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Appropriation

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What is digital appropriation? More fundamentally, what is appropriation? It is the unauthorized taking of something by someone and reuse of it in a different context. It is not the same as theft or stealing. But what’s the difference? The rule of scarcity certainly plays a part. The notion that if someone steals a car, the original owner no longer has the car. It is a rivalrous object. Whereas if a song is appropriated, a sample reused in another context, the original song is still intact and as available as before the appropriation took place. It is non-rivalrous. Taking, copying and reusing the song does not affect the availability of the ‘original’. There are decisions that must be made and taken into consideration when something is being appropriated. The word ‘repurposing’ is integrally linked with appropriation. The intimation is that by appropriating an object, the appropriator is making an ethical decision to put the object where they believe it rightfully belongs.
Perhaps the most well know example of appropriation is the story of Robin Hood, who would ‘steal from the rich to give to the poor.’ A moral judgment that is certainly open to debate. Robin appropriated money from the those that he felt came into possession of it through corruption, injustice, under-handedness and repurposed it by putting it into the hands of the ‘poor’ who had no way of coming into possession of the money themselves and who Robin felt were oppressed and taken advantage of by the rich. Certainly an objective observer could look at the situation and see that it was not fair – unequal – the rich were far better placed than the poor. But it is questionable whether Robin’s actions can be justified or considered right or wrong. Morally, from his perspective, he felt that a greater wrong than his appropriation and repurposing of the money was being instigated by the rich on the poor through their own appropriation via taxes of any measly money the poor may have had. So in a sense, he was merely returning the money to its rightful owners. The rich stole from the poor first, so Robin was simply returning the money to where it should have been in the first place. From this perspective, his apparently illegal actions appear justified, if bordering on vigilantism and clearly the lesser of two evils.
Money is an interesting one. Can money be owned? If you are in possession of €50, do you own it? It is utterly useless unless you can exchange it for something else. It is meta in this sense – it sits on top of fundamental ‘properties’. Music is similar. Music cannot be owned. It is useless unless someone listens to it. An mp3 file never listened to is utterly valueless, although we may say that it has the potential to be listened to. There is a lot more that needs to be said on appropriation.

Tactical Media

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Tactical Media is a term popularized by Geert Lovink and David Garcia in the mid 1990s. It refers to media art activism that makes use of popular media forms and distribution platforms to convey messages of critique or intervention in a wide range of social issues, political issues, any kind of perceived injustices or unethical, unacceptable behavior. Originally termed ‘Tactical Television’, it was an attempt to categorise the use of new media technologies as a means of protest and intervention – alternative media practices such as pirate TV stations, pirate radio, underground newsletters, flyers, video cassette recordings etc. You would need to consider Tactical Media in relation to the entire history of media, media theory, culture (media and cultural studies) to gain a full and complete understanding of what we’re talking about here. The term Tactical Media became a necessary label, as a dramatic increase in the production of this kind of work became apparent as the 1990s unfolded. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a dramatic drop in the cost of media production technologies. Why? Video cameras, microphones, recording equipment, TVs, monitors, editing software, computers – the digitization of media made if at once more affordable and more accessible to a greater number of people than ever before, as well as more malleable.
Where does the ‘Tactical’ come into it? An academic angle in terms of tactics and strategies, military discourse – Clauswitz – it was felt that Tactical Media works were short-term, short form, reactionary, almost like Guerilla warfare – observe an attack, react by attacking with stealth and then disappear into the night without a trace. Many Tactical Media interventions took this form – from Electronic Civil Disobedience, where thousands of users would access a website simultaneously in order to overload its servers, to the kind of temporary deceptions instigated by the likes of the Yes Men – fake websites, fake lectures, speeches, interviews, videos, etc. all designed in the semiotic language of popular mainstream media, to make them appear indistinguishable from so-called ‘real’media. This is a key point. What can we truly believe? How much of what the media says is actually ‘true’? In most cases, Tactical Media seeks to expose hidden truths – to unravel complex lies woven by politicians, corporations and mainstream media, advertising and authoritative journalism. Tactical Media evolved with the technology and eventually became a parody of itself, hijacked by art galleries, sponsored by multinational corporations – a cynical attempt to appear edgy and to appeal to the emerging market demographic of rebellious prosumers / produsers.

