Blog 10 Video Vortex

The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life
Lev Manovich
The phenomenon of Web 2.0 has inverted the producer “strategies” of producing social media and consumer “tactics” of making social media their own, in that producers now market the flexible option of customizing social platforms to consumers, and consumers now customize social platforms by adhering to and utilizing structured programs for customization.

The Art of Watching Databases
Geert Lovink
The phenomenon of teenagers and adults watching seemingly endless chain of online media clips is similar to the necessary entertainment of children: neither children, nor mature individuals desire to be engaged in activities they may consider boring or too complicated, so their attention must be regularly diverted to something visually and mentally gratifying in order to keep them content.

Agreements/Disagreements
Manovich and Lovink make arguments that describe YouTube as a means for individuals to express their individuality, though originality, a key concept in individuality, is rarely present. According to Lovink's research, only 1 percent of YouTube users create their own videos. Instead of creating new media, they use mainstream media platforms to alter original videos, to demonstrate how “original” they are as individuals. Likewise, Manovich explains how the carefully structured company strategies now “mimic people's tactics of... reassembly, and remixing”, which means that an individual's ability to reassemble and remix media as a method of self-expression, becomes limited by the constructs of the mainstream.

Their arguments differ in how they perceive “remixing” as an expression of individuality. It can be argued that Lovink believes that creating a remake of an original video is imitation, and therefore not an expression of individuality. Consider posters of the original art pieces sold as souvenirs at museums, or professional artist recreations of those same pieces for art enthusiasts; they are imitations of the originals, or to use a more harsh term, fakes. On the other hand, Manovich mentions how subcultures came into being, not “from scratch”, but by “cultural appropriation and/or [remixing] of earlier commercial culture by independent individuals and groups.” This could mean that a new artist can express artistic individuality if he/she uses the original piece as a jumping off point. A good example of original remixing, from YouTube, would be the video “Chad Vader Chocolate Rain.” In this video, Chad Vader, a YouTube persona created by Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan, imitates Tay Zonday's original video “Chocolate Rain”, but the intent of the video was not to recreate Zonday's video; if it was, Yonda and Sloan would not have had a Darth Vader imitator singing the song. “Chad Vader Chocolate Rain” is original because it built upon a preexisting piece, and created something new.