Creating a new knowledge: remix culture (draft of the final paper)

NOTE TO THE READER: At the beginnig I thought that my research would be focused only on political remix videos. But since two of my partners are going to do it, I’m going to be focused in the remix culture as a creator of critical knowledge, in general issues, not only political matters but more in mass media manipulation. That is only a draft of the final paper. The brackets try to show that the text is going to continue in this point.

Introduction. Notes and points about society and culture

For years the study of society and culture have been carried out by renowned sociologists and philosophers such as Adorno, Weber, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud or T.S. Eliot, among others. Although there are many ways to define culture and there are many theories about it, in this work we will consider the strict definition of the dictionary: “the result or effect of cultivating human knowledge or improving the human faculties.”

Nowadays, the process of cultivating knowledge is in continuous change. The way that society obtains now a new knowledge is different because of the new technologies. We are living now, as Lev Manovich said in one of his articles (1), in “the remix between culture and computers.” Nevertheless, we must not forget that behind computers there are people who help to create this new kind of culture: “while computer is a very powerful remix instrument, what comes out from it is ultimately up to the creative individuals who are at the controls of the computers – you.” (1)

A kind of culture where everyone are able to discuss, criticize, feel, express, compare, create and even, fall in love. A culture that social scientists, philosophers, cultural critics and new media theorists call cyberculture, digital culture or even, remix culture.

The key in this new culture is the Internet. The Internet is being such a powerful force in the world for freedom of thought, freedom of information, and freedom of expression. “Free culture, collective creation, cyberactivism,… are concepts that sound in the air today, associated with artistic creation in the digital universe. If we were to find a common denominator to establish a common thread among them, not so much the presence of new technologies such as the use made of them to design works of art, ways of making culture, information exchange, etc.”(2)[...]

The power is on their hands

1.-Mass media manipulation

Untitled1

The blog of the student from Standford University, Feross Aboukhadijeh, focused on Internet technologies and digital culture served to me as a basis for analyzing the manipulation exerted by the media. His analysis of the American media can be extrapolated to most of the world without fear of failure. He said:

“For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the elite class – owners of the large news outlets, printing presses, and TV networks – acted as the de facto arbiters of public opinion. These media conglomerates severely curtailed public discourse by controlling what we saw, heard, and read. The common man has no access to the machinery of mass media, and thus, has no means to share his views with a wide audience. In effect, the common man was voiceless and powerless throughout much of American history, slave to the dictates of corporate media conglomerates that shape the public agenda for their benefit.”(3)

Currently, like it or not, our culture is still governed by the mass media. And the manipulation is one of the reasons we need to be critical with “the arbiters of public opinion.” [...]
Some examples that I’m going to develop to point out the manipulation:

The problem that arose in Spain as a result of the terrorist attack of 11th March 2004, in which some of the most important media in Spain were manipulated by the government to disseminate false news about the authorship of the facts “as a result, the social coherence that the terrorists were not able to destroy is now under siege by some political actors” (4)

The incredible issue with the Bolivian television PAT. That showed in its daily bulletin, some images of the supposed instant when the Air France flight 447 fell into the Atlantic Ocean on 1st June. The images they showed were from the known TV series ‘Lost’. So, they were only thinking of reaching the highest audience share and they never made sure about the veracity of the images. [...]

2.-The role of remix culture

The third edition of the Congress online created by the Observatory for Cybersociety in Barcelona (Spain) gave me a very important point in creating this research. This last edition held in 2006 was focused on the matter ‘Open Knowledge, Free Society’. The speech that the Professor Gabriela Berti delivered is very good for my research. She said: “If we follow the path opened by Wittgenstein (1988), we understand technology as an ‘opportunity to say something’ taking advantage of a type of language, whose value is not in the language itself but in the use made of him in the ‘times’ is pronounced and the way in which lets you open worlds.” (2)

The important feature of remix culture is that implies a dialogue or a exchange between people and it shows the technology as a new way of information, of communication. As Don Joyce says in his text ‘Vapor Music’ (5): ”Internet users are participants in a new arena, able to interact with pure ideas and information and able to add their own into mix, uninterrupted by ulterior motives and uncluttered with deals or conditions. The Net has created the impression that culture is a function rather than a product” and remix culture is taking advantage of it.

Remix your brain

1.-Remix culture as a new critical knowledge

Following the path that Jonathan McIntosh open speaking about Political remix videos. I want to point out how the critic is not only in Political remix videos, but also in this remix videos which are focused on fight against the mass media manipulation. One example is the video created by Pedro Jiménez in 2005: TV doesn’t film it. The video works on a complex issue, that of immigration,also meanwhile It criticizes the mass media-especially the TV and his skewed way of presenting reality. The video is part of the research that both Pedro Jimenez as the collective Zemos98 (which is a member), made on the possibility of reinventing the television and that it is reused by the public from the Internet. Unfortunately, it is not possible to view it on Internet.
Also the video created by Laura Baigorri is a good example for this research and this point. Zap War is a remix video that addresses the impact and credibility of media images through the theme of war. She use fictional images from different films like Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse now, Wargames, Top Gun, Terminator 2 or Total recall, among others and she mixes them with real images from Vietnam war, Gulf war and Balcans war. Moreover, she uses real photos by a well known photo-journalist Gervasio Sánchez. With all this material she creates a remix video that show us the weak boundaries between horror and amusement of the war. In the title she plays with the word ‘Zap’ which in turn means removing and zapping on TV. Its maximum critic is about how the media and film shows war as a kind of virtual reality. Nothing could be farther from reality. Here is the video:

[Mention also Dan Bull video.]

[...]

2.-(re)Create education

Internet has provided a spectacular growth to the remix culture that has made Professors and teachers their own way of teaching. We shouldn’t forget that nowadays students grow with new technologies. So, we need to put knowledge grassroots in society to be able to undestand the message of the remix. This could be the perfect way to obtain a critical and committed society. If not, we have the problem that the Professor Dennis G. Jez post in his blog (6):

“Students who can only remix don’t get practice thinking critically about culture — and it’s certainly possible to recognize remix culture and design assignments that ask them to think critically about it, without rejecting it out of hand as plagiarism. It’s true that one’s own ideas only come after one has filtered through many other ideas. I think the problem I see in the classroom is that students find it difficult to trace details back to the source. I certainly don’t feel that students should never, ever remix — but if we graduate students who can ONLY remix, and have never been forced to trace an idea back to its source and critique its validity, but instead settle for riffing on it, then we are doing them — and our culture at large — a great disservice.”

[...]

07awareness-600