The question that stood out most for me in Dan’s lecture today was, how much is coded in the artefact and how much is coded in the memory and experience of when something was captured. When looking at the idea of remix and how this has changed from the 1930’s, the idea of appropriation or copying seems almost impossible to avoid. Most of the time, we aren’t exactly sure where we got our ideas from they just seem to exist within us. Some ideas are conscious and sought out deliberately, but ideas within us that influence the way we think and how we make decisions, how do we know where they came from? What did we see or experience as a child that made us think or feel a certain way about something?

For the person who captures an image, that image will mean something different for him because his emotional connection to the experience of taking the photo exists. For the viewer, they engage with the image from a different emotional place.

What also stood out for me today was the idea of a copy or remix of something having the power and capacity to change the meaning of the original artefact. The change of historical and cultural context can be both a positive and a negative thing but does the artist have a right to keep his ideas to himself and control how they are interpreted by other people? If he/she is creating public art to put out into the world to evoke a reaction, shouldn’t a natural reaction be to appropriate and take the meaning of one thing and change it to something else? It should be expected that the work inevitably, would be manipulated or reorganised in the future by people who have a connection to it.