My Attempt At Remix

So after talking so much about Remix and appreciation I took a shot at remixing works I appreciated using the basic tools of Audacity and my imagination.



My first attempt was make Adam WarRock's Sinister Six and Superior track one cohesive story since the main focus is on Doctor Octopus so I took the start and end of the first song and spliced in most of Superior after it. Since Superior Spider-Man is Doctor Octopus as Spider-Man. It just seemed like an interesting idea and one that would thematically work together. Needless to say this feels to me like a bad remix by me because it doesn’t feel like I did much but cut things out and paste other things in.

The Superior Spider-Man

It feels like the minimal amount of work it did come from a loving place but that's no excuse for bad work. I guess part of it is what I envisioned in my head was different than what came out which I had to high of hopes for my first attempt. Also there are some blatant errors like Spider is cut off the final line of the track.

My Second attempt at a remix was using Vienna Ditto's Little Fingers and The Undefeated as a
True Detective mashup/soundtrack/I don't know the proper term for this one. I feel this is a better remix I spent more time on it for sure. I don't think that is why though I like this one more that may be partly because I had a clear idea on what I wanted for this one. One I first heard Vienna Ditto a week ago I immediately said to myself this needs to be in “True Detective “Season 1 an impossible thing to do retroactively or is it? Anyway this remix is better but I feel the execution is not as good levels rise and lower and sometimes soundclips are drowned out by music.

My third and final attempt was a mash up or combination of three different Adam WarRock's track “Marvelous” “Nova” and “Andrew Garfield SDCC” this was a more ambitious attempt due to the amount of clips involved. I feel this is on the same quality as the previous remix or a bit better. At this point I had discovered some tricks in the tools I was using that I hadn't spotted before due to having spent a longer amount using them previously. As with the turtle I learned by playing. 

 



Overall this experience gave me more respect for “Girl Talk” an artist I don't actually listen to but know of who mostly does mash up and remixes it is definitely not easy work. An idea I didn't have previously but would certainly not cross my mind now. 

Girl Talk aka Greg Gillis

 



Which remix did you like best?

Visting old Friends

Looking back at Doctorow's introduction to Little Brother which I've used earlier in my Autobiography Doctorow says the following “"Finally, let's look at the moral case “ (linking to rest of quote)



Remix and copying/sharing is a natural occurrence of humanity. Pablo Picasso said “Good Artist Borrow;Great Artist Steal. Most ideas in history are in some way inspired by something or someone else. Looking back to our traditional folktales so many versions exist because every so often someone wanted to put their own spin on it.

Many  Versions of the Vampire myth exist as well as any Myth that one can name

Remix Culture has existed longer than the term itself when Arthur Conan Doyle stopped writing Sherlock Holmes the fans continued it without him. It's like this Doctorow quote “Embodying a personal recommendation between two people who trust each other enough to share bits” Remix is an act of love towards an idea. Remix can bring in new people to appreciate a work by adding elements that weren't there,before I bet a number of people who don't care for Jane Austen read or were at least mildly curios at something like Pride and Prejudiced and Zombies due to people who have a love for weird fiction mash-ups or potential exploitation films ala Abraham Lincoln Vs The Supernatural. 

Sherlock Holmes through out the ages.

 



Remix is an important culture tool I believe it helps keep works out of obscurity Doctorow says ““For me -- for pretty much every writer -- the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity “. Remix is powerful tool to bring something back to popular conscience after it's fallen into a relative obscurity. One example of this I believe is “The King in Yellow” by Robert Chambers which has in the past year has risen back a prominent state of a novel everyone and their grandmother is reading. This is no accident though it is thanks to it's themes and lines of dialogue contained with in it featuring heavily in the HBO series “True Detective” (Great Show by the way)

That of course is may not be considered a traditional remix but it is taken something someone loved and found interesting a re purposing it for a brand new idea.



