Image source: Turbulence.org
Layout by Ludmil Trenkov
Duchamp source: Art History Birmington
Levine source: Artnet

(This text has been recently added to the section titled Remix Defined to expand my general definition of Remix.)

The following summary is a copy and paste collage (a type of literary remix) of my lectures and preliminary writings since 2005. My definition of Remix was first introduced in one of my most recent texts: Turbulence: Remixes + Bonus Beats, commissioned by Turbulence.org. Many of the ideas I entertain in the text for Turbulence were first discussed in various presentations during the Summer of 2006. (See the list of places here plus an earlier version of my definition of Remix). Below, the section titled “remixes” takes parts from the section by the same name in the Turbulence text, and the section titled “remix defined” consists of excerpts of my definitions which have been revised for an upcoming text soon to be released in English and Spanish by Telefonica in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The full text will be released online once it is officially published.

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Mixmaster Mike- photo by Chris Taylor

Image source: Virtual DJ

Text source: Manovich.net 

winter 2007

It is a truism today that we live in a “remix culture.” Today, many of cultural and lifestyle arenas – music, fashion, design, art, web applications, user created media, food – are governed by remixes, fusions, collages, or mash-ups. If post-modernism defined 1980s, remix definitely dominates 2000s, and it will probably continue to rule the next decade as well. (For an expanding resource on remix culture, visit remixtheory.net by Eduardo Navas.) Here are just a few examples of how remix continues to expand. In his 2004/2005-winter collection John Galliano (a fashion designer for the house of Dior) mixed vagabond look, Yemenite traditions, East-European motifs, and other sources that he collects during his extensive travels around the world. DJ Spooky created a feature-length remix of D.W. Griffith’s 1912 “Birth of a Nation” which he appropriately named “Rebirth of a Nation.” In April 2006 Annenberg Center at University of Southern California ran a two-day conference on “Networked Politics” which had sessions and presentations about a variety of remix cultures on the Web: political remix videos, anime music videos, machinima, alternative news, infrastructure hacks.[1] In addition to these cultures that remix media content, we also have a growing number of software applications that remix data – so called software “mash-ups.” Wikipedia defines a mash-up as “a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.”[2] At the moment of this writing (February 4, 2007), the web site www.programmableweb.com listed the total of 1511 mash-ups, and it estimated that the average of 3 new mash-ups Web applications are being published every day.[3]

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Miller: “… [‘Nation’ is] one of the cornerstones of American cinema.”

Text and Image source: Philadelphia Daily News

Apr. 11, 2007
THE FAMILIAR image of the DJ hunched over a pair of turntables doesn’t quite describe the innovative approach of Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid.Where other DJs remix songs, adding beats and blending melodies, Miller remixes culture in his style-blending music and as a writer, producer, critic, philosopher and multimedia artist.

On Friday at Rutgers-Camden, he’ll present his multimedia performance “Rebirth of a Nation,” bringing the art of the remix to one of history’s greatest and most controversial films, “Birth of a Nation.”

“Cut, splice, scratch – it’s all about editing,” explained Miller about transferring his DJ techniques to a visual medium. “When you see someone spin records, they’re taking bits and pieces of any performance – classical, hip-hop, etc. In the era of software, it’s all about compositional strategy.”

Read the entire article at Philadelphia Daily News

Image and text source: beastiemania

Quick, what do these names have in common: the Prunes, Fatboy Slim, Large Professor, Prisoners of Technology, Prof D? If you guessed people who have remixed Beastie Boys songs, you would be correct. Huh? While you should be familiar with the first four names, the last and many other are evidence of the growing trend of fans becoming their very own mix masters.

Listen Everybody Cause I’m Shifting Gears I’m

In order to understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to travel back in time. Remixes used to be available in two ways, the most commercially available were B-Sides of a song released as a single. The Beastie Boys were especially prolific in the addition of numerous remixes and non album tracks to entice fans to purchase the single in addition to the album. This trend of including remixes began in the Paul’s Boutique era with the release of several remixes that were essentially dub versions of original songs such as And What You Give is What You Get, Dis Yourself in 89 (Just Do It) and 33% God.

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Image and text source: http://mixhistory.mixfreaks.nl/
In the 80s (’till the 90s) in Holland the mixing-season started.
A lot of guys started making mixes which where broadcasted on national radio.
I liked them and taped a lot of the mixes and decided to keep track on some remixers.
In the early 90s they stopped broadcasting those mixes on the radio. (and they started again in 2001!)
Those mixers kept going on offcourse.
Some started their own company, others kept remixing or started their own acts/studios.
On these pages I try to keep track on what projects/remixes they made.Around 2000 some new remixers popped up. They met together with other fans in an online community called Mixfreaks.
Some of these mixers also made mixes which were broadcasted on national dutch radio.

