Everyday Connection

Everyday Connection is a radio show you can find here, Yesterday they interviewed a member of mediawrench, Kristopher Harrison, about mediawrench, where it came from, and where its going. It was a lot of fun! Check out their stuff, and also check out the interview here. Thanks to Rick and Jean for having us on the show! It will be fun to see where mediawrench takes us next.

Here are the links to the interview:

http://everydayconnection.me/2013/05/10/kristopher-harrison-media-wrench/

blogtalk –http://www.blogtalkradio.com/everydayconnection/2013/05/10/kristopher-harrison-media-wrench

itunes –https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/everyday-connection-blog-talk/id590073067

Remix Culture, Piracy and Revoultion

The Occupation of St. James park, an exercise in Remix and Pirate ideology

By: Kevin

In my previous post I set the groundwork explaining remix cultures roots and the ideology behind it. But aside from DJ’ing, remix culture can be seen in many different forms, one prominent one is in cultural changes and revolutions.

Jürgen Habermas talks about a public space for dialogue in his book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. In the 18th and 19th century public parks like St. James, which was ground zero for the Occupy Toronto movement, would have been used as a space for the bourgeoisie to discuss issues of the day. Habermas calls this the “public sphere.” Out of the public sphere came ideas like  political power being centralized, the separation of political authority from the private sector and the separation of the state from the church. Over time however, we’ve lost touch with this idea of public sphere and the Occupy Movement is seeking to bring it back. To take over a public space and to have dialogue with people about changes we’d like to see in our society is in itself is a manifestation of remix ideology. Occupiers took a public park and remixed its purpose to better suit their needs, and arguably the needs of the society. Just like Occupy Toronto remixed the ideas of public space they also took the traditional, and non-functioning, version of democracy and re-mixed it to create a more horizontal structure. The 40 day encampment of St. James park therefore was an exercise in remix ideology, as it applies to the ideas of public space and democracy.

Remix ideology is also closely related to the culture of piracy. In chapter two of “The Pirate’s Dilemma”, the Tao of Pirates, Matt Mason outlines piracy in a way that is applicable to social revolution as well. The ideology of piracy can be summed up in two sentences. “When the trust is gone, the system stops working properly. But this in turn produces new breeds of pirates, pushing back in the name of a fairer society” (61). This is exactly what the Occupy movement, and many other social movements, have set out to do. And many of them have been wildly successful. The Occupy movement has seen injustices and inequalities in our system and have attempted to “push back” to try and fix them.

But this ideology extends well beyond the Northface tents of St. James Park to many other forms of revolution and social change. It can also change the way drug companies operate. AIDS medication is a wonder of modern science, allowing those with AIDS to combat their illness. Drug companies are rewarded handsomely for developing these medications. Patents and intellectual property laws allow them a monopoly on the ‘AIDS market’. The problem is, those countries where AIDS is most prevalent are 3^rd world countries, incapable of paying the inflated Western prices associated with AIDS medication. “When regulations and patents are stifling our economies, our environment and even human life itself, individuals and entire nations have responded with the pirate mentality, raising the stakes with world-changing consequences” (61). This is exactly what’s happening in India.

Mason speaks of Dr. Usef Hamied of the pharmaceutical company Cipla. His company creates anti-HIV drugs for about $1 a day. Compared to Western drug companies who charge $27 dollars, it’s clear that Cipla is providing a valuable service for society. “When the market fails and democracy is ignored, pirates should step into the breach” (63). In this case it is Cipla stepping in, becoming a drug pirate for the good of their society. By ignoring international patent laws and making generic drugs that everyone can afford, Cipla is saving and improving millions of lives. This type of piracy is also prevalent in Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, Egypt and China and is another example of how piracy adds value to society.

