condition and experience. From this distinction, history can be viewed as a unique product of the human mind, a product which allows humans, unlike other species, to communicate between generations. Using Cartesian reasoning, history falls outside of science because history has been created by the human mind, relates only to the human world (i.e. other species don’t consider history), and therefore does not have the stable truths required for the deduction of general laws. The notion of “quality”, despite its importance in many circumstances of human experience, lacks such generalization. As previously noted by Haig-Brown in terms of fishing, quality is not something that can be imposed from the outside, but is intrinsic to the fisherman and the culture of fishing. The Cartesian dualism has obviously been vastly influential across the scientific community, largely due to the successes of the scientific method mentioned earlier. It has also provided the foundation for the field of modern psychology despite (or perhaps because) of its success and the attention this success has received. However, Descartes’ categorization has also proven controversial. A central criticism of Cartesian thought, as mentioned previously, is “how it broke apart the unity of culture and mind” (Cole, p.327). This controversy that has been generated on account of this split has been especially prevalent in terms of Descartes’ negative position on the ability to scientifically study both the mental phenomena of the human mind and history itself. Descartes clearly excluded from “true” science phenomena which were contingent on specific historical circumstances. He had little use for the study of the humanities in general, and history in particular, because they could not yield precise definitions, quantifiable data, axioms, or clear rules of evidence, all of which were necessary for the deduction of generalizable laws. (Cole 1996, p. 21) 145 In the two centuries since Descartes’ influential ideas took hold, many scholars came to believe that natural laws and scientific methods could be applied in relation to the mind and history. Some even went so far as to claim that, with such methods, we could even predict the future, for example, the 18th century mathematician and philosopher Condorcet stated, “if man is able to predict with almost complete certainty the phenomenon whose laws are known, why is it regarded as a chimerical enterprise to foretell the future destiny of the species?” (cited in Cole, p.22) Yet the fundamental mistake in this view is the presumption that knowable cultural laws act just as laws of the physical world. What can then follow from this error is an important secondary error. Specifically, this would be the error of concluding that laws of the physical world, because of their success in this realm, should determine exclusively the desires and “real meaning” of what is involved in cultural activities: Biologists have, and always will have, a tremendous job to do in the management of public games fisheries; and they can do it far better than untrained minds, provided they first understand the real meaning and purpose of sport. It is not their business to change the desires of the angler to suit their purposes; it is their business to recognize and understand these desires and then to provide for them so far as can humanly be done. (Haig-Brown, 1959, p. 163) What Haig-Brown is arguing for is for scientists to recognize the cultural element of the activities they are tasked to perform. In this case, improving the lot of sport fishermen. This task, he argues, does not come down to a game of numbers, but rather requires qualitative research in the activity of fishing from a cultural-historical standpoint, i.e. “tradition, ethics, and restraint”. Like Cole, he’s not suggesting that the quantitative perspective and its methods are not relevant; there needs to be a view by any fisherman that there are enough fish to be caught to make the fishing trip worthwhile, at the very least, as “a romantic pursuit” (ibid.). Yet increasing the number of fish doesn’t not necessarily led to quality fishing. In fact, Haig-Brown argues that if fishing came to down a focus on efficiency, numbers, and predictability, “the sport itself would die and be forgotten” (ibid.) Roderick Haig-Brown can be seen echoing the ideas of Michael Cole and John Seely Brown in respecting the natural conditions of the physical environment. At the same time he realizes the importance of the historical element of traditions in his fishing activity, as well as that understanding that cultural growth and development also takes place through the practice of the sport in its uncertain conditions: It is difficult to describe what I mean by “quality fishing” in broad general terms to fit all types of fishing and all types of water. It is fishing that sets problems and allows for, even demands, skilful performance; it implies preservation, so far as possible, of natural conditions in the waters, their surroundings and the fish themselves; it is fishing that falls within the limits of certain traditions, yet allows for growth and development; it is fishing where unexpected things can and do happen, fishing where a man has room to move and think and see and hear and be himself. (Haig-Brown 1957, p.163) Along these same lines, the concern that Cole had for the “crisis” in psychology was that much of the discipline’s dynamic qualities – i.e. the aspects that are unique to the human species and therefore particularly relevant for consideration – were no longer being addressed. As Bakhtin 146 might argue, the “living interaction” with the cultural environment had been drained from psychology when cultural factors were put off to the side as extraneous variables in the relationship between subject and object (Bakhtin, 1981, p.276, and Cole 1996, p. 327-328). Compounding the issues of separating culture even further was the subsequent split of psychological discourse into numerous related discourses that would become institutionalized and specialized as separate domains, e.g. linguistics, sociology, anthropology, history, etc. On account of these “splits” in psychological discourse, the notion of being able to move from one discourse into another invokes the term intertextuality as a point of reference. These views, ultimately, can be seen in terms of texts, and even in terms of remix. In this way, “travelling” through texts by way of remixing involves the practical engagement with cultural works rather than a passive experience. Or, as Cole sees it, practice as “the unifying methodological element” (p. 342). Echoing Marx, Vygotsky would claim it was only through this notion of practice or practical-critical activity that the system takes on “life” as a discourse, where it “stops being sterile”, where the really difficult questions of method are initiated and are only able to be resolved in practice: [M]ost complex contradictions of psychology’s methodology are brought to the field of practice and can only be resolved there. Here disputes stop being sterile, it comes to an end…That is why practice transforms the whole of scientific methodology. (Vygotsky, quoted in van der Veer and Valsiner 1994, p.150) Such practical-critical activity – also known as revolutionary activity – is a high level of learning where the contradiction of an unworkable solution is reframed into a new context. In other words, the context of the situation is reshaped into one that allows for a solution, an approach that would later to be described in Bateson’s learning levels in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) as “Learning III”. One of Vygotsky’s own reframings came from the tensions produced by Descartes’ subject-object model in centering the human eye in the subject’s perspective of an environment. In an attempt to qualify the directness of this perspective, as in, the direct relationship between subject and object, a key contribution of Vygotsky’s work in this area of psychology has been his model for culturally mediated activity. Figure 88. Vygotsky’s mediational model (graphic by J.Flynn, 2003) 147 As we’ll see in this thesis specifically, Vygotsky’s mediational model provides a fundamental perspective for a postmodern culture of images and reproduction, as well as for Luria’s notion of the “double world” of humans. Not only does Vygotsky’s model act as a lens itself, to use Cole’s metaphor of “a coordinated set of lenses” (Cole 1996, p.338), but it can also produce a lens through which we can look at the remix culture and remix activities in the context of this thesis. In this sense, also fundamental to Vygotsky’s work, the model becomes both a “tool” and a “result” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 65). For Vygotsky, whose career in psychology lasted only ten years due to an early death in 1934, his most important contributions have arguably been the mediational model and its related zone of proximal development (p.87). While his work has only gained posthumous influence since its “rediscovery” in the late 1970s, his original mediational model serves as the basis for the entire domain of inquiry known as cultural-historical activity theory. The mediational model in Figure 88, which in today’s highly mediated cultural context seems almost obvious, nevertheless has powerfully simple implications. It is based on the understanding that human activity and experience are never direct interactions between subject and object, but also involve an indirect relationship which is mediated by cultural objects, i.e. instruments such as tools, signs, and other mediating artifacts. These instruments are therefore viewed as the practical results of human activity, synthesized in practice from the dialectic tensions of Hegel’s subjectobject dialectic. A further aspect of this model involves the work of Vygotsky and his colleagues in conceiving a resolution of the “crisis in psychology” described in this paper. As Cole explains: The paradigm worked out by Lev Vygotsky, Alexandre Luria and Alexei Leontiev was not intended as either a special branch or particular approach to psychology. It was conceived of as a resolution of the “crisis in psychology,” a comprehensive psychological framework within which the various traditional sub-areas of psychology represented a principled division of labor, rather than competing approaches to the same object of study. (Cole 1996, p. 36) The “rediscovery” of Vygotsky’s work first took place during the “Cognitive Revolution” and the work of Jerome Bruner in psychology in the 1960s (Bruner, 1966); it was later extended by Vygotsky’s colleagues from the early Soviet Union, i.e. Alexander Luria and Alexei Leontiev (see Cole 1996). The paradigm of the mediational model that was central to this work has been extended and applied towards numerous environments that involve learning, performance, and mediated human activity. In fact, Michael Cole’s efforts in the 1970s in translating much of the late Vygotsky’s manuscripts has provided the basis for cultural-historical activity theory (Vygotsky 1978), a discipline sometimes referred to as CHAT, which takes particular interest in practical learning approaches and situated human activity. As Cole argues throughout his own later work, the role of practice is fundamental in resolving the duality of psychology; however, even as a “unifying methodological element”, practice by no means rids psychology of its ambiguities: My preference is to look upon practice as the arena within which individual goals and knowledge come together with socially prescribed goals and constraints. It is perilous to claim that practice removes ambiguity about the purposive aspects of behavior… However, in practice we at least have an 148 opportunity to put different interpretations into dialogue with each other, and thereby to learn more about each “voice” in the dialogue. (Cole 1997, p.343) The multi-voiced discourse suggested by Cole that takes place through practice recalls the work of Bakhtin, and leads to the key term of intertextuality for this thesis. The earlier definition of intertextuality by Marsha Kinder (1991) expresses very well the line of critique Berger directs towards both works of art and the consumer society in Ways of Seeing (Berger, 1972). Furthermore, the idea that meaning is not fixed, but instead is determined in relation to other meanings and contexts would be echoed in the rise of postmodernism in the 1970s, through such scholars as Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotart (Storey 1997). Bakhtin sees this inability for meaning to be fixed through dialogic interactions and the notion of “thoughts exist[ing] as ‘live events’” rather than “gravitating” to a potentially totalizing “system”, or a “monologic” system in Bakhtin’s language. (Morson and Emerson, 1990, p.9) According to Bakhtin, existing forms of knowledge inevitably monologize the world by turning an open-ended dialogue into a monologic statement “summarizing” its contents but misrepresenting its unfinalizablele spirit. The dialogue of life requires a dialogic method to represent it. But in Bakhtin’s view, such a concept of truth is missing from modern Western thought, at least insofar as that thought is represented in the tradition of philosophy. So far, only literary works have approached this more adequate representation. The best novelists are far ahead of the philosophers. (Morson and Emerson, 1990, p.60) The postmodernist critiques of the totalizing tendencies of social structures such as religion, the military-industrial complex, technocracy, and even science and academia emerged from the social unrest and disillusionment of the late 1960s (Taylor 2001). These critiques were based on a shift in epistemology away from a “futile” search for essential meanings and formal structures, and towards recognition of context and power relations in how meanings are established. Yet the critics of postmodernism would counter that the movement only leads to “bafflement” (Weiland & Frank 1997) or a slide into complete relativism and apathy towards such things as truth, meaning, and justice (Habermas 1984). In contrast to this pessimistic view, Cole’s work in contributing to the development of activity theory through his cultural psychology leads to Alexander Luria’s vision of a “Romantic Science”. Briefly, this is a paradigm where a scientific analysis of individual development is treated as a combination of the generalizing/experimental approach of rational inquiry and the descriptive/particularizing approach of the humanities and social sciences. Cole cites neurologist Oliver Sack’s description of Luria’s Romantic Science as “the dream of a novelist and scientist combined” (Sacks, in Luria 1987, p.xii). Romantic Science was an attempt to put scientific discoveries in the life context of individuals involved in these discoveries, as in, situated within their personal narratives. The facts then become part of the text of the particular individual’s story. Using Descartes as an example, John Seely Brown comments on the importance of taking the step of contextualizing facts within an individual’s life course and cultural-historical situation: 149 By contrast, if I give you a fact, you don't have enough of a context to be able to understand what that fact means in a new context or even if it is still meaningful. Why was it uttered? To whom? What else was going on? In today's presentation I described how Cartesian philosophy underlies so much of today's pedagogy. But, what was going on with Descartes when he said something equivalent to, "I think therefore I am"? If you don't understand the religious environment that he was struggling against in that particular moment in time, you won't understand the force of what he was really trying to say, or why he was saying it. It made eminent sense at the time. It doesn't necessarily make the same sense today yet our system of schooling and our notions of pedagogy are still based on it. (Brown 2003) The notion or “Romantic Science”, and developed in Cole’s Cultural Psychology (1996) and applied in this thesis, is implied in the selection of data and development of method that takes place in subsequent chapters. Therefore, the overlapping lenses of “novelist” and “scientist” also act as metaphors and worldview in this work. Given the tensions between these two necessary – but contrasting – views of scholarship, the ultimate goal of this study is dialogic, in the sense of Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas which later formed the basis of Kristeva’s notion of intertextuality. The purpose of generating a methodological approach for the analysis of culture, emerging from the development of the database of new media objects that ground this work, is to present the scientific position described above by Luria – “Romantic Science” – as a dialogue. In other words, the method developed in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis” becomes a way to represent Luria’s paradigm as a conversation between multiple voices, specifically, between various perspectives and approaches to gauging the “value” of cultural materials. As such, the ultimate goal of the research work performed here, in part, by the development of both method and artifacts, aims for Bakhtin’s radical goal of a “creative understanding” through dialogue (Bakhtin, in Moreson and Emerson 1990, p. 55). The ongoing, grounded development of this methodology also follows Bakhtin, in the sense of “open systems” and idea that the real value of dialogic knowledge is that it is “unfinalizable.” 2.3 On learning, reacting, and expanding Emerging from the translation and distribution in the west of Lev Vygotsky’s work, the field of cultural-historical activity theory would see the development of the mediational model into a more sophisticated analytical framework. As a conceptual framework for understanding contextually situated human activity, activity theory attempts to reactivate the key ideas of practical activity brought forward in the 19th century by Hegel and Kant, and which were furthered by Marx and Engels (Jonassen & Roher-Murphy 1999). These ideas were foundational to the Russian culturalhistorical school in 1930s, while also highly influential to the American pragmatists as well as the developmental work of Jean Piaget in similar time frames (Cole 1996, p.36). In coordination with our metaphor of “lenses” for looking for value in remix, activity theory is also seen as a “lens” for investigating human activity: 150 Activity theory is a powerful socio-cultural and socio-historical lens through which we can analyze most forms of human activity. It focuses on the interaction of human activity and consciousness (the human mind as a whole) within its relevant environmental context. (Jonassen & Roher-Murphy 1999) In addtion to Michale Cole, a key individual in activity theory’s development has been Cole’s colleague Yjrö Engeström at the University of California, San Diego. One of Engeström’s major contributions to Vygotsky’s mediational model, as seen in Engeström’s 1987 book Learning by Expanding, has been to expand its triangular framework to incorporate contextual and institutional factors that also mediate an individual’s use of tools (artifacts) in engaging his or her environment. Figure 89. Yjrö Engeström’s expanded version of Vygotsky’s mediational model, titled “the structure of human activity” from Learning by Expanding (1987) While adding an additional layer of complexity to the analysis of human activity, the benefit of Engeström’s model is its explicit recognition of additional contexts beyond the direct and indirect aspects of an artifact’s mediation in an activity, e.g. rules, communities of practice, division of labor (see Figure 89). In this sense, the expanded model helps to identify not just the tool’s mediation of the interaction, but also the cultural forces that in turn mediate the tool’s use in the activity. Such considerations create a hierarchy of activity taking place within an individual’s interactions in a social context (Table 1). Table 1 Yjrö Engeström’s expanded version of Vygotsky’s mediational model, titled “the structure of human activity” as a table, from Learning by Expanding (1987) Instruments Methodology, ideology Subject Collective subject Object We in the world Community Societal network of activities Collective organization Immediate primary group 151 Community Societal (state, law, religion) Organizational rules Interpersonal rules Div. of Labor Societal division of labor Organizational division of labor Interpersonal Individual subject Non-conscious Models Problem task Resistance Tools division of labor For example, the individual subject’s non-conscious use of a number of tools (or “instruments’ or “building blocks”) in any given interaction could be thought of in terms of words used in a sentence that aren’t consciously reflected upon when used in speaking but are nonetheless are fundamental to the communicative act. By extension, in a higher level of activity, the individual subject creates models when consciously arranging the use of such tools, e.g. creating a proposal out of words and ideas, or building a wall out of bricks and mortar. As such, "models are embodiments of purpose and, at the same time, instruments for carrying out such purposes" (Wartofsky 1979, p. 142). A method can be a model in this sense, for example, by embodying a purpose, such as a way to combine ingredients in cooking a particular meal. Alternately, the method could be a standard approach for measuring and calculating distances between planetary objects, and at the same time it also becomes a tool when applied in practically carrying out such purposes. At an even higher level of activity, there are worldviews (or “methodologies” or “ideologies”) involved in the use of tools and models that frame out the appropriateness of the activity for a “collective subject”. Furthermore, there are tensions between worldviews that result when an idea is put into practice across contexts. For example, the building of a wall from the worldview of an urban planner who is attempting to factor in weather conditions could produce significant tensions when looked at from the worldview of political officials concerned over the segregation of neighbourhoods along ethnic lines. The point in this example is to show the interacting dynamics between the tools, models, and worldviews that are involved at any time in human activity and culture, whether it is seen as a “remix”, as a “melting pot”, or as some alternate name for an activity that can be abstracted – appropriately or not – into a hierarchy of ingredients/recipes/tastes, or data/information/purpose, or individuals/populations/cultures, and so on. In extending Vygotsky’s model and presenting this hierarchy as “the structure of human activity” (Figure 89 and Table 1), Engeström attempts the difficult task of reducing the complexity of activity down to its “essential unity and quality” (Engeström 1987). As just explained in the discussion on “quality” found in Haig-Brown’s definition of “quality fishing” (Haig-Brown 1959, p. 163), Engeström’s other essential aspect of activity – i.e. “unity” – can be just as difficult in its measurement and definition. Here, Engeström’s distinction of a unity (and in our case an “identity”) from its background becomes an issue of focus. In other words, this distinction asks the question: What is the “smallest unit” that can still be perceived apart from its larger complex system or “activity”. First, activity must be pictured in its simplest, genetically original structural form, as the smallest unit that still preserves the essential unity and quality behind any complex activity. (Engeström 1987) While Engeström’s focus here is in terms of finding a methodologically workable base unit of analysis, the process of distinction is an important connection to other “lenses” of this study. The notion of unity for our purpose will therefore be interchangeable with the term identity. The reason 152 for this – to be further argued later in this chapter – is in terms of dynamic and emergent phenomena in complex systems, i.e. a biological process of “self-making” systems known as autopoiesis. In an autopoietic system “a unity is an ‘entity’ which is ‘distinct’ from a background’ or environment” (Graham & McKenna 2000, p.3 citing Maturana & Varela 1980, xviii, p.96). Therefore, the key concept involved in thinking of unity and identity is whether the “thing” stands out – or is identifiable – from its background as its “own thing”, so to speak. Alternately, this identifiable “thing” loses such distinction by either: (a) focusing in too far, or (b) taking too broad a perspective. This same idea relates fundamentally to the notion of intertextuality in the sense that the text must be identifiable from the background of the intertext and its general field of meanings as it develops over time, i.e. what Bakhtin described as the “background of other concrete utterances on the same theme” (Bakhtin 1981, p.281). Second, activity must be analyzable in its dynamics and transformations, in its evolution and historical change. No static or eternal models will do. (Engeström 1987) The second condition that leads to Engeström’s focus on activity is the acknowledgment of the genesis and historical development of an individual life, i.e. ontogeny. For Engeström, this is a key condition in his analysis, while at the same time it is also foundational in Cole’s cultural psychology (Cole 1996, p. 109). In doing so, he opens up the structuralist notion of “eternal models” of activity to the dynamics of transformation taking place over time, i.e. structures that are able to change and are therefore “closed yet open” (see Figure 4 in relation to this idea). The reason these “closed yet open” systems would be able to change over time is addressed in Engeström’s third condition: the ecological and dynamic aspect of the activity in relation to its background: Third, activity must be analyzable as a contextual or ecological phenomenon. The models will have to concentrate on systemic relations between the individual and the outside world. . (Engeström 1987) Finally, his fourth condition is essentially Vygotsky’s mediational model, similar to Cole’s cultural psychology principle of “mediation through artifacts” (Cole, p.108) as contrasted with the “dyadic”, or two-part, subject-object split of Cartesian dualism: Fourth, specifically human activity must be analyzable as culturally mediated phenomenon. No dyadic organism-environment models will suffice. This requirement stems already from Hegel's insistence on the culturally mediated, triadic or triangular structure of human activity. (Engeström 1987) Engeström goes on to argue that the above four conditions allow for a focus on theories that incorporate the idea of “thirdness or triangulation” in representing (often graphically) the mediated aspect of human activity (Figure 88). 153 In his analysis, he finds these conditions satisfied by the early 20th century traditions of the pragmatism of Pierce, the “intersubjectivity” of G.H. Mead, and the cultural-historical school of Vygotsky, Luria, and Leontiev (Engeström 1987). Given these three traditions, Engeström would focus his work primarily on the Russian cultural-historical school. From this focus came the book Learning by Expanding: an activity- theoretical approach to developmental research (Engeström 1987). In this text, Engeström takes issue with Donald Norman’s (1982) “three basic types of learning: accretion, structuring, and tuning” (ibid.). Comparing Norman’s view of learning as similar to Robert Gagné’s hierarchy of learning types (1965) – where Gagné places “problem-solving” as the highest form in his hierarchy – Engeström then criticizes such forms of learning as reactive. In other words, Norman’s structuring and Gagné’s problem solving assume predetermined conditions and tasks. The result of this, according to Engeström, is that such learning is “defined so as to exclude the possibility of finding or creating new contexts” (Engeström 1987). The inability to adjust and adapt to changing contexts is further described by Engeström as “the difficulty of anticipating, mastering and steering qualitative changes in individual lives, in families and organizations, and in the society as a whole” (ibid.). Engeström views such difficulties as a significant “source of uneasiness and trouble in various fields of societal practice” (ibid.). This is due to a fundamental contradiction in an increasingly complex and technology-mediated society: on the one hand, the length of time needed to master the complex skills required in a technologyfocused social setting, while on the other hand, the speed in which these skills are undergoing “profound qualitative changes which often render previous tasks and skills obsolete” (ibid.). The individual in the technological society, according to Engeström, is thus left in a “no-win” situation that cannot be adequately addressed through the structuring and problem-solving approaches of Norman and Gagné. A discussion that involves keywords such as “learning”, “tasks”, and “skills” can once again invoke a discussion on design, as it did in the previous section in discussing the hyperreality of Baudrillard (1976) and de Certeau’s (1984) textual “poachers”. Specifically, a common topic in learning and design discourses is the role of design in alleviating or contributing to the pressure of needing to learn the new skills required for constantly evolving interfaces (Engeström 1987). The view of a close and converging relationship between design and learning – i.e. the view that poor design places unnecessary physical and/or mental burdens on the user – is a key part of interface design discourse; a discourse often referred to as user-centered design. Donald Norman’s work, such as in his influential book The Design of Everyday Things (1990), has become prominent in user-centered design discourses, especially in terms of the role of new technologies in cognition, human-computer interaction, and industrial design. However, as previously mentioned, his work in terms of design is strongly related to Cole’s work in cultural psychology, as is evident in the original title of Norman’s book: The Psychology of Everyday Things (1988). This not surprising given that Norman, Cole, and Engeström were all colleagues at the University of California, San Diego during the years these texts were published. Yet it was Norman’s earlier work in the 1982 book Learning and Memory that helped to ignite the previous debate on structuring and problem solving in learning and in interface design. This debate is made explicitly clear in the following citation from Engeström: 154 Symptomatically enough, Norman ends his book [Learning and Memory] with a tirade on how badly modern technology matches human capabilities. According to him, system designers misuse and ignore the users: "they start with the machine, and the human is not thought of until the end, when it's too late: (…)" (Norman 1982, 115). Norman's solution is: technological systems should be designed so as to make learning easier. (Engeström 1987) Engeström takes a sardonic view of Norman’s stance, criticizing what he sees as traditional patronizing methods for solving such design problems: “the poor learners must be helped to cope with the tasks given to them” (ibid.). According to Engeström, the major issue here is the lag between the time it takes to master the skills and the time it take for the skills to become outdated. This lag, he argues, cannot be overcome through the reactive learning methods of problem solving and structuring, as these approaches only see the role of design as a way to “make learning easier” (ibid). Accordingly, Engeström sees this approach to learning – and by extension, to design methodologies that also take this view – as futile and “doomed to the role of running after those qualitative changes in people's life contexts” (ibid.). John Seely Brown echoes these same concerns over the learning lag brought on by rapid technological change. Concerned by the effect of this change in the search for design practices that create value, Brown suggests that skill sets become so quickly outdated that the organizational focus for a company undergoes a radical shift, i.e. from a focus on the product to a focus on the context. In other words, the corporation’s focus moves to the institutional setting which produces the product, rather than the product in and of itself: If you go back to one of my first comments, I talked about our focus on how value is created. If you step back, you’ll recognize that we’re living in a world where the accelerating pace of change is real so that, to use a cliché, about the only thing that’s constant today is change itself. We find ourselves in a context where all the skills, or at least most of the skills, we learned five years ago are at best questionable today. If this is true – and surely in the world of information technology it is – then the ability to learn faster than other organizations may be the one real sustaining competitive edge that an organization or corporation has. So the shift from asking, “How do you create products?” to “How do you learn faster than anybody else?” is the way you maintain your competitive edge (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.105) Brown’s take on the situation in terms of the “accelerating pace of change” and the need to “step back” in an approach of taking an expanded view of the situation would likely be echoed today in Engeström’s work. However, Engeström might likely criticize Brown’s prescription – i.e. to improve “the ability to learn faster” – as no different than Norman’s “make learning easier.” Of course to simply question or criticize these approaches without proposing any alternatives would make Engeström’s points, while valid, much less valuable. The alternative that Engeström therefore proposes is the following: instead of looking to reactive forms of learning which take the situation as being a given, the only way that the previouslymentioned learning lag can be overcome is by “enabling the users themselves to plan and bring about the qualitative changes (including the design and implementation of technologies) in their life contexts” (Engeström 1987). This type of learning, which is characterized by the creative leaps that 155 occur in scientific discoveries and great works of art, is what Engeström calls expansive learning, or, learning by expanding. As a lens for investigation, activity theory can be used to analyze the learning-by-doing methods that are often necessary in dynamic environments. Engeström’s learning by expanding attempts to find a more systematic way for this theory to inform high-level learning environments and practices. This view includes design practice though a focus on the “enabling” of high-level learning. Furthermore, according to Engeström, activity theory can at least help to identify tensions in activities that create difficulties in “anticipating, mastering and steering qualitative changes in individual lives, in families and organizations, and in the society as a whole” (Engeström 1987). Somewhat paradoxically, Engeström suggests external design solutions (i.e. designers “enabling the users”) to do what is at the same time presented as a user-driven solution (i.e. “the users themselves… plan and bring about the qualitative changes”). This paradox in such a learning environment is not an unusual tension however, and in activity theory discourse it is referred to as the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978, p.87), sometimes abbreviated to “ZPD”. In Engeström’s work, he identifies ZPDs as “the basic category of expansive research” (Engeström 1987, p.87). For activity theorists, this same question emerged in the previously mentioned work of Vygotsky with respect to zones of proximal development (ZPDs). In what is a key concept in human interaction, ZPDs address the interrelated issues of learning and development and individual vs. societal development. In an environment where higher levels of learning are only possible through “multi-person joint activity” (Cole 1996, p. 342), it is common to question how much outside help an individual learner needs before development is stifled because of too much help. While this problem of the internal vs. external designer produces a tension between perspectives, Engeström’s suggests using the concept of the zone of proximal development (or ZPD) as a way to show the evolution of an activity over time: 156 Figure 90. Yjrö Engeström’s expanded version of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development in Learning by Expanding (1987), graphic by Joel Flynn, created in March 2003 In mapping out such development visually using a spiral metaphor (Figure 90, see also Cole 1996, p. 336 for further explanation of this metaphor), Engeström provides a useful tool for self-reflection in design practice, i.e. the designer reflecting from an “external” point of view over his or her own development processes while at the same time reflecting on the tensions involved in practice. Citing Donald Schön’s assertion that the “situations of practice are not problems to be solved but problematic situations characterized by uncertainty, disorder, and indeterminacy" (Schön 1983, p.14-16), Engeström suggests these contradictory tensions as setting the conditions for the expanded points of view and creative results involved in learning by expanding. As a play off of the term learning-by-doing, Engeström’s learning by expanding, and its grounding in practice-focused methodologies, is meant to imply that the “expanded” cognition required for “anticipating, mastering and steering qualitative changes” is not simply a theoretical concern. Rather, and more importantly, it is a practical concern. Expansive learning is therefore the result of conscious decisions of action and intention by the individual, which, it is argued, can be enabled through design practice (Engeström 1987). This practical concern implies the inseparability of activity and consciousness that is central to the research domain known as cultural-historical activity theory. As put by Bonnie Nardi, this inseparability of activity, consciousness, and context boils down to a position of “you are what you do” (Nardi 1996). Brown phrases this same idea in terms of participation: So much of our epistemology, our theories of knowledge, and our theories of knowing have been driven by, “I think, therefore I am” versus, perhaps, “We participate, therefore we are.” And so a fundamental kind of push for our design work as well as is to honor the notion of action, situated activity, situated action, 157 and to honor the emergent properties that can happen in correctly designed contexts. (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p. 103) In taking this contextual view further in terms of the notion of identity through activity as suggested in the previous quote by Nardi, the social dimension that is fundamental to activity theory also requires us to consider how much “you are what others do”. This question is actually pervasive throughout any discussion of remix culture and has been seen earlier through Paul D. Miller’s notion that “information creates identity as a scarce resource“ and subsequent open question of identity and authenticity in terms of “Who’s voice speaks through you?” (Miller 2004, pp. 36-37). Much of Engeström’s work is concerned with using concepts and frameworks of activity theory – such as ZPDs – to try to gauge a better understanding of “how the new is generated in human development” (Engeström 1987, italics in original). As with his colleague Michael Cole, Engeström notes the apparent need to look at historical circumstances in human development as part of scientific inquiry, and demonstrates this idea by including Bronfenbrenner’s poetic description: It would appear that, over the decades, developmental researchers have been carrying on a clandestine affair with Clio - the muse of history. (...) I suggest that, after so many years, the developmental researcher's illicit liaison with Clio is no longer a tenable arrangement; it is time we embraced her as a legitimate partner in our creative scientific efforts." (Bronfenbrenner 1983, p.176) Engeström’s argument again uses the idea of “thirds” – or a tertiary situation – to question the dilemma of whether development takes place either individually or socially, while also questioning what the vague notion of “mutual or reciprocal determination” of individual and society (Engeström 1987). Bronfenbrenner uses a metaphor of societal development as a moving train where individuals are free to move – or develop – from one car to another (Bronfenbrenner, p.175). Engeström’s critique of this metaphor is that it says nothing about who is driving the train, not to mention building or repairing it (Engeström, ibid.). He proposes a mediating “third factor… with which the connection of the two sides could be made more concrete and alive” (Engeström 1987). In prosing such a ‘third factor”, Engeström reinterprets the influential work of Gregory Bateson in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) in which a hierarchy of leaning takes place in individual development: Zero learning is characterized by specificity of response, which - right or wrong is not subjected to correction. Learning I is change in specificity of response by correction of errors of choice within a set of alternatives. Learning II is change in the process of Learning I, e.g., a corrective change in the set of alternatives from which choice is made, or it is a change in how the sequence of experience is punctuated. Learning III is change in the process of Learning II, e.g., a corrective change in the system of sets of alternatives from which choice is made. (We shall see later 158 that to demand this level of performance of some men and some mammals is sometimes pathogenic.) Learning IV would be change in Learning III, but probably does not occur in any adult living organism on this earth. Evolutionary process has, however, created organisms whose ontogeny brings them to Level III. The combination of phylogenesis with ontogenesis, in fact, achieves Level IV." (Bateson 1972, 293.) Focusing on the practical levels of Learning I, Learning II, and Learning III, Engeström relates these three categories to the hierarchy of his extended mediational model. Essentially, according to this overlapping of analytical lenses, Learning I takes place as direct and reactive tool-use by an individual on an object or in an environment. Learning II takes place when these tools are arranged in their implementation in order to achieve a solution that was not possible through the use of individual tools. Learning III occurs when there is a contradiction, or a “double-bind” in Bateson’s language, in the previous level of Learning II. In a Learning III situation, the double-bind doesn’t allow for a workable solution in its present context. Learning III therefore involves a creative leap or breakthrough that can be attributed to “a reorganization of consciousness” (Engeström 1987). In other words, the contradiction is resolved by changing the context to a situation where resolution is possible. In visually comparing his model with Bateson’s (along with additional models, some of which will be addressed in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis”), Engeström presents the following as part of a larger comparative table: Table 2 Yjrö Engeström’s comparison of Bateson’ levels of learning and his levels of instruments in Learning by Expanding (1987) Bateson (1972) Learning 3 Engeström (1987) Methodology, ideology Models Tools Learning 2 Learning 1 The comparison of Bateson’s levels of learning to his own framework creates a useful connection between activity and tools, signs and other mediating artifacts. For example, when tools, symbols, language, etc, are used as a knowledge base in a non-conscious, reactive manner, these lower level instruments are consistent with Bateson’s Learning I. The problem solving and structuring of this knowledge base in a conscious manner through the application of models can therefore be viewed as a higher level of learning, i.e. Bateson’s Learning II. 159 However, at an even higher level of learning – i.e. Learning III – the entire worldview (or methodology/ideology) is engaged rather than simply rearranging bits and pieces of an existing knowledge base through the use of models. This level of learning involves a whole new way of looking at the world as a collective activity of a social group, not simply an individual perspective. In this sense, Level III learning can be seen as equivalent to Thomas Kuhn’s notion of a “paradigm shift” in scientific worldviews (1962). James Hammond (1995) provides an effective and brief cultural-historical summary of Kuhn’ revolutionary ideas: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn, is a widely-respected book about the history of science; Kuhn's work is to the history of science what Hamlet is to English drama. Kuhn divides the history of any branch of science into three periods: normal science, crisis, and transition to a new paradigm. A period of normal science is a period in which the specialists in a given field subscribe to the same general theory, or paradigm. During such a period, scientific work consists of refining the paradigm, and solving the puzzles that exist within it. A period of crisis is a period in which there are so many puzzles, and the puzzles are so difficult to solve, that specialists in the field become dissatisfied with the paradigm. When someone suggests a new paradigm, the specialists compare it to the old one, and if they prefer the new paradigm, it gradually replaces the old paradigm as a foundation for normal science. Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions doesn't fit any particular revolution perfectly, but it throws some light on every revolution. (Hammond 1995) As a result, Kuhn’s notion of paradigm shifts represents collective development that takes place over time in a reciprocal interplay between changes taking place in individual worldviews. In terms of the zone of proximal development, this idea of higher levels of individual development taking place through collective activity came primarily through the work of Vygotsky (1978, p.87). It offers the possibility, as described by Engeström, that “human psychological development is to be found in the historical development of the human society” (1987). In this sense, the proposition he puts forward where “activities are becoming increasingly social” has tremendous importance in considering digital network technologies that entail interaction through mediated contexts. As digital artifacts increase in number and variety in our day-to-day world to the point where a “profound shift” has takes place (Graham, in press), human activity increasingly takes place collaboratively, i.e. activity in conjunction with others, building off of the works of others, building in anticipation of the activities of others, etc. Such a space of “multi-person joint activity”, as Cole has described (Cole, p. 342), becomes a zone of proximal development – or ZPD – when higher levels of individual learning become possible through social activities rather than individual activity on its own. In this tertiary space, the quantity and variety of mediating artifacts increases and combines with increasing interaction and collaboration between individuals. It eventually reaches a point where the meaning of signs and the dependence on their original context become less and less of a factor. The zone of proximal development therefore involves a “decontextualization of mediational means” that is consistent with the notion of metaphorical views as being perspectives that have been decontextualized from their original contexts: 160 The decontextualization of mediational means is the process whereby the meanings of signs become less and less dependent of the unique spatiotemporal context in which they are used." (Wertsch 1985, p. 33 in Engeström 1987) In such shifts in worldview, for example, applying (or “mixing”) a fishing perspective into a multimedia design practice, human development can be enabled by using the worldview to “provide access to different properties and moments of the overall process of sociocultural and individual change” (Cole 1996, p.335). This kind of development, as an informal process, could take place without knowledge of the parties involved, specifically, knowledge of who is essentially cooperating and exchanging ideas through the use of such shared perspectives. In such a worldview, there would be and expectation that ideas and artifacts produced by individuals would be built upon and used collaboratively in social activities. We can look at this idea of remix is that of a collaborative activity taking place within the decontextualized spaces described above. However, we can also look at remix as producing such a space, as well as remix requiring such a space as prerequisite. This multiple levels of context are crucial to this thesis, and will become key points of discussion in the development of this work, especially in term of methodology (see “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis”). What is central to the idea however is the implication that remixing – as a method – necessarily involves the activity of reframing worldviews. 2.4 On method and reframing Having considered the cultural-historical perspective of “remix” as a historically developing cultural phenomenon, as well as its connection to an individual’s thinking develops through culturallymediated “zones of proximal development”, what kind of methods could be used to foster such development? With this question in mind, consider the following situation: 1. The method is the object of the activity; 2. The method is also instrumental, i.e. is required as a tool in the activity. 3. The idea of “coordinated lenses” as metaphor for methodology (Cole 1996, p.338) This situation raises the question: “How can a method be used on itself as a method?” Such a question suggests a recursive loop that is highly problematic in terms of established procedures of analysis. This type or recursion produces the effect of “fractals set in motion [or] screens within screens” of a camera turned back on the cameraman (Taylor 2001, p.77), as aptly depicted in Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929, see Figure 82). These are “strange loops” as coined by Douglas Hofstader (1980 pp. 485-493) while describing the surrealist paintings of René Magritte, for example, Ceçi n’est pas une pipe (1926). The term has since been appropriated by Mark C. Taylor, “remixed” into his work as the title to a chapter of one of his books, in describing a key aspect of “emergent network culture” (Taylor 2001, p.75). 161 Figure 91. René Magritte, This Is Not a Pipe © 2001 C. Herscovici, Brussels/Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York The Two Mysteries © 2001 C. Herscovici, Brussels/Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York The issues of complexity – especially in terms of methodology – that are raised by such recursive scenarios will be further addressed in later sections of this chapter. However, before jumping into such complex issues of method and self-reflection, we first need to take a pragmatic approach to the question of methodology. The “crisis” in psychology presented in the work of Michael Cole (1996) recalls the problems and contradictions that the first psychology has had in applying established experimental methods of the natural sciences towards investigating the human mind as a cultural object. Cole’s first-hand account provides a clear example: That contradiction – between the evidence through the lens of my discipline’s methodology and that through the lens of my commonsense response to live in [a cross-cultural] environment – posed the challenge: come up with a methodology that could reconcile the two different views. (Cole 1996, p. 338) While repeated and successful application of theory and practice in solving problems in the natural sciences has led to the development of established methodologies in this field, similar attempts at establishing formal methodologies in the social sciences have been more problematic. This is due to the difficulty of working with cultural contexts that are unique to human beings. For example, Cole’s work has been driven by an attempt to reconcile the natural and the cultural aspects of psychology, where a “culture-inclusive psychology has been such an elusive goal” (p. 8). However, if repeatedly successful approaches became established as valid methodologies in the social sciences and humanities, they could then be re-applied and refined with familiar problems where these methods have had success. Alternately, in a more exploratory fashion, they could be attempted in other contexts in order to address different problems altogether. Regardless, the methodological exploration and journey of Cole can still an early attempt at reconciling the different views, while this thesis is in even earlier exploratory stages. The pragmatic view of methodology implies a separation between the problem and the method to be used, a distinction that can be seen as analogous to the fundamental design axiom of a separation between form and content. In this way, the method is the means for an intended 162 (though not necessarily actual) outcome. Similarly, the form of the design provides the means for the content to come into being. This separation between the desired outcome and the means to achieve it would thus lead to method taking on the instrumental meaning of “tool-for-result”: [M]ost traditional views on methodology treat or define method as fundamentally separate from experimental content and results, i.e. from that for which it is the method. Indeed, it is considered unscientific to do otherwise. Method is understood and used as something to be applied, a functional means to an end, basically pragmatic or instrumental in character. (Newman & Holzman 1993) While pragmatists (and science in general) view method as fundamental in solving problems, they also view method as a tool that is to be applied to its object of inquiry. In this way, the pragmatic approach can be seen as consistent with the structuring and problem solving approaches of Norman and Gagné that were discussed earlier in the previous section. The pragmatic aspect of such approaches comes from the idea that a method is used in order to address the given context, in other words, solving the particular problem as it is presented. If the method doesn’t work, a different one is attempted. The pragmatic point is that a method is used for its “capacity to solve problems” (Holzman & Newman 1993) that exist in a practical sense and not in theory. However, as we’ve seen over the course of this discussion, reactive approaches such as structuring have been criticized because they “exclude the possibility of finding or creating new contexts” (Engeström 1987). In other words, a pragmatic approach would be to attempt to solve the problem by searching for another method to fit the problem-solving structure as it is given. But what if the solution comes about by creating or improvising an entirely new structure, or, developing a structure that is “closed yet open” (Figure 4)? Such activity would involve a theoretical aspect to the problem that makes the problem solving activity less pragmatic, i.e. it becomes less of a “real world” problem and more of a theoretical “what if?” proposition. Yet what if this real world problem was actually impossible to solve in practice? In this regard, Engeström argues that the seemingly impossible problems – i.e. the ones that require the truly creative leaps of expansive learning – can only be solved through the creative steps of changing the problem’s context (thereby changing the problem itself). In this case, the pragmatic search for the method to solve the problem is radically reframed through an anticipation of another context that is yet to come into practice. It becomes a search for a method that can change the problem into something that can be solved. The basis for the argument for a fundamental shift in perspective can be found in the groundbreaking developmental research work of Vygotsky: The search for method becomes one of the most important problems of the entire enterprise of understanding the uniquely human forms of psychological activity. In this case, the method is simultaneously prerequisite and product, the tool and the result of the study. (Vygotsky 1978, p. 65) This notion of “changing the problem’s context” again brings us all the way back to John Seely Brown and his criticism of only doing “open-loop” research (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p. 104). By open-loop, he means the kind of research that is driven only by an inward-looking and relatively 163 detached research community. Despite the potentially counterintuitive term open-loop, what Brown is actually describing is a closed system that doesn’t have or doesn’t use feedback. Such detached research communities may in fact be an “intrinsically stable systems” (Taylor 2001, p.81), but would be equivalent to the “lifeless machines [of] the industrialized world” (ibid. p.80). Viewed in terms of Vygotsky’s “search for method”, a detached research community concerns itself with method that is only ever relevant to the system, i.e. the “inward-looking and relatively detached” research communities described by Brown. Without feedback of some sort entering into the system, the method would have no reason to change, since no change to a closed system’s structure could occur. In this way, since the system of detached research community is never entirely closed even if it is inward-looking, the research and methods are therefore not “grounded in real phenomena” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.104). The opposite kind of research was mentioned briefly in “Chapter 1: Remixing Metaphors” as part of a “pioneering” approach to the issue at hand that is both “radical and grounded” (ibid). Research that is grounded in real phenomenon, according to Brown, leads to environments where you find innovation taking place in the world around you, not just in your head. This perspective connects with the very same epistemological argument that Mikhail Bakhtin made in terms of “dialogue” in the literary context of author-reader relationship in a novel. Specifically, Bakhtin’s “dialogue” is equivalent to the “conversation with the world” that Brown speaks of: “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction” (Bakhtin 1984, p. 110). This same argument can be extended from the head of an individual to the collective knowledge of a research community. Expanding the paradigm in such a way produces a need for “dialogic interaction” between disciplines, not just social interactions between individuals. When research is grounded in this way, Brown argues, “you honor and engage the world in the problems you’re investigating,” which allows multiple disciplines to come together and pulls peoples views together: If you’re just doing open-loop research, then you almost never get good synergies across the disciplines. But if you triangulate on the world from multiple disciplines and you honor the world and realize that invention lies as much in it as it does in the head – going back to our earlier comments – then practically magical things can happen. (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.105) Of course John Seely Brown, as Xerox’s chief scientist, is certainly not advocating a leap of faith into the world of “magical things”. Rather, these “magical things” are equivalent to the creative problems and solutions that emerge from what Donald Schön (1983) calls the “swampy lowlands” where the solutions produced through the tacit knowledge of a group appear “magical” simply because our perspectives are focused on explicit group knowledge, such as “war stories”, documentation of best practices, etc. In other words, while we may consider the tacit knowledge of an individual practitioner, we lack the necessary “lenses” to look at tacit knowledge across a community (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.102). It’s on these grounds that Brown argues that, in a business context, competitive advantage will go to the companies that can shift focus from creating products to creating the environments that produce the products. The objective in such a context would then be to create value through a 164 “learning organization” (ibid. p.105.); the method to do so comes through “listening to the world and working with diversity, with different points of view, on real problems” (ibid.): It brings you back to the kind of interpretive stance that asks, “How do you interpret what the world is doing? Where are the trends? Why are those trends? What are the causal forces at work? What do people really need? What are the latent needs? And so on. That requires a keen ability to listen to the world and its backtalk… How do we learn with agility? How do we learn rapidly? How do we learn to reframe our understandings of the world and put those reframings into action? So I think the ability to build the learning and unlearning organization is going to be the key to success in the twenty-first century. (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, pp.105-106) The implications for this practical outlook of the world and one’s “life context” are profound, if only in terms of situating a discourse on learning and design. Because new media technologies allow learning and design to become less reactive and more interactive, there is increased emphasis on a notion of “doing” that involves the “learning and unlearning” or “reframing” that constantly takes place through dynamic interactions with an environment. Brown is essentially arguing for a “learning by doing” approach to design practice, which Engeström would follow with a “learning by expanding” approach when the “doing” reaches a point of crisis between competing worldviews. Again consider the two important aspects for Vygotsky’s mediational model as it relates to his previous statement on “the search for method”: (a) the method is the object of activity; (b) the method is also required as a tool in the activity. Therefore, according to Vygotsky’s view of learning and development, as also alluded to by others with respect to the paradoxes of self-reflexivity in “observing systems” (see von Forrester 1960, in Taylor, p. 88), the method can change simply by studying it. By extension, in making use of the methodology in practice as a way of learning more about the methodology itself (i.e. by using it as a tool), the methodology (as the object) changes through this practical-critical activity. In this case, the methodology becomes both a tool and the objective of the activity. Thus, according to Fred Newman and Lois Holzman in Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist (1993): In sharp contrast [to the pragmatist use of method], Marx and Vygotsky understand method as something to be practiced - not applied. It is neither a means to an end nor a tool for achieving results. Rather it is, in Vygotsky's formulation, a 'tool and result.' On this view, as Vygotsky tells us, the method is 'simultaneously prerequisite and product'. (Newman, F. and L. Holzman 1993) What will take place in upcoming chapters of this thesis turns on this methodological point as it relates to remixing activities and remix culture. Specifically, what will be discussed is the idea that remix is both the prerequisite and the product of a remix method. In other words, remix needs to be seen as a possible activity – as a “worldview” – in order to be able to see this same world as being constructed of “building blocks” or “remixables”. Conversely, these “building blocks” would have to be already in existence for this constructed worldview of remixing possibilities. In this sense, both the building blocks and the worldview are already in place when the method of remix takes place, i.e. they are “prerequisite”. When the method is put into effect, remixed artifacts become “product” while also contributing to the potential base of remixables and the overall worldview. 165 Furthermore, consider the output of the remix method as being a greater quantity and variety of “remixables” and a continued “worldview” of the remix practice. If the goal of this particular work is to look for value in remix culture, what has transpired in this Vygotskian “search for method” has been both the remixing of worldviews as well as attempts to deconstruct the artifact into its building blocks as a base level of the activity. At the same time, through a process of reflective practice, the method generated in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis” also attempts to identify these worldviews by metaphorically framing out the remix activity in terms of Cole’s “a coordinated set of lenses through which to interpret the world” (1996, p.338). 2.5 On metaphor and reflective practice How deliberate I was about this, I cannot now remember. But if I know myself at all I imagine the thing grew on me by a series of lucky accidents rather than by deliberate planning… [M]y enthusiasm for the new method was at a pretty low ebb and I was seriously considering reeling in and going home. Then a glassy glide along the edge of the rapid at the head of the pool insisted on another cast or two… After all, I was exploring and experimenting and plainly had no business depending on nothing but the old proven places. (Haig-Brown 1959, pp. 63-64) The fishing metaphor that runs through this thesis came about exactly as described by Roderick Haig-Brown in terms of his own fishing practice in the book Fisherman’s Summer (1959), i.e. it was “a series of lucky accidents”. I was given the book – one of several in Haig-Brown’s collection of angler observations and narratives – by my dad on a visit home to Campbell River. At the time, I was working on a paper for a class on “experience design” which I was basing around ideas from the cultural-historical activity theory research of Yjrö Engeström, discussed earlier in this chapter. I had originally intended to apply Engeström’s theoretical model of activity towards the analysis of the live music experience, a particular passion of mine (as demonstrated the travelogue of Artifact 5.11). The intent was to try out a different way to look at an area where I have some background and “experience”. Essentially, such an approach reflected the whole “write what you know” worldview that hangs over every writer’s shoulder (whether they subscribe to it or not). By lucky accident, I’d end up writing about fishing instead of live music, and the sport of fishing was something I felt I didn’t really know very well from a practical standpoint. However, when presented in terms of an activity in comparison to my multimedia development activities, I did see a very fitting “remix” of perspectives that would eventually bring me all the way back around to the activities of “music and the media arts” (Kretschmer 2004). As an informal method, this “remix” of worldviews, when applied to my own work has either led to – or put into perspective – the development of a number of remixed cultural artifacts. These artifacts, and the manner in which they’ve been created, are further discussed in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”. In fact, the method used to perform some initial analyses of “value” in these artifacts came about through a process of self-reflection in my role in their development. In this relation to these analyses and the theory presented here, it is important to mention how the influence of the 166 “self-reflective” fisherman’s perspective in this work has been paradoxically both fundamental and accidental. Fundamentally, when I starting the writing of this thesis in early January 2006, I simply wanted to apply some cultural historical perspectives – including a fisherman’s perspective – to a particular remix artifact that I had just created and that related in part to the sport. I ended up developing a more systematic approach look for value in such artifacts – i.e. an exploratory method. I then used this method to perform an introductory analysis on a particular artifact as a trial run (see Artifact 5.12 in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”). However, in trying to provide the needed context for the artifact analysis, I wound up addressing a number of other artifacts due to the long historical development of my work over a number of years. As a result, I almost accidentally – or at the very least, unintentionally – ended up producing a far more extensive thesis than I had originally planned. Metaphorically, it was a “good day” of fishing: From time to time in a fisherman’s life, it does turn out that he has found some new and more exacting or more exciting way of engaging the attentions of his fish rather than because the results of the old one have become too certain. The new conditions or the new method open up a whole new field of exploration and the days are once more lively and good. (Haig-Brown 1959, p.252) A metaphor of a fisherman’s “eyes to see” (Haig-Brown et al. 1967) has become fundamental in my work in the contextual sense of having personally grown up around fishing culture, though not having much direct involvement with the sport myself. It has been accidental in that I never had never really considered myself as part of fishing culture and never really thought to identify with it – that is, if there’s such thing as an “official” fishing culture, since there are numerous subcultures in the sport and lifestyle, e.g. angling, salt-water, bottom, commercial, netting, trolling, etc. Yet I now feel– whether accidentally, unintentionally, or ironically – that fishing has become part of my identity, at least insofar as a “self-reflective practitioner” and as someone who “writes” using various media (Schön 1983, Miller 2004). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 92. Novelist, conservationist and fisherman Roderick Haig-Brown ties a fly for casting in the Campbell River, images from the film Fisherman’s Fall (1967) and the HaigBrown Institute website. Upon first reading some of the passages by Haig-Brown in Fisherman’s Summer, I immediately found what struck me as a strange connection between the fisherman’s description of his ecological environment and my own object of interest: digital culture. In abstracting and relating 167 Haig-Brown’s descriptions and comments to my own material practice as a “man with a movie camera” (Vertov 1929), I found fishing to be a very useful “tool of thought” (Cole 1996, p. 334) for communicating aspects of what had become an ordinary activity for me: documenting live music experiences using minimal, consumer-grade, video recording technology (see Artifact 5.7 in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”). The activity of fishing – as a metaphorical framing device – would become very valuable in conceptualizing and describing my experiences with digital media practice, if only at the level of self-reflection. Even at the earlier stages of its use as a worldview in my work, it would provide the basis for an unpublished paper for a course in “experience design” (Flynn 2003b, unpublished). Essentially, the fishing metaphor was helpful in communicating and refining an ongoing learning process of trying to “catch” – with the use of a camera – those key shots and moments that unfold over the course of a live music performance. Of course fishing is not the only metaphorical construct that I find useful for this specific filming activity. Furthermore, it would not be possible to adequately address every single metaphorical framing that may be involved in a particular cultural context. For example, I’ve also used the baseball metaphor of the pitcher-catcher dynamic in modelling the performer-cameraman activity. Specifically, the “game within a game” that takes place between the pitcher and the catcher in trying to get a batter, which itself is situated within the larger context of the nine inning game of baseball that is also unfolding in the process. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 93. Boston Red Sox knuckleballer Tim Wakefiled (left) pitching at Fenway Park in July of 2001 to catcher Doug Mirabelli or Scott Hatteberg. At another level, both of these dynamics are situated within the cultural-historical development of the game of baseball, in its entirety, as it has been played for over more than one hundred years. Having played the game in my youth – whether with friends, in actual competition, or in simply throwing a ball around with my older brother – I’ve always been fascinated by the game’s dynamics. Contextualized within my own cultural-historical development, the pitcher-catcher metaphor therefore seems to provide another useful contextual frame for this aspect of my multimedia practice. 