My essay “The Originality of Copies: Cover Versions and Versioning in Remix Practice” was published in The Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture. My thanks to Sean Lowry, and Aleksandr Andreas Wansbrough for all their editorial help for the eventual publication of this article. I thank the anonymous peer reviewers who provided indispensable feedback to improve my argument. Download the PDF.
Abstract:
In this article I analyze the cover version as a specific form of copying in music recording and performance, and then evaluate it as a cultural variable that is part of the creative process in remix practice. This analysis demonstrates that cover versions, versioning, editing, sampling, and remixing are dependent on copying and, for this reason, my eventual focus is on the relation of copies to originals and copies to copies. Another important element examined throughout the essay is the role of selectivity in the creative process as a foundational principle of communication and how it shapes varying popular and individualized assumptions about definitions of originals and copies.
Keywords | appropriation, art, cover versions, cultural studies, media studies,
remix studies, remix theory
My book Art, Media Design, and Postproduction: Open Guidelines on Appropriation and Remix (Routledge 2018) is now available on hardback, paperback, and ebook. I want to thank the entire team at Routledge for making the publication process an energetic and positive experience. This book is the result of my long term engagement with remix in terms of theory and practice as both scholar and practitioner. Below is the backcover description along with reviews by Jay David Bolter, DJ Spooky, and David J. Gunkel. I give more specific thanks in the book to many people that helped me along the way. I hope the book will be of interest to everyone who finds remixing an important and vital form of creative expression for global communication. Photos documenting the moment I received my personal copies are available on my Twitter feed.
From the back cover:
Art, Media Design, and Postproduction: Open Guidelines on Appropriation and Remix offers a set of guidelines for art and design studio-based projects. The creative application of appropriation and remix are now common across creative disciplines due to the ongoing recycling and repurposing of content and form. Consequently basic elements which were previously exclusive to postproduction for editing image, sound and text, are now part of daily communication. This in turn pushes artists and designers to reconsider their creative methodologies.
Author Eduardo Navas divides his book into three parts: Media Production, Metaproduction, and Postproduction. The chapters that comprise the three parts each include an introduction, goals for guidelines of a studio-based project, which are complemented with an explanation of relevant history, as well as examples and case studies. Each set of guidelines is open-ended, enabling the reader to repurpose the instructional material according to their own methodologies and choice of medium. Navas also provides theoretical context to encourage critical reflection on the effects of remix in the production of art and design.
Art, Media Design, and Postproduction: Open Guidelines on Appropriation and Remix is the first book of guidelines to take into account the historical, theoretical, and practical context of remix as an interdisciplinary act. It is an essential read for those interested in remix studies and appropriation in art, design and media.
Reviews
“Art, Media Design, and Postproduction is the perfect synthesis of practice and theory. It provides sensible guidelines and engaging exercises in the aesthetics of remix and appropriation. It also offers a sophisticated framework for appreciating the history and theory of remix. An indispensable text for every theorist, artist, or designer interested in this key aspect of contemporary media culture.” -Jay David Bolter, Georgia Institute of Technology
“This collection of writings on the immensity of remixing, sampling, collage and the other recombinant arts is sly, fresh, and relentlessly engaging. It reaffirms the resiliency of the artistic imagination in an era of digital overload. Read it as a guide for the perennially optimistic in a very cynical and dark time.” -Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky
“In this ground-breaking book, Eduardo Navas puts Remix Theory to work, providing readers with a practical guide to thinking remix by doing remix. He expertly stages innovative engagements with content creation practices that are designed not just to be read but to be used and reused in new and revealing ways.” -David J. Gunkel, Northern Illinois University
The following is a transcript of an interview which took place in Bern, Switzerland on November 11, 2017. I want to thank Hannes Liechti and Theresa Beyer for their interest in asking me questions about remix.What follows is an excerpt. The complete interview can be accessed on Norient’s website
Key sentence 1/8 on Cultural Production from the Regenerative Culture Series by Eduardo Navas, 2016:
Cultural production has entered a stage in which archived digital material can potentially be used at will.
[Hannes Liechti]: Eduardo, just to start with: what is a remix?
[Eduardo Navas]: Remixes are specific forms of expression using pre-existing sources (sound, image, text) to develop work that may be considered derivative while also gaining autonomy.
[HL]: That means that remix is much more than the well known musical remix?
[EN]: The musical remix is a very direct and concrete form of the remix. Actually, it is the initial definition of the remix. But principles of remix had been at play in culture long before the musical remix and practices of sampling occured. As computers were introduced to the home, these principles became part of the vernacular of everyone’s lives.
