English: Full featured double rainbow in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Comments on this post should address the main question for Module 3:
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What is the aesthetic of our time?
In what ways do practices, ideas, narratives, or ideologies associated with this aesthetic depend on transmediations?
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In your comment, include any subquestions/extensions/responses that the above questions push you toward. Address Module 3 reading/viewing assignments as relevant, and point us toward any other resources or examples that you may find (be sure to add these to the Diigo group as well!).
Comments due by midnight on Monday, Oct. 29.
After reading and viewing the materials for Module 3, I would have to argue that to define the aesthetic of our time is to jump head first into disputed intellectual terrain. Films such as Rip! A Remix Manifesto and Good Copy, Bad Copy argue that battles are being waged over who controls accepted aesthetic frameworks. Artists like Lars Ulrich of Metallica want people to purchase music through legal channels and listen to it as it was recorded while performers such as Girl Talk take copyrighted songs, mix them up, and call them original pieces of work.
One of the main questions in the media appears to be: who will control the processes of artistic consumption? Ironically, the work of Girl Talk and Stacia Yeapanis challenges older notions of passive consumption by manipulating pop songs, fictional characters, and television shows, but it is still defined by a dialogue with branded material. I was intrigued by Yeaplanis’ assertion in “Confessions of an Aca-Arta-Femi-Fan” that Buffy, Xena, and the Halliwell sisters are “feminist icons.” In this fascinating statement, fictional characters share the same title that my parents’ generation bestowed on real-life icons such as Gloria Steinhem and Angela Davis. Do YouTube videos that remix episodes of Xena,Warrior Princess represent a subversion of dominant values or do they represent the ultimate triumph of the brand and and a subtle co-optation of a movement? I am still working out these questions for myself, so I welcome opinions and ideas on this subject.
Whether or not it subverts the dominant cultural system, remix culture is intimately tied to that which it references. One has to possess knowledge of popular culture to understand a lot of the fanvids and mashups, and this brings up many questions of access. YouTube fan culture is democratic and revolutionary for those who possess access to computer programs and enough leisure time and technological skill to make a video. In the end, the claim that remix culture is taking over the world probably applies only to certain subcultures, ages, and socioeconomic groups.
I really don’t know if I have answered the question for Module 3 or not. I don’t know if one can even define the aesthetic of our time. Perhaps there are many aesthetics?
I believe the aesthetic of our time, and I would define “our” time as my generation, completely centers around the influence of the internet and associated technologies and is defined as always in flux/always changing. If it’s new, innovative, challenging, exciting, raw, disturbing…the lists goes on, all of these things describe our aesthetic. In today’s world, with a new iPhone coming out every five minutes, art/artists have to be radical enough to retain an audience’s attention. Girl Talk and other similar artists are a prime example of our aesthetic because they have taken full advantage of resources available to our generation in a fresh combination not experienced previously. Practices, ideas, and narratives of my generation’s artists mostly live on transmedia. For artists such as Stacia Yeapanis who create fan videos, their medium IS the internet. Without it, would their art be innovative or even art? I would say that the internet has given birth to a whole new universe of art worlds. Cool.
As to the copyright issues highlighted in “Good Copy, Bad Copy” and “Rip: A Remix Manifesto”, I’m not quite sure who’s in the right. Most of the lawyers interviewed are very black and white, the artists are very protective of their work, and the musicians are on both sides of the fence. As our society continues to interact more and more with the internet, I believe this issue will adapt and evolve to reflect our reliance on transmedia and the internet.
And that is my two cents.
First off, to try and answer the question, “what is the aesthetic of our time?” I would say that we are coming to a point in our popular culture where it is really hard to be original. I think we could compare this to story lines in novels. There is probably no longer an original story line that you have not read/sort of read before. I think that is how I think of music too. It’s a kind of a recycling where some of the older music that is good but has been over played that repurposing it in a mash-up makes sense. To me it doesn’t ruin the original song of art, but helps it live on. In the Rip! A Remix Manifesto video, the narrator says this is the “folk art of the future.” I think that is completely true. Music is a huge part of our culture still and now technology is taking over. I think in way these mash-ups are introducing younger generations to music they would otherwise never be exposed to. I think in the case of the mash-ups, the artists pay attention to what songs were well liked and use the good parts of songs to make mash-ups that people are guaranteed to like. Sort of like found object art/ or even ready made. But it is still a collaborative effort even if it’s not consensual on the original artist’s part. Which I think brings in Becker, on editing and having all of this input on something like poetry, books or music since a lot of these are produced through a second or third party. But as we’ve discussed before, things on the internet bypass these and are in a way, above the law. It’s really hard to copyright stuff on the internet and enforce it. I would say that practices, ideas narratives and ideologies all depend on the internet as a medium. But I think where on the internet it ends up has a lot to do with aesthetic.
While reading and watching some of these videos I was thinking of the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop. The French shop owner guy decides he wants to make a documentary film about street art and artists, mostly Banksy but a few others as well. This guy ends participating in some street art and then ends up becoming Mr. Brainwash and doing his own street “art.” He sort of copies all of these people he’s been following around and then ends up having an art show of his own where he has made these huge pieces Andy Warhol style (other people doing the painting). Which, once again, raises the question, what is art?
And I also remembered this awesome video: http://vimeo.com/7939104
I largely agree with Mattie about the aesthetic for our generation, but would add that in certain circles, a contradictory aesthetic includes a complete rejection of technological advances. Just the other day, a friend and I were wondering how we could make our own salt prints, which is one of the most primitive forms of photography. I think this sort of rejection is fairly commonplace, as more an more people search for the “authentic, unique, and tangible,” in our fairly ubiquitous world. As the question is intentionally vague, doesn’t seem possible to define the aesthetic for “our time” without adding some boundaries to what our time refers.
