Scratch Video a mutant hybrid of scratch DJ music and guerrilla TV

scratchvideo/theory/juxtaposition

Scratch video is a new media art, drawing on the tradition of collage, which makes art by appropriating and adapting "found" objects from everyday life. Pop artists used bits of popular culture to create collage, and the experimental compilation films applied this practice to moving pictures, moving collage away from the confines of the canvas (Thompson and Bordwell 587). Hip hop is also a collage art: scratch DJs are using found audio (records) as a source and manipulating them to create music. Scratch video uses scratch DJ and electronic music techniques to make popular culture into a moving visual collage. Understanding scratch video as a collage art provides insight into how meaning is created by the medium:

"Collage layers into a work of art several levels of meaning: the original identity of the fragment or object and all the history it brings with it; the new meaning it gains in association with other objects or elements; and the meaning it acquires as the result of its metamorphosis into a new entity." (Waldman 11)

Understanding a scratch video sample is a three-step process for the audience. First is recognizing the sample, which also includes recognizing a genre like westerns or sit-coms. Second, connections are made between the sample you're watching and other images from the mix. Finally, there is a new meaning created by all of the samples as a whole. They take form as one image, shedding their individual associations to form a more complex idea. The brain is concurrently assigning beats to those images, finding matches by assuming the two come from the same source. This final step is "closure", how we see things as a whole and not just as component parts.

The scratch video editor can only make suggestions at meaning by choosing specific samples. This process creates a dimension of agency for the viewer: they can decide for themselves what it means. Scratch video editors are creating a moving collage art, in which juxtaposition of familiar images and sounds creates new meaning.

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Copyright 2000© Hart Snider