168 As a result, the pitcher-catcher metaphor has been useful for me personally when operating a video camera in a live concert environment, specifically, in terms of trying to “catch” the performance as it unfolds. Yet even in using this description and perspective, the metaphor is still complex. For example, there are big league pitchers who are more comfortable and have a better working relationship with some catchers over others. Because of the intricacies and dynamics of the game, if the tandem is having success and have found a certain “comfort level” (Bowa, in Singer 2004), there’s a tendency in baseball to not mess around with what’s seems to be working. As former major league player and manager Larry Bowa states: “There has to be a good relationship between a pitcher and catcher; he's the guy who tries to get the pitcher through tough spots in the course of a game” (ibid. emphasis in original). Additionally, there are some catchers who catch certain pitchers exclusively due to the ability and experience in handling specialized pitches. This is the case with the highly unpredictable knuckleball, “a very strange pitch [that] is released with very little velocity and drifts toward home plate with very little rotation” (Clarke 2006). The pitch can be viewed as being situated in an ecological environment since its puzzling and dynamic movements are “subject to all manner of influences from barometric pressure to wind velocity and maybe even the gravitational pull of the moon”. As a result, it presents additional complexities for catchers who are used to catching pitchers who throw “straight”. This is commented on by major leaguer Doug Mirabelli, who had spent several seasons as a knuckleball catcher for Tim Wakefield of the Boston Red Sox: You just kind of get into a trance there. It's almost like a relaxed state even further than you would with guys throwing straight. Your reflexes are so much quicker when you're relaxed. At any moment, the ball is going to dart in a different direction. You need to be as relaxed as possible so that maybe if it does take that last dart, it's just an instinct to catch it. (Mirabelli, in Browne 2004) As will be seen, Mirabelli’s description above has strong connection to what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes as “flow” in high concentration activities. However, because of the cultural complexities and geography of the game of baseball, I naturally question whether those who don’t share the same context would understand this pitcher-catcher dynamic. The baseball metaphor has been applied to the performance-cameraman interaction and described in similar terms by professionals in the field, specifically, by camera operator Michael Chapman from the film Jaws (1975). He quotes director Steven Spielberg as calling the film “the most expensive handheld movie ever made”: It was a fine piece of operating, frankly, if you look at it. To think that it was all handheld, then to thing about how we did it, you know, I’m quite proud of it. It was like being the MVP, or winning the Triple Crown. Baseball metaphors come very easily to [camera] operating. (Chapman, in McCarthy 1994) 169 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 94. Screenshot of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) as commented on by camera operator Michael Chapman in the documentary Visions of Light (1994) I would personally describe successful camera operating, using the baseball metaphor, in terms of catching or pitching “a good game”, this frame of reference has been used extensively in creating the “travelogue” of Artifact 5.11 the opens this work. However, in many respects I find that the baseball metaphor can be limited in its usefulness with respect to communicating aspects of the remixing activity that goes on in my work, rather than just operating a camera. At the very least, the baseball metaphor is as useful as the sport fishing metaphor. However, operating a camera in a live concert environment is just one of the various activities in my work that has a fundamental relationship to the idea of remix, but only describes one particular aspect of the work and not the overall process of remix taking place across its entirety. Regardless, as commented by Cole, “[o]ne requires a combination of at least two metaphors to represent the process of culturally mediated activity” (Cole 1996, p. 335). Combining the fishing and baseball metaphors – i.e. “mixing” the “lenses” – can help to see how perspectives can be coordinated on a particular phenomenon. Yet these lenses are flexible in the sense that an observation becomes a situation of finding the most appropriate metaphor –i.e. one that can provide the most “value” – in accessing a particular moment of “the overall process of sociocultural and individual change” (ibid.). In light of this need to select the most appropriate “mix” of metaphors for a particular situation, and with respect to the limited focus of the pitcher-catcher metaphor previously described, the fishing metaphor was one I have found extremely compelling. This metaphor not only provides, as mentioned, “access to different properties and moments” of change (ibid.), the fishing metaphor has been valuable because my actual experience with the activity has come through borrowed perspectives, i.e. through the “eyes” of others: Fifty-years of rivers and fly-fishing. It’s quite a spell. One fishes to catch fish, or course, but there has to be more to it than that. Style is important. Knowing the fish and the water, even more so. If fishing were simply a matter of catching fish, I would have given it up long ago. Fall comes gradually in the Pacific coast of Canada. There’s a touch of death in the air. But if a fisherman has eyes to see, there’s life and movement everywhere along the river. (Haig-Brown et al. 1967) 170 In contrast to baseball and the pitcher-catcher dynamic, where I have some prior experience, I don’t fish in the literal sense. However, I’ve often engaged the thought process of looking at “music and the media arts” (Kretschmer, 2005) as a river system that interconnects with a much deeper (cultural) ocean. This would be equivalent to the “Great Sea of Pop Culture” that Paul D. Miller mentions in Rhythm Science (2004), where “too many others are awash… cranking out the same style over and over, working within restricted markets, genres, and styles” (p. 21). Such a perspective has provided a sense of “fullness”, a feeling of being a part of this ecological system where one travels a “range of deeps and distances through wild salt years” (Haig-Brown, Figure 2). In terms of my digital media practice within this system, it has quite obviously developed into a passion. Like any passion, I have found more than one occasion where “my enthusiasm for the new method was at a pretty low ebb,” or where it seemed few options were available other than “reeling in and going home” (Haig-Brown 1959, p.64). Yet as later commented on by Haig-Brown in the 1967 Mike Nichol’ film Fisherman’s Fall, “if fishing were simply a matter of catching fish, I would have given it up long ago” (Haig-Brown et al., 1967). The feeling of “exploring and experimenting” in creating works that were somehow different than “the old proven places” (Haig-Brown, 1959, p.65) has provided me with a much stronger enthusiasm than any formal academic method that I’ve encountered so far. In other words, it has had “cash-value”: Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?" (James 1907) Methodology based on practical activity is not exclusively the territory of Marx and Vygotsky’s revolutionary practice, as discussed previously. In fact, an alternate practical approach, pragmatism, was developed in the United States through the philosophic and scientific work of Charles Peirce and C. I. Lewis, as well as through the psychology and sociology-oriented research of George Mead, John Dewey and William James (Shook 2005). As with Marx’s view, the pragmatists were concerned with the connection between thinking and doing. Pragmatists therefore concerned themselves with how meaning is created through action, which James would describe as having “cash-value” (ibid.). For the pragmatist, there must be an exchange that takes place between individual and environment, a negotiation and settlement in the meaning or usefulness of any idea. As with Hegel’s synthesis, James’ pragmatism therefore sees the value of any idea as the exchange that takes place between the ideal and the real when the idea is put into practice. For the pragmatists there are of course real, objective problems to be solved and theories about how to solve them; however, “the meanings of theories are to be found in their capacity to solve problems” (Holzman & Newman 1993). Because my research involves a significant theoretical component – whether through its relationship to literary theory or developmental psychology – I’ve tried to keep a perspective on the work’s ability to address the theory in a practical way. In other words, I attempt to continually look at how the practical results of my work reflect the associated theoretical angles, and vice versa. 171 This includes consideration of the cultural context from which the works developed, as well as the reframing of such theoretical perspective when I felt they lacked “the capacity to solve problems”. From this reflection on my own emerging design practice and methods, it should be clear that in my perspectives as an academic researcher, specifically, in looking into the complexities of the “remix” phenomenon, I’ve consistently and explicitly tried to “keep culture in mind” (Cole 1996, p.327). Whether this takes place in terms of overlapping metaphorical worldviews, or by combining or cutting up digital media artifacts to produce some new artifact, the approach is not without a fundamental question: If you are a psychologist who believes that culture is constitutive of mind, what can you do that is both academically acceptable and true to your sense of the complexities of the phenomenon? (Cole 1996, p. 330) Michael Cole’s question of acceptable methods for studying complex cultural phenomena is one that has been a point of considerable discussion – if not full frustration – throughout the long development timeframe of this thesis. The first frustration is the simple reminder that I’m not a psychologist. Or at least, I’m not a psychologist in any formal or professional sense other than my undergraduate background in marketing, which of course has its own interests and complexities in the study of human – or consumer – behaviour. Therefore, in further reflecting on my own role in the research development, I ask myself the question of how and why the above citation by Cole should apply to my own work? I’ve attempted to address this question, and its frustration, by accepting the particular perspective on psychology that I do actually have, i.e. considering the view from my marketing background as a way of bringing new ideas “to the table”, so to speak. Part of this process even led to a very valuable dialogue with Professor Cole in San Diego, where we briefly discussed this same point and where I demonstrated how I’ve tried to apply it to my work. So while I’m not an “official” psychologist, nor claim to be, I can ironically take comfort in the words of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky (if that’s at all possible!): “they call me a psychologist, mistakenly. I am rather a realist in a higher sense, i.e. I depict all the depths of the human soul”15 (Dostoyevsky 1883). The remainder of the frustration actually predates the formal start of this research project, insofar as the self-reflection that often accompanies an intuitive creative process always seems to beg the question of “What is the method here?” Earlier in this process, I felt that I didn’t have the artistic experience, or the research and scholarly background, or the necessarily language to be able to adequately communicate what I’m now describing here in terms of “remix”. Subsequent attempts at approaching my research and practice through existing qualitative and quantitative methods never 15 “Dostoyevsky always disapproved of photographic naturalism and defended the interest in the fantastic and exceptional. In two well-known letters Dostoevsky asserted that he had “quite different conceptions of reality and realism than our realists and critics. My idealism is more real than their realism.” His realism is pure, a realism in depth while theirs is of the surface. N. N. Strakhov, in his biography, reports Dostoevsky as saying: “they call me a psychologist: mistakenly. I am rather a realist in a higher sense, i.e. I depict all the depths of the human soul” (Letter to A. N. Maykov, 11/23 Dec. 1868, in Pisma, ed. A. S. Dolinin, 2, Moscow [1928-34], 150, and letter to N. N. Strakhov, 26 Feb./10 March 1869, ibid., 169; N. N. Strakhov and O. Miller, Biografiya, pisma..., St. Petersburg [1883]: 373) http://etext.virginia.edu/cgilocal/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv4-08 172 seemed to work out as planned. The resulting failed attempts only contributed to the difficulty of communicating what I thought was valuable about my research and why I felt it was becoming increasing relevant in the networked, digital context. Since the self-reflective aspects of my practice were already in place prior to starting my graduate work, the difficulties and frustrations of working with both self-reflective and cultural-historical perspectives began to raise some of the common limitations for such forms of research. However, a more concise and specialized study, one that “objectively” attempts to minimize the researcher’s role and self-reference in the environment seemed to also be problematic. Harry Wolcott explains some of these issues in his book The Art of Fieldwork (2005, pp.115-146). Whether self-reflective or not, the issues that Wolcott presents are important considerations for any cultural study: (a) The superficiality of a study that is too short and doesn’t reflect the long development time in dealing with cultural-historical perspectives; (p.117) (b) The potential for obviousness in results that only confirm through academic discourse what we already know; (p.122) (c) The potential for the research to be seen as self-serving because of its self-reflective aspects and therefore of little benefit to the research community at large; (p.127) (d) The possible lack of independence of the research by as both participant and observer, or the cultural and institutional influences potentially steering the research towards nonresearch outcomes; (p.134) (e) The feeling and accusations of deception and betrayal by those in the observed cultural environment and the interpersonal dilemmas regarding what to disclose in what Wolcott terms the “seductions” of a cultural study that requires developing a rapport with the observed (p.140) (f) The potential issue of clandestine observation that takes place when we are “selfappointed watchers of others” in some sort of “special, socially approved form of voyeurism” (p.144). Rather than going into detailed discussion and potential rationalizations of the above concerns, I’ll simply address these issues as being constant points of frustration during the research and even prior to it, since many of the issues apply to the kind of documentary media production that has been a consistent element in my work. For further insight into the above issues, I’ll refer again to Wolcott’s book and the section “The Darker Arts” as a valuable take on the difficulties of cultural analysis. Wolcott even leads of the chapter with a useful perspective by Clifford Geertz on the “strange science” of fieldwork: Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is. It is a strange science whose most telling assertions are its most tremulously based, in which to get somewhere with the matter at hand is to intensify the suspicion, both your own and that of others, that you are not quite getting it right. (Geertz 1973, p. 29) 173 While elements of more formalized and established methods such as phenomenology, phenomenography, activity theory and grounded theory (Flynn 2003a) seemed to connect with what I felt were key aspects of my creative practice – i.e. my fieldwork – most attempts at applying a more established research methodology felt like I was forcing the work into an uncomfortable box and forever “not quite getting it right”. At the same time however, “digital remix” as a form of expression was becoming an increasingly relevant issue (or “problem”) that needs to be addressed, though lacking in academically acceptable methods to do so. Yet each successive and incremental setback in the area of methodology would eventually lead to what has become a significant “reframing” of the research by “following the problem” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p104). John Seely Brown’s “pioneering research” involves the notion that “if the problem led you to suggest radically reframing some fundamental hypotheses about how the world works, you did it” (ibid.). This approach was discussed briefly in “Chapter I: Remixing Metaphors” but is obviously relevant for this section on reframing and reflective practice. In fact, he poses a similar question to the one in this thesis with respect to “ways of seeing” the world, creating “value”, and reflecting on our role(s) in technology-mediated contexts as creators and collaborators. While Brown’s questions are directed towards the area of ubiquitous-computing in digital culture, they apply equally well to the remix phenomenon: From a ubiquitous-computing point of view, I would say what we’re after there is part of rethinking and reexamining how value gets created… Technology is there to enhance our ability to be creative, to connect with other people, to learn from each other, and to learn from ourselves à la Donald Schön’s sense of “the reflective practitioner,” now extended to the reflective group… [and so] How do we engage multiple points of view? How do we use each other’s insights and triangulate our cognitive spheres to make maximal sense of the world at this moment in time? (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p. 101) In an interview from New Thinking in Design: Conversations on Theory and Practice (in Mitchell 1996), Brown discusses a variety of design-related issues that directly or indirectly relate to the development of the research in this thesis. These topics include: activity, context, self-reflection, multiple points of view, participation, communities of practice, emergence, improvisation, grounding, reframing, rapid changes and increasing complexity, the use of design metaphors such as “conversations” and “surfaces”, and the cultural issues of setting up “dialog” between researchers, technology developers, strategic planners, and marketers. While it is impossible to fully cover all of these issues in detail here, we can look at several of his ideas that are particularly relevant in terms of design and method. In discussing how “knowing emerges through activity” (ibid.), Brown critiques the overintellectualization of design problems that can happen by favoring abstract knowledge over concrete experience. He attributes this to a common effect of viewing the world through what has become the traditional Cartesian mind/body separation (Figure 87). In his view, the inability for some people to articulate a theory of something doesn’t mean they don’t know it, only that this knowledge could well be tacit and ingrained in the person, and not abstracted into formalized discourses. 174 What Brown suggests he and his colleagues are trying to do is to blur this duality, i.e. to support the idea that “knowing” can take place as much in the body as it can in the head. He goes even further in suggesting that “knowing” takes place even outside the body, through our interactions with the world, and that any “value” from design comes from extending the mental processes by taking sociocultural processes into account as “culture-in-mind”: So our starting point is rethinking how the human mind works, how the social mind works, and how value is really being created. Then we put these three things together to rethink the causal forces in the environment that would enable us to enhance the right forces, to really enhance our ability to create value. (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p. 103) From this starting point, Brown suggests finding ways to “honor the context” in a design situation, since our participation in a context shapes our perception in a way that is “very much like … the move from modernity to postmodernism” (ibid). He then leads into a discussion on issues of emergence through this participation, asking, “How does interacting with and in the context actually cause things to emerge that you didn’t even know you knew?” (Ibid) He suggests designing not only the artifacts, but also the context for interpreting the artifacts as a way to help center the user. He argues this “centering” for a design task is similar to the way that the periphery of a painting helps to center the eye, which involves “ a sense of how the artifact pulls you into understanding it, or pulls you into the right entrances for the right purposes.” (Ibid) Brown’s suggested approach of being aware and respecting the context – i.e. “listening to the world and working with diversity, with different points of view” – is key to the idea of grounding the research in real phenomena and real problems. As discussed earlier in this chapter, this is the very same epistemological argument that Russian philosopher and literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin made in terms of “dialogue” in the novel, and is equivalent to the “conversation with the world” that Brown speaks of: Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction. (Bakhtin 1984, p. 110). While Brown admits that such discussion borders on being overly philosophical, he also argues that a grounding in real phenomena and real problems allows the willing researcher “to think radical thoughts when need be” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.103). However, even when thinking such radical thoughts in approaches, he also argues the need for being able to “reconnect” with the world so that these ideas can actually have an impact as practice and not simply as theory. Brown makes significant use of metaphor in communicating his experiences in design practice, beginning with the “connected surfaces” metaphor that is essentially describing the idea of interacting “texts” (ibid.). For example, these “texts” or “surfaces” could include scribbled notes that become typed up and sent around to the rest of the design team, or the retrieval of electronic whiteboard archives that allow for replaying parts of the conversation that were taking place when the notes were being made. His point is that with such “connected surfaces,” we’re not far off from working environments that enhance the researcher’s ability to become the sort of “reflective 175 practitioners” proposed by Donald Schön in the appropriately titled The Reflective Practitioner (1983). These are environments that Engeström (borrowing from Wertsch 1985, p.33) might view as “decontextualization of the mediational means”. Here, stories can develop into design scenarios that ideally would be “portable” from one context to another (Carroll 1996, p.266-275). The multiplicity of perspectives through such stories and scenarios can therefore help designers move from “experiences to insights to better interpret the world” often through what Brown describes as a “telling-listening activity that really starts to shape this understanding” (Brown, ibid.). In other words, this is a dialogue, but not necessarily a verbal one. In a metaphorical sense, Brown calls such participatory activities in design as “conversations”: These aren’t necessarily verbal conversations. They can be collections of written notes, they can be actions. I use conversations broadly, a little bit like Donald Schön talking about listening to the backtalk of a situation in design. When good designers go to design something, they can tell if it fits right. They can almost have a conversation with that design in the context and understand its fit and congruence, or the lack of fit. It’s that sense of being able to have a conversation with and in the context, which good designers do all the time. Schön talks a fair amount about this and I might be changing his words slightly, but the intuitions are the same. So this notion of a conversation with the world is a very metaphorical concept. (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p. 107) The metaphor of “conversations” is not the only one that is associated with Schön’s work. Furthermore, his ideas are not limited to the realm of product design described by John Seely Brown. In keeping with Brown’s business-setting example where there has been a shift away from models where a company designs a product to models where a company designs its organizational learning context instead, Schön’s work in The Reflective Practitioner (1983) actually comes from his practice in educational design. Similarly, in The Ecology of Problem Finding in Teaching in Mark A. Runco’s Problem Finding, Problem Solving, and Creativity (1994), Michael T. Moore leads off his discussion of an ecological framework for the teacher’s environment with the following quote from Schön: There are those who choose the swampy lowlands. They deliberately involve themselves in messy but crucially important problems and, when asked to describe their methods of inquiry, they speak of experience, trail and error, intuition, and muddling through. (Schön 1983, p.43) In associating Schön’s “muddling through” to thought processes of teachers in Angelika Wagner’s in-depth studies from the early 1980s (Wagner, 1984), Moore notes that even in situations where teachers are “dealing with significant planning and curricular problems… [s]omehow the creative problem emerges”, and this creative problem finding is the important first step towards “the contemplation of a solution” (Moore, in Runco 1994, p. 175) In addition to “muddling through”, Moore concurs with Schön that this process is “undoubtedly fueled by experience, cognition, trial and error, and intuition” (ibid.). He then suggests an ecological model for creative problem finding and bases this model on a range of theoretical frameworks used for understanding the creative 176 process as well as in analyzing the compositions and relationships in visual images, literary texts, and languages (Harrington 1990, and Cooper 1986). Moore’s main argument, and this is in keeping with an underlying argument presented in this thesis, is that the cognitive processes alone are not sufficient in considering an experienced phenomenon. In other words, there is more than just mental process taking place in experience; there is a context that must be considered as well. In his case, Moore is looking at “problem finding” while my work concerns “remix”, however, there are several “lenses” being used in both situations in investigating the respective phenomena, i.e. the cultural-historical lens, the biological systems lens, and textual lens of the writing activity. For example, Moore discusses not only the use of the Harrington’s biological systems perspective (1990) in creating an ecological view of problem finding, but also how this perspective interacts with the cultural-historical perspective: Harrington’s (1990) model is based on the ecology of biological systems, and his examples of thriving and failed ecosystems are among the first conceptual frameworks for understanding the blend of social and cognitive processes in creativity. I propose an ecological model not based on biological ecology but where ecology serves as the metaphor of problem finding in teaching as an act of social construction fed by the streams (Treffinger 1987) of cognition, culture, improvisation, and environment. Problem finding in teaching is as much a result of the teacher molded by social systems as by the teacher molding these social systems. (Moore, in Runco 1994, p.176) There is a point of distinction to be noted in Moore’s use of metaphor here. Of course, a view of the interrelationships between the individual and his or her environment is not covering new ground in research, whether in Moore’s work or my own. However, in developing a “way of seeing” the phenomenon of “remix” that I believe to be valuable, it should be pointed out where Moore (like Cole and Brown previously) uses a metaphorical construction for investigating his phenomenon. Specifically, he uses ecology as a metaphor for problem finding while not equating biological ecology to cultural ecology. Moore extends the “generative metaphor” of ecology by describing how it is “fed by streams” of cognition, culture, improvisation, and environment (p.176). In other words, he evokes the perspective of a river system in describing this ecology. The river system perspective obviously interconnects with the way in which I’ve applied a “fishing” metaphor as a “reflective practitioner” in remix culture, which has been a surprising – but valuable – reframing of my own work over the course of its development. The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation. (Schön 1983, p. 68) Through further discussion of the work of Marily Cooper’s The Ecology of Writing (1986) and David Harrington’s The Ecology of Creativity: a Psychological Perspective (1990), Moore also presents the argument that “writing” must be seen as a “connected” – i.e. intertextual – activity. The writing 177 activity therefore takes place as part of social systems that are neglected by simply using only a cognitive process model by itself, i.e. Cole’s criticisms of the “first psychology” (Cole 1996). In this view, the reflective “writing” practitioner who is creating new works is seen as experimenting with his prior understanding of the practice in order to generate new understandings. In the case of Roderick Haig-Brown’s work as a writer and fisherman, his non-fiction writings may not be regarded by literary experts as “experimental” or “groundbreaking” in comparison to other works his time (e.g. the Beat poets of the 1950s, the writings of Hemmingway, or the avant-garde movements from spanning the first half of the 20th century). However, his comments on “exploring and experimenting” in his fishing methods (Haig-Brown 1959, p.63-64) and his overall body of work, in full tradition of Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler (1655), do reveal him to be a wellexperienced “reflective practitioner” in terms of his fishing methods, one who is able to improvise on the situations presented to him. The reflective practitioner, through reflection on his role in the larger context of his practice, and like the “writer” who reflects and builds upon past works, is therefore always implicated in an ecological “whirl of cultures and social constructions” (Moore, in Runco p.183). As Moore points out, and as Haig-Brown would likely agree, an ecological model “encourages exploration and ‘playing around’ with ideas and materials” (ibid.). Given Moore’s research in the educational field, he relates this mindset to the improvisational abilities of experienced teachers: Novices insisted on discrete structures, but experienced teachers felt they could improvise from any structure. An ecological model, as Harrington (1990) pointed out, encourages exploration and “playing around” with ideas and materials. Cooper (1986) contended that a cognitive process model of writing abstracts the writing process. She claimed that a cognitive model approach sees each writing context as unique and “unconnected with other situations.” Problem finding must also be seen as connected to the whirl of cultures and social constructions in the classroom and the school. (Ibid.) Having cited Leo Tolstoy’s suggestion that the teacher needs to “develop in himself the ability of discovering new methods”16 (Tolstoy 1861/1967, pp.57-58), Moore concludes with the familiar call for “new questions and new hypotheses” that can explore Schön’s “swampy lowlands” (Moore, in Runco 1984, p.184). He mentions Harrington’s description of a graduate student with a promising idea who must be “pushed into the laboratory…to begin the groping, fumbling work from which an even more promising research idea will emerge” (Harrington 1990, p. 157 in Runco, p. 184). This attitude of “creative discovery” goes beyond the classroom, as can seen in the views of the former head of Nissan Design International, Jerry Hirshberg, during his days in leading a team of automobile designers during the 1980s and early 1990s: 16 The best teacher will be he who has at his tongue’s end the explanation of what it is that is bothering the pupil. These explanations give knowledge of the greatest possible number of methods, the ability of inventing new methods and, above all, not a blind adherence to one method but the conviction that all methods are one-sided, and that the best method would be the one which answers best to all the possible difficulties incurred by a pupil, that is, not a method but an art and talent… Every teacher must… by regarding imperfection in the pupil’s comprehension, not as a defect of the pupil, but as a defect of his own instruction, endeavor to develop in himself the ability of discovering new methods (Leo Tolstoy, 1861/1967 pp. 57-58) in Runco p.182 178 But we were far more certain about what we no longer wanted to do than we were about how to achieve what we wanted. Nonetheless, we were committed to our goal of building the company around the needs of creative thinking, and by a process of instinct and self-observation, trial and error, [we] proceeded in a spirit consistent with creative discovery itself. (Hirshberg 1998, p.19) Nissan’s Hirshberg argues for the car design process to involve “instinct and self-observation, trial and error” and most of all a productive level of uncertainty. Moore similarly argues that those who are studying teaching activities “must also be pushed back into the swamp of the classroom” in order to see the ways we actually “form and reform” the classroom problems and paths to solution (Moore, in Runco 1994, p.185). In terms of the “remix” ecology that shapes this thesis, what Moore is suggesting is the equivalent of a highly integrated process of listening, collecting, mixing, contributing, and remixing. 2.6 On dialogue, memory, and intertextual feedback loops At this point it seems appropriate to once again recall the improvisational DJing skills of Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky) as one of the central influences in what is a very wide contextual web of “remix”. In this chapter, we’ve already addressed familiar faces in the cultural psychology of Michael Cole and the design research ideas of John Seely Brown, but we’ve mixed in the “reflective practitioner” concept of Donald Schön, which intertwines nicely with the educational design discourse raised in the work of Michael T. Moore. Running through all of these themes, we have an ecological paradigm framed through the work of Roderick Haig-Brown, who in his life played multiple roles: novelist, fisherman, historian, and conservationist, just to name a few. So in this one chapter alone, both author and reader have moved back and forth into a number of texts – intertextual travel, if you will – in order to get to this very point, a temporal moment and a transitory stage. Once again, we loop back into the work of DJ Spooky, in an open dialogue with Mikhail Bakhtin, echoed in a review of works by Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou, itself echoing the words of William Faulkner from Light in August (1932): And Faulkner told us long ago in Light in August: “Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing wonders.” In these words, we see the diacritical difference, the polarity, between memory and knowing. (AmericanPopularCulture.com, 2003) Within this intertextual “echo” of sources and memories, where “origin can scarcely ever be located” (Barthes 1981, p.39) Paul D. Miller’s method for a “rhythm science” finds a strong connection to the work Bakhtin. Miller acknowledges in suggesting that “what Mikhail Bakhtin might once have called ‘diacritical difference’ now becomes ‘the mix’” (Miller 2004, p.85). As Miller describes in his presentation at the 2005 AIGA Design Conference: “The DJ is a guide to memory, and when you play with records you play with people’s memories of events, of bands, of songs that bring together people… it’s an open-source culture of memory” (Miller 2005). 179 Miller’s method for a “rhythm science” poses a question to be contemplated, what Bakhtin would call “an open process that seeks ‘surprisingness’ at almost every step of the way”, rather than offering a pre-described method towards a solution that “in some sense already exists” (Moen & Emerson 1990, p. 245). This method, according to Miller, is a question of “how to foster a milieu where dialog about culture becomes a way to move into the pictures we describe with words, text, sounds – you name it” (Miller 2004, p.13). Miller’s question of method, I argue, is equivalent to the metaphorical notion of “travelling” through a collection of “texts”. Furthermore, the integrated activities of listening, collecting, mixing, contributing, and remixing are interchangeable with Michel de Certeau’s metaphors of textual “poaching” where “readers are travelers”, as discussed in his book The Practice of Everyday Life (1984). Like Bakhtin’s dialogic approach and de Certeau’s active metaphors, Miller’s question of dialogue and engagement is designed to provoke rather than close off thinking, thereby allowing problems and solutions to emerge naturally through numerous interactions with objects in an environment. It is an active dialogue – “a conversation with the world” around you, as proposed by Schön and extended by Brown – that is at the heart of Miller’s remix method and his “rhythm science”: The method becomes “actionary” rather than “re-actionary” – you end up with a culture that is more dynamic… It’s about how we play with perceptions of events, and this is the link I make between DJ culture, techno-science, and the art of everyday creativity in a digital environment. A rhythm scientist begins as an archivist of sound, text, and image. (Miller 2004, pp.15-16) The body of work at the heart of this thesis can be viewed exactly as described by Miller, i.e. the work of “an archivist of sound, text, and image.” This archiving of digital media material is in no way unique to my work, and is currently taking place in much bigger and better ways that have become ordinary, everyday aspects of digital culture. These initiatives include photo and video-sharing applications such as those offered commercially by Google, Flickr and YouTube, or can be more academic projects such as the Digital Depot17. Regardless of how well this archiving process takes place in terms of organization or access or quality of the materials in the archive, “rhythm science” essentially begins when the archiving begins. The construction of the archive, when viewed in terms of method, again calls to mind the postmodernist theories of Jacques Derrida. The famous French philosopher’s work is challenging to say the least, as is evident in the film Derrida (Dick et al. 2002) where on numerous occasions the viewer is led down the intellectual cul-de-sac that is common in philosophical discourses (Gover 1996). However, Derrida’s contributions to this discourse in terms of his critique of the archive and his method of deconstruction are actually fundamental to the research presented here. Derrida’s deconstruction is a way of reading texts, or, if you will a way of “seeing” the texts, in relation to our previous discussion of Berger and oil paintings (Berger 1972). This way of reading proposes to uncover meaning that is not initially apparent; however, the term has become a much 17 http://video.google.com http://www.flickr.com http://www.youtube.com http://ccat.uwaterloo.ca/interactive/depot.html 180 more loose definition that has since taken on meanings other than its original use. Through these meanings – for example, looking at “the metaphors writers use to make their points” (Stevens 1991) – Derrida’s approach has been integrated into the analytical method developed in thesis (to be addressed in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis”). However, given the nature of the archive of multimedia objects that form the appropriate data for this study as presented in the Chapter 3: A Journey Towards Appropriate Data), Derrida’s work on the issue of the archive also has relevance at this theoretical stage. Derrida’s preoccupation with the question of the archive in Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1996), as well as in his earlier Writing and Difference (1978), provides a key point that sets up Mark C. Taylor’s discussion of emergence in open systems (2001). According to Taylor, Derrida argues that the archive not only incites forgetfulness, but also destroys that which does not fit the archive’s system, thereby leading to “Freud’s association of the technologies of archivization with the death instinct [which] entail an inescapably destructive violence” (Taylor 2001, p. 64). It is obvious that Derrida sees digital technology and network culture as extremely dangerous. Expanding telecommunication networks proliferating worldwide webs, he believes, carry the threat of a hegemony more thorough than the military-industrial complex. Furthermore, the extraordinary rate of technological development lends urgency to the need to respond to these changes. (Taylor 2001, p.65) Derrida’s critique of these developments aims to expose the totalizing structures, but according to Taylor, that is all that his critiques accomplish. As theoretical abstractions, they provide no means for practical action that could change these structures, leaving these structures intact as repressive and inescapable. However, Derrida’s criticism of digital technology and network culture – i.e. its “machinations of techno-science [that] are inevitably incomplete and unavoidably faulty” – provide the basis for a counterargument that rests at the heart of the research question in this thesis. For example, consider the “global mediatized marketplace” described by Kline et al. (2003, p. 31) as a totalizing system in the video game industry and culture, where technology, marketing, and culture work as a potentially repressive and inescapable structure. Kline et al. argue that the video game industry “is becoming dominated by its marketing circuit” which is at this point “not so much in the driving seat [of economic institutions, but rather] giving directions, helping to steer a route towards profitability” (p. 219). Derrida would see the interaction circuits of marketing, technology, and culture as an inescapable and repressive (i.e. totalizing) structure, which leads to homogenization and the suppression of difference (Taylor, ibid.). According to Kline et al., this system is increasingly steered – if not dominated – by marketing concerns, which would help to explain the lack of variety in current video game titles and the marketing push for titles that might turn into a “supergame”, i.e. a totalizing product in the game market (Kline et al. 2003, p.237-238). However, Mark C. Taylor’s counterargument to Derrida is that “any adequate interpretation of emerging network culture must be able to describe the non-linear systems that act as a whole but do not totalize” (Taylor 2001, p. 155). 181 This thesis argues that a hypercommodified Nobrow dynamic where marketing plays a significant role in cultural development, as described by Kline et al., is actually representative of digital culture beyond video games. The question is whether Taylor’s argument about whole systems that do not totalize can apply to remix as an open interactive system that generates new kinds of artifact. In other words, can remix be considered a valuable activity that keeps a “global mediatized marketplace” open to emergent changes rather than remaining a closed and inescapably repressive system. 2.7 On complexity, emergence, and ecological “flow” One of the primary reasons for the critical emergency we are facing is the insistence of deconstructive critics that systems and structures inevitably totalize and thus necessarily exclude otherness and repress difference. Having reached this conclusion, critics endlessly repeat the same point. The paradoxical result is that deconstruction’s solicitation of difference ends up repeating the same gesture of totalization it condemns in others. This strategy ends in an interminable mourning that leaves difference fragmented without hope of significant change. (Taylor 2001, p. 155) Arguing the value of remix as a counterbalance to the totalizing tendency of a “global mediatized marketplace” requires seeing the activity and its artifacts as part of a complex cultural ecology. From this perspective of open systems, it is argued that new phenomena emerge from the highly dynamic interactions taking place within (Maturana & Varela 1980). Such systems, it is further argued, require an openness that allows for aleatory [i.e. chance] events to change the system in unexpected ways. This perspective obviously raises the question about the role of design, as “the process of making proposals for change” (Woodbury et al. 2005), whether from within or outside the system. Since this thesis has emerged from the increasingly design focused environment of the Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT), it is important to consider at this stage how the discussion that has been presented in the thesis so far is inextricably related to a design discourse. Notably, the role of complexity and reflection, with respect both to design activities and to remix as a complex cultural system, seems to be a key characteristic in both environments. This suggests that the discussion of activities currently taking place popular culture through the dynamic interactions of technology, culture, and marketing circuits is highly relevant to SIAT’s emerging learning environment. While many argue that design produces complex artifacts, and that design practice can be captured as complex formalisms, I argue that we need to understand design as an activity that responds to situations of varying complexity. The key distinction is a question of understanding design as a prospective action, that is actively reflecting within a present moment on future action and contingency, as opposed to a retrospective event from which we view the design process or artifact as a stable past action with little attention given to context. In the former, the relationship between activity and situation in design is integral and dynamic. For example, Schön views design as a conversation 182 (Schön 1983), Rittel understands design as argumentation (Rittel and Webber 1973). (Wakkary, 2005) This view of the design process, as explained by SIAT professor Ron Wakkary, involves an “integral and dynamic” relationship between designer and design context. It is a view that echoes Bronfenbrenner’s notion of “reciprocal interplay” of individual and environment in a cultural ecology (1979). The metaphors of design as a dialogue and/or as an argument, according Wakkary, lead to the implication that the dynamics of design activity are “reliant on interpretation and multiple perspectives” (Wakkary, ibid). Further, as explicitly recognized in the above description by Wakkary, Schön’s notion of self-reflection and the metaphor of design as a “conversation” that takes place in practice relates to “future action and contingency” rather than simply reflecting and talking about past events (Wakkary 2005). While these “conversations” are complex, and whether they are recognized as a form of “design”, they are nevertheless “everyday situations”: The metaphors explicitly describe an activity in which the actions of speaking/listening, and the nature of what is being said/understood are intertwined and dynamically inform each other. In addition, like a conversation, design, and in turn complexity, is quite ordinary and ubiquitous. And so, an alternate way to consider design is that it is an activity that is integrally related to complex yet everyday situations. (Wakkary 2005) In mentioning complexity as characteristic of “everyday situations” and design as a typical, ordinary activity in such environments, an analogy can be drawn to the remix phenomenon. Whether we actually refer to “the process of making proposals for change” as design, or as “a conversation”, or as “argumentation”, the activity is essentially the same as a remix. The criticism of such a definition of remix when viewed in such broad terms is the same as the criticism of an all-encompassing view design: Is everything design? Or, is everything a remix, as the case may be? If so, what usefulness – or value – comes from such broad and potentially vapid classification? Alternately, is such an overreaching classification of human activity simply another form of a totalizing system, as discussed previously? Whether this broad discourse is produced by designers or by DJs is irrelevant; in both cases the human activity involved relates to changes in a given situation and in existing artifacts. What results – or is inspired – in both cases is what Lucy Suchman calls “situated action” that is purposeful and may involve planning that may well be successful (Suchman 1987). As Haig-Brown notes in terms of planning to catch a fish: “True, there are plenty of times when one makes a plan, follows it through and everything works out exactly as it should” (Haig-Brown 1959, p.246). The same could be said for design or remixing. As Haig-Brown would argue in this context, the designer or the DJ would have “no difficulty in taking credit for these occasions” (ibid.) when the plan work or the mix works actually out. However, Haig-Brown would later begin “to have more rather more trouble with [his] fine theory” on the success that is determined by judging conditions right and in implementing “an exact performance” (ibid.). Suchman would likely concur, since she views purposeful, situated action as ad hoc and not determined by the existence and implementation of a particular plan (Suchman 1987). Using the DJ as an example, the remix begins as an intention to transform (at least) one work by breaking it apart and/or combining it with another. In other words, as with design, a remix 183 proposes a change in artifact or artifacts, and does so without any certainty that the subsequent mix – the result of implementing the proposal or plan of action– will work. The mix is therefore open to chance. The chance that the mix will be effective and produce its own artifact can be increased with technical skill and resources, for example, the equipment may provide the DJ the ability to “beat match” easily, i.e. synchronizing the pitch and tempo of one record so that it “flows” into the next. Alternately, the DJ may possess sufficient knowledge of the records that are available to mix that the decision process on which record to use next takes on the instinctive “flow” that Csikszentmihalyi associates specifically to a “psychology of discovery and invention” (1996). He relates this feeling to being “absorbed in painting, or playing a difficult piece of music”, among other situations: Watching a good play or reading a stimulating book also seems to produce the same mental state. I called it "flow," because this was a metaphor several respondents gave for how it felt when their experience was most enjoyable--it was like being carried away by a current, everything moving smoothly without effort. (Csikszentmihalyi 1991, pp. xii-xiv) While in previous comments by major league catcher Doug Mirabelli on catching a knuckleball describe “a relaxed state” when he’s performing well in his role as a catcher (Browne & Mirabelli 2004), this “flow” is not necessarily a relaxation but rather a heightened attention to the complexity of a challenging situation. Such a situation actively engages the individual, for example through attentively listening to a story on one hand, or in reflectively relating a personal experience in some form of narrative. In either case, as well as in Mirabelli’s case and for other high-level performers, there can be a feeling described as being “lost” in the situation, or what Csikszentmihalyi calls a “narrowing of attention”: Contrary to expectation, "flow" usually happens not during relaxing moments of leisure and entertainment, but rather when we are actively involved in a difficult enterprise, in a task that stretches our mental and physical abilities. Any activity can do it … the first symptom of flow is a narrowing of attention on a clearly defined goal. We feel involved, concentrated, absorbed. We know what must be done, and we get immediate feedback as to how well we are doing. (Csikszentmihalyi 1991, pp. xii-xiv) The language used by Csikszentmihalyi – “goal”, “feedback”, “task”, “mental and physical abilities”, and “activity” – all suggest the discourse once again of design, as a practical activity where such engagement can take place. Yet through another coordinated lens, these same terms suggest the more theoretical discourses of cultural psychology and activity theory. Of course, they could also be associated with the DJ’s approach to mixing records, while working with “relentless” feedback loops, in the task of proposing a mix by selecting records, then attempting to implement this new “design” by “narrowing focus” on matching the beats, with the “clearly defined goal” of a seamless transition between records that now “fit” together. The point here is that there are multiple perspectives for such a “space”, whether in terms of design, psychology, activity, or electronic music: 184 There’s always more than one map to the territory. You just have to build the terrain. Why do you like the sounds of electronic music? Because you need to. Because there’s a relentless progression from need to act, from gesture and thought, to that machinic cultural conditioning. Input, output. The sequence is tight. The loops are relentless. Play your hand, find out what the dealer deals. The rest is remix. Unpack the meanings, unstuff the fragments and the logic remains the same: the part speaks for the whole, the whole is an extension of the part. (Miller 2004, p.9) Paul D. Miller’s description of “relentless” loops in a cycle of input/output/remix provides some insight on the tensions between our “machinic cultural conditioning” (Ibid). Metaphorically, we can see ourselves moving from the Newtonian view of the world as a physical machine of interconnecting parts and motions (Taylor 2001), to the holistic view of the world as an entire integrated system (Morçöl 2005, p.9). In terms of design, we can look at Terry Winograd’s view of designing “in response to specific (typically complex) and not generic situations, a shift [Winograd] coined as the move from machinery to habitat” (Wakkary 2005, italics in original). This move could be described in terms of designing from the outside – in the instrumental sense of operating the machine – to designing as part of an ecological system, i.e. operating within and as part of the environment. Others describe a move that is taking us towards a view of the world as a game. Instead of telling the machine what to do and listening for its response, design becomes far more intuitive, absorbing the designer in an activity where “the sequence is tight” (Miller, ibid). This “tight” design activity becomes what John Seely Brown calls the “tinkering” that takes place in a game-world environment where “recreation become re-creation” (Brown, December 10, 2004). The intense and competitive dynamics in this environment of the game produces a blurring between the interacting concerns of technology, culture, and marketing in the shift towards a “global mediatized marketplace” (Kline et al., 2003). Viewing this “profound cultural shift” (Graham, in press) currently taking place as a turn towards the game metaphor is a controversial subject that is beyond the scope of the arguments presented here. Many cultural texts have presented similar philosophical themes on the construction of reality, from novels such as Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1652) to recent films such as The Matrix (Warchowski et al. 1999). The view of the world as a multi-level game involves psychologically complex situations that emerge at points where the levels (or perspectives) of the game overlap. Some of these perspectives involve a self-reflection and self-reference that produces what Hofstadter and Taylor would describe as “strange loops” (Taylor 2001, p. 73). This is a critique that has been conveyed effectively in the film eXistenZ (1999) by director David Cronenberg: The point dramatized [in eXistenZ] is clear - if such vivid intricate virtual reality can be created and experienced, as more time is spent in the "gameworld", players may have increasing difficulty discerning what is real and what is gameplay. One pays a price to flee reality, it seems. Our real lives become so "gameified" that they may feel no realer than fantasy entertainment. This is further complicated by the idea of one virtual reality "A" being a game within another, "B", which makes the game "B" seem like "reality". Our hold on actual reality becomes fluid and temporal. (eXistenZ, wikipedia.org, March 30, 2006) 185 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 95. From the factory clock to the game pod: the machinic metaphor in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) and the game metaphor in David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999). The move from the mechanistic metaphor of Newton’s universal “clock”, as portrayed in the early 20th century in films such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926/2002), to the cybernetic metaphor of multiple levels of the “game” can be seen in more recent movies such as Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999). So in terms of this game environment, is “flow” now also part of the equation? Csikszentmihalyi’s descriptions of the state of “flow” are often in reference to game or sport environments as much as they are to music, art, or other engaging experiences where it could be said that our “hold on actual reality becomes fluid and temporal” (eXistenZ, on wikipedia.org, March 30, 2006). Beyond the philosophical issues this view raises are the practical considerations and questions: How is this game will be played? Who will be allowed to play it? What roles will participants will be allowed to play once they do end up in the “game”? These questions, at least in terms of this thesis on remix in networked digital culture, once again turn on the issue of the spread of the “global mediatized marketplace” as a “totalizing system”. In reengaging this discussion, we turn again to the argument from Kline et al. in Digital Play (2003) that the intense interaction between technology, marketing, and culture is creating homogeneity in video games choices available to consumers. This standardization is the result of the need to minimize risk involved in game titles that require massive marketing budgets and worldwide distribution in order to be successful. Because of the large budgets involved in producing and distributing a game in the current industry conditions, the marketing objective therefore plays an dominant role in both the design of the game from a cultural standpoint, and in terms of the technology used to both design and eventually release the game to consumers (ibid, pp. 237-238). This same argument, though contextualized in terms of Hollywood movies rather than video games, is made by film actor Gabriel Byrne. This scenario where “the marketing objective” dominates the dynamics of film production, he argues, effectively produces what he calls “McMovies” (Byrne, in Singer et al. 2002). New films are seen to be formulaic and predictable, and criticized for being driven by marketing and technological effects rather than story (Byrne, ibid. note: Byrne’s criticisms are further discussed in the appendices or in a paper dealing exclusively with Artifact 5.4). In conjunction with this admittedly non-expert discussion on complex systems, we could view the trend towards homogenous video game titles and Hollywood movies in “the global 186 mediatized marketplace” as becoming a “totalizing” structure that represses diversity and becomes inescapable in its global reach. An association is often made in discussing homogenizing systems in culture to what are seen as states of equilibrium in the branch of physics known as thermodynamics. While these analogies are beyond the non-expert scope of this work, the key point in invoking this discourse is inverse relationship between information and noise, as well as the tendency for differences in closed systems to even out and become more uniform over time, e.g. an ice melting at room temperature, or boiling water cooling off in the same environment. In such dynamics of a closed system, entropy tends to increase as a measure of “the total amount of energy that is irretrievably disordered” (Carrier 2005, in explaining the “Second Law of Thermodynamics”), i.e. more noise, less information as all things even out as differences become less apparent (see Taylor 2001 p.93 and pp.113-117). In relation to this lens of physics, we could ask if the tendency towards homogenization in video games and movies in Kline et al.’s “global mediatized marketplace” is equivalent to the trend towards the thermodynamic state of “equilibrium”? In other words, is this dynamic system of interaction between technology, marketing, and culture in effect leading to the repression of individual voices, identities and new narratives forms? Jay Lemke answers this question, which in turn leads to its own question: But in the real world many complex systems, and all the ones on our list of examples, do not behave [as homogenizing, thermodynamic states of equilibrium]. … The living Planet as a whole is today further from the state of equilibrium than it was 4 billion years ago, not closer to it. It would be very easy to predict the future of a culture, of an ecosocial system, if it behaved thermodynamically: it would disintegrate, collapse, become homogeneous and incapable of further change. Distinctions would be lost, diversity would disappear, decay would outstrip construction, useless wastes would be more common than useful resources. But in fact our history has veered far away from this path to the ecosocial death of equilibrium, placing many buffers between us and the long slide to ruin. How? (Lemke 1995) As argued throughout this thesis, Mark C. Taylor offers an answer to this question in terms of particular kinds of closed systems, complex adaptive systems (Taylor, p.156). The structure of such systems maintain their own identity and organization, yet are at the same time open and permeable to their external environments: After considering the logic of networking, it should be clear that systems and structures – be they biological, social, or cultural – are more diverse and complex than deconstructive critics realize. Emergent self-organizing systems do act as a whole, yet do not totalize. Furthermore, emergence involves an irreducible unpredictability that creates opportunity for aleatory events. Phase transitions occur at thresholds or margins, which both make networks possible and leave them open and thus permeable. Far from repressing differences, global activity increases the diversity upon which creative and productive life depends. (Taylor 2001, p.155) 187 This idea of a “permeable” network is equivalent to what John Seely Brown describes as a “porous” organization (Brown, December 10, 2004). As will be further discussed “Chapter 3: A Journey Towards Appropriate Data”, Brown and his colleague John Hagel view the process of creating value in a “hybrid economy” or “eco-web” as requiring this kind of exchange with one’s environment (Hagel and Brown, in Yang 2001). In pointing to the “complex dynamic loops [that shape how] domains interact with each other” as the source of “the biggest opportunities” for creating value (ibid.), Brown and Hagel are effectively describing Taylor’s “phase transitions [that] occur at thresholds or margins“ (Taylor, ibid.). These kinds of open, “porous” systems are not likely to be viewed as the traditional – and metaphorical – “well-oiled machines” of the Industrial Age. Regardless, the argument for such systems is not for operational efficiency, but rather for ecological adaptability. In terms of the Schön’s “reflective practitioner”, in a state of Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow”, Roderick Haig-Brown best sums up the important role adaptability and identity in such complex systems when pressures of efficiency and uniformity enter the picture: In the end, if any real efficiency could be attained, the sport itself would die and be forgotten … it is fishing that falls within the limits of certain traditions, yet allows for growth and development; it is fishing where unexpected things can and do happen, fishing where a man has room to move and think and see and hear and be himself. (Haig-Brown 1957, p.163) The “room to move and think and see and hear” as part of the ecological system of his sport allowed Haig-Brown to adjust to the aleatory, “unexpected things [that] can and do happen” while fishing. Yet as much as his method developed over the years to the point where he saw his identity only as an integral part of the river’s ecosystem, fishing still provided Haig-Brown with the environment for him to “be himself”. In coordinating his lens with our discourse of ecology and remix, we find that his fishing activity as a system that is closed in terms of its traditions, yet still open to “growth and development” (Haig-Brown, ibid.). 2.8 On narrative, identity, and autopoiesis The infusion of issues of community and identity into the discussion has enriched the theory and my own practices. (Cole 2003) This final section of the theoretical underpinnings of Travels in Intertextuality addresses two allimportant issues for any writer: narrative and identity. Both of these concerns can be viewed in terms of voice. Narrative can be seen simply as a material expression of a writer’s voice, while identity can be viewed as the subjective framing of such expressions. This identity can be seen in various degrees of subjectivity in the expression itself, as well as in the way expressions are received by the audience (or “community”). In this sense, narrative and identity are both individually and socially constructed, i.e. voice as not just what is said, but how it is heard. At this point, we must deal with the difficult question of, “Where does identity come from?” It is the question of how individuals know they are separate “things” from the world they inhabit, and 188 beyond that distinction, how they know they are distinguishable from each other. It is the issue of subjectivity, and how this subjectivity continually forms and is formed by the artifacts it creates from its objective environment. In other words, subjectivity is objectively constituted. Humans have an emergent, continually developing identity, a linguistically mediated cognitive construct - an historical series of knowings, learnings, and doings - that recursively emerge from the relationship between a socially embedded individual and her or his social and physical environments over the history of their life. Thus, the individual participates in the ‘sociocognitive metabolism’ which is ‘the entire network of interactions and processes through which people produce socially significant, socially exchangeable meaning’ (Graham 1999) The analysis by Phil Graham of how identity is a phenomenon that emerges recursively, both over time and through an individual’s socially embedded activities, is echoed in a very effective 1996 paper by Mark R. Gover titled The Narrative Emergence of Identity. In this paper Gover discusses the “semiotic boundary” that develops over time between the individual and his or her world. This same discourse is also important in Yjrö Engeström’s Learning by Expanding (1987) in terms of how the subjective internalization and externalization of the objective environment contributes to the notion of self in the individual. This internalization/externalization, according to Engeström’s model of expansive learning, potentially reaches points where this context is radically reframed, moving through Bateson’s levels of learning (1972) from reactive to expansive learning. Similar ideas are also expressed in the stream-of-consciousness mix of expressions in Paul D. Miller’s writings, where he describes his identity emerging through the “sonic collage” of his DJ activities: No matter how much I travel, how much the global nomad, the troubadour, or the bard I become, this sonic collage becomes my identity. Blues musicians speak of “going to the crossroads” – that space where everyone could play the same song but flipped it every which way until it became “their own sound.” In jazz, it’s the fluid process of “call and response” between the players of an ensemble. These are the predecessors of the mixing board metaphor for how we think and live in this age of information. (Miller 2004, p24) In not only invoking the metaphor of the “mixing board” in the above quote, Miller is essentially framing voice and identity in the digital age as streams that are able to flow in and out of a narrative, much like the instrumental or vocal tracks in a live or recorded audio mix. Furthermore, he also raises the important (but at the same time futile) debate between whether narrative is a cognitive scheme of individual minds or, alternately, is socially determined. This debate relates to the longstanding question of whether familiar narratives show evidence of “deep” universal mental structures (Chomsky 1965), for example, through commonalities in folktales and myths across cultures (Campbell 1972). Take for example the common narratives of “crossing the river Styx in to Hades”, “going to the crossroads”, or the literary classic Faust by Goethe. Are these similar stories evidence of universal structures in mind and language if the same narratives have been seen in many other cultures beyond Greek mythology, blues music and German literature? Or, as is offered as a counterpoint to this view, do narratives come from “pure” 189 cultural forms that are merely appropriated by the mind, potentially leading to “a type of social determinism in which endogenous or biological factors threaten to play no role at all” (Gover 1996). The result of these two contrasting frameworks being debated extensively is what Gover refers to as the “intellectual cul-de-sac” of what is essentially a “chicken or egg” question. This debate involves: “the quest for an absolute ground of narrative, either as a structure embedded in the mind or as a stylized cultural tradition” (Gover, ibid.). According to Gover, it is “ultimately a crazy-making pursuit”. So rather than debate existential, philosophical questions that are without resolution, the origin of narrative is not going to be debated here. Instead, the context will be expanded by accepting the question of whether such an absolute ground is possible as being, in the Bakhtin sense, “unfinalizable” (Morson & Emerson 1990, p.60). This same approach of moving beyond the debate was taken by Gover, which allowed him to “explore other ontologies within which we might begin to conceptualize an alternative view” (Gover, ibid.). The intent of this thesis then becomes the more practical concerns of “writing” in a digital context. This will involve an attempt to look into the cultural historical processes going on in such writing – i.e. “digital creativity” (Lessig December 11, 2004) – from an overlap of technological, cultural, and marketing perspectives (Kline et al, 2003), in conjunction with Wartofsky’s (1979) three levels of artifact mediation in Cole’s Cultural Psychology: a once and future discipline (1996). Fully aware that the language and explanations in this attempt can easily become abstract and convoluted, later chapters, appendices, and/or related papers will attempt to situate the various ideas presented in this thesis to practical examples of remix taking place digital media artifacts. These are artifacts that I’ve produced both prior to and during this period of graduate research, and in this sense involve significant self-reflection, though, as discussed in earlier sections, offer both the potential for insights and for difficulties in a cultural analysis. The artifact analysis, found in the appendices of this thesis or in individual papers that deal with each artifact, will hopefully allow me to explain the various theoretical concepts presented here by sharing the developmental stories of the artifacts themselves. This approach was taken with one of the artifacts (Artifact 5.11), specifically the extensive travelogue that opens this thesis. In addressing the theoretical underpinnings of this work, these developmental narratives are essentially situated in the “life course” of the self-reflective researcher and writer as an individual who is involved in a “reciprocal interplay” with his research environment, i.e. remix culture. An analytical approach that relates theory to data through by contextualizing it within an individual’s narrative development is inspired by the ideas of Michael Cole and the novelist/neurologist Oliver Sacks, both of whom developed their ideas from the vision of a “Romantic Science” put forward by Vygotsky’s colleague Alexander Luria (Cole 1996, pp. 343-347). These ideas will be further explored in the development of the analytic method used in this work and described in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis”. As Paul D. Miller concedes, in an attempt to workaround explaining the frequently difficult concepts in his book Rhythm Science: “Sometimes stories work better” (Miller 2004, p. 101). At least, it is argued, stories work better in the case of the human species: As a result, only humans, as a species, make and have a cumulative history of social stasis and change spanning thousands of generations… Cognitive skills are not a property (much less an innate property) of individuals, but rather are a 190 shared property of humans in society as a result of human culture, and culture develops over generations, with a changing and non-repeatable history. (Richardson, in Mackenzie 2003) As mentioned in earlier sections of this chapter, one of the most accepted claims on what distinguishes human beings from other creatures and organisms is that humans are the only species that “make and have a cumulative history” while featuring a “culture [that] develops over generations” (Cole 1996, p. 8). The issue with this cultural dimension, according to Cole, is not that it is unique to humans, but rather that “it is easy to overlook this human propensity for culture and history because they are both always present in our daily activities and social interactions” (ibid.). In other words, there is always a cultural-historical context in our lives, whether we’re aware of it or not. Culture and history are always mediating our practical, everyday activities – for example, through various forms of language – while also mediating our goals and intentions for these activities. As we interact with our environment, we not only consume its culture and history, we simultaneously contribute to it, with some viewing remix not “as production, but as active consumption [where] Remix happens as a bi-product of consumption” (Boyd 2005). As Engeström states in terms of cultural-historical activity theory: “Human activity is always a contradictory unity of production and reproduction, invention and conservation” (Engeström 1987). Of course we identify and connect with our environment through its physical characteristics and our physiological condition. However, we also engage it through an ”interface” where our own culture and history interact and overlap with that of the environment. Gover calls this interface the semiotic boundary (Gover 1996, see Figure 96). Figure 96. Mark R. Gover’s depiction of identity’s formation over time with respect to the semiotic boundary between individual and environment. 