Music Mashup

The Music Mashup example that we used for our presentation:

United States of Pop (Viva La Pop)
By Dj Earworm

Featuring the top 25 Billboard hits from 2008, this music mashup does not hide the fact that it is composed of songs by other artists. This is a good example of Schneider's key distiction for this form:

"Mashups are only mashups if they are recognisable both as their components and the whole simultaneously" (Schneider 20).

Schneider's Mashup

As Schneider describes in his abstract, mashups are a new literary form. The form is so new in fact that the term is currently not found in the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary. Schneider tries to define the form and also attempts to create one, called Buchstauben. According to Schneider's abstract, mashups are "texts composed by combining portions from several original texts." He compares this form to a quilt, which is scraps of fabric stitched together to make a whole. These collaborative and derivative works can fall into controversy surrounding the issue of copyright.

Not A Mashup - Centro

CENTRO
noun
Etymology: from Latin the word for a patchwork garment
1. a composition formed by joining scraps from other authors
--Oxford English Dictionary

This term is predominately used to describe poetry. Due to the fact that The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is a novel, the text cannot be considered a centro. However, the centro is the closest traditional literary term to the form and style of a mashup. A centro is a poem composed by sampling early poets. It is different from a mashup in that the centro has strict rules of composition, while the mashup is not yet codified in this way. A centro is also usually formed by using the work of canonical authors, like Homer and Virgil. A mashup is not restricted to any specific type of source and features work from a broad range of authors.

Traditional Centro Example

580 -- xo interests to own or fit vesper w lympo
581 -- tum vic tu revo cant vi res fu sique per herbam
582 -- et dapi bus men sas one rant et pocula ponunt
583 -- postquam prima qui es epu lis men saeque remotae

This is a small part of the 694 line centro written in the mid-fourth century AD by female poet, Faltonia Betitia Proba. After converting to Christianity, Proba wrote this poem, which is parts of the Old and New Testament. The poem is created using different poetic lines previously written by Virgil. Virgil's lines have obviously been rearrange to now tell biblical stories. This section is from a part about The Last Supper, roughly translated from the Latin above into English it reads;

580 -- Meanwhile, tipped the Olympus (heaven),
the evening star is closer
581 -- Then with the food recovered strength,
and scattered on the grass
582 -- Tables loaded with dishes and glasses placed
583 -- After a first break was the food and tables removed

The choice to write in centro, and to use Virgil's words, stems from his fame. He replaced Homer as the most widely read and studied poet a somepoint during the first century BC. A perceived notion of authors at the time Proba wrote the above poem was, "Who can say something better than Virgil, who said it all?"

---- Ardea, Antonio. "El Carmen Sacrum de Faltonia Betitia, la Primera Poetisa Cristiana." Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Online.

Connection To The Text
The idea that authors in the fourth century were already concerned that previous artists and thinkers had produced all the possible original work is very similar to the postmodern theory that we can no longer create anything new. Nothing truly original can be produced because everything has already been created. In terms of his identity, Yambo is only able to recreate himself through interactions with material objects created by others. He suspects that even his own compositions as a child are written with a borrowed voice and merely created to present to the teacher a regurgitated version of something that would get a good grade. Perhaps everything that could be thought or written already has been and we are soon doomed to only create mashups from now on.

The Annotation Project

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana Annotation Project was started by Erik Ketzan and was the first online annotation wiki to be created. The wiki details, by page, the source for many of the images and quotes used in Umberto Eco's novel. Only a few of the original materials used by Eco are referenced in the Sources of Citations and Illustrations at the back of the novel, and these are predominately the images. Much of the original material, especially the literary quotes, were old enough to not need permissions and citations. These older pieces in the novel are identifiable but not identified, like a true mashup.

Schneider's mashup lists every piece of material in his mashup in Appendix A. This 21 page section details each of his sample sources, including ones, like Shakespeare, that did not legally need to be cited. This appendix is meant to support the making of the mashup but not the readers experience of reading the mashup since ideally the sample sources would be clear but not acknowledged formally.