Remix is an art form just like film making,video games. writing,etc. There exists bad remixes,good remixes and everything in between. But, just like every other art-form that exists it is done out of love and not for a quick grab of fame or whatever else there is to achieve.

Numbers Turned into an Image a form of Remix

Again I come back to old friends Andrew “bunnie” Huang says”
"Hackers are explorers, digital pioneers. It's in a hacker's nature to question conventions and be tempted by intricate problems. Any complex system is sport for a hacker; a side effect of this is the hacker's natural affinity for problems involving security. Society is a large and complex system, and is certainly not off limits to a little hacking.”



I believe that those that remix as well as those just consuming look at works of art and ask themselves what can I do with this to make it more personal. Questions are brought up in group or individually” wouldn't it be cool if they did this?”. There is also the popular “I would have done this instead”

Remix and hacking are both an art from of the new media age.

WarRock as the Informed User and Remix Culture

WarRock is an example of the informed user in that he uses the new media tools for work,play,interaction all wrapped up into one. WarRock on the FAQ portion of his site states that he makes his music by plugging a microphone into an Alesis preamp mixer which feeds the signal to his external USB sound card which then travels to his Macbook. For tracking and editing he uses Garageband and Audacity to do light mastering. While his professional releases are mixed and mastered by others.

Picture of Adam WarRock from The Guardian

What advantages has the internet provided you that other mediums can't offer you?

“For one, it's freed me of the need to build a regional base. Most bands, they have to start in their own hometown, or region, and build a fanbase up that way. That requires getting in good with the local bookers, knowing people that run the venues, know the other bands. I just made music that went straight to the consumer no matter where they lived, and when I started getting more coverage, I was able to go on tour and just do shows in a ton of cities where I had an already established fanbase. Not only that, but I didn't have to deal with the local politics of a live scene, and didn't have to constrain myself to only breaking through in one area. I even have fans in like Turkey, Norway, Sweden and Australia, places I've never even been! But if I ever do go, I at least know I can succeed somewhat “

Besides his own work WarRock also shares and mentions other work he is appreciative of. Going through his site and social media platforms one can find recommendations for other indie artists, comic book series, fan created works etc. WarRock is a producer and consumer of the new media age.

http://www.adamwarrock.com/?p=2180

WarRock's love for his craft and his influences really shine through his work and his writings. Most of the songs he post on a weekly bases come with a couple of words on what it's about and what influenced it. WarRock's samples have a wide range which include common hip hop samples such as 90s “gangsta rap” West Coast Avengers mix tape to a Vampire Weekend EP. As well as things like a Jane Austen influenced song with a Maroon 5 “Moves like Jagger” sample.



WarRock like Doctorow is supportive about fans of his remixing his work as well as sharing it.

How do you feel about remix culture and people taking your songs and making music videos out of them or just remixing your song while still crediting you?

Yeah, I’m totally down with people using my music and doing whatever they want with it, so long as they credit me and throw a link to my website. I think that so much music is out there illegally (I get Google Alerts daily about which torrent or mp3 site has my albums up) that if we get credit, and it’s presented in a quality that is acceptable, I’m all for it. I love the interactive part of music, and I would be kind of a hypocrite if I didn’t, being that that’s what I do with my site as it is.

Adam WarRock An Introduction

Adam WarRock is an indie musician that has been producing music online since 2010. WarRock is a former lawyer turned rap artist. Unlike the rap artist on the radio you'll hear a different kind of tune from WarRock. His songs are pop cultured influenced taking the things he loves and mixing them with a personal touch to create a unique blend of hip hop.



Adam is an example of the informed user and a participant of Remix culture. Taking a look at Adam's site his web presence spans all over the major social networking sites where he can keep in touch with fans and interact with them.

