media appropriation and collage

Collage is the act of appropriating existing messages to make new ones. Literally anything can be considered collage fodder: in the visual realm this usually means photographs and printed material, bits of which are selected and blended together on a new canvas to produce a new picture or interpretation.

In the worlds of audio and video, collage is much more difficult to make: the source material isn't static and neither is the final product. The issue of copyright is also much more likely to come into play when making collages from popular music, film, television programs or commercials.

The act of appropriation is not theft. It is a legitimate and established artistic technique to further the interpretation of existing works. This is because a work of collage is more than a sum of its parts. See this excellent synopsis of the Fair Use concept for further details.

Audio and video collage have been experimented with for decades, but until the desktop computer and A/V editing software came along it wasn't a widespread phenomenon. Only since the 1990s have computers and software become cheap and easy enough to use that, today, anyone can become a collage artist.

http://www.appropriationart.ca/category/media

http://multimedia.american.edu/courses/mmdd296_fa07/2007/10/media_appropriation_collage_1.html

http://recycledcinema.blogspot.com/

http://www.totalrecut.com/index.php

http://www.diymedia.net/collage/