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Digital Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization

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Digital Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization

Michelle Knobel, Montclair State University

Colin Lankshear, James Cook University

 

http://www.coatapec.net

http://everydayliteracies.blogspot.com

 

Download Michele and Colin's paper   remix.pdf

 

Session Overview

 

Lawrence Lessig (2005: np) defines remix as “someone mixing things together, and then someone else coming along and remixing that thing they have created”.  In this sense, remix is as old as human cultures, and human cultures are themselves products of remixing. Since the late 1960s, however, originating with highly contrived forms of music remix by dancehall DJs, diverse remix practices and cultures of diverse kinds have exploded worldwide. Some familiar contemporary forms include hiphop music, fanfiction writing, photoshopping, video mashup and fan animation. Remix practices have been greatly amplified in scope and sophistication by recent developments in digital technologies. These make it possible for home-based digital practitioners to produce high touch remixes across a range of media and cultural forms. This has in turn strengthened remix culture, encouraging seemingly endless hybridizations in language, genre, content, technique and the like, and raising questions of legal, ethical, educational and cultural import. This paper will sample remix culture and address some of its most pressing issues with particular reference to literacy.

 

Presenter's Biographies

Michele Knobel is Professor of Literacy Education at Montclair State University, NJ.  Colin Lankshear’s affiliations are with James Cook University, McGill University, Central Queensland University, and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.  Colin and Michelle are co-authors of New Literacies:  Everyday Practices & Classroom Learning (2nd ed.), co-editors of A New Literacies Sampler, and co-editors of the Handbook of New Literacies.

 

Remix: the concept

•    Remix is “the practice of taking cultural artifacts and combining and manipulating them into a new kind of creative blend” (Lankshear & Knobel 2006: 105)

•    The principle of remix has always been integral to cultural development, an invisible process through which cultures grow and evolve

•    On top of this “organic process”, however, self-conscious practices of remix have become popular cultural pursuits of cultural activity. Digital technologies have vastly amplified – in terms of quality and quantity – remixing options. Today, remixing cultural resources comprises what Lessig (2004) refers to as the new “alphabet” – that is, as the new building blocks of creative writing.

•    Types of currently popular remix include:

 

  • Photoshopping remixes (e.g., Lostfrog.org)
  • Music and music video remixes (e.g., Danger Mouse’s “Grey Album” and the Grey video)
  • Machinima remixes (e.g., Machinima.com)
  • Moving image remixes (e.g., Animemusicvideo.org)
  • Original manga and anime fan art (e.g., Deviantart.com)
  • Television, movie, book remixes (e.g., Fanfiction.net)
  • Serviceware mashups (e.g., Twittervision.com)
  • Modding toys and other objects (e.g., minifig modding, artists modding designer vinyl toys)

 

Reflection on remix: the concept

•    Which of the above [or other] practices of remix are you familiar with?

•    Which of them [or others] are you aware of your students being involved in?

•    What do you know about their “relationships” to these practices – or, their investments in them – and how these compare to how they are “related to” or “invested in” formal learning?

 

The art of remix

•    Aesthetics, composition, elegance, concept/design

•    Art as graphics, moving image and animation

•    Aesthetics and appreciation

 

Reflection on the art of remix

•    What makes for good remix?

•    How do fans recognize good remix?

•    How do fans reward good remix?

•    How do remixers learn what is good remix?

 

The craft of remix

•    Remixing requires technical know-how of different kinds (e.g., how to edit moving and still images, how to create a new storyline based on existing characters, how to edit sound and splice it into a stretch of video, how to record sound digitally, how to navigate timelines and synchronize sound and image, how to convert files from one format to another, how to maximize product quality while keeping bandwidth limitations in mind, knowing what’s cool within certain groups—and what isn’t, etc.)

•    The craft of remix also includes risk-taking, experimentation, improvisation, getting around snags, developing hacks and making accidental discoveries through exploration and play.

 

Reflection on the craft of remix

•    Gee (2007: 33-34) talks about the sense of expansion and empowerment humans feel when they can manipulate powerful tools in intricate ways that extend their area of effectiveness.

 

 

  • How might this apply to remix practices?
  • How might we get from the literal tools of “remix” to the intellectual tools that come with academic forms of inquiry in the kind of way Gee describes by reference to Galileo?

 

The endlessness of remix as hybridization

•    There is no “end to remixing; each new mix—or part of this new mix—becomes a meaning-making resource or affordance for another remix.

 

Why engage with remix?

