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.”

The power is on their hands

1.-Mass media manipulation

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.”

[...]

Critic process and features

[...]

To select current issues that are known for the viewers.

The creator of the remix needs to have a deep knowledge in the issue he/she is focused. So first is necessary a study on the field of the issue.

Also is necessary a critic point of view. If we want a critical society the creators need to be critics as well.

Finally, Humour is essential to reach people.

[...]

Books and articles used:

(1)Manovich, Lev. New Media as Remix Culture. In NY Arts.

(2) Berti, Gabriella. Remix culture, collective intelligence and digital art

(3)Aboukhadijeh, Feross. Freedom of Speech on the Internet.

(4) Aguirre Ernst, Mariano (director of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Center). Spanish’s 11-M and the right’s revenge. In Open Democrazy.

(5) Don Joyce. Vapor Music. In Culture Machine. Vol.10. 2009.

(6) G.Jez, Dennis. What’s with the remix disrespect?

Eldon Hiebert, Ray. Impact of mass media: Current Issues.

Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs. The next social revolution.

Firstly, my research question is going to be ‘How can remix culture help us to create a more critical society?’ I decided to choose this question because I found many articles defending this. For instance, Jonathan McIntosh who created the remix of buffy vs twilight. He is a very good creator of Political remix videos, also and he usually does speeches where he defends that:

“Political Remix video promotes a critical culture rather than one of acceptance, obedience and acquiescence , producing a healthy scepticism and a critical eye in regards to the mass media and powerful institutions”.

In this point I realised that it is necessary to figure out who is the creator of our culture nowadays. Like it or not our culture is governed by the mass media. However, why we need to be critical with mass media? Because of the manipulation.

Here we have some examples that I am going to develop in my final research project:

• 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” by Mariano Aguirre Ernst. Mariano Aguirre is a journalist and analyst with considerable expertise on peacebuilding. Now, he is the director of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Center (NOREF).
• Bolivian television PAT, 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.

But, returning to the research question ‘How can remix culture help us to create a more critical society?’ I thought in a secondary, but not less important, question: Which are the best characteristics for a good and effective remix culture video (because in my research, I am more focused on remix videos)? After reading some articles about it, I wanted to summarize some of the features that I found important in achieving a good result:

•to select current issues that are known for the viewers.

•The creator of the remix needs to have a deep knowledge in the issue he/she is focused. So first is necessary a study on the field of the issue.

•Also is necessary a critic point of view. If we want a critical society the creators need to be critics as well.

• Finally, Humour is essential to reach people.

Finally, here you have some of the books I am using for my research as bibliography. There are scholar books and articles focused on mass media and the new role of digital culture. Also I am using some Internet sources like articles by a Spanish journalist that sometimes writes about remix culture called  Javier Candeira, a blog called Zeros98.org and some posts in Jonathan McIntosh web page.

• Internet and the flow of knowledge: which ethical and political challenges will we face? by Niels Gottschalk-Mazouz.
• Digitiza this book! The politics of new medua or Why we need open access now by Gary Hall
• Smart mobs: The next social revolution by Howard Rheingold
• Vapor Music in Culture Machine (an international open journal of culture) by Don  Negativland Joyce
• Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide by Henry Jenkins
• Impact of mass media: current issues by Ray Eldon Hiebert

With this I am going to figure out the answer to the question:

How remix culture can help us to create a more critical society?

The activist, photographer and creator of Political remix video, Jonathan McIntosh is one of the sources that I’m going to use for my final work to Digital Culture subject because of his commitment and defense of remix culture. The text he wrote on the occasion of Ars Electronica Festival in Linz (Austria) which was published in the catalog of Ars Electronica 2008: A new cultural economy, is what I’m going to summarize because I think it is a good text which is focused on the positive things of political video remixes:

“Political remix video is a process of Do It Yourself (DIY) cultural creation by transforming mass media fragments through re-cutting, recycling and re-framing messages. It is an increasingly popular and relevant form of remix that can at its best challenge dominant power systems, media and myths in our society, our culture and ourselves. It has the potential to help us imagine a better more just society and help illuminate corruption, hypocrisy  and injustice in our world. These video works also have the ability to help nurture a critical talk-back culture of resistance and liberation.”

Creating a critical society

For him, political remix videos help to create a more critical society with the status quo established by the traditional media or the politicians themselves. The parody, satire and critical comments are the trends used in this new way of understanding politics and combat a passive culture. Political remix video not criticize the way that mass media work, but it used them to send messages totally different from that which the media want to launch. New messages that may suggest to the viewer a critical way to see the world:

“Political remix video works also utilize and embrace dominant media forms as the structure for their videos. Popular forms include: short news segments, TV ads, speech excerpts, movie trailers and music videos. Remixers are not critiquing the form mainstream media takes (as contemporary video art has done for decades) but rather borrowing and using it as a vehicle to deliver their own subversive messages.”

Actually, he tells us that the first time he did a Politic remix video was because he wanted to criticize the way that mass media were showing Iraq war in 2003, and how mass media had mixed the images of the war with a happy-go-lucky TV commercials.

