Presenting at the IP/Gender Symposium 2009
I’m excited and honored to be invited to give a presentation at the IP/Gender Symposium at American University Washington College of Law in Washington DC. The conference will take place April 24th 2009 and the theme this year is “Female Fan Cultures and Intellectual Property” and the event is co-sponsored by the Center for Social Media and the Organization for Transformative Works – if you are not already familiar with OTW check out their site and journal online. My contribution to the symposium will be a talk and presentation of collected online remix videos with themes of gender and sexuality as well as remix videos on other political topics transformed by female identified creators. Update – my presentation will be on Thursday, April 23. 7:15pm.
I’m often of two minds when speaking about gender. On the one hand, as a man, I am conscious that I take up space otherwise filled by women. On the other hand though I feel it is incredibly important for men (especially white and/or straight identified men) to stand up and visibly advocate feminist, anti-racist and queer-positive positions. With that in mind I am privileged and especially thrilled to participate in this convention!
Notes on Remixing the Presidential Election and the Influence of Vidding
It has been a couple months now since I released my latest political remix “So You Think You Can be President?” (SYTYCBP). In that time it has been viewed around 20,000 times via various video-sharing sites and has been linked to and discussed on blogs about remix culture, politics and humor. Not bad for a politically transgressive and critical video, especially considering its nine minutes long and has a relatively slow narrative build which does not exactly follow the formula for political humor on YouTube. So a week before Obama’s inauguration I wanted to write this wrap-up post to share some of my creative process, motivations and influences for that project.
Over the past two years we saw a flood of remix videos on the topic of the 2008 US presidential elections. Some were creative, entertaining or down right hilarious but ultimately, for me, many ended up feeling a bit like amateur commercials eerily similar to the candidate’s own nationwide television-advertising campaigns. I had hoped this torrent of politically inspired mash-up activity would yield more videos critical of the election process, of the presidency as an institution or of the candidates’ strikingly similar policies on key issues. I had for the most part been avoiding participating in this remix frenzy but as November 4th drew closer I was still disappointed with most of the remixed messages created thus far. So I decided to throw my own remixed perspective into the ring.
Opening My Website Development Details
I can’t count the number of time I have come across a nice blog or website and wandered: how was this constructed, what software powers it, what plug-ins are running, where did the icons or other graphical elements come from. So in the spirit of open web development and sharing I’ve decided to post the details of how I built my site just in case you feel like incorporating or remixing any of the elements into your own web project.
Below I have listed a rundown of how I constructed rebelliouspixels.com. It is my hope that this practice of opening up the details will one day become standard especially among bloggers and sites that are powered with open source platforms like WordPress.
Presenting at the Mashup/Remix Conference 2009
I have been invited to give a presentation on political remix video works at the Mashup/Remix Conference held at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University in mid March 2009. The event will focusing on law, politics, culture and art and is sponsored by I/S: Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society and by the Wexner Center for the Arts. it will also feature an impressive list of participants including Mindy Faber and Francesca Coppa both of whom were involved in the 24/7 DIY Video Summit with me this February at USC. Sould be an exciting event!
So You Think You Can Be President?
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Watch & share on YouTube – Read my post on why I made this remix
So You Think You Can Be President? is a re-imagined reality television show where candidates compete for American votes!
Presidential hopefuls must present their positions on major issues in front of a live studio audience then face hard-hitting critiques from our panel of judges. Viewers at home will delight in the spectacle as candidates are challenged in ways never before seen in mainstream media.
In this week’s episode, only two weeks before the election, Senator Obama and Senator McCain have their feet held to the fire over shockingly similar positions on energy and foreign policy.
Who will be this season’s champion and take home the grand prize? You’ll have to watch and decide for yourself, then participate in the show by casting a vote* for your favorite performer on November 4th!
*Some restrictions may apply. In certain areas these include, but are not limited to, faulty electronic voting systems, racist voter laws and/or voter roll purges. See your local polling place for details.
Building a Critical Culture with Political Remix Video
An essay I wrote about Political Remix Video for the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. Published in the Ars Electronica 2008 Catalog in both English and German. I would also like give love and respect to bell hooks and her writing for being an inspiration to my work on these topics.