[HL]: What’s the importance of sampling for culture?
[EN]: Sampling makes transparent what had been going on for many many decades, if not hundreds of years in terms of communication: we take ideas, even phrases and reposition and repurpose them in new forms. With sampling we had the ability to take an actual thing and reproduce it just as it was produced before. Sampling made evident that remixing is actually a thing we constantly do. In a way, sampling is a node of the world that allows us to keep track of creativity in ways that were not possible before.
[HL]: But what’s the difference between sampling and remixing then?
[EN]: Sampling makes a remix more efficient but it doesn’t lead necessarily to remixing. Sampling is more or less open-ended: we can use it for different things. Some art work could be developed based on samples but maybe it’s not necessarily a straightforward remix, although you would have those same principles at play once we start to realize how remixing works.
Cover concept by Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher and xtine burrough
Cover image: DJHughman
xtine burrough, Owen Gallagher, I are very happy to share the news that Keywords in Remix Studies is now available. It was released on November 28, 2017 in both hard copy, paperback as well as ebook. We thank our colleagues who contributed rigorous chapters to a second anthology on remix studies. We hope the remix community finds the book of interest as a contribution to the ongoing reevaluation of remix as a creative and critical form of cultural production. The book is available among major sellers. The easiest way to buy it is on Amazon or directly from Routledge. Below is the abstract plus the table of contents.
Keywords in Remix Studies consists of twenty-four chapters authored by researchers who share interests in remix studies and remix culture throughout the arts and humanities. The essays reflect on the critical, historical and theoretical lineage of remix to the technological production that makes contemporary forms of communication and creativity possible. Remix enjoys international attention as it continues to become a paradigm of reference across many disciplines, due in part to its interdisciplinary nature as an unexpectedly fragmented approach and method useful in various fields to expand specific research interests. The focus on a specific keyword for each essay enables contributors to expose culture and society’s inconclusive relation with the creative process, and questions assumptions about authorship, plagiarism and originality. Keywords in Remix Studies is a resource for scholars, including researchers, practitioners, lecturers and students, interested in some or all aspects of remix studies. It can be a reference manual and introductory resource, as well as a teaching tool across the humanities and social sciences.
Image: photo of copies of art catalogue for the exhibitionMashup the Archive. My thanks to Nadine Seigert and Sam Hopkins for inviting me to participate in the events for the opening during the month of June 2015.
This text is different from others I have written. It is in part a transcription of a presentation I gave for a roundtable discussion at Bayreuth for the exhibit Mashup, on June 1, 2015.[1] I expanded the basic transcription to revisit my definitions of remix. What is unique of this text is the elaboration of the remix diagram [Figure 1], which in the past I have included in different publications as a visual reference, but have not referred to directly as each term is discussed. Some of the material that follows below was not part of my actual presentation but is added to emphasize remix as a variable at play in Mashup the Archive. The last part of this essay, in particular, is based on the discussion that took place during our panel presentation. It is a reflection on questions about the future of the archive, and who can use it. The text itself, in a way, is a selective remix because its foundation is the transcription of my roundtable presentation to which I added and deleted selected material. This basic form of remix is explained further in what follows. Because of its hybrid format, the text may appear to go on brief tangents, or include comments that are normal in a conversation, but which may not be expected in a formal paper. This text effectively functions between spaces. It borrows from moments in time and makes the most of them to put into practice the theories upon which it reflects.
Introduction
I would like to start by thanking everyone for making this roundtable possible, Sam Hopkins, Nadine Siegert, and Ulf Vierke from the Iwalewahaus, and my fellow panel participants Beatrice Ferrara, Nina Huber, and Mark Nash who joined me during the roundtable discussion. My focus on this occasion is on the interrelation of the mashup, the archive and what I will call dividual agency[2] in accordance to principles of remixing. I will first define remix and the mashup in music and relate it to contemporary culture in general; then I will evaluate the mashup in relation to the archive and authorship by generally reflecting on the exhibit at the Iwalewahaus.
[1] I thank Lucie Ameloot for the transcription. [2] I take the concept of the dividual from Gilles Deleuze, who discusses the concept of a set (a closed system), which changes as it is divided into parts. See Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement Image (Minneapolis: Minnesota Press, 1986), 14-15.
