New Media, Baby!

Listening to the radio this weekend made me think about Manovich, unexpected, but true. There was a new song on Wild 101 that I had never heard before, but it seemed oddly familiar. And, of course, it completely escapes me as I am writing this post. Still, the point I'm trying to make that this song sampled a piece of an oldies song, which made me think about Manovich's discussion of sampling in section 3. Indeed, samples are widely found in many art-forms in our culture (118).

I was thinking of some songs that use samples to list here and came up with Vanilla Ice - "Ice Ice Baby". This in itself brings up an interesting sub-topic to the idea of sampling and new-media art - ownership. There was a huge legal battle about Vanilla Ice's alleged sampling of Queen's "Under Pressure." How do permissions of use and ownership play a role in montages and other pieced together art forms? What are the implications of using something you didn't create or own to make something new? (Tangent - sorry).

Manovich states that "electronic art from its very beginning was based on a new principle: modification of an already existing signal" (126, emphasis original). I'm not so confident about how things worked in the recording industry in the Vanilla Ice era, but now all music is digitally recorded and edited, so I would also classify music as an electronic art form. It does make sense, especially with rap music, to work off of "existing signals" or sounds to create beats to rap to, but I'm not sold on how this works effectively in other music styles without the song sounding too much like a cover. (Which I suppose is also working off of "existing signals"?)

Manovich also discusses how "culture is now busy reworking, recombining, and analyzing already accumulated digital material" (131). His argument here is more for web pages and the like, but I think it can also be applied to the music metaphor that I am working with here. One thing that has always struck me as strange when songs sample others is the lack of originality in composition. Most of the time, I'm unhappy with songs that sample others or interpretations of covers because I think the original is better. It seems that Manovich argues in this section that nothing is truly original anymore, citing Barthes and Gombrich, but I think this is more because of the artists choices rather than limitations of what's left available for someone to do or create.

Toward the end of the section on "Postmodernism" and Photoshop, Manovich explores the role of the DJ in the "operation of selection" and the DJ's relationship to computer culture. It is interesting that art-forms to follow trends in technology because of the tools that are made available, but I'm not totally sold that "live electronic music demonstrates that true art lies in the 'mix'" (135), not matter how clever of a pun the section end on. I suppose I still follow a more Romantic idea that true art is created on a "blank canvas" instead of existing as a mash up of others' works and ideas. To me, it feels a bit like plagiarism, especially in those instances where credit is not given to the original creator.