Image: Composite image of four YouTube video remixes. From top left to bottom right appear thumbnail montages of Charleston — Original Al & Leon Style!!, Charles Style, Charleston Mirror, and Charleston Mix. Larger images of the montages with proper explanation are included below as part of this introduction to my initial research on viral videos.
What follows is a brief introduction of my preliminary interest on video remixes and how I plan to use cultural analytics to evaluate their evolution on YouTube. My current research consists of various elements, some which I will not introduce at length today, but will only mention to contextualize the use of video grid montage as an analytical tool.
Janneke Adema has taken the time to analyze selected texts available on Remix Theory. She connects my theories of Remix to the future of the book. Adema also discusses the theories of Lev Manovich in terms of Remixability.
In the first part of New Visions for the Book, I described how the concept of the book is being used as a strategic power tool to argue for a certain knowledge system. I tried to show how within this discourse certain essentialist notions—such as authorship, stability, and authority—still hold a lot of prestige and are hard to discard. In the subsequent parts of New Visions for the Book I therefore want to take a few expeditions outside the world of the scholarly book to look at the way other disciplines and other media have struggled with or have come to terms with the above mentioned notions. I want to start with looking at the concept of remix, engaged with mostly in music and art theory but increasingly a concept applied to describe and analyse culture at large. Here I want to focus on two thinkers who have extensively theorized remix: Eduardo Navas and Lev Manovich. After taking an in depth look at Navas work on remix first, I will explore Manovich’s thoughts on the subject in the next post, contrasting it with Navas’s ideas. Finally, I will explore what the consequences of their thoughts and their analysis of remix are for the scholarly book, the knowledge order it stands for and the concepts it reifies.
I visited Sao Paulo Brazil on November 17th, to participate in a panel discussion for Brazilian Digital Culture 2010, organized by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture. I was invited to discuss the relationship of transmedia and Remix along with Maurício Mota (Os Alquimistas), and moderator Newton Cannito (Secretary for the Audiovisual/Ministry of Culture). What follows is not so much a summary of the panel discussion, but rather a reflection on my views on transmedia and Remix, after evaluating my participation. But first, I will begin by giving some general impressions of the day I spent in Sao Paulo.
I’m very happy to be collaborating with Mette Birk, Mark O’ Cúlár, Owen Gallagher, Eli Horwatt, Martin Leduc, and Tara Zepel on a chapter contribution for Networked Book.
ABSTRACT: The text on video remixing contributed to Networked Book is the result of an ongoing collaboration that started in January 2010, when Owen Gallagher invited Mette Birk, Mark O’ Cúlár, Martin Leduc, and Eduardo Navas to join a ‘Remix Theory and Praxis’ online seminar. In April, Navas invited Tara Zepell to join the group.
The text explores concepts of remixing not only in content and form, but also in process. The aim of the collaboration is to evaluate how the creative process functions as a type of remix itself in a period when production keeps moving toward a collective approach in all facets of culture. The emphasis on video remixing is the result of a collaborative rewriting activity among the contributors, who each wrote independent paragraphs that went through constant revisions once combined as a single text. Video was selected as the subject of analysis because members have a common interest in time-based media, and also because video remixing is at the forefront of media production. One of the group goals is that the text becomes a statement of what video could be as a reflective form of the networked culture that is developing at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The text is in constant revision and readers are encouraged to join in its writing.
Download a high resolution version of Diagram in PDF format
This text was originally published on June 25, 2007 in Vague Terrain Journal as a contribution to the issue titled Sample Culture. It was revised in November 2009 and subsequently published as a chapter contribution in Sonvilla-Weiss, Stefan (Ed.) Mashup Cultures, 2010, ISBN: 978-3-7091-0095-0, Springer Wien/New York published in May 2010.
It is here republished with permission from the publisher and is requested that it be cited appropriately. This online publication is different from the print version in that it is missing images that help illustrate the theory of Remix that I propose. I do encourage readers to consider looking at the actual publication as it offers an important collection of texts on mashups.
I would like to thank Greg J. Smith for giving me the opportunity to publish my initial ideas in Vague Terrain, and Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss for inviting me to revise them as a contribution to his book publication.
