#10 I represent that CHANGE!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ-hPNrKdZI

This remix is called "Head of the State," and it is performed by the Obama impersonator Baracka Flocka Flame.  It is a remix of a song titled "hard in the Paint" by rapper Waka Flocka Flames.

The remix I chose clearly demonstrates what Lessig said on page 42, "If the twentieth century made culture generally accessible, the twenty-first will make it universally accessible." It mostly exemplifies this quote because of how I was able to obtain it. There are more and more social media sites that focus on video and sound that we are able to access everyday. Sites such as Youtube, Vimeo and others are making it possible for people to get past copyright laws because people are able to take any video and "remix" it to create whatever they want it to be like. Even if they dont use the original video at all people are able to create there own visions and put their remixed video on these social media sites that literally anyone with internet access can listen to. This is just the beginning for what these sites are becoming.  Sites like these take away a huge part of the RO culture that large companies attempt to create.

I know this may contradict a part what I just said I could not help but realize how true this remix makes Lessigs statement on page 49, "And the RO culture that digital technologies will support will provide lots of new ways for content producers to make money."  Video's like these help these content producers to make money because of what these sites are for them. In a way sites like Youtube are the new age MTV for a lot of people.  The ability to create channels on these sites gives these companies reason to still produce music videos.  Yes I do know that MTV does have other channels that directly focus on music but the original MTV has become something that many of us have come to call "reality TV," something I myself am not very fond of.  These sites have made it possible for content producers to make money from advertisements, massive view counts and keeping people coming back for more just because they know its there. Another reason that my video exemplifies this so much is because the artist from the real video actually contacted Baracka Flocka Flame and they have now worked together to create other videos.  The use this awesome character making people, including myself, watch it over and over again which is exactly what these content consumers want. Its an unclassified RW culture that they can still make money from.

The last idea that I see in my video that Lessig points out is when he is talking about the Bush and Blair video. The quote in particular is on page 74, "And no one can escape its mimetic effect. This video is a virus; once it enters your brain you can't think about Bush and Blair in the same way again."  I think my remix video does the same thing to Obama's social image. Yes, everyone knows this video is not really Obama.  But Young Americans who dont know much about Obama moat likely see Obama in a different light after watching this video of a man impersonating him. The fact that it is a entertaining remix strengthens the possibility that a lot of people are going to see it, Just under 5 million people plus the amount of people who have watched the copies of it that are on Youtube as well. The Youtube RW culture as we know it has a new market for videos like these and there is no telling the impact that they could have on some people and their view on the real people that they depict.

#9 Copyright Catastrophe

     In the introduction to Lawrence Lessig’s book, Remix, he points how incredibly absurd and “out of date” copyright laws are and how companies today are able to take credit for what they had a hand in creating. Lessig shows this in a very real way and goes into an example of how that type of authority presses charges in the places that sell Girl Talk music but not pursue Girl Talk himself. If Girl Talk was prosecuted by the vast amount of artists whose work he has used it would be taking away from the creativity of what he made those songs into the art that he creates. Doc Adam touched on this by saying that no song is original in its self.  Lessig gives one last example of how one of those ‘groups’ went after a mother that created a homemade video and posted it to the internet which was obviously made for her child. The prosecution ended up costing the ‘group’ more than what it was worth to prosecute the women. Another example of how things are getting out of hand with copyright laws and how companies are dealing with them in a ridiculous way.

RW (Read/Write) - ordinary citizens “read” their culture by listening to it or by reading representations of it...add to the culture they read by creating and re-creating the culture around them. They do this by using the same tools the professional uses...” (28).

RO (Read/Only) - “a culture less practiced in performance, or amateur creativity, and more comfortable (think: couch) with simple consumption” (28).

     The simple difference between these two is that one (RO) is just for experiencing and not changing or expanding on what that thing may be. The other (RW) is out there for people to experience and have the ability to put their own twist and creativity into to make something new and original. The reason Lessig brings this up is because it is basically the bulk of what he is talking about. They are two underlying labels that are put onto songs, etc. that say just listen to it, or listen to it and play around with it and see what best works for your, the viewers, personal taste and creativity.

