Thinking Culture - Creative Mornings Utrecht (topic: Reuse)

THINKING CULTURE Breandán Knowlton – @bfk Thanks for having me
here in Utrecht, and I apologise that I don’t speak Dutch. I’m going to take about 15 minutes to ask three questions about reuse. Since I seem to have a microphone, I’ll go ahead and give some of my ideas about the answers, as well.

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 ONLY
THOSE WITH NO MEMORY INSIST ON THEIR ORIGINALITY. — ATTRIBUTED TO COCO CHANEL I start with a quote attributed to Coco Chanel: Only those with no memory insist on their originality. Ironically, the quote is attributed because we don’t remember. But it does raise the question:

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 Where
do we keep our memories? Where do we keep our memories? One place has always been:

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 1810
Our brains. They’ve been with us since the beginning, and do a pretty good job. You put stuff in, you take stuff out, just like in this 1810 illustration from a medical textbook. But when you have groups of people collaborating (which we call culture), you need:

a place to put everything. To remember. So these Victorians could visit the Egypt Room of the British Museum in 1847 to learn and be inspired by cultures far away from their own. When we put enough of our memories together,

We can start to put them on shelves, or even move them around like this perambulating library of a guild of mechanics in 1860. You can move the memories of how to do something directly to where the people are doing it. But when you look at the world,

That’s a lot of potential stores of memory and culture. Even in this map from 1596 the wide extent of the world was pretty well known, and each group of people have their own memories to keep. How do we keep and share them now?

Now we can use computers. Like this IBM 360 mainframe in 1969, we can put our memories into databanks, and retrieve them anywhere. So we ﬁnally have a tool to help us with the question.

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 Where
do we keep our memories? In a distributed network of computers. Where do we keep our memories? Now, we keep them in a distributed network of computers. So now these millions of outside sources exist – what does that have to do with the way we think today?

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 ALL
IDEAS ARE SECONDHAND, CONSCIOUSLY AND UNCONSCIOUSLY DRAWN FROM A MILLION OUTSIDE SOURCES. – MARK TWAIN As Mark Twain said, “All ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.” So our very thoughts are shaped by these memories, coming from outside ourselves. But that raises the second question:

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 Do
we reuse … or remix? Do we simply reuse these ideas, or do we remix, recycle, transform them into completely new shapes? I think you can see where I’m going with this.

This clothing ad from 1860 shows the height of leading fashion for men. While moustaches have now come back, some of the other shapes and fabrics seem strange ….

But is it really so far from those high collars and straight lines to this fashionable overcoat from Hywel Jones, a Welsh fashion designer, in 1962? I’m sure he didn’t spend his time poring through Victorian catalogues. But the idea, the memory persists as a kind of reuse. In 1940,

The Empire theatre in Scotland advertised their bands of the week. They use careful woodblock typography, a clear grid, the same condensed gothic type that’s back in fashion today. But 50 years later,

a Jane’s Addiction concert poster in Amsterdam seems to reject the idea of machine-set type. The form of the letters still echoes the woodblock printing of a previous generation. Re-use becomes a conscious Rejection, but still with Reference.

This illustration of an eyeball from an Islamic medical text in the year 900 might have been echoed a thousand years later,

in the graduating class of surgeons and doctors in 1870, established by the British as way to bring precious technical knowledge to the subcontinent of India. Not direct reuse, but remembering what is important. So to answer our question,

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 Do
we reuse … or remix? We build on what has gone before. do we reuse or remix, the answer is obvious: we build on what has gone before. Not literally, perhaps, but in the ﬂow of memory and culture.

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 AUTHENTICITY
IS INVALUABLE; ORIGINALITY IS NON-EXISTENT. – JIM JARMUSCH Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch said that “Authenticity is invaluable, but originality is non-existent.” If we reject the idea of isolated, unique originality, what we’re left with is a striving for the authentic, the real. Raising the question,

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 How
do we capture authenticity? How do we capture this authenticity? How do we move beyond imitation and create a true sense of the real?

