Mimi Ito is a Japanese cultural anthropologist who now works at the University of California, Irvine. Her main interest is the use of media technology. She has worked with how children use technology among many other things.
Ito goes into amateur media studies and talks about how amateur usually has a negative association and bad works come out of amateur media artists. However, the main argument she is trying to make is that that is simply not true. "I want to walk through three case studies of Internet video that illustrate key components of the amateur media ecology-participation, innovation, and reputation". Ito also gives a really good definition of where she thinks that amateur media fits in the Internet world. She says it fits between professional works and the tools that they use to complete their work and social network and everyday communication.
Reading about the first case study, which was Coulton and his musical career, you can see that his audience is a specific group of people that really support him. Also, Coulton has been very open to allowing his fans to participate with his music by making videos, etc. Coulton and his fans are great examples of one of the key components Ito talks about: participation.
The second case study, the one on lip synching youtube videos were used to show appropriation. "The workplace backstreet boys video is both an imitation as well as an incremental innovation on these prior innovations. It epitomizes the kind of work that is born out of the contemporary amateur video ecosystem." Basically what Ito is saying is that that video, and many others, use existing memes, trends, and techniques when they make their media. She also talks about how things since Numa Numa, that video made in 2004, have grown. Favoriting, sharing, etc have been created and made easier.
Reputation is the main key component discussed in the third case study. The third case study focuses on anime culture and mostly fansubbing, which is amateur subtitling so people who don't speak Japanese can enjoy the anime. The structure of these fansub groups is incredible as well. They have different positions where people in their group specialize while they work together on getting the anime episode perfect. The fansub community also works together; they look at the videos other groups have made and critique/review the work that each other makes. One part of these groups that amazes me is the amount of work these people put in and they don't get paid. They are so proud of the work that they are making for other people. According to Ito, these people enjoy being part of this specific social group. "But most will point to the satisfaction they get from knowing that others are viewing their work, and that they are developing a reputation within the scene". Ito also describes AMVs, which are mashups of anime and then music, usually Euro-American music or music from different movies. It's two cultures combining together to create a piece of work. The AMV scene likes to recognize high quality work in the forms of competition and conventions, rankings, etc. Ito also talks about the difficulties of getting noticed in AMV when she interviews AbsoluteDestiny, and AMV creator, who says that getting even just your name noticed by people is so important because in a world with so many videos its really hard to get noticed. There is a certain hierarchy in the anime world.
QUESTIONS:
In the second case study there is such a wide range of quality in the videos. Where are the lines drawn when it comes to what makes a video/creator professional or amateur? The last video was much more structured than the other three, yet the other three were part of this presentation that is talking about how amateurs/amateur media grows.
Ito says, "Although participants in the scene experience tension between the more "common" and "elite" forms of participation in the AMV scene they are integrally related and synergistic". I don't understand if there is such a hierarchy and so much tension how these two "seperate" communities work together. How is that possible?
Lessig
Lawerence Lessig is an American academic and a political activist. He's well-known as a proponent for reducing restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio-frequency spectrum. He has worked at Stanford and now works at Harvard. He is a board member for many groups including Creative Commons.
This introduction starts out with the story of a Mom simply recording her son dancing to a Prince song for a whole 29 seconds. Universal owns some of the rights to Prince's song and threatened Stephanie with lawsuits while forcing YouTube to take down the video. "...neither Prince nor Universal was in the business of selling the rights to video-cam your baby dancing to their music. There is no market in licensing music to amateur video." Lessig also talks about how much corporate money (10-50 thousand dollars) for the lawyers at Universal to have this meeting about slapping her with a fine of possibly $150,000 for a 29 second video of her dancing baby which is incredibly ridiculous. Next, a exhibit in London was discussed. It was a video of 25 fans of John Lennon singing his entire album. They were not great singer or extraordinary people. However, they were huge fans and therefore, this exhibit was more about the fans of Lennon than Lennon himself; how the music touched them. Candace Breitz, the woman who created the Lennon piece, focuses on mainstream culture and the relationship the audience has with it. She discusses how the reception of the music, video, whatever is really creative when the audience listens or watches it. People interpret and translate in different ways. She then discusses how creative works overlap and get ideas from each other. "No artist works in a vacuum. Every artist reflects- consciously or not- on what has come before and what is happening parallel to his or her practice" (9).
Gregg Gillis, the creator of Girl Talk, mashes up and remixes music from various artists to create this "new" piece of work. He doesn't have the permission of any of the artists that he uses. However, in my opinion it isn't competing with the work that the original artists create. He uses snippets of their work and makes it all his own. Gillis says, "You get a lot of raw ideas and stuff from people outside of the box who haven't taken a guitar lesson in their whole life. I just think that's great for music" (14). I agree with Gillis, new isn't necessarily bad and this remixing is going to catch on and be easier for people. Embrace it.
SilviaO, a Colombian musician, put her music on ccMixter, a social networking type of site for music, where people are allowed to remix her music. The remixes that were made this way are completely legal. The way she thought of creating music completely changed.
One quote that sums up his article really well is when Lessig says, "I then want to spotlight the damage we're not thinking enough about- the harm to a generation from rendering criminal what comes natural to them" (18).
QUESTIONS:
If there is no way to license music to amateur videos how do people make youtube videos or presentations without getting them taken down? What is the right way to go about using this media?
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