Parody In The Age Of Remix

The art of mashup music, its roots in parody, and its social and legal implications. Parody needn’t recognize copyright—but does an algorithm recognize parody? The ever-increasing popularity of remix culture and mashup music, where parody is invariably at play, presents a conundrum for internet platforms, with their extensive automatic, algorithmic policing of content. Taking a wide-ranging look at mashup music—the creative and technical considerations that go into making it; the experience of play, humor, enlightenment, and beauty it affords; and the social and legal issues it presents—Parody in the Age of Remix offers a pointed critique of how society balances the act of regulating art with the act of preserving it. In several jurisdictions, national and international, parody is exempted from copyright laws. Ragnhild Brøvig contends that mashups should be understood as a form of parody, and thus be protected from removal from hosting platforms. Nonetheless, current copyright-related content-moderation regimes, relying on algorithmic detection and automated decision making, frequently eliminate what might otherwise be deemed gray-area content—to the detriment of human listeners and, especially, artists. Given the inaccuracy of takedowns, Parody in the Age of Remix makes a persuasive argument in favor of greater protection for remix creativity in the future—but it also suggests that the content-moderation challenges facing mashup producers and other remixers are symptomatic of larger societal issues.

Analyzing Recorded Music: Collected Perspectives on Popular Music Tracks is a collection of essays dedicated to the study of recorded popular music, with the aim of exploring "how the record shapes the song" (Moylan, Recording Analysis, 2020) from a variety of perspectives. Introduced with a Foreword by Paul Théberge, the distinguished editorial team has brought together a group of reputable international contributors to write about a rich collection of recordings. Examining a diverse set of songs from a range of genres and points in history (spanning the years 1936–2020), the authors herein illuminate unique attributes of the selected tracks and reveal how the recording develops the expressive content of song performance. Analyzing Recorded Music will interest all those who study popular music, cultural studies, and the musicology of record production, as well as popular music listeners.

Parodies have been created throughout times and cultures. A glimpse at the general judicial latitude generally afforded to parodies, satires, caricatures, and pastiches demonstrates the social and cultural value of this particular form of artistic expression. With the advent of technologies and the evolution of copyright legislation, creative endeavours in the form of parody gathered a new youth but became unlawful. While copyright law grants exclusive rights to right-holders, this right is not absolute. Legislation includes specific exceptions, which preclude right-holders from exercising their prerogatives in particular cases which foster creativity and cultural diversity within that society. The parody exception pertains to this ultimate objective by permitting users to reproduce copyright-protected materials for the purpose of parody. To understand the meaning and scope of the parody exception, this book examines and compares five jurisdictions which differ in their protection of parodies: France, Australia, Canada, the US and the United Kingdom. This book is concerned with finding an appropriate balance between the protection awarded to right-holders and the public interest. This is achieved by analysing the parody exception to the economic rights of right-holders, the preservation of moral rights and the interaction of the parody exception with contract law. As parodies constitute an artistic expression protected under the right to freedom of expression, this book also considers the influence of freedom of expression on the interpretation of this specific copyright exception. Furthermore, this book aims at providing guidance on how to resolve conflicts where fundamental rights are in conflict. This is the first book in English to offer an in-depth investigation into the parody exception in copyright law, and comments on industry practices linked to this form of creative endeavours.

A collection that goes beyond the canon to analyze influential yet under-examined works of electronic music. This collection of writings on electronic music goes outside the canon to analyze influential works by under-recognized musicians. The contributors, many of whom are composers and performers themselves, offer their unsung musical heroes the sort of in-depth examinations usually reserved for more well-known composers and works. They analyze music from around the world and across genders, race, nationality, and age, discussing works that range from soundscapes of rushing water and resonating pipes to compositions by algorithm. Subjects include the collaboration of performer and composer, as seen in the work of Anne La Berge, Luciano Berio and Cathy Berberian, and others; the choice by Asian composers Zhang Xiaofu and Unsuk Chin to embrace (or not) Eastern themes and styles; and how technologies used by composers created the sound of the works, as exemplified by Bülent Arel's use of voltage-control components as compositional tools and Charles Dodge's resynthesizing of the human voice. Contributors Marc Battier, Valentina Bertolani, Kerry L. Hagan, Yvette Janine Jackson, Leigh Landy, Pamela Madsen, Miller Puckette, David Rosenboom, Jøran Rudi, Margaret Anne Schedel, Juliana Snapper, Laura Zattra Composers Bülent Arel, Cathy Berberian and Luciano Berio, Anne La Berge, Unsuk Chin, Charles Dodge, Jacqueline George, Salvatore Martirano, Teresa Rampazzi, Hildegard Westerkamp, Knut Wiggen, Gayle Young, Zhang Xiaofu

