Quotation and Context: Sampling and John Oswald's Plunderphonics

Holm-Hudson, Kevin

doi:10.2307/1513241

Cited by 35 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…John Oswald's subtly undulating collages of very carefully chosen recordings by high profile artists, for example, explicitly explored degrees of familiarity and unfamiliarity on the part of his audience. He coined the terms “plunderphone,” the smallest possible recognizable fragment of familiar music, and “plunderphonic,” the larger genre of his experiments with large collections of these fragments, to explain his work (Holm‐Hudson, , p. 21). Oswald's CD Plunderphonics from 1989 was the subject of a successful lawsuit, the judgment of which required him to destroy all uncirculated copies of the album.…”

Section: The Emergence Of the Mash Upmentioning

confidence: 99%

The emergence and historical decay of the mash up

Fairchild

2017

Journal of Popular Music Studies

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The mash up has descended dramatically from the once dizzy heights of prominence it enjoyed at the turn of the 21st century. For a form that once attracted a great deal of attention from a fair number of music journalists and academics alike, its comparative lack of visibility is striking. However, I argue here that this decay is not due its decreasing relevance, but its absorption into an increasingly expansive, pervasive musical tradition, the tradition of sample‐based music. The purpose of this article is to show how the historical assessment of mash up remains too tightly tethered to an intellectual tradition that posits its rebellious subversion of the dominant regime of intellectual property in the music industry as its primary fount of meaning. Therefore, as the intensity surrounding issues of intellectual property and piracy have faded, so has the seeming relevance this musical form. However, I suggest that if we look at this form from within its tradition of musical practice, we can understand its particular band of relevance and influence on contemporary sample‐based music more completely.

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Section: The Emergence Of the Mash Upmentioning

confidence: 99%

The emergence and historical decay of the mash up

Fairchild

2017

Journal of Popular Music Studies

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“…Here again, the mash-up is exceedlingly and unapologetically derivative. As Kevin Holm-Hudson (1997) (2006). Smith not only casts a wider net but allows for a much more nuanced understanding of the problem.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking the Digital Remix: Mash‐ups and the Metaphysics of Sound Recording

Gunkel¹

2008

Popular Music and Society

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Critical evaluations of audio mash-ups and remixes tend to congregate around two poles. On the one hand, these often clever recombinations of recorded music are celebrated as innovative and creative interventions in the material of bland commodity culture. On the other hand, they are often reviled as derivative, inauthentic, and illegal because they do nothing more than appropriate and reconfigure the intellectual property of others. This essay does not side with either position but identifies and critiques the common understanding and fundamental assumptions that make these two, opposed positions possible in the first place. The investigation of this matter is divided into two main parts. The first considers the traditional understanding of technologically enabled reproduction and the often unquestioned value it invests in the concept of originality. It does so by beginning with a somewhat unlikely source, Plato's Phaedrus-a dialogue that, it is argued, originally articulates the original concept of originality that both determines and is reproduced in the theories and practices of sound recording. The second part of the essay demonstrates how the audio mash-up deliberately intervenes in this tradition, advancing a fundamental challenge to the original understanding and privilege of originality. In making this argument, however, the essay does not endeavor to position the mash-up as anything unique or innovative. Instead, it demonstrates how mash-ups, true to their thoroughly derivative nature, plunder, reuse, and remix anomalies that are already available in and constitutive of recorded music. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital. Today, an endless, recombinant, and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of creative product (another antique term?)…The recombinant (the bootleg, the remix, the mash-up) has become the characteristic pivot at the turn of our two centuries (Gibson, 2005: 118). Although the audio mash-up 1 is a relatively new development in popular music, its cultural history appears to be already predetermined , programmed, and prescribed. The narrative trajectory of this D. Gunkel history, like the one that has been written for almost every innovation in pop music (e.g., jazz, rock 'n' roll, punk, rap, P2P, etc.), follows a rather well worn and recognizable path. Once upon a time, these narratives usually read, there was a revolutionary underground movement that sought to challenge the status quo. Mash-ups-a bastard art form created by the illegitimate appropriation and fusion of two or more audio recordings-were patently illegal, deliberate subversions of authority in the culture industry, and critical interventions in the very material of popular music. This part of the story is always and unapologetically imbued with an unquestioned validation of democratic ideals, revolutionary politics, and utopian pretensions: the people effectively challenge and circumvent the hegemony of multinational corporations, passive consumers of ...

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“…The prevalent use of digital tools and the Internet's communication facilities may be changing the rigid authorship concept that still prevails in music and other arts. As pointed out by both music theorist Kevin H olm-Hudson [13] and British drummer Cris Cutler [14], the use of sampling technology has boosted an appropriationist approach in music (although related possibilities have always been available) that carries both legal and aesthetic ramifications. Digital data is clonable, which leads to piracy, but it is also manipulable to any degree; and if this data is thrown into a public and easily accessible medium such as the Internet, its chances of development expand, allowing any kind of structural, formal or content redefinitions.…”

Section: Is Authorship Still a Valid Concept?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Faust Music On Line: An Approach to Real-Time Collective Composition on the Internet

Jordà

1999

Leonardo Music Journal

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Collective creation and the production of open and continuously evolving works are, according to the author, two of the major and more appealing artistic breakthroughs the Internet can offer to composers and creators in general. In this context, concepts such as authorship and copyright will necessarily have to evolve and adapt to a new reality. The author discusses an Internet project for real-time collective composition commissioned by La Fura dels Baus, which has been used for the soundtrack of La Fura's play F@ust 3.0.

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Quotation and Context: Sampling and John Oswald's Plunderphonics

Cited by 35 publications

References 3 publications

The emergence and historical decay of the mash up

The emergence and historical decay of the mash up

Rethinking the Digital Remix: Mash‐ups and the Metaphysics of Sound Recording

Faust Music On Line: An Approach to Real-Time Collective Composition on the Internet

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