So without an actual definition of what the aesthetics of our time is, it is difficult to answer the second part of this question. If the aesthetic is the meshing of artworlds / artworks to create a new kind of experience, then the transmediations allowed / inherent in internet & digital technologies, (copying, sharing, etc) is obvious. But as far as transmediation is an critical element of other aesthetics of our time, I could not say.
As many example in these modules are current, I can’t help thinking that these may simply be a rehashing or a manifestation of circular conversations begun long ago. In Becker’s excerpt, “Editing” from what, 20 years ago?, he discussed the influence of an artworld on an artwork, raising questions of ownership and originality. Are these questions much different than what Andy Warhol raised years ago? The media changes, but the questions remain the same: Where do ideas come from, and who do they belong to? At what point are ideas innovative, and not merely extensions on a former thought? I liked Becker’s point, if I’m understanding it correctly, that Mozart and others used the scales previously developed to create their work. One could argue that in this sense, Girl Talk is simply composing – capitalizing on an expanding musical language to create his own work.
This topic calls to mind the recent story about Madonna’s copy infringement case (http://patenthome.com/2012/09/copyright-infringement-madonna-music/). The thing I love most about this example, is that the infringement wasn’t even audibly possible for 20 years, until certain technology was developed to detect it! It seems truly absurd. I also love the absurdity of this American Life show on patents. Though not specifically about art, the questions raised by this show are related: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack
I feel as though the aesthetic of our time is such a mash up of anything and everything that has come before, that it makes originality a very complex issue. For example, in Good Copy, Bad Copy, it is talked about how Danger Mouse created a mash up between a track from Jay Z and a track from The Beatles. Obviously, his use of those songs individually is not original because they have already been written and recorded, but the combination of the two in one track is original. And even if there were more tracks that combined those two songs, one could argue that his specific combination is original. I think part of this aesthetic of a mix of the past is due to our wanting to honor the past and also learn from it in order to go forward. By examining what has been done maybe we can find a niche that hasn’t been filled, or expand on a a past experimentation. Technology today provides us with more tools for making art than what has previously been had and our transmedia environment makes it easier for us to reach out for help and/or opinions, publish our work, as well as obtain others’ work. That easy access has also influenced the ideology of ownership and made us very sensitive to what is ours and what isn’t. In this aspect, I believe our transmedia environment has only complicated the idea of ownership. Not only is there the question of who created what (and therefore who owns it), but with computers being within our reach everywhere, we now have the question of where was it created? If you do not create your art on your own computer, is it really yours? Or does it belong to whomever the computer belongs to? It feels as though technology has helped us greatly to access others’ artwork and create our own new artwork, but are with all this influence of others so easily accessible, are we creating truly original artwork?
The remixing that some artists engage in (Girl Talk, for example) is often an homage or says something about that individual’s genuine desire to participate in an already-established art form or movement, so calling it plagiarism is short-sighted. But because this chopping-and-screwing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopped_and_screwed) is a recent phenomenon, and because it relies on someone else’s hard work, the knee-jerk reaction is to call it derivative. Artists have always been inspired by those that came before them; it’s the extreme level of reappropriation, and the unabashed attitude with which it is carried out that I think is new. Becker wrote in 1982, “. . . it is the art world, rather than the individual, which makes the work” (p. 194). An artwork has always taken many people to create it—both individuals who make up the support systems that facilitate the work (the salesperson at the art supply store who sells the painter canvas, the music journalist to who reviews the musician’s album), and the peers and fans of the artist. So, this latest craze is remixing is just a further development down the same road, a new avenue for an artist to explore made much easier by the Internet. My question is: when does it end? Becker (1982) talks about how all these little “editorial choices” are made as an artist creates a work, and eventually, he or she must be done: “. . . a final work…arises out of a much larger body of possibilities” (p. 197). Well, when an artist is making a work resulting from already made works that each were comprised of thousands of their own editorial moments, doesn’t the aesthetic suffer as a result? Doesn’t it get so murky that there is no definable through-line? The person viewing the work no longer has the private, internal, one-on-one connection with the artist that makes the experience special.
The kitchen-sink aesthetic: that’s what we’re dealing with these days. The stopping point is so much further out when you’re telling a story across multiple platforms. I don’t know that this is necessarily a good thing. For example, Kutiman’s work doubtless took skill. He, I am sure, has some kind of musical background, or at least a great ear, because he knows what videos to match up to create new songs. Yes, it is a feat to comb through hundreds of videos and remix them so that the end result is even listenable. But in my opinion, the songs sound like they’re about to fall apart. They don’t sound like songs I would purchase. That’s also my personal opinion of Girl Talk’s music—ie, not fun to listen to, but I respect his skill. Just because you can, does that mean you should? But other remixing/editing examples provided for Module 3 are, I think, better executed. And they also happen to be more politically oriented (Auto-tune the News, BLF), so there might be a connection between a remixed work (or any work at all) being better aesthetically when it has a higher purpose or defined goal.
