Issue 11
Black-and-white photograph of a large industrial generator or turbine with metal piping and a warning sign reading "Danger 4800 Volts."
Master Hands, A Video Mashup Round Table
2011

"Oh, there's one more thing I'd have cut into my mashup, the scenes from Kubrick's 2001 where we're revealed as just violent apes using the bones of the dead for our tools."

——Geoffrey Sirc, "Depressingly Good"
Master Hands (Part I), 1936, Chevrolet Motor Company

Articles

Two silhouetted figures crouch beside a film camera on a dimly lit set, backlit by a single dramatic beam of light cutting through haze.

Introduction: Master Hands, A Video Mashup Round Table

James J. Brown Jr. and Richard Marback
We are excited to present “Master Hands, A Video Mashup Round Table,” a project that we see as a unique experiment in digital publishing. Master Hands is a 1936 film sponsored by the Chevrolet Motor Company that shows the inner workings of a Chevrolet plant in Flint, Michigan. It is available for download at the Internet Archive, and it offers rich material for mashups and remixes.
Screenshot of Master Hands film title.

Master Hands, A Video Mashup Round Table

Richard Marback, bonnie kyburz, Jeff Rice, Jody Shipka, and Anthony Stagliano
We invited four other scholars to create their own mashups of Master Hands. Richard, bonnie kyburz, Jeff Rice, Jody Shipka, and Anthony Stagliano were presented with four constraints. Mashup artists had to use footage from Master Hands, could not provide a companion text, had to create a mashup that was no longer than ten minutes, and were not permitted to see anyone else’s work until all five were completed.