Figure 1: four shots from around a third into the film. Left is original edit, Right is chronological edit
During the Fall of 2013, I analyzed Pulp Fiction with my students in my Video Art Class for the School of Visual Arts at Penn State. One of their assignments was to produce a video and then re-edit it to tell the same story but in different order, and therefore explore how aesthetics play a role in experiencing a narrative. We went over a few examples that would give them ideas, some of the links I provided as resources included Pulp Fiction and Memento.
A review of my book, Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling, was published on April 11, 2014 in the German edition of Mixmag. Many thanks Florian Schirmacher for his critical review. It’s in German:
Warum finden wir genau diesen Detroit Beat in so vielen aktuellen Produktionen wieder? Liegt es daran, valtrex dass alle denselben Remix machen, weil Spuren im Internet aufgetaucht sind? Oder haben sich die “House-Lover” alle auf dasselbe Sample geeinigt? Der Remix erfährt gerade so eine elementare Wiederbelebung, dass der theoretische Unterbau und das nötige Einbeziehen in einen größeren Zusammenhang zum unausweichlichen Basiswissen geworden ist.
We have now turned in the manuscript of The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies, and can release the Table of Contents. The reader is due for release around December 14, 2014. The TOC is below:
Part I: History
1. “Remix and the Dialogic Engine of Culture: A Model for Generative Combinatoriality” Martin Irvine
2. “A Rhetoric of Remix” Scott H. Church
3. “Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal: Reflections on Cut-Copy-Paste Culture” Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss
4. “Toward a Remix Culture: An Existential Perspective” Vito Campanelli
5. “An Oral History of Sampling: From Turntables to Mashups” Kembrew McLeod
6. “Can I Borrow Your Proper Name? Remixing Signatures and the Contemporary Author” Cicero da Silva
7. The Extended Remix: Rhetoric and history Margie Borschke
8. “Culture and Remix: A Theory on Cultural Sublation” Eduardo Navas
Part II: Aesthetics
9. “Remix Strategies in Social Media” Lev Manovich
10. “Remixing Movies and Trailers Before and After the Digital Age” Nicola Maria Dusi
11. “Remixing the Plague of Images: Video Art from Latin America in a Transnational Context” Erandy Vergara
12. “Race & Remix: The Aesthetics of Race in the Visual & Performing Arts” Tashima Thomas
13. “Digital Poetics and Remix Culture: From the Artisanal Image to the Immaterial Image” Monica Tavares
14. “The End of an Aura: Nostalgia, Memory, and the Haunting of Hip-hop” Roy Christopher
15. “Appropriation is Activism” Byron Russell
Part III: Ethics
16. “The Emerging Ethics of Networked Culture” Aram Sinnreich
17. “The Panopticon of Ethical Video Remix Practice” Mette Birk
18. “Cutting Scholarship Together/Apart: Rethinking the Political-Economy of Scholarly Book Publishing” Janneke Adema
19. “Copyright and Fair Use in Remix: From Alarmism to Action” Patricia Aufderheide
20. “I Thought I Made A Vid, But Then You Told Me That I Didn’t: Aesthetics and Boundary Work in the Fan Vidding Community” Katharina Freund
21. “Peeling The Layers of the Onion: Authorship in Mashup and Remix Cultures” John Logie
22. “remixthecontext (a theoretical fiction)” Mark Amerika
Part IV: Politics
23. “A Capital Remix” Rachel O’Dwyer
24. “Remix Practices and Activism: A Semiotic Analysis of Creative Dissent” Paolo Peverini
25. “Political Remix Video as a Vernacular Discourse” Olivia Conti
26. “Locative Media as Remix” Conor McGarrigle
27. “The Politics of John Lennon’s “Imagine”: Contextualizing the Roles of Mashups and New Media in Political Protest” J. Meryl Krieger
28. “Détournement as a Premise of the Remix from Political, Aesthetic, and Technical Perspectives” Nadine Wanono
29. “The New Polymath (Remixing Knowledge)” Rachel Falconer
Part V: Practice
30. “Crises of Meaning in Communities of Creative Appropriation: A Case Study of the 2010 RE/Mixed Media Festival” Tom Tenney
31. “Of ‘REAPPROPRIATIONS'” Gustavo Romano
32. “Aesthetics of Remix: Networked Interactive Objects and Interface Design” Jonah Brucker-Cohen
33. “Reflections on the Amen Break: A Continued History, an Unsettled Ethics” Nate Harrison
34. “Going Crazy with Remix: A Classroom Study by Practice via Lenz v. Universal” xtine burrough and Dr. Emily Erickson
35. “A Remix Artist and Advocate” Desiree D’Alessandro
36. “Occupy / Band Aid Mashup: ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?'” Owen Gallagher
37. “Remixing the Remix” Elisa Kreisinger
38. “A Fair(y) Use Tale” Eric Faden
39. “An Aesthetics of Deception in Political Remix Video” Diran Lyons
40. “Radical Remix: Manifestoon” Jesse Drew
41. “In Two Minds” Kevin Atherton
I have not posted on Remix Theory for some time. The reason being that I have been editing along with fellow editors xtine Burrough and Owen Gallagher an upcoming volume on Remix Studies. It has been a lot of intensive work, needless to say but well worthwhile as we believe the remix community will value the many contributions that comprise the volume. We hope to have the book published in the latter half of 2014–at the moment the tentative release date is for early 2015. Here is some information and a link to the official webpage:
Edited by Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher, xtine burrough
The Remix Studies Reader comprises contemporary texts by key authors and artists who are active in the emerging field of remix studies. This rapidly growing field extends from remix culture, an organic international movement that originated in the popular music culture of the 1970s and has grown into a rich cultural activity encompassing various forms of media. The act of recombining pre-existing material brings up pressing questions of authenticity, reception, authorship, copyright, and the techno-politics of media activism. This book approaches remix studies from various angles, including sections on history, aesthetics, ethics, and politics, and presents theoretical chapters alongside case studies of remix projects related to the themes of each section. The Remix Studies Reader will be a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners, as well as a teaching tool for instructors using remix practices in the classroom.