     Lessig uses Sousa because of Sousa’s own battle against copying music back in 1906.  Sousa was a critic of copyright law in America and we was also a proclaimed composer who made a good chunk of change being a composer with copyrights on his work.  He had an insight that the voice of machines would be the downfall to music as we know it. His point was that people would eventually live in a RO culture, people would be able to listen, but not expand on the subject and participate in its entirety. Sousa is a good person for Lessig to bring up because of what he had to say about the copyright problems and what he has done for them.

Rhythmic Cinema - "If you play, you get something out of the experience" (85).  I really like this quote a lot and know how true these words really are. In the world of art, when learning to use new mediums and objects the best way to get familiar with them is to play with them and see what happens when different things are done to them. With hip hop this is relevant because a lot of great artists 'play' around with different beats and mixes to come up with what they are looking for. Sometimes the best art comes from things just being 'played' around with.

Rhythmic Space - "Speaking in code, we live in a world so utterly infused with digitality that it makes even the slightest action ripple across the collection of data bases we call the web" (89).  DJ Spooky is saying that we live in a world that is almost totally engulfed in in the digital world.  Communication barriers are broken so that information is so easily widespread that even the information that we do not want has the possibility of reaching us because of how connected we all are in digital media.  He also notes on the end how each of those programs (facebook, blogs, twitter, etc.) are interlinked and each program has a part that can be linked to others. An example of this would be the # like we use on twitter (#dtc356).

Errata Erratum - "Rhythm becomes the context for the performance and the artist becomes part of the sonic palette he describes" (97).  I think this comes across as a very smart quote. It is saying that the underlying rhythm is the first thing that is noticed by the viewer. Also that after the song is made and heard by other people. It leaves a lasting impression on them that directly relates to the artist. In short, the artist becomes the song during and after the song is heard.

The Future is Here - "It's almost exactly a social approximation of the way web culture collapses distinctions between geography and expression, and it's almost as if the main issues of the day are all about how people are adjusting to the peculiarity of being in a simultaneous yet unevenly distributed world" (105).  The first part of this quote explains how, like in the first quote that I chose, geographical barriers are broken down in the digital world.  A persons can express whatever they like and have someone half way around the world understand them and possibly even react to what their words are saying. The second half talks about how people are able to so many different lives (facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.) and still be able to maintain each of them individually.

The Prostitute - "You can never play a record the same way for the same crowd. That's why remixes happen" (113).  This quote basically speaks for itself. If an artist performs the same song twice during a concert the crowd would not react in the same way. They would probably even act the exact opposite way and things would come out badly for the artist.  I think that the same thing goes for digital media. Too much of the same thing and people start to become uninterested and bored with the product.  It it is the same thing but slightly altered to make it different and better there will be a positive reaction. Much like how Facebook took over the world that myspace created. I think that Coldplay is a good example for this because almost all of their music basically sounds the same but each song is slightly altered so that it is different from the rest but it still sounds good. (Dont get me wrong, I do enjoy Coldplay from time to time but you have to admit almost all of their songs sound very similar.)

On the website, www.whosampled.com, I searched for Wiz Khalifa.  Seeing how he is a fairly new artist I did not expect to find much on him from the description of what the website does.  After searching for him I found that he has 62 samples, 2 remixes and 5 covers.  I went looking through the website a little bit and found some really cool stuff about who has sampled his songs and found a couple of really cool covers to his latest hit, "Black and Yellow," one of which was a rock cover.  All of the different parts of the website including samples, covers,and remixes reminded me of my last quote from miller the 'The Prostitute' chapter about how people want something different after they have already heard the origional. People are always expecting new and improved songs to come out whether that be just including samples from other songs or an epic dubstep, techno, crazy remix.  It does make me wonder how much of a sample/remix is too much of the original to where copyrights come into play. This is a very cool site though!