Appropriation and Recontextualization

Appropriation artists want the viewer to recognize the images they copy. They hope that the viewer will bring all of his original associations with the image to the artist’s new context, be it a painting, a sculpture, a collage, a combine, or an entire installation.

The deliberate borrowing of an image for this new context is called “recontextualization.” Recontextualization helps the artist comment on the image’s original meaning and the viewer’s association with either the original image or the real thing.

https://www.thoughtco.com/appropriation-appropriation-art-183190

Philip Brophy and Recontextualization

In the second installment of his work Evaporated music, http://www.philipbrophy.com/projects/evaporatedmusic2/info.html, a range of appearances of ‘fake’ bands on TV shows are rescored with metal music. Their unedited songs are heard, but each is a completely new metal song composed to perfectly match the performers’ movements and vocalization.

Watching it I was constantly reminding myself that this isn’t the original recording. Rather, music has been added on top of a (pretty much famous) recording to give an certain effect.

What makes a message go through?

In the telecom industry, there are three main components:

• The sender: this is the person or device that is sending the message
• The medium: this is the means for transmitting the message. This is where the most technical part. i.e. cables for a landline phones, sound and air for musicians, Video for movie makers…
• The receiver: This is the person that receives the message

If one of these points fails. Remember a time where you were trying to say something important on the phone but the call keeps on dropping? Problematic medium. Or that time when the lines were good but you were too drunk to speak? Problematic sender. Or that time when both problems weren’t here but the receiver is too distracted to concentrate with you? Problematic receiver.

Now my message

• The sender: this part was taken care of when I carefully worked on my video
• The medium: in my case, this encompasses me sending the message through different platforms and designing the metadata to help convey absurdity.
• The receiver: at this point, I don’t have much control over reactions but I can analyze and look for correlations that will help with iterations if I think of doing any

Why did I bring this up?

Absurdism might get confused with bad technique.

Recontextualization might be confused with stealing.

I will Explicitly say it on Facebook when I post.

I will see what sentiments this incurred in people in the comments.