Last month I watched Stewart Butterfield [founder of flickr.com] give a keynote address at the Northern Voice Conference in Vancouver, which I also spoke at. I really enjoyed his talk, The Internet 1992-2009, A Love Story, which chronicled his long courtship with the internet over a number of years.
Although I loved the talk, I couldn’t relate. My romance with the internet was more like a happenstance of us standing side by side when the ugly lights went on at 2am. We were hammered, and went home with one another because the other’s pants fit nice and snug.
At breakfast in the morning there was a lot of, “This will never work… I’m so analog, you’re so digital.” But the damage was done; we’d tasted one another. We were in love.
So, when I saw Brett Gaylor’s film, RiP: A Remix Manifesto, last night, I stared at the screen with that starry look in my eyes that only happens when you glance at something that you love and remember exactly why you fell in love in the first place. The film is a meticulously chaotic survey of remix culture and its implications on art, commerce and law. What’s a remix? Something re-structured or a combination two or more things to create something new.
So what? For me, the moment where I truly realized what the internet was 26 months ago was when I took a couple of viral emails (script), two good electronic songs (score), and shot some crude digital video with Leah. I went back to Michigan and we bounced the file back and forth via email, remixing each other’s work… which was a remix to begin with. We threw it out to the internet to give it back to where we took it from. The video we made, How to Shower: Men Vs Women, went all over the place. Somebody even re-shot it in Portuguese. That was it - we quit our jobs and decided to be full time content creators, mixing and remixing content to make new stuff that’s better, worse, different.. or all three.
Go see this film. It might just change the way you think about stuff. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to start remixing everything; I’m gonna poop standing up, wear white after Labour Day…. All in the name of art.
03/20/2009 at 12:24 pm
Well said sir. I think everyone who shared the viewing experience last night could identify with how you described the documentary. Phenomenal.
I’ve felt torn between what has been told to me as “what is right” all the while exploring, downloading and consuming the left. The creative art vs structure, business,government or success.
In a society where , we and our children are increasingly encouraged to build the right side of our brain, this documentary shed a needed light on the absurdity of it all.
How quickly we forget the joy’s of boundless creativity; often lost at age 5.
Thanks for passing it along!
03/21/2009 at 9:45 am
[...] must see film. Check it out at the Ridge Theater (see show times) or click here to read what Jay Grandin had to say about [...]