I like Alex’s description of the “aesthetic of our time” as being a “kitchen sink aesthetic”. We still have working artists (and larger art worlds) today who would define temselves as being painters, or sculptors, etc., but many more people who would define themselves as multi-media, conceptual, etc. New technologies and mediums have really mandated new art forms to be created by artists and art worlds. I would say artists like Girl Talk and Kutiman are really exciting artists at the forefront of a new aesthetic of our time- not the only aesthetic there is, or even one that has replaced old aesthetics, but a new aesthetic which embodies our rapidly changing technologies and culture of consumerism. As Becker and I think some others mention, appropriation has been around for a long time, so this controversy surrounding artists like Girl Talk and Stacia Yeapanis seems just archaic- seems like these sort of corporate and individual gatekeepers are clinging to outmoded conventions of ownership and “the Artist” as genius (although, as Nathan said, Stacia Yeapanis seems like a but of a problematic case for me with her discussion of feminism being embodied by Xena and Buffy.) I think that we can’t say there is just one aesthetic of our time, because people still enjoy working in older media and art forms, but I do think that the “mashup” and “remix culture” is one exciting new aesthetic of our time. I was intrigued by what I found in the Wikipedia article on Kutiman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kutiman which said that his work, when uploaded on YouTube, was immediately praised/ hosted by major institutional (and critical) organizations, Time Magazine and the Guggenheim. Kutiman is doing the same sort of work Girl Talk is doing- that is, sampling from previously recorded music to create new art forms- yet Girl Talk is seemingly getting much more slammed than Kutiman. The difference in what they are doing that seems to be key is that Girl Talk samples from recognized, very popular names in the music business whereas Kutiman is taking from Youtube videos of people who presumably haven’t made a name for themselves in music and do not have established reputations as such. I think these “mashups” are extremely innovative and require just as much skill and special knowledge and creativity as the composing of the original artworks. Producers and corporate media which are trying to bar these new art forms need to recognize that, as Girl Talk said in the trailer for “Remix”, “it’s beneficial to share ideas”. Maybe the solution is what Girl Talk is doing- creating as a part of his artworks an accessible, legible tribute to those artists whose work he has sampled/appropriated (in his case, this was part of his CD sleeve).
The aesthetic of our time is the edit. We are all editors. We shape our identity and how others perceive us through the way we dress, speak, act, behave, what we look at, what listen to and what we spend our time doing. Time, material and money influence the way in which we access the ability to edit. The internet has opened up new possibilities in order to edit because it has widened the points of accessibility and community.
The examples of Becker’s Editing,RiP: A Remix Manifesto, Good Copy, Bad Copy, The Gregory Brothers Auto-tune the News series and the Organization for Transformative Works all had in common for me one thing, that was that all of the people who were taking and repurposing things was doing if from some form of love. It takes a special kind of commitment and appreciation to take something and give it a new form or life. To leave bits and pieces for people to understand where something came from so that a different interpretation/view/identity can be achieved is a form of celebration. The original continues to live on in a contemporary fashion and will continue to do so if access to it is allowed. Having heavy restrictions on the ownership of something limits imagination and growth, leaving the original in state of stagnation. It has no way to evolve and with innovation being akin to a shark, if it cannot move it will die. Blocking the use of material is contradictory to our natural curiosity and the ways in which we play. These are the fundamentals to which mankind has relied on to make the technological advances we have.
The system of capitalism that is in place has led us to the situation we are in concerning copyright law. We have used editing techniques throughout history and it should not stop now. We should feel proud that we inspire each other, that we find value in what others do. In essence the internet has created Jung’s thoughts of collective consciousness. It would benefit all of humanity so much more if everything was open for us to use.
I also agree with Alex’s “kitchen sink aesthetic” idea (great term, by the way!). In relation to Becker’s comment that a “finished” artistic product is often the result of an art world collaboration versus a purely individual effort, I started thinking about our discussion last week regarding “rural” art and how it can be defined/curated — specifically with the PlaceStories project. The community of sharing and discussion that the Internet has helped facilitate, this group-process of redefining and contributing to a product as it is passed along and the remixes and fan projects that result, all reflect a freer-DIY-community-salvage aesthetic that seems to dominate the arts landscape at the moment. However, a dichotomy is present due to the continual emphasis on individuality and self-expression, which the Internet also enables (self-publishing, blogs, ect.) and which the copyright issue can address. There’s definitely tension between the individual rights/expression/profit idea and that of sharing/remixing/remaking.
In attempting to define “an overarching aesthetic for our era,” I believe it is first necessary that we recognize that such a definition will not necessarily apply to everyone, everywhere. The broadness of the query begs more questions, but for the purposes of responding to the prompt I will reference particular issues we have been engaging with in class and the examples presented in this week’s readings/links.
In Good Copy Bad Copy, it is stated that current laws prevent society from producing its own culture for its own use because the laws serve corporations. In my response to the Module 2 prompt, I brought up the relatively recent protests against governmental enforcement of copyright restrictions through ACTA, SOPA, etc. I believe that the individuals opposed to these measures (myself included) would interpret them as an attack on a productive, culturally significant mode of artistic production–an “aesthetic” that is perhaps becoming increasingly legitimized. However, the entertainment industry, having realized the economic benefits offered by transmediations, still seeks to impose limitations on how copyrighted media can be consumed and used by fans. Once again, private interests are privileged over those of the collective.
Furthermore, there is still a great amount of anxiety over authenticity and originality that further serves to polarize people. Yet, I think there are many examples of mash-up media that thoroughly contradict accusations of uninspired laziness. Pogo (http://www.youtube.com/user/fagottron?feature=results_main) is a music producer and remix artist who samples sounds (including the score, dialogue, sound effects) from television and film to create ambient music tracks, some of which are quite extraordinary. Adding a participatory element, Pogo has also asked fans to create their own music videos for his tracks, reflecting an audience that celebrates and wants active engagement with a remix/mash-up/sampling aesthetic.
