Hillel Schwartz: The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles, 2nd ed. (1996/2013)

The Culture of the Copy is an unprecedented attempt to make sense of the Western fascination with replicas, duplicates, and twins. In a work that is breathtaking in its synthetic and critical achievements, Hillel Schwartz charts the repercussions of our entanglement with copies of all kinds, whose presence alternately sustains and overwhelms us. Through intriguing, and at times humorous, historical analysis and case studies in contemporary culture, Schwartz investigates a stunning array of simulacra—counterfeits, decoys, mannequins, and portraits; ditto marks, genetic cloning, war games, and camouflage; instant replays, digital imaging, parrots, and photocopies; wax museums, apes, and art forgeries, not to mention the very notion of the Real McCoy. Working through a range of theories on biological, mechanical, and electronic repro­duction, Schwartz questions the modern esteem for authenticity and uniqueness. The Culture of the Copy shows how the ethical dilemmas central to so many fields of endeavor have become inseparable from our pursuit of copies—of the natural world, of our own creations, indeed of our very selves.

This updated edition takes notice of recent shifts in thought with regard to such issues as biological cloning, conjoined twins, copyright, digital reproduction, and multiple personality disorder. At once abbreviated and refined, it will be of interest to anyone concerned with proglems of authenticity, identity, and originality.

First published in 1996
Publisher Zone Books, New York, 2013
ISBN 1935408453, 9781935408451
480 pages

Review (Terence Hawkes, London Review of Books, 1997)
Review (Francis Kane, The New York Times, 1997)
Review (Todd Gitlin, Los Angeles Times, 1997)

Publisher
Google books

Download (removed on 2014-3-20 upon request of the publisher)

TIM – Teorie Interaktivních Médií, 4: Remake (2012) [Czech]

“TIM ezin je odborný magazín studentů oboru Teorie interaktivních médií Masarykovy univerzity v Brně. Číslo 4 je věnované tématu REMAKE a také aktuálnímu projektu REMAKE z dílny Sdružení pro aktuální umění a kulturu Atrakt Art.

Projekt, který je založen na kolaborativní produkci a mezinárodní prezentaci nových uměleckých prací, inspirovaných bohatou historií mediálního umění v Evropě, představuje tematické východisko článků druhého čísla ezinu TIM.”

Klíčová slova: remake, remix, remixability, postprodukce, apropriace, znovu provedení (reenactment), koláž, montáž, pastiš, postmodernismus, vizuální kultura, DJ culture, nová historiografie, produsage, prosumer technologies, autorské právo, open source, free software.

Edited by Zuzana Kobíková and Jana Horáková
Publisher Ústav hudební vědy Filozofické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity, Brno
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
ISSN 1805-2606
via Barbora Šedivá

PDF, PDF (updated on 2017-12-2)
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REFF RomaEuropa FakeFactory (2010) [Italian]

The reinvention of the real through critical practices of remix, mash-up, re-contextualization, reenactment

Romaeuropa FakeFactory is an act of artistic and technological hacking, a platform for global discussion and a performance that, beginning in 2009, has dealt with the themes of active, critical and creative innovation, confronting the management of cultural and technological policies related to these areas. The story begins with the opening of the Romaeuropa WebFactory, a digital art competition launched in 2008 by the Romaeuropa Foundation (Fondazione Romaeuropa) and Telecom Italia. Oppressive copyright conditions, such as the unilateral transfer of the rights to the works submitted and a ban on the use of techniques like mashup, cutup, remix but conversely giving the Romaeuropa Foundation and Telecom Italia the right to remix the works, inspired the creation of a Fake capable of becoming a point for multi-disciplinary analysis of the possibilities offered by freely available knowledge, contents and resources: a chance to reverse the logic of the competition and bring to light the contradictions, limits and implications of such a typical, reactionary cultural policy.

“Remix the world! Reinvent Reality!” is one of the principal themes that has inspired the REFF, from an act of détournement and cybersquatting – that brought to life the creation of a remix skills competition determining in 2009 a reversal of the Romaeuropa Foundation and Telecom Italia’s policy on the management of intellectual property rights – to the presentation of REFF’s instances and methodologies to the Cultural Commission of the Italian Senate (Commissione Cultura del Senato della Repubblica Italiana), up to the current production of the REFF book, as a global effort to create a working business model that implements the concepts and demands expressed by the RomaEuropa FakeFactory. Supporters of the REFF are found all over the world: over 80 partners among universities, artists, academies, associations, hackers, researchers, designers, journalists, politicians, magazines, networks, activitst, art critics, architects, musicians and entrepreneurs together with all the people who share a belief that art, design and new technologies can unite towards a critical, yet positive vision of a world that can create new opportunities and new ways of being, collaborating and communicating.

English version to be published soon.

Authors
Publisher (Fake Press)
Publisher (Derive Approdi)

Foreword by: Bruce Sterling
Edited and produced by FakePress and Derive&Approdi
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAlike 2.5 Italy.

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