Everything Is A Remix

Part One 1) Q: What is a remix? A: To combine or edit existing materials to produce something new.

2) Q: What style of music was it mostly associated with? A: Hip Hop.

3) Q: Who and what did the Sugar Hill gang sample? A: The bass riff from Chic's "Good Times", used in "Rapper's Delight".

4) Q: Which two other artists have used the same sample? A: The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash / Grandmaster Flash Everything's Gonna Be Alright / Father MC It's All Good / Will Smith 2345Meia78 / Gabriel O Pensador Around The World / Daft Punk

5) Q: Which band formed in 1968? A: Led Zeppelin

6) Q: What term is coined in Paris in 1961? A: "heavy metal"

7) Q: What novel did it come from and who wrote it? A: The Soft Machine - William Burroughs

8) Q: What were the band formed in 1968 labelled as? A: "ripoffs"

9) Q: "Stairway to Heaven" was based on which exisiting song? A: Spirit's "Taurus"

10) Q: What's the 'problem' with what Led Zeppelin did? A: When Zeppelin used someone else's material, they didn't attribute songwriting to the original artist. Zeppelin didn't modify their versions enough to claim they were original. They copied without making fundamental changes.

11) Q: What's the difference between a cover and a knock-off? A: Covers: Performances of other people's material. Knock-offs: Copies that stay within legal boundaries.

Part Two 12) Q: What do most box office hits rely on? A: Existing material.

13) Q: How many films out of 100 are sequels/remakes/or adaptations? A: 74.

14) Q: What is a 'genre movie'? A: Films which stick to standard templates.

15) Q: List 4 sub genres of Horror: A: Slasher, Zombie, Creature Feature, Torture Porn.

16) Q: What happens to their standard elements? A: Appropriated, transformed and subverted.

17) Q: List the elements of Star Wars. A: Foundation built by Joseph Campbell, popularised the structures of myth in The Hero with a Thousand Faces - Follows the outline of the Monomyth; The Call to Adventure, Supernatural Aid, The Belly of the Whale, Road of Trials, Meeting with the Goddess - Flash Gordon (1936) - Akira Kurosawa, Hidden Fortress (1958) Yojimbo (1961)

18) Q: Which two genres were huge sources for Star Wars? A: War films & Westerns

19) Q: What does creation require? A: Influence.

20) Q: Who is now the most movie saturated director? A: Quentin Tarantino

Part Three 21) Q: What are the myths of creativity? A: That creativity comes via inspiration, that original creations break the mould, that theyre the products of geniuses, and appear as quickly as electricity can heat a filament. Creativity isnt magic, it happens by applying ordinary tools of thought to existing material. James Watt spent 12 years improving his own version of the steam engine because he was assigned to repair a Thomas Newcomen model; Christopher Latham Sholes modelled his typewriter keyboard on a piano, which then evolved over 5 years into the qwerty layout we use today; and Thomas Edison didnt invent the light bulb, his first patent was improvement in electric lamps, but he did produce the first commercially viable one, after trying 6000 different materials for the filament. These are all major advances but are not original ideas.

22) Q: Why do we need copying?

A: Nobody starts out original. By connecting ideas together, creative leaps can be made. We need copying to build a foundation of knowledge and understanding. We cant introduce anything new until we are fluent in the language of our domain. It is then possible to create something new through transformations, taking an idea and creating variations.

23) Q: When was Guttenberg's printing press invented? A: 1440.

24) Q: What elements were combined to create the model T in 1908? A: Assembly Line (1867), Interchangeable Parts (I801), Automobile (1885)

25) Q: What are the basic elements of creativity? A: Copy, transform and combine.

26) Q: Who invented the PC? A: Xerox.

27) Q: What is multiple discovery? A: The same innovation emerging from different places.

Part Four 28) Q: What is evolution? A: Copy, transform and combine.

29) Q: What is the term for this in culture? A: Memes; ideas, behaviour and skills.

30) Q: What is this called? A: Social Evolution

31) Q: What doesn't law acknowledge? A: The derivative nature of creativity; instead, ideas are regarded as property, as unique and original lots with distinct boundaries.

32) Q: What was the side effect of a market economy? A: Original creations cant compete with the price of copies.

33) Q: What was the point of the copyright and patent act? A: The act aimed to encourage the creation and proliferation of new ideas by providing a brief and limited period of exclusivity; a period where no one else could copy your work.

34) Q: What term was created to protect ideas? A: Intellectual Property

35) Q: What is loss aversion? A: We hate losing what weve got.

36) Q: How did Disney use the public domain? A: Snow White, Pinocchio and Alice in Wonderland were taken from existing texts.

37) Q: "We have no problem with copying as long as... A: were the ones doing it.

38) Q: Which song did George Harrison subconsciously copy? A: Hes So Fine (R. Mack) performed by The Chiffons (1962) in his track My sweet Lord

39) Q: What connects Kanye West to "It Must Be Jesus"?

A: Kanye Wests Gold Digger (2005) features samples of Ray Charles song I Got A Woman (1954), which was based on The Southern Tones It Must Be Jesus (1954).

40) Q: What is a patent? A: A blueprint for how to make an invention.

41) Q: What is a software patent? A: A loose description of what something would be like if it was invented.

42) Q: What 0% of patent lawsuits are over software? A: 62%.

43) Q: How much wealth is estimated to have been lost? A: Half a trillion dollars.

44) Q: What are sample trolls and patent trolls? A: Corporations that dont produce anything. They acquire a library of intellectual property rights, then litigate to earn profits.

45) Q: Who is the most famous sample troll and why? A: Bridgeport music, which has filed hundreds of law suits. In 2005, they scored an influential court decision over a short sample which was virtually recognisable.

46) Q: How long was the sample from 2005 and where was it from and where was it used? A: 2 seconds. Taken from Get Off Your Ass and Jam performed by Funkadelic, April 1975 and used in 100 Miles and Runnin performed by N.W.A., August, 1990.

47) Q: Why has this been bad for hip hop? A: This rendered any kind of sampling, no matter how small, infringing. Sample heavy musical collages of hip hops golden age are now impossibly expensive to create.

48) Q: Why are patent laws bad for postmodernism? A: The belief in intellectual property has grown so dominant its pushed the original intent of copyrights and patents out of the public consciousness.