Remix Culture

                  I must admit, when I first heard the term "remix culture" in a class last semester, I was quite skeptical about how much of a "culture" there really was for it.  Sure, I knew that there were people on youtube that would take content from a movie and put it to a song, or who would take clips of the President in order to give the illusion of him saying something comical, but it wasn't until this semester that I realized there are in fact a large group of "remixers" that use this art form to get messages out to the public.  Reading about Elisa Kreisinger and her battle for feminism only drilled this concept further into my mind.  I loved how the article, How a Video Artist made Don Draper a Mouthpiece for Gay Rights,  showed Kreisinger's thought process when it came to her art form.  She knew that shoving her feministic views down the throats of the public with drab, straight forward, preachy methods would not be the way to go about things.  As the article puts it, "Pop culture, she realized, could be the sugar coating on the bitter pill of feminist theory."  The moment I read this, I finally felt that I understood it all.  This is exactly what remix art is.  It is a fun, entertaining, and interesting form of video art that people love to watch, little do they know though, that they are being exposed to important issues and messages at the exact same time.  It is a win-win for both the artist and the viewers.

                   As far as the actual topic of remixing and sharing other media content is concerned, I think that this article alone is proof enough that there is really nothing wrong with it.  Even before the digital age, artists had been taking ideas or actual images from other artists' works and re-creating them in fa way that was completely original.  This is no different than what remix artists are doing, yet their lives are much more difficult.  As their work continuously gets mixed up with actual pirated media, these artists struggle to keep their messages and other work out in the public view.  Overall, remix art is constantly growing, and every day new and innovative clips are published to the internet in the hopes that issues will be addressed.  I feel that remix art is the way of the future and I truly enjoy and respect it.