god bless the internet
July 27th, 2005 by herichon
So in the last few days I’ve been exploring the whole idea of recycled culture (having borrowed that phrase from Detritus.net).
It started from two directions at once – on the one hand I was curious about and trying to find some discussion of the (relatively) recent Hollywood remake phenomenon from a scholarly point of view. And on another front I’ve lately been exploring the work of Marcel Duchamp (he of the L.H.O.O.Q. piece I mentioned a while ago), in particular looking at his Readymades and the question of why or why not (or to what extent) they are art. These questions turn out to overlap each other, and there’s a place in the middle that’s fascinating, where memes get sucked into the culture Cuisinart and spit out in new and sometimes unexpected directions. (Well, rarely unexpected with Hollywood, true; those unexpected results are more common in other—more thoughtful—aspects of recycled culture.)
Another area where this happens a lot is music, and that’s where I was poking around today. Plunderphonics is a good case in point. One might compare John Oswald to Duchamp in some ways. And lots of other folks before and since have been toying with samples, found sounds, mixes and mashups.
Maybe at some point (when I’ve done a lot more exploring, anyway) I’ll be able to talk more intelligently about this stuff. In the meantime, I just wanted to point out that it’s an fun place to explore, and maybe share a few of the links I’ve found so far. Also since you’ve put up with my rambling this long, I’ll share with you God Bless the Radio, by The Fuzz, found on the Free Sample Zone. It doesn’t have anything grand or meaningful to say on the topic of recycled culture, but on the other hand it’s pretty much impossible to listen to it and not start moving. So crank it up and dance. 