Introduction: Mashups, Remix Practices and the Recombination Of

Introduction

Introduction: in the 1960’s. Yet how these cultural practices significantly differentiate from to- Mashups, Remix Practices and the Recombination of day’s mashup cultures could be outlined in the following:

Existing Digital Content a) Collage, montage, sampling or remix practices all use one or many materials, media either from other sources, art pieces (visual arts, film, music, video, literature etc.) or Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss one’s own artworks through alteration, re-combination, manipulation, copying etc. to create a whole new piece. In doing so, the sources of origin may still be identifiable yet not perceived as the original version. The genesis of this volume is partly owed to the fact that the international study b) Mashups as I understand them put together different information, media, or ob- programme ePedagogy Design – Visual Knowledge Building is celebrating its fifth jects without changing their original source of information, i.e. the original format anniversary, and what could be a better symbolic, practical and intellectual present remains the same and can be retraced as the original form and content, although to myself, my students, co-workers and affiliates on this very occasion. recombined in different new designs and contexts. For example, in the ship or car At first my intention was to try to bring together well-known international industry standardised modules are assembled following a particular specific design experts in their field with whom we partly collaborated in our study programme platform, or, using the example of Google map, different services are over-layered so and to confront them with our community of experts and students so as to trigger as to provide for the user parallel accessible services. a vibrant discussion across borders and disciplines. What has soon become clear to c) Remix and mashup practices in combination can be considered as a coevolving, me was the importance of highlighting the interdisciplinary approach of the study oscillating membrane of user-generated content (conversational media) and mass me- while at the same time proposing a good deal of critical reflection and rethinking dia. upon what we have achieved so far. It is part of an international study programme, especially in our case, to permanently readjust modes of communication and col- In other words mashups follow a logic that is additive or accumulative in that they laboration across the great variety of expertise and cultural backgrounds the in- combine and collect material and immaterial goods and aggregate them into either ternational student community holds. As the study programme is situated at the manifested design objects or open-ended re-combinatory and interactive informa- intersections of art, media and education it appeared natural to group together tion sources on the Web. In fine arts, Pointillism would be a good example to dem- expert voices from these fields under a unifying umbrella of exploring together with onstrate how this technique is in sharp contrast to the more common methods of the students, teachers and experts key concepts, ideas and paradigms of participa- blending pigments on a palette or using commercially available premixed colours. tory media culture. This analytical painting technique is in fact analogous to the subtractive colour Why I have chosen Mashup Cultures as the title for this book has basically two method in the four-colour CMYK printing process, or the additive colour methods main reasons: one is connected to the definition of mashup, which in Web develop- that occur with television or computer monitors and stage lights using a “pointil- ments denotes a combination of data or functionality from two or more external list” technique to represent images through Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) colours. sources to create a new service (in the case of this compilation hopefully new in- The more pixels are displayed on a screen, the sharper the image is in analogy to sights), and the second reason puts the cultural dimension into the foreground, as the information or bit-level: the more information is encoded between the bits and these developments permeate through almost all cultural techniques and practices the output medium. on a global scale. If we consider mashup as a metaphor for parallel and co-existing Moreover the more complex the hard- and software, which is essentially de- ways of thinking and acting rather than exclusionary, causal and reductionist prin- fined by its usability and modes of interaction, algorithms, metadata, formats, and ciples of either or instead of as well as, then we might gain a broader understanding protocols, the more difficult it is for the individual on both the micro and macro of the unique characteristics of the plural in mashup cultures. level to piece together these fragmented parts into a whole new picture in the very A historical comparison might also be helpful to find distinguishable and dis- metaphorical and practical sense. Defragmentation seems to be a key concept in cernable criteria for sometimes confusing terminologies using the example of remix networking culture, trying to re-establish alienated modes of common understand- practices. In retrospect we can ascribe these practices certain kinds of techniques ing through aggregation, augmentation, reconfiguration and combination of infor- (collage, montage, sampling, etc.) and different forms of appropriations within spe- mation, quite similarly to what the hard disk does when physically organising the cific socio-cultural contexts, for example John Heartfield’s political photomontages contents of the disk to store the pieces of each file close together and contiguously. in the 1930’s, or James Tenney’s early sampling of Elvis Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes” From the standpoint of information sciences information is defined by its existence

8 9 Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss Introduction as a bit – in Bateson’s formulation, “a difference that makes a difference.” This is an important aspect insofar as it holds an immanent power relationship: that of control within a complex system of hierarchical order and manipulative control mechanisms. Control of information and communication equates with control of code, leading again to fundamental questions: “Who is the owner of the code, where is it stored, and what are the consequences of misuse?” Code is the language of our time, as there is hardly any consumer article in our daily usage free of computer-supported, automated mass production chains. Our cultural production with all its pluralistic modes of expression and formats produc- es a parallel digital universe that is stored in and dispersed through a gigantic net- work of databases around the globe. Richard Stallman was right with his claim on “Free Software”, as it engages with non-exclusionary and non-hierarchical forms of co-evolvement of intellectual goods manifested in code for the purpose of constant improvement in an open source environment. Many attempts have been made to translate open source principles into the broader cultural realm (cf. for example Lessig’s Free Culture) yet under the wrong premises of mixing commodity value up with intellectual value, which does not necessarily generate surplus value but rather exchange value. The value of code, then, is not generated through multiplication of single copy software products but instead through exchange of different versions, modifications according to needs, specific needs a piece of software should fulfil. “You can buy a picture, but you cannot buy the image in it” might work as an anal- ogy for liberating code from any kind of commodity boundaries. MASHUP FORMULA: In other words, code must circulate freely to build upon collective intelligence, API X + API Y = Mashup Z something that has been convincingly demonstrated as a successful business model API X + API Y = API Z in almost all big ICT branches. Free software does not mean that everything is for free: it can for example lead to new business models and products in which code API = Application Programming Interface is an interface remains still free and modifiable by the open source community. Comparably, in that a software program implements in order to allow other Mashup Cultures the code that makes possible information and knowledge ex- software to interact with it; much in the same way that software might implement a user interface in order to allow change must be maintained liberally as a public good. Important steps in this direc- humans to interact with it. tion are APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow Web communities to create an open architecture for sharing content and data between communities and applications. In this way, content that is created in one place can be dynamically posted and/ or updated in multiple locations on the Web; for example photos can be shared from sites like Flickr to Social Network sites like Facebook and MySpace. The in- terconnectivity of software applications and their users on the Web appears from today’s perspective a literacy with which most teenagers and prosumers are familiar. Yet the impact of such a remarkable media revolution as that of Web 2.0 on indi- viduals and society at large can only be fully understood in a media-historical con- text: understanding what and how communication media has transformed within the complex interplay of perceived needs, competitive and political pressures, and social and technological innovations.