Of course the usage of  material that is already familiar to the public and has a certain amount of built in cultural meaning helps to create a more close relation with the public.

Copyright

He defends himself against copyright laws because he thinks that:

“The remix is a process of constructing a new artistic creation out of pieces of the original but never simply copying or pirating the whole original source.”

Conclusions

At the end, he concludes that:

“Political remix videos can offer a way for people to define their own world, or rather to re-define the way their world is presented by mass media”

The people who works with remix culture needs to know everything about the issue he/she wants to analyze (in our case, Political remix videos, are always a critic or parody).  As Rubén Díaz said in the Spanish blog focused on Digital culture stuff, Zeros98.org, This means “deconstruct the speech, analyzing their parts, their ideology, their message, understand the language used (the mass media, which we are familiar, recognizable to us and so we reuse it yourself) and rebuild again a audiovisual text that through creativity, wit, irony, satire, humor or parody is able to decipher the true intent of what they raised in the beginning and we can thus understand the world differently, more participatory, more active, critical and alert in the face of new visual impacts that inevitably we will continue to suffer”.

But for reach this in the best way, Internet is the best weapon to disseminate this kind of messages:

“Online video offered a direct conduit to and from the general population.”

The journalist especialized on digital tecnologies Javier Candeira said supporting this in one of his articles at the newspaper La Vanguardia that  ”the fluidity and ubiquity of the web makes this medium a particularly weapon suitable for the remix. A document on a website is both permanent and temporary: permanent because it is published in the light of any citizen equipped with a browser and a connection; and temporary because unlike the publications in paper (tradicional way), the digital document is not coagulated in its final form: it is both raw material and the master plan with which to build video, music or text that reaches the public. But remains a collection of bits and, as such, remains malleable and remixable.”

On the other hand:

I found a discussion on the Internet about remix culture which is interesting because we can see some negative things people think about remix culture.

The argument is between Dennis G. Jerz, a scholar from Pennsylvania who is teaching ‘New Media Journalism’ [literature, journalism, writting techniques and cyberculture] (his blog), Jeff Rice, an Associate Professor of English and Director of the Campus Writing Program at the University of Missouri (his blog) and Phill 365, a person that says he is a teacher but we can’t know anything else (his blog). At the end, it doesn’t matter because the interesting point are in the speeches of Jerz and Rice.

Difficults to integrate remix culture

All started with an excerpt of a Rice post in Jerz’s blog that said this:

“The logic of the remix has made its way into consumer culture – we know that. But what we haven’t yet identified is how to integrate that logic into the university (what I wrote about in my theory article). It took hundreds of years before the university completely adopted the logic of print as an organizing principle, and only in the late 1800s did the composition program evolve out of this logic. We can imagine assignments and pedagogy based on the remix (“adding a different and unique spin” to previously constructed arguments, writings, images, etc.). But what about the entire composition curriculum? How would a remix composition program function? What would it look like? How would students become remixologists instead of “precise” and “identifiable” figures (products of topic sentences and linear argument)?”

The most difficult thing for this professors is integrate the remix culture in their lectures at the University or classes at the school, because is a new issue that needs a deep knowledge. As I said before you need the analyze the meaning of the thing you want to remix, so no everybody is able to make a good remix or understand it in the correct way.

The necessity of a deep analisis

Furthemore, Jerz said that in a comment about Rice post:

“So 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.”

We have here a really different opinion from the begining of this post. If you remember Jonathan McIntosh said that remix culture is the way to create a critical society. It helps us to imagine a better more just society. However, the teacher Dennis G. Jerz is not against remix culture but he thinks that students need to create their own ideas or try to demonstrating the ability and willingness to explore those ideas more fully. For him, remix culture without a deep knowledge about the source or about the issue is nothing. It destroys the desire of students to analyze the issues themselves. If they are not taught first to have a critical mind and write and think in the traditional way, they can never understand the remix culture in the most appropriate way and students are going to take only the superficial message.

“My critique of the remix culture lies specifically in the convention that assumes the author’s personal expression of reactions can substitute for investigating the issue. So a good course built around remix will have to include analysis and fact-checking.”

Final conclusions

Finally, It’s difficult to find two authors really opposite in their thoughts. However, it was interesting because I found sources that show us the difficulty to integrate the remix culture in our society. Internet has provided a spectacular growth to the remix culture that has made teachers question their own ways of teaching. We wouldn’t forget that nowadays students grow with new technologies. The conclusions is that the remix culture can provide a perfect way to obtain a critical and committed society, but first we need to put knowledge grassroots in society to be able to understand the message of the remix.

• Building a Critical Culture with Political Remix Video by Jonathan McIntosh

• Political Remix Video by Rubén Díaz

• La cultura de la remezcla by Javier Candeira

• Remix, etc. by Jeff Rice

• What’s With the Remix Disrespect? by Dennis G. Jez

This video starts on December 2007 but is in a few months ago, June 2009, when explodes with 3,141,919 views. Then, it generates a lot of different activities related on it: twitter with 6.000 followers,  on another web page you can buy T-shirts and cups with the Keybord cat on it, papercraft activities with the drawing of the same cat and a lot of media reports about it.