191 What results for any environment, whether it a social system, a digital world, or a physical space, is the cumulative effects of our actions in producing the bits of culture and history that weave together to form a semiotic boundary. This boundary identifies us individually through its construction out of the building blocks “of code, formulae, rhythmic models, fragments of social languages, etc., [which] pass into the text and are redistributed within it” (Barthes 1981, p.39). In Barthes’ language, the individual’s identity would be considered a “text” which interacts the background of our shared cultural environment. Barthes calls this environment “the intertext”, which he sees as “a general field of anonymous formulae” (ibid.). Or, put differently, the intertext as composed of mixes that are indistinguishable (“anonymous”) from the overall pool of cultural artifacts, in direct contrast to those that have some sort of identity. It is the semiotic boundary that maintains the unity of the individual identity. It is, pardon the pun, every bit of an identity as the identity derived in the physical space from our physiological traits and physical mannerisms. As the demands of subjective internalization/externalization increase, the notion of self emerges though practical activities involving both natural and cultural interactions. At the same time, innovative changes begin to take place in the objective environment through the continued development of a greater number and variety of cultural artifacts, eventually producing a “qualitative change in terms of the mediational potential” of these artifacts and the cultural environment as a whole (Cole 1996, p. 114). Yet in conjunction with these qualitative changes in the objective environment, and just as importantly, innovative changes begin to take place in the subjective framing of this environment. Such changes lead to the possibility of “reframing radically some fundamental hypotheses about how the world works” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.104). This kind of development could be compared to what Csikszentmihalyi suggests in The Evolving Self (1994), i.e. where “the boundaries of the self [are] expanded” The well-matched use of skills provides a sense of control over our actions, yet because we are too busy to think of ourselves, it does not matter whether we are in control or not, whether we are winning or losing. Often we feel a sense of transcendence, as if the boundaries of the self had been expanded. The sailor feels at one with the wind, the boat, and the sea; the singer feels a mysterious sense of universal harmony. In those moments the awareness of time disappears, and hours seem to flash by without our noticing. (Csikszentmihalyi 1994, p. xiixiv) Creative human activities lead to a recurring process of new tools and cultural objects becoming externalized through individual activity and then folded back into the activity, thereby resulting in adaptive changes to the individual in a cyclical and ecological process. It is a process which can be viewed as essentially consistent with Marshall McLuhan’s notion of how the tools that we shape end up shaping us by changing our environment (McLuhan 1994, in Vieta 2003). Regardless of whether it is seen as determinist or constructivist, this same idea has been argued throughout the research presented here in terms of remix activities, i.e. the idea of remix artifacts become building blocks for new mixes. Furthermore, it has been extensively demonstrated in the artifact analysis discussed later in the work and included in the Appendix. 192 Following Brown’s notion of “reframing radically” one’s worldview in response to changes in an environment, and combined with Engeström’s analysis of activity as base unit of cultural and developmental analysis, a revolutionary point may eventually be reached from continued practical activity. Changes brought about by the continued contribution of new tools and cultural artifacts through practice reach a point where a “new model for the activity is designed and implemented” (Engeström 1987). Building off of Marx’s idea of practical-critical activity – or the revolutionary practice taken up by Vygotsky later on – Engeström explains how the internalization and externalization of tools as part of creative and expansive learning activities actually changes the environment: [T]he expansive cycle of an activity system begins with almost exclusive emphasis on internalization, on socializing and training the novices to become competent members of the activity as it is routinely carried out. Creative externalization occurs first in the form of discrete individual innovations. As the disruptions and contradictions of the activity become more demanding, internalization takes increasingly the form of critical self-reflection - and externalization, search for solutions, increases. Externalization reaches its peak when a new model for the activity is designed and implemented. As the new model stabilizes itself, internalization of its inherent ways and means becomes again the dominant form of learning and development. (Engeström 1998)) Thus, echoing Schön’s (1983) “reflective practitioner” these changes to the environment – i.e. the activity’s context – begin to demand more and more self-reflection by the individual as the environment becomes increasingly complex and challenging. The changes, according to Engeström, may eventually require a redefinition – or expansion – of the entire model of activity. In framing this process through Gover’s view of the semiotic boundary, we could look at expansion as a new identity emerging from changes in individual’s the context or overall narrative. These changes result in and result from tensions and dynamics between competing meta-narratives (“worldviews”) of the activity. A potentially “radical” reframing of this perspective can then take place in what Gover calls the narrative emergence of identity (1996). Since humans are the only species with culture and history, and therefore are able to share narratives with each other and across generations, human social systems must therefore – by definition – involve cultural-historical contexts in order to be identified and defined as such. This applies to any human social system. Whether the system relates to technology, culture, marketing, or some other object of activity, the key point is that it can be defined as a system – as a unity – and therefore has an identity apart from the larger environment in which it is situated. These cultural-historical contexts revolve around the unique stories that distinguish one social system from all the others, even if these systems are highly dynamic and interactive. In other words, stories are what culturally identify the person from the group, or, alternately, the foreground of an individual’s identity from the background of “self-producing and reproducing social entities”: Herein lies the link between language, identity, and meaning: People are, invariably, socially and materially embedded and constituted. Thus their ontogenesis is embedded and constituted in objective circumstances. Their identities are produced and reproduced in interrelated social environments. Social environments, which are necessarily material environments, also stand in 193 objective interdiscursive relationships with each other. Within these environments, which are themselves self-producing and reproducing social entities - or autopoietic identities - individuals learn, develop, and construct discursive relationships between themselves and their world using the intertextual, heteroglossic, discursive, and ideological meaning-making resources provided by the social environments that they inhabit. (Graham 1999, p.8) In the sociocultural perspective of Gover’s narrative emergence of identity, “narrative and identity are not separable entities but, instead, serve to mutually constitute one another” (Gover 1996). This mutual constitution takes place through a complex interplay of time, affect, artifacts, selfreflexiveness, and activity (ibid.). The process is obviously complex; simultaneous construction both of narratives and identities is so fundamental and common in human social systems that it can be difficult to gauge where one person’s story ends and another’s begins. Furthermore, if the effect of globalization is to intensify the interactions between various communities through technological development and media expansion (Taylor 2001, p. 155), an intensification of this interplay of narratives and identities would seem to be the reasonable outcome of individuals trying to “find their voice”, or in John Seabrook’s Nobrow description, looking for their “place in the buzz” (Seabrook 2000, pp.3-44). This propensity to communicate through narrative activities is, according to Gover, a conversation that “cannot be stopped” (Gover 1996). Echoing Bakhtin’s dialogism (Morson & Emerson, pp.366432), Gover describes such conversation as able to include communicating one own viewpoint through the use of stories and the appropriation of others’ viewpoints: The value of a sociocultural view for teaching, helping, and learning stems from the fact that our personal stories are not simply heard, they are used by others in ways which make them forever a two-way street. That is, in spite of narrative's ability to express an actor's unique worldview, one person's story remains another person's metaphor. Through stories, we have the predilection for vicariously inserting ourselves into the position of others in ways that make their stories simultaneously both public and private. This is a human propensity that cannot be stopped, and one that has the potential to both enrich and constrict our personal identities. (Gover 1996) Again building off of similar ideas of Bakhtin in terms of the novel as chronotrope, or, as “a way of understanding experience [and] the nature of events and actions” (Morson & Emerson, p.367), all of this dialogic activity takes place in cultural-historical contexts that “vary in qualities…[and] presume different kinds of space and time” (ibid. italics in original). Through the multiple perspectives and subjective positions of numerous individual participants in a human social system, and combined with qualitative variations in space and time, Gover sees semiotic boundaries as becoming complex, self-reflective and self-referential environments, where “like Russian dolls, there is always a story within a story” (Gover 1996, see also Cole & Engeström 1993, pp. 18-22). Such forms of social and organizational communication – i.e. sociocultural and sociolinguistic systems – have been related in key discourses to biological organisms and the function of autopoiesis in the development of these systems (see Luhmann 1995, Lemke 1995, Graham & 194 McKenna 2000). The difficult term autopoiesis has been touched on previously in mention what Taylor describes as “complex adaptive systems” (Taylor, p.156), Further discussion on the various “orders” of autopoietic systems has also been worked into the development of the multi-lens methodology in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis”. It is important to recognize the critical qualification (as maintained in the earlier discussion of complex and ecological systems) that much of natural science-related discussion is beyond the author’s expertise. While my background is far from the biological sciences, the autopoietic discourse is not completely beyond my expertise, as is further discussed in the development of the method used in this thesis. My own academic introduction to the term autopoiesis actually dates back to undergraduate studies in the mid-1990s in what is now the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. At the time, the term was used in a very introductory way to look at various forms of organizational behavior. Only very recently has the term re-emerged in my studies by integrating some of the ideas presented in Phil Graham’s work in communications and then applying these ideas in an attempt to look for value in the sociolinguistic systems of remix. I therefore find it interesting to consider, whether in relation to my own work or more generally across related discourses, not only how the term autopoiesis has culturally crossed into other disciplines, but also what the implications are for this particular use of language. In Graham and McKenna’s A theoretical and analytical synthesis of autopoiesis and sociolinguistics for the study of organizational communication (2000), the term autopoiesis is presented as used in describing systems whose boundaries, behaviours, and power relations are continually maintained and redefined through a “self-making” circular process (p.3). The theory of autopoiesis is a key contribution from the seminal work of Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in the 1970s. It was eventually published as Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living (1980). In it, they proposed autopoietic systems as “homeostatic machines” where “autopoiesis is necessary and sufficient to characterize the organization of living systems” (1980, p.xviii). The key notion is that an autopoietic system produces its own components (Graham & McKenna, p.3), which in turn structure the entire system as a unity. As a result, such a system maintains its integrity and identity despite the constant flux of its dynamically changing components. Figure 97. An abstract representation of the dynamics of autopoiesis, leading to “the richness of the system's behavior” (Rudrauf et al. 2003). 195 As self-organizing unities, autopoietic systems are said to exist on at least three levels, or orders (Maturana & Varela 1980, p.107-108). While there may be more than first, second, and third-order autopoietic systems, any order beyond this is not particularly useful in attempting to make practical use of this biological lens for investigating remix. Since these orders create a hierarchy of autopoietic systems, it creates the view of a “circle that seems to be closed” but which keeps from collapsing in on itself by being “necessarily implicated with other entities, systems, and networks” (Taylor 2001, p.90). By addressing the interdynamic relationship between first, second, and thirdorder autopoietic systems, Maturana and Varela’s theory provides a way to resolve the paradoxes of self-reflexivity in “observing systems” (von Forrester 1960, in Taylor, p. 88): On the one hand, if the observer remains outside the system, it is not clear whether knowledge of its inner workings is possible; on the other hand, if the observer is part of the system, self-observation leads to infinite regress that makes complete knowledge of the system impossible. (Taylor, ibid.) Deconstructing the relationship between these three orders will help demonstrate the problem described above by Taylor. Biologically, the first-order systems are cellular, as in, the inner workings of a reproductive cell within a larger organism. This larger organism represents the second-order autopoietic system; it is a meta-cellular organization of individual cells. Third-order autopoietic systems are social domains comprised of groups of second-order systems, which, as mentioned, are themselves composed of first-order systems (ibid.). Third-order systems would include communities and groups of individuals, or populations of species, institutions, corporations, nationalities, subcultures, etc. Along with the development of social phenomena, communication systems, and language, there is also a consensual domain of language. This consensual domain is where the descriptions and distinctions emerge on how language is used (e.g. rules and norms) in shaping the third-order autopoietic system. Within each domain, cognition is present, specific phenomena emerge, and a “universal logic” exists. According to Maturana and Varela, this internal logic specifically refers to “the relations possible between the unities that generate these domains” (1980, p.121). While cognition is present in all three orders, it is only at the third-order where this cognition can become “selfconscious”, i.e. where a “living system [that] is capable of being an observer can interact with those [observations] of its own descriptive states, which are linguistic description of itself” (Maturana and Varela, ibid. cited in Graham and McKenna, 2000, p.13). In doing so, the observer is effectively engaging with its cultural environment, and through this engagement, is capable of observing itself observing. Furthermore, it is capable of observing itself observing itself in a self-reflective way that can produce “strange loops” of recursive feedback (Taylor 2001, p.73). 196 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 98. The problem of self-reflection and the “strange loops” of recursive feedback, as depicted by Gordon Pask for Heinz von Forrester in The Natural History of Networks (1960, see Taylor 2001, p.73-88 and Hayles 1999, p.133). Similar ideas were adapted in Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay for the film Being John Malkovich (1999) by Spike Jonze This raises the obvious question of how a system’s identity and organizational structure can essentially maintain its integrity over time without collapsing into a recursive feedback loop? This scenario would be equivalent to the “subjective implosion” that Paul D. Miller attempts to forestall by writing and DJing (Miller 2004, p.60). It has been depicted in the 1999 film Being John Malkovich, where, in a strange but highly original scene, actor John Malkovich enters a “portal” that leads him into his own mind only to find reflections of himself on the faces of all the “individuals” in his mental space (Kauffman et al., 1999). The question that is raised from pop culture examples is the ecological issue of how one might appropriately observe a self-organizing system if not actually part of it. In a paper examining autopoiesis in terms of city jurisdictions and governments, Göktug Morçöl provides the following response: Autopoietic systems maintain their integrity by continually renewing themselves through exchanges of components (molecules) with their environments. In their exchange of components with the environment, the system “adapts” to their environments. The organizational form of the system (i.e., its self image) determines how to adapt, not the other way around. In other words, autopoietic systems are self-referential in their relations with their environments. Their structures (components) continually change, but their organizations (relations between components) remain the same. As such, autopoietic systems are organizationally closed, self-referential, or autonomous. Autopoietic systems do change, but on their own terms. They resist external influences to change them. (Morçöl 2005, p. 10) The metaphor of a “puppet” is also used extensively in the film Being John Malkovich, specifically, with respect to the notion of having agency over a system and acting on it as from an outside position, i.e. the puppeteer. In other words, a puppet is not an autopoietic system on its own because it does not change on its own terms, but rather changes when it becomes part of an autopoietic system. In contrast, the notion of a self-organizing and self-regulating system – such as 197 an individual human being or a school of fish– is the complete opposite of externally driven systems such as puppets or automobiles. What is important to remember is that the example of the puppet is analogous to language; just as the puppet doesn’t “come to life” until it is put to use, in a practical and dialogic way that recalls the work of Bakhtin, language does not have meaning unless put it is into use in a sociolinguistic system. This is a key distinction, which needs to be considered throughout any use of autopoiesis as a lens for social interactions. The application of the biological theory of autopoiesis when looking at social systems has been controversial, and these points of contention will again be raised in the conclusion of this thesis. Despite the issues, there are key ideas in Maturana and Varela’s theory of autopoiesis – selfreflexiveness, self-referentiality, and a system’s self-production of its own components – that have strong implications for cultural and semiotic perspectives. Specifically, the work of Niklas Luhmann and Jay Lemke in the mid-1990s began much of the discussion on “social autopoiesis”, i.e. applying Maturana and Varela’s biological lens to systems of signs, signifiers, and cultural artifacts rather than the cells, organisms, and populations of the term’s original use. While Maturana and Varela hold differing views on their theory’s applicability towards social systems, neither maintains that social institutions are autopoietic in themselves. Rather, they see this characteristic as emerging from the individual biological components of these social systems (Wittig 2000). This has been a point of contention and continued debate with respect to a number of managerial rationalizations of an organization’s purpose (e.g. a “corporate vision”) as having a life of its own. The problem with such rationalization is similar to NYU physics professor Alan Sokal’s criticism of the application of complexity theory to social phenomena since it is still “in a very inchoate stage, even as pure mathematics” (Sokal, in Graham & McKenna 2000, p.6). While Sokal is referring specifically to complexity theory, where “supposed ‘applications’ to social phenomena usually seem to amount to nothing more than pasting trendy metaphors over banal ideas” (ibid.), applications of the biological paradigm of autopoiesis for sociocultural contexts share similar criticisms. Beyond the timing problem of the early stages of these still “inchoate” theories, there’s also the ethical and critical issue of claiming that an organization with a “life of its own” somehow provides an “out” for the decision-making of its individual members. Specifically, by giving the organization some sort of “living” autonomy, the role of managers who actually do exert a measure of control over the organization is misrepresented. By the same token, taking a view of the autonomous organization leaves the individuals within this organization as functional objects who are subjected to this vision, e.g. ‘cogs in the wheel” of an industrialized world. An autopoietic view of communication within social systems carries with it an ethical and critical imperative: Social systems survive in niches that exist within social and physical environments. They also provide and create an environment which, itself, is continually recreated and defined through language in the social relations of the social system’s constituents, and in the system’s relationship with its social and physical environments. Therefore, communication within social systems should be considered in the context of the interdependent, linguistic relationships that the social system has with its environment and its constituents. The study of organisational communication as a facilitating prosthetic in the context of a perceived systemic purpose, or vision, renders the social system’s 198 relationships with its environment, and the autonomy of its constituents, invisible and is, therefore, inadequate. (Graham & McKenna 2000, p.15) In a mechanistic view of the social system, the individual members essentially are treaded as components (i.e. “cogs”) that can be directed through external designs and goal-oriented action on applied to the system (i.e. “turning the wheels”). Graham and McKenna maintain that attempts to direct a social system by communicating a unifying vision for its members through a “perceived systemic purpose” are actually activities that are also external to the system, even if misrepresented as being internally driven (ibid.). Therefore, such attempts are actually irrelevant for self-organizing autopoietic systems (2000, p.11). For Mark C. Taylor, such organizational purpose does not come from within, but “from without by a designer who remains external to his creation” (2001, p.85). It should therefore not be confused with the organization’s intrinsic purpose, i.e. its internal logic. With respect to this internality, Taylor cites Immanuel Kant’s idea of “an organized natural product [where] every part is reciprocally both ends and means” (Kant 1973, p.22, in Taylor, ibid.) and where the concepts of “purpose, function, or goal are unnecessary and misleading” (cited in Taylor 2001 p. 93 and in Graham and McKenna, ibid.). In this respect, the only concern for the autopoietic system is the maintenance of its own identity. According to this perspective, what matters in the application of autopoiesis on a social system, as with a biological system, is whether there is internal organization that supports the system’s own reproduction and identity. In this case, it is the reproduction and evolutionary development of a discourse: Viewed through the lens of autopoiesis, organizational communication is the means by which a socially embedded discourse community maintains its identity; the means by which its individual constituents understand “the world” and themselves through descriptive discourse; and the means by which convergent and divergent relationships between the organization and its constituent individuals are produced, maintained and altered – dialogically and dialectically – through the use of language. (Graham & McKenna 2000, p.11) Put simply, the stories create the community, which creates the stories, which create the community…etc. Such stories, myths, and narratives provide the community and its individual constituents a frame of reference, or, a “worldview”. The stories provide the means by which individual constituents can see “the world” and themselves in it. These constituents then produce more narratives through this worldview, which in turn contribute to the overall unity and identity of the system. As autopoietic systems in the natural world are “continually renewing themselves through exchanges of components (molecules) with their environments” (Morçöl 2005), the argument from the social sciences is that this process is consistent with the way language and culture develop in society. A key quote for semiotics professor Umberto Eco helps to demonstrate this “living textuality”: … but [a cult movie] must display certain textual features, in the sense that, outside the conscious control of its creators; it becomes a sort of textual syllabus, a living example of living textuality. Its addressee must suspect that it is not true that works are created by their authors. Works are created by works, texts are 199 created by texts, all together they speak to each other independently of the intention of their authors. A cult movie is proof that, as literature comes from literature, cinema comes from cinema. (Eco 1984, p. 199-200) Extending Eco’s discussion of “cult movies and intertextual collage”, we can look at works as framed contexts that have been created by other works, while acknowledging these framings as containing other “intertextual frames” (ibid). In doing so, we see how “every story leads to another story…” (Miller 2004, p. 21). As Paul D. Miller argues in Rhythm Science, electronic music makers, turntablists, and DJs are artists that “create psychological collage space” (ibid.). He calls those who participate in such activities the “the new griots”, a reference to the West African performers and storytellers who perpetuate “the oral traditions of a family, village, or leader by singing histories and tales” as described in Martin Scorsese presents The Blues (2003). Miller suggests that by similarly expressing their identities, as well as the identities of their communities, electronic performers may be more willing to create such psychological spaces as the result of “access to so many different cultural products as raw material” (Miller, ibid.) The best DJs are griots, and whether their stories are conscious or unconscious, narratives are implicit in the sampling idea. Every story leads to another story to another story to another story. But at the same time, they might be called “music before the impact of language,” or pre-linguistic stories. Core myths from the binary opposition at the center of the human mind. In the twenty-first century, stories disappear and evaporate as soon as they’re heard, a sonic and cultural entropy. Mass counterbalances rhythm science’s entropic drift, though, as the physical density of information becomes a new field open for interpretation. (Miller 2004, p.21) Language, as with any tool or mediating artifact, always has context in is use. Fans of a particular sport might describe and discuss their lives and their world in the language of that sport, such as the use of football terminology in military and industrial settings, or the “traditions, ethics, and restraint” of the sport fisherman (Haig-Brown 1959, p.161). Miller describes “the new griots” as a context-specific cultural-historical reference that overlaps with his own activities as a musician, performer, and storyteller. Enthusiasts of a different activity might enact the its own culturalhistorical contexts and language through other metaphors and symbols. Regardless of the particulars of the contexts, in expressing identities in this way we are able to communicate with others who share the same worldview, or at least aspects of it. The language of sport fisherman and novelist Roderick Haig-Brown provides a powerful example of such a perspective: “From a fisherman's point of view almost everything about a river is related to fish and fishing” (Haig-Brown 1950, p. 255). In framing his observations as a sportsman and writer observing a biological system, he talks about the “interrelationships” of this perspective that are “so far reaching and complicated” that it puts even more emphasis on observation. However, he also provides a strong motivation and explanation for taking the point of view of a fisherman, observing how “observation is one of the keenest pleasures of his sport” (ibid.). Through the overlapping worldviews of a fisherman, a novelist, and a conservationist, Haig-Brown observes and describes a system – the fishing activity – as its own distinct entity. However, he is an observer who is also part of a cultural-historical system that is “the sum of generations of 200 traditions, ethics, and restraint” and which “anglers themselves have imagined, developed, tested and proved over hundreds of years” (Haig-Brown 1959, p.162). He therefore finds it difficult to contain the system’s complex interrelationships and comprehensiveness, which effectively keep the closed system open to the inclusion of new conditions and observations. Haig-Brown’s thoughts and writings on fishing have obvious ecological implications; the ecology of a fishing stream is just one of many interacting systems in Haig-Brown’s observed environment. Such ecological views can be described as autopoietic when a “living system capable of being an observer [can act as] an observer of itself as an observer, a process which can be repeated in an endless manner” (Maturana & Varela 1980, p.121). In this way, the system creates a recursive feedback loop which, like a Magritte painting (Figure 91), “poses the paradoxes of reflexivity by depicting empty heads with bowler hats, and of Hofstadter’s nested screens on which images mirror images, which mirror images” (Taylor 2001, p.88 see also Figure 98). The recursivity of this system, when contextualized in terms of a consumer society, is a situation that speaks to Jean Baudrillard’s theories on simulacra and hyperreality (Baudrillard 1983, p.3-47; Baudrillard 1976, p.16). Furthermore, it reflects John Berger’s valuable discussion on publicity as a system: It is true that in publicity one brand of manufacture, one firm competes with another; but it is also true that every publicity image confirms and enhances every other. Publicity is not merely an assembly of competing messages: it is a language in itself which is always being used to make the same general proposal. Within publicity, choices are offered between this cream and that cream, that car and this car, but publicity as a system only makes a single proposal. (Berger 1972) Without using the terminology (since it had yet to be developed by Maturana and Varela), Berger is essentially arguing that the culture “publicity” is an autopoietic system: all the artifacts that are continuously and dynamically produced in the publicity system are individual pieces, yet all produce a single structure, or “proposal”, i.e. the sales pitch of production and consumption. The interaction between technology, culture, and marketing forces in the digitally networked age results in individuals acting as both producers and consumers simultaneously (Engeström 1987, and Boyd 2005). Individuals must negotiate the dynamics of this space while immersed in enough “commercialized information” that it might eventually lead to, as Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky, a.k.a. That Subliminal Kid) might argue, “a multiplex consciousness of rhythm science [that] adds several layers of complexity” (Miller 2004 p. 64). Miller describes the complexity of this dynamic metaphorically as “a dyslexic shuffle of autopoesis [sic] between two undercover agents who clutch their orders in cold, dead hands – the transfer of information between them is an Interrelationship between music and art and writing” (ibid. p.112). These so-called “undercover agents” all must operate in a “double world” (Luria 1981, p.35) of the natural and the cultural. In this sense, we all operate within this “double world”, potentially using metaphors such as “undercover agents” in order to reconcile the lenses of these two environments. 201 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 99. A transfer of information on a CD-ROM between “two undercover agents” in the demo reel On Her Majesty’s Impossible Mission (2000) by the BCIT New Media and Animation class (1999-2000) in Artifact 5.4 (see Appendix); and fisherman Roderick Haig-Brown “spying” on his fish by diving in the Campbell River in the Robert Nichol film Fisherman’s Fall (1967). Alexander Luria’s notion of the “double world” of human existence led to his previously mentioned vision of a Romantic Science, i.e. a combination of the perspectives of both the sciences and the humanities (Luria 1979). While humans – as cultural beings – invariably engage the world and create our identities simultaneously from both natural and cultural positions, there are other important examples of multiple subjective positions that have been touched on in this thesis. For example, the multiplicity that arises from the blurring of technology, marketing and culture in environments ranging from real life cities to virtual game worlds presents a common problem in a mediated “double world”: at least one world is always being alienated, and at least one identity is always pushed to the background. John Seabrook idea of “Nobrow” as being the blurring distinction between what is a marketing experience and what is the cultural environment. He describes the problem in terms of “editorial independence [being] entombed” by shifting, if not conflicting, viewpoints in what has effectively become a double world of marketing and culture (Seabrook 2000, p. 213). Such conflicting positions have also been described and discussed by W.E.B. Dubois in arguing what is the “double consciousness” of the African American condition; by Charles Mingus’ view of a third perspective that “stand in the middle unconcerned, unmoved, watching, waiting, to be allowed to express what he sees to the other two”; by Sherry Turkle, whose book The Second Self is itself a digital era update on Du Bois’s double consciousness”; and of course by Paul Miller, who dialogically interconnects these multiple perspective by weaving them into his own voice (Miller 2004, p. 61 and p. 101). Miller extends this “double world” with his comments on how we experience multiple levels of consciousness through the consolidation of various roles and identities in our day-to-day lives. For Miller, this role consolidation takes place by “DJ-ing, making art, and writing simultaneously” while functioning as “a content provider, producer, and critic all at the same time.” (Miller 2004, p. 48) He calls this phenomenon “multiplex consciousness”: 202 No one can escape an identity clash if they bounce off of the “received culture” of commercialized information, not even WASPs. Identity is about creating an environment where you can make the world act as your own reflection. … Where Du Bois saw duality and Mingus imagined a trinity, I would say that the twentieth century self is so fully immersed in and defined by the data that surrounds it, we are entering an era of multiplex consciousness. (Miller 2004, p. 61) In this sense, autopoietic social systems are dependent on and responsive to their environments, and are effectively maintained by the (semiotic) boundary between themselves and their environment. Yet it is not only the individual’s semiotic boundary and identity that is becoming a “multiplex”. In his presentation at the AIGA Design Conference 2005, Miller mentions Brian Eno’s idea of a cultural shift away from the single perspective of the lone genius, which is a European model of creativity and discovery. In response, both Miller and Eno argue this shift has moved towards the idea of the “scenius”, as implied in “networks of correspondence” (Miller, September 16, 2005). In this collaborative model, it is “the exchange [that] makes the material” which for Miller can be seen as the playlists, chatlists, and neighbourhoods where, “like an alchemy, the sum is greater than its parts” (ibid.). 2.9 Theoretical recap and an alienated remix What the preceding sections of theoretical underpinning have attempted to demonstrate a perspective of remix as a “systems culture”, as described by Paul D. Miller in Rhythm Science (2004, pp.64-65), while incorporating the theory of autopoiesis as a useful lens for investigating the dynamics of this culture. In terms of this theory, we first engaged the literary discourse of intertextuality emerging from the early works of Mikhail Bakhtin (Morson & Emerson 1990). We then moved into the discourse of how such intertextual relationships play out in terms of perception in a consumer society (Berger 1972, and Kinder 1991, p.2). We’ve looked at the historical tensions between psychological approaches that treat culture as either an external variable or as constitutive of mind (Cole 1996). We’ve explored a discourse on learning and design that attempts to address the futility of constantly reacting to the relentless changes taking place in networked digital culture (Engeström 1987). From these initial interconnecting discussions, we then considered issues of method where the “reframing” of contexts plays an important role (Vygotsky 1978, and Brown, in Mitchell 1996). The role of metaphor and reflective practice was then considered, especially in terms of Schön’s work in The Reflective Practitioner (1983) and in relationship to a metaphor of fishing that has been consistently related to this thesis through the writings of angler Roderick Haig-Brown. The ecological metaphor that emerged from these discussions then moved into ideas of complexity and “flow” (Taylor 2001, and Csikszentmihalyi 1994) that are critical to relating this work to the remixing that is involved in the activities of DJs and other performers. At this point, the attempts at relating interacting dialogue and feedback loops across the theoretical underpinnings of the work were designed to lead into a discussion of social issues of narrative and 203 identity, but with relation to the biological concept of autopoiesis, i.e. the self-producing dynamics of a sociolinguistic system as a potentially useful way to look at remix culture. Whether remix culture is viewed as an autopoietic system or not, a remix artifact depends on the contribution of its environment, but is identifiable as its own entity against this cultural backdrop. In such a culture, Miller claims, “everyone can contribute to rhythm science; whether it’s Linux, hiphop, or mix-tape culture…” (Miller 2004, pp. 64-65). He compares the overlap of the psychological and the spatial in this culture to “the Situationists critiques of the urban landscapes” of the 1960s. These critiques suggested that cities “unfold in the mind of the person who moves through the landscape”, producing “the sense of alienation and familiarity” of what they described as the “psychogeographic” (Miller 2005, pp. 64-65). So does remix just produce another form of cultural alienation? In the Hegelian sense of alienation (see Hegel & Paolucci 1979, and Eco 1989), the question is whether in expressing one’s “Spirit” through the creation of digital media artifacts, those same alienated expressions become alienating forces when used as part of someone else’s remix? Again, these issues can be viewed from numerous perspectives in terms of the value of the remix. The ability to use a remix approach in creating a more appropriate expression of one’s place in contemporary culture may be seen as valuable. The ability to share this expression as part of another’s work may also be seen as valuable. The possibility of financial compensation for the use of this work could have value. Yet there are also tradeoffs from these value systems. For example, consider the work’s cult value, as discussed through the works of Walter Benjamin earlier in this chapter. Keeping it less accessible to remix activities would preserve this value, while the misrepresentation or the unintended mass exposure of the work could also result in an alienating situation. The ability to be financially compensated for an expression may not in itself seem to be an alienating situation, though what is perceived to be a poor licensing arrangement for such compensation may well turn into a form of alienation. One of the more famous examples of such alienation comes from the music industry and the protracted dispute between the artist currently known as “Prince” and his record label Warner Bros which eventually led to Prince becoming alienated from his own name and trademark, i.e. changing his name from Prince to a symbol in order work around his recording contract (R.Graham, August 15, 2004). Yet beyond the hyperreal examples of rock n’ roll icons, the notion of alienation is of course far from new. Nor is it exclusive to what Miller calls a “consumer reality that posits [the individual] as passive” (Miller 2006). Alienation has been a condition argued and discussed well before digital culture and activities such as remix. It is and has been “pervasive” according to Umberto Eco, whether in terms of Feuerbach’s ideas on alienating aspects of religion (1841), Marx’s ideas on the alienation of the Industrial Age (1845), or in terms of what we’re witnessing now in the transition from the Industrial Age to an Information Age of digital networked culture. In “Form as a Social Commitment” in his seminal text The Open Work (originally published in 1962), Eco describes alienation’s familiarity as “so pervasive as to manifest itself in all our social relationships”: At this point, however, alienation is no longer confined to a particular social structure; rather, it extends to every relationship between a man and a man, man and object, man and society, man and myth, man and language. As such, it not 204 only serves to explain all those economic relationships which, because of their hold on us, assume the appearance of psychological phenomena, but must also be seen as a form of psychological and physiological behavior whose effect on our personality is so pervasive as to manifest itself in all our social relationships. Alienation will then appear as a phenomenon which, under certain circumstances, goes from the structure of human groups to the most private mental behavior, and under other circumstances, from individual mental behavior, to the structure of human groups. The very fact we live, work, produce, and form relationships means that we exist in alienation. (Eco 1989, p.130-131) Eco sees this alienation therefore as part of our very existence and identity as human beings living simultaneously in both a natural and a cultural world. This existence, he claims, “demands an active and practical involvement with the [alienating] situation” which always confronts us with a “new, transformed reality” (ibid.). Such transformation of reality into something new has connection to the idea of transforming works into new works through a remix. However, it also implies the “active and practical involvement” that would be familiar to those engaged in any number of design activities. Figure 100. The co-evolution of design culture and cultural psychology, as seen through a selection of books by Donald Norman. In writing The Open Work in the early 1960s, Eco was of course dealing with the cultural metaphor of Industrial Age’s “machine” and its alienating effects “in all our social relationships” (ibid.). In an Industrial context that he claims “oppresses”, Eco has nevertheless found a potentially positive role for producing designs that, in a sense, advertise their own usefulness and value: We produce a machine, and then the machine oppresses us with an inhuman reality that renders the relationship we have with it, and with the world through it, disagreeable. Industrial design seems to have found a solution to this problem: it fuses beauty with utility and gives us a humanized machine, a machine cut to human size – the blender, the knife, or the typewriter that advertises its capacities in a pleasant way and invites us to touch it. Man could thus be harmoniously assimilated to his function and to the instrument that allows its fulfillment. (Eco, 1989, p.130-131) 205 Even though Eco’s intertextual theories at the time predate by decades both the World Wide Web as an ordinary, every aspect of contemporary digital culture, as well as pleasing and inviting designs of interactive digital products such as Apple’s iPod, there’s no reason to think that alienation of the individual from his or her expressions would not continue in the Information Age. Again, this is especially the case with remix culture, where new media objects – as individual cultural artifacts or as the cultural environment as a whole (Manovich 2001, p.12) – are constantly being transformed and retransformed through the affordances of digital technologies. In other words, we could employ the same “psychogeographic” critique of the Situationists’ urban landscape, but applied in terms of the “web” of network culture. We could engage its “terrains” of digital “worlds”. We might enable others to do likewise with an intuitive design strategy for user interaction in a digital culture “that advertises its capacities in a pleasant way and invites us to [experience] it”, all the while watching the unfolding of such a space in the minds of those navigating the hyperlinks of a “global and mediatized marketspace” that acts as an autopoietic social system. In others words, we can – and effectively we just have – travelled the intertextuality of such a digital networked culture, as presented through the frames or coordinated lenses of this thesis. But has all of this been a valuable experience? In attempting to address this question, the following chapter will therefore suggest that we “travel” into several key digital media artifacts that have been developed over the course of this research. More significantly, this will lead to a “methodological journey” (Cole 1996, p.338) in the remainder of this thesis, one that has produced a method designed to look for value in the remix of digital media artifacts. 206 3. A JOURNEY TOWARDS APPROPRIATE DATA I call the river mine, without owning any foot of it from source to sea and without any thought of possession in the ordinary sense...I do not want possession, only freedom of the river; and with every growth of knowledge and experience, freedom grows. (Haig-Brown 1950, pp. 255-256) At this point, a significant amount of background has been provided on a very broad base of knowledge. While grounding this research in theoretical concepts, and through John Seely Brown’s notion of “listening to the world” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.105), we’ve attempted to look at remix from a number of angles as a real phenomenon in contemporary culture. We’ve also touched on some examples of remix through artifacts that have been created during the course of practical, everyday activity in the development of this thesis and have been pulled from an extensive and growing pool of similar artifacts. In terms of Brown’s observations in the previous chapters, what has taken place has been an “accretion” of new media objects that, arguably, have resulted from a “profound cultural shift inherent in our new media environments” (Graham, in press) in which has taken place a qualitative transformation of “narrative telling/listening” activities into “world building” activities (Brown, December 10, 2004). In relation to the intertextuality, the reflective practice, and the complexity involved in what can be viewed as an ecological development of this pool of artifacts, this discussion has so far been approached, as best possible, through the cultural and historical perspectives that inform Michael Cole’s Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline (1996) and Alexander Luria’s vision of a “Romantic Science” (Luria 1979). However, in necessarily reflecting upon cultural-historical development of this work and where it is situated within my own activities at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT), I realize that all of the aforementioned discourses, as well as other related topics discussed in “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings”, offer significantly more theoretical material, practical applications, and discursive opportunities that could be usefully applied in sharpening the ideas presented here. So in trying to generate something from this work other than ongoing theoretical discussion, we’ll now turn towards this pool of digital media artifacts as being potentially valuable material that could be useful to this research. At the same time, we’ll considering the question/issue that is to be more fully addressed in the following chapter, specifically, “Are their appropriate models with which to explain the cultural, aesthetic, and economic value of remix?” Another way of phrasing this question would be in terms of finding “ways of seeing” remix as a potentially valuable activity when applied to pools of media resources, innovative practices, and the creation of new works, i.e. what “lenses” can we use to evaluate the remix activity and remix artifacts? When following this line of questioning, it inevitably leads back to the issue of method; specifically, we turn to Michael Cole’s view of methodology as “a coordinated set of lenses through which to interpret the world” (Cole 1996, p. 338). As discussed in the previous chapter, Cole’s cultural psychology was developed in order to address the contradiction he experienced in terms of his formal, scientific reasoning and his common sense, everyday experience. His observations of 207 cultural situations where therefore always broken in two. This split presented the challenge – and a long term “journey” – of attempting to reconcile these contrasting perspectives: When we set out on our methodological journey in the 1960s, I had never used the word methodology and did not understand that I was rediscovering the history of my scientific discipline through a new lens. In going to Africa I stumbled on a situation where the tools of my profession led to conclusions that radically contradicted my everyday experience. It was inconceivable to me that anyone with the “objective” difficulties of non-literate peoples as indicated by psychological tests could function effectively in the complex activities I watched them engage in. I was sure I couldn’t function effectively if I were put in their shoes. That contradiction – between the evidence through the lens of my discipline’s methodology and that through the lens of my commonsense response to attempting to live in their environment – posed the challenge: to come up with a methodology that could reconcile the two different views. (Cole 1996, p. 338) Instead of simply reacting to this contradictory situation by attempting to block off one perspective in favour of the other, only to inevitably come back to the same contradiction, Cole would instead step back and change the context of this contradiction so that a resolution was at least possible. In this example of “expansive learning” – i.e. “anticipating, mastering and steering qualitative changes in individual lives, in families and organizations, and in the society as a whole” (Engeström, 1987, italics in original) – Cole would shift his perspective from what his scientific discipline’s lens and his commonsense lens were showing him, to how they were showing it to him. Once made, this shift would direct Cole towards a search for “knowledge of what pattern of methods is used to relate theoretical claims on the one hand to empirical warrants on the other” (Cole, ibid.). In essence, he was less concerned with patterns in the results as with patterns in mediating artifacts used to achieve those results. In the Vygotskian sense, the method, when described as a tool, shifted from a “tool-for-result” into a “tool-and-result”, i.e. method becomes the object of the study. Much of the discourse of this thesis involves the use of metaphor “to provide access to different moments and properties of the overall process of sociocultural and individual change” (Cole 1996, p.335). With this in mind, we can for the moment view method through the metaphor of writing. In this sense, the method used to analyse a particular text is itself a text in ‘the overall process” (ibid.). Paul D. Miller comments on this overall system – moving from an individual piece of writing to the writer’s “total text” – in the following excerpt from a 2003 interview with author Erik Davis: Paul D. Miller: I'm actually at a crossroads myself in terms of trying to figure out the writing stuff, especially this idea of writing as total text. Erik Davis: What do you mean by total text? Paul D. Miller: I'm in the process of editing my first two nonfiction anthologies, Sound Unbound and Rhythm Science. I'm going to have multimedia, I'm going to have web, I'm going to do a limited edition CD, I might want to do some performances around them. That's what Wagner was trying to do with the whole idea of the Gesamptkunstwerk ["total artwork"]. (Davis & Miller 2003) 208 What has happened in my own research has been a similar set of shifts and transformations, as seen in the approaches of both Cole and Miller. In other words, there have been several instances in the development of this research that have required “reframing radically” the view of the data by expanding its context (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.105; Engeström 1987). In Cole’s case, the cultural environment that he was observing ended up expanding to include the method. In Miller’s case, his writing method expanded to include other methods for working creatively, i.e. as a musician, as a multimedia artist, and as a performer. Similarly, my research has been reframed on several occasions, and has been warranted on an empirical whole of cultural artifacts in what I also call a “total text” (Miller, ibid). Eventually, this reframing became an investigation of remix as “writing” in a digital context. Specifically, the investigation has become concerned with the value of “writing” in this way, essentially asking, “How can we look at remix as a worthwhile activity?” Interestingly, this seems to have been the problem I’ve been following all along, though in no way was it a predetermined outcome. 3.1 The problem of “the oak in the acorn” When I initially started my graduate studies, my main objective was to find some sort of theoretical position or methodology I could apply to a growing body of digital media artifacts. I felt strongly that these artifacts had value if framed in the proper context, but I had tremendous difficulty finding such a context. Upon entering the environment of graduate studies, part of my objective was to work on what I felt was an interesting research project. I therefore reasoned that the artifacts that I had developed and collected would make extremely appropriate and valuable data for the research that I wanted to perform. By applying an established and rigorous approach to these artifacts through formal methodologies learned at school, I hoped I’d be able to validate these data as valuable objects for scientific research. Specifically, I thought these methods could help to better explain the development of the artifacts over time. As evidence of this intention, the following excerpt from an unpublished paper (titled Qualitative Research Methods: an analysis and application) briefly describes my research interest in “multimedia interoperability” (Koenen 2001) and proposed thesis project at the end of 2002: The research that I’m proposing to undertake in the Masters program is focused on an emerging interactive narrative prototype for which I’ve been developing multimedia objects over the course of the last five years. The work is tentatively titled Fairytale of New York and it is primarily an adaptation for a new media environment of a combination of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. The technological form of the narrative will be based on the MPEG-21 framework for multimedia interoperability. This framework will hopefully allow the user/reader to explore a closed narrative structure based on a conspiracy theory story while simultaneously being actively involved in an emerging open narrative. The emergence in this innovative narrative approach will be determined through: 1. The user/reader’s interpretation of the story (internalization) 209 2. Subsequent development of MPEG objects relating to this interpretation (recombination and externalization) 3. The MPEG objects are then contributed to an object-oriented database where the can be interpreted, internalized, and reworked by other user/readers. The research aspect of this prototype is primarily concerned with general developmental and educational theory. It directly follows the work of Yrjö Engeström on expansive processes in learning and activity theory. (Flynn, 2003a, unpublished) While these ideas from early 2003 were not worded in terms of “remix”, the concepts and the language in the excerpt above – e.g. “explore [a] closed narrative structure, “emerging open narrative”, “multimedia interoperability”, “recombination”, “expansive processes” – clearly shows consistency with the ideas that have been developed in this thesis and the ideas of remix culture expressed in Miller’s Rhythm Science (2004). At this early stage in the formal research of a graduate degree, I began investigating a variety of qualitative research methodologies – e.g. biography, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, and case study – as potentially valuable approaches for my work. Again, the hope was that such methods could provide a “scientific” perspective of an example of complex interactive narrative (Flynn, ibid.). Essentially, I was searching for a systemized conceptual overview and approach to manage the growing database of new media objects. If effective, this approach would show the value in the works through “an exact performance” – i.e. a quantifiable, measurable approach – similar in respect to the mindset described by Roderick Haig-Brown in terms of fishing performance: For many years I was content to apply the same theory to my fishing – for anything that when wrong I was prepared to blame myself, for anything that went right, I was prepared to take all the credit. Fishing, I argued, was an exact performance, a simple contest between man and fish. If the man judged his conditions right, he would catch his fish, if he did not, he would not…[however] I am beginning to have rather more trouble with my fine theory. (Haig-Brown 1959, p. 246) Of course, I would increasingly find issue with the notion of events work out just as planned, i.e. by way of an “exact performance” of a selected research method when applied to my work. In what I’ve later recognized as the very pragmatic way of William James’ three modes of (1) commonsense, (2) scientific, and (3) critical philosophical thinking (James, 1907), the scientific “lens” that these methodologies provided my work would increasingly find itself at odds with other perspectives. For example, I would take a critical philosophical view of my collection of artifacts – and permit some self-reflective self-indulgence here – as valuable “works of art”. Furthermore, both of these lenses were at odds with my commonsense response to the growing pool of artifacts. This commonsense view throughout the course of the project has essentially been one of: “Well, I’ve put time, money, and effort in developing these ideas, now how do I make some return on this 210 investment?” Of course, there is an alternate side of this view, i.e. “If I can’t make any income on this work, then it must be worthless.” Prior to taking the Qualitative Methods course, my familiarization with approaches for research that didn’t rely primarily on number-based data was fairly limited. In a society that is often inundated and consumed by measurements based on numbers and statistics, I’ve often overlooked more subjective approaches when trying to determine a plan for a research study in the upcoming two years. Part of this oversight is due to the fact that, as a business grad, I’ve never been able to escape the question of “Where are the numbers?” despite knowing full well that the numbers only tell part of the story. (Flynn, 2003a, unpublished) So in terms of appropriate data for my research, there was already a significant tension in place in whether to look for a quantitative approach to working with new media objects that was more in line with traditional scientific methods of experimentation, or to use a qualitative one that dealt with the subjective and experiential aspects of the objects as “art”. And of course, this tension was often framed in terms of which of the two approaches would result in more “cash value” when applied to my work, in the pragmatic sense of income and employment. This description may make the work presented here in this thesis as seem extremely calculated and pre-planned, which admittedly it has been at times. Yet it has equally been a case of Schön’s description of “methods of inquiry [based on] experience, trail and error, intuition, and muddling through” (Schön 1983, p.43). In this sense, the work has been a journey where any sense of development can seem directionless. The result of the intersection of these modes of thinking has tended towards seeing the value of the project metaphorically as either oak or acorn. In actuality, and in retrospect, its development has always been (fortunately) somewhere in between: If chance is actually illusory, temporality and history are in some sense penultimate or even unreal. What appears to be temporal emergence or historical development is actually the unfolding of a necessary end or a prescribed program. Even if the program can only be decoded retrospectively, the oak is always in the acorn from the beginning. For chance to have a chance, for time to be more than an illusion, and for history to be the site of aleatory emergence [i.e. “good fortune”], systems must be open. (Taylor 2001, p.93) In light of these perspectives, and whether “steered” by an anticipation of their growing contradictions, or just through dumb luck, I found an interest in cultural-historical activity theory as a way to frame my data. In the excerpt from paper from the early stage of this research (Flynn 2003a), I had indicated an interest in the ideas in Yjrö Engeström’s Learning by Expanding: an activity- theoretical approach to developmental research (1987). As discussed in “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings”, Engeström’s work is strongly influenced by Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), and it explicitly addresses Bateson’s “levels of learning” and the role of contradictory “double-bind” situations in individual development. Engeström views such contradictions as integral to development and hypothesizes “a historically new advanced type of learning - learning by expanding - is currently emerging in various fields of societal practice” (Engeström, 1987, see the “learning by expanding” diagram in Figure 90). 211 Engeström approached his research hypotheses by taking both fictional and historical narratives, as appropriate data for investigating the role of contradictory dilemmas in development, for example Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Mendeleev's discovery of the periodic law of elements (ibid.). Following this approach, I looked to my own work and interest in literary theory and semiotics as potentially appropriate data in recombining (i.e. “remixing”) two fictional works (Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum) while simultaneously looking for formal properties, elements, and structures in new and interactive forms of narrative (Flynn, ibid.). This self-reflective developmental approach, while problematic from an “objective” perspective, led to a framing of my work along chronological sections, i.e. a series of “closed systems” (Taylor 2001). These “chronotopes”, to again invoke the language of Bakhtin (Emerson and Morson, 1990, pp. 336-342), could then theoretically be analysed as appropriate data for examples of either reactive or expansive learning. In theory, the idea was that insight could be gained by using the “lens” of activity in identifying contradictory situations that were either anticipated or accidentally/unexpectedly encountered. Ultimately, the very roughly formalized research intention at this early stage involved investigating whether contradictory situations (i.e. Bateson’s “double-binds”, 1972) were some how predictive of Engeström’s notion of expansive learning. However, rather than using texts such as Huckleberry Finn or the work of Mendeleev to look for such development, the idea was to analyse an interactive narrative “based on the MPEG-21 framework for multimedia interoperability” (Flynn 2003a). In the process of this analysis, activity theory seemed to provide an all-encompassing view that reduced contingency and chance down to a component of systematic approach. In creating a closed system on interrelationships, activity theory thereby potentially rendered chance events as “illusory… through philosophical reflection”: Since everything [a closed system] is internally related, there seems to be no possibility of chance, accident, or contingency. Hegel attempts to include contingency in his system, but chance always appears illusory when its truth is comprehended through philosophical reflection. (Taylor 2001, p.93) In explaining the development that takes place within activity theory’s systematic representation, there intuitively seemed to me to be a rather unsettling aspect the theory’s explanations, as well as for any predictive claims that may result. Similar to Bakhtin’s reservations towards a “theoretism” that “monologizes” a process of natural dialogue by imposing a single explanatory perspective, I found that activity theory’s usefulness in explaining a great deal about human interaction resulted in the risk of it actually explaining not very much. Influenced heavily by Bakhtin’s work and ideas on dialogue, I began to view the theory with much less interest on the grounds that an activity theory model was essentially “unified and closed in itself”: Question and answer are not logical relations (categories); they cannot be placed in one consciousness (unified and closed in itself); any response gives rise to a new question. Question and answer presuppose mutual outsideness. If an answer does not give rise to a new question itself, it falls out of the dialogue. (Bakhtin 1979 p.168, in Emerson and Morson 1990, p. 56) 212 Over the course of the research that followed, I would naturally become somewhat disillusioned with cultural-historical activity theory, as further research into the theory and practical problems in its use would lead to important questions regarding its applicability in my work. Again, I found this to be especially the case in terms of the use of activity theory as a predictive design method that could be operationalized and tested. As Jonassen and Roher-Murphy state in Activity Theory as a Framework for Designing Constructivist Learning Environments (1999): “Activity theory is not a methodology”. Citing Kari Kuutti, they claim it is viewed instead as a “philosophical framework for studying different forms of human praxis as developmental processes, both individual and social levels interlinked at the same time” (Kuutti 1996, p. 532 in Jonassen and Roher-Murphy 1999). Since less a method than a philosophical framework, activity theory I would however find it valuable as a way to model the use of a method as tool of research or design (i.e. a “tool-forresult”). Or, in the case of this particular research, as a perspective on studying methodology itself, i.e. the “tool-and-result” perspective that distinguished the Russian cultural-historical school from other traditions such as the American pragmatist movement (Newman & Holzman 1993). Whether a method is seen as a tool to look at data or as the data itself, activity theory can therefore effectively present a key philosophical question on methodology by framing out these contrasting perspectives, especially through the use of the visual representation of Vygotsky’s mediational model: Figure 101. Vygotsky’s mediational model, as used to distinguish the pragmatic approach to method from the approach where method is “both prerequisite and product”, i.e. “tool and the result of the study” (Vygotsky 1978, p.65) As with its ability to depict contrasting philosophical approaches to methodology, I also found activity theory useful as a way to deconstruct particular moments in individual and human development into categories of subject, object tools, rules, community, and division of labour (see Engeström expanded activity triangle in Figure 89). At worst, however, these categories tended towards becoming overly rigid and segmented, thereby losing the wholeness of the activity. The result could be argued as a reductive categorization, making it extremely difficult not to view human activity through a fundamentally shattered and closed perspective that left little room for a notion of chance or, as Taylor describes it, “aleatory” events (Taylor 2001, p.97). In essence, this problem would see the expanded mediational model as simply multiplying the longstanding problem of Descartes’ split of mind and body “which has so dominated our thinking in [Artificial Intelligence], in technology, and in fact in design [that it is now] what we are trying to blur” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.102). As a way of deterministically explaining development through 213 contradictions in the categories mapped out by this framework (as was previously described to be part of my earlier approaches), I would come to find that applying this categorization to the development of my pool of new media objects as being, or at least becoming, problematic. It seemed inappropriate to me, especially when instances of development could easily be attributed to a “lucky break”, that learning by expanding could be designed and operationalized by way of some extrinsic plan of action. For me, the expansive learning that takes place as a result of Bateson’s “double-bind” situations was a far more complex, dynamic, and emergent activity than was being described by my readings of activity theory at the time. By this time, however, the activity theory lens was well established in my work, for better and for worse, and continued to inform it on many levels. The difficulties I was having with activity theory were compounded with the problem of not being able to “step outside” of Vygotsky’s mediational model – or variations such as Engeström’s – since it simply led to another recursively mediated perspective. This scenario can be visualized much in the same way that the Magritte paintings pictured in Figure 91 lead to “strange loops” of feedback through self-reflective and self-referential dynamics, and where “all reality is some sense screened” (Taylor 2001, p.73-78 italics in original). In other words, using activity theory as a tool to look at a mediated activity was nevertheless a mediated activity in its own right, there by creating “screens within screens” (p.77). This inevitable mediational aspect would therefore always produce a fundamental question in activity theory’s ability an “objective” perspective. This issue of objectivity is not inherently a problem, but can become so when activity theory is claimed to somehow be a more objective or an inherently better tool. This is an especially important point when one of the key figures in the theory’s development claims specifically that the “there’s no such thing as an all-purpose (context-free) tool” (Cole 1996, p.334). Furthermore, when claimed to be a “better tool” it must be remembered that there are varying perspectives of activity theory within its discourse, even simply between and within the Russian and American traditions (p. 139). As Cole stipulates: “Activity theory is far from a monolithic enterprise” (ibid.), though at times I’ve questioned had to question whether it resembled Bakhtin’s notion of “monologic thought” more than the dialogism that I found useful and of interest (Morson and Emerson 1990). Combined, these difficulties would therefore provide the basis for engaging a much-needed, multiperspective critique of activity theory. Specifically, this involved viewing activity theory as an extension of Hegelian dialectics – and as a potential “totalizing” worldview – which had been a point of criticism in the early development of postmodernism by scholars such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Baudrillard (Taylor 2001). As discussed by Mark C. Taylor in The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture (2001), these criticisms of structuralism lead even to the structure of the Hegelian system, with that Foucault, Derrida, and Baudrillard were not dismissing structuralism out of hand. Rather, these “savvy critics…do not attack the positions they oppose from without but attempt to subvert them in ways that preserve what they nonetheless displace” (ibid.). From Taylor’s book, I was also able to find some potentially valuable perspectives in his discussions on complexity theory, autopoietic systems and the ecological emergence of “aleatory” events. As mentioned in previous chapters, these ideas deal specifically with the problem of “chance” when presented with the question of whether “the oak is always in the acorn from the 214 beginning” (Taylor 2001, p. 93). In discussing Derrida’s notions of the archive and différance, Taylor suggests the paradoxical possibility of openness within a closed system: In Derrida’s reworking of Gödel’s theorem [on undecidable propositions], every system or structure includes as a condition of its own possibility something it cannot assimilate. This “outside,” which is “inside,” exposes the openness of every system that seems to be closed… systems and structures are neither static nor eternal but emerge historically and are always changing. Such change is not prefigured or programmed but is subject to the uncertainty and unpredictability of chance…Always open and forever subject to chance, such systems emerge at the edge of order and operate far from equilibrium. (Taylor 2001, p.97) Taylor’s condition of the openness of an activity “system or structure” that takes chance into account ties in fundamentally with Engeström’s view that “activity must be analyzable in its dynamics and transformations, in its evolution and historical change”. Specifically, Engeström states: “No static or eternal models will do” (Engeström 1987). So given these ideas of the role of the subject in framing an experience, some key points need to be made with respect to my work and what Taylor sees as intinguishable the difference between “Derridian deconstruction and Foucaultian constructivism” (Taylor 2001, p.64). In very general terms that don’t do justice to the depth of the discourse of Derrida and Foucault, the difference between these two concepts is one of “pulling a thing apart to see different perspectives of it vs. looking at how the perspective of a thing is constructed, or put together. In looking at the entire scope of my work by both pulling it apart and in looking at how I had put it together, I had constructed a distinction between what I saw as “official” research and what actually was of interest to me in terms of research. In practice, this distinction between perspectives would either lead to a contradictory situation, or would find some way of reconciling what was similar to Cole’s contraction “between the evidence through the lens of my discipline’s methodology and my commonsense response” (Cole 1996, p.338) of being engaged day in and day out in an educational environment at SIAT that was often concerned with discourses of technology, media, design, and of course, in the area of culture, where I had a particularly strong interest. For an extended period of the research I had constructed what I saw as an “official” inquiry that attempted to balance my interests in these discourses with my practical involvement in working with other instructors in the design and delivery of curriculum. This inquiry involved the development of an interactive learning object called CHAT Circuits (version 1.2) that was conceptually based on Engeström’s expanded model of an activity system Figure 89 and Kline et al.’s model of the cultural-historical development of the video game industry through the lenses of technology, culture, and marketing, as presented earlier in Figure 75. This learning object was designed for use in an undergraduate course in “programming multimedia” and as picture in the screenshots below, it depicts the “map of a global mediatized marketplace” by Kline et al. (2003) in coordination with the mediational triangles of Vygotsky, as extended by Engeström’s (1987): 215 Figure 102. Screenshots from the interfaces on the CHAT Circuits tool, developed in 2004 by Anthony Charles and Joel Flynn for the “Programming Multimedia” (IART 206/7/8 SIAT, Spring 2004). Despite the promise of this early prototype for an interactive learning object, and having made numerous attempts at working along this “official” research path, I was never particularly comfortable with this direction. This became increasingly the case once the course had been revised and no longer had any practical use for the CHAT Circuits learning object. Consequently, what resulted in a practical sense was the lack of resources and opportunity to further develop the tool, specifically, in collaboration with co-instructor and fellow graduate student Anthony Charles (who had actually designed, programmed, and implemented the learning object’s web-based interface). However, the early demise of the CHAT Circuits learning object, at least in terms of the research presented here, may have actually been a “lucky break”. The simple reason for this can be seen in terms of having to eventually question what was common and consistent across my research – as a “total text” – once coming to the conclusion that the CHAT Circuits direction was no longer viable. Again, this relates back Schön’s notion of the “experience [and] intuition” of the reflective practitioner that is “muddling through” what he feels are “messy but crucially important problems” (Schön 1983, p.49). Quite simply, all of the productivity, innovation, and “lucky breaks” in my research activities were coming from the idea of combining and recombining bits of digital media, mixes, or even entire perspectives in what I felt were interesting ways. Sometimes this recombination were successful, other times not so much; however, the “digital play” (Kline et al. 216 2003) involved in doing such recombination usually created an environment where I was (more or less) “enjoying myself” and where things were “happening right”: But I am beginning to find it very [beneficial] to remember just how much “happening right,” if not downright luck, there has been in nearly all my little triumphs. Often there has been so little between success and failure that I feel little inclined to take much credit unless for perseverance, and that is no virtue because I do not persevere in fishing unless I am enjoying myself. Time and time again, one or two fish, seldom more than half-a-dozen, make the day. How close a thing has it been between getting or not getting those few fish? (Haig-Brown 1959, p. 247) We can arguably view this thesis as a result of “happening right” by actually enjoying my work (more or less), and its long development should reflect this. So in terms of the problem of the oak and the acorn it is not fair to say that the “oak” of data that has grown over the course of this project - i.e. a system of “recombinant” and “interoperable” digital media artifacts – was determined by the “acorn” of these ideas in earlier plans and directions in what Cole would describe as a “methodological journey” (Cole, ibid.) Nor has this database grown through a predictable series of “double-binds” that produced instances of expansive learning, even if some of these difficulties may have been anticipated well in advance. In truth, the data that is to be considered in this work has become part of what I view as my “official” research through a fair share of chance and good fortune. While this may be seen as problematic in terms of measurement and predictability, or, in how “good” or acceptable this research could be considered from strict scientific and academic perspective, as Haig-Brown said of fishing: “It is perfectly true that good fishing is not all luck. But it is just as true that there’s no good fishing without some luck” (Haig-Brown 1959, p.253). 