Widespread distribution of recorded music via digital networks affects more than just business models and marketing strategies; it also alters the way we understand recordings, scenes and histories of popular music culture. This Is Not a Remix uncovers the analog roots of digital practices and brings the long history of copies and piracy into contact with contemporary controversies about the reproduction, use and circulation of recordings on the internet. Borschke examines the innovations that have sprung from the use of recording formats in grassroots music scenes, from the vinyl, tape and acetate that early disco DJs used to create remixes to the mp3 blogs and vinyl revivalists of the 21st century. This is Not A Remix challenges claims that 'remix culture' is a substantially new set of innovations and highlights the continuities and contradictions of the Internet era. Through an historical focus on copy as a property and practice, This Is Not a Remix focuses on questions about the materiality of media, its use and the aesthetic dimensions of reproduction and circulation in digital networks. Through a close look at sometimes illicit forms of composition-including remixes, edits, mashup, bootlegs and playlists-Borschke ponders how and why ideals of authenticity persist in networked cultures where copies and copying are ubiquitous and seemingly at odds with romantic constructions of authorship. By teasing out unspoken assumptions about media and culture, this book offers fresh perspectives on the cultural politics of intellectual property in the digital era and poses questions about the promises, possibilities and challenges of network visibility and mobility.

Longlisted for the 2022 International Gothic Association's Allan Lloyd Smith Prize The bestselling genre of Frankenfiction sees classic literature turned into commercial narratives invaded by zombies, vampires, werewolves, and other fantastical monsters. Too engaged with tradition for some and not traditional enough for others, these 'monster mashups' are often criticized as a sign of the artistic and moral degeneration of contemporary culture. These hybrid creations are the 'monsters' of our age, lurking at the limits of responsible consumption and acceptable appropriation. This book explores the boundaries and connections between contemporary remix and related modes, including adaptation, parody, the Gothic, Romanticism, and postmodernism. Taking a multimedia approach, case studies range from novels like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series, to television programmes such as Penny Dreadful, to popular visual artworks like Kevin J. Weir's Flux Machine GIFs. Megen de Bruin-Molé uses these monstrous and liminal works to show how the thrill of transgression has been contained within safe and familiar formats, resulting in the mashups that dominate Western popular culture.

Chuck Palahniuk, America’s premier transgressive novelist, enjoys a tremendous readership. Yet he has not necessarily been embraced by critics or academics. His prose is considered vulgar by some, but his body of work addresses a core motivation of 21st-century life: individual self-empowerment. Palahniuk writes about what it means to be on the outside looking in, revising familiar narratives for a contemporary audience to get at the heart of the human condition—everyone wants a chance to win his or her fair share, no matter the cost. In Haunted, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, Damned and Invisible Monsters Remix, he confronts marginalization and disenfranchisement through parodies of various works—The Decameron, The Inferno, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, The Elephant Man—as well as Hollywood history, 1970s karate films and the porn industry. This comprehensive study of six novels refutes criticism that Palahniuk’s goals are to shock and sensationalize.

Keywords in Remix Studies consists of twenty-four chapters authored by researchers who share interests in remix studies and remix culture throughout the arts and humanities. The essays reflect on the critical, historical and theoretical lineage of remix to the technological production that makes contemporary forms of communication and creativity possible. Remix enjoys international attention as it continues to become a paradigm of reference across many disciplines, due in part to its interdisciplinary nature as an unexpectedly fragmented approach and method useful in various fields to expand specific research interests. The focus on a specific keyword for each essay enables contributors to expose culture and society’s inconclusive relation with the creative process, and questions assumptions about authorship, plagiarism and originality. Keywords in Remix Studies is a resource for scholars, including researchers, practitioners, lecturers and students, interested in some or all aspects of remix studies. It can be a reference manual and introductory resource, as well as a teaching tool across the humanities and social sciences.