The Digital Remix Mash-Up Culture Explained

A quick cool audio-visual way to explain to other educators (or kids!) the Digital Remix Mash-Up Culture today is to show clips of these music videos.

"Recent technological developments have created a wave of user-generated content in which pre-existing sounds and images are appropriated, reshaped, and shared with unprecedented ease." Natalie Bennett

But to better show this concept: I start with the below original music video Dynamite by British performer Taio Cruz - Not totally appropriate for middle schoolers to show the whole video as it's pretty hoochie. This international phenom has had 74,339,619 hits on YouTube. Catchy song...trite video.


Then something special happened. From a small Canadian town London Ontario comes this one talented guy Mike Tompkins with a studio in his house, a talented mouth, and he creates this homage A Capella remix of the song that goes absolutely viral with 5,665,335 hits on YouTube! Brilliant! Stay for the whole video where he explains exactly HOW he does it!


Then...of course, a re-mix tragedy happened. Or viral magic? Hmmm....I guess you know you're a hit when the Today Show gets wind of it and asks Mike to come in and do their own tortured painful mash up version (but love you AnnC!) Nooo Meridith nooo! Awkward!


Then just when you thought it was done...or done to death (damn you Meredith!)...Happiness in the form of a Jewish A Capella group from Yeshiva University in New York - named the Maccabeats - They re-mixed this song and also helped teach my students re-mix culture AND diversity with their YouTube hit with 4,617,718 views ...Candlelight! Brilliant!


Playing this video for our school got MY MHTV kids to dancing! Reaching quickly for our MHTV flip cam we recorded this video to send to the Maccabeats as a thank you! We've gotten over 700 hits Uri even sent us a msg! Woohoo!


So a quick video journey shows how one inspiration can spark a lot of creation! Transformative original creativity...parody...and that's mix up mash up digital remix culture of our kids today! Let's foster that creativity and inspire kids to create digital products that demonstrate learning mastery!

WAIT! What? You wanna see more?
Ok...Watch this! via @hrheingold



Do you have any great examples of the Remix Culture out there? Please leave a comment - What did I miss? So we can all share in this! See? We're gonna get our Crowdsource on!
My dear readers....You Rock!
Resources:
Fair Use: Remix Culture, Mashups, and Copyright - a Lesson for Students
Digital Sampling and Remix Culture: Creativity or Criminality?
Remix Culture Vs. Copyright Protection: What's Best for Dance?

Credits:
Mike Tompkins photo added by Felicia Ailien to "Mike Tompkins"