Building a Critical Culture with Political Remix Video
by Jonathan McIntosh – June 6, 2008
In March of 2003, I found myself glued to the television watching in horror and disbelief as American bombs rained down on the people of Iraq. Like many people living in the United States, I was deeply disturbed by our mainstream media’s cheerleading for war and their childlike fascination with military weaponry. As each broadcast seemed more and more void of humanity or concern for Iraqi lives, I was compelled to grab my video camera, hook it up to the screen and begin recording the carnage. Especially unsettling for me was the surreal juxtaposition of happy-go-lucky TV commercials for major brands scattered in-between news reports of an ancient civilization being laid waste in real time before my eyes. It was that absurdity coupled with my sense of outrage at the sheer injustice being perpetrated, which informed my first Political Remix Video (PRV) works. [1]
I loaded the newly captured digital video into my computer and began to remix, still not sure what would emerge. The result was a collection of biting, yet humorous, re-cut and re-framed TV ads fusing commercials with news footage. Once completed, I made the decision to disseminate these newly transformed works free to the public via my website and later through popular online video sharing tools. I was particularly drawn to the online distributing method because of the populism inherent in the medium. Online video offered a direct conduit to and from the general population. I wanted my remixes to reach a larger and diverse audience, which would be impossible had I chosen galleries, festivals or other more traditional means of video art delivery.
Video from Talk at Ars Electronica 2008
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Here is the video of my talk on Political Remix Video at Ars Electronica 2008 in Linz Austria for the New Cultural Economy Symposium. The title of the presentation is “Building a Critical Culture with Political Remix Video” and there is a youtube playlist on my user page including all the videos I present in case you want to favorite, comment on or share them.
I try to showcase Political Remix Videos that, I think, transcend the standard topics of government, elections or policy and instead highlight issues of racism, injustice, environment and mainstream media. I felt it was important to present and discuss works that focus on issues relevant to marginalized and oppressed communities inside the United States – specifically videos by Jackie Reem Salloum, The Black Lantern and Theodore Lyons.
I would also like to note that at the beginning of my talk I neglected to include a shout-out to the African American hip-hop communities that perfected and popularized remix as a art form and helped infuse it into our culture over the past several decades. An important point that, I think, should be included in any discussion of remix culture. Oh and in the talk I mispronounce Aaron Valdez’s name, apologies for that Aaron.
You can watch my talk above or via the video stream coming directly from the Ars website in wmp format.
For a good round-up of the rest Ars Electonica 2008 check out the report for Rhizome by Jonah Brucker-Cohen who I met while in Linz.
Political Remix Videos at FSCONS in Sweden
Looks like some of my Political Remix Videos will be featured this month at the Free Society Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden. The event is a collaboration between the Free Software Foundation Europe, Creative Commons Sweden and Wikimedia Sweden. I am told that at the conference my work will be shown (along with other video works) as an example of why sampling and remixing culture is valuable to society and social discourse and therefore should not be subject to legal prosecution.
Audio from Ars Electronica Talk
A quick update from Ars Electronica here in Linz Austria. I gave my talk on Political Remix Video and building a critical culture this Saturday as part of the New Cultural Economy Symposium IV.
You can listen to the MP3 of the talk on the Ars Electronica site and hear the audio from the panel discussion afterward. Here also is the YouTube playlist I used in my presentation linking to all the videos I referenced.
The Symposium IV line-up included Isaac Mao speaking on Sharism, Georgia Popplewell on Global Voices and Elizabeth Stark on free culture movements. Be sure to check out audio from all the symposium speakers including those mentioned above. Video should be available shortly.
Photo by Joi Ito
Remix at the New Forms Festival
My remix Go Army: Bad Guys will be featured as part of the Politube collection at the New Forms Festival this September in Vancouver Canada. Politube is curated by fellow political remixer Frank Lopez of submedia.tv. The discription for the show reads in part:
“Politube features the highlights of the short history of political videos online. From Canadian filmmaker Stephen Marshall’s “Channel Surfing the Apocalypse” to Jonathan McIntosh’s TV commercial mash-ups, the diverse world of Politube lives up to the name of the first web browser.”
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