mash-up

Great videos on the creative culture and remixing…

February 16, 2011 By Dan Thornton

I’ve finally got around to watching the first two parts of ‘Everything is a Remix‘, (h/t Rubbishcorp and Only Dead Fish), and it’s a really good series of realtively short videos looking at the pervasive remix culture which has become more explicitly acknowledged in the digital era:

It’s very well-made and crafted, and Kirby Ferguson does a great job of pulling together a huge number of sources and insights. And oddly enough in the spirit of remixing, it reminds me a lot of another great film about remix culture, RIP! A Remix Manifesto, written and directed by Brett Gaylor.

What’s particularly interesting is that Kirby lists RIP! in his references section, alongside another film, ‘Good Copy Bad Copy‘, which begins which features DJ and remixer Girl Talk from the start – who also plays a big part in RIP.

All three are worth watching, and it’s interesting to see the similarities, differences and shared influences. And if anyone goes on about how bad remix and mash-up culture is for artistic endeavours, or consumers, it gives me a lot of hope that talented filmakers around the world are creating great documantary remixes on the topic of remixes.

If you’d prefer to examine the written word when it comes to remix culture, copyright, and the legal issues involved, then you can do no better than to start with Lawrence Lessig. Code 2.0 and Remix are highly recommended and the also excellent Free Culture is available as a free download under a Creative Commons licence, from here.

The enduring power of a good mash-up…

March 17, 2009 By Dan Thornton

I dashed out in my car at lunchtime to run some errands, and while I was rushing around, this famous song was being played on the radio (it’s not the official video due to all the Youtube, PRS, music industry and other licensing restrictions.

But the lyrics forming in my head, and the video being pictured in my mind as I drove along was actually:

There’s probably a lot you could imply about original creations, payment mechanisms, and music industry copyrights etc…

I’ll just sit here chuckling and thinking about the quote on a T-shirt I bought from the National Gallery (is it just me that thinks their website is shocking?) recently – ‘Bad artists copy, Good artists steal’ – Picaso.

Snow hits UK, but train travel information arrives via Twitter

February 2, 2009 By Dan Thornton

The best way to get reliable UK train travel updates during the current light covering of snow appears to be the excellent uktrains service, which publishes updates to Twitter for 25 rail companies. Especially when the official website for some companies appears to be as reliable as the trains themselves.

Once again Twitter is showing itself as an excellent mechanism for information, following on from the #uksnow mash-up in my last post.

But although it’s still new enough to get coverage on mainstream media such as the BBC, (@bensmith is talking about UKtrains at the BBC as I type), it’s not without precedent (Not to diminish the great work by Ben Smith (uktrains) and Ben Marsh (uksnow).

Back in October 2007, Twitter users @nateritter and @viss used the hashtag #sandiegofire to distribute information on fires in California.

And then there were the earthquakes. US, UK and China.

There was the tragedy in Mumbai, and the use of Twitter to start alerting people about the status of hospitals and need for blood donations.

And some emergency services have a Twitter account, such as the LA Fire Dept.

The interesting thing about #uksnow and uktrains is how the interpretation and use of data pulled from, and pushed into Twitter is evolving to make more effective services for information.

Plenty of people have talked about how Twitter is moving into the mainstream, or how Facebook made an offer to purchase the microblogging service – but in many ways the mainstream are being sucked into Twitter – exactly as happened with Facebook en route to 150 million+ global active users.

Monitor the UK weather via Twitter mash-up

February 2, 2009 By Dan Thornton

There’s a fantastic Twitter mash-up to capitalise on the UK fascination with weather – even if most of us will only see about an inch of snow at the moment.

Recommended via @joannejacobs, it works by Twitter users posting a Tweet with the hashtag #uksnow and the appropriate postcode. For example “#uksnow NG9 3/10”

You can see it working by clicking on the image above or visiting the site of the creator, Ben Marsh, but I don’t know how long it will be running for – you could ask him on Twitter at @benmarsh!

Is the new masterpiece just a moment in time?

August 13, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I originally posted this thought as a comment on a post by David Cushman at /message, but wanted to repost it here. Partly it’s to remind me to examine it more in the future, and partly because I’m fortunate enough to have received some very insightful comments recently, and I’m hoping the same will help me form this idea.

In the broadcast era, a masterpiece was a finished product which received a response from either critics or the general populace.

In the new era just arriving, the influential content creators will produce masterpieces, but these will be moments frozen in time in the evolution of a piece of content as it continues to evolve.

The masterpiece may not be Back to the Future, but it may be Brokeback to the Future. Which could then lead to Microsoft Goes Back to the Future. We see it already in the constant evolution and improvement to a Wikipedia article. But with the more gradual evolution of content or an idea across websites, blogs, comments, lifestreams, emails, microblogging, video and audio sites, there will be certain revisions and remixes which stand out as most relevant or informative for each of us. And those which are adopted by influential individuals or a critical mass of groups will be retained as a classic.
Ideas have always evolved in a similar fashion, but generally Hollywood sequels and remakes are perceived as lower quality, with notable exceptions (Aliens, Dawn of the Dead, possibly The Empire Strikes Back and The Godfather Part 2). But rather than watching Sylvester Stallone or Jude Law fail to match Michael Caine in the originals of Get Carter and Alfie, or an Italian Job which takes place in America with modern Minis, we’ll get new versions every year, month or week, with different actors, different interpretations and different outcomes.

The original creator and creation will still have a venerable position as the archetype, but it’s relevance starts to fade as soon as it has been consumed, and only re-emerges once it has been reinterpreted time and time again.