                                          (The name takes inspiration from Marvel Comic's character Adam Warlock)

How do you use social networking in relation to your work?
“I use it to not just promote my releases, but also to stay connected to fans. I think people want to support artists who have full personalities, who reveal a lot of themselves and make themselves accessible. I pretty much get on twitter and blab about politics, rap music, tv, whatever, and talk with strangers. It's a great way to just put a personal touch on my product"

 

WarRock is consistently putting out tracks some weeks there is a new song everyday while others times there may be a short term break before any new material is released. At this point though WarRock's catalog stretches quite far so those new to him have plenty to devour in that downtime. A good portion of WarRock's catalog is available for free (500+ songs) unlike the traditional music model.

  

(WarRock performs an a Hip-Hop sub-genre known as NerdCore)

Pictured above is MC Frontalot known by many as the Godfather of "NerdCore"

Once a year he hosts a donation drive where fans can support him by donating money. Donates as low as $1.00 net fans an exclusive mix tape album along with other goodies. Of course there are also WarRock's album releases which fans can also buy to support him. The past albums of his including last year's “The Middle of Nowhere” have topped Bandcamp.com's top sellers. 

                                                   (A 2013 Donation Drive Song  plus music video)
 



             Bandcamp.com is an indie music distribution site where many prominent indie artist reside.

What is your preferred method to distribute your content over the web and why?

I mainly use Bandcamp.com, which is kind of becoming the staple mainstay of indie artists. Not only is it incredibly easy to use, but it takes a much lower cut than iTunes/Amazon (which take cuts of about 30% from your profit margin). Plus, it allows me to collect emails and build mailing lists, automate free codes, and sell merch in the same location.”

Good Bye Space CowBoy

So who is the Digital Liberian it is me and you (or is it I can never seem to remember the correct grammer) anyways the Digital Liberian is a scrounger and archiver. He is sometimes also a "pirate" but most importantly what he is;is an informed user and producer. He believes in free open knowledge and sharing what he enjoys as well as creates. It doesn't have to be a massive coded program, a piece of music or anything like that it can be a simple edited image of themselves wearing a funny hat.

The digital librarian believes in  a free and open internet and technological realm where it's okay to tinker and improve. The most important value to remember is to use the tools we have to spread knowledge and joy but never harm.

Enough of the pesudo sounding philosophy I believe these words from Andrew "bunnie" Huang encapsulate the point I'm trying to make in the following points from the afterword of Little Brother he is taking about hackers but I believe the same sentiment applies to the digital librarian 

Hacking Space By Mack Male

"Hackers are explorers, digital pioneers. It's in a hacker's nature to question conventions and be tempted by intricate problems. Any complex system is sport for a hacker; a side effect of this is the hacker's natural affinity for problems involving security. Society is a large and complex system, and is certainly not off limits to a little hacking. As a result, hackers are often stereotyped as iconoclasts and social misfits, people who defy social norms for the sake of defiance. When I hacked the Xbox in 2002 while at MIT, I wasn’t doing it to rebel or to cause harm; I was just following a natural impulse, the same impulse that leads to fixing a broken iPod or exploring the roofs and tunnels at MIT." 

 "However, the motivations of a hacker are typically as simple as “I’m an engineer because I like to design things.” People often ask me, “Why did you hack the Xbox security system?” And my answer is simple: First, I own the things that I buy. If someone can tell me what I can and can’t run on my hardware, then I don’t own it. Second, because it’s there. It’s a system of sufficient complexity to make good sport"

Digital Liberian Risk,Sharing Copy Right:Electric Boogaloo

Piracy does not hurt industry

In the sense that  if I find content I enjoy I will share it with others and one of those people is bound to put money into it tell their friends and etc. A personal example is in the case of Adam WarRock I enjoy his musical content and each year he hosts a donation drive in which those who wish to support him can do so by donating money. In return they receive an exclusive mixtape only available to those who donate as well as other minor perks like original artwork.

