Module 2 - Creative Project

Go Viral

tl;dr: Appropriate existing online content to create a sound or video piece that you think could go viral. Create either a remix, mashup or supercut (time-based media) and share it online. Document and reflect on the response to your project.

Due Date: Monday, Oct 10, 9pm (see full timeline)

Gallery Pool: Go Viral

Brief and Goals

As part of this project, you’re going to experiment remixing and spreadability. You’ll be asked to consider how you can rework existing footage (from YouTube, movies, songs or other sources) into something new. If you’re in the sound labs, you’re going to create an audio remix. And if you’re in the visual labs you’re going to create a video remix.

Specifically, the goals will be to:

You’re going to need to ask two things:

  1. How do I make a interesting remix?
  2. How can I use the internet to make sure it is seen?

In terms of the remix, you have the latitude to interpret this broadly, but it may be helpful to focus on one type of remix that you find most interesting to experiment with.

A “remix is the reworking or adaptation of an existing work. The remix may be subtle, or it may completely redefine how the work comes across. It may add elements from other works, but generally efforts are focused on creating an alternate version of the original.” *

The remix is generally focused on a single principle piece of content that is reworked in some way. A good example of this would be reducing political debates into just the moments of silence, reordering a movie to alphabetize the words spoken by actors, to sequences the scenes by color or reorganize them like making Memento chronological, recutting movie trailers, or making rap from TED Talks.

“A mashup, on the other hand, involves the combination of two or more works that may be very different from one another.” *

A mashup is generally lots of samples that are masterfully interwoven to create something new and distinctive. There’s lots of examples of this in the audio domain and particularly in pop and electronic music e.g. Girl Talk. Another great example is The Grey Album by Danger Mouse, a mashup of Jay Z’s The Black Album with The Beatles’ The White Album. Johan Söderberg’s ‘Read My Lips: Bush and Blair’ edits news footage to make it appear as though world leaders were singing pop songs. Wreckandsalvage’s Call and Response explores imitation (the repetition of a melody in a polyphonic texture) as a structure for remixing adverts. Cory Arcangel’s Arnold Schoenberg’s, Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11-I played by cats on pianos blends footage of cats from YouTube into a performance.

A supercut is a “genre of video meme, where some obsessive-compulsive superfan collects every phrase/action/cliche from an episode (or entire series) of their favorite show/film/game into a single massive video montage.” *

A supercut is a much more thematic combination of media into a mashup. Typically a supercut explores a single thing found in multiple sources (often movies or TV) and brings them together to give a perspective on it’s prevalence or more often than not it’s overuse. Most focus on overused dialogue, themes, motifs, filmmaking techniques. Examples include the phases like “Get out of there”, “It’s showtime”, “Let’s enhance” or the word ‘What’ on TV’s Lost. But it can also include many more thought provoking examples like: Leigh Singer’s exploration of Breaking the Fourth Wall, Vugar Efendi’s analysis of art meeting film, Celia Gómez’s visual exploration of the first and final Frames of well known TV series, Candice Drouet’s touching Last Words a story told through The Last Words From 129 Films she’s watched, and more politised perspectives like Obama’s references to spending. If you’re working with a supercut make sure you fix your theme early and make sure you’ve enough content to make it work.

Whether you choose a remix, mashup or supercut, try to take a critical or tactical approach to the content you produce. Think artfully about the intent behind your remix: what are you trying to say? does it have a point to make? is it recontextualising something familiar and to what end? Keep in mind the discussion of what makes good spreadable media: it either responds to something in the world, society or culture or it’s expressive, beautiful nonsense that delights and entertains. You’re free to choose either, but think about what you make; don’t just make something for the sake of it.

Keep the spreading part in mind. It’s easy to overlook this and think it’s as simple as putting it on Vine, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Twitter and Facebook. In fact it’s the hardest part. You’ll need to think about how you can get people to see your work and value it enough to share it. Spread and sharing happens differently across each platform . Do you want to share your outcome on lots or focus on spreading through one community? Remember that there’s also over 30 people in the class who will be sharing content at the same time and your social networks might overlap; if so you’ll be competing for eyeballs on your work. But if you plan carefully, you can engineer large spread and visibility for your work. You’ll need to investigate strategies for this and propose uncommon ways to reach audiences with your creative work.

Learning Objectives

In this exercise, you’ll explore internet art, spreadable media and remix culture. Specifically, you are asked to:

  1. Become familiar with the design of remixed media through applied exploration;

  2. Develop you skills in making connections across media and content and across art movements.

  3. Study, investigate and test the relationship between remix culture and spreadable media;

  4. Acquire new skills or knowledge of new media tools and workflows for creating remixes, mashups and supercuts;

  5. Explore how media spreads by putting your media out into the world.

Considerations and Constraints

Constraints:

Considerations:

Deliverables

You are asked to deliver five things for this exercise:

  1. Remix: The final digital remix that you have created.
  2. Statement: An artist’s statement of the intent and ideas that drove the creation of the work (approx 100 words).
  3. Response: Document the spread and response to the content.
  4. Narrative A description of the manner in which you approached the project, the process you followed and the strategies you used to translate the work
  5. Reflection: A critical reflection on outcome and it’s success. This would mirror the approach you took for the looking out exercise.

