Recycling Materials

Dj Spooky mentions in his book an old adage that he thinks about when he writes: “Make the people think that they think, and they love you. Actually make them think, and they hate you” (116). Does his cd make people think or make people think that they think? What about the book itself? Is he saying that audience members want information just fed to them? What would a book or cd that made someone think be like? Would the book ask questions and not answer or explain them? Or just ask unanswerable or rhetorical questions?

It seems to me that Dj Spooky believes that, at least concerning djing when it first came out and some current djing, people must think more to understand newer and different forms (“People can become so unreflective in their usual media-habits that any kind of systemic renewal takes a long time to succeed” (57)). For example, if a new genre of music comes out, it’s often not in the mainstream; if it ever gets to the mainstream, it’s mimicked and the heart and soul or the original message seems to be lost.

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This second section revolves around copyright and recycled material.

The second link below is a remixed clip from The Colbert Report featuring the host with Lawrence Lessig ironically discussing his new book, Remix (about outdated copyright laws). The real/original interview can be seen here: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/215454/january-08-2009/lawrence-lessig). Lessig is the quoted promoter and remixing expert on the back of Rhythm Science.

Colbert stated during the original interview that no one had the right to remix their original interview to a dance beat (even though Lessig noted that they both are joint copyright owners of the interview, and he was okay with it), which of course is what people did and what the following link shows, illustrated by the many more remixes on youtube (I liked this one because it allows the audience to understand the main premise of the original interview in only about one minute): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_w1FR67AXs

The Remix website states the following about its book:
“For more than a decade, we’ve been waging a war on our kids in the name of the 20th Century’s model of “copyright law.” In this, the last of his books about copyright, Lawrence Lessig maps both a way back to the 19th century, and to the promise of the 21st. Our past teaches us about the value in “remix.” We need to relearn the lesson. The present teaches us about the potential in a new “hybrid economy” — one where commercial entities leverage value from sharing economies. That future will benefit both commerce and community. If the lawyers could get out of the way, it could be a future we could celebrate.”
This book obviously echoes parts of Rhythm Science.

Lessig and Dj Spooky seem to be saying similar things, especially when Dj Spooky says, “You can always squeeze something out of the past and make it become new” (56). He does not see anything wrong with it and neither does Lessig. As Lessig points out during the real interview, The Colbert Report uses similar tactics as peer-to-peer file sharing networks (and to what a dj does): using already existing material to make it new.

This also reminds me of “one of the first recorded copyright disputes in Western history” that Dj Spooky mentions concerning St. Columba making a copy from a borrowed manuscript from the Latin Psalter and St. Columba eventually winning the copy by literally going to war for it (73), except that the copied manuscript was probably not altered all that much for the exception of different handwriting.

Likewise, Dj Spooky remixes a taped recording of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kr3yGZR70M&feature=related
Around 6:22, there’s another remix in which former President George W. Bush’s words are reordered to say something that he did not originally say. Dj Spooky says in the clip that remixing is often about “playing with the familiar”, which leads me to my second main question: Are these two remixes original? They seem to be “texts that absorb other texts” (Miller 8), but is that original?

Dj Spooky also says that “For the most part, creativity rests in how you recontextualize the previous expression of others” (33); so, can ANYTHING be completely new? He seems to think so when he says, “You can always squeeze something out of the past and make it become new” (56). But the question still remains as to whether one actually “renew[s] the cloth by repurposing the fabric” (113). Does recycling make it new? It’s easier for me to answer this question in environmental terms: yes, by recycling plastic bottles, fleece can be created as well as a plastic bottle Christmas tree, with the bottles themselves as the branches. It all depends upon personal opinion and how much a text is altered.