1. Mashing up Japan
Remixing, Authorship and Cultural Origin
Monday, December 12, 11
2. The Culture Industry’s content
creation process
Only some can contribute
Expensive
Slow
High Risk, High Reward
Recycles successful ideas, with little variation
Promotes mainstream ideas
Other areas of life have this mechanism, such as cancer
research.
Monday, December 12, 11
3. The Mob’s content creation
process
Possible because of rise of internet and desktop
publishing
Anybody can contribute
Fast, highly iterative
Low Risk, Low reward
Explores obscure realms
Promotes subculture
Monday, December 12, 11
4. Content creation feedback loop
Public
Concept Production
Reaction
Cultural Industry: The Mob:
High Cost, Low Frequency Low Cost, High Frequency
High Quality, Narrow Unlimited Scope, Lower
Scope Quality
Predictable Practically Random
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5. Mob method promotes
Mashups and Remixes
Murakami: Superflat Manifesto
Mashups: Combining ideas
Remixing: modifying an existing idea
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6. Mashups
Putting two (or more) possibly disparate concepts
together
A large trend: combining something Japanese with
something Western
AMV: Anime Music Video
Mashing up anime video clips with a wide variety of
music
Done by fans, not producers
Monday, December 12, 11
15. Nyan Cat’s origin
Original image made by Chris
Torres from LOL_Comics on April
2nd
Combined two different requests,
one for a cat, one for a poptart
Later created animated sprite
3 days later, YouTube user
saraj00n uploads video adding
Hatsune Miku song from Nico
Nico Douga
Monday, December 12, 11
24. Authorship and Cultural
Origin
Authorship: As a meme spreads, its authorship gets
diluted. Meme authors aren’t generally known.
What’s Nyan Cat’s Cultural identity? Is it American?
What would a person who doesn’t know the back story
say?
Mimi Ito: Otaku fandom activities are losing their
localization to Japan.
Monday, December 12, 11