•    Cultural evolution purposes

•    Challenge to conventional “school” notions of reading and writing

•    Medium/pretext for innovation

•    Important for teachers to engage with intellectual property and copyright issues

•    Potential for deep learning

•    Taking notice of new forms of meaning making and social exchange or status

•    Educational values inherent in social practices of remix (community building, intrinsic interest/values, humor, generosity, focus on design, etc.)

 

Reflection on why engage with remix?

•    Gee (2007: 172-173) talks about education in terms of “deep learning” and says this involves moving from “learning about” to “learning to be”.

 

 

  • To what extent might non-formal popular cultural participation in remix practices be seen as a form of learning to be?
  • What aspects of such “learning to be” might apply to how we might think of best trying to engage young people in formal educational learning?
  • How might we start to think about making such connections to formal educational practice?

 

•    How well do the points Gee makes about “learning to be” mesh with your personal philosophy of education in general, and your view of literacy education specifically?

 

  • What are the main points of similarity?
  • What are the main points of difference?

 

•    How do you see the kinds of education policies that impact most directly on your work as a teacher “sitting” with the concept of trying to build bridges between non formal practices of remix and formal educational practices in the classroom?

 

Web sites showcasing some form of remix

 

•    Worth1000.com

•    Fark.com (scroll down and look for “photoshop” labels” next to entries, then click on number in parentheses beside a relevant entry)

•    Youtube.com (search for: remix, machinima, anime music video)

•    Howtodrawmanga.com (select “forums”)

•    Lostfrog.com

•    Fanfiction.net

•    Machinima.com

•    Animemusicvideo.com

•    Toriyamaworld.com/fans/manga.html

•    Templeotrunks.com/images/fan_manga/index.html

•    Hfuff.stalo.com

•    Antiwarposters.com

•    Newgrounds.com

•    Tfcog.net

•    Jedimaster.net

•    Break.com (search “remix”)

 

Supplementary reading

 

From:  Gee, J. (2007). Good Video Games + Good Learning: Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning and Literacy. New York: Peter Lang.

 

Excerpt 1, from pages 33-34

 

4. Manipulation and Distributed Knowledge

 

PRINCIPLE: As I suggested in the first part of this chapter, cognitive research suggests that, for humans, perception and action are deeply inter-connected (Barsalou 1999a, b; Clark 1997; Glenberg 1997; Glenberg & Robertson 1999). Thus, fine-grained action at a distance—for example, when a person is manipulating a robot at a distance or watering a garden via a web cam on the Internet—causes humans to feel as if their bodies and minds have stretched into a new space (Clark 2003). More generally, humans feel expanded and empowered when they can manipulate powerful tools in intricate ways that extend their area of effectiveness.

 

GAMES: Computer and video games inherently involve action at a (albeit virtual) distance. The more and better a player can manipulate a character, the more the player invests in the game world. Good games offer characters that the player can move intricately, effectively, and easily through the world. Beyond characters, good games offer the player intricate, effective, and easy manipulation of the world’s objects, objects which become tools for carrying out the player’s goals.

 

EXAMPLE: Tomb Raider, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and ICO allow such fine-grained and interesting manipulation of one’s character that they achieve a strong effect of pulling the player into their worlds. Rise of Nations allows such effective control of buildings, landscapes, and whole armies as tools that the

player feels like “god.” Prince of Persia excels both in terms of character manipulation and in terms of everything in its environment serving as effective tools for player action.

 

One key feature of the virtual characters and objects that game players manipulate is that they are “smart tools.” The character the player controls— Lara Croft, for example—knows things the player doesn’t, for instance, how to climb ropes, leap chasms, and scale walls. The player knows things the character doesn’t, like when, where, and why to climb, leap, or scale. The player and the character each have knowledge that must be integrated together to play the game successfully. This is an example of distributed knowledge, knowledge split between two things (here a person and a virtual character) that must be integrated.

 

A game like Full Spectrum Warrior takes this principle much further. In this game, the player controls two squads of four soldiers each. The soldiers know lots and lots of things about professional military practice, for example, how to take various formations under fire and how to engage in various types of group movements in going safely from cover to cover. The player need not know these things. The player must learn other aspects of professional military practice, namely what formations and movements to order, when, where, and why. The real actor in this game is the player and the soldiers blended together through their shared, distributed, and integrated knowledge.

 

EDUCATION: What allows a learner to feel that his or her body and mind have extended into the world being studied or investigated, into the world of biology or physics, for example? Part of the answer here is “smart tools,” that is, tools and technologies that allow the learner to manipulate that world in a fine-grained way. Such tools have their own in-built knowledge and skills that allow the learner much more power over the world being investigated than he or she has unaided by such tools.