This version brings together much of my previous writing. Individuals who have read texts such as The Bond of Repetition and Representation, as well as Turbulence: Remixes and Bonus Beats will find that many of my definitions and theories of Remix are repeated in this text. I found this necessary to make sense of a fourth term which I introduce: the Regenerative Remix. Those who have read the previous version of this text may like to skip pre-existing parts, and go directly to the section titled “The Regenerative Remix.” However, all sections have been revised for clarity, so I encourage readers to at least browse through previously written material.
An important change has been made to this text. In the original version I argued that Reflexive Mashups were not remixes. In 2007 I did not know what Reflexive Mashups could be if they were not remixes in the traditional sense, but after consideration and rewriting, I developed the concept of the Regenerative Remix. To learn more about this change in my definition of Remix as a form of discourse I invite readers to consider my revised argument. I also introduce a chart (above) which helps explain how Remix moves across culture. I also include an entirely new conclusion which will clarify my earlier position on software mashups.
A note on formatting: The text below is set up in simple text form. This means that italics and other conventions found in print publications are missing. If you would like to read a print ready version, please download a PDF file.
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Introduction
During the first decade of the twenty-first century, sampling is practiced in new media culture when any software users including creative industry professionals as well as average consumers apply cut/copy & paste in diverse software applications; for professionals this could mean 3-D modeling software like Maya (used to develop animations in films like Spiderman or Lord of the Rings); [1] and for average persons it could mean Microsoft Word, often used to write texts like this one. Cut/copy & paste which is, in essence, a common form of sampling, is a vital new media feature in the development of Remix. In Web 2.0 applications cut/copy & paste is a necessary element to develop mashups; yet the cultural model of mashups is not limited to software, but spans across media.
Mashups actually have roots in sampling principles that became apparent and popular in music around the seventies with the growing popularity of music remixes in disco and hip hop culture, and even though mashups are founded on principles initially explored in music they are not straight forward remixes if we think of remixes as allegories. This is important to entertain because, at first, Remix appears to extend repetition of content and form in media in terms of mass escapism; the argument in this paper, however, is that when mashups move beyond basic remix principles, a constructive rupture develops that shows possibilities for new forms of cultural production that question standard commercial practice.
My most recent text “Remix: The Ethics of Modular Complexity in Sustainability” is published in the CSPA Quarterly. The journal is the print publication for The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, a non-profit that supports artists and organizations; it enables them to be ecologically and economically sustainable while maintaining artistic excellence. My text is not yet available online but I hope to have it released in a few months. I do share an excerpt at the end of this message. In the mean time, I encourage you to purchase a copy of the CSPA Quarterly, which focuses on works made with found materials.
Here is the issue release statement:
In this issue, we’re working against the stereotypes of the form, and attempting to broaden its term. As always, we’re exploring our chosen theme across disciplines and were delighted to include sculpture, visual art, theater, public art, and media art in the following pages. Instead of asking for work based on waste materials, we asked for work built from objects that already exist.
Excerpt from my text, “Remix: The Ethics of Modular Complexity in Sustainability”, page 13:
Remix and Sustainability
Within immaterial production (music and other arts dependent on forms of communication) recycling of existing material becomes an aesthetic with real repercussions. As stated in the introduction, Remix expands across culture from music to ecology: from immaterial pleasure to material responsibility. It is a binder that informs the awareness of the interrelation of one’s beliefs and actions in culture.
Once an idea or content becomes calculable, measurable as an actual thing produced, intellectual property becomes a pivotal issue: who owns the material and how should such material be re-used if it is to be recycled? Thus the result is that we live in a time where information is privileged and immaterial pleasure has become the prime commodity, as the global economy has assimilated a fourth layer of global production, which agriculture, industrial production, and the service industry support. Information plays a prime role in defining the other layers of production. As the emerging market it dictates how the others are represented. This shift places a certain stress on the sustainability of intellectual production, since ideas, its prime real estate, become more precious than ever before. Immaterial production is at the forefront of a global market that thrives on the low-cost of information production and outsourcing of repetitive labor in computing and networked services such as telemarketing, and social media to different areas around the world.
