Bryan Mathers has been a tireless supporter of Open Education and has produced volum,nous openly-licensed work for many years now. He not only hosts an archive of Visual Thinkery, but in the last few years has created, and added to, The Remixer Machine.
The Remixer Machine is a web app that aims to provide people with a visual voice, especially to those who might not consider themselves “arty” – or who don’t have the graphical tools to create.
About the Remixer Machine
It uses an SVG template that allows certain parts of the SVG to be modified. SVGs (Scalable Vector Graphics) describe an image by using markup language. This means that they provide the ability for someone to very simply change a discrete part of the image. In short, they provide the perfect scaffold for visual remixing
All of the visuals published through the Remixer project are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence, which makes projects like Remixer possible.
An individual brings their own context to a remix, their knowledge, experiences and biases. Different ideas become “obvious” to them when presented with a simple creative constraint. When pieced together, the variety of remixes from a diverse group can form a rich visual patchwork of meaningful art.
Anyone can remix. Everyone has a voice. The Remixer Machine is just a place to start.
This free-to-use tool allows for the remixing of pedagogically useful information in a whimsical way. Remixes themselves can remixed, showcasing the value of open licenses such as Creative Commons.
The design style will be very familiar for people who have been part of Association for Learning Technologies (ALT) programs and events, graphic elements in the GO-GN web site and publications, and the visual output of the We Are Open Cooperative (where Bryan is a member).
See also where Open Education Global itself makes use of a Digital Postcard Remixer used for previous conferences and Open Education Week activities.
Follow Bryan Mathers on Mastodon
It’s rare for someone with such a talent for drawing and illustration to make their work available so openly and freely. As Bryan also has a background in Computer Science, it’s almost unheard of for someone to create something so unique across the technical/artistic divide!
Award Nominator
This is a super fun project that both leverages and demonstrates the power of open licenses to encourage creative remixing of immediately useful visuals and infographics. It more than meets the award criteria of being an outstanding example of remix.
Award ReviewerAward ReviewerWith so much of the OER ecosystem being (understandably) focused on textual materials, it’s exciting to see a project that has more of a visual and artistic focus. I particularly like how it enables anyone to make remixes without needing to have particular tools or software to create them. While many open resources may be open from a licensing standpoint, they aren’t always open from a technical standpoint because they require users to have access to (and facility with) particular tools in order to adapt them. The Remixer Machine is designed to avoid that problem.