Elevator Pitch

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An attempt at distilling the core of my research enquiry as a value proposition or elevator pitch style summary. If someone asks ‘what is your PhD about’? How do I answer? I’m researching the implications of ‘remixing’ copyrighted audio visual material to produce political statements. What am I trying to find out? To what extent may producing political remixes be considered ethical behavior? The act of producing political remix work, a more recent form of ‘Tactical Media’ – where is the line? In Western Culture – in Eastern Culture? What is acceptable in the USA and Europe may not be acceptable in China or the Middle East. What is the Spectrum? Totally unacceptable behavior on one side, completely acceptable behavior on the other. Balance in the middle. This deals with censorship – who are we talking about? Who decides? There is no classification system for online videos. A cartoon of Mohammed is considered offensive enough to warrant the execution of the cartoonist.
Political remix may be considered in similar terms. If someone creates a remix highlighting the behavior of a multinational corporation, the subject of the piece will not be happy about it. The copyright holders of the material used may not be happy with the image they are being associated with and loyal consumers of the company’s products and services may not be happy with how they are being portrayed. The intended message of each specific remix must also be considered – the remixer is taking an ethical stance, saying it is unethical or even wrong that such and such a person did or continues to do such and such a thing, yet how does the remixer end up on the moral high ground? What qualifies the artist to pass judgment on the multinational corporation, the US army, Muslims or anyone else for that matter? What is the threshold for unacceptable behavior? Should there be such a threshold? How can ‘acceptable behaviour’ be enforced? How is any individual or group better placed than any other to make claims about what anyone should or should not be allowed to do or say? Is it a case of majority rules? Or do some people now better than others? Should a small elite be allowed to make decisions for what they think is best for the unwashed masses? Is Political Remix an effective tool in effecting change?

Political Remix

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Speaking from an authoritarian position – what is political remix? ‘Remix’ is a form of media production whereby disparate fragments of culture, often in the form of audio-visual samples, are edited together to produce a coherent whole, whose meaning exceeds or differs from any of the source material and stands alone as a finished piece of artwork in itself. Examples of remix emerged in the mainstream music scene through DJ and hip hop culture where music producers would weave new tapestries together using samples from different songs or audio soundtracks. More recently we have seen many more examples of video remix, where both audio and video content may be remixed in a single piece. Perhaps the primary quality of importance is the fact that the meaning of the piece itself is being remixed. Meaning, of course, is subjective to a degree. What the producer of the work was trying to communicate may not be what is understood by the end viewer/user. In many ways, such works are akin to advertising, a form of visual communication. The producer has a message they want to deliver to an audience. They wrap this message up in a clever remix, which stimulates the user on multiple levels, one of which is the primary message intended by the producer.
But there are also many other messages and meanings (layers of meaning) and symbolism wrapped up in each particular combination of footage, music and imagery which may trigger memories or have connotations far beyond the intended effect of the producer, in many different contexts. Of course, the producer may not have a clear message in mind either, beyond the aesthetic pleasure of combining two or more sets of sounds and images that would not ordinarily be placed together. In the case of Political Remix, in most cases that is, the producer or production team generally has a clear message they wish to communicate using the remix piece as a vehicle to deliver this message to a specific audience. Most political remixes are critiques of power structures, highlighting injustices or calls to action, to boycott companies or individuals or join in protest movements. It is a form of protest, criticism, propaganda in many cases using the media in whatever form it may be consumed by most malleable minds. Political remixes may be posters, magazines, radio / tv spots, mini-documentaries, any kind of audio-visual media. Websites, games. The key point again is that disparate source material has been recombined in the creation of a work with new meaning(s).