I agree with Lyle that the aesthetic of our time is the edit, and this is entirely dependent on various types of media. Anyone can edit her/his own work, or use the works of others and make it her/his own. Things like using Photoshop to edit the photos you took on your beach vacation, or using new kinds of instruments to do a cover of your favorite Queen song, or using a blog to write your own fanfiction are all things people do to make new kinds of art, using media to change existing forms. Though the base material is not necessarily original (which, of course, is where copyright issues arise), the point is to add something new and to make it your own. We consider art more authentic if it reflects the artist’s personality and style. This could be a individual effort, or a group effort, as Becker discusses in this week’s reading. The edits make the art. And this doesn’t only apply to contemporary artists, of course. I was reminded of Picasso’s Guernica. He made and remade that piece, and parts of it, numerous times, and at the end he still said it wasn’t finished.
I think a big part of this aesthetic in general, but particularly with regard to copyrighting, is subjectivity. Copyrights are only an issue if the original artist feels that her/his work is being misappropriated or misused in some way. I think some fail to understand that the art sometimes lies in the method used to produce it. The artist Girl Talk, for example, who takes parts of famous songs and puts them together to make new songs. He is not trying to take credit for writing the songs, his art is making mashups. It’s a different art than writing or singing the songs he uses. And, as he says in Good Copy Bad Copy, he gives credit to the artists whose songs he uses, and he feels that he is helping them become even more popular.
I was also interested in the language of these kinds of transmedia arts. Girl Talk’s “mashup” and “songify” of the Gregory Brothers are just two of the probably plethora of new terms that have come into use in new kinds of art forms that have become popular recently. When new terms enter the lexicon and more people begin using them, they become a part of everyday life. This makes them accessible. Anyone with a computer can participate by making art or by observing or otherwise appreciating it. You can even songify your own videos with the songify app on the iPhone, you can use Pinterest to make a collage of your favorite photos, or use Facebook to advertise your cake-decorating business.
After reading the above entries I sense a pattern that I largely agree with and which encourages me to pose the question: are there any original ideas? Continuing on the theme of music production, one can observe recognizable chord patterns in thousands of unrelated songs all of which are claimed to be entirely original. Is it possible that an African folk song might sound similarly to an Icelandic pop hit? A wild comparison to be sure, but not totally unlikely. I feel that the ‘human’ aesthetic is nicely illustrated in a piece that I currently have hanging in my living room by Seattle street artist John Strongbow. “Meeting of the Minds” depicts two cultures, one from New Guinea and one from central Africa, which developed and went extinct in completely different time periods, yet strangely enough almost mimic each other in appearance. (The drawing can be seen here, http://jonstrongbow.com/secret/21.jpg ). I met with John when I purchased his art in downtown Seattle and he was adamant about the artistic connection humans share. As wide and far apart as humans may cultivate a culture and create art, somehow our practices seemed to be joined in a greater circular understanding. So I guess what I am trying to say is that the aesthetic of “our time” is not a question I feel competent to answer because essentially I don’t feel like it has ever truly changed. Artists inspire one another (whether they would admit it or not), artists are inspired by what they observe from their culture and other cultures. I don’t feel that a musical mash-up, a pop art collage, a tribal chant, and a ceremonial mask are totally inseparable. Art is expression and human kind tends to yearn for the same things. Now I feel like I’ve gotten away from myself in my response so let me start again…
Becker comments on editing, choices and I think that art creation ultimately comes down to those two things. I don’t mean to sound pessimistic in saying that I don’t believe there can be a completely original thought, I only want to point out that humans have been making art for thousands of years and our basic needs and wants have not changed that much, so I don’t believe our aesthetic has changed much either. We compile our understanding of the world in a big mental melting pot and artists are simply involved in the process of choosing and editing which aspects they choose to express.
I also like Alex’s description of the aesthetic of our time as the ‘kitchen sink.’ There is so much technology and resources available today that it is entirely possible to enjoy a little bit of everything and for people to be completely fine with that. To use music as an example, technology makes music collection/enjoyment much less restricted that it has been in the past. Generations ago, a person’s musical awareness and enjoyment was limited to what one could hear live, buy sheet music to, or hear on very limited radio stations. Exposure was the limiting factor, not necessarily choice. It’s hard to choose to like a musical genre that one didn’t know existed because access was not available! With the internet, everything is so accessible and available, it’s entirely possible to enjoy a little bit of everything. It’s so easy to ‘curate’ one’s ipod (as we discussed in class last week) so that a playlist can contain a Mozart sonata, a GirlTalk composition, Robyn’s newest offering, Billie Holiday singing the blues, a One Direction jam, and a Loretta Lynn ballad all next to each other. In the past, one had to invest in an album in terms of money and in storage space. Now, people carry thousands of songs on their phones and have access to almost everything imaginable on the internet. It’s easy to not choose a certain genre or type but embrace many different ones because there are simply more options available and more variety at everyone’s fingertips. Cultivating a music collection is less based on ‘choice’ and more on ‘knowledge/awareness.’
I was very interested in Becker’s thoughts on editing and artistic choices. Sometimes artists must choose between what might be profitable and something that maybe reflects more of their artistic vision because often these are not aligned. We see this in everything from the ballet company having a Nutcracker ballet AGAIN just to pay the bills and ensure that they can produce an independent/newer show to movie actors starring in a big summer blockbuster so they can get funding for their indie films. It was also interesting to note that sometimes artists’ choices are out of their control: if a piece is promised by a certain date, it must be declared finished by that point, whether the artist considers it complete or not. Although today, we see a lot of movies being rereleased with directors’ cuts, etc. where directors took more time (sometimes decades!) to make different choices and present these offerings to the public.