Radio Veronica had the ‘thuismixwedstrijden (79-83)’ ,the ‘Home-Edit Mixes(83..)’ & Ben Liebrand’s In the Mix, Grandmix and Minimix (1983-1992/2000-????) and Tros & Veronica Top 40 Mixes
TROS had its share with the Bond van Doorstarters, Tros Club Mix, Disco Mix Club and The Pitch Control ReRemix
AVRO had the RicksMix and the Avro’s Driemaal Doordraai Live-mixes
The Kro had ‘And The Beat Goes On’ (1983-1985)

TMF (The Music Factory) had from 1995 till 2000 the TMF Video Yearmix
Radio 538: 538 Yearmixes AND rebroadcast of Grandmixes AND the MilleniumMix And broadcasting of Liebrand’s Minimixes..
Slam FM : Klubbsound yearmixes since 1996 and “In 2 The MilleniumMix” all by Initial Studio

Image and text source: National Geographic

April 2007

Photographs by David Alan Harvey

Whether you trace it to New York’s South Bronx or the villages of West Africa, hip-hop has become the voice of a generation demanding to be heard.

This is my nightmare: My daughter comes home with a guy and says, “Dad, we’re getting married.” And he’s a rapper, with a mouthful of gold teeth, a do-rag on his head, muscles popping out his arms, and a thug attitude. And then the nightmare gets deeper, because before you know it, I’m hearing the pitter-patter of little feet, their offspring, cascading through my living room, cascading through my life, drowning me with the sound of my own hypocrisy, because when I was young, I was a knucklehead, too, hearing my own music, my own sounds. And so I curse the day I saw his face, which is a reflection of my own, and I rue the day I heard his name, because I realize to my horror that rap—music seemingly without melody, sensibility, instruments, verse, or harmony, music with no beginning, end, or middle, music that doesn’t even seem to be music—rules the world. It is no longer my world. It is his world. And I live in it. I live on a hip-hop planet.

Read the entire feature at National Geographic

Image source: http://www.descalzosporelparque.com

Text source: Slate

Posted Monday, July 29, 2002

CD coverThe debut of Jennifer Lopez’s J to Tha L-O! The Remixes at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart earlier this year was just another notch on the career bedpost for the multimedia Latina. But for the art of the remix, it was a milestone: the first time an album composed entirely of remixes hit No. 1 in the United States. Serendipitously enough, Lopez’s collection followed directly on the heels of her onetime beau P. Diddy’s We Invented the Remix—an album whose typically grandiose title, you won’t be surprised to hear, is so much hooey. We Reinvented the Remix as a Marketing Ploy would have been more accurate.

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Image and text source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/tx/
documentaries/remix.shtml

Date of publication, uncertain

1Xtra’s ‘Remix Kid’ Seani B uncovers the origins of remixing…
How has the art has changed over the years?

First developed by Jamaican reggae producers in the 1960s to create dub music, remixing was picked up by hip hop pioneers and disco DJs to develop new styles.

P Diddy is one the most famous remixers of all time – if that title is in your sights, listen up for Seani’s tips on how to put together your own remix track.
Who’s the remixer of the remixers? How has remixing blurred the boundaries between different musical genres in the UK?

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Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times

Image and text source: NYTimes

March 14, 2007

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — In a classroom at a community center near a slum here, a street-smart teacher offers a dozen young students tips on how to improve their graffiti techniques. One floor below, in a small soundproof studio, another instructor is teaching a youthful group of would-be rappers how to operate digital recording and video equipment.
Students practice drawing because of graffiti’s connection to hip-hop.

This is one of Brazil’s Culture Points, fruit of an official government program that is helping to spread hip-hop culture across a vast nation of 185 million people. With small grants of $60,000 or so to scores of community groups on the outskirts of Brazil’s cities, the Ministry of Culture hopes to channel what it sees as the latent creativity of the country’s poor into new forms of expression.

The program, conceived in 2003, is an initiative of Brazil’s minister of culture, Gilberto Gil, who will be speaking on digital culture and related topics on Wednesday at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Tex. Though today one of the country’s most revered pop stars, Mr. Gil, 64, was often buy cytotec ostracized at the start of his own career and so feels a certain affinity with the hip-hop culture emerging here.

Also see:

Brazilian Hip Hop on the rise
http://madeinbrazil.typepad.com/
madeinbrazil/2007/03/brazilian_hip_h.html
Brazilian Hip Hop On The Rise

Image source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/
blogs/technology_news/2875526.html

Text source: NYTimes

February 22, 2007

WHAT do flying plastic pigs, dancing daisies and robotic Barbie dolls have in common? An iPod.
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Lars Klove for The New York Times

With more than 90 million players sold worldwide since its introduction in 2001, the iPod has spawned a lucrative accessories industry. At least 3,000 types of iPod extras have received Apple’s blessing — mostly no-nonsense options like cases, earbuds and amplified speaker systems, including the $300 SoundDock line made by Bose.

But another trend is developing, one more playful and not always with Apple’s approval or knowledge.

Call it iSilly, a growing number of products in which fun is emphasized over function, and cute or irreverent often trumps wow. All of these items, some costing as little as $10, have been created to plug into an iPod — or, in many cases, any audio source that has a standard 3.5-millimeter headphone jack.

Read the entire article