#7 - De Bourgoing & Miller

De Bourgoing:

                The core of De Bourgoing’s article seems to do with the culture of hip hop and how the various players and trends interact within this culture.  She talks about how hip hop artists are using various forms of social media, such as Twitter, in order to interact with and attract their fanbase and sell their “brand”.  De Bourgoing also discusses the importance of community, commenting on the prevalence of collaboration and the tendancy of older artists offer opinions or advice to newer artists.  Additionally, she discusses the role of gender in hip hop culture and asserts that despite being largely male dominated; there is still a strong female presence in the form of female rappers or critics. 

                Another key point from the article is the importance of storytelling and the incorporation of different types of media (dancing, graffiti) into hip hop.  She mentions that hip hop exists as an oral tradition, which gives it more fluidity and enables it to assimilate other art forms easily.  If I were going to boil the essence of her arguments into a single sentence it would be “Hip hop is a legitimate, texturally varied art form with its own rich culture and innovators.”

                There are a few points of similarity that I noticed between De Bourgoing’s article and some of the previous material from class.  Most notably is her discussion of how hip hop incorporates various media, and the way that the artists are using different types of media to promote themselves.  This seems to tie into Jenkins’ idea of convergence culture, whereby media, as well as its creators and consumers are becoming more flexible rather than being bound to a single avenue of distribution.  Her mention of the artists “leaked music” also reminded me of Weinberger’s claim that “hoarding knowledge diminishes power”.  By freely distributing their music the hip hop artists are increasing their “power” by increasing their online presence.  De Bourgoing’s phrase “We were scholars before colleges” also seems to tie into Weinberger, specifically regarding his discussion of gatekeepers.  Although she doesn’t really expand on this phrase, I think that De Bourgoing could easily be referring to the same rejection of traditional authorities that Weinberger discusses in his book.

Miller:

                Paul Miller seems to have a serious “sesquipedalian loquaciousness” bent to his writing.  This makes it a little difficult sometimes to work your way past the pretty words to the point that he is trying to make.  To start with though, I would say that the main point of this reading is that all art/dialogue/consciousness is informed by the works of past creators (which is in turn informed by prior creators and so on).  He refers to previous writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Goethe who also made similar arguments (and whom he quotes copiously, though this is perhaps appropriate considering the topic), discussing how any work exists both as a synthesis of, and a reply to all that has gone before.  Miller also discusses this in relation to DJ-ing and sampling, drawing a connection to the words “replication” and “reply” (p. 73) and the effect that audio recordings had on the realm of creative responses and the idea of inappropriate copying.  In addition he discusses the effect that the current media culture has on identity, and proposes a “multiplex consciousness”, although I confess that I was not entirely able to pin down what he meant by this.

                There are a number of the connections that I see between the reading from “Rhythm Science” and previous class materials.  I think that there is a strong connection between the sort of creative reply and the creation of a “consensual manufactured situation” (p. 76) that Miller discusses and the idea of “social knowing” from Weinberger’s book and “collective intelligence” from Jenkins’.  All suggest a form of knowledge that fluid and is built collectively rather than in discrete, individually contributed chunks.  Miller’s commentary regarding the free exchange of culture and information (p. 65) sounds very much like Weinberger’s “digital disorder.”  Miller also goes on to mentions the “battle to control and distribute culture” (p. 73) which relates to Weinberger’s gatekeepers, and the political nature of organization.  Miller’s ideas also remind me of the Web 2.0 business model of “Some rights reserved” that suggested that businesses should facilitate and encourage “remixibility and hackability.” 

Further connections:

                Apart from the previously mentioned connections between De Bourgoing and Miller and previous class information, there are a couple other similarities to be seen.  Both De Bourgoing and Miller emphasize the importance of cultural interaction (either with past or contemporary co-contributors).  De Bourgoing discusses the collaboration between artists and the importance of community, and Miller discusses the interaction of hip hop and mix culture and the creation of individual identity (p. 64).  They both also discuss the hip hop culture’s flexibility and facility at absorbing other forms of media (Miller p. 65, De Bourgoing #7).  Miller also briefly touches on the idea of technological neutrality versus technological determinism, although he doesn’t seem to definitively support either side (p. 57, 61).  Lastly, both De Bourgoing and Miller seem to typify the “long tail” concept from O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 article.  De Bourgoing focuses on the creativity and importance of independent artists, while Miller’s book in my opinion, exemplifies the niche market that is encouraged and nourished by the Web 2.0 mindset.

I think that I’m going to have to work on my succinctness, because these posts seem to keep getting longer and longer.  I’m almost to the point of “tl,dr” and I’m writing them.