Understanding appropriation as a creative practice
A culture jam uses the media of a dominant culture (corporate, entertainment, political) to criticize and subvert the ends of that culture. Culture jams may be audio, video, or still images, and could possibly exist in other modes as well. A culture jam is something more than a parody (of, say, an ad). Its intentions Read More …
A term used by Guy Debord and the French politicized avant-garde group known as the Situationists to describe a creative appropriation that attempts to radically change the intended meaning or direction of the original work. For the Situationists, this means using outmoded media to express new, more progressive values. The Situationists were far left “art Read More …
The cut-up technique is a method of literary creation in which a text is cut up into into individual words or short phrases and these are randomly rearranged to create new patterns of language. The technique was used by the Dadaists, especially Tristan Tzara, who wrote a brief set of instructions called “To make a Read More …
The Readymade is a form of appropriation art invented and exclusively practised by Marcel Duchamp, who was connected with the Dadaists but generally distanced himself from any school of art. The first and most famous readymade was the urinal that Duchamp signed “R. Mutt” and submitted under the title Fountain for an open exhibition of Read More …
A form of creative work where paper and other generally flat objects are pasted to canvas, board, etc. Often the pasted material is combined with other media (painting, pen and ink, etc), but sometimes an entire work is composed of pasted paper together. Typically the paper materials are printed matter from mass media (newspapers, magazine Read More …
A medley combines partial covers (re-performances) of two or more songs into a single continuous musical performance. See also: cover, mashup
A cover version is when someone re-performs someone else’s song.
Vidding involves creating a music video from the footage from one or more video sources, generally mainstream franchise movies or tv shows, to explore material from the source in a different way from how it was presented by the creators. The vidder may explore a single character across different films, promote a minor character or Read More …
Fan edits or fanedits are movies that have been recut, rescored, remastered, or “remixed” by amateur editors, using computer software. They are like alternative “director’s cuts” of movies and tv shows, but made by unknown, illicit, hacker directors. Fan editors generally take advantage of the dvd releases of films, including extras, which they rip and Read More …
Transmedia adaptation is appropriating the story, characters, motifs, etc from a work in one medium to “recreate” the work in another medium, for instance creating a film version of a novel, an opera from a play, a tv series from a comic book, and so forth.