Cover concept by Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher and xtine burrough
Cover image: DJHughman
I have not posted for many months, the reason being that I have been working on several writing projects. One of them will be released very soon. The cover for Keywords in Remix Studies, to be published by Routledge later this year, has been released. I am so happy to have been able to collaborate once again with xtine burrough and Owen Gallagher. I hope everyone finds the book of relevance in terms of remix as a creative field. Below is a brief description.
Keywords in Remix Studies consists of twenty-four chapters authored by researchers who share interests in remix studies and remix culture throughout the arts and humanities. The essays reflect on the critical, historical and theoretical lineage of remix to the technological production that makes contemporary forms of communication and creativity possible. Remix enjoys international attention as it continues to become a paradigm of reference across many disciplines, due in part to its interdisciplinary nature as an unexpectedly fragmented approach and method useful in various fields to expand specific research interests. The focus on a specific keyword for each essay enables contributors to expose culture and society’s inconclusive relation with the creative process, and questions assumptions about authorship, plagiarism and originality. Keywords in Remix Studies is a resource for scholars, including researchers, practitioners, lecturers and students, interested in some or all aspects of remix studies. It can be a reference manual and introductory resource, as well as a teaching tool across the humanities and social sciences.
During the Fall of 2016, I taught Art 315 at Penn State, which is a new media studio practice class that introduces students to basic principles of time-based media. The class focuses on bringing together image, sound and text to create experimental and open ended narratives. The class begins exploring sound, particularly noise and ambient sound recorded by students. The students then learn basic editing of music in combination with ambient noise to then move on to basic video editing techniques. They explore the three basic shots in storytelling: the close-up, the mid-shot, and the wide-shot. They also learn basic principles of special effects and end up with a reel of selections that represent the best work they produced throughout the term. The last piece in each of the reels that follow below are remixes of material that each student considered relevant to their respective vision. I am very happy to share the five reels that students agreed to share publicly. My entire class produced very strong work throughout the term, and this is just a sample of all the material they worked very hard to produce.
«Information is not knowledge». (Albert Einstein). Linkedin maps data visualization. Picture: Luc Legay/Flickr. (see Norient for context)
Regenerative Knowledge was written between June and October 2015. It was published on Norient in five parts between March and June 2016. I want to thank Thomas Burkhalter and Theresa Beyer for editing the essay and making it available on Norient’s academic journal. In this essay I update the definitions of remix with an emphasis on the regenerative remix. I argue that constant updating is becoming ubiquitous, which is much more evident a year after the essay was written. A short version titled “Im/material Regeneration” was published in print as part of Seismographic Sounds in 2015.
Cultural production has entered a stage in which archived digital material can potentially be used at will;[1] just like people combine words to create sentences (just like this sentence is written with a word-processing application), in contemporary times, people with the use of digital tools are able to create unique works made with splices of other pre-recorded materials, with the ubiquitous action of cut/copy & paste, and output them at an ever-increasing speed.[2] This is possible because what is digitally produced in art and music, for instance, once it becomes part of an archive, particularly a database, begins to function more like building blocks, optimized to be combined infinitely.[3] This state of affairs is actually at play in all areas of culture, and consequently is redefining the way we perceive the world and how we function as part of it. The implications of this in terms of how we think of creativity and its relation to the industry built around authorship are important to consider for a concrete understanding of the type of global culture we are becoming.
In what follows, I evaluate situations and social variables that are important for a critical reflection on how elements flow and are assembled according to diverse needs for expression of ideas and informational exchange. I begin by elaborating on what I previously defined as the regenerative remix,[4] which is specific to the time of networked media, to then relate it to speech in terms of sound and textual communication. I then provide examples that make evident the future trends already manifested in our times. Because digital media consists in large part in optimizing the manipulation of experience-based material that before mechanical reproduction went unrecorded, the aim of this analysis, in effect, is to evaluate how ephemerality is redefined when image, sound, and text are digitally produced and reproduced, and efficiently archived in databases in order to be used for diverse purposes. In other words, what happens when what in the past was only ephemeral is turned into an immaterial exchangeable element, and most often than not some type of commodity? To begin in what follows I analyze how the regenerative remix functions as a type of bridge to a future in which constant updates and pervasive connectivity will become ubiquitous in all aspects of life.
[1] This is a reasonable proposition as long as the person has access to the material. Some archives are evidently password protected. The person has to be also in a position to exert such an act, and this is linked to economics and class that define the person’s reality. I am not able to go into this issue in this text as its focus is on how sampling is functioning in terms of regeneration.