3.2 “Official” vs. “unofficial” data In any theoretical investigation moving on the level of categories, three methodological questions must be implicitly or explicitly answered. These three questions are: (1) how to select the data; (2) how to process the data into categories: (3) how to bring the categories developed into fruitful contact with practice. (Engeström 1987) The difficulty of studying the complexity of culture and the question of what is deemed “appropriate data” is to be expected. As Gregory Bateson explains: “What can be studied is always a relationship or an infinite, regress of relationships. Never a 'thing' " (Bateson 1978, p.249). In my work, as with most research, I have constantly encountered the common issue of how an experience, or a text, or apiece of information, etc. relates to my thesis direction. Further, this kind of research raises the question of whether “external” cultural factors are influencing my object of study, whether they’re diverting my work from its appropriate path, or whether these factors are actually fundamental to research in the first place. 217 Attempting to keep such relationships and questions in mind – if not in some sort of balance – is perhaps what contributes to the tendency for culturally focused research problems to become “messy” (Schön, ibid.). However, this approach at least points to a way of moving beyond what Mark Gover describes as the “intellectual cul-de-sac”, i.e. the problem of treating the mind as either determined by cultural forces, or, alternately, “as a more or less decontextualized, cranium-bound, mechanism” (1996): In this frame, although culture may be seen as influencing the mind, mind and culture otherwise retain their fundamental separateness. [The opposing frame] entertains notions of culture-in-mind, of human society as no longer a mere influence on mind but, instead, as one of its actual constituents. (Gover 1996) While trying to balance the contrasting views of the potential data described in previous sections of the thesis, how then does this discussion inform, as Engeström advises, (1) the need to select appropriate data and then (2) process this data into categories? In reflecting on my own research context of having backgrounds in culture, technology, and marketing-related activities, I’ve found a useful framework of perspectives in the “Three Circuits of Interactivity” model developed by Kline et al. (2003, see Figure 75). ) Through this reflection on my own background and experiences at the intersection of these interactive “circuits”, there may lay the possibility of finding a way to (3) “bring the categories developed into fruitful contact with practice” (Engeström, ibid.). As a critical theory approach to the development of the video game industry, Kline et al.’s framework of three interacting systems of activity – technology, culture, and marketing – resonate with my background (and consequent worldview). This is the case despite the fact that I don’t consider myself – in contrast to my obvious interest and participation in popular music culture– as an active participant of contemporary video game culture. Regardless, the coordinated set of three lenses in Kline et al.’s model has nevertheless provided a familiar – yet still foreign – overall perspective in my research. I’ve found this perspective to be extremely valuable in the metaphorical sense of a “game”, much in the same way that the fishing metaphor has also provided a familiar-yet-foreign perspective to my approach with multimedia development. I was first introduced to the “Three Circuits of Interactivity” model through a review of Digital Play: the interaction of technology, culture, and marketing (Kline et al. 2003) in a local pop culture magazine (Georgia Straight, January 2004). Around this time, I was beginning to feel some contradiction between what I was viewing as my “official” research direction which concerned mostly cultural-historical activity theory, as mentioned earlier, and the work that I was performing as a course developer and instructor at SIAT. Further adding to this tension was my informal artistic practice in media production and creative digital activities. In trying to resolve some of this growing tension, I even withdrew from a key activity in this multimedia practice for nearly a year, specifically, the filming of live concert experiences and the authoring of digital media artifacts from these recordings (as described and analyzed in Artifact 5.7 of the appendices or in a related paper dealing specifically with this artifact). So from November 2003 to September 2004, I did not participate in filming any more shows, feeling that perhaps the cost and time demands of such productions were not only too burdensome, but were distorting my actual enjoyment of the live concert experience. As a result of these tensions, I felt that the activity had run its course (at least for the time being). 218 What also helped during this time to address the tension, at least momentarily, was the development of the aforementioned “CHAT Circuits” tool. In conjunction with the visualization, programming, and web design expertise of co-instructor Anthony Charles, this tool was developed and implemented for the online aspects of the Programming Multimedia class (IART 206/7/8) in the spring of 2004. Through the use of “CHAT Circuits” by the approximately one hundred and twenty students in the course, we had collected significant data on the use of a learning object designed around an activity theory framework and the “Three Circuits of Interactivity” model for the popular culture of video games. Coordinating these lenses at the time seemed to be an appropriate way to find a useful reframe the activity theory focus of my work in term of my interest in popular culture and student interest in video games. In other words, the overlap help to reconcile the varied perspectives in what was an environment of “multi-person joint activity” (Cole 1996). Just as my perception of what was my “official” research direction had expanded to include the “Three Circuits of Interactivity” proposed by Kline et al. through the practical application of the “CHAT Circuits” learning object, the Programming Multimedia course was revised and taken in another direction. As mentioned, this essentially killed further development on the tool, since there was little practical way to continue to work on the learning object with the Anthony Charles, whose expertise was vital. In other words, we had created what Vygotsky would call a “zone of proximal development” (1978, p.87) in building, revising, and implementing the CHAT Circuits tool for the Programming Multimedia course. But when this environment was disrupted, it made further development of the tool a much less inviting (or even practical) use of either of our research and teaching efforts. However, despite the failure of CHAT Circuits tool to develop beyond its initial prototype, the work that I was doing as a course developer and instructor was providing substantive and practical knowledge in relation to my research interests. Even if my “official” plan of action would again require reframing (e.g. questioning whether to use CHAT Circuits in another environment or adapting it for another course), it was no surprise to see that my practical activities and experiences were largely charting the direction that my research would take. The process is akin to dead reckoning approach to navigation - marking each point in absolute reference to a previous point as you encounter them, setting a general direction, and discovering the world as you go. (Wakkary 2005) For example, when practically involved in music activities, my research interests tended towards examining the live music experience; when involved in teaching, the focus would shift in some degree towards learning objects. When I began to later work on redeveloping a course on popular culture for design students in the summer of 2004, my research would begin to, fittingly, help coordinate the music lens and the learning lens in the context of designing and teaching a course in cultural studies (see Figure 4). Furthermore, this experience in course development and delivery helped me contextualize a growing database of digital objects that I felt were increasingly appropriate objects of investigation. For example, I was able to produce a particularly insightful example of a remix of a1930s silent film and a contemporary soundtrack by synchronizing Dziga Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera (1929) with Radiohead’s Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001) in order to produce a new work that I called Kid A With Movie Camera (2003). This remix was later extended to make use of the 219 affordance of DVD player technology in a way that allows the user to navigate between Vertov and Eisenstein films while the Radiohead soundtrack or alternate soundtracks are playing (see Artifact 5.8: Kid A With Movie Camera in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 103. Stills from Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) also used in Manovich’s The Language of New Media (2001). The Kid A With Movie Camera piece (see Artifact 5.8: Kid A With Movie Camera in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”) has been fully described and analysed in either the appendices to this thesis or in a related paper dealing specifically with this artifact. The work was not planned out in advance, but emerged spontaneously and intuitively through some informal experimentation with video editing software late in 2003. I had seen and heard of similar instances of mixing film with alternate soundtracks, the idea to experiment here was not culturally new. And since the tools for experimentation were readily at hand, while developed reasonable editing skills through prior experience with digital video, experimentation is this way came as a natural process that required little thinking. It produced an “emergent formation that [Engeström would] call the created new activity” (Engeström 1987, italics in original). [These activities] remind us of the 'liberated or unloosed action' mentioned by V. P. Zinchenko … and of the loss of the 'self' in Learning III as described by Bateson [who] extends the notion of non-pathological double binds using as examples the actions of mountain climbers and musicians, "unrewarded and unbribed in any simple way". Shotter (1982, 47) points out that such actions contain a transformation of the subject "from a being who must first plan an action in thought before executing it in practice into someone who knows what to do in the course of doing it. (Engeström 1987) As result, this particular digital media artifact speaks directly to the ideas presented in this thesis, and indirectly to Lev Manovich’s description of a new media object (Manovich 2001) by intertextually relating concept of culture, computer programming, and the Russian and German avant-garde movements of the 1920s. Furthermore, it intertextually relates to The Language of New Media (2001) in that Manovich “remixed” screen shot’s from Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera as key points of discussion throughout the text. Therefore, because of this context, the numerous artifacts such as Kid A With Movie Camera can be viewed as data that is far more appropriate to this thesis than a pre-planned and rigorously controlled methodological approaches for generating and selecting data that ends up being removed from day-to-day, practical experiences. 220 There are numerous digital media artifacts that I’ve developed and collected that both precede and follow the remix experiment that led to Kid A With Movie Camera. Because they’ve emerged from the convergence of expression and practical activity in a digital context, I argue they are appropriate data for this study. More and more of this data continue to emerge in my work, even after having “completed” the thesis and no longer require additional artifacts. The reason for this, I feel quite strongly, is because of the practical nature of the data. In other words, such playful experiments with digital technologies and popular culture have long been part of my day-to-day activities, and apparently continue to an avenue for a practical form of digital expression in a popular culture environment. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 104. Slide from thesis PowerPoint presentation depicting a collage of images from digital media artifacts that were developed through the convergence of expression and practical activity. These artifacts have informed both the research in Travels in Intertextuality (2006) and indirectly in the design and deliver of cultural studies curricula. The cultural studies course development work that I was also doing at this time therefore became far more relevant to my own technology, culture, and marketing-related practices than the possibility of further developing the CHAT Circuits learning object. At least, this was the case for the particular time and environment where I was working on these objects. In helping design and implement a cultural-studies course for digital designers at SIAT, I was able to draw on my practical, everyday experiences and background in popular culture to inform the course content. At the same time, the development of this course content inspired and influenced many of the digital media experiments that were feeding my research interests. These practices and experiences not only helped develop and grow the course content; they were also useful in the course’s delivery later on. In this way it became clear to me that while my 221 activities as course developer and instructor with popular culture curriculum were becoming increasingly practical in shaping my actual research interests, what I was considering as my “official” graduate research was focused on an area that I was no longer viewing as a” living system”, i.e. it was a project that had come to a standstill. As a result, these practical experiences from working in a classroom – both face-to-face and online - were producing the actual insights and learning that I was finding valuable in my research. Through this “lens” of my commonsense response to the situation, in using Cole’s terminology, I again feel quite strongly that the value in my work has come primarily from the data produced as part of my cultural-historical background in activities of popular culture, i.e. the data that related to my actual practice. These practical activities included playing in a band, writing and performing music on my own, capturing media at music performances, or in organizing events for other performers. At the same time, through the “lens” of my discipline’s methodology – i.e. using activity theory in context of learning and design in a high tech environment – I had more than enough data and theory to produce a defensible thesis with respect to the CHAT Circuits application. However, the cost of this direction I felt would alienate a valuable cultural-historical background, where (1) I had unique experience to draw from, (2) where I was actually learning much more about activity theory and educational design technology than in my “official” research, and (3) provided a more common forum for communicating this material with students and colleagues. Because of this perceived contradiction between what I considered my “official” research and my informal research interests, I would end up wandering into what has been described by Schön as “the swampy lowlands” (Schön 1983, p.43). Presented with a “swamp” of remix data in a growing database of new media objects, I felt I could at least identify with Schön’s notion of researchers who “deliberately involve themselves in messy but crucially important problems and, when asked to describe their methods of inquiry, they speak of experience, trail and error, intuition, and muddling through” (ibid.). In framing the process of developing and accumulating digital media artifacts that have emerged from this research path, through categories of technology, culture, and marketing, these artifacts – when considered as “data” – became far more appropriate to the problem of remix than the CHAT Circuits initiative. Through these artifacts, which are summarized in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results” and address in greater detail in either the appendices or in separate papers, I would find what I saw as a consistent path that I had been following throughout my own extended “methodological journey” (Cole 1996, p.338). 3.3 Basic principles of an “ordinary” culture in the digital age Mix is the idea of taking ideas, expressions, putting them together and making something,” said [Stanford Law Professor Lawrence] Lessig. “Remix is the practice by which others take that [mix] and re-express it. Culture is remix. Knowledge is remix. Politics is remix. Everyone in the life of producing and creating engages in this practice of remix. (Lessig, November 11, 2004) 222 As will be further discussed in greater detail the following chapter on the methodology that has emerged from this thesis, Michael Cole’s basic principles in Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline (1996) can be summarized in terms of three primary and interconnecting conditions: (1) human activity is mediated through artifacts, i.e. any interaction with the world involves cultural aspects, (2) these cultural aspects have developed and accumulated over time “as the entire pool of artifacts that mediate human activity” (p.110), and (3) since this culturallymediated and historically developing human action is an ordinary and everyday occurrence, then any analysis of human activity must be grounded practically in this way. We’ll take a closer look at each of these principles: 1) Mediation through artifacts: The premise of this concept is that human psychological processes have developed simultaneously through the modification of material objects. As such, artifact mediation in human beings became “a new form of behavior in which humans modified material objects as a means of regulating their interactions with the world and one another” (p.108). The terms “tool”, “tool use”, and “tool mediation” are often used when describing the objects used in these interactions; however, the tool concept has been refined by Cole through the use of “artifact” as a way of reemphasizing the semiotic aspect of language as an important and integral part of the process of mediation (Cole, ibid.). By using the term artifact, we can allow semiotic “tools” such as signs and symbols to be just as relevant as the more common interpretation of tools, i.e. physical artifacts used to manipulate material, such as hammers and nails for example. Artifact, as a more inclusive term, is therefore far more appropriate in a digital context where the line between physical computer hardware and the language-based software of a digital artifact are effectively blurred. Manovich (2001) has even proposed new media object for this digital context, which is a term that has been used often in this thesis in signifying digital media artifacts. However, in keeping with Cole’s language, the inclusive term artifact will be used for both physical and digitally based mediation. 2) Historical development: For Cole, an artifact is “an aspect of the material world that has been modified over the history of incorporation into goal-directed human action” (Cole 1996, p. 117). An artifact is simultaneously both ideal and material. Its physical form or its expression through language – i.e. its material form – has been shaped by past and present interactions through “changes wrought in the process of their creation and use” (ibid.). In keeping with the idea of language-as-tool, this material form does not necessarily mean a physical form; words, phrases, numbers, etc. also have a material instantiation by simply being spoken, written, or communicated in some form. In contrast, the ideal form of the instantiation comes from the social significance it carries, specifically, in terms of its purpose and use. For example, the social significance of the word “hammer” or the physical form of a hammer, which are both material forms, could have different meanings depending on the intended purpose or context of use. As these meanings change over time, the entire pool of these artifacts – both material and ideal – are accumulated as “culture”: Culture, according to [Dewey’s] perspective, can be understood as the entire pool of artifacts accumulated by the social group in the course of its historical experience. In the aggregate, the accumulated of a group – culture – is then seen as the species-specific medium of human development. It is “history in the 223 present.” The capacity to develop within that medium and to arrange for its reproduction in succeeding generations is the distinctive characteristic of our species. (Cole 1996, p. 110) As discussed previously in terms of intertextuality, the social significance of an artifact can be seen as analogous to Bakhtin’s “linguistic significance”, where “a given utterance is understood against the background of language while its actual meaning is understood against the background of other concrete utterances on the same theme” (Bakhtin 1981, p. 281). Similar to Bakhtin’s use of the “chronotope” as situating this meaning against a culturally and historically changing background (Morson and Emerson 1990), the social significance of an artifact’s ideal form develops over time, in succeeding generations, and is “transmitted from previous human activities” (Dewey 1938/1963, p. 39 in Cole, p.110). 3) Practical activity: When combined with the material form, the notion of artifact as both material and ideal allows for a way out of the “intellectual cul-de-sac” of debating culture – as an “entire pool” or system of artifacts – as being located either in the head or in the world (Cole, p.118 see also Gover and Brown). Moving past this debate allows for the third premise of the culturalhistorical approach, specifically, grounding the analysis of cultural artifacts as expressions of ordinary, everyday activity. This is consistent with Raymond Williams’ notion of culture as “both the most ordinary common meanings and the finest individual meanings” (Williams 1958/1997) as well as with Lev Vygotsky’s view of intellectual development: ...the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge (Vygotsky 1978, p.24) Following Vygotsky’s cultural-historical perspectives, Cole’s argues that the historical development of an artifact – its “ideal/material residue” (Cole, p.110) – can only be experienced through practical activity with the artifact in the world and in its social contexts. In this respect, the social nature of all artifacts has particular relevance to Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky 1978, p.87), where collaborative activity leads to collective development that is not possible by the individual. Cole notes that this social view of artifacts also applies to other people acting in mediating roles, or, alternately, as “artifacts” in an individual’s activities: Note that in this way of thinking mediation through artifacts applies equally to objects and people. What differs in the two cases is the ways in which ideality and materiality are fused among members of these two categories of being, and the kinds of interactivity into which they can enter. (Cole 1996, p. 118) What this implies is that the social aspect of the artifact can range from a detached ideal form that allows the repurposing of the artifact as knowledge that can transfer across contexts and generations, to where the social purpose and use of the artifact is embodied in its material form in a way that suggests (or affords) possibilities for interaction. As Umberto Eco comments on the potential for industrial design to at least address the alienation of the individual in the Industrial Age, this fusion of ideality and materiality in an object “advertises its capacities in a pleasant way 224 and invites us to touch it. Man could thus be harmoniously assimilated to his function and to the instrument that allows its fulfilment” (Eco 1989, p.131). Regardless of the integration or detachment of the ideal and the material, the important implication from a cultural-historical perspective is that human consciousness is a unity of the material and the symbolic. The visual representation of mediation as a cognitive relationship between subject and object is commonly presented in the following simplified diagram based on Vygotsky’s original model and presented in Cole’s book: M (artifacts) S (subject) O (object) Figure 105. The basic mediational triangle in which the and object not only as ‘directly’ connected but simultaneously as ‘indirectly’ connected through a medium constituted of artifacts (culture).” (Cole 1996, p. 119) Cole helped revise and revive the mediational model (pictured above) from the work of Vygotsky, Leont’ev and Luria in the Russian cultural-historical tradition of psychology, originally formulated in the 1930’s (Vygotsky 1978). This model implies the idea of a “double world” (Luria 1981, p.35), one where the subject is both directly engaged with its environment while simultaneously engaged in an indirect, mediated relationship with this environment. This concept arguably has far more relevance today in the context of what Baudrillard calls the “hyperreality” of simulated worlds in a consumer society (Baudrillard 1976), or in terms of the “publicity image” described by John Berger (as discussed previously in “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings”): In the cities in which we live, all of us see hundreds of publicity images every day of our lives. No other kind of image confronts us so frequently. In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages. (Berger 1972) The “density” of images, sounds, and multiple other media that Berger is addressing all call to mind the image of being inundated or submersed in a hypermediated environment. To invoke Cole’s 225 metaphor of the fish in water, the human as a uniquely cultural being “swims” in a cultural environment that can be seen as an “entire pool of artifacts” that grows and changes over time (Cole, p.110). Furthermore, and just as importantly, it is not practical to consider living and breathing outside of this cultural pool, so any analysis of our actions must take culture into its proper context. Although this description and triangular model in Figure 105 provide a brief summarization and visualization of Cole’s basic principles, consider how they relate to the idea of “remix” expressed by Lawrence Lessig in the quote that opens this section: 1. First of all, when Lessig begins to describe mix and remix as “the idea of taking ideas”, it immediately indicates that Cole’s notion of mediation is involved in this activity; furthermore these ideas are also artifacts since they’re “expressions” that can be put together to “make something”, i.e. another artifact. So remix therefore satisfies Cole’s first principle for an analysis in terms of cultural psychology. 2. Secondly, Lessig describes the artifact as a “mix” that can be “re-express[ed]”, thereby indicating a historical developmental process that, over time, will produce a pool of artifacts, or, culture and history as an accumulation of expressions and re-expressions. This view of remix would therefore seem to adequately satisfy the second of Cole’s principles, as suggested by Lessig’s view of “Culture…Knowledge…Politics” as all being “remix”. 3. Finally, Lessig’s general definition of remix, as the basis for the analysis in this thesis, then satisfies Cole’s requirement for “practical activity” by claiming that “everyone in the life of producing and creating” is essentially involved in remixing activities. Therefore, if the production and creation of remix artifacts is increasingly an everyday part of contemporary digital culture, then the line between “official” remix culture and what people do in their everyday lives is effectively blurred. Lessig’s broad definition invites obvious criticism of being so broad that it becomes useless. However, it will be demonstrated in the following chapter on methodology, how his description can actually be applied productively to concepts of artifact mediation in a more systematic way than what is described above. Specifically, we’ll address Wartofsky’s hierarchy of artifacts (1979) in terms of Lessig’s description as a way to inform the analytical method that has been formulated in this thesis. Regardless of the generality of Lessig’s description of remix, when based on its relationship to Cole’s three basic principles for a cultural psychology that is situated in today’s digital context, the argument can be made that remix is effectively an ordinary, everyday aspect of human activity in the contemporary environment of a “mediatized global marketspace” (Kline et al. 2003 p.31). Going even further, we can argue that the concept we’re describing as remix in the digital age has historically been a fundamental part of creative cultural activity regardless of its name, e.g. “collage”, “montage”, “dada”, “appropriation”, etc. What is important to think about in terms of remix therefore is the claim that, underneath this historically developing activity, there has been a “profound cultural shift inherent in our new media environments” (Graham, in press, p. 25). Furthermore, we should also consider whether this shift is due to quantitative and qualitative changes in media artifacts through changes in digital 226 technologies. With these ideas in mind, consider that the “digital creativity” that is inherent in this shift leads to new forms of expression, or, as Lessig argues, new ways to “write differently”: Anyone with a $1500 computer can capture images and sounds from the culture around him or her and remix them and express ideas more powerfully, [to] write differently. Write differently in the sense that the expressions are more directly connected to way most people in this culture connect to expressions, and write differently in the sense that a free digital network enables the spreading of this expression in a way unimaginable in any time in our past. (Lessig, December 11, 2004) As a result, Lessig sees radical changes in what we conceive of as “writing” that are changing “the way we understand these ordinary things” (ibid.). In terms of these changes in creativity potential, he argues that older generations have grown up thinking that creative writing (for scholars anyway) was a process of quoting texts, i.e. in the sense of texts as books or stories. For example, creativity might be found in taking a quote from a Hans Christian Andersen story (e.g. Everything in the Right Place, 1853) and combining it with another quote from an Ernest Hemingway novel (e.g. The Old Man and the Sea, 1952) and producing a new work with its own new meaning in the process, or, what Engeström would call “the creative new” (Engeström 1987, italics in original). While this has been an ordinary form of creativity in the pre-digital era, Lessig suggests that the aforementioned “radical change” brought on by digital culture “is most pronounced in the context of our children… in relation to their ordinary ways of expressing and transforming art” (ibid.). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 106. A “rip-off” of The Matrix (1999) in a video piece produced by kids playing and creating with digital technologies [see “Chapter 5: Summary of Results” and Artifact 5.3 “Nightmare on Tern Place”] contrasted with a screenshot from the game Enter the Matrix (2003) by video game icons Atari. They understand, express, and critique using these technologies differently, but increasingly, in ways which are ordinary for them. [It is a] different writing, but different only because we don’t recognize it. For them, it’s the obvious way to express, to critique, [and] to transform. The question we have to ask as a culture, as a legal culture, is whether this form of expression, this form of ‘writing’ will be allowed. (Lessig, December 11, 2004) 227 For Lessig, children may understand, express, and critique in ways that are different to our perspectives and therefore difficult to recognize. However, these new observations are as valid as the ones we do recognize, or even formally sanction as legal cultural activities. For Raymond Williams these officially recognized activities create the “known meanings and directions” of culture that is always “both the most ordinary common meanings and the finest individual meanings”, even as new observations and meanings that are being tested out in practice (Williams 1958). These are the ordinary processes of human societies and human minds, and we see through them the nature of a culture: that it is always both traditional and creative; that it is both the most ordinary common meanings and the finest individual meanings…The questions I ask about our culture are questions about deep personal meanings. Culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind. (Williams 1958) According to Kline et al., Williams was “a fierce enemy technological determinism” (2003, p.46) who criticized what he saw as McLuhan’s “celebration” of media as “explicitly ideological” which ran the risk of canceling out “all other questions about [media/technology] and its uses” (Williams 1992, p.122 in Kline et al. ibid.), Along with the work of his colleagues at the Birmingham school, such as Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall, Dick Hebdige, and Angela McRobbie (Reed 2001), Williams helped to provide some footing for those looking at both the creativity and ideology in taking place popular culture as being a valid source of appropriate research data. As mentioned in previous parts of our discourse, for example the tensions between the “natural” and the “cultural” worldviews in scientific disciplines such as psychology (Cole 1996), or the hi/lo cultural tensions that have now collapsed into a Nobrow space (Seabrook 2000), the radical shift towards treating popular culture as equal to high culture (and any other culture for that matter) laid the foundation for what is now known as cultural studies. Ziauddin Sardar frames out the radical reframing of culture by Williams and his colleagues that has ironically produced the “discipline” of cultural studies in the 1997 article “Stop Studying Cultural Studies” from The New Statesman magazine: Cultural studies was conceived as a dissenting intellectual tradition outside the academy, dedicated to exposing power in all its forms… [it] thus deliberately took an anti-disciplinary stance. It shunned thematic coherence and the sense of a progressive accumulation of knowledge because this is precisely how established disciplines produce and control knowledge. It did not attempt to formulate theories because theories tell you what to expect, how to react. It rejected institutional consolidation because that would have undermined its very reason to be. (Sardar 1997) The radical shift in perspective offered by the Birmingham school removed culture's significance from the domain of the elite by claiming that culture exists, according to Williams, "in every society and in every mind" (Williams 1958). Therefore, in Williams view, it wasn't the task of the cultural elite to educate the masses on what kind of culture is right and worthy of study. Instead, and in as sense presaging the ecology and complexity arguments of culture that have been raised in this thesis (for example in the work of Mark C. Taylor), all cultural relationships have relevance and can be studied in terms of their role in society. 228 Every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning. The making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions, and its growth is an active debate and amendment under the pressures of experience, contact, and discovery, writing themselves into the land… The growing society is there, yet it is also made and remade in every individual mind. The making of a mind is, first, the slow learning of shapes, purposes, and meanings, so that work, observation and communication are possible. Then, second, but equal in importance, is the testing of these in experience, the making of new observations, comparisons, and meanings. (Williams 1958) Williams’ work would help to shape the field of cultural studies for years to come, moving from the idea of literature as “cultural production” towards the increasingly electronic aspects of culture. For example, his notion of television’s “flows” of information would be later summarized by Kline et al. as more than just a technological ability to “continually stream words and images to a receiver, without pause or interruption, fostering an experience” (Kline et al. 2003, p. 48). Further, and in a very relevant description (in terms of the fishing and ecology metaphors used in this thesis), it is an experience “that is like an electronic river of sorts” from which has emerged a “mediatized marketplace” (ibid.). When television “flows” into the household, it potentially ruptures previously existing social relations. Televised sport, for example, undermines the social occasions that brought people together in public spectacles of football and soccer; it signals the dematerialization of a kind of social community and its displacement in to the mediated realm of television. In this way, media are deeply cultural, reshaping practices in the realm of everyday life… Williams’s approach places in the foreground the historical constitution of media as institutional and cultural practices, and his analysis of television is one of the best historical accounts of the emergence of a mediatized marketplace. (Kline et al. 2003, p.48) The analysis above by Kline et al. argues, in a sense, that the “flows” of electronic media such as television are deeply cultural and therefore, in relating this analysis to Lessig’s ideas, involve a “radical change” that is taking place through the displacement of social communities into the digitally “mediated realm” (Kline et al. ibid). To again invoke a key metaphor in this work, it’s as though we’ve either jumped – or been pushed – into this “electronic river” (ibid.). In such a scenario, the issue becomes a matter of whether we know how to “swim in a remix culture” (Shirkey, in Heins & Beckles 2005), which itself can be viewed in terms of a passive (“sink”) or active (“swim”) approach to negotiating the complex dynamics of the emerging mediatized marketplace. In a very recent interview with ESPN columnist Bill Simmons, National Basketball Association commissioner David Stern reconfirms these very ideas and metaphors in mentioning the “technological changes” of “the digital ecosystem” in marketing the sport of basketball around the world: 229 NBA Commissioner David Stern: The other part that we're doing -- the section that deals with digital entertainment, the digital ecosystem, when you think about what's coming in that part of the technology world, where there are going to be 3 billion cell phones by the year 2010, and even they and their successors, which will be just called handheld devices, will be video-enabled, music-enabled, voiceenabled and Internet-enabled … that has enormous implications for everything we do, both as a society and with the NBA. It's in a vacuum, changing day by day. So we've got the technological changes occurring, we have globalization occurring, and we have enormous needs for corporate/social responsibility, so there's really a great opportunity to do well and do good at the same time. Bill Simmons: How would you compare that to 1983, when you were taking over? David Stern: Look what's happened since 1983. We've gone from three networks or maybe four... … I mean, the first network deal I made for cable, which I either fortunately or unfortunately made, was in 1979 (with a network that eventually became USA) for $400,000.In the intervening 20 years or so, we went from 4 million subscribers on cable to 90 million on cable and satellite … we went from five networks to 500 networks. That was the most enormous growth and we rode that growth. That was a river that came running by our door -- actually, it was more like an ocean. (Simmons & Stern 2006) Figure 107. Excerpt from Bill Simmons’ February 16 interview with NBA Commissioner David Stern in ESPN Magazine. Image features Stern (right), Patrick Ewing (middle, the number one draft choice in 1985), and former New York Knicks general manager GM Dave DeBusschere (left). John Seely Brown argues that children are “native” to this cultural environment of digital media (Brown, December 10, 2004), while Lessig suggest they are already negotiating the complexities of the digital environment in the way they “understand, express, and critique using these technologies differently, but increasingly, in ways which are ordinary for them” (Lessig, December 11, 2004). Increasingly, through “deeply cultural” technologies and media that saturate day-to-day living (Kline et al., ibid), the argument by scholars such as Brown, Lessig, Graham and other is the notion that what is “ordinary” to those growing up in a digital generation is undergoing radical change from what was “ordinary” to previous generations. The notion of “radical” change has become increasingly part of ordinary culture, at least in terms of the use of “revolutionary” language in contemporary marketing approaches (Frank 1997) in the collapse of high and low culture into a Nobrow space (Seabrook 2000). At the same time, today’s 230 digital generations can be seen managing the complexity of their environments in ways that are metaphorically similar to the revolutionary avant-garde filmmakers of the 1920s. Using the technology of the camera to “see” the world, as Dziga Vertov saw through his premise of the KinoEye (or “cinema” eye) in the early Soviet Union, the “profound cultural shift in our new media environments” (Graham, in press, 25) allows for new worldviews on what it means to “write”. With this perspective in mind, the digital generation “plunges into the seeming chaos of life to find in life itself … whatever is most typical, most useful”: Kino-Eye plunges into the seeming chaos of life to find in life itself the response to an assigned theme. To find the resultant force amongst the million phenomena related to a given theme. To edit; to wrest, through the camera, whatever is most typical, most useful, from life; to organize the film pieces wrested from life into a meaningful rhythmic visual order, a meaningful visual phrase, an essence of “I see. (Vertov & Michelson, 1984) LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 108. Video footage from fifty digital video cameras given to fans at a Beastie Boys concert at (Madison Square Garden, New York, October 9, 2004) was pooled, synchronized and remixed into a feature film (premiered March 18, 2005). A recently released concert film by the Beastie Boys provides an extremely relevant example of the ideas that span this entire research project. The development of this film came for the pooling of the unscripted material from fifty digital video cameras handed out by the band prior to a concert in New York’s Madison Square Garden on October 9, 2004. These “Fans with Movie Cameras” thereby helped to create the film in what John Seely Brown would describe as “distributed collaboration” (Brown, in johnseelybrown.com), and through the “radical reframing” of a concert film (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.104). Beastie Boy and filmmaker Adam Yauch, working under the pseudonym Nathanial Hornblower, comments on this phenomenon in creating the multi-angle film in an interview with film and music video director Spike Jonze: 231 I was trying to find things to tie it together, and [the screen of all 50 angles] seemed to really help make it all one thing. Every time that grid comes back on the screen it reminds you that all 50 cameras are shooting simultaneously. (Yauch, in Jonze 2003) While Lev Manovich uses Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) as an appropriate point of reference for the development of his book Language of New Media (Manovich 2000), we can look at ordinary cultural productions taking place in our contemporary environment in the same way. Whether this ordinary cultural material consists of examples such as those we’ve seen discussed and presented by Lessig, Brown, and Miller in their presentations (Brown 2004; Lessig 2004; Miller 2005; see also Artifact 5.3 in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”), or whether it is a more extensive work such as the recent concert film by the Beastie Boys (Figure 108), these artifacts in their various forms and combinations can act as appropriate data as this thesis moves towards its investigation of “the million phenomena related to a given theme”, i.e. remix in “music and the media arts”. 3.4 Remix in “music and the media arts” As cited earlier in this thesis, the July 2005 issue of Wired magazine features a cover story on remix culture where it claims that “everywhere you look, pop culture has been digitized, resequenced, and reassembled” (Wired 2005). In the cover story, the magazine goes on to describe remix as having historically developed from origins in music, then moved into films, and then spread into other parts of popular culture, such as games, cars, and fashion (ibid.). While comments such as these help to demonstrate the widespread aspect of remix, the tradeoffs comes in finding specificity for the phenomenon in terms of a research focus. The ubiquity of remix makes it difficult when attempting a limited analysis on particular artifacts of remix culture, i.e. the intertextuality of this cultural phenomenon and general definitions (such as the description we’ve seen by Lawrence Lessig and Paul D. Miller) makes it’s hard to draw boundaries around where one remix begins and another one ends. For example, we could approach remix in terms of the ideas of “appropriation”, “dada”, and “collage” of avant-garde artists such as Marcel Duchamp in the early 20th century, and these terms have produced deep discourses of art theory that are no doubt relevant to this work. Furthermore, these historical precedents could provide the basis for a comparative analysis on earlier approaches with present day versions of “appropriation” and “collage” under the umbrella term of remix. In fact, and as mentioned earlier, some of my work as an artist working in terms of remixing digital media artifacts actually appropriates work by some of these avant-garde artists (e.g. the films of Dziga Vertov) in the creation of new digital works. Similarly, Paul D. Miller has appropriated the works of famous avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp’s – or, as Miller call him, “M.C. Duchamp” (Miller, 2004, p. 97) – in creating both installation pieces (“Errata Erratum”) and music tracks included in the audio CD that comes with his book Rhythm Science (2004). In this way, Miller explores Duchamp’s work and treats it as readymades or “found objects” to be recombined with elements of his own “everyday culture or popular culture”: 232 This notion of context and appropriation explores how the meaning of objects and imagery can be altered through utilization within alternate contexts. Duchamp viewed his own everyday culture or popular culture as having the characteristics of local culture. Clearly, this factor became another aspect of the dominant-to-local culture argument, characterized in modernist terms as the antagonism between "high" and "low" culture. This reflexive trait of one's own culture and its navigation of high and low became central to post-modern activities. (Leblanc et al. 2001) For this reason, and given the nature of the data that is being considered for this research, an attempt will be made to focus on data that appropriately represents the phenomenon’s earlier historical origins. More fundamentally, the data will need to represent the “reciprocal interplay” (Bronfenbrenner, in Moen et al.) of this researcher with the object of inquiry, i.e. my own “local culture” (Leblanc et al. 2001). Therefore, what I’ll be considering as appropriate data for this study will have emerged from my background as a “reflexive trait of [my] own culture and its navigation of high and low” (ibid.). In other words, this appropriate data will address my role as a “reflective practitioner” (Schön 1983) who remixes “his own everyday culture or popular culture” (Leblanc et al. 2001) with respect to Martin Kretschmer’s definition of “music and the media arts”: ‘Music and the media arts’ for the purpose of this study was defined as any artifact that can be delivered digitally as strings of 1s and 0s where sound is an essential and dominant feature of the receptive experience. This definition allows for the inclusion of words or pictures (i.e. multimedia music works), but music videos, video installations, computer games, or radio plays are not the primary focus of the study. (Kretschmer 2004) While still broad, the above definition by Kretschmer at least helps to narrow remix activities in an area where my background as a writer and as a performing musician can help provide more practical insight than, say, a focus on remix activities that take place in the world of fashion. The definition also addresses another key condition: while sound is the driving force behind the creation of the remix object, the sound-based remix can also include various aspects of multimedia. Rather than being the dominant feature of the remix, these additional multimedia objects should build off of the sound track so as to relate to, at the very least, the rhythmic aspect of recombining cultural objects into new arrangements “where sound is an essential and dominant feature” (ibid). Viewed in this way, the images take on a decidedly musical quality, or, as Vertov describes it, a “rhythmic visual order” (Vertov 1984). As part of the data in question, such media can be seen as appropriate in the example of the rhythmic avant-garde filmmaking approach in Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929), which of course displays these rhythms and musicality despite being a silent film. These qualities and their relevance to remix activities of this thesis are extensively addressed in the analysis of “Artifact 5.8: Kid A With Movie Camera” (found either in the appendices or in a separate paper dealing specifically with this artifact). In addition to being able to recontextualize a silent film in terms of data that relates to music and the media arts, we can also recontextualize such works in terms of these activities and their resulting artifacts are also contextualized as digital in this definition, i.e. able to “be delivered as 233 strings of 1s and 0s” (Kretschmer 2004). According to Kretschmer, the digitisation of cultural artifacts allows for the following reframing of activities in music and the media arts: • Digitisation enables a more extensive engagement with already existing artifacts (for example through sampling and adaptation), and may break down the traditional copyright barrier between creator and user. Digitisation offers a new disintermediated distribution channel which may affect the bargaining power between creator and existing market intermediaries (and thus the structure of copyright contracting). • What Kretschmer claims digitization allows for in music and the media arts can be seen practically in the form of the remix. Paul D. Miller and John Thackara respectively describe this affordance as the ability to “move into the frame” and “step into the garden” (Miller 2004, p.101; Thackara 2001), thereby describing the ability of digital tools to engage works in more direct ways. As further mentioned in Kretschmer’s claims, this “extensive engagement” has the potential to break down traditional barriers between creators of works and their users (or “readers”), as well as potentially affecting in a fundamental way the market intermediaries who mediate such engagements. For those paying attention to the technological changes that have taken place over the last decade (and beyond), this potential for “extensive engagement” and the questions it raises have been ongoing since the early days of the Internet. This fact is clearly shown in a 1995 documentary for PBS, titled The History of Rock n’ Roll: Up from the Underground, where musician/producer/artist Brian Eno makes the following comments: LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD We now have, via the internet, there’s a system called Mosaic which enables you to download music to millions of other people and for them to pick it up and play with it in whichever way they want… On people’s CD-ROMs now they’re offering the option of “remixing” things. What is that remix? Are you in someway the author of that? If you are, should you get royalties if other people listen to it? Nobody knows how this works anymore. (Eno, in Peisch 1995) Figure 109. A screenshot of recorder producer and sound artist Brian Eno from an interview in Jeffrey Piesch’s The History of Rock n' Roll: Up from the Underground (1995) In light of Eno’s comments, do we know any better how remix works when looking at the phenomenon ten years later? This thesis is arguing that, yes, we do have appropriate “lenses” we 234 can use to gain insight into this phenomenon, and for the purposes of this study, our “lenses” of analysis will focus on the artifacts and the activities of remix that are situated in Kretschmer’s definition of “music and the media arts” (2004). We’ve described these artifacts and activities in terms of “musical” and “rhythmic” qualities, as well as in their interactive and mediational possibilities. However, to further extend our “coordinated set of lenses” (Cole 1996, p. 338), we need to also consider that these processes are not context-free, but are always situated in historical and institutional conditions, as seen through the discussions of many of the theorists mentioned in this thesis so far (e.g. Cole, Engeström, Williams, Kline, etc). So by using the above definition of music and the media arts as an entry point into the phenomenon, we can go beyond simply addressing remix in terms of its origins as primarily a music-based activity. We can go beyond its aesthetics and its technical aspects by also moving into remix’s historical roots, e.g. in the “Dub” mixes of Lee “Scratch” Perry and King Tubby in 1970s Reggae music. In this way, the value of the artifact is not only contained in itself, but is situated in the cultural-historical context of how it came into being. Such value comes from being able to recognize in a remix artifact “its approach to the act of creation”: Quite apart from the value of the music itself, the most surprising thing about the Dub concept was its approach to the act of creation. I was used to the idea of music being built up, track by track, piece by piece, until the final mix was reached. Jamaican dub producers such as Lee Perry and King Tubby reversed this process. The final mix of a song became the starting point for experimentation. Composing at the mixing desk, they punched holes in the sound; they let instruments drop away, only to return at some later moment; they added sound effects to the mix. Very often the track revealed its skeleton, the bass and drums; at other times a ghost seemed to be haunting the mix. Music had become a liquid experience. Over the years, this once secret concept has entered the public mind as the idea of the remix. Music no longer has a final outcome; rather, it exists in a constant state of flux, in which many different musicians add their own elements to the track. Even at the moment of performance, either live in concert, or in the hands of the DJ, the music is still being operated upon. This creates, I believe, a music totally in tune with the contemporary mind. (Noon, n.d, “Origins of a Dub Fiction”) The historical context of the remix activity – such as its relationship to other genres and approaches such as “appropriation”, “collage”, and “dada” – has been discussed briefly in previous parts of this research. As just described by Jeff Noon’s in his application of ideas of “Dub” mixes in creating his novel Cobralingus (2001), descriptions of remixes and the remix activity can be seen relating to Bakhtin’s view of “unfinalizability” (Morson and Emerson, p.60), or Eco’s notion of “the open work” that is in “movement” through its meaning (1989). While these historical precursors will continue influence the remainder of the thesis, they will only be secondary concerns, as much as is possible, in terms of the data that is appropriate for the purpose of this study. Specifically, we’re less concerned with how remix relates to these other genres and approaches than in trying to gain some insight into the overall processes and evaluation that are involved in combining and recombining artifacts, mixes, and remixes, regardless of the “official” name or categorization of this activity. 235 Even though we’ve already argued many times over that any object “is inextricably tied to its context in expressing its cultural meaning” (Leblanc et al. 2001), and even though we’ve raised poststructuralist arguments in questioning “static or eternal models” (Engeström 1987), what were concerned with in the data is actually trying to find value through some sort of structural analysis. This is an intention that is best stated by Cole in his attempts to look at culture in the discipline of psychology: “Some way is needed to talk about structure in the resulting cultural medium” (Cole 1996, p.121). The minimal mediational structure given in [Figure 47 of this thesis] cannot stand alone as a representation of mediated action in its social context. In order to elaborate a cultural-historical psychology to guide our research in complex, everyday settings, we need to be able to talk about aggregations of artifacts appropriate to the events they mediate and to include the mediation of interpersonal relationships along with mediation of action on the nonhuman world. (Ibid.) The method developed in the following chapter therefore attempts to extend the “minimal mediational structure” in just such a way by explicitly coordinating a number of lenses in order to gauge the tradeoffs in “value” between these perspectives. By also taking an ecological view of how digital culture is performed, produced and reproduced – i.e. by addressing how these processes are situated in contemporary culture – we can look at remix and its potential value as “connected to the way most people in this culture connect to expressions” (Lessig, December 11, 2004). However, prior to moving into the development of this method in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis”, we’ll again work from Lessig’s ideas on “the expression” of digital creativity by moving straight into the work of John Seely Brown and his colleague John Hagel. Here, we’ll get a better sense of how remix can be seen as both distributed and collaborative, whether in terms of the activity as whole, or, simultaneously, as simply the artifacts that form the appropriate data of this study. To do so, we’ll need to briefly travel metaphorically to what Brown and Hagel refer to as “the edge”. 3.5 Value at “the edge” The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization is a 2005 book (with a somewhat contradictory title) written by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown. Naturally, given the ideas on remix and the “new social capital” in the digital age that we’ve already seen from Brown in “Chapter 1: Remixing the Question”, the “accretion”, and “world building” activities that Brown claims are part of this new social capital have led the two authors to create an associated website to complement their book. This site, called “edge perspectives”, thereby allows their book to take on aspects of a “random access evocative object” (Brown, December 10, 2004). As such the interplay between website and book, provides “an very interesting interplay between a virtual ecology overlayed on physical 236 structure” (ibid.). The site’s worldview – its lens of perspective – is stated very clearly on the opening page: “the edge is becoming the core…” (Hagel and Brown, 2005). Figure 110. A screenshot of John Haley and John Seely Brown’s website for the book The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization (2005) According to Hagel and Brown, it is this “edge” where “growth, innovation, and value creation” are taking place. The result of this activity at the edge leads to a new “common sense model”, as has happened with every major technological shift (Hagel and Brown, 2005). In discussing this “edge”, the authors call to mind Mark C. Taylor’s description of open systems ” in The Moment of Complexity: The Emergence of Network Culture (2001), specifically, systems that are “forever subject to chance [and] emerge at the edge of order and operate far from equilibrium” (Taylor, p. 97). For their book, Hagel and Brown are arguing that similar ideas to what Taylor is describing can be applied pragmatically in business strategy. They perceive this “edge” by framing out their perspectives on four areas where the “action” is taking place: “social, enterprise, market and learning” (ibid.). Complex dynamic loops shape the evolution of each domain and the interdependencies across domains. Many analysts have described elements of each of these domains, but no one has sought to explore systematically how these domains interact with each other. We believe that the biggest opportunities will arise where the edges of these four domains interact and generate tensions that need to be resolved. It is this intersection that defines the first dimension of our research agenda. (Hagel and Brown, 2005) 237 While the lenses that Hagel and Brown are using may be different than the ones that have been identified and will be further applied in this thesis, the processes and objectives are the same. Specifically, Hagel and Brown are looking at activities that are highly dynamic, interactive, and tension-filled; they do so by looking at the intersection of their coordinated perspectives. The intent in doing so in an attempt to find or create “value” from these activities that are taking place at “the edge”. We have been looking at remix culture in similar terms, and as reinforced in his presentations (Brown, 2004, December 10), Brown and his colleagues have been doing the same. It is not just corporate training that is important but rather rich participation with partners who are at the edge. Ask: how do you learn as much from a partner as you learn from creating something yourself? How does distributed collaboration around the world become a critical strategy for survival? What are the most effective ways to convert your existing global supplier networks into new nodes of innovation? (Brown, in johnseelybrown.com’s “speeches”) Brown’s notion here of a “distributed collaboration” could be viewed alternately as Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978, p.87), or the remix of samples pulled together from his own works and the works of others that takes place consistently in the performances and presentations of Paul D. Miller (Miller, September 16, 2005). In terms of design strategy, Brown is suggesting participatory approaches that pull together the perspectives of partners in these dynamic environments, i.e. “listening to the world” as it takes shape at the edges (Brown, in Mitchell 1996). Brown goes on to suggest that what is taking place is a synthesis of “old economy” and “new economy” skills and characteristics, where a mix of professionalism and agility create an emerging “hybrid economy” (Yang, 2001). The result of these interaction is what Brown describes as an “ecoweb” system that blurs the boundary between what is inside and outside of the firm, and between the “old vertically integrated enterprises” and “dynamic loosely coupled organization” (ibid.). In similarly arguing the point about living in a “media ecology” (Miller 2006), Paul D. Miller raises these same questions in terms of the blurring between internal and external thoughts in an “opensource culture of memory” (Miller, September 16, 2005). This permeable boundary between the system and its environment calls to mind the concept of the autopoietic system with its self-referential feedback loops in conjunction with the feedback coming from its interactions with other systems. In an interview with C. Otto Scharmer on behalf of the Society for Organizational Learningon, Lucy Suchman comments on these autopoietic “islands” by pointing out the problem with an autopoietic system that has gone too far, i.e. when it becomes so intensely self-referential that it poses serious complications for the notion of “listening to the world”: And the feedback loops on those islands are getting tighter and tighter, and more and more intense. People are increasingly preoccupied with just staying engaged within the self-referential world that they’re part of, never mind being able to make connections to other worlds. And of course, part of that is probably also self-reproducing, right? It’s disruptive to hear from other worlds, and if you have enough trouble as it is, then the last thing you want is more complication. (Suchman 1999, p. 14) 238 Echoing Brown’s notion of distributed collaboration, Suchman explains in terms of a value proposition how these complications are addressed and overcome. Specifically, she explains how the benefit of crossing boundaries, or of Brown’s “listening to the world”, must be seen as outweighing the costs of the complications that follow from trying to maintain these open relationships. In other words, the openness of the system must framed in terms of solutions rather than complications: The shift that has to take place is to come to believe that what you’re going to get from crossing those boundaries isn’t just more complications, but solutions. When you actually go out and engage with customers, then you discover that you get things that you never could have come up with on your own. It makes your life easier in many ways, and more than repays the kind of energy that’s required to maintain the relationship. But if you don’t believe that, if you think it’s just going to make your life more difficult, then you’re not going to do it. (Suchman 1999, p. 14) In this way, Suchman is presenting a value proposition for establishing and maintaining outside relationships rather than turning inward as a self-referential autopoietic system. Brown and Hagel later presented similar ideas in terms of looking at the system’s “edges” as being a key part of its own “core” identity. Yet in the case of looking for business innovation at the “edge” of the “hybrid economy”, as well as in the case of looking for musical innovation on the electronic frontier of avant-garde artists such a Paul D. Miller, the point is still to see how either of these potential sources of data could be looked at in terms of value, i.e. how we can more clearly communicate the value propositions taking place in these technological, cultural, and market interactions. In “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings” we raised some notions of value in terms of Benjamin’s “cult value” and “exhibition value”, as well as the Marxist distinctions between “use” and “exchange” value. In the next chapter we’ll attempt to apply these notions of value in framing out a set of useful perspectives for specifically looking at remix activities and artifacts. But in the context of the value propositions of Hagel and Brown – i.e. in terms of what they call the “hybrid economy” – where do these key figures in this discourse seem to find value? In a 2001 review of presentations delivered by Hagel and Brown on ideas that led to their recent book, Santa Clara University professor Cary Yang further explains some of these emerging ideas. Specifically, he discusses Hagel and Brown’s ideas on “value creation” in the “hybrid economy”: John Hagel expanded upon the opportunities suggested by Brown’s hybrid economy by focusing on value creation. He described three dimensions of value creation. First, the lag in the adoption and deployment of technology can be addressed and minimized via organizational restructuring, such as adopting a more dynamic and loosely coupled architecture. He cited the example of the lag of changes in manufacturing relative to the potential for increased asset efficiency associated with MRP/ERP manufacturing information systems. Within new hybrid structures, interaction and transaction costs across all aspects of a business operation can be systematically and fundamentally reduced. (Yang, 2001) 239 For the first dimension of value creation suggested by Hagel, transaction costs are reduced both systematically and fundamentally by a hybrid structure. For example, this value might be achieved through a reduced lag time of changes in manufacturing as a result of changes taking place in the market, industry, or within the enterprise itself. In our theoretical terms, this reduction in transaction costs would create an increase in “exchange value”. To qualify this view, rather than exchange value being seen in terms of profit made on an individual object, the value of exchangeability when situated in a hypercapitalist, information age is found in the ability for the object to be bought and sold repeatedly on an open market, i.e. high exchange value in terms of high liquidity. When viewed as liquidity, this exchange value is essentially related to the optimization of information flow in the market. So in this sense, the exchange value of an object is situation ally dependent on the market in which the object is exchanged, e.g. technology shares traded through online markets where there information flow is hypermediated in a “global mediatized marketplace” (Kline et al 2003, p.54). However, Yang further comments on similar ideas in Hagel’s presentation by also suggesting an entirely different kind of value. This potential source of competitive advantage is one that Walter Benjamin would be familiar with: Finally, to optimize information flow, the organization can be positioned to gain privileged access to new information as it emerges. Information and knowledge assets can become a source of competitive advantage. At the same time, more adaptive, flexible organizations will have developed the necessary skills to generate, synthesize, and act upon the information flow. (Yang, 2001) This mention of “privileged access to new information” should indicate that the value being presented here is the very same “cult value” that have given works of art their value through an exclusivity that is only available to a few, and perhaps for only a limited time (Benjamin 1936). There is a difference, however, in the cult value of each case. Specifically, the painting by Michelangelo hanging on a wall in its owner’s house translates cult value into social standing, that is, depending on the perceptions and social conditions of those making value judgements on the owner. The cult value from being in a good position to act upon privileged business information would translate into improved financial standing, which may ultimately improve social standing, though indirectly. The point here is that while exchange value would seem a natural lens for looking at economic systems where commodities are being exchanged on open markets, the notion of cult value can also be a useful lens. Though its normal connotation is in terms of the art world and religious objects, the reactions and effects on financial and commodities markets when “insider” information released helps to relate cult value to the notion of exclusiveness information in market transactions. Furthermore, cult value can have an effect on a market even if the object or the information is only believed to have been released to an exclusive few. Other market participant may act upon their subjective interpretations of the reality and validity of this information, potentially contributing to trends in the market’s direction. The argument for gaining access to the cult value in a hybrid economy of a digital context, as presented by Yang, therefore comes from the ability to act upon it quickly. In contrast, the cult value from a rare work of art in a non-digital context comes from the ability to not only possess it, 240 but also to enforce the boundaries around it. Interestingly, Hagel’s summary also suggests the other two values that we’ve mentioned in the previous chapter: exhibition value and use value. Hagel summed up his remarks on the hybrid economy by painting the scenario of “asset arbitrage,” in which new economic value is created by taking the undervalued assets of a traditional company and repositioning them using the capability of new technology. (Yang, ibid.) The exhibition value in Hagel’s scenario of “asset arbitrage” derives from the “capability of new technology” to provide a context for the asset, i.e. some kind of environment where it can be recognized as potentially useful. The wider the exposure potential that the technology is able to provide the asset, then the greater the exhibition value will be. For example, an 8-track tape of a Led Zeppelin album has a low exhibition value; the object may have value but the environment essentially nullifies it. However, an album of audio in more useful formats such as aiff, mp3 or AAC files that are playable on an iPod or other portable music player have significantly more exhibition value due to their playability in multiple contexts through a number of varyingly interoperable technologies. In terms of use value, it is usually measured in relation to exchange value, with the difference being a value surplus. The use value in Hagel’s “asset arbitrage” example is described in terms of “new economic value”. This value arises by “taking the undervalued assets of a traditional company and repositioning them” (Yang, 2001). This use value, as an ability to reposition or repurpose the asset, can be viewed in terms of this thesis be viewed as the use value of remix. 