Carolyn Guertin
Carolyn Guertin is a digital media scholar-practitioner and the author of *Digital Prohibition: Piracy and Authorship in New Media Art* (Continuum, 2012). She specializes in digital cultural studies, electronic literature, global media arts, emerging technologies, digital storytelling, and pedagogy. Her work appears in proceedings in the arts, sciences and communications. She has taught at universities in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and the E.U.
In 2013, she received the Outstanding Early Career Award from the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities / Société canadienne des humanités numériques. For potential research, writing collaborations or speaking engagements, please contact her at carolyn [dot] guertin [at] gmail [dot] com.
Her PhD was in electronic literature and cyberfeminist theory from the University of Alberta (Canada) and she was Senior McLuhan Fellow and SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto from 2004 to 2006.
In 2013, she received the Outstanding Early Career Award from the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities / Société canadienne des humanités numériques. For potential research, writing collaborations or speaking engagements, please contact her at carolyn [dot] guertin [at] gmail [dot] com.
Her PhD was in electronic literature and cyberfeminist theory from the University of Alberta (Canada) and she was Senior McLuhan Fellow and SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto from 2004 to 2006.
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Le remix démontre que la créativité est bel et bien vivante; mais qu'elle est aussi en butte à des attaques par les détenteurs de droits d'auteur des entreprises, qui tentent d'arrêter le partage de médias et des médias remixés. La pratique de l'art se trouve maintenant dans la façon dont les matériaux préexistants sont remixés et rendus neufs. C'est l'acte de transformer le matériel original qui contribue à la valeur du remixage. Les artistes réutilisent d'autres textes pour révéler et pour transmettre des messages politiques, et non pas tout simplement pour les recréer. Le remix ne tue pas la forme narrative; au contraire il favorise une transformation et une renaissance de la pratique créative, à l'extérieur des limites juridiques du droit d'auteur. La criminalisation des nouveaux types de cette pratique créative est un obstacle croissant à la renaissance créative du remix. Le remix réinvente les textes préexistants, aussi bien que les intrigues et les genres comme un moyen d'interroger l'avenir de la culture, et cela, par le biais de la paternité des travaux numériques réalisés en collaboration, et par une forme esthétique distincte du remix qui est basée sur l'interruption, les perturbations, la capture et les fuites.
Asian cultures by and large are not rooted in the culture of the subject or in identity formations in the same way that Euro-American cultures are. By contrast in our digital culture, the Web 2.0 world revels in egomania and in celebrations of the self. A shift toward personal expression is starting to make itself felt in China where a massive cultural renaissance is leading to explorations of Western themes and media. Digital culture explorers Cao Fei, Miao Xiaochun, and Feng Mengbo insert themselves as subjects into their art. It is important to note that in a country that has no tradition of self-representation that the use of the self as a subject is operating in very different ways that are stock in trade in Euro-American notions of identity. Despite that, these artists take their explorations of identity to extremes:
• Cao’s subject appears as her avatar, China Tracy, in her fantastical digital city where hip-hop, sci-fi and cosplay meet traditional Chinese painting in Second Life
• Miao’s 3D virtual retellings of the Sistine Chapel and Garden of Earthly Delights are populated by identical versions of himself that number in the hundreds
• Feng’s Q4U, a hack of the popular game Quake, features his representation both as fighting self and as camera/gun-toting enemy to be exterminated
While these digital creators are clearly the ‘authors’ of their selves and their art, the very notion of interactivity in exploring China Tracy’s RMB City, touring Miao’s 3D worlds, or in playing Feng’s game problematizes authorship in complex ways.
Collaborative structures of authorship are already in existence in Asian cultures, often for safety’s sake. In a country like China where speaking one’s mind can have dire consequences, the concept of voice can be fluid, contradictory or shared. “In such contexts, voice is just as likely to be a vehicle for the proliferation and scrambling of identity codes” (Teh 173). Power mechanisms are responsible for subject formation, and s/he who controls representation possesses the power to visualize data, shape and share her own narratives. Going far beyond simple remix, appropriation or the reapplication of existing techniques, these authors are adapting technologies and inventing new methodologies. This paper will explore the new subjects and spaces for authorship they are fostering in these virtual worlds.
Works Cited
Akira, Tatehata. “Why Cubism? (2006).” Contemporary Art in Asia: A Critical Reader. Melissa Chiu and Benjamin Genocchio, Eds. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2011. Print. 107-115.
Teh, David. “The Video Agenda in Southeast Asia, or, ‘Digital, So Not Digital.’ Video Vortex Reader II: Moving Images Beyond YouTube. Geert Lovink and Rachel Summers Myers, Eds. 08 March 2011. Accessed 10 March 2011. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2011. 162-177.