10 11 Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss Introduction

Key Concepts, Projects, Ideas in New Media History Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate”, in which he coined the term “hypertext”, i.e. “a body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a Digital culture is driven by rapidly changing technologies, which have altered the complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper.”4 entire media landscape over a period of less than 20 years at a never-before-seen In his groundbreaking work Nelson introduced a new concept of file operations pace. With the advent of the Internet and the popularisation of the WWW, for based on entries, lists and links called an Evolutionary List File (ELF), which for the the first time in the history of humankind a communication technology based on first time in computer history allowed text, films, sound and video recordings to be soft- and hardware has paradigmatically altered the entire media landscape in size, arranged as non-linear systems. scope, functionality, access and modes of interaction. In retrospect one dares to as- What seems to be nowadays a natural routine in daily computer work was more sert that mass media has lost its privileged status of media control and monopoly than forty years ago a revolutionary step forward in new media history, which a despite one last defiant struggle of the old tycoons – and in return participatory decade later peaked in – some call it the most important book in the history of new media is on the verge of breaking through the prevalent one-way (dimensional) media – Nelson’s book on Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Essentially, if I may say mass media information channel. At least this is the hope of those who pledge for so in regard to the complexity of his visionary thoughts, Nelson argued that com- democratisation and active engagement of the user, who is now empowered by puter experiences are media that need to be co-designed with the audience in mind means of user-friendly technology to actively take part in the making and shaping as a creative process. Most striking was his proposal to place these design processes of public opinion. in a radical, open publishing network that ought to support reconfiguration, com- In practice this would mean transforming the intimate media sphere of the parison and interconnection, which lent leeway to his ongoing project Xanadu.5 couch potatoes into a self-directed interaction with a new and responsive medium. Roy Ascott in his seminal article “The Construction of Change”6 that first ap- Although the hope for abolishment of producer and recipients (consumers) re- peared in 1964 conveys a bold statement on the interdependency of art, science mains an unfulfilled promise of new media technologies, early 20th century utopi- and education in the form of a progressive cybernetic concept in teaching learn- an expectations of a new medium for a new social system through conversion of the ing. Cybernetics, Ascott claims, is not only changing our world, it is presenting conditions of communication from passive consumption to active participation has us with qualities of experience and modes of perception which radically alter our greatly influenced recent media theory and practices (e.g. social media). In 1932 for conception of it. Science can inform art, yet the goal is not to produce a scientific example Bertolt Brecht notes: “…the radio could inarguably be the best apparatus work but to substantiate empirical findings and intuitions with profound analysis of communication in public life, an enormous system of channels – provided to and reason. Creative synthesis would then be the final stage of putting together a function not only as a sender but also as a receiver. This means making the listeners coordinating matrix of images, concepts, annotations, ideas found in the products not only listen but also speak; not to isolate them but to place them in relation to of science with an understanding of the concepts behind them. Ascott’s didactical others.”1 Art as a collective form could in Brecht’s terms revolutionise the existing concept in his work with art students puts great emphasis on individual creative social system by collectivising senders and receivers. Accordingly, every loudspeaker identity, flexible structure and arrangements within which everything can find its could potentially be used as a microphone – and as Enzensberger puts it, “every place, every individual his way (Ibid., p. 132). receiver” could be “a potential sender”.2 In 1985, Richard Stallman published “The GNU Manifesto”, which in my As a consequence of mass media critique, which pointed to the artificial sepa- opinion did not only revolutionise software culture but to a much greater extent, ration between producer and consumer, Max Neuhaus, an American pioneer of it fundamentally altered our concepts of material and immaterial good, in favour sound art in his first Public Supply project in 1966, combined a radio station with of liberating source code from any kind of ownership towards the concept of open the telephone network and created a two-way public aural space twenty miles in source. diameter encompassing New York City, where any inhabitant could join a live dia- I will thus reproduce some of his key thoughts leading to Free Software Move- logue with sound by making a phone call. Neuhaus’s project was quite remarkable ment: insofar as his approach did not purely concentrate on the inherent possibilities of new media but rather on “proposing to reinstate a kind of music which we have - You have the freedom to run the program, for any purpose. forgotten about and which is perhaps the original impulse for music in man: not - You have the freedom to modify it to suit your needs. making a musical product to be listened to, but forming a dialogue, a dialogue - You have the freedom to redistribute copies, either gratis or for a fee. without language, a sound dialogue.”3 - You have the freedom to distribute modified versions of the program, so that In 1965 Ted Nelson published the conference paper “A File Structure for the the community can benefit from your improvements.

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