I found Becker’s thoughts on waste being a necessary part of the artistic process fascinating. Waste and making mistakes/learning from past failures is a required element of learning. When one is developing one’s artistic sensibilities, one will waste a lot of time, resources, materials, etc. and forego other opportunities. It was a good reminder that this waste is not a negative thing but rather a part of the creative process. It makes it worth it when an artist finally accomplishes something s/he is proud of and deems worthy of sharing!
Finally, my two cents on GirlTalk since that seems to be a favorite topic—for me, he’s actually provided an entrance/created an awareness of other songs/genres that I hadn’t previously known. In this sense, through his sampling and mashups, he’s actually helped introduce me to other ‘art worlds’ and helped me discover some older things I hadn’t heard before but really enjoy now. So that’s kind of an interesting circle—by using other artists’ work in his own way, he’s helping a new audience discover and enjoy their work, too!
I think that the aesthetic of our time is an emphasis on collaboration. The internet has created access to so much music, art, movies, photographs and writing that it has become hard to hold on to the importance of the individual and individual thought and ego that is mainly emphasized in the United States. I see this reiterated in the Becker article when he discusses editing and the importance of the collaboration needed to come to the end result. This is obviously what is necessary for Girl Talk to create his match ups as well. I guess one could also so that communication is evolving and morphing into something more accessible in some ways to newer generations and something more alien to the older ones. The internet leaves so many people behind, who do not want to understand or care about learning how to use it, and maximize it’s assets. I see the web as a new fangled tool. And just like every technological advance, it takes some getting used to. The problems are there too. With change there are always problems but I see this as an evolution of sorts. It is necessary and unavoidable. We have to start looking for new ways to reward our musicians and artists for their willing or unwillingness to share their art. Music has been the one consistent art form that has been able to make oodles of money without too much scorn from the art world. I feel like this situation is reversing itself now in the form of the internet. It is as if sharing music on the internet has encouraged people to appreciate the art for art’s sake and to use it with their own experiences. The access of it has created an understanding of art in a way that many nonprofit organizations try to promote unsuccessfully. I believe art is forever moving and if one is a true crusader for music and a true artist, one will move with it. Performances are where the money is at now. Music can no longer be stagnant or an investment that creates without creation. Musicians have to be active participants with the internet as their tool and not their enemy.
My answer to the question “What is our aesthetic of our time?” was mostly shaped by http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/. Kirby Ferguson, a New York filmmaker, created a blog based on the idea Everything is a Remix, and one point he made that really stuck with me was “Remixing is a folk art, anyone can do it. Yet these techniques collecting material, combining it, transforming it, are the same ones used at any level of creation. You could say everything is a remix.” That statement I feel sums up what our generation is about, using transmedia to take other ideas and combine them with our own with a touch of irony of course! Our generation is used to multitasking. We text, use facebook, and finish homework all at the same time, and the way remixing fits in our society caters to that. Music like Girl Talk (which is on my ipod!) caters to the fact that listeners in this generation have ADD, we are used to hearing different musical styles all smashed into one song just to hold our interest. Another internet remix art form is Memes. Uses have shown off their creativity with witty one liners (again with the ADD) against a common background so the viewer knows to expect a certain theme based on the image they see. These art forms would not be so popular if we didn’t grow up in a transmedia culture where everything can be shared globally in a matter of seconds. The only down side to this, is the fact that since tools to create all these things are available you don’t necessarily need skills to create art. For some people, skill set is an important element in determining whether or not something earns the definition art.
I don’t think it is possible to determine the aesthetics of our time. For one, we are too entrapped in them to provide an objective view, just like an artist is too self-conscious to accurately anticipate the public reaction to his/her art. Secondly, as time goes by, our understanding of the aesthetics of today will change, just as our understanding of history’s aesthetics is constantly changing. The question is though, does time change the meaning of aesthetics or add to it?
From a historical perspective, when you think of famous pictures like Diane Arbus’s Child with Toy Hand Grenade (examples below) in Central Park and then see all the photos she didn’t choose (when the boy looked playful and not deranged), does this change how you view the boy or add to it? How about how feel about the artist? Or from a process perceptive, art can change meaning/aesthetics while still being made. When I worked for San Jose Public Art, I realized how extremely long it takes any public art project to come to completion. And by the time the project is done, it could have changed completely from the original idea or the need for it might be gone or the audience just doesn’t care anymore. There was one project that was supposed to be a representation of the snake god Quetzalcoatl but ended up looking like (there’s no other way to say this) poop. This project went through all the public meetings and was approved but now we have the big poop statue in the middle of downtown (see picture below). And the public art staff love it because it’s one of our only controversial species. The point is you never know what response you’re going to get and how that response can change the meaning of the art work, so how can we say what the aesthetics of today are if we don’t know how people will respond tomorrow?