One way is to look at the memories of an age. This Danish ﬁlm poster from 2006 certainly tells us something about our attitude toward teenagers, their habits, their ﬁerce desire for independence. But just as much,

This ad for an Amsterdam leather shop in 1980 tells us something about that era just as strongly. (Unfortunately, you won’t be able to un-see that image.). Moving back,

this migrant-rights poster from 1975 certainly tells us something about how The Netherlands perceived foreigners. And if we want to really know nostalgia,

a poster for the Communist Youth movement in Hungary in 1950 captures perfectly that sense of rural nostalgic euphoria, combined with the modern progressivism imagined by central party planners. The memories of any age are strangely compelling to revisit,

like this cartoon from the year 1180 showing this poor peasant who just wants to burn the bristles off a boar so he can have some dinner. Almost a thousand years later, can’t we tell exactly what he’s thinking?

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 How
do we capture authenticity? We use trustworthy sources. So we’ve answered part of the question. How do we capture authenticity in the absence of unconnected originality? We use the trustworthy sources of each age and culture.

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 IT’S
NOT WHERE YOU TAKE THINGS FROM–IT’S WHERE YOU TAKE THEM TO. — ATTRIBUTED TO JEAN-LUC GODARD But as Jean-Luc Godard said, “It’s not about where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.” And in these days with our memories housed in computer systems around the world, we need new tools. I work on one of them,

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 europeana.eu
called Europeana. It’s a website and data service that connects some of these dots, where

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 europeana.eu
3,000 memory organisations 28 million digital objects 1 access point 5 years old < 1% complete 3,000 of these memory institutions, museums, archives, galleries, libraries, audiovisual collections, can share 28 million digital objects to create one access point across countries and cultures. The project is about ﬁve years old, but is far, far less than 1% complete.

We can show you Dutch design of the 1980s, itself clearly derived from an earlier swiss modernism, or

the political commentary of the 1970s,

or the public health warnings of Russia in the 1920s, in this case things not to do if you don’t want to die of cholera ...

or even the lingerie ads of 1880s London, giving us an inside look at fashions of the day.

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 We
believe that openly accessible digital cultural heritage leads to a better mutual understanding of our cultural diversity and contributes to a thriving knowledge economy. We believe that openly accessible digital cultural heritage leads to a better understanding of our cultural diversity, and contributes to a thriving knowledge economy. This project and this tool answer these questions of reuse, of remix, of reference, even rejection of culture. But raises one more question:

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 What
do you want to make? Once you have immediate access to the culture of centuries, what do you want to make?

@bfk | Creative Mornings Utrecht | 29 March 2013 So,
let’s chat! b @ breandan.org

IMAGE CREDITS (ALL SOURCED FROM EUROPEANA.EU) http://l.breandan.org/10h8nnV - wall seller
http://l.breandan.org/XjVL3g - isaac clothing http://l.breandan.org/XjXmG3 - person's weekly http://l.breandan.org/11Rvv2x - intercity http://l.breandan.org/10h9UKv - cholera http://l.breandan.org/15ZRKjN - kalzana http://l.breandan.org/WZ5URp - religious emergency http://l.breandan.org/14r3SOg - glasgow empire http://l.breandan.org/YhUb1f - blood could save http://l.breandan.org/13B2IRc - nixon/hitler http://l.breandan.org/YGEYq6 - leather pants http://l.breandan.org/10VekdV - jane's addiction http://l.breandan.org/YIQynB - geen pasjewset http://l.breandan.org/Zrquqd - refugee poster http://l.breandan.org/YhVz3P - rezone film http://l.breandan.org/ZrqTc6 - communist youth http://l.breandan.org/10d0OQD - more lazarus http://l.breandan.org/Xk8faV - mary conceiving christ http://l.breandan.org/YIWNHS - raising lazarus http://l.breandan.org/ZrrZVm - slaughtering pig http://l.breandan.org/Zrs3Em - corset http://l.breandan.org/ZryUO8 - medical school http://l.breandan.org/11TM3TV - brain http://l.breandan.org/XKlcqn - British Museum http://l.breandan.org/YH84Wq - Perambulating Library http://l.breandan.org/Xlb8Z2 - Laurel & Hardy http://l.breandan.org/10dOLSY - Overcoat http://l.breandan.org/WZLszU - World Map http://l.breandan.org/YWIMzA - Computer http://l.breandan.org/XfByMG - Air Service http://l.breandan.org/YWLgxU - Droitwich Spa http://l.breandan.org/YHgvRB - Ghent railway PRESENTATION

Thinking Culture - Creative Mornings Utrecht (t...

Thinking Culture - Creative Mornings Utrecht (topic: Reuse)

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