Not A Mashup - Collage

COLLAGE
noun
Etymology: from French for the verb to glue
1. a) an artistic composition made of various materials (paper, cloth, or wood) glued on a surface b) a creative work that resembles such a composition in incorporating various materials or elements
2. the art of making collages
3. hodgepodge, the collage of ideas
4. a work, as a film, having disparate scenes in rapid succession without transition
--Merriam-Webster's Dictionary

It could be argued that The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is a literary collage but because of the word's emphasis on visual art, it is not a wholly appropriate term for the text. The materials used in the novel are not disparate from each other an often pages in succession will feature the same type of item, like a book cover or record album. However, some of the illustrations included in the text, as part of its mashup nature, are collages. The images on pages 366 and 324 were created by Umberto Eco and are more like the composition style of collage. However, in the Sources of Citations and Illustrations provided at the end of The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, these pages are referred to as montages.

Copyright

In Canada, we have the Canadian Copyright Act, a federal law that was created in 1867. According to the Act, a work is protected for the life of the artist and then for a period of 50 years. However, it is obviously impossible to copyright ideas, information, and facts. Copyright only covers the expression of ideas, and the arrangement of facts. The issue with mashups is that they highlight previous artists specific expression of ideas and therefore violate the Copyright Act.

But there is hope....
"It is a tricky balancing act, creating derivative works like the maship up without falling afoul of copyright legislation. Both scholars and legal experts support the notion that derivative works can be creative works in their own right, works that move well beyond their source" (Schneider 3).

Copyright - The Man

It is important to preserve the rights for intellectual property. From a purely economic standpoint, copyright and other intellectual property laws help artists make money from their work, which is good on an individual and public level.

These are the groups that champion a more restrictive model of intellectual property. These groups consider the mashup to be a derivative work and that without due permission or payment to the original artist it should be against the law:

ACTRA -- Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio
MPAA -- Motion Picture Association of America
RIAA -- Recording Industry Association of America

Copyright - Keeping You Down

It is important for intellectual property laws to be flexible. There is a danger in a society that is too focused on permission and financial monopolies. Artists should have access to experiment and communicate with culture more freely.

Creative Commons is an organization that realises copyright-licences, or Creative Commons licences, which allow free public access to previously copyrighted material. This organization works to expand on the material that is available for the public to use legally.

Not A Mashup - Bicolage

BRICOLAGE
noun
Etymology: from French for the verb to putter around
a) construction (as of a sculpture or structure of ideas) achieved by using whatever comes to hand, b) something constructed in this way
--Merriam-Webster's Dictionary

Bricolage can be seen in theatre, visual art, and music. A band that uses found objects as instruments would be an example of this. Culturally, bricolage is seen when people reach across a number of different cultures to bring together an identity from a collection of objects. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is an example of bricolage in literature, especially because not only has the author found objects to use in the text but the character of Yambo finds them as well. So this is a text that is a bricolage in form and is also about the action of creating a bricolage. Sometimes a mashup is also a bricolage, dependent on the types of materials used to create it. However, if the components of the piece are not recognizable than it is a bricolage but not a mashup.

Presentation Questions

Summery of questions asked to the class during our presentation:

Did you find the language barrier a problem within the comics and images found in The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana?
Consensus was that the language difference between the text and images was not a barrier to understanding and enjoy the novel but that it was slightly annoying. Because the novel was originally written in Italian, and the comics, book covers, albums, etc. were also in Italian, an Italian audience has a different and more complete experience of the novel than the English audience. It is difficult to determine how the translation of the images would have worked, as some of the songs were translated but ended up not making a lot of sense.

Did you find the images helpful in understanding the text?
Having the images along with the descriptions of them adds an extra layer of meaning and understanding to the text. Once Yambo goes to Solara the story intertwines with his visual discoveries, without seeing these the reader would not feel as connected to the main character.

Did you think the text would have been more effective as an online narrative?
The connection between Yambo looking through books and the reader holding a book is important. With the images included hyperlinks are not necessary. The class agreed that an online narrative, or even just reading the novel online, would not be as effective as the physical book. This then initiated a discuss about the positives about owning physical books over reading and purchasing novels online.

Presentation Today!!

Emma Vossen and I presented today. Emma's article was a section of Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud which worked well with Schneider's article because much of the mashup material used by Umberto in The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana are comics or cartoons.

SLIDESHOW

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ABSTRACT (From Handout)
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is a ‘literary mashup’. Eco Umberto’s use of different texts in the novel is essential for the plot. The story unfolds through a retelling of songs, stories, magazines, and comics. In the novel, Yambo’s attempt to remember his past is completely tied to these sources which are written or created not by Umberto but previous authors, musicians, and artists