Author: abarker21

This is a defense of the remix intended to enlighten as to its pervasiveness and inevitable/infinite nature. The progression of society necessitates the remix– it drives human culture throughout history. Music is a medium where the remix has garnished the most disdain and criticism, but why are we not as critical about “stealing” when it comes to film? Directors, like musicians, copy shots and themes from their favorite movies almost identically at times (i.e. Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Lucas’ Star Wars). How many different Batman movie versions have been made? Painters, authors, poets, inventors all remix as well.  Anyone who does anything new and breaks conventions will encounter criticism. Writing was once scoffed at. We can bask in the aura of authenticity and appreciate subsequent remixes simultaneously.

I tried to make this video a remix in itself. I used Adobe After effects to manipulate text, images, and sound. I remixed many original sounds found online and examples from popular media. I added visual and sound effects to add uniqueness. In keeping with the idea of the remix as a democratizing force I used many sound effects from “freesound.org”. This is an open-source community that records sounds and allows you to download for free. Myself and many others regularly use this resource to remix personal videos, songs, projects, etc. The ease of access to these sound files accelerates the proliferation of varied artistic mosaics throughout the internet. Hopefully, the multimodal aspect of the video excites the senses somewhat, tickling the viewer’s brain into thinking in slightly different ways. The importance of the remix is to help imagine what is possible, to avoid stagnation, and to maximize human potential.  

credits

remix intro – missy elliot (remixed by me)
the beatles – “i wanna hold your hand” and (ogan dalka remix)
stephen foster – “beautiful dreamer” (delay remix by me)
star wars opening theme
random sound effects – freesound.org
mac startup noise

Describe how the multimodal design of “The Medium is the Massage” expresses the ideas in McLuhan’s text. What is McLuhan saying about the difference between print culture and the new electric culture of television and mass media? In what ways do Manovich’s 5 principles of “new media” extend McLuhan ideas about how media shapes us? What about these principles have an effect on social interaction and/or cultural production? In what ways are media and culture being reshaped and transformed by the logic of the computer?

“The Medium is the Massage” is a graphical representation of McLuhan’s  “medium is the message” thesis. It is done in an experimental mosaic style, combining text with visuals. His argument is that technologies (or the medium) are in themselves the message and that the actual content of conversation is not as important.

 According to McLuhan, print media culture is more of a “hot media” meaning there is less engagement, favoring one sense, and has a single, linear point of view. The new electric culture of mass/social media falls into the “cool media” category, which has a more social aspect with multiple points of view in play, and relies on more using more senses to digest and process information. It’s more expansive, open to interpretation, less singularly directed.

Manovich’s 5 principles of “new media” extends on McLuhan’s ideas:

• Numerical representation 
  New media is digitized by mathematical equations done by computers. Numerical sequences are manipulated to create sounds, color, text, video, etc. A physical painting is transferred into the digital realm through these complex equations and is seen in a new way through a makeup of pixels/light emissions.
• Modularity
  New media is highly adaptable, alterable, scalable, easily remixed, etc. Being broken down into pixels allows things to be easily arranged in a seemingly infinite amount of ways.
• Automation
  Much of the creative process is now streamlined by computed perfection. Mess up on a mechanical typewriter and canvas painting and you must start over. Mess up on a digital format and you can easily undo the action or change it into something else non-destructively. Different techniques can be applied, unapplied, reapplied through a computer’s help, which takes a lot of the grunt work away from the creative and allows for higher variety, output, and creative possibilities.
• Variability
  New media is never really fixed. It can be chopped and screwed into many different forms. Its modular-ness allows for infinite possibility and different ways perceive.
• Transcoding
  One of McLuhan’s points: the medium is (part of) the message. New media is created on, distributed by, stored through computers. The computer’s handling of the media can affect its cultural understanding. Networks of highly varied information are being built. Billions of user’s computers connect to this network and shape it over time. Different meanings are being attributed and interconnected all the time.

Hi, I’m Adam Barker. I’m majoring in DTC.

This is my first term at WSU. I recently graduated from the PCC Multimedia certificate program. I work with a variety of multimedia mediums. My main passion is 3D modeling and animation, but I have experience with game design, music production through Ableton Live, VR design using the Unity game engine, video editing, many Adobe Suite programs like Photoshop and Illustrator, etc.

I use a PC mainly for creating artwork and playing games, but I use a Macbook for classes and internet browsing.

Looking forward to learning more and discussing with everyone in class!