I think this ties right into today’s internet culture. Everything is re-appropriated almost immediately and then distributed widely. The Gregory Brother’s Double Rainbow or Bed Intruder videos are perfect examples of how local news/home videos can become widespread sensations/cultural phenomena. I think the difference between history and current aesthetics is in curation. Today, YouTube views or Facebook likes determine popularity. It’s as though sites like YouTube have become places for mass research into today’s aesthetics. Although then you get into the politics of search engines and how they determine what is accessible. In the end, most internet sensations are short lived. They continue to exist on the internet, but often forgotten in the craze for the next new meme. So, if according to Becker, curating determines what art lives on or dies, who knows what kind of reputation internet driven mass-media will have over time?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_with_Toy_Hand_Grenade_in_Central_
http://www.flickr.com/photos/taxidriver/5955419/
Also, to address Nathan’s question of feminist icons in pop-culture, I want to post this video of Buffy vs, Edward. It’s a commentary on how weak of a female character Bella from Twilight is by mashing Edward’s stalker like tendencies up with Buffy’s feminist witticism and fighter attitude. So I would say one usage of this remix culture is as commentary of mass media rather than regurgitation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM
It seems to me that the aesthetics of our time are repurposing/ephemerality and crowdsourcing/virality. I categorize it as such because traditionally so much of art practice was based in the materiality of art objects: paintings, sculptures, photographs, etc. What this meant was that a great deal of art historically has been associated with the permanence of physical artifacts. While perhaps subject to copying or replication, the original pieces of art had a tangible element of completeness. In other words, once completed, a physical piece of art had finite potential.
However, in the digital age, duplication, repurposing, and remixing leave open the possibility that there is no definite point of completion. Original images, texts, and audio that are now put into digital code are ephemeral because they can continue to be transformed in context, form, and purpose ad infinitum. In this way, aesthetics for our time take on a much less static or material form because anyone can continue to reshape another artist’s vision to their own. Repurposing and remixing as such means that any form of art that is digitized is subject to continuation without an end point. There is no longer the promise of a final note in a song or the last sentence of a novel. Works of art may now simply be in a constant state of becoming. So without regard for the legality of ownership or intellectual property, art practice is now simply more of an ongoing process than a fulfillment of a single artistic vision.
In a similar vein, as works of art are repurposed, remediated, and remixed, the traditional hierarchy of aesthetic critique are now more susceptible to crowdsourcing and virality. With so many contributing their own versions, art is now subject to the aesthetic whims of the crowd and the judgment of art critique is now more visible through which forms go viral. In a sign of democratization, perhaps, the number of views now often insinuates what the people find popular more than qualitative reviews conducted by an elite class of critics. For good or ill, whether or not memes or mash-ups constitute the same level of aesthetic value as other forms of “fine art” no longer really matters. In this digital era, any aspiring artist can apply their own aesthetic taste to previous forms of art and create a new level of appreciation if it goes viral and enough people view it. So, again, art aesthetics now extends to more of the ongoing process that can equally include assessment of competing visions rather than simply judging a single piece.
Thus, combined with a transmedia environment, the story never really has to end and everyone can put their own spin on it. The question remains, then, with so many voices contributing to the creation, revision, and evaluation of art, is there even any value to the concept of aesthetics anymore when everyone’s tastes have the potential of being met?
My generation is all about repetition and theft. I don’t say this in a negative way at all. Picasso says that a good artist copies, and a great artist steals. What I love and hate about contemporary art is that I’ve seen it all before. There is nothing original about the content of art nowadays, but by the same token all art is original to take something that already exists and turn it into something else, even slightly different, is what art is about now. Sometimes it’s done we’ll, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes there is an in between that is debatable. My favorite example of an “in between” is Jeff Koons. He wants to be Andy Warhol, there is no doubting that. Every piece he has ever created has existed previously. He doesn’t even make his own art: he utilizes the ideals from past masters and has a school of young, aspiring artists do all the work for him. He recreates media and throws it somewhere it has never been before, which is why he is famous. A lobster hanging for the ceiling of Versailles is not art, in my opinion, but the fact that no one has ever hung a lobster from the ceiling of Versailles is definitely something, at least.
I feel like I am always at a crossroads with the subject of originality in art. Art has gone through so many different phases and has been made for so many different purposes. Art for art’s sake is a relatively young phenomenon. Before, art was made as a historical marker, then as religious worship, cultural ritual, etc. what is the purpose of art now, other than aesthetics? And if art is only made for aesthetics, can anything truly be original? Artists today, as I said before, take what already exists and out a new spin on it. Copyright is also a relatively new theory, and is a problem now. Art no longer has an owner because it can be viewed anywhere, anytime. Google Art Project has taken people out of museums. There is no need to leave your couch to view art. Arts is a literally in the face of every single person every day at every minute minute; that is what media is now. The Internet allows people to claim ownership over images that weren’t generated by them. Who’s to say who owns art anymore? The aesthetic of my generation is to ignore copyright and to ignore ownership and just take whatever we want. We were born and bred in a culture of mass media with the Internet always available at our fingertips. This easy access to information has given us no respect for ownership. However the fact that media is always available to us is a beautiful thing, because we can take it and make whatever we want out of it. My generation uses the concept of found objects in a very different way, because we have different types of media and objects available to us. We remix images and music. We take intangible things and change them as if they have mass, proportions, and density. We breath new life into old ideas.
In terms of dance the aesthetics of my time are a mash up of movements the generations before me have provided, everything old is new again. Due to trasnmedia, largely television, our society has a huge effect on what the current trends are. In the past we saw the aesthetics of dance change when a particular artist or artists deviated from the cultural norms. While classical movement still maintained their place in time, the new movements carried forward the new aesthetics. During the beginning of the twentieth century, in dance practice, Sergey Diaghilev challenged the aesthetic of classical ballet by introducing parallel feet, inconclusive stories, a lower center of gravity, and the use of primitive cultures in his choreography. George Balanchine, one of the 20th century’s most famous choreographers, challenged the aesthetics of ballet which resulted in what is now known as the Balanchine method. The creation of modern dance deliberately defied ballets conventions all together. When new dance forms were developed criticism was accounted for and dealt with. Now, what we see on TV becomes the new aesthetic. The aestheticians of our time are you and me! Take a show like So You Think You Can Dance for example. In the past few years, largely due to this show, there is a new style of dance referred to as “Contemporary” that has become a current trend (example http://youtu.be/GW-zVDhOjcM). While this style is not a new concept, especially to those in Modern dance world, it is the new aesthetic because it is the most popular. When a dance becomes incredibly accessible people latch onto it. Eventually something new will come along and take its place thus creating a new trend in movement, even if it’s just something old that’s being reinvented. With transmedia these transitions take place more rapidly. Classical ballet companies now usually include a vast repertoire to make them-selves more marketable to audiences keeping up on current trends. People gravitate to the theatre to see a performance of what they are seeing in media. It is a challenge for dancers now to keep up with aesthetics because they are constantly changing. Not only do they have to be rooted in classical training but there is huge demand for them to be versatile. One week they’re a hip hop dancer and next week it’s ballet, a continuous cycle of everything old and everything new.