Of course, copies are important in this point. There are a lot of copies about this video, but not based on real fidelity. The people copy it changing the meaning of the first video. They create remix videos about fear, nostalgia, videos that express any awkward or painful situation and even video games! Easy copies, but with not exactly the same meaning. This is a really good example on  The Daily Show of Jon Stewart.

Finally, why ‘Keyboard cat’ has achieved this fame?

On Time Magazine, we found an article written written on June 2009 that said that “These days, people only use the Internet to search for pictures of adorable animals. Unfortunately, most of them are cats.” This means that the only reason is because it is a cute cat. A cute and funny cat. And the people love it. At the end, on Internet you can find a lot of videos related with animals that have many viewers. In my opinion animals doing human activities like playing the piano, eat with a fork, dancing, etc. are easy to spread on Internet because people think they are cute because they have human behaviour.

Without forget Jenkins characteristics or qualities typical to succesful spreadable media, is important not lose the idea of humour. I think is another characteristic that make famous a video.

Internet could be a very potent weapon of communication. A weapon to change the perception of things. Internet gives us  the possibility to know all the planet earth with only a button switch on. However, many people enjoy watching Internet videos of cute cats. At the end it does not matter, because this point shows us that Internet is now a really free media in which you can find videos of cute cats, falls, babies, etc. All mixed with political criticism, independent analysis of history, digital media,…

But if you want a more deep analisis about ‘Keyboard cat’ don’t lose this good and funny video about it. It is really interesting and you can find other analisis with spreading ideas(memes) based on Youtube videos:

In the book ‘The Selfish Gene’, Dawkins analizes another way to study the evolution of the species. He focuses on genetics and culture issues, more than a biological point of view, He focuses on genetics and culture issues. This book is famous because its eleventh chapter where Dawkins introduces the notion of Meme: “Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches…Memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” A new way to develope and spread ideas, cultural stuff and attitudes: “the survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next.” He also explains that the meme notion is related with the inmortality desire, because we can create an idea to keep us alive forever in the minds of others.

Is this related with Internet? Maybe it is related with the new blog/video-blog generation: the people who wants to leave thier footprint in somewhere. At the end, Internet is like a big Meme which is creating other little memes inside it. Don’t you think so?

We are in a new era. A culture revolution in wich the main character is Internet. Nowadays, Internet is “the vehicle for collective problem solving, public deliberation and grassroots creativity.” But, what happens when the fandom (for example, the fans of Harry Potter books) and the big companies are against? That what Jenkins show us in this book. The great experience of children as a “active participants in these new media landscapes, finding their own voice through their participation in fan communities” and the big issue: copyright.

At first, Internet seems a free big world “where people can participate in various ways according to their skills and interest”, a world without gatekeepers, without parents or teachers. A new way of knowledge (writing and reading skills are develope in some children by surfing on Internet). Jenkins speaks about Heather Lawer and her school newspaper about the imaginary Hogwards school: ‘The Daily Prophet’, like a great example of this. In my opinion the big problem in all of that issue are the big companies (in the text is Warner Bros inc.) because they think that “almost all fan fiction are arguably a copyright violation”. And what? Is it not positive for the book, film or serie? Is it not free advertisement? Is all the time the same: the studio’s assumptions against the fans’ own sense of moral.

Finally, I think Internet has created a new way to develope our kowledge. That’s not means that on Internet everything is good, but a correct use of it is positive. At the end is necessary “rewrite fair-use protections to legitimate grassroots creativity” to offer the best use of Internet.

As Barthes, Foucault introduces us the notion of ‘author’. A closer aproximation at the theories about this. He gives us more examples about different authors of the History to explain the funtions that one author have. For him, an author achieves the individualization about ideas and knowledge. He divides the authors in different categories, for instance transcursive authors like Marx o Freud (Foucault says that they are the ‘big authors of the History’, because they created a new discursive way) or the novel writers.

However, at the end he starts to ask himself when we can know who is an author or how we can know that one author is the real author of the work. As Barthes, Foucault relates the notion of author with originality and with the notion of work of art. Why one author has more importance than the other ones? Why one work is more important than the other? and the most important for my: How we can delimit the authorship of works? In this point he speaks about Galileo and shows us that all the works derivates from Galileo ideas could be Galileo autorship as well. Why not? But this idea introduce us another problem: who is the original author of one work? Are only authors like Galileo, Marx or Freud ‘real authors’? For Foucault seems yes.

At the same time Foucault tries to explain the difficult point about the name of the author. He speaks about Shakespeare like an example to show us that the name of the author has the power to classify the works and to create an image of the author and the work inside our heads: “If we proved that Shakespeare did not write those sonnets which pass for his, that would constitute a significant change and affect the manner in which the author’s name functions”. In my opinion the important issue is, at the end, the work and not the name of the author. If we will discover that Shakespeare had never written Romeo and Juliete we will destroy the author but the work will continue alive. Finally, I think that the name of the author only is a way to reputation for him/her but It should not matter to readers. Although Foucault didn’t think the same.