 

Let me give one concrete example of what I am talking about. Galileo discovered the laws of the pendulum because he knew and applied geometry to the problem, not because he played around with pendulums or saw a church chandelier swinging (as myth has it). Yet is common for liberal educators to ask children innocent of geometry or any other such tool to play around with pendulums and discover for themselves the laws by which they work. This is actually a harder problem than the one Galileo confronted—geometry set possible solutions for him and led him to think about pendulums in certain ways and not others. Of course, today there are a great many technical tools available beyond geometry and algebra (though students usually don’t even realize that geometry and algebra are smart tools, different from each other in the way they approach problems and the problems for which they are best suited).

 

Do students in the classroom share knowledge with smart tools? Do they become powerful actors by learning to integrate their own knowledge with the knowledge built into their tools? The real-world player and the virtual soldiers in Full Spectrum Warrior come to share a body of skills and knowledge that is constitutive of a certain type of professional practice. Do students engage in authentic professional practices in the classroom through such sharing? Professional practice is crucial here, because, remember, real learning in science, for example, is constituted by being a type of scientist doing a type of science not reciting a fact you don’t understand. It is thinking, acting, and valuing like a scientist of a certain sort. It is “playing by the rules” of a certain sort of science.

 

Excerpt 2, from pages 172-173

 

14. Learning to Be

 

For years now we have attempted to speak to the literacy gap in our schools—the fact that poorer children learn to read less quickly and less well than do better off children. But modern digital technologies are opening up possibilities for new gaps on top of this old one, gaps in knowledge and in access to tech-savvy skills and identities. This is happening at the same time as our country—along with other developed countries—faces a looming creativity/innovation crisis, especially in technical areas. At the same time, fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to become scientists, engineers, or computer scientists.

 

Deep learning—learning that can lead to real understanding, the ability to apply one’s knowledge, and even to transform that knowledge for innovation—requires that we move beyond “learning about” and move to “learning to be.”62 It requires that learning be not just about “belief” (what the facts are, where they came from, and who believes them) but also strongly about “design” (how, where, and why knowledge, including facts, are useful and adequate for specific purposes and goals).

 

Deep learning requires the learner being willing and able to take on a new identity in the world, to see the world and act on it in new ways. Learning a new domain, whether physics or furniture making, requires learners to see and value work and the world in new ways, in the ways in which physicists or furniture makers do. One deep reason this is so is because, in any domain, if knowledge is to be used, the learner must probe the world (act on it with a goal) and then evaluate the result. Is it “good” or “bad,” “adequate” or “inadequate,” “useful” or “not,” “improvable” or “not”?  Learners can only do this if they have developed a value system—what Donald Schon calls an “appreciative system”—in terms of which such judgments can be made. Such value systems are embedded in the identities, tools, technologies, and worldviews of distinctive groups of people—who share, sustain, and transform then—groups like doctors, carpenters, physicists, graphic artists, teachers, and so forth through a nearly endless list. A game like S.W.A.T.4 is all about such identities and values. In playing the game, the player comes to realize that S.W.A.T. team members look at and act on the world in quite distinctive ways because of their values and goals and that these values and goals are supported by and integrally expressed through distinctive tools, technologies, skills, and knowledge. So, too, with any type of science, for instance.

 

Good video games can offer people new experiences which can be interrogated inside good learning systems. They can offer problem sets integrated, worked, modeled, and ordered in intelligent ways. They can offer identities— new shoes to stand in from which to view the world, ready for action, in distinctive

ways—connected to powerful tools, knowledge, and technologies. They can create new forms of collaboration and communities of practice. They can create new roles and enrich old ones for teachers. They can create new gaps and make old ones worse, or they can be one tool among many for us to close old gaps and forestall new ones.

 

Some additional recommended reading

 

Gee, J. (2004). Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling. London: Routledge.

 

Gee, J. (2007). Good Video Games + Good Learning: Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning and Literacy. New York: Peter Lang.

 

Goldhaber, M. (1997). The attention economy and the net. First Monday. firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_4/goldhaber (accessed 28 April 2007)

 

Knobel, M. and Lankshear, C. (eds.) (2007). A New Literacies Sampler. New York: Peter Lang. 

 

Note: Page proofs for A New Literacies Sampler can be accessed free online at: http://www.soe.jcu.edu.au/sampler/

 

Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2006). New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Classroom Learning. 2nd edition. Maidenhead and New York: Open University Press.

 

Lessig, L. (2004). Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin.

 

 

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