Public Domain Image

To add on to that I only discovered the band The Protomen through music piracy and last year when they played a show in my area I went to it. In order to support them that was the only thing I did in the week long vacation I had. Without the internet and file-sharing websites I would not have been able to find the music of this band and later on go to one of their concerts.

 I am not saying we should all just download content but if one really enjoys something they will find ways to support it.

 

It’s a moral panic of sorts no different than VHS recording movies and TV and sitting in one's car waiting for a song to come on in order to copy it to ones cassette player and share it with friends.

It just those same activities on a  larger scale.

Continuing on with Doctorow and piracy  I'd like to close him out with the following also from the introduction to Little Brother

"Finally, let's look at the moral case. Copying stuff is natural. It's how we learn (copying our parents and the people around us). My first story, written when I was six, was an excited re-telling of Star Wars, which I'd just seen in the theater. Now that the Internet -- the world's most efficient copying machine -- is pretty much everywhere, our copying instinct is just going to play out more and more. There's no way I can stop my readers, and if I tried, I'd be a hypocrite: when I was 17, I was making mix-tapes, photocopying stories, and generally copying in every way I could imagine. If the Internet had been around then, I'd have been using it to copy as much as I possibly could.

There's no way to stop it, and the people who try end up doing more harm than piracy ever did"

Pirate Bay raid protest image by Jon Aslund

 Speaking of harm a lot of these file sharing sites are fairly untargeted sure they host copyright violating material but they also host files that are under no copyright and violate no copyright laws. It’s like  bank being targeted because   a drug dealer or other suspicious person is  saving their money in that bank.

Also  lot of DMCA take downs and the closing down of sites for holding pirated material is kind of futile because once its on the internet people have downloaded it some have saved it to re uploaded while others have created mirrors of the content elsewhere.

Risk of the Digital Librarian

When it comes to digital texts though even though I currently have hundreds of them

maybe into the thousands I still only keep very few of them. Such as those I wish to share with others later or would be hard to find at a later date if I needed it again.

 

Sure I love a physical book but there is only so much space where one can keep them. I can hold a million books on my fingernail while holding that many books in a physical space would take an enormous amount of cost. Sure digital space has its limits too devices can only hold so much content but with the cloud you can't lose any of it. 

 

Image by Jorel314

Even if one chooses not to save the content to their cloud storage account it can be easily be re obtained after a few minutes or even seconds of searching because at some point someone else has also found the content and re-uploaded it most likely. Sure not everything can be found on the web but once content has been digitized its hard to destroy.

Sure the complaint about digital goods is that you can’t share them with your friends and others but that isn’t necessarily true. I mean sure various content has anti-piracy checks and other forms of DMR to make sure the content isn’t being stolen which is a noble intention people should be paid for their work.  At times though that stuff is more of a hassle to the consumer than the pirate.(On a side note in reality it’s copyright infringement and not “piracy”. Sure some of the people that download content off the net won't pay for it but that dose not mean everyone will do that.

 

Roger Wallis is a professor in Sweden and the witness for the Pirate Bay in their trial. Wallis and others in the academic field have done research on piracy and its effects on industry. The conclusion is that “piracy” does not really hurt industry but in some cases strengthens its.

Even Doctorow has this to say in his introduction to "Little brother"
 
"People who study the habits of music-buyers have discovered something curious: the biggest pirates are also the biggest spenders. If you pirate music all night long, chances are you're one of the few people left who also goes to the record store (remember those?) during the day. You probably go to concerts on the weekend, and you probably check music out of the library too. If you're a member of the red-hot music-fan tribe, you do lots of everything that has to do with music, from singing in the shower to paying for black-market vinyl bootlegs of rare Eastern European covers of your favorite death-metal band."

Doctorow on Piracy video from the Guardian

http://tinyurl.com/lr6yd4k

Interlude:The Digital Nomad

The Digital Nomad is defined as individuals who don't have permanent office and work on the web. I'm not a digital nomad in the traditional sense but I believe I am one in the fact that I only need my various gadgets and I'd be ready to set sail to anywhere in the world. Image by  szwerink

Adam WarRock By keri.

