Low Fidelity Art-making and Black Storytelling via Sampling Practices
When I was first introduced to Hito Steyerl's “In Defense of the Poor Image”, I ignored it because the subject matter and the subsequent conclusions to be made seemed too obvious to me as someone born and raised during the height of the Age of Information. However, I recall later having watched “How Not to Be Seen”, and decided to check out “In Defense of the Poor Image” seeing as it might actually be something I'd be interested in and can learn from.
Now though, when I think about the “poor image,” as it were, I'm fascinated by the way it manifests in non-art, “low-brow” communities. Coming of age during the Age of Information has truly been a blessing, if not only for the fact that I have been able to witness the growth of internet memes from troll faces and Rage Comics into the irony-filled cesspool of election altering images we know them as today.
For ease of understanding, let's define the “poor image” as any graphic presented in an unpolished manner, devoid of any indications of clean manufacturing or “fine art” context. Largely, this includes memes, but also photos and videos recorded with obsolete or otherwise analog technologies. In an earlier version of this text, I wasted my time explaining deep-fried memes, and the rhizomic family tree of meme variations that are created when people re-create a meme with their own spin on it because I was speaking to an older white art faculty as my audience. Thank god I don't have to do that this time. You all know what I'm talking about.
The memetic language is one of the most powerful aspects of society, and the “poor image” is the everyday persons tool for immediate conveyance of even the most mundane or abstract thought. It is as powerful as it is nonsensical, and its digitally decayed form is celebrated, understood, and solidified as a demarcation of what the language is and how it works. All of this is to say that no facet of Western culture hasn't been touched by the ever- present influence of blackness, and the meme or “poor image” is no different.
Sometimes, it is incredibly helpful – raising awareness for important causes via subversive humor, acting as a vehicle institutional and social critique, and creating all around wholesome content. Other times, it can be a nuisance – proliferating the cultural appropriation of AAVE, endangering genderqueer persons, and spreading violent misogyny. Regardless of whether or not the use of such imagery is futile or developmental, it is undeniably true that it continues to affect the way that we live.
Nothing substantiates this more than the contemporary concern surrounding digital blackface, and the overall reception and usage of the black visage both URL and IRL. The internet and developments in technology have blurred the lines of reality for all of us, but there must be a limit to all of this madness, no? It's hard to define the exact relationship of memes and the lo-fi image to black people, but the black Twitter community is certainly evidence of one. The circulation and the practice of low fidelity reiteration in graphic images is similar for music in its application, and this is especially true when evaluating black culture. The current trend of revising and updating or altering images (especially memes) for new, sometimes ironic and often layered commentary is a process that is comparable, if not indebted to, the idea of sampling in music. Altering a meme and reintroducing it for added effect is a cornerstone of modern meme-making culture. In a similar fashion, the sampling of recognizable (or not) sounds, melodies, or song excerpts to produce a new narrative or refer to an older one is a cornerstone of rap music, house music, jazz, and blues. It is of no coincidence that these genres are created by black people.
In “Blues People”, Amiri Baraka discusses the genealogy of black music as it relates to the developing identity of Black Americans post-slavery. He establishes blues as the parent to all true jazz, but makes sure to emphasize the importance of slave work songs in the development of what we know as blues music. Going further down the line, Jones points out that the call-and-response nature of slave work songs, as well as the freestyle lyricism, comes from a long tradition of African music and oration. It is well documented that African drums were used as communication and not solely for musical entertainment. Thus, it makes sense why slave masters would ban the presence of such drums on the plantations. As a percussive instrument, drums are the driving force of rhythm and groove in many genres, but especially so for all black derivative music. In hip-hop/rap and house music especially, recognizable grooves are largely drum driven, and to me it it's obvious how this instrument might have been used for communication, as the targeted use of recognizable grooves for rap and house songs is a core element to DJing and/or connoting an emotional sentiment in a song.Sampling (both instruments, melodies, and vocal tracks) adds to this in that it allows for the reiteration of a cultural moment, narrative, or other time-specific sentiment that is then re-contextualized and reevaluated in a new musical landscape.
In a timely fashion, one work that almost completely encompasses my arguments about low-fidelity reiteration, and the practice of sampling for narrative effect is Earl's album Some Rap Songs.The album is as brief as it is jam packed with dense lyrics, cultural references, and some pointed jabs of social critique. I won't waste your time and mine by repeating the Apple Music description, though. I revel in the rise of popularity in the return to analog technologies. The production on this album relies heavily on soulful loops that crackle and pop in all the right ways. Finding loops to sample is a commonplace practice, but I, like Amiri Baraka, feel the practice itself is indebted to those call-and-response songs slave work songs that led to the invention of blues. When producers make use of those samples, they are building off of a tradition of repetition and then variation that is important to early music of African genealogy. This genealogy is only able to be preserved in rap and house music by the legions of crate-digging vinyl enthusiasts and YouTube to mp3 rippers who are always looking for sounds and (whether purposefully or accidentally) narratives to sample and give a new home in a new sociopolitical, cultural, and sonic landscape. Sampling as a method of thinking a mode of production is now ubiquitous, especially in its application to images. I don't know if the return to analog, and lo-fi tendencies is a response to late capitalism, the rapidly changing landscape of developing technology, fascism, or all of the above. Our new technologies are fresh, clean, and magical, served to us in devices with barely any bezel and a water-like screen. Meanwhile, our memes are disgusting both in content and appearance, modified and processed by Photoshop and mobile apps, reflecting the fallacious nature and general nastiness of our geopolitical landscape and the overall zeitgeist. The internet itself is both a mirror and a portal. Loops found in sample based music are both, as well. A mirror of the present, and a portal to the past and future.