3.6 Selecting the data In seeing the term repositioning of assets show up quite naturally in the discourse of business strategy, consider the term’s applicability in, for example, the composition of colors or images in a design, or in the reuse of digital objects in a database system. Again, as we’ve been arguing, there are points where the lenses of technology culture and marketing overlap, and these “interactive circuits” (Kline et al. 2003) will continue to be argued in this thesis as a kind of remix. In selecting the data that is appropriate for this project, consideration must be given to at least one of these three lenses as a way of being able to situate the data within our discourse in a “valuable” way. Furthermore, the arguments that have been brought forward in terms of self-reflective practice (Schön 1983) must also be factored in when selecting the data. My own reciprocal role in the research environment of remix has been explicitly acknowledged at the beginning of this thesis, and reinforced consistently throughout the remainder work as a fundamental aspect of my research. In fact, in reflecting on this reciprocal role, the selection of the three lenses of technology, marketing, and culture are grounded in my own personal context of interacting backgrounds in these three same areas (though not directly in term of the video game industry for which the model was originally developed). Rather than video game design, however, my background as a reflective practitioner is grounded in “music and the media arts” (Krestchmer, 2004). This activity is in many respects fundamental to 241 any sense of identity that I find as an artist working with new media. Additionally, the practice of “writing as a total text” (Miller, in Davis 2003) within the context of music and the media arts is an important overlap of yet another valuable and practical perspective. Therefore, the data selected for analysis in this work should also address these self-reflective aspects of my own practice as a writer in music and the media arts, as it has developed over a reasonably extended historical timeframe. This extended span of time can hopefully allow for the development that has taken place in these remix processes and artifacts to be seen in terms of “the contemporary issues and dynamics of Art vs. Commerce in the media-saturated digital age” (Flynn, July 7, 2004; see Figure 4). This notion of context and appropriation explores how the meaning of objects and imagery can be altered through utilization within alternate contexts. Duchamp viewed his own everyday culture or popular culture as having the characteristics of local culture. Clearly, this factor became another aspect of the dominant-to-local culture argument, characterized in modernist terms as the antagonism between "high" and "low" culture. This reflexive trait of one's own culture and its navigation of high and low became central to post-modern activities. (Leblanc et al. 2001) Again, in terms of what I find as an artist working in a “media ecology” (Miller 2006), the notion of Marcel Duchamp’s “found object”, when updated for a digital culture, must also frame this data and its appropriateness. As argued extensively by Paul D. Miller, the idea of “play and irreverence towards the found objects” (Miller, September 16, 2005) is essential to his conception of DJing. It is also what must be shown in terms of this pool of data and how it has developed over time. Similarly, the data to be analysed in this research must reflect my own practice as a digital media artist with a sense of “play and irreverence”, specifically, in putting together digital media objects in the intuitive but self-reflective manner of Schön’s “muddling through” the “swampy lowlands” (Schön 1983, p.43). The pool of data that has metaphorically “collected” in these “swampy lowlands”, for the most part, is based in an online system of streaming MPEG-4 objects, rented out from a friend who offers video streaming services (Nolan March’s www.karma-projects.com). The data, as a “total text” has seen a significant amount of material moved into this online database format. However, it is not completely available, if only because the time required editing and digitizing additional works is beyond the scope of this study and well beyond my available resources. Regardless the “depth” of this pool is significant. For the purpose of this study, the database has been named “Intertext-1” (see screenshot Figure 111 at the end of this section). The collections of artifacts it contains manages to cover an historical development in my “writing” with my multimedia practice that dates back to extremely preliminary media recordings made in 1997. As a whole, the digital media artifacts in this database reflect instances of “radically reframing” in the writing activity (Brown, in Mitchell 1996 p.104), for example, from 2000 onward when video was introduced as a “reframing” of the original music and the media arts focus. The database therefore reflects a developmental and methodological journey where, hopefully, no further explanation is required on the metaphorical significance of the name Intertext1, i.e. in alluding to such motifs as “the road”, “travel”, and “exploration”. 242 Finally, the appropriateness of this database as what Manovich calls a new media object (2001), as a total text, or as a whole artifact of its own, has been considered extensively in terms of the database’s mediational potential to develop over time through practical activity (see Cole’s “basic principles” 1996, p.108-110). However, the Intertext-1 database must be also be grounded in relation to similar efforts and examples of collecting “junk” materials in a digital database for the purpose of repurposing. These similar initiatives, which are of course operating on a much larger scale than the DIY (“Do-ItYourself”) project of Intertext-1, include the ACRO project18, as well as its counterpart at the Canadian Centre for Cultural Innovation, known as the Digital Depot (http://ccat.uwaterloo.ca/interactive/depot.html). As a result of this important consideration, the appropriateness of the data in this research will need to take into account a potential future repurposing in this way. Specifically, this repurposing would involve these similar online databases as more extensive example of John Seely Brown’s “distributed collaboration” while looking into comparable questions and issues of new media environments, digital culture, value, and remix. The following chapter therefore attempts to take an initial step in this direction by making some preliminary analyses on the value of remix artifacts and activities for these purposes or in other contexts. This attempt will take place through the application of an analytical method that, as will be further explained, has emerged in the development of this thesis. This “coordinated set of lenses” (Cole 1996, p.338) will therefore compare various perspectives for looking for value in several examples of remix artifacts, as well as in activities that have produced these artifacts. 18 Australian Creative Resources Online, at http://www.acro.edu.au 243 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 111. Screenshot of ftp access to the Intertext-1 database on the karma-projects streaming server 244 4. METHODS AND PROCEDURES OF ANALYSIS How deliberate I was about this, I cannot now remember. But if I know myself at all I imagine the thing grew on me by a series of lucky accidents rather than by deliberate planning… [M]y enthusiasm for the new method was at a pretty low ebb and I was seriously considering reeling in and going home. Then a glassy glide along the edge of the rapid at the head of the pool insisted on another cast or two… After all, I was exploring and experimenting and plainly had no business depending on nothing but the old proven places. (Haig-Brown 1959, pp.63-64) The question of methodology has come up throughout the previous three chapters of this thesis, and in fact, informs all aspects of this work. We’ve addressed and reinforced a common point on numerous occasions, specifically, the problem of analysing any cultural object because of the difficulty in recognizing that all activity is culturally-mediated and therefore never free of its context. In considering Descartes’ mind/body split (Figure 87), we can use this model to address the methodological tensions between approaches in the natural sciences that treat culture as external to the individual mind versus approaches that explicitly address culture and history as fundamental in the human experience, as in the humanities and social sciences. As described in “Chapter 3: A Journey Towards Appropriate Data”, over the course of my research I began to feel a significant spilt in perspectives of my work. What I was framing as an “official” study involved the development and application of a learning object based upon cultural-historical activity theory (i.e. the CHAT Circuits prototype, see Figure 102). In contrast to this perspective were the actual practices that were driving my interests in the literary concept of intertextuality and the activity of “writing” in a pop culture environment through affordances of digital media technologies (see the various artifact descriptions in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results” and the full analyses included in the appendices or related papers to this document). Eventually, to paraphrase John Seely Brown (in Mitchell 1996, p.104), this split suggested and in fact led to a “radically reframing” of my research activities around the contemporary issue of remix. In retrospect, remix has been a consistent element in my work, and as the aforementioned split widened, I would fortunately find a useful point of reconnection for my interests in cultural historical activity theory through this same topic This point of interconnection rekindled interest in activity theory, specifically through the work of Michael Cole and his approach to cultural psychology (1996). Cole’s work would provide a way to reconcile the various metaphorical “lenses” that have so far framed this thesis: In the end, my version of a cultural psychology is simply stated: Adopt some form of cultural-historical psychology as your theoretical framework. Create a methodology, a systematic way of relating theory to data that draws upon both the natural sciences and the cultural sciences, as befits its hybrid object, human beings. Find an activity setting where you can be both participant and analyst. Enter into the process of helping things grow in the activity system you have entered by bringing to bear all the knowledge gained from both the cultural and 245 natural sciences sides of psychology and allied disciplines. Take your ability to create and sustain effective systems as evidence of your theory’s adequacy. The failures are sure to outnumber the successes by a goodly margin, making it certain that you will never run out of interesting things to do. (Cole 1996, p. 349-350) Admittedly, the model that Cole describes above is very general when compared with more established methodologies that are structured and detailed in their approaches to data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Furthermore, Cole’s approach has no associated software application that can be used to analyse the data. In fact, such an application would not be feasible due to the varying contextual factors of the individual research – and of the researcher – that would need to be taken into account. However, the model Cole presents is extremely valuable as a starting point for what he describes as a “methodological journey” of an individual researcher or research team (Cole 1996, p.338). As Cole explains in introducing his work in cultural psychology, culture has historically been a difficult concept for humans to think about (ibid. p.8). Nevertheless, and as Umberto Eco recommends: “The important thing is to make a start” (Marshall and Eco 1997). The following sections of this chapter therefore use Cole’s approach in framing out my own methodological journey, or alternately, my experiences in “following the problem” of remix (Brown, ibid.) – as both artifact and method – in the emerging dynamics of networked digital culture: 4.1 Adopting a framework Adopt some form of cultural-historical psychology as your theoretical framework. (Cole 1996, p. 349) As discussed in “Chapter 3: A Journey Towards Appropriate Data”, the form of cultural-historical psychology adopted in this research follows Cole’s conceptualization in his book Cultural Psychology: a once and future discipline (1996). His approach has been broken down into individual sections, beginning with his suggestion to first “adopt [a] framework” (ibid.). Given Cole’s background in having helped bring early Soviet scholar Lev Vygotsky’s work to the West, specifically, in acting as an editor for Mind in Society (1978, ed. with Scribner and Souberman), his version of a re-emerging discipline of cultural psychology borrows heavily from the Russian cultural-historical school, which includes the work of Alexei Leont’ev and Alexander Luria along with that of Vygotsky (ibid.). While primarily focusing on these Russian perspectives, Cole also gives significant emphasis to American pragmatists such as John Dewey, William James, and G.H. Mead (Cole 1996, pp.35-36). Central to Cole’s framework is a “new” approach to psychology, which he argues is not actually new, but has rather been overlooked for many years, i.e. as a “once and future discipline”. Like Bronfenbrenner’s cultural ecology (1979), Cole’s approach explicitly recognizes the interplay between cultural development and phylogenetic development. In other words, the concern is for “the evolutionary interrelationships of living things” in both the biological sense and in the cultural sense through the development of both aspects of the human experience over time (Collins 1996). 246 Cole’s argument is founded on the idea of keeping “culture in mind” (Cole, p.327), or, looking at human development by treating cultural and historical factors as being just as integral to this development as the physiological and cognitive changes that occur over time. Rather than limiting research perspectives on cognition and physiology, Cole’s formulation of a cultural psychology refuses to treat culture as an external variable. Instead it treats culture as a fundamental part of the psychological process. Through social interactions and engagement with the artifacts produced by cultural beings over time, a cultural psychology views development as taking place both in the individual mind and at the same time distributed across social contexts. As explained and simplified by Cole, and as framed out the previous chapter of this work, the key concepts and basic principles of this formulation include: (1) mediation through artifacts, (2) historical development, and (3) practical activity (ibid. pp.108-110). Cole argues that with increasing complexity in these basic principles, “culture undergoes both quantitative change in terms of the number and variety of artifacts, and qualitative change in terms of the mediational potentials that they embody” (Cole 1996, p.114) What emerges from this mediated context is “the special quality of human thought referred to as the “duality of human consciousness” (Cole 1996, p. 120). Cole cites Luria’s remarks on the “advantage” that humans possess through this duality: The enormous advantage is that their world doubles. In the absence of words, human beings would have to deal with only those things they could perceive and manipulate directly. With the help of language, they can deal with things that they have not perceived even indirectly and with things which were part of the experience of earlier generations. Thus, the word adds another dimension to the world of humans… Animals have only one world, the world of objects and situations. Humans have a double world. (Luria 1981, p. 35 in Cole, ibid.) Cole’s framework, which is based on Vygotsky mediational triangle (Figure 88), implies Luria’s notion of a “double world” that human beings uniquely possess. The relevance of this cultural world is argued to have reached a critical point for a postmodern society that even in the early 1970s was characterized by “a concentration of [publicity] images” and a “density of [marketing] messages” that had never been seen before (Berger 1972). Similarly, the increasing relevance of the cultural side of Luria’s “double world”, through this historically unprecedented density of representations, can be viewed in terms of the “precession of simulacra” in Baudrillard’s hyperreality (Baudrillard 1976, p.16). To provided a relevant example of this hypermediated environment, we can look to the recent Grammy awards television broadcast and subsequent re-broadcast (The Recording Academy, February 8, 200619). The event featured pop culture icon Madonna performing, as both a “real” person and as a digital reproduction, alongside the digitally animated band “Gorillaz” (see Wired, July 2005 cover story in Figure 85). In examples such as this, the “map” replaces the “territory” in what is considered an “authentic” experience (Baudrillard 1983, p.3-47). 19 http://www.youtube.com/?v=8pdBjdwTqBc vs. http://www.youtube.com/?v=xjWn32l8dOw 247 For the Grammy Awards specifically, several video clips of the Madonna/Gorrilaz performance were posted on the video-sharing website “YouTube.com” soon after the event, with one clip in particular having audio that was not properly synchronized with the video (Figure 112). However, the offset in the audio still managed to produce a synchronization of the video with the beat in the musical soundtrack playing during this award show. The result was a delay in words and music that effectively simulated a poorly lip-synched “live” performance. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 112. Screenshots of the official Grammy website, featuring the Madonna and Gorillaz, and the “strange loops” of an oddly synchronized clip of the same performance, as posted on YouTube.com. Through this offset of space and time, the clip inadvertently also produces an ironic commentary on award show presentations that are common to music television stations such as MTV. Essentially, the example unintentionally demonstrates what Baudrillard would call the “precession of simulacra” (1983). Filmmaker David Lynch presented this same concept on screen – though quite intentionally – through the use of the metaphorical “Club Silencio” in his 2001 film Mulholland Drive, where the singer on stage passes midway through a passionate rendition of Roy Orbison’s “Crying (Over You)”. When the singing continues on even though the singer is passed out, the illusion of the lip sync is revealed to the audience. 248 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 113. Club Silencio in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) By essentially providing Lynch a metaphor to raise the ongoing question of what is the “reality” of a reader’s response or an audience’s interpretation of an event, the scene creates a metaphorical space (see Figure 113) for Lynch to “highlight the confusion between reality and perception and to expose theatrical pretense” (Ruch 2003). More generally, both examples provide a way to reflect upon an audience’s self-awareness of their cultural world, i.e. when we’re reminded, “that what we are watching, too, is a mirage of sound and vision” (ibid). While Madonna may not have been making as strong a statement on hypermediated “theatrical pretense” in her Grammy performance as Lynch achieves with the line “No hay banda!” (“There is no band”) in Mulholland Drive, the technical mistake in the audio and video playback that occurs in the video stream from YouTube.com provides the audience this same message anyway. Therefore, in considering issues of technologically mediated environments and audience selfawareness, Cole’s cultural psychology provides a particularly relevant framework for turning our perspective towards the highly dynamic and interactive domains of technology, marketing, and culture. These “circuits of interactivity” are used as a framework for the video game industry in Digital Play (Kline et al. 2003); however, with respect to this thesis, we’ll shift focus slightly away from video games and instead turn our attention towards our discussion of remix. Since remix entails the idea of building off of existing cultural artifacts – i.e. in first creating mixes and then creating mixes of those mixes – it is fair to say that such activity speaks to the “density” of “publicity images” described by Berger in 1972. However, the difference in time that Berger made his comments in the early 1970s and the contemporary context of a digital networked culture circa 2006 is the presence of even greater density and variety of artifacts than simply publicity and image-based media. At the same time, the mediational structure and interactions between Wartofsky’s primary, secondary, and tertiary artifacts still remains intact (Wartofsky 1979). There are several considerations required if we are to adopt Cole’s combination of Vygotsky and Wartofsky’s models as the framework for our methodological journey here. Specifically, in term of this particular thesis argument, we must consider the unity of analysis: 1) The first consideration to take into account is the notion of the model of mediated activity as a unity rather than as a process of the subject’s activity moving through a mediated 249 path to the object (Figure 88). This unity reflects the notion of “thirdness” that Engeström argues is the basis for an analytical approach to activity (1987). Essentially, this unity views both the natural and the cultural sides of activity as a single entity. The premise of this model – in fact, the very premise of cultural-historical psychology – is that both the mediated cultural route and the unmediated natural route operate simultaneously and synergistically. As individuals incorporate these mediating elements (including other people) into their actions, the basic structure of the mediation triangle becomes increasingly complex, resulting in an “emergent consequence” of a “zone of proximal development” through “multi-person joint activity” (Cole 1996, pp. 111-120 and p. 342). 2) This “emergent consequence of intermingling ‘direct, natural, phylogenetic’ and ‘indirect, cultural’ aspects of experience” is the second key consideration of artifact-mediated activity. The complexity of the model increases in response to the number of artifacts that must be confronted by the individual. By factoring in the “multi-person joint activity” now afforded by digital communication networks in the “mediatized global marketspace” (Kline et al. 31), we further increase the complexity that is taking place within this “density” of representations. For example, the “density of visual messages” previously mentioned by Berger in his description of publicity creates what he sees as a new form of society that is unlike any previous one in history (Berger 1972). So essentially what we have in this cultural-historical framework is equivalent to what John Seely Brown described earlier as a shift away from the production of “narrative-telling” artifacts, or “texts”. Instead, we’re moving towards the “accretion” over time of artifacts in the “world-building” that takes place in games activities (Brown, December 10, 2004). With respect to this shift, which forms the basis of Cole’s 5th Dimension research experiments (Cole 1996), the cultural-historical framework features the following characteristics (p. 104): • • • • • • It emphasizes mediated action in context. It insists on the importance of the “genetic method” understood broadly to include historical, ontogenetic, and microgenetic levels of behaviour. It seeks to ground its analysis in everyday life events It assumes that mind emerges in the joint mediated activity of people. Mind, then, is in an important sense, “co-constructed” and distributed. It assumes that individuals are active agents in their own development but do not act in settings entirely of the own choosing. It rejects cause-effect, stimulus-response, explanatory science in favor of a science that emphasizes the emergent nature of mind in activity and that acknowledges a central role for interpretation in its explanatory framework. It draws upon methodologies from the humanities as well as from the social and the biological sciences. • 250 The points above present a comprehensive framework, one which requires balancing multiple views of the world simultaneously, or at the very least Luria’s notion of a “double world” (1981, p.35). However, what is appealing in Cole’s approach is the sense of activities being grounded in the everyday, as well as the recognition of both the natural and the cultural sides of living systems. It also appeals to the idea that the mind and its sense of identity emerge from an individual’s interactions in larger social contexts, while individual agency is not only assumed, but in a practical sense, is required because of the central role of individual interpretation. While recognizing the interpretive aspect of this agency, Cole’s approach also assumes that the settings of any individual’s activity are not entirely of their own making or choosing. 4.2 Creating a methodology Create a methodology, a systematic way of relating theory to data that draws upon both the natural sciences and the cultural sciences, as befits its hybrid object, human beings. (Cole 1996, p. 349) In relation to the interpretive and co-constructed aspects of our framework, it is extremely interesting to see that Cole then directs researchers towards creating a methodology. Cole’s suggestion to “create a methodology” requires special attention here, if only because of the conventional view that methodology is to be adopted while methods are to be applied. The problematic aspect of suggesting to “create” rather than “select and apply” from a given set of choices can imply for some that the methodology is created “from scratch”, or as a burst of artistic inspiration. Or it may be created as a convenient – but dubious – way to obtain the desired results. Put differently, creating a methodology poses the problem, whether conscious of it or not, that one might easily select/create an approach because the result has already be determined in the mind of the researcher. This negative characterisation of Cole’s suggestion for creativity in methodological approaches was not the intent, nor the approach, in working here with Cole’s “version of a cultural psychology” (1996, p.338). As discussed earlier in the thesis, the method was created out of the practical needs of working on a very elusive research object of “remix” in a highly dynamic environment involving the interaction technology, cultural, and marketing forces. Further, it was not created “from scratch” but actually reflects Bronfenbrenner’s notion of the “reciprocal interplay” (1979) of my role as a researcher investigating the remix phenomenon while internalizing and externalizing a numerous artifacts and influences. This would include a variety of perspectives and methods for qualitative inquiry that have been studied in SIAT’s graduate courses. Specifically, a methodology was created for looking at remix by remixing a set of perspectives, as is consistent with Cole’s view of methodology as a “coordinated set of lenses through which to interpret the world” (Cole, ibid.). In light of this, the goal of creating an appropriate methodology for investigating remix suggested the method of actually remixing of perspectives, while calling to mind Engeström’s discussions of “the created new” in Learning by Expanding (1987). For example, Cole’s work reflects his colleague Engeström’s discussion of reactive versus expansive learning, where the anticipation of new contexts allows the learner to move past a situation of being “doomed to the role of running after those qualitative changes in people's life contexts” (ibid.). 251 As with Cole’s contradiction between his scientific and his commonsense lenses, there has been inherent contradiction between my own lenses for looking at remix culture. This could be described in terms of a perceived need for an “official” and established method in my research practice versus a perceived lack of methods available that were appropriate to the ideas emerging from this cultural investigation. In anticipation of this contradiction in “following the problem” of remix (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.104), and given the focus on creativity that has been key to this discourse, Cole’s suggestion to create a methodology jumped out as being particularly apt for the problem at hand. In a sense, the entire research project turned on the connection between the terms lens, method, and creativity. What followed was the question of what new ways could we look at remix when situated specifically in terms of my own background, i.e. in looking for value in this cultural practice. By “reframing radically” my research in this way (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p. 102), what emerged was an approach where pieces and components of a remix object were pulled apart and viewed in relation to other works. While such an approach obviously evokes Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction (Derrida, 1976), this deconstructive method has not be approached in its “pure” form (if, ironically, there is such a thing). Despite having become familiar over the course of my research with the postmodernist critiques of structures, formalisms, metanarratives and other “pure forms” discussed earlier in this work, I did not initially make the connection between a methodology as being equivalent to a metanarrative. Viewed in this way, a methodology shapes the structures and formal approaches of the methods used as part of its worldview. For example, recalling the differing worldviews (and tensions) between the quantitative methods of the natural sciences and the qualitative methods of social sciences, each approach can be seen as having its own overarching narrative on how one searches for truth and meaning in the world. These narratives can at times support each other, while at other times acting as each other’s antagonist. Regardless of whether the interactions between worldviews are supportive or antagonistic at any particular time, the idea here is that the worldviews are in either case involved in a sort of dialogue. This dialogue, again in either case, offers the possibility of a new view emerging that can reconcile the contrasting views for a particular moment or context. Cole’s use of the word “create” alongside “methodology” therefore raised this same issue, in a way that connected with the dialogism of Mikhail Bakhtin (Morson & Emerson 1990, pp.59-62), i.e. of methodology as a creative question, or as a way of reading or engaging a question, rather than as a finalized worldview of an unchanging set of practices. As discussed in “Chapter ll: Methods and Procedures of Analysis” and according to Derrida himself, deconstruction is a way of “reading” a text, rather than a method to be operationalized (Derrida, 1985). Criticized as philosophically destructive for being “somewhat infamously, the philosophy that says nothing” (Reynolds 2006), deconstruction can more positively be seen not as destroying a text’s meaning, but rather as a way to look at how meanings are framed out in the text or in a discourse. Of course, it can also provide a way to see how contradictions and tensions between those framings invariably result at some point in their development over time. As Mitchell Stephens explains: 252 Deconstructive readings focus -- intently, obsessively -- on the metaphors writers use to make their points. Their purpose is to demonstrate, through comparisons of a work's arguments and its metaphors, that writers contradict themselves -not just occasionally, but invariably -- and that these contradictions reflect deep fissures in the very foundations of Western culture. (Stephens 1991) As Derrida’s ideas are controversial in academic circles, the point in incorporating them here is not to add further complexity and controversy. This thesis already involves an unconventional approach for a remix methodology in an already unconventional academic focus on popular culture. Rather, this simple intent in using the loose term of deconstruction as part of this method is to incorporate the key point in Stephens’ description of “deconstructive readings”, i.e. focusing on “the metaphors writers use to make their points” (ibid.). The idea here is to use this same notion of deconstruction as a way of looking at metaphors used in texts and discourses, though applied to the activities and artifacts of remix. In this way, the issue of metaphor can be systematically addressed in terms of Wartofsky’s tertiary level of cultural artifacts, and in referring to these levels, we reach a critical point in our discussion of remix. As will be demonstrated, this three-level structure provides a way to coordinate several key lenses in this work as a way of investigating remix as a cultural phenomenon. In coordinating lenses in this way, we are effectively creating a methodology for remix culture. From this methodology an early-stage method has emerged to be tested out on some sample artifacts as a way of looking into their dynamics and our interpretations of value in these dynamics. Again, key to this coordination is the idea of levels of artifacts. While we’ve previously discussed what Cole sees as the key principle of “mediation through artifacts” in developing a cultural psychology (1996, p.117), what was not discussed specifically was Cole’s incorporation of Wartofsky’s three-level hierarchy of artifacts. Importantly, this structuring of mediating artifacts includes the tangible and physical tools involved in an activity as well as the intangible artifacts of language. Both can be considered as “objectifications of human needs and intentions already invested with cognitive and affective content” (Wartofsky, 1973/1979, p. 204 cited in Cole, p. 121). As with Cole’s appropriation of Wartofsky’s model, Engeström uses a similar analytical approach in Learning by Expanding (1987) by breaking apart human activity into an interrelated set of categories. This deconstruction, to again use Derrida’s term loosely, also incorporates Wartofsky’s hierarchy of artifacts: Table 3 Subject Collective subject Individual subject Non-conscious Use of Wartofsky’s levels of by Cole and Engeström Instruments Methodology, ideology Models Tools Object We in the world Community Societal network of activities Collective organization Immediate primary group Community Societal (state, law, religion) Organizational rules Interpersonal rules Div. of Labor Societal division of labor Organizational division of labor Interpersonal Problem task Resistance 253 division of labor Engeström (1987) Methodology, ideology Models Tools Wartofsky (1979) Tertiary artifacts Secondary artifacts Primary artifacts Subject Collective subject Individual subject Non-conscious Mediating Artifacts (Cole/Wartofsky) Tertiary artifacts Secondary artifacts Primary artifacts Object We in the world Problem task Resistance Additionally, the three levels of artifacts will also be used to help provide some meaning to Lawrence Lessig’s rather general definition of remix, as delivered on November 11, 2004 in a speech titled “The Lawyer’s Work in a Free Culture”. In this speech, he claims: “Culture is remix. Knowledge is remix. Politics is remix. Everyone in the life of producing and creating engages in this practice of remix” (Lessig, November 11, 2004). As mentioned in earlier chapters and will also be addressed in the conclusion to this work, the criticism here in Lessig’s statement is that if “everyone” who is “producing and creating” is essentially remixing, then what isn’t considered remix? In other words, Lessig seems to be saying that everything is remix? In order to address the question of what is not remix, we’ll look specifically at how Lessig’s statement could be interpreted through Wartofsky’s levels of artifacts. In using a deconstructive approach, we’ll now breakdown Lessig’s statement in relation to Wartofsky’s model: Primary Artifacts: “Culture is remix.” The first level of artifacts consists of those used directly in production, where such cultural activity “is always a contradictory unity of production and reproduction, invention and conservation” (Engeström 1987). These primary artifacts correspond to tools and other basic elements of both physical and linguistic systems. They can therefore include the examples that Wartofsky lists as “axes, clubs, needles, bowls” but can also include non-physical artifacts. Cole provides examples of “words, writing, instruments, telecommunications networks, and mythical cultural personages” (Cole, ibid.). Cole further suggests that primary artifacts “correspond closely to the concept of artifact as matter transformed by prior human activity” (ibid.). In this way, primary artifacts can be seen as the building blocks of a cultural world, i.e. “culture is remix” Specifically in terms of remix, these primary artifacts can be viewed as the individual samples, clips, songs, and other media elements that are mixed together to create a new work. Such a mix becomes a remix when these primary artifacts have already been mixed previously, or, “transformed by prior human activity”, e.g. a song that is mixed from primary artifacts of guitar, bass, drum, and vocal tracks can itself become a primary artifact if it is sampled by a DJ in creating a remix. 254 Secondary Artifacts: “Knowledge is remix.” Secondary artifacts differ from primary artifacts in that they are representations of the artifacts and of activities that use primary artifacts. This second level of artifacts describe how primary artifacts would be assembled (or put together, arranged, combined, sequenced, etc.) in a way that the combinations become knowledge that is transferable between individuals, social groups, and generations. Secondary artifacts only reference their primary artifacts, and as such, they are important in transmitting and preserving information, modes of action, and beliefs across both time and space. Cole mentions examples of secondary artifacts as including “recipes, traditional beliefs, norms, constitutions, and the like” (ibid.). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 114. 1920s avant-garde film editing environment contrasted with a screenshot from Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro editing environment. These help to depict the idea of “building blocks” of film reels that were eventually edited into Dizga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929), while the film itself as a whole was used as a “building block” in the Kid A With Movie Camera remix (2003) Artifact 5.8. A secondary artifact in remix culture would be considered as, for example, the “sequence” or the “performance” of the mix of primary artifacts, i.e. how the artifacts are arranged or ordered as an expression in its own right. The secondary artifact is more intangible than a primary artifact because it is only a set of relationships. What is vital in this understanding of a secondary artifact is that the primary artifacts come together to create something that is considered new, i.e. with its own identity in relationship to its intertextual background of other artifacts. Of course, if the primary artifacts used in creating and transferring this knowledge have already been mixed previously, what results is a remix, i.e. “knowledge is remix”. The remix could therefore be a tangible artifact, such as the timeline of a video-editing program that doesn’t actually contain the objects in the sequence, but like a recipe, shows how these “ingredients” would be combined and arranged. Alternately, the secondary artifact could be far more intangible, such as a performance where primary artifacts are combined, but is not recorded or materialized in a more tangible form. Such remixes only take place momentarily, for example, an ephemeral oral narration of Homer’s The Odyssey versus its combination of characters and plot developments in written form such as a novel, or adapted for a film, or as a screenplay that resides somewhere in between these two forms. 255 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 115. Homer Reciting His Poems (1790) by Sir Thomas Lawrence; James Joyce’s appropriation of Homer’s The Odyssey as a structure for his novel Ulysses, and Ethan and Joel Coen (with Roger Deakins) considering how best to remix The Odyssey into their 2000 film O Brother Where Art Thou? What is important to again consider is what then would not be considered a remix in this framework? If a fundamental assumption in an intertextual worldview is that “works are created by works [and] texts are created by texts” (Eco 1984, p.1999), then remixes become “anonymous formulae whose origin can scarcely ever be located; of unconscious or automatic quotations, given without quotation marks” (Barthes 1981, p.39). The argument in this sense would be that remix has always been going on in culture. The only thing that would truly separate a mix from a remix, in this perspective, would be a dubious assertion of “originality” in a work, i.e. the position that the work did not borrow from or build off of the works or ideas of others in some way, shape, or form. Tertiary Artifacts: “Politics is remix.” Wartofsky’s concept of tertiary artifacts is where the important connection between ideas of cultural psychology and deconstructive reading approaches takes place. Specifically, this connection comes from a focus on metaphors. Viewed in terms of virtual or imagined worlds, or the fictional spaces of stories and myths, this third level of artifacts relates to ideological worldviews as nonpractical constructions of an environment. As a result, tertiary artifacts provide the basis for the metaphorical perspectives that we’ve been using here as “coordinated lenses” (Cole 1996, p.338). It is important to note that Cole’s approach of “coordinated lenses” is itself a metaphor that can influence – or “color” – an analysis. In order to take this dynamic into account so as to grasp the full implication of the category of tertiary artifacts, we’ll look to Cole’s summarization of Wartofsky’s ideas: The third level is a class of artifacts ‘which can come to constitute a relatively autonomous ‘world,’ in which the rules conventions and outcomes no longer appear directly practical, or which, indeed, seem to constitute an arena on nonpractical, or ‘free’ play or game activity” (Wartofsky 1973, p. 208). Wartofsky calls these imagined worlds tertiary artifacts (-jf italics in original). Such imaginative artifacts, he suggests, can come to color the way we see the actual “world” providing a tool for changing current praxis. (Cole 1996, p. 121) 256 The idea that a tertiary artifact can “color” our perspectives of the actual “world” can effectively describe the role of metaphor in language, i.e. a description through the use of language borrowed from another context. What is also critical about this third level of artifacts is how the concepts of a “game” world and “play” become introduced as activity that is not directly practical to the actual “world” – i.e. activity that is in a sense “free” from real-world constraints – but yet can influence (“color”) our real world interactions all the same. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 116. DJ Spooky pointing to where imagination is found? Is it “in the head” or is it “distributed” across remix culture? John Berger may have a different “perspective”. What is implied in this definition is imagination. More specifically, it is the idea of changing imagination by changing worldviews. Further, it is precisely this idea of “changing imagination” that Paul D. Miller claims “is the most important issue in the 21st century” (Miller 2006). In relation to the discourse of remix, what this suggests is that one has to imagine being able to remix artifacts together, i.e. having a worldview where remix is seen as a possible and practical mode of expression. This imagination, as a worldview, then leads to the question: “What happens when these cultural artifacts are transformed?” The question is only actually answered through a practical act of remix by the one who posed the question, or, in conjunction with one or more individuals through what John Seely Brown describes as distributed collaboration (Brown, johnseelybrown.com). Alternately, this is what Vygotsky called the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978, p.87), which we’ve seen in action in the development of the travelogue narrative early on in this thesis, including its associated building blocks and mixes. Through practical activity, such as the physical travel and multimedia development in the travelogue, imagination is changed into a material expression. In this way it takes on a role as a mediating, third-level artifact – or a common viewpoint across contexts – in individual and “multi-person joint activity” (Cole, p.342). By applying this same concept to works of art and processes of perception, Wartofsky’s three levels of artifacts can be seen in similar terms as John Berger’s ideas on perspective in the art world. In the television series Ways of Seeing (1972), Berger implies the concept of intentionality, or goal-oriented activity, in the tradition of oil painting. Alternately, such activity could be described in term of the role of design, for example, in framing European art as a design activity that focuses on the convention of perspective in presenting “reality”: 257 The process of seeing paintings – or seeing anything else – is less spontaneous and natural than we tend to believe. A large part of seeing depends upon habit and convention. All the paintings of the [oil] tradition used the convention of perspective, which is unique to European art. Perspective centres everything on the eye of the beholder. It is like a beam from a lighthouse, only instead of light travelling outwards, appearances travel in. And our tradition of art called those appearances “reality”. (Berger 1972) The powerful description of the “world” of art that Berger conveys, including the metaphor of the lighthouse, can effectively be seen as describing what Alexander Luria called the “double world” that humans possess by having a sense of culture and history (Luria 1981, p.35). The dual reality of the natural world and the cultural world as always existing simultaneously in human life is what drives Luria’s combination of the two worldviews. To reconcile the two perspectives as an attempt to “combine the two psychologies, one experimental/generalizing, one descriptive/particularizing” (Cole 1996, p. 344), Luria proposes a “Romantic Science” in his autobiographical The Making of Mind (1979). As Cole claims, Luria’s resulting paradigm of Romantic Science renders suspect the “ultimate causes from which consequences flow” but seeks instead to take into account both the natural and cultural aspects as “moments” in human development. He therefore seeks to “include both moments and their dynamics” as “one and the same psychological act” (Luria, ibid.). In doing so, Luria’s s distinction of the two methodologies of “classical” and “romantic” science become what Berger would call “ways of seeing”: Classical scholars are those who look upon events in terms of their constituent parts. Step by step they single out important units and elements until they can formulate abstract, general laws… Romantic scholars’ traits, attitudes, and strategies are just the opposite. They do not follow the path of reductionism, which is the leading philosophy of the classical group. Romantics in science want neither to split living reality into its elementary components nor to represent the wealth of life’s concrete events as abstract models that lose the properties of the phenomena themselves. (Luria 1979, p. 174 in Cole 1996, p. 344) Herein lies the methodological tension that runs throughout this thesis in its attempt to investigate remix as a valuable cultural phenomenon. Specifically, when involved in any sort of cultural investigation, it is important “not to scare off what we are looking for” (Vygotsky 1987). In this way, if our search is in terms of the value of remixing culture, such as search would first entail viewing remix artifacts as part of the “the wealth of life’s concrete events” (Luria, ibid.). However, there is the risk of abstracting these events into models “that lose the properties of the phenomena themselves” (Luria, ibid.). In other words by splitting what Luria would call the “living reality” of a remix into its elementary components we’d be closing what is essentially an open system. Doing so would thereby prevent the emergence possibility through aleatory events that allow systems to develop in unexpected ways, as explained in our discussion of complexity and autopoiesis in “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings”. In effect, we’d be subjecting the cultural phenomenon – as a “living” system – to the equivalent of what Mark C. Taylor described as the “lifeless machines [of] the industrialized world” (Taylor 2001, p.80). 258 Luria’s practical suggestion for avoiding such abstractions was to ground analyses in “the life circumstances of an actual person” (Cole 1996, p.344). This approach combines “information from experimental studies of large groups of subjects with the peculiarities of [the] individual” (p.345). It is an approach that has since been championed in the “clinical anecdotes” of neurologist Oliver Sacks’ methods, made famous in the movie Awakenings (1990). Sacks viewed Romantic Science as “the dream of a novelist and a scientist combined” (Sacks, in Luria 1987 p.xii), while its central premise was to treat “analytic science and synthetic biography as essentially complementary” (Cole, p.346). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 117. Lawrence Lessig remixes the “clinical anecdote” of Awakenings (1990) into the introduction of his Scholarship in the Digital Age presentation, December 11, 2004. Cole’s cultural psychology approaches also incorporate this view of particularities versus generalities of the individual in a social context. Specifically, by organizing studies around “gamelike activities” over the extended time frames of his “5th Dimension” research projects (Cole 1996, p.277-325), Cole and his colleagues would employ scientific methods in their work when dealing with larger groups of subject. They would take this approach by incorporating into their work “microgenetic analyses motivated by principles of cultural-historical psychology” (ibid.). However, they would also explicitly combine this generalized information with the particular development of individuals in the group (e.g. in terms of patterns of strengths and weaknesses). In this way, Cole et al. built off of ideas similar to Bronfenbrenner’s focus on the “life course” of an individual in a cultural ecology (Bronfenbrenner 1979). Luria’s vision of Romantic Science in Making of the Mind (1979) re-engages the discourse of a cultural ecology through a recognition of context similar to Bronfenbrenner’s “reciprocal interplay” of the individual and his or her environment (ibid.). In doing so, we find an opportunity to at least initially address a critical issue in Cole’s cultural psychology as it applies to this thesis. In following the ideas of Luria, Cole asks those doing research in cultural psychology to be creative rather than reactive in approaching their research environments. Specifically, he suggests designing methods 259 by creating “systematic way[s] of relating theory to data that [draw] upon both the natural sciences and the cultural sciences” (Cole 1996, p. 349). In terms of this thesis, its attempt to follow Cole’s approach has always sat uneasily with me when reaching this particular point and trying to incorporate his advice. Creativity has certainly not been the issue, as it plays a considerable role in my own sense of identity. However, without a background in the natural sciences, the condition of drawing “upon the natural sciences” as part of this creative process has always presented some serious limitations. The notion of a Romantic Science is clearly appealing as an approach for a writer working with digital technologies as tools of expression. However, if looking at this situation from the point of view of Sacks’ description, I am most certainly approaching Cole’s “methodological journey” far more from the perspective of “a novelist” than from the perspective of “a scientist” (ibid, p.338). In terms of the natural sciences, I would however find one relevant connection that would come from an interesting and unexpected source. Specifically, it was during the later years of my Bachelor of Commerce degree (circa. 1996) while studying international business management at what is now UBC’s Sauder School of Business, that I was introduced to Maturana and Varela’s theory of autopoiesis. As discussed in “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings”, this biological term assumes a hierarchy – or, to use the language of Maturana and Varela, an order – of autopoietic biological systems beginning at the primary level of individual cells. These cells become secondorder autopoietic systems when they combine and interact in the form of a living organism, such as a plant or animal. A third-level autopoietic system reflects the social organisation of such organisms, whether or not they have a sense of self-awareness of themselves and the group to which they belong. Viewed in the context of a globalizing digital culture, autopoiesis provides an important argument in Mark C. Taylor’s The Moment of Complexity (2001), as he uses the theory to show the potential emergent possibilities of complex systems. Fascinated by Taylor’s work, and while considering my own research area in remix culture in relation to the complexity of open systems, I remembered briefly encountering the term autopoiesis in an organizational behaviour class in 1996. In these classes, autopoiesis was being applied as a concept for companies to consider for their organizational structures, i.e. as way to adapt to rapid changes in the market and industry (see Robbins and Langton 1999). As with an autopoietic biological system, this “social autopoiesis” implies an intrinsic order that makes the system act as “both ends and means” (Kant 1951, in Taylor 2001, p.85). To review and briefly summarize this key idea, an autopoietic system acts in the interest of producing its own components and structure rather than producing for some external purpose. For example, consider a factory that produces parts to be assembled at another factory, or, produces products for consumer purchase. The factor would not be considered an autopoietic system in this way. However, if the factory some how had the sense to only be concerned with producing parts for its own use and survival, it could be loosely considered as autopoietic since it would have an intrinsic order or self-producing design (ibid.). As explained earlier, this description of a factory as being an example an autopoietic social system does not suggest that the factory is a living entity all of its own. Rather, the factory exists in a social context as a construction of human agency. It is the individuals who are part of the factory that are 260 considered the living entities that interact, produce, and consume within the factory’s social context, giving the environment an identity and meaning. As a result, we could look at the factory and the individuals who are part of its social system through the lens of autopoiesis, but we wouldn’t consider this factory on its own as a biological autopoietic organization, i.e. with its own purpose in mind as it interacts with individual human beings. What is therefore being suggested here, in relation to other discussions of social autopoiesis (see the work of Graham, Lemke, and Luhmann), is that while remix artifacts and remix activities can be viewed through the lens of autopoiesis, we’re not suggesting that remix is a biological system which displays autopoietic self-organization. Instead, the remixing of cultural artifacts can be seen as a sociolinguistic emergence from the interaction of self-organizing biological systems. In other words, despite how intriguing an idea it might be to think that an effective remix artifact is capable of having a “life” of its own, while human involvement in the artifact’s development is seen as secondary to its own intrinsic purpose, such conclusions would be at odds with the understanding that human organisms are the entities that produce cultural artifacts and not the other way around. Where this leads us is to the tricky “chicken and egg” question of whether culture is a prerequisite for human experience or is rather a product of human experience that has accumulated over human history. We’ve already seen this same question posed by Mark Gover in “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings”, i.e. terms of narrative being seen “either as a structure embedded in the mind or as a stylized cultural tradition” (Gover, ibid.). As with Gover’s position on this debate, we have also concluded that attempting to answer the question futile since it is not worth arguing over the absolute origin of both narrative and culture. To move past this debate, we can instead consider such cultural activities as “always a contradictory unity of production and reproduction, invention and conservation” (Engeström 1987) Similarly, our methodological journey in following the problem of remix can be seen as a human activity that involves method as both prerequisite and product. In a general sense, this recursive notion can be summarized in saying that method is needed to produce new methods. In following the problem of looking for value in remix culture, what we’ve ended up doing has been to mix together various cultural perspectives in the hope of finding systematic ways of gaining insight into the phenomenon. Like ideologies in a political context, the perspectives on approaches for framing out the research problem can be seen as methodologies, i.e. tertiary artifacts that act as alternate views of the problem space. What we are doing here is explicitly acknowledging these alternate views of the problem space and coordinating them as an appropriate vantage point for our study. As suggested by Cole, we’re now attempting to draw upon the perspectives of the natural sciences by mixing in the lens of autopoiesis. Naturally (pun fully intended), the way in which autopoietic biological systems function will color our perception of the processes taking place in remix culture. But in balancing this view, we have other lenses that also color our view from a different vantage point. In this way, the explicit remixing of certain lenses has effectively become a method employed in this study of remix. A remix method therefore becomes both “ends and means” (Kant, ibid.), or in the Vygotskian sense, remix is “simultaneously prerequisite and product, the tool and the result of the study” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 65). 261 Of course this approach is not without controversy, as method is commonly viewed as being separate from the results of a study in the pragmatic tradition of scientific inquiry. As addressed in “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings”, method is viewed as “something to be applied, a functional means to an end” (Newman & Holzman, 1993). In contrast, our view of remix in this thesis has been to see it as both the method and the content of this study, i.e. Vygotsky’s position on “method as something to be practiced – not applied” (ibid.). In acknowledging the controversial aspect of this approach from within a traditional scientific worldview, this investigation of remix has not been taken up without strong consideration of these concerns. The scientific paradigm is only one of several lenses that has been used in our investigation of remix culture, and it is not unreasonable to expect that some these lenses would be in tension, if not contradiction. This was in fact the case Michael Cole’s early experiences in crosscultural study in societies that were supposedly less advanced than his own (Cole 1996, p.338). In contrast, the cultural research that has been undertaken in this thesis primarily views remix from the perspectives of digital technologies and popular appeal in commercial culture, i.e. our observations are grounded – if not immersed – in the dense digital environment of the “global mediatized marketplace” (Kline et al. 2003, p.31). This environment that is relevant to remix culture is therefore quite different in many respects to more traditional cross-cultural studies, such as in Cole’s early work, where time is spent in foreign lands observing and interacting with an indigenous population (Cole ibid.). It is an environment that is also quite different in many respects to the research of biological systems, as was central to the work of Maturana and Varela (1980). However, when dealing with groups of humans that are physically isolated from other groups in different parts of the globe, or when dealing humans interacting globally though communities fostered by digital technologies, there are always methodological tensions between the natural and the cultural because of duality of human experience in both worlds. As a result there are always at least two contexts that must be taken into account in any study. To acknowledge these contexts, we’ve attempted to draw from the biological insights of Maturana and Varela’s theory of autopoiesis, even if it is only being applied to this research in very a rudimentary and introductory way. Further, we’re also acknowledging the traditional paradigm of the natural sciences and its separation of method and result despite our blending of the two. In doing so, we’ve also attempted to make this blending of method and result explicitly clear, especially the use of the biological lens of autopoiesis, which is being mixed into our model in a very non-expert manner in the hope of developing an appropriate method for a cultural investigation of remix. In doing so, we need to realize that we’re again faced with the same methodological tensions between natural and cultural contexts that historically led to the separation of the “two psychologies” (Cole 1996, pp.18-30). The remaining justifications for having remix viewed as both the tool and the result of the study – i.e. as both means and ends – have been left for the final sections of this thesis since they present very critical points for overall reflection on this topic. Specifically, “tool and result” approach used in this study is further discussed and demonstrated through examples of artifact analysis that apply the method developed later in this chapter and recognize the researcher’s reciprocal interplay in the remix environment (see “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”). Further, this ecological approach to 262 the development of a method that produces remix artifacts, and conversely, artifacts that produce a remix method, frames the entire work in terms of what Miller calls a “total text” (Miller 2003). As such, the totality of this thesis, as a whole text made up of smaller individual texts, should provide the needed grounding and arguments for the method that has emerged from the research. It is a method designed to create a set of interconnecting perspectives through the texts of key scholars of the cultural-historical tradition. These texts include the work of that Wartofsky developed from Vygotsky’s mediation model, especially in terms of its relationship to the work of Luria, Cole, and Engeström. It also relates to concepts from other key scholars who are relevant to cultural ecology and psychology, such as the “levels of learning” proposed in Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972). We can of course criticize this work by seeing it as a disregard for the traditional scientific approach of keeping method and result separate. We can also lay further criticism on this approach because it mixes already functional and established methods in a way that could potentially lead to unfocused or confusing results. However, we’ll reserve this further criticism of the methodology for the time being, and instead continue revising and reconsidering the remix of lenses required for the various analyses of remix artifacts that are summarized in the following chapter. As a result, our matrix of lenses which has now added the lens of autopoiesis, has developed into the following table: Table 4 Engeström’s and Cole’s hierarchies, following from Bateson’s levels of learning, now considering the addition of Maturana and Varela’s autopoietic orders. The question: Does remix fit this design? Engeström (1987) Methodology, ideology Wartofsky/Cole (1979/1996) Tertiary artifacts Maturana & Varela (1980) 3rd order autopoietic sys. (i.e. social systems made of organisms) 2nd order autopoietic sys. (i.e. organisms made of cells) Bateson (1972) Learning III Remix? The mixing and remixing activity as a whole, as a way of life Unfinalized mixes, remixes, sequences, arrangements, formulae “building blocks” of culture, e.g. songs, samples, clips, words, final mixes, etc. “Politics is remix.” Learning II Models Secondary artifacts “Knowledge is remix.” Learning I Tools Primary artifacts 1st order autopoietic sys. (i.e. cells) “Culture is remix.” In considering the matrix show above in Table 4, we can see Engeström’s approach of creating his own hierarchy by connecting Bateson’s levels of learning to Wartofsky’s levels of artifacts, and how it has been extended in this research. Specifically, it is extended through the application of Maturana and Varela’s three orders of autopoietic systems as overlapping lenses for looking at sociolinguistic systems. In particular, when viewed through the lens of autopoiesis, the 263 sociolinguistic system of remix that we’re analyzing here can be identified and situated in what Graham and McKenna refer to as a “socially embedded discourse community” (Graham & McKenna 2000, p.11). 