In Chapter 4, Colin Lankshear and Michele Knoble describe what remixes are in these new digital literacies, as well as, what a “remix” actually is. According to Lankshear and Knoble, every artifact is a form of remix. They write “’remixing’ involves taking cultural artifacts and combining them and manipulating them into new kinds of creative blends and products,” (2011, p. 95) and also the remixing is “a necessary condition for cultural sustainability, development, enrichment, and well-being” (2011, p. 97).
Everything we know about cultures is derivative of other cultures before, and cultures before that, and so on all the way back to, who knows? Cavemen? Maybe a caveman made a spear out of sharpening a stick, and another remixed it by adding an arrowhead. The Iron Age was a remix of the Bronze Age. The Renaissance was a remix of the Dark Ages and Ancient Greece.
What I really liked about Lankshear’s and Knoble’s assessment of remixes was the Read-Only culture versus the Read-Write culture, and the Read-Write culture’s ability to remix as a means of progressing culture. They write that the Read-Only culture, or RO culture, “emphasizes the consumption of professionally produced cultural tokens or artifacts,”(2011, p. 98) meaning these cultures only read, view, or listen to cultural items, like art, performances, or music. The Read-Write, or RW culture consumes these cultural items and “wish to ‘add to the culture they read by creating and re-creating” (2011, p. 98). Or remixing.
They cite composer John Philip Sousa as a proponent of this RW culture. He said amateurism helped progress music as musicians became more practiced by replaying musical works. These musicians could then compose their own works (in remixes). However, he was against the recording, and mass production of music in player pianos and phonographs because he believed these technologies established an RO culture. People would only consume music, and none would practice it in order to reproduce it. Writing and performing music would be left to a few professionals.
Although I appreciate his argument, Sousa was wrong. Mass production of music has inspired many people to create their own music. The classic example would be a young group of aspiring musicians listening to their favorite albums, and deciding they want to be rockstars too. Today, because music, and other medias, are so proliferated through the internet, there is a massive level of amateurism.
Yet, now we have a new argument of what could deemed “music.” I imagine Sousa may struggle with understanding some of today’s genres, like Rap, Metal, or Dubstep. Perhaps he would argue that mass production, and mass consumption of music has led to a musical decay. And I’m sure everyone would agree with him in some way. We all have our preferences.
Artistic decay could also be a consequence of remixing,
as this video suggests. What do you think? Could remixing be leading to a gradual decline in the quality of art, music, etc.? Or is remixing the "cultural development, enrichment, and well-being," as Lankshear and Knowble suggest?
The War of Art, Page 87 - 118This week it was very difficult to find some parallels between the content presented in Chapter 4 of New Literacies and Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. According to the little schedule I outlined in
Week 1, I was only meant to read to page 102, but I continued a few more pages to see if there was any more content I could scrape off and apply to Lankshear’s and Knoble’s notion of remixes.
I apologize, but the best I could do is relate remixes and Pressfield’s use of quotations. In this particular section, Pressfield quotes Xenophon (an ancient Greek historian), Plato, and Agathon (an ancient Greek poet). He uses quotes from these figure’s works, and remixes them with his own writing to further push and persuade the reader of his philosophy’s ethos.
I won’t re-write these quotes – the Plato quote is particularly long – but I will conclude that using quotations from major figures is a common form of remix. For example, in a class assignment a couple semesters ago, you could say
I remixed a John F. Kennedy speech. And in that speech, JFK also uses quotations, one from William Bradford (pilgrim) and another from George Mallory (first man to climb Mt. Everest), to further push his message of traveling to the moon.
I know I may be grasping, but if the next section of The War of Art does not yield much relation to New Literacies’ Chapter 5, I may set the book aside and find a new scholarly item.
CitationsLankshear, C. & Knoble, M. (2011). New Literacies: Concepts and Theories. In New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning (3rd ed., p. 95, 97, 98). New York, New York: Open University Press.
