Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has made available the band's new single, "The Hand That Feeds," as a free download for Apple's GarageBand application. The song, which weighs in at a hefty 70MB, features multiple tracks that you can easily tweak. "For quite some time I've been interested in the idea of allowing you the ability to tinker around with my tracks -- to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what's there," Reznor says.Once you start messing with an artist's song, is it still the artist's song? Does the answer even matter? In addition, this makes GarageBand (the Mac program you need to remix these songs) an avenue for pop cultural production. So let us not discount the implications this has for MacIntosh and corporatist culture.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
You and your Mac Remixing Culture
Nine Inch Nails is allowing people to break down their songs by musical tracks, using Garageband. From a MacMinute story:
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According to Benjamin, "The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity." Because Reznor has decided to allow the Nine Inch Nails single, "Hand That Feeds" to be remixed, experimented with, and embellished on Garageband, the authenticity of the track is arguably lost. While the original is still there, it is no longer the artist's song. We still here remnants of the original track, but it is altered to suit our individual needs, thus altering the track's authenticity/originality. Benjamin also brings up the idea that authenticity is outside the realm of technical reproducibility, and in this is just what is happening when fans remix songs on Garageband. While they are not exactly reproducing the same exact track, they are tampering with the artist's piece of art. As we discussed in class yesterday, the symbol of originality is the aura in which a piece of art takes on (like with the example of The David). If a song is remixed, the aura no longer exists, and therefore, neither does the authenticity.
To answer the next question that goes hand-in-hand with my belief that once a song is tampered with, it is no longer the artist's, I would like to say it matters, but only in certain cases. Because Reznor and the NIN decided that they wanted to put their song on Garageband, it doesn't matter all that much. On the other side, if an artist did not agree to having their song remixed, yet it was done anyway, this would matter a whole lot. Reznor wants his fans to have a more personal interaction with his music and is using Garageband as an avenue to make this happen. I commend his desire to do this, as well as his ability to stand up to the music industry.
As far as Macintosh and the corporatist culture, while I do think it enables people to create pop culture, I do not think it is making Mac anymore powerful than it already is. This is because the things fans recreate are not widely heard (at least I don't think so) and therefore are not infiltrating society in such a way that other pop media have. It's definitely a publicity tool for Mac, but I do not think this program alone is doing enough for them to gain more power than they already hold (especially with sites like YouTube and other technological devices that allow people to do this sort of music remixing).
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