Process and Timeline

Approaches, Inspiration and Methods

There are countless ways you could approach this project. Check the resource sections for lots of other places to look.

A starting point… Getting an Idea a.k.a. The Remix Method #1

Kirby Ferguson author of ‘Everything is a Remix’ provides some insight on how to approach remixing.

The 4 Steps to Getting an Idea (The Remix Method #1)

Another incredibly helpful things to do before you start this project is to watch/listen to other remixes that you want to emulate. Think about are they made and what tools and techniques they use.

Beyond this seek out guides, tutorials and tools on making your kind of content. For example,

Audio Remixes/Mashups

Supercuts

Examples

For a phenomenal list of remixes, look at Cut Up an exhibition of remixes across: supercuts, recut trailers, political parody, songifications, music video mashups, trackjacking, recomposing, and vidding (click each header for examples).

Remixes

Erik Bünger. The Allens - A sound and video installation where a computer program continuously changes between the different vocal incarnations of Woody Allen.

Jesse England. Staring Newscasters. Utilizes extensive use of matte technology to re-direct the actions displayed by local news reporters. The hour-long broadcast has been transformed into a 90 second drama about the boredom of the local news, and the desire of the newcasters to be elsewhere.

wreckandsalvage. Call and Response.

Johan Söderberg (2002). Read My Lips: Bush and Blair

Sidebar: Also look at the user’s full set of content. It contain’s a “history of Subversive Remix Video before YouTube: Thirty Political Video Mashups Made between World War II and 2005”

Special Report - by Bryan Boyce (1999) Remix artist Bryan Boyce combines appropriated footage from CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC news broadcasts with audio from classic 1950s sci-fi and horror movies to make the anchors deliver a message of electronic hypnosis and impending doom. The remix is made particularly convincing by a technique Boyce uses called ‘stunt mouths,’ in which he films someone lip-synching the dialog, then pastes the mouth onto the face of a mass media figure.

Guerrilla News Network (2002). S-11 Redux: (Channel) Surfing the Apocalypse. Directed by Steven Marshall. It pulls from over 20 hours of television footage recorded over a 1-month period and across 13 networks to challenge the messages emanating from mainstream media news networks about the US government’s war on terror.

Sidebar: find more examples of pre-YouTube subversive and political remixes and mashups in this article

Emily Danchik. TEDraps — Religion. A computationally generated rap, made from TED talks.

Mashups

Chris Beckman’s oops. Appropriated YouTube video. 2009. Concept by Billy Rennekamp

Barack Obama Singing Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen

A pre-processed and triple-layered Superbowl commercial sandwich made with 90% lean bear and puppy meat, slathered with dreams and power and guaranteed to change your world.

Cory Arcangel - Arnold Schoenberg, op. 11 - I - Cute Kittens

Pogo’s Lead Breakfast - a Pulp Fiction Mashup

Pogo and Skye’s Time Machine - a Back To The Future Mashup

Sidenote: Check out Pogo’s YouTube channel which includes Bloom a patchwork of vocals and musical chords from various Disney films, Jaaam a fresh prince mashup, Boo Bass and Upular

Kutiman - Thru You Too - GIVE IT UP

Sidebar: Kutiman’s insanely viral ThruYou Project weaves various samples from amateur YouTube performances. Worth a look.

Supercuts

The definitive list can be found at http://waxy.org/2008/04/fanboy_supercuts_obsessive_video_montages/. The Creator’s project has an extensive catalog and Kottke.org maintains a great list too.

Christian Marclay’s The Clock - 0.04 pm

Chuck Jones’s 50+1: An American Collection (1999-2003)

Loveline Questions (2002) from Four Isolation Studies by Chuck Jones - audio supercuts that extract specific phrases or aspects of speech from radio and television content.
Here are all of the questions asked by the show's hosts during one two hour episode of "Loveline," the radio advice show. The questions were separated out, filed by host (first Adam Corolla, then Dr. Drew Pinsky) and then sequenced in alphabetical order.
Numbers (2002) from Five more Isolation Studies by Chuck Jones - audio supercuts that extract specific phrases or aspects of speech from radio and television content.
One of 5 different pieces made from one two hour episode of "Loveline;" this time with the addition of guest host Donol Logue. All pieces are MP3 audio and were made in Fall 2002. Subject matter and arrangement are generally self-explanatory

The Last Thing You See: A Final Shot Montage - A meditation on the beautiful, cathartic, and transcendent power of the final shot.

Sidebar: Pay attention to the careful and rigorous citation of sources in this supercut

Celia Gómez, First and Final Frames of Series

Rishi Kaneria’s ROYGBIV: A Pixar Supercut - A one minute supercut examining (and celebrating) Pixar’s use of color.

Rishi Kaneria’s ‘Red: A Kubrick Supercut’ - A supercut examining Stanley Kubrick’s use of the color red.

Sidebar: Look at the number of blogs, feeds and sites that have shared Rishi’s work.

Leigh Singer’s Breaking the 4th Wall Movie Supercut

Time In Time - all the instances of time in the movie Time

Documentation:

Include a write up of the following:

Each of these sections should be no more than 200 words max. and well illustrated (images, videos, etc.)

For the Project Info’s goal description: it must be tweetable - summarise your outcome in no more than 140 characters