Now in Print: Disco Edits and their Discontents in New Media and Society

Now in print:

Borschke, Margie (2011) "Disco edits and their discontents: The persistence of the analog in a digital era" New Media & Society September 2011 vol. 13 no. 6 929-944; Published online before print December 6, 2010, doi: 10.1177/1461444810386693

University of New South Wales, Australia, margaret.borschke@unsw.edu.au

Abstract

This article foregrounds the distinction between two compositional forms and creative strategies in dance music — edits and remixes — as a way to gain a better understanding of the relationship between media use and media content, between producers and users, artifacts and events. It considers how the earliest disco edits in the 1970s were shaped by listeners (DJs and dancers) working in tandem with the material qualities and functional properties of vinyl records and other analog technologies and argues that while contemporary edits are made with digital tools, they continue to be in debt to their analog antecedents. In doing so this article critiques the enthusiastic adoption of ‘remix’ as a metaphor to describe digital culture and questions whether this rhetorical usage overshadows the aesthetic priorities and political implications of a variety of creative strategies that involve media use and re-use.








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Is all writing copywriting now?

Nate Silver's piece on the New York Time's website, 'The Economics of Blogging and The Huffington Post' makes the following statement:

"I’ve also done a fair amount of uncompensated or undercompensated writing — there is certainly a time and a place for it, particularly if you’re trying to establish or re-establish your brand."

This conflation of reputation and brand is intriguing. It seems to me that if you follow this line of thinking it suggests that somehow all writing is advertising that exists to reinforce a writer's 'brand'. For me, self promotion has never been the point of writing and I expect many others would bristle at this conceptualization.



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Stealth videography in Cairo

New York Times foreign correspondent Stephen Farrell describes his pared down kit for stealth reporting at Tahrir Square

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/what-not-to-bring-to-tahrir-square/

Multimedia
Lens: What Not to Bring to Tahrir Square
By By STEPHEN FARRELL
Published: February 8, 2011
Less is more for journalists in Cairo, Stephen Farrell reports. Less equipment can mean more access. Or, at least, fewer hassles.

“At one checkpoint you will encounter a thug with a nail-studded plank; elsewhere, a member of the professional class twirling a golf club, who smiles and remarks, ‘Interesting times, no?’”

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Don't copy my appropriation, says Jeff Koons

http://www.baycitizen.org/visual-art/story/jeff-koons-sends-cease-and-desist-sfs/

Lawyers for artist Jeff Koons sent a letter asking Park Life to stop selling and advertising the balloon dog bookends, return them to some mutually agreed upon address, tell Koons how many have been sold and disclose the maker of said bookends — a fact, Alexander said, that could easily be found via Google.

In Twist, Jeff Koons Claims Rights to ‘Balloon Dogs’
By KATE TAYLOR
Published: January 19, 2011
New York Times

Jeff Koons, who is known for appropriating pop-culture imagery, says that bookends sold by a San Francisco gallery violate his intellectual property rights.

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