Note: Below is an excerpt of a film analysis of Inception I wrote for Vodule, a new collaboration that focuses on the concept of volume and modularity in emerging media.
Spoiler alert: this is a film analysis, meaning an in-depth review that gives away key moments of the film.
Written by Eduardo Navas
Inception is defined as “The establishment or starting point of an institution or activity.” In the film Inception, the term means “the introduction of an idea in someone’s mind.” Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a master at manipulating people’s dreams. He is able to introduce an idea deep into a person’s unconscious. The idea will take over the individual’s reality and perhaps even push him or her to the edge of sanity. The individual may question actual reality and consider the dreamworld real, not the material world.
Inception was written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who consistently plays with the concept of time in multiple parallels of reality. He did this with Memento, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight. But Inception, as original as it may appear, in effect, is far from being itself an introduction of a new concept that may take over film form and ask that film as a medium be redefined. Nolan by no means may be claiming to do this with Inception, but serious filmmaking is at its best when it becomes that which it proposes. This is known in the arts as the sublime: to present the unpresentable–to present the possibility of comprehending the incomprehensible. This is the ultimate space of exploration in aesthetics. Inception, as respectable as it may appear, falls short in this important aspect. Why this may be so is worth considering.
Lawrence Lessig recently gave a talk about what the left can learn from the right when it comes to sharing and remixing content. Much of the material will be familiar to people who have read Lessig’s books; still, his own position is explained: he considers himself on the left but repeatedly looks to the right, as it is people on this camp that appear to be interested in supporting remix culture.
Note: I’m very happy to announce the release of a book publication titled Mashup Cultures in which I contribute a text titled “Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture.” The text was previously released on Vague Terrain in June 2007, and has been revised and extended by over 15 pages for the book publication.I introduce a series of new terms along with a diagram, which I will be making available online in the near future.
Mashup Cultures, Sonvilla-Weiss. Stefan (Ed.), Springeren: This volume brings together cutting-edge thinkers and scholars together with young researchers and students, proposing a colourful spectrum of media-theoretical, -practical and -educational approaches to current creative practices and techniques of production and consumption on and off the web. Along with the exploration of some of the emerging social media concepts, the book unveils some of the key drivers leading to participatory engagement of the User.
Mashup Cultures presents a broader view of the effects and consequences of current remix practices and the recombination of existing digital cultural content. The complexity of this book, which appears on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the international MA study program ePedagogy Design – Visual Knowledge Building, also by necessity seeks to familiarize the reader with a profound glossary and vocabulary of Web 2.0 cultural techniques.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss: Introduction: Mashups, Remix Practices and the Recombination of Existing Digital Content
• Axel Bruns: Distributed Creativity: Filesharing and Produsage
• Brenda Castro: The Virtual Art Garden: A Case Study of User-centered Design for Improving Interaction in Distant Learning Communities of Art Students
• Doris Gassert: “You met me at a very strange time in my life.” Fight Club and the Moving Image on the Verge of ‘Going Digital’
• David Gauntlett: Creativity, Participation and Connectedness: An Interview with David Gauntlett
• Mizuko Ito: Mobilizing the Imagination in Everyday Play: The Case of Japanese Media Mixes
• Henry Jenkins: Multiculturalism, Appropriation, and the New Media Literacies: Remixing Moby Dick
• Owen Kelly: Sexton Blake & the Virtual Culture of Rosario: A Biji
• Torsten Meyer: On the Database Principle: Knowledge and Delusion
• Eduardo Navas: Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture
• Christina Schwalbe: Change of Media, Change of Scholarship, Change of University: Transition from the Graphosphere to a Digital Mediosphere
• Noora Sopula & Joni Leimu: A Classroom 2.0 Experiment
• Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss: Communication Techniques, Practices and Strategies of Generation “Web n+1?
• Wey-Han Tan: Playing (with) Educational Games – Integrated Game Design and Second Order Gaming
• Tere Vadén interviewed by Juha Varto: Tepidity of the Majority and Participatory Creativity
