One of the weirdest things about December and May is that my brain is always so full of academic concepts that they somehow manage to get integrated into many conversations. At the Creative Commons party, i found myself talking to lawyers about the Kuleshov effect and its relevance to remix culture. Or more accurately, the problems that emerge because of it…
Lev Kuleshov was a Russian filmmaker. Because of the political climate of Russia, he was left without access to actual film. Instead, he constructed films by splicing film and telling his story in a collage-esque manner. In addition to his style of film, he’s known for something called the Kuleshov Experiment. In this experiment, an image of a man’s face is shown juxtapositioned with various other images immediately following. Viewers thought that the man’s emotion changed even though it is exactly the same shot.
This creates an interesting dilemma for remix culture. What happens when an artist’s construction is repurposed to convey something different than intended? Does an artist have control over the context in which their material is used? How might this affect how people are willing to distribute their material?
Creative Commons and The Kuleshov Effect
As we start working on the details involved in the launch the sampling license over at Creative Commons, we find,…
Apropos your last paragraph… in Europe artists have what are called “moral rights”. These rights mean that you can’t purchase a painting and then subsequently pee on it or light it on fire without the consent of the original artist… so much for free culture! I love setting things I buy on fire… 🙂
Kuleshov Effect
art as exploration of our humanity
We fought the Kuleshov effect and The Law won?
danah boyd, who I met briefly at the Creative Commons party, has posted some interesting thoughts about an aspect of remix culture called “The Kuleshov effect”. Danah explains it thusly: Lev Kuleshov was a Russian filmmaker. Because of the political
well, you could probably do these wonderfully expressive things in they privacy of your own home if you wanted, without violating the law.
All Is Quiet (Mostly) On New Year’s Day
Erm. Got rather drunk New Year’s Eve, woke up this morning blonde. Yes, blonde. Looks pretty cool, actually — sort of like Egon from The Real Ghostbusters cartoon from the ’80s. Found myself puzzling this evening over the Kuleshov effect, which — in …
This reminds me of this page which takes a random pic from the news websites and then overlays either random EBay feedback, or a random news headline over the image.
It frequently results in something with a very strange connotation that is very different than the original context – and occasionally makes entirely too much sense.
This illustrates Marshall McLuhan’s notion of figure and ground perfectly: Meaning is created via the interplay of what we notice (figure) and everything else, in particularly that which we don’t notice or pay attention to (ground). It’s a way of saying that “context is everything,” recognizing that much of what we take for granted is context/ground – our cultural heritage, our parents’ birthplace, what we had for supper last night, the clown that terrorized us as a chile, and so forth. Some of these may have less influence at a particular time and/or relative to a particular figure; some may have more. But meaning cannot be achieved from the figure alone.
This has profound implications, not only for the new CC sampling license and moral rights (which are recognized in Canada, btw) but for the semantic web as well. Most semantic web metadata, that intends to convey meaning through a machine-interpretable mechanism, focuses on a very small subset of ground-made-figure information (eg. FOAF, RDF), from which all sorts of possibly erroneous meaning can be made. While understanding ground context is essential, and was the natural practice in ancient oral cultures, we are presented with an interesting and somewhat different challenge in a global village age of new orality. “Understand your neighbour as yourself,” becomes the new commandment in an interconnected world society.
well, mostly it depends on whether or not the remix is authorized. authorized remixers are generally given pretty much complete control. so when i see an ed rush remix of an adam freeland track, musically i think ed rush, not adam freeland. when adam asked ed rush to remix, he fully intended for it to be completely repurposed. from an artistic standpoint, this encourages listeners to explore different artists (check out the b-side), and enables artists to explore each other’s territory a little. from a commercial standpoint, it’s diversifying the expected sales base (ew, i feel dirty).
now unauthorized remixes, which i assume you’re more concerned about, that’s obviously a different story. but i feel like that’s fairly cut and dry. if it’s unauthorized, it’s illegal in most of the world. so if the original artist (or their label’s legal team) feels strongly about it, they can take action against you. obviously this doesn’t stop unauthorized remixing, but it contains it and provides a framework for seeking redress. when ils remixes pink floyd, he can’t release thousands of copies and put it on compilations and make money from it. he releases a small number of white labels, gives a lot of them away as promos, and no label takes credit for it. and he hopes that pink floyd doesn’t notice. if they do, it’s not really worth their time to do anything about it. their lawyers cost waaaay more than ils made from the track. had he done a large commercial release, he knows he would be at risk.
as far as distribution, i may not correctly understand the issue, but i don’t see it having an effect. i mean, ils didn’t have any special materials from pink floyd– i’m pretty sure he just lifted some samples off the cd. hell, give me an old steve miller band 8-track and if i’m hell bent on remixing it, you’re gonna be gettin’ down to “fly like an eagle” next time you hear me spin >_<
Seventh Circuit Dug Kuleshov Effect
A week ago, I wrote about the Kuleshov Effect and The Law in response to danah boyd’s post about remixing culture. Thanks to an anonymous commentor (thanks commentor!) who points us to LEE v. A.R.T. COMPANY, 125 F.3d 580 (7th
Seventh Circuit Dug Kuleshov Effect
A week ago, I wrote about the Kuleshov Effect and The Law in response to danah boyd’s post about remixing culture. Thanks to an anonymous commentor (thanks commentor!) who points us to LEE v. A.R.T. COMPANY, 125 F.3d 580 (7th