4.3 Finding an activity Find an activity setting where you can be both participant and analyst. (Cole 1996, p.349) As a writer and reflective practitioner who constantly works with tools of digital media, I consider any work that I produce to be a “story” to some degree. Some of these works have a strong narrative element that I’ve either been able to develop through technical effort, or, that have come out naturally through the affordances of the artifact in its development. Other works that I’ve produced seem to have little in the way of narrative, except insofar as they signify a story that I’ve experienced either directly or indirectly. These may be stories that I have yet to “write” or have no intention of writing at all. Such stories may be personal narratives that I see as my own, or they may “belong” to others and I have only appropriated them from my own expression (appropriately or not). In this sense, I see these cultural objects as part of an ecosystem, or as Paul Miller describes, “a media ecology” (Miller 2006). In returning once again to the metaphor of the river system and the perspective of the fisherman, it is the same perspective as Roderick Haig-Brown’s view of his “ownership” of the river “without owning any foot of it… and without any thought of possession in the ordinary sense” (Haig-Brown 1950, p.255-256). For Haig-Brown, this alternate view of what is meant by “possession”, when the term is situated in the context of an ecological system, allowed for the “growth of knowledge and experience”. In turn, Haig-Brown believed that such a worldview also lent itself to a growing sense of “freedom” (ibid.) The stories and perspectives touched on by author and fisherman Roderick Haig-Brown are not mine, but they signify to me something of my own experiences. Interestingly, they signify in a metaphorical sense my role as both cultural consumer and producer who is heavily involved in the practice of remix. The journey through these experiences has not been travelled in a smooth and clearly planned path from one stage to another. In fact, and quite naturally, it has veered and drifted – sometimes wildly – in what can be looked back on as the shifting currents of digital culture over the last ten years. In this sense, the development that has taken place in this work has been paradoxically expected and unexpected. Part of the motivation for this thesis, with respect to the notion of travel in its title, is to provide some perspective on these experiences and the “uncertainties [that] are a good part of their charm” (Haig-Brown 1959, preface). It is not only the observation of one’s environment that is of interest, but also of one’s own development within the environment. Such development can be seen through varying “angles” of my travels in a digital media context, as I hope to demonstrate in the analysis of new media objects that are relevant to this study. Haig-Brown, as an angler of a different kind, instead looks for patterns, or “familiar things”, in development of his ecosystem over the course of a number of fishing “seasons”. 264 The uncertainties of the seasons are a good part of their charm. They are a constant reminder that natural things are not grooved into rigid timetables and are not likely to be. A fisherman looks forward to the familiar things of his seasons… He will watch for special fly hatches the patterns of other years. Often there is a surprising precision in these things, but all of us know the hazards of calling them too precisely. They will come in their time, very close to the time they always come, but not necessarily to the day. Many things can happen to change the day or even the week. (Haig-Brown 1959, preface) Haig-Brown’s view of patterns in the seasons help to shape his writing approach, as can be seen in the terms winter, spring, summer, and fall that are used in titles of his books, e.g. Fisherman’s Summer (1959). Similarly, I can frame my own work in terms of “seasons”. For example, I could frame my work in terms of various academic years, or, alternately, in terms of periods of artistic development such as in the context of playing in a band as one “season”, or recording bands with a video camera as a different “season”. With respect to just such an earlier “season”, my background beyond the topic of remix actually speaks to another issue that is fundamental to this thesis: value. My undergraduate degree, as listed on the opening page of this work, is a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of British Columbia (with specialization in International Business Management). Much of my degree was spent studying culture, whether through an initial interest in Japanese and Chinese business practices, or in later study in the interrelationships between Canadian, American, and Latin American cultures. Significant focus of my work during my later years in business school was also directed towards technology and culturally driven marketing ideas, given the culturalhistorical context of the dot.com boom that was developing in the mid-1990s. As such, there was already a heavy overlap between the concerns of technology, culture, and marketing in my work by the time I finished my undergraduate degree in 1996. In other words, some of these “lenses” we’ve been exploring had already been coordinating back at this time. Despite tremendous changes in the last ten years, the same ideas that were of concern to me during my undergraduate degree – i.e. the effects of digital technologies on “music and the media arts” in a globalizing cultural context – continue to be of concern to me today. These issues have been recently summed up by Martin Kretschmer in his 2004 paper, “Artists earnings and copyright: A review of British and German music industry data in the context of digital technologies”, where he claims: Digitisation offers a new disintermediated distribution channel which may affect the bargaining power between creator and existing market intermediaries (and thus the structure of copyright contracting). (Kretschmer, 2004) As evidence of these overlapping concerns that presage Kretschmer’s proposition of the “disintermediated distribution” afforded by digital technologies, my main project in completing my undergraduate degree was an innovative Internet start-up idea called “The RockXchange”®. The idea for this initiative essentially combined technology, culture, and marketing concerns around the premise of unrecognized value in the independent rock “scene” of the mid and late-90s. By combining the technology of an online stock exchange model with the cultural commodities of song copyrights, the argument for this concept was based on the potential of valuable opportunities for accessing value in these mostly unrecognized works. 265 As with any financial asset, a value proposition could take place through speculative and/or arbitrage situations with respect to these copyrights. In a very basic sense, an asset’s financial value comes from the difference between buying and selling price (profit margin) in addition to the liquidity of the asset, i.e. it’s ability to be bought, sold, or exchanged. In other words, a high profit margin for the seller means little in terms of value if there’s no way for the transaction to take place, but if a marginal profit can be earned over and over again, the seller may have found a much more valuable situation. The term speculation in this sense becomes “the act of buying or selling for reasons of benefiting of price movements” that are expected to take place in the future, e.g. speculating on real estate prices going up (Dow and Hillard, 2002, p.228). Speculation is similar to the term arbitrage in that “it involves buying low and selling high, albeit across time rather than space” (ibid.). The premise of the RockXchange relied on the notion that the value of an investment may not just be reflected in a financial sense, but rather could also be speculated and arbitraged in a cultural sense, i.e. the “cultural capital” of social status from supporting a particular artist (Bourdieu 1973). In the case of the RockXchange®, these value situations would be first spotted by “investors” at “the edge” of the dynamics between the technology, marketing, and cultural interactions of “indie rock”. This “edge” would consist of the fans and participants of subcultures who are more aware of the cultural-historical intricacies, developments, and trends in “new music” than would the bigger media players who are removed from “the action”. In this way, and as we’ve seen Hagel and Brown suggest in “Chapter 3: A Journey Towards Appropriate Data”, and as mapped out in the “Three Circuits of Interactivity” model of Figure 75, “the edge becomes the core” (Hagel and Brown 2005, and Kline et al. 2003). LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 118. Alan Cross’s “The Ongoing History of New Music” logo (1993-present) as context for a remix in the above version of The RockXchange® logo (based on the graphic representation of the Nasdaq stock exchange’s historical rise and fall). 266 As mentioned, this project dates back to 1996 and has never really been developed effectively in a practical way, but has remained somewhat of a theoretical proposition. However, there is tremendous relevance to the RockXchange® when considered in terms of the arguments in this thesis. Specifically, with the development of the Internet, the emergent concepts that underlie this initiative relate fundamentally to the notion of combining the “lenses” of technological innovations and marketing strategy as a way to uncover cultural value. This value proposition hinges on the idea that the existing system has been flawed in terms of, say, the music industry (i.e. the dominant player in the market) having questionable ability to recognize long-term value in cultural works while focusing instead on short-term “numbers”. This is a historically developing behaviour in the context of music and the media arts, where “slow-building talents” are no longer “nurtured and developed to allow for gradual growth of a following” (Gunderson 2002). As former Spin magazine editor Alan Light comments: These days, you live and die by the hit single [and as a result, today’s music artists] are not given an opportunity to develop. If you look at the careers of superstars like Bruce Springsteen and U2, it was three or four albums before they clicked. Now that labels are owned by multinational conglomerates that measure success in quarterly statements, bands need a hit the first time out. (Light, in Gunderson 2002) There are obviously differing conceptions of value between alternate worldviews in the description above. It is a common tension that exists between the views of cultural development on the one hand, versus financial return on the other. According to Edna Gunderson in a 2002 feature or USA Today, the result of these tensions is that “[e]mbittered consumers and embattled corporations seem to be at loggerheads over blame and solutions”20 (Gunderson 2002). As noted by Peter Spellman, director of career development for the Berklee College of Music in Boston21: Similarly, major labels are starting to once again toss around the phrase "longterm artist development" as an antidote to the perception they are shortsighted. But this can only be rhetorical in a corporate setting where quarterly results rule the environment. Product (and its creators) not bringing in the necessary numbers will continue to be dropped like a bad habit. (Spellman 2002) The comments by music pundits above suggest that the music industry’s focus has historically been on short-term, mass-market driven products (ibid.). The result of this focus is tension with consumers looking for more than short-term value in the money they spend on music purchases. The RockXchange® concept was an attempt to address these very issues – well before arguments over value became front-page material in USA Today – by allowing music fans to have a more direct form of participation in the long-term development of an artist. While electronic music was blooming in the late-1990s and rock n’ roll was apparently on its deathbed once again, the premise of The RockXchange® was, to use a marketing slogan, take stock in rock. However, this rock n’ roll focus was simply a speculative and market-driven strategy through the proposed RockXchange© 20 21 http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/2002/2002-06-05-cover-music-industry.htm http://nohoartsdistrict.com/dance/how_to_music_records_suck.htm THE REAL REASON MAJOR RECORD COMPANIES SUCK By Peter Spellman From AlternateMusicPress.com August 9, 2002 267 brand. The concept itself was not limited to a rock n’ roll context, but could theoretically be applied to other contexts. In a sense, the concept for this stock exchange mechanism therefore became of a design question, i.e. how the Internet’s technological innovations could open up the value proposition to the users within a music subculture. The assumption for such a design situation is that the users can help to fundamentally inform the design of the environment through the contribution of their resources. Put differently, how could fans-as-users be enabled to invest in the artists that they view as having financial or cultural value, either presently or in the future? With this interest in mind, combined with later involvement as a songwriter and performer in an independent (“indie”) rock band, I’ve essentially had a long-term stake in trying to find some sort of reconciliation between these competing worldviews. This tension can essentially be viewed in terms of, on the one hand, respecting the author’s copyright and earning potential in his or her creative output, and on the other hand, respecting the author’s need for creative environments that promote innovation and are not overregulated by copyright administration. In this sense, and as Cole suggests in his version of a cultural psychology, I’ve been both “a participant and an analyst” of these creative environments (p.349). Initially, and in terms of business practice or interaction design, this participation came from looking for a system that could allow users or customers to financially support the developers more directly than by buying the products. In terms of Kretschmer’s “music and the media arts”, such a system would allow music fans to contribute directly to the development funds of the music artists in exchange for future royalties (or dividends, to use the stock market terminology). While conceptually The RockXchange® seems just as relevant now as it did ten years ago, there have been practical changes in terms of the technology and the marketing involved of “music and the media arts”, not to mention changes in the culture of popular music as well. For example, we can see these changes in terms of how fans in digitally networked music contexts are able to contribute to the development of “official” and “unofficial” music culture in unprecedented ways. This content creation may simply involve making a post on an artist’s message board, or may even be a remix of the artist’s work, whether sanctioned or not. As such, contributions can go beyond simply the fan’s participation in a discussion group or even the funding of an artist’s work through the exchange of financial assets. Specifically, fans can now engage creatively in the artist’s developmental process in new ways through the contribution of valuable digital media assets. 268 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 119. A “strange loop” of a photo of Joel Flynn using a TRV-130 to capture of the performance of Gord Downie and The Dinner is Ruined in Cambridge MA on July 30, 2001, as pictured in the screenshot from that video. This scenario demonstrates how digital media assets could be contributed to an artist’s development just as much as the financial assets raised by CD sales, merchandise, or door receipts. This kind of fan participation can be seen in terms of what John Seely Brown calls distributed collaboration (Brown 2005), an idea that was the subject of an extensive but unpublished paper and project called Fan with a Movie Camera (2005). I helped to produce this project and paper along with fellow graduate colleague Jason Toal in the spring of 2005. Most of our efforts spent in testing out a concept for capturing and authoring media from a live music performance on March 17, 2005 by avant-garde artist Joseph Arthur (see “Chapter 5: Summary of Results - Artifact 5.9: Three-point Shooting”). The work attempted to demonstrate how digital media is increasingly being produced, to use Giulio Jacucci’s terminology, as “reverberations” of the live event, e.g. through digital still and video cameras or audio recordings of the event. This content can theoretically be pooled together in order to create new forms of audience engagement with the artist and the event. The objective was to move this theoretical proposition in to a practical outcome, and while we were less successful than we hoped at being able to include additional participation from the audience, we were able to create a prototype split-screen video artifact from this event that we argued was able to provide “windows” into such participation (Figure 120). 269 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 120. 3-point shooting prototype for a multi-camera split screen video artifact from Joseph Arthur’s performance at the Red Room in Vancouver BC, March 17, 2005. The project and paper were primarily concerned with what was taking place in terms of cultural and technological developments with respect to capturing live music performances. However, a key part of our efforts was also directed towards the theoretical development of an entrepreneurial start-up company based on applying the RockXchange® concept to the context of fan-created digital media. The proposed start-up company would therefore attempt to capitalize on the affordances of digital networks and related technologies to provide functioning environments for distributed collaboration. The initial focus would be directed towards music and the media arts, which was a direction not only influenced by my own interests and self-reflection as an artist working in this area, but was also motivated by a perceived need to find workable solutions for the issues facing both consumers and producers in the music industry. Therefore, the obvious activities where I can be seen as both participant and analyst are in a) music and the media arts, b) the entrepreneurial search for value opportunities in digital contexts, and c) the remixing of cultural artifacts through digital tools as a “value added” activity. Through this triangulation, which has been echoed in the arguments of others throughout this thesis (Paul D. Miller, Lawrence Lessig, John Seely Brown, Kline et al.), I argue that it is the activity of digital “writing”, or the expression of “voice/identity” through a creative process involving digital tools, as being the most appropriate activity for considering myself both a participant and analyst. In supporting this claim, I can point to numerous cultural artifacts of music and the media arts that I’ve not only remixed, but that I have also deconstructed and analyzed in terms of value (see “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”). While I have experience in a number of music-focused activities, and have strong interests in remix and electronic music, I don’t consider myself part of a DJ community. I also have film and literature perspectives, which are both unique lenses in their own right, though I don’t consider myself as either an “official” filmmaker or literary writer. Rather, my limited experiences in these areas provide perspective and access to properties of the remix activity from different vantage points. The idea of “finding an activity setting where you can be both participant and analyst” (Cole, ibid.) is to consider how and where these perspectives best line up, or as Cole would put it, become “a coordinated set of lenses through which to interpret the world” (p.338). 270 With this coordination of perspectives in mind, the following tables attempt to very briefly relate the previous framework, which combined the work of Bateson, Engeström, Cole, Wartofsky, Maturana and Varela, to the remix activities in taking place in music, writing, and filmmaking. These three lenses will also be contextualized by relevant ideas from the work of Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. The idea here is to try to make more explicit the multiple perspectives that are being used to approach the research environment of remix, as well as to highlight key points where these perspectives potentially juxtapose or overlap. Remix through the metaphor of music: Music is always a metaphor. It’s an invisible, utterly malleable material. It’s not fixed or cast in stone. Rhythm science uses an endless recontextualizing as a core compositional strategy, and some of this generation’s most important artists continually remind us that there are innumerable ways to arrange the mix. (Miller 2004, pp. 20-21) Starting with Miller’s description of how music is used metaphorically to conceptualize how objects are manipulated and designed through “a core compositional strategy” of endless combinations and recombinations, we’ll apply this perspective to our existing matrix of lenses: Table 5 Bateson (1972) Learning III Applying the perspective of the musician to the coordinated lenses method Engeström (1987) Methodology, ideology Wartofsky/Cole (1979/1996) Tertiary artifacts Maturana & Varela (1980) 3rd order autopoietic sys. The Musician Genres, styles, movements Remix? The mixing and remixing activity as a whole, as a way of life Unfinalized mixes, remixes, sequences, arrangements, formulae “building blocks” of culture, e.g. songs, samples, clips, words, final mixes, etc. Learning II Models Secondary artifacts 2nd order autopoietic sys. Arrangements, songs Learning I Tools Primary artifacts order autopoietic sys. 1st Notes, chords, lyrics, melodies In this way we can see the basic building blocks of music culture in terms of notes, chords, melodies, lyrics, etc. The arrangement of these elements in the shape of a song becomes a secondary artifact that is not only predicated on having sufficient building blocks available, but this activity also requires an overall worldview where the act of composing music is seen as something possible. 271 Otherwise, the engagement with music would essentially be limited to the act of listening passively to a musical work, i.e. with the view that the work or the environment is not to be infringed upon in any way by those listening to it. Furthermore, the worldview of the musician or the audience could frame out the activity in terms of interest in a particular genre, i.e. neither the musician nor the audience may have issue with the creation of, say, a hip hop song, but might be less able or interested in being involved in the composition of a symphony piece. Remix through the metaphor of writing: Phono/graph means sound/writing and in an era of rhythm science both serve as recursive aspects of information collage where everything from personal identity to the codes used to create art or music are available to the mix. It’s that simple and it’s that complex. (Miller 2004, p. 64) The activities of composing music and writing texts are highly related and merge in the form of song writing with songs seen as individual texts. Of course, to describe songs as texts is itself a metaphorical framing of the songwriting activity. So while the terminology changes, the activity remains similar, if not essentially the same. For example, the “writer” may uses building blocks of words, sentences and themes to construct a narrative while the musician would employ notes, chord structures, and progressions to accomplish the same essential result. Table 6 Bateson (1972) Learning III Applying the perspective of the “writer” to the coordinated lenses perspective Engeström (1987) Methodology, ideology Wartofsky/Cole (1979/1996) Tertiary artifacts Maturana & Varela (1980) 3rd order autopoietic sys. The “Writer” Genres, styles, movements chronotopes, within the intertext Narratives, formulae, identities Remix? The mixing and remixing activity as a whole, as a way of life Unfinalized mixes, remixes, sequences, arrangements, formulae “building blocks” of culture, e.g. songs, samples, clips, words, final mixes, etc. Learning II Models Secondary artifacts 2nd order autopoietic sys. Learning I Tools Primary artifacts 1st order autopoietic sys. Words, bits of code, texts, characters, settings, archetypes A musician or songwriter may write for particular worlds that could be seen a genres or styles. For example, the songwriting activity might involve a loose and unstructured piece for “the jazz world” versus a highly specific advertising jingle for the “corporate world”. Similarly, the literary writer may write for particular worlds or genres, if only in terms of writing a fictional work versus a non-fictional work. In relation to Bakhtin’s notion of “chronotopes” these worlds are contextualized in terms of 272 time and space, such as an era. Therefore, the writer must sufficiently frame out this worldview for the reader’s sake if the narrative is to have its intended effect. This would be the case even if the framing requires an uncertain blending of worldviews, for example, the blurring of fact and fiction that is a strategy employed by many writers as a way to engage the audience’s curiosity and imagination. Remix through the metaphor of filmmaking: …twenty-first century aesthetics needs to focus on how to cope with the immersion we experience on a daily level. [Soviet filmmaker Sergei] Eisenstein spoke of this density back in 1929 when asked about travel and film: “The hieroglyphic language of the cinema is capable of expressing any concept, any idea of class, any political or tactical slogan, without recourse to the help of a suspect dramatic or psychological past.” Does this mean we make our own films as we live them? Travelling without moving. (Miller 2004, p.88) Finally, and in following the metaphorical lenses both of the musician and the writer, we arrive at the point where the metaphor becomes the method, i.e. the filmmaking activity which depends literally upon the coordination of lenses. Again, the metaphor of filmmaking is similar to the activities of composing a song or writing a text, but because we’re using a metaphor involving lenses to explain a method of coordinating lenses, the result is what could be described as a “density” and “immersion” that makes it difficult to separate tool from result. Table 7 Bateson (1972) Learning III Applying the perspective of the filmmaker to the coordinated lenses perspective Engeström (1987) Methodology, ideology Wartofsky/Cole (1979/1996) Tertiary artifacts Maturana & Varela (1980) 3rd order autopoietic sys. The Filmmaker Genres, styles, movements within the ‘canon’ of filmmaking Storyboards, sequences, cuts, edits Film stock, cameras, actors, props, settings, scripts, Remix? The mixing and remixing activity as a whole, as a way of life Unfinalized mixes, remixes, sequences, arrangements, formulae “building blocks” of culture, e.g. songs, samples, clips, words, final mixes, etc. Learning II Models Secondary artifacts 2nd order autopoietic sys. Learning I Tools Primary artifacts order autopoietic sys. 1st In terms of filmmaking, the “tools” of the trade can include the film stock and the digital video, the cameras, the actors, sets, props, and scripts that are storyboarded, filmed, and edited into a movie. The film may even be framed as a journey, whether through a standard narrative arc of a dramatic motion picture, or a trip to the edge of the known universe, as in the film Powers of 10 (1977) by 273 Charles and Ray Eames. Notice that even Eisenstein has to address what should now be the familiar metaphor of travelling. As with music and writing, there are genres and styles to filmmaking that present worldviews and ideologies that frame the film’s content, whether it is an agitprop film or cinéma vérité, rather than only its aesthetic dimension of widescreen, or square pixel, or whatever means of presentation is involved. For example, the Dogme95 approach to filmmaking is highly ideological through its set of rules that place the filmmaking movement and genre of the mid-1990s. These aesthetic and technical limitations positioned Dogme95 as the antithesis of big-budget Hollywood approaches. Since “the essence of Dogme95 is to challenge the conventional film language” (Vinterberg et al. 1995), the contrast and tension between worldviews in the filmmaking realm can play out in terms of the technologies used and how the film is marketed/distributed in movie culture. Further distinction between worldviews in the filmmaking activity can be found, for example, in different views and approaches to creating episodic works for television or the web, genres that find success on a cinematic big screen, and even the common ideological position that the film adaptations of a literary works produce substandard versions of the original text. Regardless, the advantage that cinema has for “expressing any concept”, as Eisenstein claims, is highly ideological itself. The all-encompassing aspect of this claim again raises the criticism of the lens’ potential as a totalizing rather than a liberating tool. The fear that “Big Brother is watching you” used so successfully by George Orwell in his famous novel 1984 can be found in film adaptations of similar dystopian themes. For example, we can look at the recent example of modern day media voyeurism, specifically, of a completely staged upbringing for Jim Carrey’s character in director Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998). Or, in the example of Stanley Kubrick’s film version of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968), we can look at the omnipotent computer “HAL 2000” as commentary on society’s interrelationship with the potential of new technologies and artificial intelligence. LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD Figure 121. Posters for George Orwell’s novel 1984 and Peter Weir’s film The Truman Show (1998), as well as an image of Arthur C. Clarke’s HAL 9000 computer as depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 274 Early filmmakers such as Eisenstein and Vertov celebrated the potential of the camera to create “a meaningful visual phrase” from the complexities of life through the activities of recording and editing (Vertov 1984, p.86). Others would caution the dangers of a mediated world in which the density of images and the immersion of audiences in these images helps to set the necessary conditions for a propaganda model (Chomsky 1994). The danger in this sense is not that the camera has a privileged position because of its ability to transform “life into a meaningful rhythmic visual order” (Vertov, ibid.). Rather, it is the potential for the camera to exclude the points of view of other forms of expression or documentation, e.g. audio or text-based works that can require more time and effort by the audience than with the immediacy of video and film. Of course, the three perspectives of music, writing, and film all have become important in this work due to my own reciprocal interplay with these activities, i.e. in my literal and figurative travels as both participant and analyst of remix culture. Hopefully, by balancing all three of these perspectives and in not taking the metaphor of “coordinated lenses” too literally, we can find some useful positions for further engaging with the practice and research environment of remix. In doing so, we can hope to better inform the development of the method that is emerging from these and other activities. 4.4 Entering the process Enter into the process of helping things grow in the activity system you have entered by bringing to bear all the knowledge gained from both the cultural and natural sciences sides of psychology and allied disciplines. (Cole 1996, p.350) In entering in the activity system of remix and attempting to help it grow through the continued production and analysis of remixed digital media, I’ve approached this activity equipped with what Cole calls a “toolkit of metaphors” (p.334). This toolkit can be seen demonstrated in the “coordinated set of lenses” (p.338) used to provide the previous metaphorical descriptions of the remix activity, for example, the lenses of music, writing, and filmmaking that were coordinated with the models proposed by Bateson, Wartofsky, Cole, Engeström, Maturana and Varela. Recognizing that metaphors are in effect “useful tools of thought” and that these tools are never “context-free”, I’ve explicitly presented the metaphors that I’ve selected as based on my own reflective practice and as having involved my own cultural-historical development as a participant and analyst of remix culture. As Cole states, “there’s no such thing as an all-purpose (context-free) tool” (p.334), and when seen as models, these lenses produce specific worldviews, methodologies or ideologies, depending on the term one chooses to employ. In other words, we are dealing with Wartofsky’s tertiary artifacts (Wartofsky 1979). As mentioned, Cole’s use of the the term “lens” is infact a metaphorical description – i.e. a tertiary artifact – and it is important to remember the natural biasing that such a view produces over other, non-visual forms of perception and communication. 275 Cole’s approach is similar in some respects to the use of scenarios as “portable contexts” in design problems (see Brown 1996, and Jacucci 2004) where the lens, like a scenario, can be applied to various situations in order to see if it “fits”. As Brown comments in talking about the dialogue that takes place between the designer and the design object, when “good designers go to design something, they can tell if it fits right” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.107). Similarly, when using metaphors in designing, communicating, or analysing particular works, the important consideration is whether the metaphor is apt for its context. If so, Cole argues, we can gain “access to different properties and moments of the overall process of sociocultural and individual change” (Cole 1996, p. 335). Cole also suggests that any analysis “requires a combination of at least two metaphors to represent the process of culturally mediated activity” (ibid. italics added). This statement is fundamental to the entire argument of this thesis, first of all because remix is fundamentally a culturally mediated activity. It is also fundamental to the methodology being developed here to investigate remix culture because any representation is essentially a mix of metaphorical perspectives, Furthermore, the representation may actually be a remix of metaphorical perspectives if the perspectives are already seen as some sort of a mix already. To illustrate this point, let’s consider a base example as well as a more complex version. We can start by returning again the activities of Roderick Haig-Brown as both a fisherman and as a novelist. While he argues that fishing is not “a way of life”, it certainly played a significant role in his life and in his writing vocation. It is arguable what could be considered Haig-Brown’s primary role with respect to these two activities, i.e. is it the fishing that supported his writing by providing the writing material and an identity in his community? Or is it work as a writer and as his actual profession that supports the fishing activities? Therefore, through this specific “duality of human consciousness” (Cole, p.120), both fishing and writing become Haig-Brown’s worldviews, i.e. they are metaphors for engaging with and within his environment, each with their own culture, traditions, and ethics. In other words, these metaphors come equipped with their own contexts. It’s a dyslexic shuffle of autopoiesis [sic] between two undercover agents who carry their orders clutched in dead hands – the transfer of information between them is an Interrelationship between music and art and writing. I guess that’s what the subliminal seduction scenario creates – a dialectical triangulation between thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis. (Miller 2004, p.112) In the case of Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, he too must negotiate this duality in his roles as writer and musician. As described in the preceding quotation from Rhythm Science (2004), Miller sees this negotiation as taking place in an open-yet-closed autopoietic manner with the medium of art acting as a bridge between writing and music. Specifically, he sees the three roles of the artist, the writer, and the musician interacting as individual systems within his identity. When combined, these three perspectives triangulate as “thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis” (ibid.), and it is uncertain which cultural activity would be seen as the thesis for Miller, how its relationship with the other two plays out practically. 276 Beyond the double world of natural and cultural interactions, what Miller is suggesting is splitting the cultural realm into multiple layers of consciousness, i.e. through in his roles in art, music, and writing. While these multiple layers of cultural consciousness can be seen as similar to way we are likely to be conscious of the natural world through our five senses. However, the density of these overlapping roles and the ensuing complexity of what Miller calls “the multiplex mind” is not without consequence: The paradox here is that you have a culture founded on unceasing change and transformation – so much so that things change to quickly that there’s no there there – the agency of change is dead without ceaseless transformation, and that’s where music and philosophy intersect. If architecture is nothing but frozen music, philosophy is the music that forms the sound track of this transaction. Yeah, no doubt it’s about the blending and blurring of the whole subject-object scenario, that Cartesian dualism of doubt imploded on itself, the mind and body rendered as cultural critique of a multiplex mind. (Miller 2004, p.112) The language above can be difficult for readers not used to Miller’s stream-of-conscious style in Rhythm Science, especially when Miller’s arguments also seem to undergo “ceaseless transformation” (ibid.). As mentioned, this is common point of criticism in Miller’s works, i.e. the difficulty in untangling his insights (Cloninger 2004). By incorporating multiple perspectives in the cultural world, in addition to the perspectives from our physiological interactions with the natural world, Miller opens up the subject-object relationship to the increasingly complex situation of a “multiplex mind” (ibid.). In discussing the “multiplex mind”, Miller is making reference to the technological process of multiplexing (or “muxing”), which involves “combining of two or more information channels onto a common transmission medium”22(Institute for the Telecommunication Sciences). According to Miller, the multiple information channels that are perceived by the “multiplex mind” leads to what he terms a “multiplex consciousness” (Miller 2004, p. 61). Miller argues this sense of being is becoming the condition of individual identity in the contemporary world, specifically, that “the twenty-first century self is so immersed in and defined by the data that surrounds it, we are entering an era of multiplex consciousness” (Miller 2004, p. 61). As layers upon layers of perspectives begin to add up through these concepts of “a coordinated set of lenses through which to interpret the world” (Cole 1996, p.338) and “a multiplex mind” (Miller 2004, p.112), the complexity of this methodology obviously begins to complicate its potential effectiveness. To address this complexity, we’ll bring in other metaphors that were discussed in “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings” and attempt to relate them to our method of Cole’s coordinated lenses. For example, we’ll add the ecological metaphor of problem finding in learning environments (Moore 1994, in Runco, 1994), as well as the conversation and dialog metaphors employed in the design of learning environments, interactive objects, and even in the writing of novels (Schön 1983, Bakhtin 1983). Of course, in appropriating these metaphors, we also find a natural flow into the fishing metaphor that has been discussed at length in this thesis through the work of Roderick Haig-Brown, specifically, its relationship to the notions of growth and development in an ecological 22 http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-023/_3439.htm 277 system. The fishing metaphor has here been applied to our emerging model for looking at remix culture: Remix through the metaphor of fishing: Table 8 Bateson (1972) Applying the fisherman’s perspective to the coordinated lenses method. Engeström (1987) Wartofsky/Col e (1979/1996) Maturana & Varela (1980) The Fisherman Type of fishing (river, ocean, etc. line or net), See comments by Haig-Brown on differences in perspectives here A catch, big fish stories, formal and experimental methods and approaches Rods, hooks, lures, bait, reels, lines, pools, rivers, ocean, fish Remix? The mixing and remixing activity as a whole, as a way of life Learning III Methodology, ideology Tertiary artifacts 3rd order autopoietic sys. Learning II Models Secondary artifacts 2nd order autopoietic sys. Unfinalized mixes, remixes, sequences, arrangements, formulae “building blocks” of culture, e.g. songs, samples, clips, words, final mixes, etc. Learning I Tools Primary artifacts 1st order autopoietic sys. Finally, we return once again to the “Three Circuits of Interactivity Model” proposed by Kline et al in Digital Play (2003) and reconsider its appropriateness for our view of remix culture. The model proposed by Kline et al., when applied to our discussions of remix rather than simply to video games and the video game industry, suggests the metaphor of a game as a way to help us make sense of the contextual dynamics that are involved in a remix artifact. Specifically, this model helps us negotiate the competing and interacting value systems of technology, marketing, and culture taking place in contemporary digital culture. As discussed in “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings” we look at cult value, exhibition value, exchange value, and use value as all being related to the same three domains that form the “Three Circuits of Interactivity in a Global Mediatized Marketplace” (ibid. p.31). 278 Figure 122. Three Circuits of Interactivity model by Kline et al. 2003, Given the addition of this model into our “coordinated set of lenses” (Cole 1996, p.338), we can continue with Cole’s prescription of “bringing to bear all the knowledge gained from both the cultural and natural sciences” (pp.349-350). As a result we can combine the lenses of marketing, technology, and culture with lenses that focus on Bateson’s learning levels, of Engeström’s hierarchy of tools, and well as Wartofsky’s levels of artifacts. While all of these lenses are essentially provide views from the cultural sciences, we can also attempt to make use of one lens in particular from the natural sciences, i.e. the lens of autopoiesis. With this lens, which we’ve seen has already been applied in other analyses of social and language environments, we can look at the dynamics that are taking place between first-order, second-order, and third-order autopoietic systems. Finally, we can then overlay these perspectives with the additional perspectives of cult value, exhibition value, exchange value and use value as our final set of coordinated lenses in the development of this early-stage analytical method for remix culture (Figure 122). 279 Figure 123. “Three Circuits of Interactivity” model by Kline et al. 2003, modified with exhibition, exchange, and cult value associations as part of our approach of coordinating lenses. In reviewing these notions of value and in applying them with respect to searching for value in remix culture, consider John Berger’s important thoughts on perspective. Specifically, consider how a particular view of value can change through cultural shifts, technological developments, or changes in the “concentration [and the] density of visual messages” that we constantly confront in the “publicity images” of modern advertising techniques: Perspective makes the eye the centre of the visible world. But the human eye can only be in one place at a time; it takes its visible world with it as it walks. With the invention of the camera, everything changed. We could see things which were not there in front of us. Appearances could travel across the world. It was no longer so easy to think of appearances always travelling regularly to a single centre. (Berger 1972) Cult Value: Cult value has obvious connection to the cultural circuit. This value system implies the accessibility of the artifact to a selected few, as the artifact is kept away from the masses, i.e. the value of a best kept secret, of specialized knowledge, or an enlightened view of the world attainable only to few. Cult value can be seen with respect to works of art and the high culture interpretations of these works, i.e. through the use of language that the “masses” are deemed unable to grasp. Cult value could also be developed by actually blocking off mass access to the artifact, whether by physical restrictions (gates, security guards, etc.), cultural strategies (advertising, propaganda, etc.), or in digital contexts such as the use of DRM controls (Digital Rights Management) and limited password access. This value can be associated with the cultural circuit, where high cult value results from exclusivity and an inability to easily commodify the artifact for mass distribution. Exhibition Value: This value system is the inverse of cult value in that it expresses the ability of an artifact to be accessed by the masses and therefore its release from the exclusivity to the few. High 280 exhibition value allows the artifact to be broadcast around the world, or seen as object that can be used in multiple systems that are interoperable, i.e. minimal technical limitations for repurposing and reusing the object, as is seen in attempts to create common interoperable standards and components. For example a digital image in JPEG format has high exhibition value, as does an MP3 audio file, though only to a degree since these compressed files would become less able to be exhibited in large scale or high-fidelity environments. Another example would be Sony’s MiniDisc as having lower exhibition value than the more popular Apple iPod. In a non-digital context, an actual painting displayed in a museum would have had only very limited exhibition value until the possibility for mass reproduction that arrived with the introduction of the camera (Benjamin 1936). Exhibition value can therefore be associated with the technology circuit, since there is a predominant focus on how technologies allow for prevent acess to materials. Exchange Value: This is the idea of worth in an economic system, but not necessarily in terms of higher price. It can be viewed here in terms of price elasticity, i.e. a high price elasticity denotes commodities that are easily exchangeable and replaceable by other commodities. Because such products are more liquid than harder to trade products, a high price elasticity is can valued more in fast-moving economies (higher turnover, lower inventories can make total profit higher than with more specialized products, e.g. soft drinks have high price elasticity but can easily be easily bought and sold very quickly in integrated and dynamic markets. The other extreme would be a unique work of art that requires time and specialized resource to make a sale. The sale of the art piece may make more money per unity, but the high price elasticity product could present a more valuable market through high sales and ability to move the product quickly. We can associate exchange value with the marketing circuit. Use Value: the practical aspect of the artifact, a high use value denotes its ability to be put into use and as valuable when applied. Regardless of the cult value, the exhibition value, and the exchange value of an artifact, its use value negotiates all of these concerns in actually putting the artifact into practice. This can be associated with the remix of the three circuits, i.e. a remix is worthless if its components can’t be accessed, shown, or marketed beyond the remixer. 281 282 4.5 Considering evidence Take your ability to create and sustain effective systems as evidence of your theory’s adequacy. (Cole 1996, p.350) See “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”, which will summarize the results of various analyses of remix artifacts using the method developed here in this chapter. Full analyses will be included in the appendices of this thesis (or addressed individually in related papers) which will also include contextual information through a narrative that helps to situate each artifact in its proper context. 283 5. SUMMARY OF RESULTS In looking at what has resulted from our version of Cole’s “methodological journey” (Cole 1996, p.338) – i.e. the theoretical development of the coordinated lenses method in the previous chapters of Travels in Intertextuality – we need to also consider other practical outcomes that have emerged from this research. Specifically, we need to again consider the pool of new media objects that has been produced over the course of this study as has been referred to here as the “Intertext-1” streaming media database. We need to consider this database as an open system, or, to use the language of Michel Serres, as a “quasi-stable eddy” within the larger flow of digital culture’s “allencompassing system” (Serres 1982, in Taylor 2001, p.119). We’ll again look at Serres’ quote in order to provide the metaphorical framing of this pool of digital media artifacts. Within this all-encompassing system, however, there are countless open systems… Serres describes these [open systems] as “quasi-stable eddies,” which are “the erratic blinking of aleatory [i.e. chance] mutations” that form a “local flow upstream toward negentropic islands – refuse, recycling, memory, increase in complexities” (Serres, in Taylor, ibid.). This view of open systems was discussed extensively in “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings”, but once again provides a useful perspective as we reconsider some of the complex interactions taking place within and between the artifacts – or, to again use Lev Manovich’s terminology, the new media objects – that are about to be analysed. We should again also consider Bronfenbrenner’s notion of the “reciprocal interplay” (Bronfenbrenner 1979) between researcher and environment – i.e. my own participation in remix culture – and the consolidation of this particular researcher’s roles as “as content provider, producer, and critic all at the same time” (Miller 2004, p.48). Because of these highly integrated dynamics, the analysis of the artifacts in this section involves a significant and unavoidable degree of self-reflection. Of course, the recursive aspects of selfreflection during an observation complicate any analysis. However, despite these complications, which have been discussed extensively, the proper consideration of the relationship between researcher and environment can at the same time provide a level of ecological validity to the research. In light of such considerations, I have attempted to address as best possible my role as author (or at least a co-author) of the works, as designer of the methodology, and as a reflective practitioner in the activity of “writing” through the use of digital tools and remixes of digital culture. There is no argument on my end that this observer-environment relationship can be difficult, in fact, it is a relationship that I approach with as much apprehension as enthusiasm. The quantity and complexity of the material presented in this thesis should speak to these tensions and apprehensions, if only in terms of the potential for self-reflexivity to contribute to what Robbie Baker described much earlier in the travelogue as a “bad gig”, i.e. where “you become painfully aware of who you are, where you are and what you are trying and probably failing to do” (Baker, in Levy 2006) 284 Yet to again reiterate the point made by John Seely Brown, I feel that the nature of this work implies upon the researcher the responsibility of “following the problem” as best possible, whether or not it requires taking the role of a “reflective practioner” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.102). When I reflect upon the entirety of the work that has both inspired and frustrated me throughout this course of study, and for years prior to its emergence as a formal research project, I have found that the issue of remix has uniquely been the common thread of a problem that best identifies all of the individual artifacts in the Intertext-1 database. Therefore, as argued in “Chapter 3: A Journey Towards Appropriate Data”, a limited analysis will be performed of on a set artifacts pulled from the appropriate resource of the Intertext-1 database. Accordingly, the method to be used for these analyses will be the approach developed in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis”. This approach involves: (1) the coordination of a number of metaphorical “lenses” on what could be seen as value in remix artifacts and activities, as well as (2) an interpretation of value in the remix artifacts that is framed out in terms of a hierarchy of building blocks, mixes, and worldviews. As part of this analysis, and in keeping with the notion of contextually situating the cultural artifact while interpreting its meaning, each of the analyses is complemented with narrative material that hopes to provide the needed situational context for the work’s development. This material can be found in the appendices to this thesis, or in individual papers dealing with each artifact specifically. These additional writings begin with introductory analyses of four relevant artifacts or groups of artifacts, i.e. what Manovich would call new media objects. These initial analyses, as summarized here, are designed to simply demonstrate how the artifacts have emerged from the researcher’s actual practice and how they can be effectively related to the theoretical underpinnings of this research: Table 9 Initial set of artifacts that apply theory to data Artifact 5.1 “Fan of Yours” (July 16, 2005) This artifact involves a simple “demo” song produced in a digital home studio environment produced over a few hours using only vocals guitars and a drum machine. It was intended to be used as a building block for a future remix involving real drums and bass; however, it essentially became a final mix when the intended remix never materialized. This artifact is being used here to demonstrate the differences between the ideal and the material, or, the intended purpose and the actual use of an object in its cultural context. [LINK] 285 Artifact 5.2 The Tragically Hip’s In Between Forgetting and Coldplay’s XYZ (December 2004 and June 2005) As opposed to the previous artifact, the remixes discussed here have actually materialized through the reconfiguration of two popular albums, specifically, The Tragically Hip’s In Between Evolution (2004) and Coldplay’s X&Y (2005). The individual song objects from these albums are supplemented with “bsides” that were omitted from the officially released album. These were made available and purchased from via digital download in order to create a pool of artifacts for remixing purposes. The intent of this example is to demonstrate how individual songs can be considered as building blocks (primary artifacts) for user-driven remixes (secondary artifacts), not only as source material for sampling, but also as whole pieces to be rearranged in a new version of the album. In these cases, the remixes were created by sampling portions of the album’s songs and creating loops that help to bridge the songs from one song to the next. The objective is then to create a sequence of songs with a “flow” that improves the listening experience of the albums. The example also attempts to show the issues presented by technological, cultural, and marketing restrictions on the ability of users to engage with their culture in ways that extend upon the idea of creating a playlist, i.e. remixing the songs together rather than just reordering them. [LINK] Artifact 5.3 Nightmare on Tern Place (August 2000) This artifact is a simple demonstration of the affordances of digital editing technologies in how children of today’s digital culture see remixing as an ordinary and everyday part of their “play”. The short video piece was produced by a group of 9 and 10-year olds during their summer holiday and was subsequently entered into a local competition. While it did not win any awards, the piece is noteworthy for its actual use of found digital 286 Artifact 5.3 Nightmare on Tern Place (August 2000) materials in the creation of a new work, but more importantly, in the way that the group parodies texts from its popular culture. The influence of this piece on the entire Travels in Intertextuality research project should not be understated, as it provides a potential indicator of the expectations of future generations in how they will be able or unable to engage with what is an increasingly digital cultural environment. [LINK] Artifact 5.4 Ordinary Remix of Demo Reels (October 2000) The intent of this set of remix artifacts is to demonstrate similar processes to the remix activities of the 9 and 10-year olds in Artifact 1.3. However, in this case the activity is moved up in age bracket and recontextualized in terms of multimedia students remixing digital culture as part of their learning activities and professional portfolio development. The example contextualizes these “unofficial” cultural productions in terms of the “digital play” of interacting forces of technology, culture, and marketing (Kline et al. 2003). The set of remix artifacts are also used to demonstrate what Lessig sees as a potential “chill” in the development of creative work in the digital context (Lessig 2004, p.185). Specifically, these artifacts address key issues surrounding the restrictions on user engagement of digital works through built-in rights management technologies, the legal limitations of marketing opportunities through copyright monopoly, and the ideological positioning of a permission culture worldview. [LINK] As mentioned, the analyses of the above remix artifacts simply attempt to make explicit some important connections between the theory presented earlier in “Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings” and the practical outcomes of the researcher’s participation in remix culture. The remaining artifacts described below go a step further in this analysis by applying the method developed in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis”. Specifically, the artifacts are viewed with the express focus on how we might perceive value in a remix object by coordinating various lenses of analysis, e.g. Kline et al’s “Three Circuits of Interactivity” and Bateson’s “learning levels”. 287 Table 10 Relating theory to data by incorporating the coordinated lenses approach in the analysis. Artifact 5.5 The Halcyon Days 5-song Demo EP (January 2000) This early example of a remix artifact is an audio CD that again argues how individual songs can be rearranged and mixed with other digital materials in order to create a new work. Using audio samples from songs and films of popular culture, or even digital graphics that are remixed as part of the album’s artwork (e.g. graphic of HAL 9000’s “eye” in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968), the resulting artifact is argued to different from a simple collection of the same individual songs. In other words, the remix has is own identity apart from its background. As well as demonstrating the technical aspects of a remix, the artifact also helps demonstrate the researcher’s involvement in this practice. Whether within the context of the band Halcyon Days or not, the remixing activity has taken place over a long historical period that precedes the time frame of this Masters research, and is now moving beyond this academic work. [LINK] Coordinated Lens Analysis for Artifact 5.5 (Synopsis): The approach of remixing “unofficial” culture, such as an independent band’s music with “official” culture of audio samples from motion pictures and major lable songs seems to have low use overall use value since it is not a “marketable” practice and could suffer from digital rights management restrictions. The actual mix of songs and samples in this particular work also has a low overall use value, since little can be done with it in an official sense unless all necessary permissions are cleared. However, the individual building blocks, when treated as separate pieces and not mixed with other pieces, would have their own use value. This value might be low compared to what can be seen as the ideal value of the mix of songs and samples, but without proper permissions in effect, this mix may well have no value at all, i.e. choice between low value and no value for the producer of the work. 288 Artifact 5.6 The Multi-angle Halcyon Days DVD (March 2000 and July 2004) This artifact uses the existing functions of a standard DVD player to demonstrate the remix possibilities that are already possible in terms of ordinary and everyday user interactions in digital culture. The DVD media artifact takes a set of audio and video recordings from a March 10, 2000 performance at the Commodore Ballroom by the researcher’s band (Halcyon Days). It uses a 3-angle split screen interface that allows the user to navigate between alternate angles as the performance plays out in a linear fashion from start to end without interruption or additional editing. The artifact helps demonstrate some of the cultural ecology and selfreflective activity that ground this research in everyday practice. Most interestingly, the artifact also has the potential to demonstrate how remixing can take place intuitively through the user’s eye movement rather than through a tactile interaction with the DVD remote control. [LINK] Coordinated Lens Analysis for Artifact 5.6 (Synopsis): The building blocks of this work have average use value overall, as perhaps some of the songs could be valued on their own, but could suffer from removing them from the context of the performance as a whole. This is an even more important concern for the video pieces, which likely have little use value without being mixed with the other angles and audio. The end mix with multiple-angle navigation could have a use value that is high due to its compatibility with standard DVD players, and for its potential cult value as a highly unique performance recording. Marketability however becomes a question due to the unknown whereabouts of the camera operators from this show. As a worldview, the activity of documenting performances with a “lo-fi” and multi-angle approach could develop a strong overall use value if it is used as a strategy in more concert filming examples or in other contexts, i.e. if it develops as a genre of its own. 289 Artifact 5.7 Fan Experiments with a Movie Camera (June 2000 to present) These experiments represent a shift in worldviews (or tertiary artifacts) involving a move from the perspective of the performer on the stage to the perspective of a cameraperson, or of the fan observing the stage. The shift is demonstrated through an extensive collection of digital recordings of live music performances over a long development time through the researcher participation in the culture of “bootlegs”. The artifacts can be used to communicate key ideas of revolutionary practice – i.e. practice that actually changes the environment – that can take place through the profound qualitative changes brought on by digital technologies. Also of note from the analysis of this artifact is how a technique to recording live performance developed specifically as a way to reduce the amount of time-consuming remixing that is required in creating subsequent works from these recordings. [LINK] Coordinated Lens Analysis for Artifact 5.7 (Synopsis): As with Artifact 5.5 mix of unofficial pop culture with samples from films and songs of official culture, and as shown with Artifact 5.6’s mix of similar lo-fi material, this documentation approach could have a high use value if it becomes a genre of its own, similar to Dogme 95 (Vinterberg et al. 1995). The individual pieces have overall use value based on their ability to be played in various formats, but only when provided with the rights to exhibit the pieces, or, alternately, the rights to require renumeration for the use of these materials. Mixes made from such pieces therefore have varying degrees of use value, depending on these rights issues. Also, the “mixibility” of various video and audio quality formats depends on where and how the work is presented (both technically and aesthetically). Furthermore, it would be difficult to have a “loose” mix of recorded pieces that could adapt to the above concerns, for example, mixable streams of content. Presently, given the “heaviness” of the media files, the use of these pieces would require mixing them down into a new work that is “set”, more or less, in order to distributed. Once set however, the new mix could become much less useful in adapting to new context, though more exchangeable as a commodity. 290 Artifact 5.8 Kid A With Movie Camera (December 2003 & May 2004) Moving away from the recording of live events to activities that are more obviously seen as remix, the Kid A With Movie Camera artifact is similar to the famous remix example of Pink Floyd’s 1972 album Dark Side of the Moon with the screen classic The Wizard of Oz (1939). This unlikely experiment mixes Radiohead’s Kid A (2000) with the Dziga Vertov’s 1929 avant-garde masterpiece Man with a Movie Camera. It led to other remixes involving Radiohead’s music in other silent film classics: Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926). The remix was also extended into a DVD version that incorporates multiangle and multi-soundtrack capabilities in order to demonstrate the remixing potential of current consumer grade digital technologies. Specifically, the DVD allows the user to intertextually navigate between Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, his earlier work in Kino-Eye: Life Caught Unawares (1924) and the influential Battleship Potemkin (1925) by Vertov’s rival Sergei Eisenstein. In further demonstrating the immediacy of remixing possibilities in a digital context, the user can also navigate between alternate sound tracks in addition to Radiohead’s Kid A, e.g. Leonard Cohen’s Field Commander Cohen (2001). Overall, these remixes demonstrate new potential for the user or viewer to engage with strategies such as montage and juxtaposition that have often been employed by avant-gardes artists in film, music, and poetry. [LINK] Coordinated Lens Analysis for Artifact 5.8 (Synopsis): Since the films and songs/albums used in these remixes are already commodified and exchanged both physically and digitally, their exchange value is already high, while their exhibition value is also hight due to their ability to be played in numerfous formats (e.g. AIFF or WAV format for the audio pieces). They may also already have some cult value if the audiences for the original works and are very specific. Therefore, the building blocks for these remixes can already have high use value even when not mixed together. The remix also has high use value because the work’s notoriety would essentially come from being effectively engaging to small audiences who have seen these “unsanctioned” remixes and consider them to be engaging and worthwhile. Yet as a practice, aside from producing a genre with cult appeal, this remixing approach seems to have little value due to it inability to be exhibited or exchanged in an official and practical way, i.e. they can only seem to funtion as “illegal art”. 291 Artifact 5.9 3-point Shooting: a User-Driven Split Screen Remix Technique (May 2004 to present) In this example, the 3-angle split screen approach used in the Halcyon Days DVD in Artifact 5.6 became a tool to be applied to the documentation activities and fan experiments of live performance recording. In this way, it remixes two of the previous artifacts that have already been analyzed above. Specifically, it extends the concept of Artifact 1.6 where the video work is designed to let the user’s eye movement perform the editing and remixing processes, then combines this concept with the fan-captured live recording concept in Artifact 5.7. The 3-point shooting technique, in a slight reference to the introduction of the 3-point shot in the sport of basketball, attempts to change the rules of live performance filming by metaphorically opening up the floor to dynamic interactions between performer, cameraperson, and audience. Since an original test example on March 17, 2005 involving avant-garde New York artist Joseph Arthur, the 3-camera split screen approach has since been applied in the editing of an October 2nd, 2005 performance involving New York bands The National and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. [LINK] Coordinated Lens Analysis for Artifact 5.9 (Synopsis): This 3-angle approach to “lo-fi” concert documentation is analysable in a similar way to Artifact 5.7. However, this is a specific approach that could be seen as a valuable genre of such recordings within the overall genre of “lo-fi” concert documentation, or concert films in general. Again there are issues faced here in terms of how the mix of angles can exist as independent pieces and the value of those independent pieces on their own. This specific technique also requires that the three camera angles be available, i.e. losing one or two of the three angles obviously destroys the value of the overall process and resulting work. 292 Artifact 5.10 The Swell Formula, a.k.a. How it Goes (May 2005) This artifact, called How it Goes, is similar to earlier artifacts (Artifact 5.2 and Artifact 5.5) where a mix of songs was sequenced in a specific order. This sequence of songs was drawn from the catalogue of Swell, an obscure “indie” band from San Francisco. Following the ideas of Walter Benjamin (1936) and Umberto Eco (1984), Swell is a band can be described as having cult value, as in, being seen as valuable not because of its popularity, but because it is seen instead as “America’s best kept secret” (Ianelli 2001). The artifact was created as a retrospective of the cult band’s fourteen-year career, sampling a mix of songs from across its catalogue, to be delivered as a potential podcast. The term podcast is technically used to describe regularly downloaded or streamed audio and video files, but in this case there was only a single episode. However, it was assembled and produced in the same way as podcasts and with the same software, i.e. using chapters, images, and links that are mixed in to the audio file. This work originally developed by playing around with the iPod and its ability, while a song is playing, to easily navigate an artist’s entire catalogue in order to select the next song. Playing with an extensive pool of artifacts in this way produced a formula for selecting a series of songs from, in this case, Swell’s body of work. The formula therefore becomes a demonstration of a secondary artifact – such as a recipe, a code, or a method – that is used to create a new work. This formula can be transferred to other contexts and applied in mixing together other sets of building blocks. In this case our building blocks are songs from an artist’s catalogue of albums produced over a career. The “Swell Formula” has since been used on the catalogues of other bands, modified, then used again as a way to show the transferability of secondary artifacts in, for example, the digital culture of iPods and personal playlists. [LINK] Coordinated Lens Analysis for Artifact 5.10 (Synopsis): This practice of remixing songs from albums into new playlists, versions, songs, etc., is increasing in value as technological affordances and access allow a much broader audience participation in this way, even if it is just in creating an iTunes or Winamp playlist. Furthermore, the individual components – i.e. the songs – are already highly commodified and exchangeable (both in physical and digital formats). The actual mix, in this example, has questionable overall use value. The “formula” for arranging 293 Artifact 5.10 The Swell Formula, a.k.a. How it Goes (May 2005) the songs is highly transferable, but more tightly integrated mixes that flow from one song to the next require additional skills and resources than what is involved in creating a playlist. And while only working off of the catalogue of one artist makes for a less complicated process of clearing rights, it could still present a significant hurdle for the work to actually become used. Additionally, the activity requires more than a couple albums available from the artist whose catalogue is being sampled from. Using an artist with only a short career of a couple of albums, the activity loses its complexity, variety, and reason for making the remix, i.e. a lot of building blocks are needed initially for the remix to have high use value. Artifact 5.11 A Slow Dance Through the Zone of Proximal Development (December 2004 – present) This series of events and artifacts is designed to show how remix artifacts can develop through systems that are open to “distributed collaboration” (Brown 2005) and “aleatory events”, i.e. chance occurrences (Taylor 2001, p.93). The analysis of what can be viewed as a tertiary artifact, of a worldview of “travelling” through artifacts, whether as road trip, or a fishing trip, or some other kind of journey. This artifact concerns the development over an extended time frame of a key work that involved “multi-person joint activity” that moves through various physical places and digital artifacts. One of the products of the this activity has been a 3-angle concert recording from October 2nd 2005 that is complemented by other digital recordings gathered primarily during a trip to Boston and New York for the AIGA Design Conference in September of 2005, which featured Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid). The overall worldview here attempts to show how the context from which these works emerged was based on social interactions and socially embedded artifacts that act as archives of culture and as “scaffolding” for the development of new artifacts, for example, travelogue that opens this thesis. 