Understanding appropriation as a creative practice
The three most common forms of fan-created video can be distinguished as fan movies, fan edits, and fanvids. Fan movies (or fan films) are videos in which fans recreate scenes from movies they are fans of, whether in live action, animation, or stop-motion animation (sometimes using franchise toys). Fan movies/films should not be confused with Read More …
I’m tentatively including memes under the modes and genres of creative appropriation because I adopt Limor Shifman’s definition of a meme in her very lucid and penetrating book, Memes in Digital Culture (2013). The word “meme” was originally coined by Richard Dawkins in the final chapter of his book on sociobiology, The Selfish Gene (1976). Read More …
The process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. (Wikipedia) The process was occasionally used in advertising in the late 19th century and for novelty postcards that were popular with the Victorians (many of which were proto-surrealist). People often had Read More …
In Jamaican music – particularly dancehall – it is a common practice for a producer to create a basic rhythm track (bass and percussion) and to then solicit a variety of artists to create songs over it. The track is called a riddim. This is a sort of “invitational appropriation,” in which sometimes dozens or Read More …
Dub is a brand of musical creation that originated in Jamaica around 1970. Many people credit King Tubby, the most famous early dub artist, with having created the “remix” in his dub versions of songs he and others produced for the Reggae market. Dub arises out of the popularity of “versions” in Jamaica in the Read More …
In the classical period of Western music the only generally legitimate ways a composer would appropriate another composer’s music would be to write variations on that composer’s theme or to “transcribe” their work for different instrumentation. For instance, the popular composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886) transcribed countless orchestral and other works by fellow composers. He recreated Read More …
Fan art is original artwork made by fans of a particular franchise, such as Batman, Star Wars, etc. The art may be in any number of media: drawing, cartoons, painting, sculture, collage and photomontage, digital remix, etc. Fan art often focuses on a particular character or motif with which the fan is obsessed or preoccupied, Read More …
Fan fiction involves original stories about characters from mainstream commercial franchises written by fans. Often these take the premises of the original commercial franchise and bend them in startling new directions. For instance, there are thousands of examples of fiction written by fans of Harry Potter who want more or different stories about the characters Read More …
“Filming” a video within a virtual world designed for other purposes (mainly video games and virtual worlds such as Second Life), using the world’s scenery, avatars, and sometimes music etc, but typically providing voiceovers, new music and other elements not from the virtual environment. A few well-regarded examples. Red vs Blue (episode one) The French Read More …
Video mashup is often used as a general term for re-edited video footage that uses two or more audio/video sources to create a new video. The motivations for this kind of appropriation are as varied as the artists, but many theorists would suggest that the effect of much of this video remix is to create Read More …