Barrett

Prefacing Interaction Copyright and Remix in Online Digital Literature Jim Barrett Modern Languages / HUMlab, Umeå University.

Author is an authority not an identity and it is constructed through dialogues

Digital Interaction is About Response

Compliance with response guides in reception

Copyright is a response guide

Digital literature is protected by copyright

Anticipating response in the design process

Copyright prefaces a work of digital literature

as a response guide

End User License Agreement (EULA)

Types of Copyright Agreements

Creative Commons (CC) Licenses

Copyright ©

Automatic copyright under Berne Convention

All creative works are protected under the Berne Convention. According to the Berne Convention the rights of the author must be recognized and the work may only be responded to according to copyright law. Distribution and storage of digital works and the possibility of remixing are addressed in each of the above…..

Remix is the “transfigurative appropriation of older materials” or the taking up of materials from older texts and using it to create something separate but derived from the source/s. ( Shusterman, 1995) 154.

Remixing at Three Stages of Digital Text Production Source Author Reception Literary intertextuality does not sufficiently explain the active remixing that is part of digital text reception. Interaction with a digital text, such as adding words, opening a file or clicking a link, has the potential to remix already ‘older’ components of the text into ‘new’ combinations.

Older Texts Included in Contemporary Online Digital Texts Satellite Images. CAT scans Medical textbooks. Hospital Records Old photographs. Home video film. Technical diagrams. Poetry of Erica Ghersi 2500 joint dialog behaviors. 27 Narrative beats. 32 Global mix In progressions. 3 Autonomous mix-in behaviors. Five Separate soundtracks. Narrative and visual elements from Optic Nerve , Eightball , Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? Liechtenstein’s Modern Room (1961) The Bible. Conversations. Newspaper content. Wikipedia , Emails, Song lyrics, Review column from Harpers Bazaar s Photos, Radio Broadcasts, Texts by Frank Ford, Herman Melville, Jim Hightower, John Kenneth Galbraith, Peter Van Sommers, Benjamin Franklin, W.B Yeats, Jorge Luis Borges. Record Of Congress The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Death on the Nile. Death Comes as the End, Ambient Egypt: Sounds From Ancient Sources. Egyptian Museum Papyri. Osiris Myth . The Bride Of Abydos Biographies of Flinders Petrie, Howard Carter and Amelia Edwards. Songs of Umm Kalthum Afghanistan Revealed. Black Eyed. Death Letter FBI Files. Hitler’s Henchmen Made in USA. The Nazis: A Warning from History. The Peoples Century. South Central Inside Voices. The Spanish Inquisition . Without Sanctuary, Iraq center, Lantos Briefings Halabjah. Afghan Women under Tyranny Amateur video of Rodney King beating by LAPD. Blade Runner Lord of the Rings. Meet the Parents. Good Will Hunting. The Ref. The Shawshank Redemption. Texts by Maqapi Selassie, Farid al Din Attar, Amjad Hussain Shah, And Irvine Saunders. Requiem Mass in D minor (K. 626) by W.A. Mozart. CAT Scans Dreamaphage CC Flash Site Façade EULA Custom Code 3D Ftrain © Custom coded blog Egypt (Berne) CD-ROM Last Meal Requested © Flash site Alleph (Berne) Flash site

Last Meal Requested Can be responded to as an audio visual instrument for playing, as a historical multimedia document or as a new media art piece. Depending upon the skill of the respondent and the contexts of reception the text is as adaptable as its codes allow it to be. http://www.e-garde.com/lmr/main.html

A seeming Democracy of Choice is actually an invisible hand – guiding, shaping and helping. Alleph by Sakab Bashir (2004) We don't exercise our copyright protection. (In short, for many of us the use of © is not done to protect the works from other artists who wish to use our material). Also, as many appropriation artists do, I believe rearrangement, remixing, or simply to bring something into a new context constitutes a work of art (the best example of which is probably Sherrie Levin's works). Sachiko Hayashi, e-mail to the author, 23 March 2007

The interpretive response to texts, termed in this paper ‘Remix’, should be recognized as important features of digital literacy, but they cannot be isolated from social and cultural forces such as copyright that define what texts are and how they are to be responded to. Authority is embodied in the preface ’treatments’ which surround the digital text, such as storage, distribution and copyright. These prefaces do not necessarily reflect text possibilities and they construct access to the text.

Jim Barrett http://www.soulsphincter.blogspot.com [email_address] http://www.humlab.umu.se/