SCENE 2013 Video Montage!

Here is a short montage of a few videos and photos I took at SCENE. If you want to know more about what bands played or where you can find their music leave a comment!
NOTE: The music is loud in this video so check that you have your speakers turned down a little if you don't want to be startled. 

Module 4: In Summation

In lieu of a summative post (due to having no comments) I’m going to give a “reflective” post on “Copy, Transform, Combine,” while also sharing some of my experiences and observations from this past Sunday’s S.C.E.N.E Music festival. 

In my post “Copy, Transform, Combine” I stated my opinion of the importance of culturally common materials that have low production costs. Having stated this I reflect on it now and I realize that this is a very broad and general statement that has many issues. First and foremost – my statement assumes that cultural products with low production costs are not worth paying for and this is not true. However small in value, it does still hold value and this is not to be overlooked. But I do affirm my point that there needs to be some sort of culturally common material to be used as building blogs. 

Now switching the pace – a common thing that I observed during the SCENE music festival this past weekend was the use of cover songs by bands. There are many things that could be said about this. I think that bands use cover songs during their live sets to keep the audience intrigued and to connect with them. With an audience member who may not be familiar with a band’s songs and may experience their performance with less enthusiasm because of this, a cover of a song offers a new connection between listener and band. Now I am not familiar with the copyright laws regarding the use of cover songs during live shows. But it would be my assumption of logic that because nothing is being recorded (intentionally) by the band that it would be free to do.

So doesn’t the sampling of other band or artists song have the same concept of playing a cover live? Kind of like my suggestion of allusions and intertextuality in literature? It creates a connection with the consumer/producer based on material that is KNOWN to be someone else’s. Isn’t that how knowledge and ideas are circulated? This is why culturally common material is fundamentally needed, and this is why I believe that copyright laws on music should be loosened and the boundaries of prosecution redefined.

"Copy, Transform, Combine"

Remember back to high school English for a moment. Recall the terms such as allusion, or intertextuality - these terms are attached to literary works that reference other texts to create meaning, whether it is direct or implied. And these are commonly accepted scholarly concepts that have been engrained in our minds from a very young age. It is culturally acceptable to allude to another person’s writing, and it is recognized and supported by literary communities. Literature is a remix!

So why does the distribution and remix of cultural products online pose so many issues? We've been doing it for hundreds of years through published literature!

Kirby Ferguson`s videos (Everything's a Remix) raises the key point of market economics. This is in my opinion the dominant cause of all sample and patent lawsuits. In short, it all comes down to greed. Jenkins also focuses largely on the market economics of online cultural content distribution, although his is a less “greed” themed argument and takes a “struggling” tone, empathizing with both producers and consumers.
Jenkins is justified and balances his arguments in favour of both sides of the producer consumer spectrum, and I think that this is important. In order to have “freely accessible cultural commons,” we need to understand how we are consuming, and how material is being given to us.

In order for fully accessible cultural commons, I think that producers of cultural products need to redefine the monetary value placed on them. It is widely known by consumers that movies, for example, have extremely high production costs, and therefore consumers justify their purchase of movie theatre admissions or DVD purchases this way. Conversely, an internet blogger wishing to use a photo that is relevant to their writing would not value the photo in the same way one values a movie. Therefore, I argue that low production cost material or no production cost material SHOULD be made culturally common. Because without the building blocks for cultural production, such as photos, sound bytes, short video clips, fan fiction, etc. etc. etc., there is no way for culture to evolve. It’s just what Kirby Ferguson stated in his system failure video: “Copy, transform, combine.”

 References:

Everything is a Remix Part 4 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Jenkins, H. (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence  International Journal of Cultural Studies March 2004 7: 33-43