Remix Culture

Great documentary featuring Girl Talk, Lessig and a few others who want to foster a society that isn't controlled by corporate law, but rather embraces creativity fueled by past culture.

Remix Manifesto
1. Culture always builds on the past
2. The past always tries to control the future
3. Our future is becoming less free.
4. To build free societies you must limit the control of the past.

Remix

DJ's like Fatboy Slim have pioneered the music remix and Girl Talk has built a successful career on it. It's a huge part of video culture too because remixing is an entertaining way to make anything just a bit more ridiculous. It's also a forum for creativity because remixers pair audio samples with all sorts of visuals. Faris recently hired Eclectic Method for the NYC Twestival. They are the fore-fathers of mash-up have been affecting the way we experience media since back in the day. The most recent example of this phenomenon is a meltdown Christian Bale had on-set. It didn't take long for the Bale remixes to pour in.

It's interesting because we love to tell stories, extrapolate and exaggerate; and remixing is great for just that. But it's bigger than an entertaining video. This story is about driving creativity. I'm a proponent of the philosophy that good ideas come from good ideas. Well I guess I picked that up from Lawarance Lessig. He is well know for fighting for remix culture because new ideas come from remixing old ones. His book frames the problem as "a war between an old read-only culture, in which media megaliths sell copyrighted music and movies to passive consumers, and a dawning digital read-write culture, in which audiovisual products are freely downloaded and manipulated in an explosion of democratized creativity." So I guess the question is how do we promote an environment that encourages the rapid progression of ideas instead of stymiing it?

Lessig remixed on Colbert



Lessig @ TED



Christian Bale Melt-down Remixed