The purpose of piracy, Mason argues, is to keep capitalism and democracy accountable to consumers and to push back when things get out of hand. The examples I talked about are just two ways piracy is changing the landscape of society. This piracy model has been applied to farming, fashion and could be applied to any situation where the current system does not adequately serve the average person. It seems like big corporations and governments could learn a lot from the pirate mentality, if only they would listen. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, “the only way to defeat piracy is to compete with it” and I think that’s true. Piracy forces companies to become more efficient and to innovate and helps keep governments honest and working for the people who elected them. And I think remix culture and piracy go hand in hand a lot of times. In order to remix the accepted views of things like public space or democracy, the pirate mentality is often helpful in getting the ball rolling. While our society is advancing at mach 3, our version of capitalism and democracy seem stuck in the past, resulting in structures that do not meet our expectations and needs. Piracy and remix encourages innovation and creates systems that work for the greater good. If remix is the end goal then piracy is the roadmap.

Visit The Pirate’s Dilemma website here

Watch a video about drug piracy in Africa here

Watch a video about drug piracy in India here

Watch a video about Monsanto seed’s monopoly on the seed market here, another industry that desperately needs piracy

Watch a video on fashion piracy here

From Grandmaster Flash to Jaydiohead

By: Kevin
In the third chapter of his book The Pirate’s Dilemma, “We Invented the Remix”, Matt Mason brings us through the evolution of the remix and talks about how it has changed our views on copyrighted information and what art and music really are.

Remix culture has its beginning in 1960’s Jamaica. A producer, Arthur “Duke” Reid, was cutting a version of the popular track “on the beach” when he forgot to pan up the vocals. This was the first remix, called dub music. This allowed the MC to make announcements or talk overtop of the popular track during an event. This turned the record player into a musical instrument, allowing the DJ to repurpose a track for his own uses, turning studio engineers into musicians. Listen to Duke Reid’s dub of The techniques Queen Majesty below:

Dub music was changed again with disco in the early 70’s when Tom Moulton took parts of songs that worked on the floor and looped them. This was the beginning of the disco movement and also an important move in remix culture. It called into question what production, authorship and creativity actually meant.

The remix was implanted into our culture again with the evolution of hip-hop. “Duke” (the Jamaican producer that created dub music) inspired a young Jamaican-American Clive Campbell, a.k.a. Kool Herc. He would take the “break beat” of a song and repeat it, making it the focal point of his performance. This evolved with the creation of mixing and scratching by Joseph Saddler a.k.a. Grandmaster Flash, with his remix The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel. This new form of remix, which involved parts of many different songs, challenged the idea of genre, authorship and cultural theft. Listen to The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash and the Wheels of Steel below:

So what about the remix today? Artists like Girl Talk and DJ Danger Mouse are still making and the same questions still remain un-answered. Should the remix, which is essentially taking bits of pre-existing music from different artists, be considered fraud? Should a remix artist be able to benefit monetarily by creating remixes of other’s songs? In his book Remix, Lawrence Lessig says, “writing, in the traditional sense of words placed on paper, is the ultimate form of democratic creativity…meaning that everyone in a society has access” (52). Writing has virtually no barrier to entry. As long as you have some sort of tool to make a mark, and some surface to write on, you can create words. This means that virtually everyone has the ability to create and can be seen as the “golden standard” for creativity, which can be applied to the idea of the remix. Listen to Danger Mouse’s remix of Jay Z’s Black album and the Beatle’s White Album below:

As Lessig says “the act (of remixing existing music) is the same (as writing), only the source is different. And the measures of fairness could also be the same; is it really just a quote? Is it properly attributed?” (53). Just like quoting is an essential part of writing, it is essential to the remix. Taking the ideas of existing music is what the remix is all about, and many artists credit the music they sample. Remix culture takes these riffs from existing music and remix them and make them their own, not copying them exactly. As a result, a vibrant culture of people making their own art by “quoting” other music exists all over the world.

The boundaries to making music, therefore, are next to none either, as with the writing example. For the price of a laptop and Internet, anyone can download music and a program to start remixing. Even if one doesn’t have “musical talent” to play an instrument, they can create their own music on a laptop. With the remix we have achieved virtually the same democratic creativity Lessig talks about. The problem is, in order to remix “legally”, you would have to pay millions of dollars in rights to big record companies. This process is hugely expensive and often takes months or years to achieve.

I’ve just touched on the music remix culture, but remixing exists in all other forms as well and it all achieves this creative democracy that we strive for. In a following post I’ll try to explain the impact remix culture has on activism and social democracy.

The Pirate’s Dilemma has a nifty website here

Remix has a website located here