294 Artifact 5.11 A Slow Dance Through the Zone of Proximal Development (December 2004 – present) Grounded in the theory presented in this thesis, specifically, in terms of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978), this example demonstrates in practice how such systems can develop into new forms of cultural innovation. Viewed through the coordinated lenses of baseball, music, and performance, this trip not only emerged from previous engagement with remix ideas, but has since helped to produce key artifacts that are essential to the argument presented in this work. For example, from what was “caught” on film on this trip, or in this “zone”, so to speak, provided important material for the development of the Desolation Sound System podcast (Artifact 5.12) through a recording of performance artist Jason Webley in New York. It also significantly helped the development of the 3-point shooting approach through further work that took place upon returning to Vancouver that added to the “accreting” world of artifacts in this thesis. Specifically, this work interconnects various zones of development by material from other concert filmmakers, such as recent recordings of performances by New York bands The National and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. It also interconnects with previous and current examples of live performance recording, e.g. bands such as Pink Floyd and the Beastie Boys, while exploring the notion of zones of proximal development in the unfolding of live performances, whether in sports or music or elsewhere. Furthermore, this development of material artifacts through these creative journeys would not have been possible without formal and informal collaboration between dispersed individuals and changes to the activity brought on by chance occurrences. This artifact aims to demonstrate how the unfolding of these aleatory and collaborative processes can take place in a very powerful way that is becoming increasingly possible in a digital environment where such movement- through- works is permitted. It does so in a narrative that unfolds in a non-linear travelogue of the developmental journey. [LINK] Coordinated Lens Analysis for Artifact 5.11 (Synopsis): The overall approach that is used here is essentially a worldview of taking a journey in the world through its physical and cultural environments simultaneously. Further, the approach looks to produce and collect artifacts from these travels that can be used to create a mix - i.e. a travelogue – of the experiences. This worldview has high use value, not only because the perspective of travelling in the world is not a major conceptual leap for an 295 Artifact 5.11 A Slow Dance Through the Zone of Proximal Development (December 2004 – present) increasingly mobile society, but also because the tools available to documents such journeys – both in the physical and virtual worlds – are becoming ubiquitous, if only at the level of camera phones and text messages. Mixing these artifacts together into a narrative, and having that narrative and its artifacts open and able to interact with similar works by others (i.e. distributed collaboration), presents problems again in terms of permission of use. Without being able to build upon these artifacts by integrating them into key parts of a narrative’s development, the entire narrative could fall apart and its value destroyed. Similarly, what is also needs to be considered is what kind of value the individual building blocks on their own have, i.e. a highly subjective documents that required the contextualization of such a narrative. Artifact 5.12 The Desolation Sound System (July 2005 and January 2006) The final piece of the Travels in Intertextuality puzzle is in fact the artifact that essentially started the formal process of writing this thesis document on January 10, 2006. It is also perhaps the artifact that is most consistent with the idea of remix found objects for one’s cultural environment into a “whole” system that overcomes the limitations of its individual components. In other words, the artifact looks at how materials that are otherwise considered “junk” or of little use can be recombined with other materials in a way that they provide value to the whole work as an “ecological” sytems. The artifact is an extended audio piece designed for playback on an iPod. It has similar characteristics to a podcast, i.e. the addition of chapters, images, and links that are added to the audio track, though does not have regular episodes. It has been constructed primarily from home studio and live recordings of songs and stories by a Campbell River fisherman and retired schoolteacher (Doug Flynn). The recordings are complemented by samples from the 2003 film Big Fish by Tim Burton, as well as the Robert Nichol film Fisherman’s Fall (1968). The latter film features the late fisherman and novelist Roderick Haig-Brown, also from Campbell River. Also added to the mix are songs from Jason Webley and the Pogues that reflect interconnecting sub-themes and side narratives within the work as a whole. Also of important note is the variety of technical formats that have been brought together in this work in its final audio-based form. 296 Artifact 5.12 The Desolation Sound System (July 2005 and January 2006) Specifically, the work combines audio from home studio recordings, digital still camera recordings, video camera recordings, film sound samples, etc. In this way, the work alludes to the complexity and emergence of interconnecting narratives, as demonstrated in the works of Irish novelist James Joyce. The Desolation Sound System podcast similarly aims to find a sense of “flow” in the listening experience from start to end, incorporates the metaphorical perspective of a river’s flow to a fisherman, and arguably achieves this goal in a unique and unprecedented example of digital remix. [LINK] Coordinated Lens Analysis for Artifact 5.12 (Synopsis): This artifact in many ways can be seen in its analysis as covering many of the key analytical points of the previous artifacts. For example, the work is comprised of various pieces of culture that are already commodifed and “official” (e.g. songs, samples from films, etc.), as well as contextual bits of “unofficial” culture that would have little use value outside of this artifact (e.g. random recordings using an extreme of high and low quality recording devices). Technically and conceptually, the use value of creating a work such as this could be high, since the tools and approaches for creating such works are increasingly available for most consumers (e.g. Apple’s iLife suite); however, rights holders of “official” culture would not necessarily support such works, or even care about such works. Furthermore, in attempting to protect the content against piracy, rights management technologies might be implemented that would adversely affect this kind of digital creativity, if not cripple it entirely. Potentially high use value for the approach and worldview, as well as for the mixes that result (such as the Desolation Sound System artifact) would therefore drop to minimal values as key pieces of the work start to “fall” out of its sequence and its narrative flow. Both levels of analysis attempt to provide the necessary situational information needed to put each of the works into its proper context. Ideally, even if the reader is without access to the artifacts – for whatever reason, whether technological, cultural, or marketing issues prove to be problematic – the analysis provided in the appendices (or the associated papers that individually address each artifact) will still be able to adequately inform any future discussions on the artifacts or on this research in general. 297 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS As the World Wide Web continues to expand, it's becoming increasingly difficult for users to obtain information efficiently. This has nothing to do with the volume of information out in the world, or even who has access to it - it's a kind of search engine function that's undergoing a crisis of meaning. The metaphor holds: the poem invokes the next line, word leads to thought and back again. Repeat. (Miller 2003) In the quotation above, Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid) describes the expansion of digital culture in metaphorical terms, or, if you will, in poetic terms. Specifically, he claims that “the poem invokes the next line, word leads to thought and back again” (ibid.). At this particular point in the thesis, I hope that the reader sees similar processes taking place in my own work, even if this work does call into question issues relating to the increasing quantity of information in a digitized culture, not to mention the ideological issues concerning access to this information. There is no reason why these questions, issues, and concerns must remain the driving force behind further research in this area, as there are other directions and other texts that this work could move towards, if not move through. If such interpretations as to “the next line” have not already happened, that is the reader’s prerogative. However, as the author of Travels in Intertextuality, and in fully recognizing that my role as author has involved building upon the works of others, I can at least make the claim that this research has been, and still is, open to moving in new directions, or new mixes. In other words, even as we draw closer to addressing some needed conclusions on the value of remix culture, as well as finding value in this research for such evaluations, the work still remains open to aleatory changes, new thoughts, and alternate perspectives. This “open-yet-closed” system, as alluded to in the excerpt from the Halcyon Days multi-angle DVD that literally opens this thesis (Figure 4), allows the work to move in one direction, only to return to the same point from another direction, i.e. “word leads to thought and back again” (Miller 2003). In providing new perspectives of the original context, we wind up flipping DJ Spooky’s words around – remixing and extending his work – to the point where the next line invokes the poem: And the end of all our searching shall be to return to the place where we started and know it for the first time. (Elliot 1942, in Parker 2002) This famous quote by T.S. Elliot from “Little Gidding” is so appropriate for any of life’s journeys, large or small, that it is frequently appropriated in introductions and conclusions to works and presentations such as these. Its use in these contexts, such as the opening line of Jerry Hirshberg’s The Creative Priority (1998), has reached the point where it can be argued as having become a cliché. Regardless, as Richard A. Parker observes in his Exploring the Wasteland website, Elliot’s poetry suggests that “the only way to learn about life (or about poetry) is by exploring” (Parker 2002). 298 Similarly, the theory, the methods, and the artifacts that have informed this research project have simultaneously emerged through the researcher’s explorations of remix culture. As with Elliot’s quote, these explorations of the general intertext of cultural artifacts in the digital world seem to always “to return to the place where we started,” as clichéd as that may sound when hearing it time and time again. After all, as we’ve seen already commented on by Umberto Eco: Two clichés makes us laugh but a hundred clichés moves us because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion (Eco 1984, p. 209). Eco advised us many times earlier in this work that “the important thing is to make a start” (Eco, in Marshall & Eco 1997), yet may now find his own words on the beginnings of journeys becoming as clichéd as Elliot’s thoughts on the journey’s end. And so, as this methodological journey of cultural exploration comes to a close in its present form, so now also begin new journeys of future works that build off of the blocks that have been assembled and sequenced in the particular worldview of remix culture, i.e. the document titled Travels in Intertextuality: the autopoetic identity of remix culture. Earlier versions (or “mixes”) of this document were intended to provide an entire chapter with respect to future works that are to be undertaken from this point forward. Rather than including this chapter on future works, the following descriptions have instead been added here in the conclusion. The intended chapter on the future works that are emerging from Travels in Intertextuality can therefore be moved to a separate appendix, or alternately, will lead to individual papers that can more adequately explore these initiatives as they unfold. These future efforts, ideally, will provide the basis for later publications that essentially attempt to remix elements of the thesis document by applying the work to specific projects. To a degree, this process has already taken place in the development of the travelogue (Artifact 5.11) that has become a key section of this thesis, but was originally only a sketch of a story in earlier versions. The intent of this approach is to keep the works-in-progress more open to emergent developments brought on by aleatory (or chance) events and the inevitable unforeseen changes that we’ve argued are inherent to the intense dynamics of digital culture. Furthermore, some of the intellectual property developed in these efforts – some of which I feel have tremendous use value if allowed to develop to a reasonable stage – is still at an early stage level where discussing them in detail in this particular work would likely be a pointless exercise (not to mention would add even more material to an already “extensive” document). As a result, moving these future plans to future papers should allow the ideas to grow and develop more fully and completely by not being locked into what will become the eventual published form of this thesis. With respect to these initiatives, they can briefly be summarized as follows: 299 Artifacts 5.13 – 5.18 Future Travels in Intertextuality ACRO and the Digital Depot: The Australian Creative Resources Online (ACRO) and its northern counterpart at the Canadian Centre for Arts and Technology’s (CCAT) Digital Depot are two initiatives that are strongly related to the Travels in Intertextuality project. These initiatives are central to the work of Professor Phil Graham, whose research in social autopoiesis and interactive archives of digital culture has been highly influential in this thesis, and has pushed the work forward in many respects. In conjunction with Graham’s research, a step to be taken in my own work would see the reframing of my Intertext-1 database through its application to the approaches being developed at ACRO and the Digital Depot (i.e. a new database called, of course, Intertext-2). The work could then potentially be put into practice with the help of these initiatives, perhaps along the lines of the Digital Depot’s role in creating an archive of content for the Canadian Hockey Hall of Fame (similar to what was discussed in the travelogue with respect to MLB.com’s archives of baseball’s cultural-historical information). Remix-related Interface Development (CHAT Circuits and NOSK): Beyond how the data from this research is actually managed, i.e. perhaps through an ACRO-type system – an additional initiative for Travels in Intertextuality would involve visualization of its system of artifacts through interactive digital interfaces. Such visualization approaches would be designed to help communicate the dynamic and emergent aspects of remix, as obviously discussed extensively in this thesis. One initiative with respect to this approach could involve the further development of the CHAT Circuits project, as discussed in “Chapter 3: A Journey Towards Appropriate Data”, if an appropriate context for the tool can be found. For example, the CHAT Circuits tool could be applied in future course development related to cultural theory in a digital context. The tool may also be useful as the basis for an interactive version of our coordinated lenses method as further revisions of this model are made. In terms of another interface, there is the possibility for a remixed and updated version of the Non-linear Organic System of Knowledge (NOSK) prototype that was developed by student-colleagues at SIAT in order to visualize the intertextual relationships between key concepts in a cultural studies course. New version of this information visualization (which are already being produced for other projects) could be applied to the artifacts in Travels in Intertextuality as an alternate way to interact with the materials presented in this thesis, i.e. as opposed to a essay format as a paper or electronic document that is most likely being used here. 300 Artifacts 5.13 – 5.18 Future Travels in Intertextuality The RockXchange®: As explained earlier in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis”, The RockXchange® is a long developing project that will continue to be explored in future applied research efforts. Given the investment put into its development already, as well as in recognizing that the concept behind The RockXchange® has been “ahead of its time” (Reynolds, personal conversation 2005), this initiative seems just as relevant to the present context of digital culture as it did in 1995 when it was originally conceived. Specifically, the concept raises key questions relating to how this research can inform the concept of a stock exchange system being applied as a mechanism for raising both cultural and financial capital. In other words, by providing the users (i.e. the fans) of an artist the ability to “invest” in the artist’s works, the concept leads very easily to the participatory design discourse that is a major area of discussion for faculty and researchers at SIAT and elsewhere, e.g. Phil Graham’s work with the ACRO initiative. Feedback Loop VODcasting: In further developing the live performance recording efforts that have already taken place in this research, as well as in refining the 3-point shooting approach to such recordings, future efforts will again be directed towards putting these ideas to work in practical settings. The first such effort will be to attempt to stage a music performance featuring one or more artists in a small venue, so as to test out the following process: (1) the performances will be captured on audio and video, which (2) will then be quickly transformed into an interoperable new media objects that (3) can be played, for example, on devices such as the iPod Video. The goal will be to present a sample clip of the recording to the audience at the same event later than night, i.e. a “feedback loop” of the event. These test examples will be used to inform the longer-term goal, which is to develop a method to provide users a way to participate more directly in the production of such “grassroots” media objects, specifically, by giving them both the primary and the tertiary artifacts (i.e. the building blocks and the worldviews) needed to create their own secondary artifacts (i.e. the mixes and remixes produced from the digital archives). New Forms Festival: This conference is held yearly in Vancouver and aims to “connect local and international arts, sciences, academic, and grassroots communities” (NewFormsFestival.com). The 2006 conference is themed around “the transformation of culture, art, and movement in media arts” (ibid.). This is a theme that obviously relates very strongly to the ideas presented in this thesis and presents opportunities to generate 301 Artifacts 5.13 – 5.18 Future Travels in Intertextuality additional long-term interest in the work I’ve done with Travels in Intertextuality. The conference, because of its mix of “cutting edge” art, academic scholarship, and key figures in contemporary film, music, and digital media has the potential to become a key event in the development of Vancouver’s cultural heritage. Strangely enough, this kind of work for me relates to Haig-Brown’s views on the ecology of fishing, or as Jim Austin talks about in terms of his old Redsand building, as turning a “neighborhood” into “a more inviting public space” (Austin 2005). Specifically, this event is of high interest in my future work on remix culture because it represents a way to stay engaged and help take care of, metaphorically, the ecology of my home river (i.e. the ecology of “music and the media arts” taking place the Vancouver area). Furthermore, the event presents opportunities to again work closely with key individuals in the conference and at SIAT, for example, Professor Niranjan Rajah (the 2005 Conference Convenor). His research with respect to the digital transformation of “sacred architectures” presents some intriguing and unexpected overlaps with the materials discussed and developed in this thesis, for example, the idea that “new modes of representation… reconstruct the very ground of knowledge from which they emerged” (Rajah 1999). Of particular note are the cultural-historical implications of transforming physical spaces of popular culture into virtual environments, for example, the Commodore Ballroom as a key venue in “music and the media arts”, or, the “design icon” of Fenway Park in the baseball’s physical world as much as in its virtual world (AIGA 2005). Something Completely Different? ? TBD Coordinated Lens Analysis for Artifacts 5.13 – 5:18: TBD [LINK] Beyond the considerations of the future works listed above, which may or may not develop from future explorations, some conclusions are of course also in order. What is important to remember 302 is that the ideas here have, in most cases, taken an excessively long time to develop (in once again invoking the metaphor of the camera). However, in taking such an extended duration, there has been an opportunity – over time – for an accretion of mediating artifacts that effectively ground these ideas in practical activity (Brown, December 10, 2004). This accreting collection of artifacts and ideas (in the form of the Intertext-1 database) has not been the result of a well-planned and well-executed strategy. Rather, and in a similar fashion to Roderick Haig-Brown’s description of fishing methods, it has been “a thing that grew on me over time, through series of lucky accidents” (Haig-Brown 1959, p.63). This “thing” has been, on the one hand, a remixed method for a remix culture, i.e. what has been referred to as the coordinated lenses method, which has been used to perform early-stage analyses on the set of twelve remix summarized in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”. On another hand, this “thing” has also become a particular document called Travels in Intertextuality: the autopoetic indentity of remix culture, as well as two alternate versions of this same document, i.e. The Director’s Cut of the original work and The Permission Culture Remix that has removed all images and materials that require written permission for their use in this work if it is to be published in the school’s library. This “thing” also includes all of the associated artifacts, whether digitally encoded and part of the Intertext-1 database, or in some other form. This “thing” includes these pieces even if they didn’t make into either version of the document itself, though ideally they would’ve found an effective place to be incorporated somewhere in the “mix”. In other words, and in keeping with Cole’s work in Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline (1996, p.117), the net result of this study is an artifact that is both ideal (conceptual) in the original version that I would like to publish (analogous to a “director’s cut” of a film) and the material (tangible) version of the “Permission Culture Remix” that might actually get published in a timely manner. While the completion of this document has also produced some early conclusions, which are about to be addressed, these will also likely undergo significant development and unforeseen changes in the flow of digital culture. While we obviously can’t imagine these unforeseen changes (otherwise they wouldn’t be “unforeseen”), we can actually say that such changes would likely come in response to “the new conditions or the new method” (Haig-Brown 1959, p.252). As Haig-Brown further ponders the mysteries of catching fish, he makes a very important point with respect to our ability to be in control of these methods and conditions: But I think it is altogether possible that we might in the end wear out all possible combinations of conditions and methods were it not for one thing – the unpredictability of the fish. (Haig-Brown, ibid.) It would be easy for me to attribute the reason that this project has taken so long, in a metaphorical sense, to “the unpredictability of the fish” (ibid.). But that wouldn’t be entirely fair or accurate. In all fairness, a reason for the extended duration of this thesis research has been a lack of efficiency and organization on my part in dealing with a topic that obviously has some difficulties with structure and order. Yet this “looseness” and difficulty with structure can itself be seen as part of the dynamic tension between creativity and efficiency discussed in earlier parts of this thesis (Edwards 2001). It is also a “looseness” that is alluded to and represented throughout the Intertext- 303 1 database, with its “lo-fi” and unstructured media artifacts that nonetheless display, I feel, a significant amount of creative thought nevertheless. Most importantly, somewhat ironically, and not at all surprisingly, the reason why this research has taken so long – as best I can describe – has already been described by someone else, in yet another related context. Here we find Canadian singer-songwriter and poet Gordon Downie discussing the conflicting process of trying to finish off a song, record, or poem, which are tasks that at this stage in his career he is likely to have performed many times over. Echoing his thoughts, and with my own experiences in mind, I’d argue that the time it has taken me as a researcher to follow the problem of remix can be viewed in the same manner as a writer who spends the majority of his or her time trying to find just the right way to say what they want to say: Like anything anyone makes, you try and make it so that it can float across the Atlantic if it had to, you know, in your mind. And you only know it’s finished when it stops asking you questions, when it stops bothering you, and nagging at you, and questioning you. You really want to finish something, you want to say something, [you want to] say it right… (Downie 2005) In terms of what I want to say, and how I would like to “say it right”, I’d argue that the upcoming conclusions accomplish this goal by being well grounded in the theory and data presented throughout this thesis. At the same time, however, I’m not so sure. Given the aforementioned metaphor of the “unpredictability of the fish” (Haig-Brown 1959), I wonder whether the research ever “stops asking you questions” (Downie, ibid.). Though a particular text may finally “shut up” (at least temporarily), it doesn’t change the fact that “fishermen are searchers” who search for “experiences… varied and repeated year after year in our special comings and goings” (HaigBrown 1959/1974, preface). So in this sense it becomes difficult for the research to, figuratively, stop nagging at you when you yourself can’t stop asking it questions. There are, of course, always questions in the endless and painstaking process of revision for any writer and his or her texts. Some writers are well known for the lengthy time frames involved in the development of their work. Consider, for example, Canadian icon, singer-songwriter, and poet Leonard Cohen, whose approach to writing is commented on by Dave Evans (a.k.a. “The Edge”), the guitarist for the popular Irish rock band U2: Well, I think to understand Leonard's work, you have to understand his very unusual process for writing. Leonard's writing process is unique. He might spend years, five years, on one song, coming back to it, rewriting it. And its not necessarily a passive just five years, it's like he will write multiple verses, he will whittle it down until it's almost a crystalline, pure form of words, some kind of perfect song. But it takes a long time. So if you're a lyric fan, as I am, when you hear a Leonard Cohen song, it's like every word is so perfectly placed, and chosen, it just connects in a very deep way. The first time I heard his songs, that was what hit me. (Evans, in Wagner 2006) In contrast to Cohen painstaking approach, others try to move right past the nagging questions that are posed by the work and the lengthy time frames these questions produce in the writing process. For example, the “spontaneous prose” and the “first thought, best thought” mantras of Beat poets such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg attempt to get past the “nagging” questions before they 304 have time to drag out the writing process (Watson 1995). Of course, Ginsberg would also qualify this mantra in Mind Writing Slogans (1994) by citing William Blake’s "First Thought is Best in Art, Second in Other Matters". Which begs the question: So which matter is it? Is it art? Or is it something else? Whatever the expression may be, whatever its context, and whatever method is used to “say it right” (Downie, ibid.), the question of whether the idea can “float” as a finished work will always remain until it is actually put into practice. And of course, once it is put into practice, the question’s context shifts to: “But how long will it float?” Yet the questioning does not end there, as we can further extend the “floating” metaphor offered by Downie by also shifting its context towards HaigBrown’s ecological system and his geographical context in Campbell River (Nichol & Haig-Brown 1967). To paraphrase both writers: “Yeah, sure it can float across the Atlantic if it had to… but how would it do on ‘the Pacific coast of Canada’?” So even when the work is deemed to be “finished”, given our context of remix, we’re still dealing with the effects of what Miller calls the ”endless recontextualizing as a core compositional strategy” that he proposes in Rhythm Science (Miller 2004, pp. 20-21). In other words, even a finished remix is still an “open work” (Eco 1989). The reassessment and reinterpretation of the work in multiple contexts would therefore invite even more “bothering”, and “nagging”, and “questioning” (Downie, ibid.). And perhaps this is exactly what leads Miller to currently see a “crisis of meaning” that we face in the lets-check-the-search-engine worldview of an emergent, networked, Information Age (Taylor 2001), or of a Nobrow “culture of marketing” (Seabrook 2000), or of a “mediatized global marketplace” (Kline et al. 2003, p. 31). Therefore, even as we finish off this thesis with the following conclusions, what we can actually conclude about this “thing” is really just the following statement: When the work is finally all said and done… there will still be questions. Conclusion #1: Remix. The same… but different. In wrapping up this thesis, the first question that must be addressed is the following: “Why should this activity of remix be considered any different than past forms of cultural transformation, e.g. appropriation, collage, montage, etc.?” The answer is that remix is in fact no different than these examples of cultural transformation… except in terms of two very important contexts that relate to the Kline et al.’s “Three Circuits of Interactivity” that have informed much of this work (2003). Specifically, remix is different because of its relationship to digital technology and marketing. Situating cultural transformation in the context of digital technology, and seeing it as leading to something “new”, is fundamentally important to the notion of remix. We can make this claim if only in the potential offered by digital technologies to significantly increase both the quantity and variety of cultural artifacts in our day-to-day world. According to Cole, these increases provide the basis for a “qualitative change” in culture and human thinking” (Cole 1996, p.114). 305 Digital recording technologies now allow us to record massive amounts of information on a daily basis, if we choose to do so. While much of this information can be seen as commercial advertisements, we now have digital storage capabilities that allow us to archive more media materials than we’re capable of handling individually on a day-to-day basis. The ways in which we are capable of recording and archiving with digital technologies are already varied in terms of formats and modalities. Furthermore, the variety of artifacts produced – if not marketed – through digital media authoring approaches is far from relegated to a limited palette of styles and forms, or even sales pitches for that matter. The net result of this increased quantity and variety of artifacts is a “profound cultural shift inherent in our new media environments” (Graham, in press, p.25). This shift transforms the “capturing and sharing that has always been integral to our culture”, as Lawrence Lessig illustrates using the example of the Kodak company’s success in introducing the camera into our popular culture: This digital “capturing and sharing” is in part an extension of the capturing and sharing that has always been integral to our culture, and in part it is something new. It is continuous with the Kodak, but it explodes the boundaries of Kodaklike technologies. The technology of digital “capturing and sharing” promises a world of extraordinarily diverse creativity that can be easily and broadly shared. And as that creativity is applied to democracy, it will enable a broad range of citizens to use technology to express and criticize and contribute to the culture all around. (Lessig 2004, p.184) At the cultural-historical scholars of the 1930s argued, this “quantitative change in terms of the number and variety of media artifacts” is tied to a “qualitative change in terms of the mediational potentials they embody” (Cole 1996, p.114). As more current scholars argue, “when technological development gives rise to new modes of representation, these new modalities impinge upon and reconstruct the very ground of knowledge from which they emerged” (Raja 1999), essentially remixing even whatever solid cultural footing we may have, as we’re standing on it. In the marketing sense, we can see this effect in terms of new technologies “cannibalizing” what used to be counted on as stable revenue streams, essentially reconstructing the market as they’re being produced and consumed. The classic example is of course the effect of digital cameras on the sales of Kodak’s traditional 35mm film cameras, which the company stopped producing by the end of 2004 (Davies 2004). The underlying context, or the solid cultural footing, has changed radically as more and more varied artifacts accumulate in our digital environments. Remix can therefore be described as the same process of cultural transformation that has been practiced well before the digital age, e.g. through works of art and processes of perception combined with the introduction of new tools of representation (Cole 1996, p.115 and Berger 1972). Remix, however, is situated in the context of a digital consumer socitey that involves rapidly accumulating digital artifacts. Remix therefore presents a much more marketable term than its analog predecessors, e.g. appropriation, montage, collage, etc. In this way, remix becomes a tertiary artifact that “colors our actual ‘world’” in an “arena of nonpractical, or ‘free’ play or game activity” (Wartofsky 1973, p.208, in Cole 1996, p.121). This is a world of possible mixes, of potential reconstructed ground to stand on, and of “reframing” and 306 “tinkering” activities. This leads to a zone where, as John Seely Brown suggests, “in a very exciting sense, recreation becomes re-creation” and ‘world-building” activities replace traditional narrative’s “telling/listening” activities as digital artifacts to be played and tinkered with continue to accumulate rapidly in these virtual worlds. Through this rapid accumulation – or accretion – of increasingly varied digital artifacts, there comes a point where the mediational potentials for these artifacts become qualitatively different than such approaches as collage, appropriation, and even sampling vinyl records with turntables. So as the primary artifacts (i.e. the building blocks) of remix culture expand and diversify through digital technologies and market reach, the tertiary artifacts (i.e. the cultural worldviews) of remix also change. Thus, when “applied to democracy”, the creativity suggested by remix activities results in an ideological shift with respect to how we can “express and criticize and contribute to the culture all around” (Lessig, ibid.). The important question that is further opened up by this argument is initially posed in the earlier work of Yjrö Engeström. It is the question of whether remix would be considered as one of the “expansive processes [that] are becoming integrated into processes of learning, i.e., that a historically new advanced type of learning - learning by expanding - is currently emerging in various fields of societal practice” (1987, chapter 1). Of course, we can also ask this question with respect to “the global mediatized marketplace” and the role of remix as a buzzword that integrates “fields of societal practice” that include technology, culture, and marketing (Kline et al 2003, p.31). This question of remix’s role as an expansive process is likely to be an ongoing, open discussion that is subject to Miller’s “endless recontextualizing” (Miller 2004, pp. 20-21) in an environment of “consumerist interactivity” (Kinder 1991). In Bakhtin’s positive sense of the word, hopefully, this is a question that is “unfinalizable” and therefore always providing an engaging and varying mix of perspectives (Moreson and Emerson 1990, p.36-40). Conclusion #2: The method is appropriate Let’s consider again what has happened here in terms of the analytical method employed in this work. In looking for an appropriate model that looks for value in remix culture, I’ve essentially created a methodology, as Cole has prescribed in closing out his book Cultural Psychology: a Once and Future Discipline (1996). Using Cole’s notion of a “toolkit of metaphors” (i.e. Wartofsky’s tertiary artifacts that effectively color our perspective of the world, see Cole p.122 and p.334), a number of metaphorical “lenses” have been coordinated to look at the phenomenon of remix. What has taken place here is therefore the development of a method – i.e. the coordinated lenses method – that is essentially a remix of perspectives. Furthermore, in explicitly recognizing my own reciprocal interplay with this research environment (Bronfenbrenner 1979), I’ve developed the method in a way that I argue is appropriate to the context of a self-reflective writer acting as a reflective practitioner (Schön 1983). This mix of perspectives therefore addresses my background. Furthermore, this reflective practice uses digital tools of expression as a core compositional strategy of the writing activity. By using various metaphors in the reflective practice involved in this research, and when applied to the context of 307 remix, I’ve been able to “access to different properties and moments of the overall process of sociocultural and individual change” as Cole has suggested in his work (Cole, p. 335). As a test run, the method has been applied with a number of individual works as well as sets of artifacts from the Intertext-1 database, as described and summarized in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”. In doing so, the approach reveals different ways of perceiving value in these remix artifacts. While the method may be considered unusual in that it was created rather than selected from existing approaches and applied to my work, the creative process that led to the development of the method was not only grounded in my practical day-to-day activities of remixing digital artifacts, but is also situated in the historical development of these activities over time, as can be seen with through a cultural-historical perspective of the data in the Intertext-1 database. In this way, the methodology of coordinating lenses is appropriate in Vygotsky’s sense of being both tool and result of the study. Further, it implies that the method changes and develops through its use, as different lenses are called upon for different moments of the analysis. The difference between this methodology and its alternative – i.e. a tool for the result of a study – may sound slight, yet as Vygotsky argued, it is of fundamental importance in “the search for method” (Vygotsky 1978, p.65). However, as appropriate as the result of this search may be, if the method is going to have any value beyond this work, it will need to be refined empirically through repeated testing in other contexts and by other researchers. Conclusion #3: The method is not context-free Claiming that the method is appropriate is not to say that the “remixing of lenses” used in my methodology is somehow better than the combination of perspectives that another individual may use in looking for value in remix culture. Making such a claim would be similar to falling into the “same methodological traps” that the Soviet cultural-historical researchers once fell into, as Cole explains in his work in cross-cultural research (Cole 1996, p.116). Specifically, this trap would be the tendency to make evaluative conclusions and general statements based on “interactional procedures [that are] treated as if they were free of their own cultural history” (ibid.). My own cultural history in, for example, music, film, multimedia, sports, and fishing (of all things!) effectively colours my perspectives of my research object as well as my own remix practice. Acknowledging this approach shifts the results of this work away from a direct focus on the “quality” of the artifacts and towards the combination of perspectives used in framing the environment, as well as towards the processes that led to their development. These perspectives of my own work are of course not free of context or bias, and for that matter, they are not claimed to be. Yet the role and influence of my own background in the development of the method can be seen as no different than Paul Miller’s approach to remix, i.e. when considering his role as a DJ to be that of a “new griot” (Miller 2004, p.20). Miller’s lens is certainly not free of context either, nor is it free of irony. Specifically, this would be the context of African storytellers who have historically been faced with the threat to their culture and traditions from the colonialism of empire and commerce. When seen in terms of remix culture as threatened by commercial pressures and the threat of a “lock down” of digital culture (Lessig 2004), Miller’s self-identification as a “griot” can be seen as at least 308 somewhat ironic, as would be my self-identification as a “fisherman” when I don’t actually fish in the literal sense. Any recommendation for the use of metaphors in the analysis of cultural contexts does not come down to simply supporting the idea of mixing “lenses” as perspectives to be taken in a cultural investigation. The strategy is not one of designing the perfect mix of perspectives that has absolute advantage in any given context, i.e. an inherently superior view. Rather, this strategy emphasizes the notion of a “toolkit of metaphors” for framing the investigation, as in, a number of perspectives that can “sampled” from and adjusted in response to changing contexts. With this idea of adaptable perspectives in mind, and in terms of the combination of perspectives used in this particular research project, we can even see a far more appropriate metaphor for the “toolkit of metaphors” suggested by Cole. In what seems rather obvious upon further reflection, this “toolkit of metaphors” would be appropriately transformed through symbolic use of a “tackle box of lenses”. Figure 124. Transformation of metaphorical perspectives, i.e. from toolkit to tacklebox. In restating the need for the method to be taken up and applied by other researchers with their own contexts, if the method is going to have any value in its use, it’s not because it is a tool that is somehow more objective than other methods. Nor will the method’s value be derived from some sort of specialized knowledge that can only be practiced by those who are within a particularly exclusive context. Rather, if the method developed here is going to be used as a valuable tool by others, it will do so despite its own cultural biases. In other words, these biases will be recognized by the practitioners who use the method, while recognizing their own biases in applying the method in numerous other contexts than the artifacts in my database. In other words, to use the terminology of the method itself, it will need to find its own exhibition value. 309 Conclusion #4: Method is not a substitute for practical experience In Michael Cole’s early years as a researcher, and after observing the complex activities being engaged by “non-literate peoples” with supposedly “’objective’ deficiencies”, he came to a conclusion about his own “objective deficiencies” (Cole 1996, p.338). Despite his supposedly advanced background, he was certain that if he had to function within this culture, he would be lost in trying to perform what were actually very complex tasks. While he might have been able to intellectually understand the dynamics involved in these tasks through his various lenses of analysis, having to actually perform these same tasks was an entirely different matter. These activities involved a level of understanding that was not necessarily aided by his intellectual abilities. Likewise, I am also certain that I would not be able to function effectively if put in the shoes, so to speak, of the people who are involved in the various activities on which my metaphorical perspectives are based. While the metaphors provide insights into these complex activities, and may even lead to methods for more empirical approaches to such observations, a metaphorical perspective is by no means a substitute for the tacit knowledge acquired in actually performing the activity. In reference to the opening travelogue of this work, throwing a baseball around in a back yard is one thing. However, I wouldn’t expect much success in trying to throw a “fastball” past a Major League slugger like Gary Sheffield, or for that matter, in “simply” trying to catch one of Tim Wakefield’s elusive dancing knuckleballs. Similarly, but from a different metaphorical perspective, I believe I have a strong understanding of what Paul D. Miller does as a DJ who performs remixes. I make this claim because of my use of “sociosonographic expression” or “sound writing” (Miller 2004, p. 33) as metaphorical perspective in my own remixes. In other words, I don’t treat these works simply as sound collages, but as attempts to “write” through the use of sound objects as building blocks of a narrative. At the same time, this “sound writing” activity can be seen as consistent with the activities of a DJ. Furthermore, I also hav a fair deal of practical experience in getting on stage and performing music, doing presentations in front of audiences, as well as sound editing and authoring for non-linear digital environments. Yet despite all these experiences and insights into the DJ’s worldview, there is no way that these insights would allow me to adequately perform turntable mixes in front of an audience when I have no practical experience in doing so. Similarly, the insights acquired into the mind of a fisherman have been incredibly valuable in this research work, as demonstrated repeatedly in Travels in Intertextuality through the inclusion of the writings and comments of angler Roderick Haig-Brown. However, these insights do not provide any practical knowledge about where best to cast a fly on the Campbell River, or which fly to choose from in doing so, or what season would provide the best time for “quality” fishing. Furthermore, without any practical experience as an angler, it is impossible for me to assess what would constitute a “quality” fishing experience beyond the numerically determined “time between bites” that Haig-Brown was quick to discredit as a valid measurement of “good fishing” (Haig-Brown 1959, p163 and pp.243-253). Similar arguments hold for the open water, such as the activity of commercial fishing in a troller on the Pacific coast of Canada. In this environment, I actually do have some limited experience, coming from a couple of summers of deckhand work on my dad’s fish boat. Theoretically, I’ve got a 310 strong understanding of my dad’s fishing perspective, and this understanding grows as I gain greater appreciation for the fishing experience when applying it metaphorically to the context of my own multimedia practices. I can even discuss my work in similar kinds of fishing terms, which might lead someone to assume that I also fish regularly. Further, they might assume that since my dad has fished and navigated the waters around Campbell River for decades, perhaps I would somehow be able to steer a fish boat through the Seymour Narrows and around the remnants of Ripple Rock. However, not only would this be a terrible error in judgment, it would be missing the entire point of these examples, if not this research project as a whole. So what then is the point of these examples? Metaphorical perspectives may help to “dematerialize” contexts in ways that allow for momentary insight, but they in no way replace the experience of seeing through those lenses as a practical and everyday part of one’s individual life course… as it develops over time. Conclusion #5: Autopoiesis becomes “autopoetics” The inclusion of Maturana and Varela’s theory of autopoiesis (1980) was a fairly recent development in this thesis, inspired to a large degree by telephone and email conversations with Professor Phil Graham with respect to his research in social autopoiesis. While I suspected that these ideas would be very relevant to my work at some point, I was initially hesitant incorporate them in the Masters thesis for fear of the complexity that naturally comes along with having to work with this topic. With my very limited background in this area of biological sciences, and a realization that I had already more than enough material for a Masters thesis, the topic of autopoiesis seemed to be, metaphorically, “a can of worms” that I didn’t want to take on this particular fishing trip, let alone open up. With this rationalization, I figured autopoiesis would be best left for later graduate work, perhaps at a PhD later stage. However, both ironically and fittingly, the interacting systems at play within my research would change with the introduction of the topic of autopoiesis, and of course, these systems would need to adapt. The renewed interest in autopoiesis and the realization that it had to be addressed in my work came about unexpectedly and from an unlikely source: a fan website of rock n’ roll band. Briefly, the webmaster for the popular Canadian band The Tragically Hip, David Bastedo, was in the process of redeveloping the band’s site based on some interesting ideas for working with archives of digital media artifacts. He posted some of these ideas to a website know as “The Hipbase”, a fan site created in 2002 that has no official connection to The Tragically Hip, but has been supported and administered by enthusiasts of the band as forum for discussion and interaction between members both in its virtual space and in the physical world (www.hipbase.com). In relation to this research project and the webmaster’s role in its development, the relevant ideas that were posted consisted of the following excerpt for Bastedo’s post on October 27, 2005: Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 12:50 am Post subject: I've build a database and a mechanism to archive fan and band assets. . . . I call it, The Hipstory Project - I think I have settled on that name. 311 It's inspired by both Hip Base itself, and a visiting Professor at CCAT, which is the Canadian Centre for Arts and Technology located at the University of waterloo. His name is Phil Graham and he a brilliant, funny man. I sat on a panel with him last year, and we've been friends ever since. He is here from Australia on a Canadian Research Grant, and his area of expertise, is the collection and storage of digital assets. In his case, he is working on a project called the digital junkyard, where unused and misc digital assets are stored, under a creative commons license for people to use. He is also a musician and know a lot of really smart people, whom he has introduced me to. Some of them are high tech librarians. One of them, designed a program for cnn to help reporters and editor find specific images in video. As in, descriptive video search . . . pretty complex very interesting. (Bastedo 2005) Quite obviously, the ideas presented in the posting above have a strong connection to the theory and data that has been argued throughout this thesis. Furthermore, the post suggested a potential academic expert in these very ideas, which I have also long argued are highly relevant to a band with a fan community such as The Tragically Hip. Because of this strong relationship to the work I was doing, I contacted Bastedo through the website and he put me in touch with Professor Graham via email. I then directed effort towards familiarizing myself with his research, specifically, what he refers to as “an autopoietic view” of organizational communication (Graham & McKenna 2000). In the process, an autopoietic view of my work began to emerge in a way that I thought I could develop effectively as a key idea in Travels in Intertextuality. In suddenly engaging with this autopoietic discourse right around the same time that I was about to start writing my thesis, there began to loom a threat of this additional topic pulling the thesis in complex directions that would complicate the work in unmanageable and unimaginable ways. For example, the perspective that individuals, as social beings, are invariably engaged in autopoiesis through the process of producing and reproducing their own identities has significant relevance to the idea of remix and Miller’s’ notion of a “multiplex consciousness” (Miller 2004, p.60). Yet as alluded to earlier, the ongoing debate on social autopoiesis, rather than biological autopoiesis, was not one I wanted to engage in. Nor was it a subject where I feel I had enough expertise – i.e. in the biological sciences – to be able to weigh in effectively. The relevance of autopoiesis in my work, however, seemed to be taking on its own “intrinsic logic”, so to speak. Continued email and telephone dialogue with the Professor Graham in Waterloo (and now in Australia) produced some very valuable insights on the topic that ended up focusing and organizing the work around the emerging methodology that was produced in “Chapter 4: Methods and Procedures of Analysis” (Graham 2006, personal communication). While the discourse of autopoiesis, complex systems, and sociolinguistics was more than I wanted to deal with at this stage, I didn’t want the work to lose some of what I felt were its most important and productive insights in the work. This was especially the case with respect to the gaps that were looming in trying to explain my research in terms of its methodology. Neglecting these insights simply because I was already committed to a particular plan for shaping the thesis would essentially lead to the problem of not “following the problem” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.102). So instead staying along the path of the research as it had been more-or-less framed out, I instead turned towards following this problem of remix as autopoiesis, i.e. whether “remixables can be 312 considered as autopoietic systems in themselves or artifacts thereof” (Graham, email communication, February 11, 2006). In doing so, and at this preliminary stage, the results have been inconclusive and require extensive further research. For example, it is not reasonable to suggest that the artifacts of remix culture can be seen as “living”, “self-organizing systems” of varying autopoietic orders of consciousness (Graham, ibid. and Taylor 2001, p.155). If we look at a single word as a building block of culture, we can’t say that this word created itself and its meaning through its own internal logic, as would be the case with a biological cell structure. So in this sense the connection between biological systems and sociolinguistic systems fundamentally breaks down. However, this consideration doesn’t mean that biological autopoiesis isn’t useful as a metaphor for looking at sociolinguistic systems such as remix. What is interesting form this perspective is where the models begin to collide and integrate, i.e. the point where the interaction of primary, secondary, and tertiary artifacts connects to the biological metaphor of autopoiesis, while doing so in combination with Vygotsky’s view of method as being “both prerequisite and product” (Vygotsky 1978, p.64). This combination suggests that to consider remix as a method, or, as a secondary artifact, it requires remix to also be both primary and tertiary artifacts. Put differently, in order to see the world and its objects as things that can be remixed, the primary artifacts (or building blocks) of remix need to first be seen as existing and available. Alternately, for those building blocks to be produced, - i.e. the mixes that are produced and are in turn remixed – the tertiary artifact of a remix worldview also needs to be in place. Taking an example of one of our twelve artifacts, in remixing the Desolation Sound System podcast (Artifact 5.12), there were various media artifacts that already existed in the Intertext-1 database, or elsewhere in digital culture. These were artifacts – e.g. audio clips, film samples, songs, etc. – that related to the various themes in the podcast, such as fishing, or singing, or even New York as a point of interconnection between parts of the whole. These media artifacts or pieces of culture had to first be seen as “remixable” (Graham, ibid.) through an appropriate worldview in order to even entertain the notion of creating the remix in the first place. Yet, at the same time, had these various media artifacts not been produced as individual mixes, the subsequent Desolation Sound System podcast would have been either technically or conceptually impossible. In this sense, while using autopoiesis as a biological perspective of language and remix culture to argue that cultural pieces create their own meaning seems a stretch, it is quite reasonable to work with the simple idea of a human agent perceiving a cultural setting through what has been described as “a poetic state of mind” (Downie et al. 1996). So instead of forcing some tenuous connection between biological and sociolinguistic systems, we can still make use of the value that the term autopoiesis provides from its roots in the natural sciences. Specifically, we can make use of its value in communicating key aspect of complex biological systems in trying to see insights into the development of cultural systems involving remix activities. However, in order to reflect the idea that we’ll be using autopoietic terminology in literary and communication contexts – i.e. language and remix – we’ll transform the term slightly by mixing it with the term poetics. 313 The term poetics can be intertextually referenced to the works of Aristotle, written around 350 B.C.E. It was a term used in the study of language by the Russian formalists in the early 20th century and then later appropriated by the structuralists of the 1960s (Eco 1989). The term is particularly noteworthy with respect to Lev Manovich, as he had strongly considered calling his book “The Poetics of New Media” but was not satisfied with the context that the term carried with it, and instead decided on the titleThe Language of New Media (2001, p.12). Realizing that any reference to poetry is open to interpretation, we can mix in the term autopoiesis and its notion of open systems, with the term poetics in order to produce a new term that is subtly changed, but incorporates both ideas, i.e. autopoetics. At the very least, we can point to the semiotic connection of this new term to the first chapter of Umberto Eco’ seminal text The Open Work (1989). This first chapter is conveniently titled, “The poetics of the open work”. The result of this view of autopoiesis when it is applied to remix culture raises important questions. For example, who is allowed to see the cultural environment as “remixable”? Is remix to be seen as a valuable part of individual and societal development in an emerging digital culture? Or is it only to be viewed as an “official” activity, controlled by narrow interests rather than by the public for its good? In other words, does remix become an activity that only “works for a tiny percentage: superstars”, as commented on by Lawrence Lessig in the following response to questions at the Scholarship in the Digital Age Conference on December 11, 2004 in Los Angeles: So we build this huge system that, you know, has a familiar form. It works for a tiny percentage: superstars. And for the rest, it’s just a tax. It slows their opportunity to create and spread culture [i.e. to remix]. Now, you know, again, and this is the point in which I’m so pessimistic, to go back to this RPI question [RIAA vs. Jesse Jordan, 2003]… If in universities we can’t excite people to say “This is wrong!” and we should do something different and we shouldn’t [treat] archives and museums in the same way, then how are we [as scholars in the digital age] going to begin to expect that we’re going to convince people, you know, a couple of miles from here [in Hollywood] that they’re wrong [about remix] too? I mean if we can’t even… and even in the most obvious context where [remix is] not about money, be enlightened about what this system of control does, then that’s the source of pessimism elsewhere.” (Lessig 2004) These questions cannot be answered in the context of this work, though the deep concerns that I have for such an unbalanced cultural ecology should be well understood by the reader by this point. The arguments, the theory, and the data already presented here suggest that further study in the dynamics of autopoietic biological systems may help to provide additional insights and clarifications into systems with similar characteristics as the cultural system that Lessig describes above. However, there is a better starting point for such insights and clarifications. In order move this work any further in the direction of autopoiesis for additional insights, an alternate approach to studying the complexities of biological systems is required, especially when my background is not in the biological sciences. In fact, this alternate appraoch has been thoroughly attempted in the development of Travels in Intertextuality and in the analysis of its artifacts. The approach is a response to a suggestion Lessig made in a presentation and discussion with recording artist Jeff Tweedy of the rock n’ roll band Wilco. Actually, we could interpret Lessig’s suggestion as more of an appeal to “artists, authors, and creators” alike: 314 Unless you start showing us – you artists, you authors, you creators – unless you start showing us how you create and have always created, unless you show us how this technology can create, then this potential, which is being realized every moment by kids using technology today, will be taken away. (Lessig, April 7th, 2005) This thesis is a direct response to Lessig’s appeal. The analyses of various artifacts and the intertwining narratives regarding the context from which the artifact developed are also a response to this appeal in some ways, while the travelogue that opens this thesis is a response to these analyses. While the artifacts, narratives, and analyses have been either moved to an appendix or are to form a set of research papers that address each artifact individually, the goal in their further refinement is to also further the method through this practical activity of “showing us how you create” (Lessig ibid.). The heart of the process of combining various artifacts and narrative threads together in this thesis project an attempt to show the internal logic of my own “autopoetic” remix system. It is to help provide insight on how I’ve created these works, the complexity that both helps and hinders the work, and how technology has played a role in expanding its creative potential. More importantly, and with respect to this thesis document, it also attempts to show how creative potential could be undermined, for example, the very fact of having to produce the alternate version of this document, The Permission Culture Remix, that has been stripped of all copyright images where written permission for their use was unable to be obtained. Conclusion #6: Remix leads to questions of integrity I can conclude from the process of creating this document that it exists, for the sake of argument, as two separate works: a “free culture” version and a “permission culture” version. The rationale for producing the separate “mixes” was discussed early in this thesis, i.e. at the end of the travelogue section that opens this work (see Artifact 5.11). As mentioned in the travelogue, these two versions build off of the same materials and attempt to make the same argument, yet do so in fundamentally different ways. The “free culture” version attempts to make its arguments regarding the value of remix activities by including significant amounts of digital culture into its mix. It does so in order to hopefully give the reader a sense of depth in terms of the ideas, the narratives, and the pool of artifacts that have resulted from this research. On the other hand, the “permission culture” version attempts to make this same argument by pulling out, or excluding, much of the material that provided the depth in the “free culture” version. The reader is then ideally left with the question of whether these missing pieces were integral to the mix. As a result, there are two separate mixes of Travels in Intertextuality – The Director’s Cut and The Permission Culture Remix – that address two different kinds of value. Using the lenses of our method, the “free culture” version would have a high cult value from its use as personal research of the author, which is distributed only to peers and other individuals in his communities of practice. The “free culture” version was created from a perspective of being able to 315 freely build upon the works of others, and is itself intended to be a resource for others to build upon. But in practice, it paradoxically becomes a document that is really only accessible to an exclusive few, since it isn’t technically publishable. The work therefore becomes much more limited in its usefulness as a piece of research that can be examined and reviewed by a more extensive group of peers. Furthermore, while this version may not be valuable in terms of marketing the work in a published format, this loss of exchange value for the “free culture” version may be offset by the longer-term marketing potential of future works that the author gains from the cult value of the work. What the author loses in financial capital from being able to earn royalties on a published document could therefore be assessed in relation to the cultural capital gained if the work were to achieve significant cult value. In contrast, the “permission culture” version would have a high exhibition value because of the lack of questions surrounding the building blocks that were used in its development, since they have been removed from the document. In this way, the work can technically be exhibited or published much more easily than the “free culture” version, and could potentially be distributed to a wide audience through a digital format (such as an eBook). Ironically, due to the significant holes in the work from having pulled out all of the images and multimedia that were key parts of its argument, this “permission culture” version may actually present more of a question mark to a permission culture than all the questions raised in the “free culture” version when situated in this same environment. Both versions of the work have therefore been intentionally designed to leave this question open and up to the interpretation of the reader. In this sense, the work can be seen as idealistically trying to strike a balance between these two worldviews of a permission culture and a free culture. Yet the strategy has also resulted from a simple and practical desire to try to get something out of the substantial efforts that have been put into work and all its related components. This “return on investment” may be in terms of financial value, cultural value, or ideally, a bit of both. Regardless, trying to strike a balance in this area is not a particularly pleasant situation, as can be seen in another context, i.e. the career arc of Liz Phair, the “once-adored darling of indie rock” (Begrand 2003): [Liz] Phair's career has always been dominated by the critic-artist dynamic; she's gone from darling to punching bag and back again in the space of only two albums. Part of this backlash could be chalked up to the fact that critics were annoyed that Phair was never a particularly devoted artist, just a talented one. She never copped to a starving-artist myth … and once she got her Rolling Stone cover and a chance to give the finger to any of her foes, she acted as if she didn't care that much to begin with. On [Phair’s 1998 album] she even goes so far as to suggest that the whole integrity trip is a farce anyway: "It's nice to be liked, but it's better by far to get paid," she sings on "Shitloads of Money" -- and ironically it's one of the most sincere-sounding songs on the record. (Joyce 1998) The critics have again not been kind to Liz Phair in the five years after the above review, especially given that her most recent work has begun to embody the “it’s better by far to get paid” philosophy (Begrand, ibid.). And yet in a worst-of-both-worlds scenario, her recent mainstream pop material still has not been a commercial success, only reinforcing the volatile nature of the space that attempts to “reconcile two elements, which are art and entertainment” (Downie, in Stevenson 316 1996). While this reconciliation continues for many artists in the Nobrow sense of the “culture of marketing [and] the marketing of culture” (Seabrook 2000), integrity is apparently getting knocked around somewhere in between. Similarly, this thesis and its integrity can be seen as straddling a precarious line between “art and entertainment” while also serving as a research object for design practices within technologymediated environments. Or, it can be seen as caught somewhere within the intense dynamics of interacting forces of technology, marketing, and culture. While trying to maintain its “integrity” as a complete (and essentially unmarketable) whole, Travels in Intertextuality also tries to stay open to alternate versions that can fill the role of producing commodifiable pieces for new marketing opportunities that are now available for authors with access to digital networks and publishing technologies. Regardless, the question of integrity would not come up here unless the work offered the possibility of being changed from one version to another. Remixed, if you will. Conclusion #7: Fishing for an “official” red herring At several points in this thesis, I’ve made what I consider an important distinction between what is viewed as “official” cultural activity and what is outside of this official status. i.e. culture that has an associated “official” value, and, on the other side of the equation, everything else. This “everything else” can arguably be viewed for our purposes as “junk” (Graham, in press). Obviously, since much of my own material is not “official” culture in the sense of having been produced in a commercial environment, published, and able to be distributed through the established cultural channels at present, I would have to consider my own work as being “junk” in this non-official sense. However, I of course do not consider it junk across every context, since I feel very strongly that it does have value, if only in presenting practical examples of the ideas that are fundamental to thesis argument. To further explain this distinction, I’ve discussed earlier the fact that I had previously been working on a Masters research project that dealt only marginally with the work presented here, and was not directly addressing remix as an object of study. Specifically, this previous work concerned the application of activity theory in an online classroom environment using an interactive tool that could be tested out on a significantly large pool of data (see “Chapter 3: A Journey Towards Appropriate Data”). Logically, this research direction presented, and would likely have achieved, a far quicker and more efficient path to a completed Masters thesis and published journal papers, both of which are key to a successful academic career. However, there was one problem with this direction, and a major problem at that: despite the logic of this approach, I didn’t feel the project had any real value to me personally, other than an “official” set of credentials. Phil Graham explains this problem nicely through what he calls the “one buyer, many sellers” model of a monopsony, contextualized in terms of academia: 317 The practices of the burgeoning academic “industry” exemplify the practices of cultural producers in a monopsony: academics write research papers and manuscripts and submit them to publishers in the hope that they will be accepted, even though an acceptance will usually bring little or no direct financial reward. Prior to being accepted through official channels, academic work is considered to have little or no “official” status as knowledge. (Graham, in press, pp. 12-13) Essentially, because of this perceived lack of value beyond “official” credentials, there was no drive behind the “official” path of my research project. Some of this lack of motivation came from a feeling that the path of publishing academic papers presented a somewhat futile proposition, at least as far as the short-term return on the time invested in writing such works. When short-term cash flow needs are essentially framing out one’s worldview, this situation presents a major motivational problem in terms of being able to sustain an interest in writing and submitting research papers that in the short-term are only useful in padding one’s résumé. In the long term, of course, having such publications on one’s curriculum vitae is, of course, essential to a career in academia, While recognizing this need should have produced the motivation for the research path, in the long term, however, the academic career didn’t seem feasible to me for a variety of reasons. In reflection, this disinterest could be attributed to deeper issues, specifically, my passion for “music and the media arts”, combined with my own creative work in this area. These interests I felt – very strongly – were consistently providing the fundamental value and motivation for my learning outcomes, if only for keeping some sense of mental well-being and wholeness over the course of these “travels”. As described in earlier chapters, my creative approaches