I'm all about mobility/portability and being able to experience content at a moments noticed when desired I love services like Google Drive and One Drive (formerly Skydive) that allow me to carry all my work with me anywhere I go. The synergy of all my devices is an amazing thing I can start reading an article on my laptop and don't have to stop or re find it apps like pocket allow me to save articles and other web content in the cloud and access it later where I left off on my phone or if I want to read it on a screen closer to my laptops then I can switch over to my kindle fire.

The sleek design of the Kindle Fire allows me to stuff it into my jacket pocket or that of my hoodie so I can carry it along easily without hassle while my phone and Nintendo 3DS fill my pockets. My laptop can stay at home when I don't want to bring it with me even then though a regular backpack and my jacket pocket are all I need to have access to hundreds of books,comic books,music, games and whatever other content I'm interested in viewing.

The full discography of The Smiths,hundreds of tracks by indie rap artist Adam WarRock, the greatest hits of Queen,Kiss,The Beatles,Rush etc you name it I probably have it. Currently and officially my total of music amounts to 8,907 different files or 34.8GB. At this point in time it is a bit off though due to the fact that I sometimes download music files and put them on my phone rather than getting out my portable hard drive and storing them on there.   

Name a popular video game of the recent past and not so recent past and it's probably loaded up on my laptop as something I'm currently playing or on my portable hard drive possible for future use.

(Can't Embed this video for some reason)
City Beautiful-Adam WarRock

Digital Librarian Part Deux

After a while my trusty desktop withered away  in the corner as a relic of an era gone by.

Before entering the 8th grade I got my first laptop times were good I had moved away from dial up and had discovered the wonders of wireless internet of course at the time I didn’t know I was  leeching off the neighbors wifi. (Since then I’m currently on my 4th laptop my current prized possession)

Image By Sinchen.Lin

 

This period though is a pretty naive and uneventful time in the world of my media use. My true jump into the the world of the digital and technology came during high school. 

 In New York city high schools are divided into different interest there also supposed to specialize in are you're given a book to look through to help you make a decision. Conveniently the one I decided on was close to home but that wasn’t my main reasoning the other was it’s specialization. It was the High School of Computers and Technology. 

Author Unknown

Purportedly we were going to learn Computer Maintenance,repair,networking and other such skills. Which all things considered we did. 

My transformation into a Digital Librarian began there. The things available to do on the school internet access were pretty limited   eventually individuals found a variety of ways around school restrictions.

UltraSurf Proxy Image by denharsh

 The most prominent of these methods was a program called Ultrasurf a free digital proxy. Ultrasurf was a hot commodity one could bargain with others if inclined to. Aside from Ultrasurf other digital commodities were traded like Windows 7 tiny,various games and other software. 

Most of the time trades were one sided you asked and received other times exchanges were made but overall the philosophy on software was that it was available to flow freely. 

 

(Couldn't find better quality video of this. In context this is a clip from Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger a Japanese TV show in which characters can transform into various Super Heroes. As an aside this show was something I really got into during this period and I'm still quite  heavily obsessed with it. Using various file sharing sites and fan translations I mange to keep up with this show and a variety of other foreign TV shows some current and some not so current.)

I didn’t realize it at the time but looking back it now this time and experience is what birthed me into the digital librarian. The individuals I associated with had heaps of various games and software they kept archived that they shared with others and just accessed when needed. Before I meet them I was scared of torrenting and digital downloads due to horror stories with the RIAA and MPAA suing individuals but that fear went away and now torrents and file sharing are like second nature.

(The documentary highlights the trail in Sweden of  the Pirate Bay founders the biggest peer to peer bit torrent  tracker in the world.)

Original Image by Tooby Doo (The text in this image is a reference to a segment in the documentary Pirate Bay:AFK. 