We’ve all heard the expression, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” And perhaps, to some unfortunate extent, it’s a true saying. Everything has already been done, and maybe, the artists of our time are just trying to do it better. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. We can only hope that it gets superior with each repetition or “remix”. Maybe the aesthetic of our time is the bigger and better remix. But there are also artists out there who are teaching old dogs new tricks, like Girl Talk. With Girl Talk, you’re hearing something you’ve heard a hundred times before, but you’re hearing it in a new way for the first time. Is it new enough to not be considered copyright infringement? I personally don’t think so. If there are elements to a piece of art that someone can unmistakably pick out as belonging to another artist, the “remix” artist should not get full credit. At best, it could be called a collaboration piece.
The transmedia nature of society makes it easier to steal… I mean “use” art from other artists. As an artist, I will admit that I do this all of the time. Most of the paintings I’ve done have started with an idea in my head, and a google image search to see what other artists have done on the subject. And if I like that I see, I copy it to a certain extent! Having access to art on a grand scale (through the internet, museums, galleries, radio) means that there are no limitations to what artists can be inspired by. Maybe that’s a better term: instead of saying someone ripped off a piece of art, we can say they were inspired by it…
With the internet, the aesthetics of “our” time has changed dramatically over my lifetime. Before I got my computer (which was pretty late by 1999), I asked someone what “the internet” was. They responded “its information you can access 1,000,000 times faster than you could in a library.” At 9 years old, I didn’t understand how much of a societal shift was taking place or how the internet would change cultural exchange in a matter of a few years. Art, along with ideas, academia, etc, has always borrowed from the past. Artists take what they like from others and transform it into something new. I was struck by Becker’s article on editing when he discusses George Herbert Mead’s “taking role of the other.” He paraphrases, “People move actively through their environments, searching for objects to direct their activity toward. When they meet such an object (and he included among objects other people), they immediately interpret its meaning by imputing to it various tendencies to respond to the actions they might undertake. Thus, people gradually shape a line of action by taking into account not only their own impulses but also imagined responses of others to various actions they might undertake.”
After reflecting on the documentaries on Girltalk, I thought about the artist Pretty Lights–which I have seen several times live. His song, “Finally Moving” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk9XYQMRiLY&feature=related is one of my favorites, as I kindly remember listening to it while I studied during college. By 2011, I was very upset to hear a song that used the same hook as the beginning of my prized Pretty Lights song. To me, Flo Rida had stolen it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OnnDqH6Wj8 It wasn’t long until another song, with the same hook came out only a few months later remixing it still–Levels by Avicii http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ovdm2yX4MA. Aesthetically, I believed Pretty Lights obviously had the better sound. Possibly, because Flo Rida is more rap driven and Avicii is what sounds like a mix of dub step and trance (?). I knew that Pretty Lights had sampled the song from someone else (Just recently I looked it up–Etta James http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzibSiJv8hc). However, it didn’t bother me half as much as Flo Rida stealing it from Pretty Lights, and Avicci continuing my agony. Perhaps, for me, it had to do with point of entry and my appreciation for the artistic reinterpretation Pretty Lights brought to the song while bringing in a new style I could relate to.
Aesthetic reflects a special way that human beings master the power of the world. It means a non-utilitarian, emotional, and vivid relationship between the human beings and natural. It is a concrete unification of the subjective and objective, reason and emotion. In order to deal with the problem of aesthetic, firstly, we should make clear what beauty is. Second, we need to be clear aesthetic is a process that individuals evaluate beauty and to ugliness. Thus, aesthetic is a subjective psychological activities and it is contingency. But at the same time, it is limited by the objective factors, especially the society’s time background. From the angle of philosophy, aesthetic is a good certification of the contradictory and unified. The aspect of contradictory of aesthetic, which appears as individuality, is easy to be observed by individuals. On the other hand, the unified of aesthetic reflect in the objective factor effect individuals’ psychology, for example every time or phase of the live, different environments are all more or less effect our perspective of aesthetic. In contemporary society, the range of aesthetic has become more and more broaden, including painting, music, architecture, dance, dresses, pottery, diet and decoration, etc. In a word, aesthetic exists in the all aspects of our daily life. We appreciate the scenery aside the street when we are walking on the street. We need to appreciate the biggest meal when we have dinner in a restaurant. All of these are shallow appreciation of aesthetic. We should be on a high level to discuss the aesthetic, namely, the beauty of humanity. We need to continually examine our own mind and promote aesthetic appeal. Nowadays, the way of representation of the aesthetic become multiple and advance. For example, a video could record the process of the bloom, which more directly transmits the aesthetic feeling than traditional way of representation. Chiangnan Watery Region Culture Museum of China, which mainly displays the culture of the south of the lower reach of Yangtze River. This is one of the important ancient cultures in Yangtze River basin during the late period of China’s Neolithic age. The museum adopts dynamic display method and used transmediations to representation, which simultaneously arranges the displayed objects and its background settings in the exhibition environment. In this case, apart from seeing displayed cultural relics, visitors are also allowed to touch and observe the objects as well as listen to their stories, through models, video, audio, diagram, computer and simulation experiment tour, so that they can get more real and vivid sensory experience. It impressed me very much. I think in transmediations, the ways do practices, context, ideas, narratives, or ideologies associated with aesthetic need individuals to establish a stereoscopic thinking mode. From top to bottom, it includes the process, which from objectivity to abstraction, from the visual exhibition to the spiritual display. Besides, it also involves audience, artist, curator, etc, involves various social, educational or personal aspects, and involves the content of psychology, sociology, anthropology and economics. We also need to reconsider the relationship between the aesthetic and human beings and pay more attention on the
spiritual world to discovery more information from spiritual aesthetic needs.