in developing various multimedia works became what Nissan design legend Jerry Hirshberg would call “the creative priority,” which he claims requires avoiding a “narrow specialization and a singular point of view” (Hirshberg 1998, p.66). These activities, over time, would find similarities to the description of the sport of fishing, as provided by Roderick Haig-Brown: [The sport of fishing] sets problems and allows for, even demands, skilful performance; it implies preservation, so far as possible, of natural conditions… [it] falls within the limits of certain traditions, yet allows for growth and development; … where unexpected things can and do happen, [and] where a man has room to move and think and see and hear and be himself. (Haig-Brown 1957, p. 163) When applied to my creative work with digital media, this view of the interests that were driving my efforts obviously inspired numerous attempts to incorporate my own creative priorities into my “official” research project. Yet in John Seely Brown’s sense of “listening” or “honoring” the various contexts that were emerging in my research activities, it became clear that my work would require “reframing radically” the entire project in terms of my interests and hypotheses on remix culture (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.104). At this point, the “official” distinction in my work became irrelevant. In many senses, however, this “official” distinction has always been irrelevant, and it therefore presents somewhat of a red herring in this argument. Previous discussions of my “official” research have been more or less situated in the area of educational technology, and while this accurate to a 318 degree (i.e. due to my heavy involvement in classroom activities at SIAT), the field does not seem to properly situate the development of this research in its overall scope. In this regard, the “coordinated set of lenses” (Cole 1996, p.338) that have been provided in the development of this work have only been informed by the educational technology angle rather than having been led by this context. In other words, the educational technology angle can provide key insights into the way individuals might interact in social environments such as classroom settings or learning environments, which can then be applied to other contexts such as “music and the media arts” (Kretschmer 2004). But again, educational technology doesn’t necessarily drive my interest in music and the media arts, nor does it explicitly direct the research activities. The educational technology discourse has provided some useful methods and paradigms of the social sciences to consider in framing my research questions and approaches to implementing an investigation, but these insights and resources would always end up being used to look at music and the media arts, rather than music and the media arts functioning as a lens to look at how people learn using digital technologies. Therefore, all of the angles used in investigating cultural environments were essentially “official” aspects of my research, regardless as to whether the context was a classroom environment, an online forum, or a performance stage. Whether the work involved the production of a multi-angle concert DVD or the application of activity theory in design practice for digital environments, the inquiry moved through these texts and activities as though they were ordinary, everyday parts of the research. The “official” status of these texts and activities as being relevant to my research was for the most part a secondary consideration. A valid criticism of the educational technology label when applied to my earlier research – as in, when calling it my “official” research direction – is that the description seems to “stick out a mile” (Dobson 2006, personal communication). This criticism should only highlight the point of the internal logic of a complex system versus an external design. The external design intended to have the work fit within the traditional construct of a typical Masters research project – i.e. one which addresses all the standard procedures, methods, and formats for a completed and publishable argument and document. However, the internal logic of my research activities as a whole, i.e. as an emergent and complex system involving a significant number and variety of digital artifacts – pushed the work in a direction where all I felt I could do was to “follow the problem” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p. 104). Again, from this perspective, the notion of what’s “official” becomes an external concern that loses relevance. The key point to consider here, in terms of the larger discourse of remix as a creative practice in digital culture, is the inappropriateness of the “official” distinction. Consider the important idea of remix activities taking place in one form or another across all cultural activity, though not necessarily being labelled under the buzzword of “remix”. Specifically, consider the process of transforming “building blocks” into new “things” that flow back into the cultural environment as a whole, whether it’s writing a thesis, or working on an arts and crafts project, making a PowerPoint presentation, or simply preparing a recipe for an evening meal. We might give these new “things” names such as “mixes”, “remixes”, “artifacts”, “texts”, or “works”, yet regardless of the terminology, the process is essentially the same. 319 In other words, remix can be considered as a fundamental activity of an ecological system in the context of a culture that has both analog and digital aspects. It involves activities of transforming building blocks into mixes that contribute to an overall worldview of the activity, and then reengages these mixes through further activity in this environment. In this sense, there is no “outside” of the system, and the separation of the system into categories of “official” and “junk”, or even “analog” and “digital” makes no difference whatsoever, i.e. they are all part of the same cultural environment. As the unattributable saying goes: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. As a result, the “official” tag can therefore only be viewed as being imposed on the system from the outside. As argued previously in these conclusions, we can see remix as the continuation of ongoing value transformations , interpretations, or reframings of worth and worthlessness, i.e. where “trash” becomes “treasure” and vice versa. However, we’ve simply added a digital context to these activities (or, as Lessig calls it, “digital creativity”) by (1) observing the trend towards digitization of analog environments, and by (2) relearning what it means to transform, interpret, and reframe in these new digital environments: It brings you back to the kind of interpretive stance that asks, “How do you interpret what the world is doing? Where are the trends? Why are those trends? What are the causal forces at work? What do people really need? What are the latent needs? And so on. That requires a keen ability to listen to the world and its backtalk… How do we learn with agility? How do we learn rapidly? How do we learn to reframe our understandings of the world and put those reframings into action? So I think the ability to build the learning and unlearning organization is going to be the key to success in the twenty-first century. (Brown, in Mitchell pp.105-106) So in reiterating John Seely Brown’s insights for the reflective designer, what would be considered an “official understanding” within an organization – or an academic institution for that matter? And importantly, how does such an “official understanding” come about when “unlearning” is as much part of the process as “learning”? The conclusion to be drawn from the apparent futility of trying to fit a label such as “official” culture or “official” knowledge on a work is that these constructs are external to the research problem and should not drive the inquiry. While it might not necessarily play out this way in practice, the research should ideally be driven by, for example, the notion of having “a conversation with and in the context”, a view that Brown further argues is something that “good designers do all the time” (Brown in Mitchell, pp.105-106). Conclusion #8: “The dream of a novelist and a scientist combined” This research project has produced a significant amount of what Lev Manovich calls new media objects (2001, p.14). It has also produced a significant amount of writing, obviously in the sheer size of this document. If we were to try to evaluate how much has been produced in this research – in a tongue-in-cheek way – we might consider the images to be “worth a thousand words”, as goes the colloquialism. Disregarding how many words all the related sound and video artifacts would be 320 worth in counting these words, it would be interesting to weigh the total words from the use of images versus the actual number of typed works in this document. It may well be a close race! Yet aside from the output of text, audio, and video artifacts that were generated through this research, the real key outcome of the work could be the “coordinated lenses” method that emerged unexpectedly in the process of this extensive writing activity. Not only was this method created in response to the theoretical and practical work that was undertaken in this research, but it was also applied to a set of artifacts as a way to do an informal testing of the method’s potential usefulness. In this way, I’ve created a method to be used to analyse my own artifacts in a research project that involves a high degree of self-reflection. Conventional wisdom would see this work as being “unscientific” and possibly even disrespectful of the scientific tradition, yet labelling the work in this way would completely miss the point. Let’s consider this “unscientific” approach of having created a methodology (Newman & Holzman 1993) while further considering the issue of what is “official” culture and knowledge (Graham, in press, pp.12-13). In overlapping these lenses, we have a worldview where that which is considered “unscientific” is also considered “unofficial”. In keeping with Graham’s view of the value assigned to works that are “considered to have little or no “official” status as knowledge” (ibid.), we could interpret this “unscientific” method as having little or no “official” value. Now mix in the context of the “novelist” while reconsidering this notion of value from an alternate worldview, specifically, Alexander Luria’s “Romantic Science” (Luria 1979). Romantic Science is a paradigm that has heavily influenced the work of neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, who later described it as “the dream of a novelist and a scientist combined” (Sacks, in Luria 1987 p.xii). Also influenced by Luria’s work has of course been Michael Cole, whose development of a cultural psychology has a strong bearing on this alternate methodology. In reflecting upon his research while working on Luria’s posthumous The Making of the Mind (1979), Cole came to view his own approaches as consistent with a Romantic Science (Cole 1996). And so philosophers step in To weave a proof that things begin, Past question, with an origin. With first and second well rehearsed Our third and fourth can be deduced. And if no second were or first, No third or fourth could be produced. As weavers though, they don’t amount to much. To docket living things past any doubt You cancel first the living spirit out; The parts lie in the hollow of your hand, You only lack the living link you banned. (Goethe 1949/1988, p.95) For Cole, who had also played a key role in editing the late Lev Vygotsky’s work, a Romantic Science situates the process of discovery within the biographical development of the individual. In 321 this, Romantic Science presented a perspective that he found was effectively summed up in Luria’s references to Goethe’s Faust: In writing about Romantic Science, Luria quoted a line from Goethe's Faust in which Mephistopheles tells the eager student, "Grey is every theory, ever green the tree of life," expressing his scepticism for the golden promises of theory. Luria's fusion of the two different world views, or orders of reality, is clearly in conformity with Vygotsky's views about the conditions necessary to overcome the crisis of psychology summarized earlier: it is the field of the real life circumstances of real human beings which serves as the anvil on which the improvements in theory must be tested. (Cole 1997) My own methodological journey down a research path of investigating remix culture – not mention the numerous “travels in intertextuality” that have taken place along the way – have led me to the conclusion that my research can similarly and accurately be described as “Romantic Science”. Specifically, I can relate Luria’s paradigm to my own work in terms of the “grey” of academic theory as often being in contrast with the “green” of the liveliness of music and the media arts. This contrast should be visible throughout this document and its related artifacts. However, such a conclusion requires an extremely important qualification: Unlike Luria, Cole, and Sacks, who were all scientists by profession, my experience with Romantic Science has come from the exact opposite direction, i.e. coming from the perspective of Sacks’ “novelist”. Technically, a novelist is probably not the best description for a role that I’ve argued essentially boils down to “writing” through the use of digital media. However, by considering the continued length of this document, if we were again to go through the process of adding up the words, it may be a cause for further reflection on the description of what can actually be considered a novel. Of course, as a “novelist” claiming to be involved in this practice of “Romantic Science”, I don’t consider myself a scientist. That would be a claim best left for after any further study and practical experiences in the traditional scientific domain, which may or may not take place down the metaphorical road. But again, the point of this research is not to impose such categorizations. Rather, the intent was to try to understand some alternate and important points of view in trying to come to terms with the cultural phenomenon of remix (scientific worldview included). As argued in Cole’s version of a cultural psychology, and as discussed thoroughly in the theoretical underpinnings of this thesis, the traditional scientific discourse – or Classical Science – is based fundamentally on perspectives of the natural world. This discourse contrasts with perspectives of the cultural world, which is exclusive to humans as cultural beings. The argument from a Romantic Science paradigm is that both worldviews – both “orders of reality” (Cole 1997) – must be taken into account by considering “the real life circumstances of real human beings” (ibid.). With respect to such considerations, I’ve attempted to explicitly address this scientific lens and to engage with scientific discourse, but from the position of a writer. While uncertain as to other examples of research that have explicitly taken a similar approach in the manner that has been employed here, I’ve attempted to engage this scientific discourse as best I can, given the depth and complexity of the material that has been covered. In this way, what I’ve attempted is to include the scientific discourse as a key voice in the ongoing dialogue of remix. 322 Over the course of this journey, there has been a lot of trial and error, and in the process I’ve experienced a narrative that has seen its share of ups, downs, twists, and turns. There has also been much learning, and perhaps some expanding along the way. Much of this methodological journey has been discussed to a large degree in the previous chapters. Additional contextualization of the research in my own “life circumstances” has taken place in the analyses of the twelve artifacts mentioned in “Chapter 5: Summary of Results”. As mentioned, these narratives have either been moved to the appendices of the thesis or will be developed into individual research papers for each artifact at a later date. Along the way, there have been “radical reframings” of this “pioneering research” as suggested by John Seely Brown, i.e. research which is both “radical and grounded” in an attempt to “follow the problem” (Brown, in Mitchell 1996, p.104). Furthermore, in tying my own travels through remix culture back to the ideas of artist, musician, and writer Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, these radical reframings can be seen in terms of his notion of a “multiplex consciousness” (Miller 2004, p.61). In a critique of Miller’s Rhythm Science (2004), Curt Cloninger credits Miller’s strategy against the commodification of individual identity by embracing the multiple perspectives of a “multiplex mind”: What arises is a constant flux of creative variability serving as a sort of talisman/immunization strategy against commodification. You ward off stereotypes of yourself by absorbing them and spinning them… Miller writes, "By Dj-ing, making art, and writing simultaneously, I tried to create a new role that's resonant with web culture: to function as content provider, producer, and critic all at the same time. It's role consolidation as digital performance." Ultimately, it's this tactical approach that makes the "Rhythm Science" project worth wading through. Spooky is one of the few artists simultaneously prolific and optimistic enough to perpetually speak the ever-churning language of new media. (Cloninger 2004) In my case, the writing of this extensive research document may as well have been the writing of a novel, involving complex interrelationships between perspectives and identities, as well as characters, settings, and dialogues. As a result, my own “multiplex mind” includes, but is not limited to, the perspectives of an artist, a designer, a technology user, an instructor, and a marketer. There’s also the fisherman’s perspective of an ecological system such as a river, and of the fisherman as a “searcher” looking for some “luck” to make for a “good” day of fishing (Haig-Brown 1959). This multiplex would also include the perspectives of the writer and the scientist, as found of Luria’s paradigm of a Romantic Science. Either of these roles can be both creative and critical at various moments in their personal and professional development, whether it involves writing a book, or readying it for publication. On this note, given the current state of the digital and pop culture ecology, it’s not out of the question that “the dream of a novelist and a scientist combined” might now include more concerns that the scientific and literary worldviews, for example, the concerns of marketing, or digital distribution, or even book cover design (for better or worse). 323 Conclusion #9: On finishing eighteen, and calling it a day… I do not want to manage or control anyone, or even to instruct. But I would claim again the privilege of sharing some fishing experiences and some thoughts about fishing with the many good anglers and good sportsmen who have been kind enough to enjoy what I have written before – and perhaps even a few who come upon this book entirely by chance. (Haig-Brown, 1959, p. 19) As a result of reframing the work in terms of following the problem of remix, this thesis has become an opportunity to deal with ideas that had been simmering for an extended length of time. Despite significant materials to work with, it seems that what I simply required for this undertaking was an opportunity to present these materials in a way that I was happy with, i.e. a way to “say it right” (Downie 2005). In the process, not only has the writing and the remixing helped me come to terms with the work through the effort of putting together a significant thesis document, but this same process has also provided an opportunity to reflect upon my own identity within the interrelated social environments that I inhabit. This reflection has further inspired an opportunity to reflect upon a number of complex artifacts that relate to this identity, though at the same time forcing a decision as to which artifacts should be selected from a significant pool of digital culture as embodying the best examples for me to work with, i.e. a process of trying to determine where my own “semiotic boundaries” can be found (Gover 1996). As demonstrated in the previous chapter, I was unable to simply narrow the work down to one single artifact as the focus of this study, which, of course, shouldn’t be a surprise to the reader at this point. At the same time, key to the arguments here is the movement between artifacts, or of travelling between texts, if you will. Therefore, the work required investigating a significant set of artifacts, or, alternately, an intertextual system. My argument has not only required covering a lot of theoretical and methodological ground, but has been based on the key notion of complex dynamics taking place in systems of artifacts which are constantly interacting on at least three levels: building blocks, mixes, and worldviews. Dealing with the analysis of such systems has required a great deal more work on my part, as demonstrated in the appendices of this document or in a set of related papers dealing with each artifact specifically. Furthermore, many layers are required in order to observe these systems adequately, i.e. considering what is required for such observation to be an ecologically valid and valuable exercise. Adding these layers to the work in a way that I feel provides the needed contextual information for each of the analysed artifacts only compounded the writing efforts involved here, as shown in the travelogue that opens this narrative. However I also feel this effort is also very much worthwhile, or, valuable. As mentioned, this process of selection, description, and analysis has required me to selfreflectively ask the question of what objects I should work with in order to best present an identity for my work. However, in providing such descriptive and analytical information for these artifacts, much of this ordinary “junk” material can be seen as having increased in value through a remixing process of putting old pieces together in new ways. At least this is my argument, coming from 324 someone who takes great pleasure in being able to take existing works in creative new ways, and who takes even more pleasure in finding new perspectives in unexpected places. Fishing to me is not, as some of my critics have suggested, a way of life. But it is one of the keenest and best-wearing pleasures of life. There are deep and glowing things even in the simplest day on a river, and even more in retrospect of such a day, which are worthy of honest examination. (Haig-Brown 1959, p. 19) So if there’s any conclusion that I’m happy to take away from this project, it is the belief that I’ve been able to add value to a significant pool of multimedia efforts that have both excited and frustrated me for many years. As with a fish that is seen through the eyes of a fisherman, this excitement and frustration will most likely continue, one would think (or hope). Otherwise, the recreation and the “re-creation” involved in these texts and artifacts would not likely be considered a passion, or, as one of the “things that you do for love, not just because it’s your profession” (Brown, December 10, 2004). In order to intertextually tie these various artifacts through a certain narrative thread, the project has become less about the artifacts than about the method to tie them – if only briefly – into a collective whole, or a “loop of perception”: The scenario: internal becomes external becomes involution. The loop of perception is a relentless hall of mirrors in the mind. You can think of sampling as a story you are telling yourself - one made of the world as you can hear it, and the theatre of sounds that you invoke with those fragments is all one story made up of many. Think of it as the act of memory moving from word to word as a remix: complex becomes multiplex becomes omniplex. (Miller 2003) This “loop in perception” as a “whole” in the system, if you will, requires a perspective that is hopefully found by the reader somewhere within the various streams of this work. This is, of course, dependent upon one’s metaphorical perspective. So with respect to perspective, and to throw one more metaphor into the mix, just for good measure, before we call it a day, consider this: It can become painfully true to a golfer the meaning that a creek takes on when missing the green and landing in it, even a measureable value in terms of how many strokes were added to the golfer’s scorecard after “finishing eighteen”. To an angler looking for a bite, a creek has a whole different value system. So as a fisherman and novelist such as Roderick Haig-Brown might see it, with the right fly, a skilful cast, and “a good, heartfelt ‘Damn the luck!’” there might just be some value in this effort, lying there in the “laughing waters”, waiting for the take… 325 LINK TO ARTIFACT STREAM OR DOWNLOAD On Pitchfork Media and the Gunga Galunga of Total Consciousness [LINK] [Groundskeeper Carl:] So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over there in the Himalayas. [Kid with pitchfork at his throat:] “A looper?” A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a tenthousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? . 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STS Nexus, 1(2). 343 APPENDICES As at May 31, 2006 344 Table 11 Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.5 Level of artifacts or “new media objects” (re: Cole, Manovich) Tertiary artifacts (Wartofsky) Methodology, ideology (Engeström) Learning III (Bateson) 3rd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”worldviews” Secondary artifacts (Wartofsky) Models (Engeström) Learning II (Bateson) 2nd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”mixes” Marketing (exchange value) The practice of remixing original songs with sampled audio from films or other songs only becomes a marketable skill in contexts where there is access to these materials, access that includes the ability to create derivative works that may need to be commercialized. Otherwise there’s little economic value in this approach. The sequence of songs with added transitions becomes potentially less marketable due to IP restrictions on the added materials that create a “flow” from one song to the next. The remix becomes less of a commodity and will be priced differently than $.99 per song, though as a whole could be sold as a commodity. Technology (exhibition value) Exhibition value could be affected by the practice of bundling (i.e. mixing) of songs into a single, closed object which prevents the exhibition of individual pieces of the “system”. Again, DRM issues may prevent the system from being open, or may even prevent the system from existing in an “official” sense. Culture (cult value) There’s a marginal chance at a high cult value for this process as an artifact if it symbolizes a “covert” or “secret” approach to creating new works, i.e. interconnecting original songs with samples from film and other songs. This would be similar to the emergence of new genres (e.g. “dub” in the early 80s) that become know only initially to an exclusive group (“hipsters”) The sequence of songs could have increased cult value, but only for those who are already aware of the original building blocks. In other words, It’s difficult to gauge how much more cult value is transmitted by this “special” arrangement of songs and samples if unaware of the songs’ original context as individual demo pieces that weren’t designed for any particular sequence. “The Mix” (use value) = use value seems to be low unless the practice of mixing whole songs with audio transitions from film and other songs becomes a genre of its own, in which case the now legitimate activity and its artifacts would then have an “official” use value and with some artifacts as key examples of this value. The sequence of songs shouldn’t have issues when arranged as a “playlist”; however on some systems the flow of playback between songs can be interrupted slightly (small gaps) causing the user to mix the songs into a single object. The drawback of this approach is the sequence as a whole becomes a building block rather than the individual songs that comprise it. Remixes of these songs therefore become more difficult. DRM could also be a factor in wanting or being able to create the remix. Songs in audio format can usually be exported into file types that are playable in most digital environments (commonly as MP3), e.g. AIFF to MP3, or AAC to AIFF to MP3 therefore highly interoperable, though slight decrease due to compression quality as well as the lower quality “demo” mix of the present versions. = use value seems to be low as a result of the inability to both present and sell the work due to IP issues or sound quality issues. There’s a slight chance for an increase in this low use value due to a marginal amount of cult value. Primary artifacts (Wartofsky) Tools (Engeström) Learning I (Bateson) 1st order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) # “building blocks” Individual songs can be sold via environments such as iTunes), at a set price, e.g. $.99 therefore can be viewed as highly exchangeable commodities, though only in a one-way direction? I.e. no one will buy the digital files back since they can simply be reproduced. Since access isn’t an issue both in terms of price and playability (e.g. a p2p could have the song in an mp3 format, cult value is only apparent in awareness of the songs. The transition samples on their own wouldn’t have much cult value outside of the context of the original work. =potentially high use value for the individual songs, though as lower quality demo versions, they may have some issues with exhibition. Some minor cult value, but potentially exchangeable on a market such as iTunes. The movie clips and samples from other songs have far less use value on their own, outside of their original context of use. 345 Table 12 Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.6 Level of artifacts or “new media objects” (re: Cole, Manovich) Tertiary artifacts (Wartofsky) Methodology, ideology (Engeström) Learning III (Bateson) 3rd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”worldviews” Secondary artifacts (Wartofsky) Models (Engeström) Learning II (Bateson) 2nd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”mixes” Marketing (exchange value) The exchange value of this DVD is only high if it becomes viewed as a commodity with a value exchange proposition and a price involved. The worldview of these recordings however is that only professionally shot and edited works (i.e. “official” culture) should be treated as such commodities while the lo-fi works are only to be traded and not for $$. Asking for money is frowned upon by the trading community. The sequence of songs performed in the DVD becomes potentially less marketable due to IP restrictions on a couple of the songs, i.e. they’re cover songs and not original works. Also, there are monologues within certain songs that have been appropriated from other works. Even if it were possible to “remove” these unoriginal aspects, doing so may make what remains less marketable as a commodity. Technology (exhibition value) Exhibition value for concert video has increased significantly with the ability of bit torrents to transfer larger file sizes across the net. Bootleg trading and now torrenting can be argued to be a “worldview” as there are rules, norms, expectations and division of labor that takes place in this paradigm, Culture (cult value) There’s a marginal chance at a high cult value for this process as an artifact if it symbolizes a “covert” or “secret” or “innovative” approach to creating new works, i.e. the multi-angle split screen approach used specifically here . This cult value would require the work to become a key text that represents an emerging genre, e.g. lo-fi concert video. “The Mix” (use value) = use value could be high if the approach spawns a genre of its own, or represents a key text in such an emerging genre. However, competing worldviews and technological factors could make its use value irrelevant, i.e. a focus on hi-fidelity, professionally produced and the relationship of this to exchange and exhibition value. Similar comments as in Artifact 1 in terms of its audio components. The video components when remixed as a DVD also have exhibition value since they’re now playable on most DVD players (depending on region at present). A video stream, or smaller sample of the entire performance could also be exhibited online, but would likely lose the interactivity of the DVD. The DVD though can be torrented via the web for increased exhibition value The mix of audio and multiple camera video could have increased cult value, but only for those who are aware of the uniqueness of the composition of multiangles as an interactive work. It’s difficult to gauge how much more cult value is transmitted by interactive design of the DVD rather than just the split screen video remix. Torrenting the DVD could decrease its cult value through increased access, but torrenting can be more or less and exclusive activity? Since access can be an issue both in terms of market availability and format playability, the cult value of the pieces could be higher as an inverse relationship to access. The cult value of the video could also increase if the audio is know to the point where access to the video is desired but exclusive. = it seems less feasible to break up its components into pieces that are only held together by the remix, i.e. the remix needs to be mixed down into a primary artifact to hold together. IP questions on some of the components put into question the sustainability of the remix as a whole. Primary artifacts (Wartofsky) Tools (Engeström) Learning I (Bateson) 1st order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) # “building blocks” Video feeds/recordings from individual cameras in theory could become more like commodities that are able to be distributed through online stores; however, there doesn’t seem to be a natural market for these objects as commodities. Consumer expectations are not for watching a single video feed. Most of the audio from the show could become commodified, though depending on IP clearance for each song. The ongoing issues of interoperability and IP seem to get in the way as well: Full quality files that can be used across systems + questions of who owns the video (observer or observed?). MPEG formats seems to offer reasonable interoperability at present, but bandwidth for video is always uncertain. The audio however should have a high exhibition value because of formats where it is playable =some of the artifacts have more exchange value than others, e.g. individual songs vs. individual video streams as “building blocks” though tech affordances can change this. Combined with minor cult value of the work = average use value 346 Table 13 Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.7 Level of artifacts or “new media objects” (re: Cole, Manovich) Tertiary artifacts (Wartofsky) Methodology, ideology (Engeström) Learning III (Bateson) 3rd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”worldviews” Secondary artifacts (Wartofsky) Models (Engeström) Learning II (Bateson) 2nd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”mixes” Marketing (exchange value) The dominant worldview of these recordings is that only professionally shot and edited works (i.e. “official” culture) should be treated as commodities with monetary value, while the lo-fi works are only to be traded and not for $$. Asking for money is frowned upon by the trading community, while the professional community frowns upon bootleg recordings. Technology (exhibition value) Exhibition value for concert video has increased significantly with the ability of bit torrents to transfer larger file sizes across the net. Bootleg trading and now torrenting can be argued to be a “worldview” as there are rules, norms, expectations and division of labor that takes place in this paradigm, This kind of media can also be streamed at the cost of quality but at gain of response time. Culture (cult value) There’s a marginal chance at a high cult value for this process as an artifact if it symbolizes a “covert” or “secret” or “innovative” approach to creating new works, i.e. the multi-angle split screen approach used specifically here. This cult value would require the work to become a key text that represents an emerging genre, e.g. concert video that includes lo-fi fan captured material “The Mix” (use value) = use value could be high if the approach spawns a genre of its own, or represents a key text in such an emerging genre. However, competing worldviews and technological factors could make its use value irrelevant, i.e. a focus on hi-fidelity, professionally produced and the relationship of this to exchange and exhibition value. The sequence of songs performed in the audio and video capture only becomes exchangeable when a quality expectation has been met in terms of what a consumer would pay for a copy of this material. The exchange value of these mediated performances is only high if it becomes viewed as a commodity with a value exchange proposition and a price involved, For example, could one of these recordings be available for purchase via iTunes? What kind of quality would make this transaction viable? Video feeds/recordings from individual cameras in theory could become more like commodities that are able to be distributed through online stores; however, there doesn’t seem to be a natural market for these objects on their own as commodities with a price. Artifact mixing seems necessary at some point for marketability. Consumer expectations are not for watching a single video feed or for lo-fi. Higher quality audio also necessary for it to be bought and sold. Similar comments as in Artifact 1 in terms of its audio components. The video components when remixed as a DVD also have exhibition value since they’re able to be torrented and played on most DVD players (depending on region at present). However, whether systems could access pieces from this DVD artifact is questionable. The entire performance, or smaller samples of it could also be exhibited online by a dynamic web stream or by downloadable file. The ongoing issues of inter-operability and IP seem to get in the way as well: Full quality files that can be used across systems + questions of who owns the video (observer or observed?). MPEG formats seems to offer reasonable interoperability at present, but bandwidth for video is always uncertain. The audio exhibition value is low due to it being recorded by the camera’s mic only, though a soundboard recording exists for the London show The mix of higher quality audio and multiple camera video could have increased the exhibition value of the remix at the expense of cult value, but only if the quality of the remix leads to it been seen by a larger audience rather than a smaller, cult audience. These higher quality materials are known only to exist in for one of the two shows, and their usability status is unknown, little can be done in terms of remixing. = it seems less feasible to break up its components into pieces that are only held together by the remix, i.e. the remix needs to be mixed down into a primary artifact to hold together. At least not yet. IP questions seem more clear cut, but pose issues of incentive to create the remix. Primary artifacts (Wartofsky) Tools (Engeström) Learning I (Bateson) 1st order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) # “building blocks” The cult value of the audio and video could be higher due to there being few recordings of the Belgium show, however the London show was recorded and webcast. Some additional cult value due to the European location which the Hip do not frequently visit, as well as cult value from Sloan’s cult value as the opening band (again not a frequent occurrence) = artifacts seem to have little exchange value on their own, while there’s exhibition value is high in terms of playback formats, though low quality would prevent exhibition in some respects. Combined with some cult value due to the artists (Tragically Hip and Sloan) and the location (Europe) = average use value 347 Table 14 Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.8 Level of artifacts or “new media objects” (re: Cole, Manovich) Tertiary artifacts (Wartofsky) Methodology, ideology (Engeström) Learning III (Bateson) 3rd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”worldviews” Secondary artifacts (Wartofsky) Models (Engeström) Learning II (Bateson) 2nd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”mixes” Marketing (exchange value) The practice of remixing popular songs with popular films in order to create a synchronizing remix is not a new concept, for example, the Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon with the Wizard of Oz. But this remixing activity doesn’t have a high exchange value since such mixes tend to be cult objects and not particularly profitable. The sequence of songs that synchronizes to the film does not require mixing except in terms of creating a playlist that can allow for some minor gaps of varying lengths between songs. The programmed playlist, as a model, could be exchanged easily as a code without any IP attachments (i.e. neither the songs nor the film would actually be part of the code, just referenced). Technology (exhibition value) Exhibition value is currently affected by the rights management issues around public performance of the underlying works in many remixes. These restrictions to the activity may prevent remix systems from being open enough to be dynamic, or may even prevent the system from existing in an “official” sense. However, there is no issue in terms of the technology required to put digital works together in creating something new. The sequence of songs shouldn’t have issues when arranged as a “playlist” or as a sequence in a video editng program; however on some systems the flow of playback between songs can be interrupted slightly (small gaps) causing a slight offsynch that may lessen the remix’s effect. The playlist or edited sequence could be mixed down to a single artifact as a “podcast” that could be programmed to synch in Quicktime with a digital version of the film, regardless of its playback format. Songs in audio format can usually be exported into file types that are playable in most digital environments (commonly as MP3), e.g. AIFF to MP3, or AAC to AIFF to MP3 therefore highly interoperable, Kino films sells MWAMC on DVD format. Kid A w Movie Camera exists as both a DVD and as a streamable mp4 file that is highly interoperable via Quicktime for example. Culture (cult value) There is likely a high cult value for this process as an artifact if it symbolizes a “covert” or “secret” approach to creating new works, i.e. interconnecting songs from a quasi-cult band with an avant-garde film that already has cult value. Additional cult value could arise if this process were to become recognized as a genre of remix, e.g. silent film + contemporary soundtrack The sequence of songs could have increased cult value, and an increased cult value for those who are already aware of the original building blocks and the lack of manipulation taking place in the synchronization. The “aura” of the work is apparent because of the “strange web of space and time” in mixing Radiohead with a 1929 silent film. However, this cult value increases upon realization of the “accidental” aspects of how the remix works. “The Mix” (use value) = use value seems to be low unless the practice of mixing whole songs/albums existing film works becomes a genre of its own, in which case the now legitimate activity and its artifacts would then have an “official” use value and with some artifacts as key examples of this value. = use value seems to be very high for this remix artifact: it has a cult object “aura” from the combination of cult band with cult movie, it can be exhibited in many formats, and even the issue of IP rights for the underlying works is less of a concern since a sequence that aligns the IP objects could exist on its own. Primary artifacts (Wartofsky) Tools (Engeström) Learning I (Bateson) 1st order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) # “building blocks” Individual songs by Radiohead can be sold via environments such as iTunes), and on physical CDs at an approximate set price, e.g. $.99 = highly exchangeable, they’re commodities, though in some cases only in a one-way direction? I.e. no one will buy the digital files back - they can be perfectly copied. MWAMC is available as a single work (DVD) While Radiohead is a fairly high-profile, mainstream band, it still retains some cult status because of its approaches. The band’s songs therefore have some cult value, especially the rare or live tracks, though this is less so due to wider availability via the internet. Man With a Movie Camera is avant-garde classic, and commonly used in academia, especially in film school, but not well known in mainstream culture All of the individual objects that come together to form this particular work are highly commodified and exchangeable, able to be exhibited on various formats, and even retain cult value despite this. The use value therefore is fairly high 348 Table 15 Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.9 Level of artifacts or “new media objects” (re: Cole, Manovich) Tertiary artifacts (Wartofsky) Methodology, ideology (Engeström) Learning III (Bateson) 3rd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”worldviews” Secondary artifacts (Wartofsky) Models (Engeström) Learning II (Bateson) 2nd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”mixes” Marketing (exchange value) The dominant worldview of these recordings is that only professionally shot and edited works (i.e. “official” culture) should be treated as commodities with monetary value, while the lo-fi works are only to be traded and not for $$. Asking for money is frowned upon by the trading community, while the professional community frowns upon bootleg recordings. Technology (exhibition value) Exhibition value for concert video has increased significantly with the ability of bit torrents to transfer larger file sizes across the net. Bootleg trading and now torrenting can be argued to be a “worldview” as there are rules, norms, expectations and division of labor that takes place in this paradigm, This kind of media can also be streamed at the cost of quality but at gain of response time. Culture (cult value) There’s a marginal chance at a high cult value for this process as an artifact if it symbolizes a “covert” or “secret” or “innovative” approach to creating new works, i.e. the multi-angle split screen approach used specifically here. This cult value would require the activity to become represented by key texts in an emerging genre, e.g. concert video that includes lo-fi fan captured material “The Mix” (use value) = use value could be high if the approach spawns a genre of its own, or represents a key text in such an emerging genre. However, competing worldviews and technological factors could make its use value irrelevant, i.e. a focus on hi-fidelity, professionally produced and the relationship of this to exchange and exhibition value. The sequence of songs performed in the audio and video capture only becomes exchangeable when a quality expectation has been met in terms of what a consumer would pay for a copy of this material. The exchange value of these mediated performances is only high if it becomes viewed as a commodity with a value exchange proposition and a price involved, For example, could one of these recordings be available for purchase via iTunes? What kind of quality would make this transaction viable? Video feeds/recordings from individual cameras in theory could become more like commodities that are able to be distributed through online stores; however, there doesn’t seem to be a natural market for these objects on their own as commodities with a price. Artifact mixing seems necessary at some point for marketability. Consumer expectations are not for watching a single video feed or for lo-fi. Higher quality is recorded and sold at the performance. Similar comments as in Artifact 1 in terms of its audio components. The video components when remixed as a DVD also have exhibition value since they’re able to be torrented and played on most DVD players (depending on region at present). However, whether systems could access pieces from this DVD artifact is questionable. The entire performance, or smaller samples of it could also be exhibited online by a dynamic web stream or by downloadable file. The ongoing issues of inter-operability and IP seem to get in the way as well: Full quality files that can be used across systems + questions of who owns the video (observer or observed?). MPEG formats seems to offer reasonable interoperability at present, but bandwidth for video is always uncertain. The audio exhibition value is initially low due to it being recorded by the camera’s mic only, however, higher quality audio is available for purchase. The mix of higher quality audio and multiple camera video could have increased the exhibition value of the remix at the expense of cult value, but only if the quality of the remix leads to it been seen by a larger audience rather than a smaller, cult audience. These higher quality materials are known only to exist in for one of the two shows, and their usability status is unknown, little can be done in terms of remixing. = it seems less feasible to break up its components into pieces that are only held together by the remix, i.e. the remix needs to be mixed down into a primary artifact to hold together. At least not yet. IP questions seem more clear cut, but pose issues of incentive to create the remix. Primary artifacts (Wartofsky) Tools (Engeström) Learning I (Bateson) 1st order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) # “building blocks” The limited mainstream profile and avant-garde approaches of Joe Arthur allows for his works (music, lyrics, paintings) to have a higher degree of cult value than other artists. Furthermore, while the recording and availability of most of his performances could have the effect of reducing cult value due to accessibility and exposure, the variety of the recordings is big enough is some ways to keep this uniqueness intact = artifacts seem to have more exchange value on their own than lower quality recordings, while there’s exhibition value is high in terms of playback formats. Combined with some cult value due to the artist’s approaches in producing and documenting his art = above average use value 349 Table 16 Level of artifacts or “new media objects” (re: Cole, Manovich) Tertiary artifacts (Wartofsky) Methodology, ideology (Engeström) Learning III (Bateson) 3rd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”worldviews” Secondary artifacts (Wartofsky) Models (Engeström) Learning II (Bateson) 2nd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”mixes” Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.10 Marketing (exchange value) Technology (exhibition value) Culture (cult value) “The Mix” (use value) The practice of creating playlists of existing songs is an increasingly popular activity, as services such as iTunes host playlists from users and celebrities. The exchange value of these playlists is high, though they aren’t sold commercially (though the underlying songs are often sold as a unit). Raises the question as to whether the formula could be sold as a song? Exhibition value for this activity seems to be increasing significantly as consumer-grade audio editing software becomes ubiquitous through suites such as iLife, with its Garageband program. The technology affords such engagement and remixing, and Garageband, for example, even includes techniques for creating podcasts that would further support such activities. This activity could have potentially high cult value as a “worldview” of engaging with the body of work of an artist, i.e. the notion of “tinkering” with song arrangements to produce better albums rather than accepting them “as is”. Additional cult value could arise if this process were to become recognized as a genre of remix, e.g. a “best of” formula as an overall methodology for bands with several albums = use value seems to be high as the practice of remixing albums is increasingly supported by technology affordances, that could lead to cult objects. The exchange value of these remixes is the question, specifically, whether these remixed albums could be treated as “official” culture and how they would be exchanged in a market system. In terms of the remixed playlist, the sequence of songs requires a degree of noise levelling and in a couple of most cases a fade in and out is required in order to maintain a sequential “flow” from song to song. Additionally, one of the songs is actually a remix of a song and a “soundscape” of mise en scène audio. The playlist therefore seems to require a “mixdown” into a podcast form, i.e. a “primary artifact”. Since it’s one artist, IP issues are less of a concern. Individual songs by Swell can be sold via environments such as iTunes), and on physical CDs at an approximate set price, e.g. $.99 = highly exchangeable; they’re commodities, though in some cases only in a one-way direction? I.e. no one will buy the digital files back - they can be perfectly copied. Similarly, playlists are highly exchangeable Since the playlist as just an arrangement of songs isn’t sufficient as a remix – i.e. it requires a more finely-tuned recombination – the remix would likely need to exist as an edited sequence in an audio or video editing software program. Yet the sequences aren’t playable on portable music players = exhibition value of the remix is compromised. However, software applications are becoming more prevalent for mixdown, and the remix could be exported into a “podcast” that is more universally playable. Songs in audio format can usually be exported into file types that are playable in most digital environments (commonly as MP3), e.g. AIFF to MP3, or AAC to AIFF to MP3 therefore highly interoperable, In the case of playlists, they are generally only functional within specific applications, but can be reproduced fairly easily for each, e.g. iTunes vs. Winamp. The sequence of songs could have increased cult value, and an increased cult value for those who are already aware of the original building blocks. Additional cult value could come from the specialized knowledge required to produce the remix. As well, the nature of this remix as a “formula” for combining and recombining songs from various Swell albums could create multiple variations of song sequences each with cult value of its own. = use value seems to be questionable for this remix is some respects. The formula used to arrange the songs as a remix is highly transferable, but the actual mix of these songs requires more specialized software than a simple playlist. Exhibition value is therefore compromised. Also a potential compromise to the remix is the IP issue, though it’s an all-or-nothing scenario since it’s one artist’s work Primary artifacts (Wartofsky) Tools (Engeström) Learning I (Bateson) 1st order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) # “building blocks” Swell is an “indie-rock” cult band because of its style, longevity, and anonymity. The band’s songs therefore have some cult value, especially the rare or live tracks, though this is less so due to wider availability via the internet. However, even with the internet, there are only limited sources for finding these artifacts. All of the individual objects that come together to form this particular work are highly commodified and exchangeable, able to be exhibited on various formats, and even retain cult value despite this. 350 Analysis of artifact 5.11 Level of artifacts or “new media objects” (re: Cole, Manovich) Tertiary artifacts (Wartofsky) Methodology, ideology (Engeström) Learning III (Bateson) 3rd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”worldviews” Secondary artifacts (Wartofsky) Models (Engeström) Learning II (Bateson) 2nd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”mixes” Marketing (exchange value) The dominant worldview of these recordings is that only professionally shot and edited works (i.e. “official” culture) should be treated as commodities with monetary value, while the lo-fi works are only to be traded and not for $$. Asking for money is frowned upon by the trading community, while the professional community frowns upon bootleg recordings. Therefore the response to this exchange value is highly contextual. A playlist of remixed video objects from multiple performances becomes valuable as a whole when a quality expectation has been met in terms of what a consumer would pay for access to this material. The exchange value of these mediated performances is only high if it becomes viewed as a commodity with a value proposition and a price involved. For example, could one of these recordings be available for purchase via iTunes as an “album”? What kind of quality would make this transaction viable? Video feeds/recordings from individual cameras in theory could become more like commodities that are able to be distributed through online stores; however, for most artifacts mixing seems necessary at some point for marketability. While most consumer expectations are influenced by large screen viewing, portable video players offer alternate expectations if objects with reasonable quality can be easily moved on and off the players. Audio quality helps some artifacts. Technology (exhibition value) Exhibition value for concert video has increased significantly with bit torrent and can be argued to be a “worldview” with rules, norms, expectations and division of labor. This kind of media can also be streamed at the cost of quality but at gain of response time. Finally, the playlist of video objects could also be available by download through an online vendor for playback on portable devices that don’t require as much video quality. The playlist comprises of MPEG-4 files that have little issue in being sequenced in an order and played back on a computer or on a portable video player. The variation of the audio and video quality could require some sort of levelling system to ensure enough consistency to allow a smooth flow from one object to another (or as best possible). There seems to be some ability for the user to manipulate individual objects settings in putting together the playlist. Culture (cult value) There’s a potential here for high cult value for this process as being exclusive which could result from distributed collaboration in the production of playlist (i.e. multi-person joint activity) or by having been present at the performance i.e. the multi-angle split screen approach used specifically here. This cult value would require the work to become a key text that represents an emerging genre, e.g. concert video that includes lo-fi fan captured material The playlist could have a cult value attached to it in terms of Benjamin’s “strange web of space and time” in the literal sense of the playlist as being comprised of artifacts from three different locations on the planet and at different times, i.e. Boston (and Cambridge), Vancouver, and Paris, France. If the objects were all offered in a coordinated way, it could increase exhibition value at the expense of cult value, but presently some exclusive knowledge is required to put the playlist together. The cult value of these works is mainly due to the cult status of the indie bands (The National and Aberdeen City) and DJ (Spooky) featured in the captures, but can also come from the filmmakers (e.g. Vincent Moon). No cult value on account of the playability of the files since they require no specialized/exclusive knowledge or software for playback. “The Mix” (use value) = use value could be high if the approach spawns a genre of its own, or represents a key text in such an emerging genre. However, competing worldviews and technological factors could make its use value irrelevant, i.e. a focus on hi-fidelity, professionally produced and the relationship of this to exchange and exhibition value. = the use value presently may not be high due to only some of the artifacts being available, but there is potential for a higher use value of the playlist than for the individual objects on their own. i..e there’s a zone of proximal development here that allows the distributed collaboration to create a work that is not achievable by the individual. Primary artifacts (Wartofsky) Tools (Engeström) Learning I (Bateson) 1st order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) # “building blocks” The ongoing issues of inter-operability and IP seem to be less of a problem here. Full quality files are not expected. 320x240 movies are easily moved from one device to another and can even play into another display such as a TV. The MPEG-4 format seems to be fine for playback except for some cases of bit rate being too high. = artifacts seem to have reasonable exchange value on their own, while there’s exhibition value is high in terms of the MPEG-4 playback format, though low quality would prevent exhibition in with respect to very large screens. Combined with some cult value due to the artists = above average use value 351 Table 17 Level of artifacts or “new media objects” (re: Cole, Manovich) Tertiary artifacts (Wartofsky) Methodology, ideology (Engeström) Learning III (Bateson) 3rd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”worldviews” Application of method in the analysis of Artifact 5.12 Marketing (exchange value) Technology (exhibition value) Culture (cult value) “The Mix” (use value) The practice of remixing original songs with sampled audio from films or other songs only becomes a marketable skill in contexts where there is access to these materials, access that includes the ability to create derivative works that may need to be commercialized. Otherwise there’s little economic value in this approach. In addition to comments made in Artifact 5.6, the audio format for this podcast is an “m4a” that is based on MPEG-4. It plays on and iPod, iTunes, and Quicktime, but not sure about other devices. Some players can display the sequence of images included in the podcast, others miss out on this feature. For example, older iPods lack video capabilities and therefore only get the audio portion of the podcast. This puts into question the effect for the user experience of losing the visual aspect, and how this affects the exhibition value of podcast development as an overall activity. A podcast differs from a playlist in that it is essentially one single file (i.e. it is mixed down), but contains chapter markers, images, and lyrics/notes at particular time codes that the user can interact with. As a result, the actual remix artifact is the sequence that was produced in the audio/video editing software. This file has little exhibition value, unless it can be used to create a dynamic mix of the various pieces of the podcast, or if an alternate mix is desired. The individual pieces are either recorded live with a video or still camera, or in a home studio, or sampled from other media and turned into AIFF format and eventually mixed into a podcast. In one case, a song was purchased from iTunes and converted into a usable file. The technical playback of these objects is not so much a question, but the audio quality varies from object to object and not likely be exhibited as individual pieces. The images are 300x300 jpegs This activity could have potentially high cult value as a “worldview” of creating new works with found objects of digital media, including popular culture of movies and pop/folk songs in what Miller calls “irreverence towards found objects” in citing the “worldview” of Marcel Duchamp. The cult value of this worldview could also come from its ecological perspective, though the point is to lose this cult value by making cultural ecology more accessible = use value seems to be low as unofficial practices of remixing found objects that include “official” culture is increasingly supported by technology affordances, but not supported by producers of “official” culture. Despite the especially high cult value for unique works to be produced, the exchange value of these remixes is the question, specifically, whether these remixed albums could be treated as marketable and how they’d be exchanged in a such a system. = use value seems to be questionable for this remix is some respects. The formula used to arrange the songs as a remix is highly transferable, but the actual mix of these songs requires more specialized software than a simple playlist. Exhibition value is therefore compromised. Also a potential compromise to the remix is the IP issue, since some of the artifacts in the mix are under copyright. Very few of these objects are commodified in a way that is exchangeable, cult value is high in some cases, and the exhibition value of the artifacts is moderate to low due to the low quality of the some of the recordings (e.g. from a digital still camera, or with background engine noise). Therefore the objects on their own have moderate to low use value. Secondary artifacts (Wartofsky) Models (Engeström) Learning II (Bateson) 2nd order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) #”mixes” In terms of the remixed playlist, the sequence of songs requires a degree of noise levelling and in a couple of most cases a fade in and out is required in order to maintain a sequential “flow” from section to section. Numerous IP issues in this mix because of clips from a feature film, popular music under copyright, etc. However, removing these elements leaves a mix with numerous “holes” and therefore little exchange value. One of the pieces used as a building block, the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York, was purchased from the iTunes music store then covered for remixing. It has high exchange value as a commodity but also has rights issues. Other pieces hit similar snags, e.g. a Garth Brooks song in the background of a recording. Even the studio recorded songs by Doug Flynn are not my productions, nor are they his songs. The cult value of the podcast remains high as the content once again is highly contextualized for a specific location and community. However, the inclusion of more widely known works juxtaposed with these pieces opens the cult work up to a larger audience. The various versions of the sequence could also have cult value in showing the development of the work overtime. Some of the artifacts that are building blocks here have high cult value because of their locality to a specific context, e.g. Campbell River’s fishing community. Other cult objects relate to artists that are not well-known, e.g. Jason Webley. Other artifacts are more widely accessible, e.g. the folk songs, the pop songs, the clips from the film Big Fish and therefore have less cult value. Primary artifacts (Wartofsky) Tools (Engeström) Learning I (Bateson) 1st order autopoietic systems (Matura & Varela) # “building blocks” 352 Tragic irony Despite selling 3 million albums in Canada, The Tragically Hip can't make an impression in the U.S. The Hip File By JANE STEVENSON Toronto Sun Sunday, December 1, 1996 VANCOUVER -- After spending a good 40 minutes attempting to analyze The Tragically Hip's astonishing success in Canada with frontman Gord Downie, he manages to sum it all up in one word at the very end of the interview. "Charimsa, baby," Downie jokes, getting up from behind a drum kit that he's been half-heartedly playing in a dressing room backstage at the Pacific Coliseum. Downie, at turns charming and prickly, is only being half-serious. But his powerful stage presence - a cross in movement, personality and style between William Burroughs, David Byrne and Michael Stipe -- certainly plays a large part in the Hip's ability to sell out stadium after stadium on their current Canadian tour, which ends at Maple Leaf Gardens on Dec. 12 and 13. "I went to see our accountant who has a band called the Angry Boy Scouts," he relates, "and I went to see them at Safari Room, just north of the fringe, just a little north of Lawrence on Yonge in Toronto, and I only had one piece of advice for them and that was, `Don't listen to the crowd, don't ask the crowd their opinion, and don't apologize.'" Downie isn't just talking to hear the sound of his own voice. The next night during the Hip's tour opener at the Coliseum, he stops the band right in the middle of Titanic Terrarium after screwing up. There's certainly no poll of the crowd or apology before the Hip moves to the next song amid wild cheering and applause from almost 16,000 fans. It seems the uniquely Canadian band, who sing about such disparate home-grown personalities as painter Tom Thomson, hockey player Bill Barilko, wrongfully convicted murderer David Milgaard and novelist Hugh MacLennan, can do no wrong. There appears to be, quite simply, a collective sense of Canadian pride in watching them unleash their sonic fury. "You're talking about trying to create a rich sensory experience for people," says Downie, "it's a hockey rink, you know. So you're trying to make it intimate, which seems like it might be an impossibility, but it isn't. I remember at the Maple Leaf Gardens on the last tour -- a year and a half ago, in February -- there were moments in that show where you could have heard a pin drop. It was totally quiet. Air -- was -- charged. So, ultimately, you're talking about doing little things that the people way up there in the back row will definitely feel part of the show." With this Hip tour though, there are definitely some big things. A large stage with three thrusts. Dramatic floor lighting. And a laser light show projected onto a seemingly invisible screen above Downie. "Ultimately what you're talking about is trying to reconcile two elements, which are art and entertainment, and I think we're going to do that," says Downie. "You're going up there to experience something, you're going up there to ideally commune with the crowd -- and I'm fond of 353 saying this too -- but when the stage and the audience sort of fall away, that's when it's fairly ideal, 'cause then it becomes like Peter Pan or something where you're flying around and it's cool. "But as far as doing something to conjure that up, it's impossible. And ultimately, the only surefire method I can think of to come up with that is just becoming a little more disciplined about what we do. Approaching the music in a fairly workmanlike fashion." Which is how, according to Downie, the group approached the writing, recording and producing of their most recent album, Trouble In The Henhouse, whose lovely first single, Ahead By A Century, is hands-down one of the best songs in the Hip's impressive six-album catalogue. "We produced it ourselves, so I felt personally a need to be fairly meticulous and regular and orderly and secretarial," says Downie, "and I basically functioned, aside from singing and playing guitar, as a sort of secretary, a log keeper. Basically I was inputting into the black box in case the whole studio went down, someone could pick up the pieces and figure out what happened." Which isn't to say Downie was in anyway a dictator. "We're five guys doing everything ensemble, it's a bit of a democratic process with friendship placed as the premium and sort of reason for doing everything, and the thing that we try to protect most and the thing that we try and enhance most. And it was an incredibly liberating experience because we thought there was a possibility it could denigrate into screaming fits, or even worse, silence and, in fact, none of that happened." If charisma is part of the Hip's appeal, so equally then is the band's wickedly rhythmic rock and dense, literate, often puzzling, lyrics provided by Downie, who has a distinctly professorial attitude in person, right down to an overstuffed black leather briefcase he carries. The satchel is even with him on stage during the Hip's technical run-through of some songs at the Coliseum the night before the official tour launch. "I guess we should have put up more posters," Downie jokes, as he looks out at 40 people sitting on benches on the floor. Which brings us to the nagging question about the Hip, tragically, not making a serious impression south of the border, despite having sold three million albums in Canada since their 1987 self-titled debut. Granted, Trouble At The Henhouse briefly cracked the Billboard Top 200 and has sold 500,000 copies thus far, but not even a high-profile musical spot on Saturday Night Live last year, which was set up by fellow Kingston native Dan Aykroyd, seems to have made an impact. "We've spent a very long and incendiary summer in America -- that's a word I like to use to describe those shows because that's what they were," says Downie. "Relative to what we've done down there, relative to the amount of time we've spent down there, it's probably appropriate the amount of records we've sold. We're not deterred. We love to go to America and play. We love to be working in America, it's a fun feeling for musicians, it's a fun feeling for anyone. You're in New 354 York City, but you're not a tourist, you're working. And that's the way you feel, even if you're playing to nobody, which we don't." As for a recent description of the Hip as "possibly the definitive Canadian rock act of this decade," in the new book Mondo Canuck, Downie appears unimpressed. "Whatever, let's see what happens next decade. Ambition hasn't been one of our strong suits, maybe it used to be but it isn't. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't let ambition get in your way. "Mothers and school teachers across the land will probably be upset to hear that." THE HIP FILE MEMBERS: Singer Gord Downie, guitarists Bobby Baker and Paul Langlois, bassist Gord Sinclair and drummer Johnny Fay. FORMED: In 1983 in Kingston, Ont., where all five went to high school. They named the band after a video by former Monkee Mike Nesmith. ALBUMS: The Tragically Hip (1987), Up To Here (1989), Road Apples (1991), Fully Completely (1992), Day For Night (1994), Trouble At The Henhouse (1996). DOWNIE ON BEING INTERVIEWED: "I take part in this process because I actually kind of find it interesting. Trying to come up with different ways to say the same thing so as to appear deep." Copyright © 2000, Canoe Limited Partnership. All rights reserved. 355