The great thing about “open source/content” is that information becomes more accesable, more and more, than from the past. I like this idea because more people can educate themselves with this information, and in a sense, people start to realize what kind of a world we live in. This approach to remix culture compliments our increasing gloabalized world today. However, the more globalized the world becomes, the more mixing and meshing of cultures, art, food, objects, you name it, the more hybrid creations we start to recognize(or lack of recognition). Perhaps this makes it harder to track down the original source of these things.
Personally, I feel that having access to open source material can be great. Being able to use and have access to images, writings, videos or music, great things can come out of the remixing, simply in respect to putting knowledge or info out there into the world. Sometimes I feel that the remixed version of a work, can be more relatable to the current culture, or even get a political point across in a more “louder” way. Depending on the final remixed version, I do feel strongly about stating where the source material came from, or simply by calling it a remix, states this. But really it depends. I sometimes go back and forth, unsure where I stand when it comes to open source. As an artist myself, would I mind if my work was open and used by anyone? Perhaps, I will know how to feel about this when creating work is all I do, a more developed stage of my art career. Also, I think I am still trying to grasp and understand what the art world should look like, since it is constantly changing, my ideas of art have drastically changed, as time passes.
I don’t think copyright and intellectual property should be more or less obsolete, when you’re talking about digital work or networking, although I feel people do make copyright less relevant in the digital realm. By putting work on the internet, the artist wants to make their work public, but not necessarily “open”. So, even though work is put up in this net space, I think the artist should have the right to be able to protect the work, if that is what they want. I sometimes see the internet as a “free museum” of sorts, just another way to display work. Some artists may prefer to put up their work on the internet rather than in a gallery, therefore, treating this web space no different than a material space. However, the artist should be aware and responsible of their own work, and understand that their work can still be taken and used, and decide from there, how they want their work displayed on the web space.
Takashi Murakami is a contemporary artist I see to be remixing both western culture and eastern, as well as meshing of high and low art, further appropriating source material. In his work titled "727" , Murakami mimics the oxidation effect, in which Andy Warhol used in some of his creations. Furthermore, you discover a mickey mouse type character in his paintings and could clearly see his inspiration from otaku culture in his work. Murakami's appropriations and hybrid creations of source material serve as reminders of important events of the past, cultures and how they function, and everything that surrounds us in our world.
In a previous series of work I would explore personal and cultural identities, where I would appropriate and recreate source material. I had taken snapshots of scenes from various films, and recreated them by drawing or painting the exact image, as well as placing myself as one of the characters. Not only did I remix a specific frame shot from a film, but I also took from the photographer, Cindy Sherman, who was known for this similar concept. From the beginning of this project, I felt it to be original, since it became so personal by using myself as the characters. Creating the images as drawings or paintings further disconnected the final product from the use of film.
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