) 

 

 

 

(On a  another aside note  later me and my core group got jobs at the school as Mouse Squad (don’t know what that stands for till this day) which allowed us to gain access to the administration wifi connection  as part of our privileges nicknamed “GOD”)

Image From Waiting For The World

                 

How I became the Digital Librarian

Starting out in my youth or younger than now I should say. All I had was  a CRT monitor with a desktop that  had Windows XP installed that later  in its life cycle shut itself off randomly at times. All I had where 10 hours of internet access from Netzero that I consumed like it was potato chips. I did the thing most do at this relatively young age search for games to play on the internet. I searched for things I could download and Stumbled Upon (Unintentional Internet pun)  various Abandonware sites. I downloaded a variety of games downloading as many as I could at a time to try out and play with. Most of these I can’t really recall. 

Abandonware Logo By Frédéric DE GOMBERT

( Abandonware is a product that is  no longer supported by its owner/manufacture but is still under copyright law. By this definition Windows XP will be Abandonware in   February 2016

since support for it will end in January of that year)

The two that stick out the most are the original DOS version of Sid Meiers Pirates as well as his lesser known game Covert Action. What gravitated me towards them I couldn’t really explain at the time. Now in my wise age of 21 years-old I can now know what gravitated me to those games  that even at the time I played them were fairly old having been produced in 1987 and 1990 respectively. These two games just had endless re-playability and were not linear in any sense of the word.

Box Art for Sid Meier's Pirates released in 1987 (There are other versions of this game in existence such as Pirates   Gold in 1993 and modernized version in 2004. I haven't experienced those versions of the game I do plan to play the 2004 release but I don't think it will top the initial first encounters with the game. Original Image by David  Broadman

 

In Pirates I could wander the caribbean for ships to plunder then after I was satisfied with that I could marry the governers daughter  and retire happy. Alternatively I could try and live a life within the law trading at ports and only attacking ships my country was at war with as a privateer. 
 
 
While in  Covert Action I was an agent of the CIA designated to track down and dismantle terrorist organizations and nefarious individuals. I could go on high speed chases  or patiently surveillance my targets apprehending them when the moment was right.  I recall never being the best super sleuth spy or even as successful as Blackbeard in my privateer career but that didn’t matter and still does not.

  

When reflecting on the past these two silly little games shaped a lot of my habits and use of technology and media.  After a while my trusty desktop withered away  in the corner as a relic of an era gone by. Looking at a lot of the content I use now a lot of it is open-source or copyright free while some fall into a grey line of fair use since I don't intend to make a profit but to share and mostly just for personal use. I prefer my software and hardware to be able to be customizable and not locked into propriety  form factors.  It just like the games of my youth in which I can do anything I wish in the context and limitation of what the tools can do.

To Be Continued 

                                            

Digital Libarian Countinued

The digital librarian hopes to preserve knowledge and spread it to others. “For me -- for pretty much every writer -- the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity (thanks to Tim O'Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy.”  (Doctorow Introduction Little Brother)  Doctorow here states that every writer fears obscurity and that success or failure  isn’t a measure on people giving away stuff but about knowledge

Botherhood Of Steel by Sauron94

(The text on the image comes from the tenets of Kopimism a religion in a similar vain to that of the satirical Pastafarianism.)The logo on the image is the logo of the Brotherhood of Steel a fictional group in the world of "Fallout". They gather old world technology in the post Apocalypse and also have scribes that scavenge for Pre apocalypse books and information. In order to keep it safe and preserved.")

Doctorow’s statement here  about writers also applies to other producers and consumers of content everyone’s biggest fear is obscurity. The digital librarian as the informed user/producer tries to prevent this by sharing and re-purposing content. The digital librarian is much like one of those elder wanders in bad post-apocalyptic SC-FI  guarding and sharing cultural knowledge as well as finding new purposes for it.