[2] This is already evident in the fact that the time it takes to produce just about any cultural apparatus has been shortened exponentially since the industrial revolution. Futurist Alvin Toffler makes a case with his term “The 800th Lifetime.” The much criticized Ray Kurzweil, who currently is affiliated with Google, also makes a case for exponential growth, arguing that Moore’s Law will be superseded in 2020, and we will enter a new paradigm of innovation. See, Alvin Toffler, “The 800th Lifetime,” Future Shock (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), 9-10. Ray Kurtzweil, “Ray Kurzweil Announced Singularity University,” Ted Talks, Last updated February 2009: https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_announces_singularity_university#t-188322.
[3] My use of the term “building blocks” is influenced by the work of Manuel De Landa, who discusses language in relation to biology and geology. I refer to his work throughout this essay. See Manuel De Landa“Linguistic History: 1000 – 1700 A.D.,” A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (New York: Zone Books, 1997), 183 – 190.
[4] Eduardo Navas, “Remix[ing] Theory,” Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling (New York: Springer, 2012), 101-108.
During Fall of 2015, I taught two classes in The School of Visual Arts at Penn State, in which students explored creative practice in time based media. Art 316 focused on video art, and Art 415 focused on integrating media to develop experimental works that explored principles of remix, beginning with sound, moving on to the time-based media. The final project for both classes was to evaluate and re-edit selected work produced throughout the term, and organize it into a cohesive body of work. This means that the projects did not need to be organized chronologically.
I share compilations by some of my students below. First are selections from Art 316 followed by selections from Art 415. I believe all of the students in class grew quite a bit in the process of exploring the aesthetics of contemporary time-based media in image, sound, and text.
Art 316 assignments begin with stop motion with no sound. The reason for this is so that students can focus on the image editing process. Eventually, students move on to explore video and sound in relation to text. Some students used music which they composed themselves, others chose pre-existing tracks. What was crucial when using pre-existing sound was that it did not overpower the video footage, but that it developed a balance that allowed for autonomy of the videos as works of their own.
John Guilyard, Video Project, Fall 2015
In Art 316 students explored concepts of sequential media, meaning the concept of movement with different forms of digital visual presentation, such as still graphics, animation, typography and video. The influence of film language across various media disciplines was discussed at length and explored with a hands-on-approach to produce video projects.
Eden Yung, Video Projects, Fall 2015
Students explored concepts of motion in art, film and video. Issues of design practice in time based media in general were covered. Students gained a theoretical and practical understanding of sequential movement.
Brendan Rogers, Video Projects, Fall 2015
Art 415 consisted of an interdisciplinary approach to the production of art and media design. Its conceptual platform is the act of remixing as initially understood in music, which is increasingly influential across media in terms of remix culture. Students were introduced to the basic principles of remix with a hands-on approach in order to develop independently driven projects.
The starting point of class, in terms of hands-on production, consisted of mixing and remixing music with different software. Students then applied their initial knowledge and methodology to image/time-based media and text.
The class consisted of three major projects, each building on the skills, history and theory students learned throughout the term. The class was designed to enable students to acquire a methodology that will eventually help them develop an ambitious vision of their own practice, and complement the eventual production of a thesis and/or portfolio in their respective discipline.
The following text was published in August of 2015 in the publication Seismographic Sounds: Visions of a New World, which accompanies a traveling exhibition with the same title. More information can be found at http://norient.com/en/events/seismographic-sounds/
I would like to thank Theresa Beyer and Thomas Burkhalter for the opportunity to share an update on my definitions of Remix. This text is a short version of a much longer essay to be released in the future.
Remix/ Archive Im/material Regeneration
Remix is at play in all areas of contemporary culture. Text, image and sound become easily accessible data that can be re-combined at will. Remix in music consisted of the reinterpretation of pre-existing songs by way of sampling. Today the copying/sampling of not just sound but all material from infinite sources challenges the «spectacular aura» of the pre-recorded original in order to claim autonomy.
By Eduardo Navas
Cultural production has entered a stage in which archived digital material can potentially be used at will; just like people combine words to create sentences, in contemporary times, people with the use of digital tools are able to create unique works made with splices of other pre-recorded materials. Due to the ubiquitous action of cut/copy & paste, output is at an ever-increasing speed. This process is possible because what is digitally produced in art and music, for instance, becomes part of an archive, particularly a database. The archived material begins to function like building blocks, optimized to be infinitely combined. This state of affairs is actually at play in all areas of culture, and consequently is redefining the way we perceive the world and how we function as part of it. The implications of this in terms of how we think of creativity and its relation to the industry built around authorship are important to consider for a concrete understanding of the type of global culture we are becoming. (more…)