Opps, I forgot to do my homework. What is the aesthetic of our time? I don’t really know. I do know now that I can find everything online for free and usually I am able to peel it off the internet and use it to my own liking without any fanfare or financial transactions. Even with my brother being a musician in Los Angeles selling jingles and singles on the side, I still listen to Spotify for free over purchasing his albums (I may be a bad person). With Girl Talk I have come to enjoy the music he uses in a new way, I never enjoyed the majority of his sampled songs individually before. The pop, rap and dance music he uses is laughable on it’s own but when meshed together it creates a conversation that is fun, enjoyable and new.
I’d argue that ephemerality isn’t all as new as we think; for most of human history, the vast majority of artistic expression was either unwritten oral stories and songs, or tangible items made of ephemeral materials. Recipes and food presentation are still mostly uncopywriteable since they’re considered ephemeral. Of course the kind of ephemerality we see on the internet is different, but I don’t think it’s totally unprecedented, and may in fact make our global society a bit more like the traditional small societies where people used to share all creative expression with one another.
Ephemeral or tangible, creative works have always been inspired by or created from established material. Whether someone’s creative expression is fair game as creative ingredients is a question we’re all actively tackling now more than ever. And as the Becker reading illustrates, there are also questions about the hidden contributions of editors or other influences (which reminds me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvaUwagX_uU).
I think that the driving aesthetic of our time is really the self-awareness behind this remixing, exaggerated by the increasingly monetized and litigous nature of art, which leads to very self-consciously collaborative and/or subversive meta-art deliberatly drawing from this pool of existing cultural ingredients. Notions of copyright and copyleft are becoming relevant to everyone. As I posted in my section of the Module 2 essay last week, even at an event like ComicCon fans are actively interested in learning about the legal ins and outs of copyrighted works.
Of course, artistically this encompasses everything from the elegantly simple to the chaotically layered, the copied to the creatively inspired, drawing from prehistory through last night’s news. Maybe our aesthetic is simply “meta.” (I have to go wash my hands after typing that.)
I would describe editing, remixing, copyright and left are ways to identify ourselves with. Self identity is an important aspect of our culture, and the power to shape our own identity through how we dress, what we listen to, what kinds of ideas we associate with are seriously a huge aspect of our own cultural identity. Maybe the question is not really about aesthetics, but about individuality, something that American culture prizes. However, these Individual expression, free speech, and creativity seem to prohibit and stall the flow of culture. As repeated many times in the RIP! video, questions about oppression of one’s creativity and cultural jamming by copy right laws creeps in and out of the film, and raises one question for me, when they introduced Radiohead. If Radiohead did not already have international fame, would they have such power to prevent, basically their “employer” to back of from their new projects on the internet with their huge fan base? Although, the battleground is the internet, however, I feel like this is really a struggle for power and control and its balance with capitalism.
I believe that the Gregory Brothers, Girl talks, and all the “artists” that appeared in our module 3 materials shares a passion that many of us don’t have. They have the talent, and technique and skill to create something that reflects our current cultural aesthetic, they are leaving imprints for the future keeping the ideas afloat. It is not our job to define “what is the Aesthetic of our time?” but it is our job to create, process and reflect what is in our time. As a trained musician, I personally don’t agree with sampling, but if you were to sample me and not make profit and only for the sake of art or for a charitable cause and purpose, that contract I will sign.
The aesthetic of our time is driven by many issues and mainly influenced by information technology. In the ancient world of art the inquiry used to be done with beauty, art and perception used to relate to the appeal of senses by what you saw in art and linked with the producer, but today influence by digital media plays a big role in human perception of art. We live in the world where social media drives most of the debate and ends up shaping our perception. Artists have the skills to perfom in reflection our current cultural aesthetic which ends up being that of a mixture of global and not traditional culture.
Also, Becker’s writing reminds me of the book Henry Darger in the Realms of the Unreal by John M. MacGregor which is testimony to Henry Darger’s isolation and realization that his most extended intimacy happened after he was dead. His work was collected, categorized, edited and presented all by other people with no involvement from the artist.
The aesthetic of our time, especially in regards to the arts existing on the internet, could be described as highly participatory and contains uninhibited creation, adaptation, and re-appropriation of other media. Often times I feel we can be an overwhelmingly media-oriented society. The examples of remix culture in RiP: A Remix Manifesto, and Good Copy, Bad Copy, are very telling to what can become popular and widely accepted. The ways that our remix culture is consumed and executed in recent decades can be attributed to Hip Hop culture, starting from the late 1970s. Taking what is given to you and turning it into something new, exciting and tangible is a very popular basis for creation in recent times, and the internet is a great way to facilitate this.