This link has been bookmarked by 2 people . It was first bookmarked on 05 Jul 2007, by Ole C Brudvik.
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08 Dec 07
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05 Jul 07
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he Internet also depends on sampling, on cut/copy and paste in order to function as a network. File sharing, downloading open source software, live streaming of video and audio, sending and receiving e-mails are but a few of the activities that rely on copying, and deleting (cutting) information from one point to another as data packets. This means that cut/copy and paste is a pivotal element of Internet based art, and apply directly to the Turbulence archive.
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What is particular to Internet art is that the user plays a crucial role in activating the work, like the DJ does when s/he plays with vinyl records. The Internet user manipulates the files in the Turbulence archive in the same way the DJ manipulates the record on the turntable. Both access pre-recorded material. The seventies DJ, however, was following the tradition of hackers, because s/he was manipulating records on a machine that was originally used for passive listening. This active interaction with pre-recorded material became part of the mainstream, and we can see how the online user falls within a category in part deriving from the DJ; the user now is expected to play with the files (like a DJ with records) and not just listen or view them passively, because interaction, touching, or in the case of the online user, clicking, is now integrated into culture.
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The DJ manipulates a record and the Internet user manipulates the Turbulence archives. Metaphorically then, we can think of the Turbulence archive as a record, and like a "vinyl recording," it can develop scratches, and indeed it has, especially when we consider early works such as Not Walls (1996) by Laurel Wilson which uses Apple's Quickdraw, (5) an online interface that remixes image and text in a 3-D environment. The online work cannot be viewed because the plug-in is no longer available and the work has thus turned into an unplayable or scratched section in Turbulence's record groove.
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The Hip hop DJs improved on the skills previously developed by Disco DJs starting in the late sixties. They took beatmixing and turned it into beat juggling, which means that they played with beats and sounds, and repeated (looped) them on the turntable to create unique momentary compositions. This is known today as turntablism. This practice found its way into the music studio to become part of the tradition of sampling, and has now been extended into the culture at large with the practice of cut/copy and paste.
Loops are also essential to computer technology, for what else does the computer do but execute loops to know what it should be doing at all times? In the days before the first computers, people did calculations manually, but at one point the need to have repetitive computations performed in a more efficient way became a concrete idea. (38) And in 1945, with ENIAC, computers started to take over the role of human computers. (39) The concept of loops played a crucial role in culture at this time, as Pierre Schaeffer and Stockhausen were creating compositions consisting of loops that were performed not by humans but machines. (40) The loop in music became crucial for DJ Culture, as has already been pointed out; and DJ culture would meet digital culture in new media art, in particular Internet art. This merging is crucial to Remix, as I have demonstrated above. Let us now define Remix to understand its complex role in new media art and popular culture. -
In brief, the remix when extended as a cultural practice is a second mix of something pre-existent; the material that is mixed for a second time must be recognized otherwise it could be misunderstood as something new, and it would become plagiarism. Without a history, the remix cannot be Remix. (44)
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What the DJ did is s/he stopped the record and played with it as an instrument to create ephemeral experiences that could certainly be recorded, but which did not lose their power of representation. After each performance, the record was left as it was originally made, with obvious wear and tear, of course. The record, in terms of its future access was essentially the same after each performance. It was like a database ready to be accessed again. This is the case with all of the works that have been examined in this text, they are all ready for access from a database, and the user can "play" them, like the DJ would play records. Of course the online user, by default, does not have the same ability to alter the work as the turntablist does, given that the turntablist is essentially a hacker, but the argument here is that all of the works mentioned here can function without having the actual information lost (unless the record is scratched or the server storing the net art files crashes).
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In new media, with cut/copy and paste, the artist has the ability to sample without worrying about destroying the file from which the information was taken. Further the user who views the work understands this and knows that the copy being viewed can be accessed in the same exact way, like a record would (this is true even for new media projects, like Grafik Dynamo, which uses randomness with exactitude to present the illusion of chance to create a supposed unpredictable narrative: while text and image may not be repeated together, the algorithm presenting unrepeatable material is repeated perfectly. This type of "collage" that makes new media work possible is completely dependent on sampling, and as I have demonstrated above, sampling is the essence of Remix. This means that while H�ch, Heartfield and Duchamp shared elements of remix, their works were not remixes in the way Remix has been defined in this text with the works of Armstrong, Tippett, Stern, Neustetter, Levin and Paetzold. During their times, their works were called readymades, photo-montages and collages because the technology at that time allowed for sampling described by such terms. The basic elements of Remix found in Analog technology (the vinyl record), however, as I have shown, were already at play in their works with great accuracy.
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