I recently watched “everything is a remix”, a series by Kirby Ferguson under a recommendation by a friend. The whole series focused on conveying the idea that nothing is entirely new, and how creativity as the front picture of this article suggested is built upon copy, transform and combine.
The series is broken into 4 parts. The first and second part used the music and movie industry as a relatable reference to most people to convey the main idea that remixing existed even in the pieces of artworks that we deem as innovative and creative. The third part went on talking about the elements of creativity through the lenses of inventions such as computer and graphic interface and showed that these innovations doesn’t come into being through one try out of some vacuum. These are actually the results of accumulated efforts through the process of copying and transforming and combing. The final part was a reflection on the social implication of intellectual property laws on creativity.
The whole series go along well with the topics and projects that we have been exploring throughout the course. It’s interesting to think where the line is. When Barbara Kruger takes on photographs from other people to make her extremely stylistic artwork, at which point do we start to define her work as original? In regard to our dada composite, how many pictures collage together do we start to become designer or artiest instead of an appropriator? The ultimate question: could we conjure a whole world inside our head without influences?
Taking a step back, maybe as the series suggest, everything is a remix. Maybe the only way we could define creativity from merely copycatting is the finesse and effort in this curating act and execution. Quentin Tarantino might be the most well-known and careful curator, seamlessly taking pieces of elements from various movies and incorporating them in one scene, but within this curating act, he created a style, a unique one that we could identify as his and only his. It’s almost like biology, taking two pieces of DNA and somehow, we got a whole new person.
Another point I always ponder upon is that under the assumption that everything is a remix, do people with the most access to knowledge have an advantage of becoming a creative person? The more sources and references you have, the more you could remix from. How much does this access to knowledge prevent less privileged people from creative endeavors?
Bringing the focus of this blog a bit back to the reality, I would finish it off with a discussion of the final part of the series, which is about the concept of intellectual property. The series argue that such law is on some level bad for creativity. I could definitely relate. There are times that I got inspired by something, say like a tv series I watched, and decided to write a song. In these cases, I often wish to sample the lines from the show as a part of the song, but I would run into so many issues regarding copyright laws. I took a whole class on this topic in my undergraduate year, but still found it hard to navigate in real life. Usually, I give up sampling the original audio and record a similar version instead as a resort, but in a way, I feel like the work lost some essence right there. It’s almost as if the work couldn’t proudly claim its heritage. On the other hand, I am well aware of the effort in creating, and it is definitely unfair for people to just simply copy and paste because for creative work, the most time and effort seems to be in the ideas, not the execution, and intellectual property law recognizes such effort. Where is the line of protecting creativity and inspiring creativity?
A good series make you think, and “everything is a remix” is definitely one of these. It is also well remixed of contents by its own nature, so I would definitely suggest looking into it if you have free time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc
