Universität Wien

124260 KO Critical Media Analysis (2015S)

Remix Cultures

6.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 12 - Anglistik
Continuous assessment of course work

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 30 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

Monday 09.03. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21
Monday 16.03. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21
Monday 23.03. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21
Monday 13.04. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21
Monday 20.04. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21
Monday 27.04. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21
Monday 04.05. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21
Monday 11.05. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21
Monday 18.05. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21
Monday 01.06. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21
Monday 08.06. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21
Monday 15.06. 10:00 - 12:00 Seminarraum 6 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-O1-22.A
Monday 22.06. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21
Monday 29.06. 10:00 - 12:00 Helene-Richter-Saal UniCampus Hof 8 3G-EG-21

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

This course will explore how reproduction technologies, from the printing press to the camera to the phonograph, changed our relationship to culture, and how new digital technological innovations, from youtube to free remixing software, are actively re-transforming the nature of culture’s circuit of creation and consumption in the Internet Age. This will be achieved by investigating the ideas of Remix Theory, a burgeoning school of Culture and Media Studies that explores the idea that technologies and culture do not evolve independently, and that we find ourselves currently at the nascent point of a cultural paradigm shift towards a dominant Remix Culture.
Lawrence Lessig has argued that as a result of technologies of mass production introduced over the last five centuries, the general public became “just consumers of culture, not also producers.” Lessig characterizes this cultural paradigm shift as a move from “Read/Write” (R/W) to “Read/Only” (R/O) culture. Yet, over the course of the last century a strong counter-discourse to this prevailing model of R/O culture slowly developed. From postmodern pastiche and collage to DJ and hip-hop remix aesthetics, culture has been democratized by new theories and digital technologies to the point that in the current era culture occurs “in a networked, participatory environment, which breaks down the boundaries between producers and consumers and instead enables all participants to be users as well as producers of information and knowledge.”
This course will introduce students to Remix Theory and Remix Culture through collage films such as Woody Allen’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, Orson Welles’ F For Fake, and Carl Reiner’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid to contemporary youtube film mash-ups and memes; through the postmodern collage artworks of Andy Warhol and Richard Hamilton (and through their Victorian and Surrealist forebears) as well as street graffiti; to musical hybridization from Musique concrete to Jamaican dance-hall, Hip-Hop, and contemporary mash-ups. Exploring the consequences of this new R/W culture for the production and consumption of cultural artifacts will also allow us to introduce and engage with a number of key theoretical ideas in Culture and Media studies, such as questions of authenticity, original v. copy, and the conflict between authorized and deauthorized voices. Along the way we will consider these issues alongside various theoretical paradigms, such as Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage, Max Ernst’s theory of collage, Stuart Hall’s model of mass communication, postmodern theories of intertextuality and authorship (Barthes, Foucault), questions of copyright and ownership, and the semiotic differences between old and new media.

Assessment and permitted materials

Student presentation, Research assignments, and final essay

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Uses Lawrence Lessigs’s theory of Remix Culture to teach students about the intersection between technology and cultural forms, theories of High Culture v. the popular, simulacra & simulation, race, gender, etc. in a series of twentieth-century popular genres (music, film, art)

Examination topics

Reading list

Online Moodle Reader

Association in the course directory

Studium: UF 344, BA 612, BEd 046
Code/Modul: UF 4.2.5-426, BA07.3; BEd 08a.2, BEd 08b.1
Lehrinhalt: 12-4260

Last modified: We 09.09.2020 00:22