On Friday January 29, I participated in The Long Table, an open discussion session part of Refest in which about 8 individuals were invited to discuss the state of remix in 2013. The video of the discussion is embedded above. The Long Table was co-curated by Tom Tenney. The event took place at La Mama streamed live and archived online by Culturehub. I had the pleasure to participate in this event along with Adriano Clemente, David Commander, Fabian Saucedo, Jennifer Weber, and DJ Spooky, among others. The discussion began with the copyright dispute over the song “Girls” between GoldieBlox and The Beastie Boys. It moved from there to other aspects of remix. Refest took place at La Mama from November 29 – December 1, and also featured a performance by DJ Spooky which took place on November 30. The video of the performance is embedded below. Many thanks to Tom Tenney for inviting me to participate, a special thanks to the entire staff at La Mama and Culturehub, who do an amazing job at producing high quality events.
The catalog for the exhibition Three Junctures of Remix, which took place from January 17 to March 15, 2013 is now available for download as a PDF. I would like to thank the entire gallery staff and committee members for making the exhibition possible, especially Trish Stone, Jordan Crandall, Hector Bracho, Doug Ramsey, and Scott Blair. I especially thank the artists Arcangel Constantini, Mark Amerika & Chad Mossholder, Giselle Beiguelman, and Elisa Kreisinger, who participated in the exhibition, and were generous in providing interviews now published in the catalog.
John Cage 3 Compositions for Piano @ 5 (Remix) is a mashup of three compositions that last around 5 minutes. After listening to the compositions over the years, I realized that a mashup of the three recordings would follow the principles of chance as promoted by Cage. The compositions mashed include:
1) Music for Piano 2: 5:21
2) Roots of Unfocus: 5:01
3) Music for Marcel Duchamp: 5:20
This mashup is part of an ongoing series of remixes of John Cage piano compositions.
The recordings were performed by Steffen Schleiermacher, and released in John Cage Complete Piano Music Volume1 & 2, 1998.
John Cage 3 Compositions for Piano @ 4 (Remix) is a mashup of three compositions that last around 4 minutes. After listening to the compositions over the years, I realized that a mashup of the three recordings would follow the principles of chance as promoted by Cage. The compositions mashed include:
1) Primitive: 4:03
2) Music for Piano 1: 3:47
3) Music for Piano 37-52 , Part 1: 4:01
This mashup is part of an ongoing series of remixes of John Cage piano compositions.
The recordings were performed by Steffen Schleiermacher, and released in John Cage Complete Piano Music Volume1 & 2, 1998.
I recently participated at the El Chopo Museum‘s (Mexico City) series of events titled Bastard Pop. Above is the video archive of my performance which took place on September 7, 2013. The improvisation consists of three major sections. The first is an instrumental remix of Eric B and Rakim’s “Paid in Full” with James Brown’s “Payback.” This one is followed by a remix of John Cage’s “Music for 5 Pianos,” “Music for 4 Pianos,” “Music for 3 Pianos,” and “Music for 2 Pianos” which together form a sound piece I call “John Cage Music for 14 Pianos (Remix).” During the performance I doubled the remix and at one point people heard 28 pianos with different sound effects I set up specifically for the recordings. The last part consists of a remix of Kraftwerk’s “Numbers” with MJ Cole’s “Introduction,” a piece part of his seminal 2step album “Sincere.” The end consists of bass-lines and synth-sounds that I developed with Audiomulch, the software I used for the performance. Throughout the performance I also manipulated the introduction to Laurie Anderson’s “Superman,” which is the last sample heard at the end of the improvisation.
The sound in the space was simply amazing. It is too bad that the videostream went into the red, with the result of sound distortion. At least people online will have an idea about the development of the sound piece. I plan to post a better recording of the improvisation at a later point.
John Cage Music for 14 Pianos (Remix) is a mashup of Cage’s “Music for 5 Pianos,” “Music for 4 Pianos,” “Music for 3 Pianos,” and “Music for 2 Pianos.” All four pieces are 7 minutes plus a few seconds long. After listening to the compositions over the years, I realized that a mashup of the four recordings would follow the principles of chance as promoted by Cage. As a result this piece is part of a series of Cage remixes I will be releasing in the near future.
I will be remixing “Music for 14 Pianos” live at the upcoming event on September 7, 2013 at the El Chopo Museum, UNAM in Mexico City, at which point it will become part of much longer performance.
The recordings were performed by Steffen Schleiermacher, and released in John Cage Complete Piano Music Volume1 & 2, 1998.
