The Routledge Handbook of Remix Studies and Digital Humanities was published in March, 2021. In order to highlight our third anthology on remix studies and support interdisciplinary research on remix as a form of creative production and communication, xtine burrough, Owen Gallagher, and I decided to organize a series of dialogues via Zoom. The first dialogue took place on May 5, 2021. It featured scholars, artists, and designers: Anne Burdick, David J. Gunkel, Virginia Kuhn, and Paul D. Miller AKA DJ Spooky. A video recording of the event is archived and available for viewing.
Our second dialogue is taking place on September 23 and will feature scholars, artists, and designers: Aram Sinnreich, Maggie Clifford, Fernanda Rosa, Scott Church, and Michael Collins who are brought together to continue our ongoing discussions on remix as a creative variable at play across culture. Registration for this free event is free via Zoom.
Information about The Routledge Handbook of Remix Studies and our previous two publications can be found at remixstudies.com
We are planning three more remix studies events for Fall 2021 and Spring of 2022.
Publication: Eduardo Navas, “Re-versioning The Elements of Selectivity: Transformation and Originality after Remix,” Radical Cut-Up – Nothing is Original, ed. Luka Feireiss (Amsterdam: Sternberg Press, 2019), 227 – 244.
Figure 1: Diagram showing the tautological process of meaning creation.
Note: This essay was published in November 2019 and is released online on December 30, 2020. I will be publishing an update on the theory of selectivity to be released in 2021, which considers the implications of creativity and the selective process in relation to machine learning and artificial intelligence titled “Machine Learning and Remix: Self-training Selectivity in Digital Art Practice.” For a previous release of my basic Theory of Selectivity see “The Elements of Selectivity: After-thoughts on Originality and Remix.” A special thanks to Luka Feireiss who suggested a mashup of my own theories for this version.
The following is a re-version of my theory of selectivity in remix, edited specifically as a contribution for the publication Radical Cut-Up – Nothing is Original. An earlier version of the section titled “The Elements of Meta” was published as part of the last chapter of my book Art, Media Design, and Postproduction: Open Guidelines on Appropriation and Remix (Routledge, 2018). The diagram and the updated text that follow include a new theory on transformation, which was developed after a presentation at The Popular Culture Association Conference of 2019.[1]
[1] The diagram and general theory of selectivity are updated after my presentation for a panel at The Popular Culture Association Conference, which took place in Washington D.C. on April 19, 2019. I want to thank xtine burrough for organizing the event, as well as Seth Welker, who took the time to initially contact presenters, who also included Scott Church. The presentation led to a series of discussions during and after Q&A that led me to reconsider the configuration of the selective process in creativity and communication. I especially thank xtine for bring up during our discussion the importance of the transformative process in remix. Her question led me to comment on transformation being part of the loop of selectivity and appropriation. Previous versions of this text were presented throughout 2017, specifically on October 10 at the Arts & Design Research Incubator (ADRI), Penn State, on October 11 at The University of Caldas in Manizales Colombia, on November 1 at The University of Bern, Bern Switzerland, and as a lecture at Karen Keifer-Boyd’s graduate seminar class at Penn State on November 8. I want to thank everyone who made my presentations possible.
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
“Rhetoric and Remix: Reflections on Adorno’s Minima Moralia” was published as part of The Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, Volume 7, Issue 2/3. I want to thank David Beard and Lisa Horton for including my work in a special issue focusing on remix. The essays comprised in the volume are written by important scholars who often focus on remix. I am honored to be part of this collection. Below are the first few paragraphs of my essay. You may download the actual document from the journal’s website. I also make it available on Remix Theory for download.
Rhetoric broken down to its most basic element can be called “the art of speaking well.”[1] In terms of contemporary times, it could be rewritten as “the art of remixing well,” given that we are able to extend our views using pre-existing material almost in real time using different media formats. Remix [and rhetoric] is the use of all media for communication by way of appropriation, repurposing, copying and mimicking.
Scott Church explains that the process of selection in remix is rhetorical because the remixer chooses a sample over another.[2] This is an act of selectivity that is vital to contemporary forms of production, whether they be highly acclaimed works of art, or a basic e-mail message that includes pasted content that a person may want to share with another person. My remix of Minima Moralia, which I titled Minima Moralia Redux, from this standpoint is a rhetorical work that, by way of appropriation, updates Adorno’s book as an online project.[3]
Minima Moralia Redux functions as both a work of art and a data analytics research project, which enables me and I hope can help others in understanding how individuals develop works that appear to be autonomous and credited to a single person, but which in reality are only possible because many people are willing to share ideas and resources. It is my hope that we can eventually move past ideas of single authorial works to more open approaches that do justice to the way culture is actually produced in terms of collective knowledge exchange. For this reason, the following focuses on how I appropriate and remix Adorno’s work. I do not discuss his critical position in detail, although I do mention it to contextualize the remix process.
I posted Minima Moralia’s Redux’s first entry on October 16, 2011. The goal, at the time, was to write an entry every week until the 153 aphorisms comprising Adorno’s book were remixed. The initial goal was to finish the project within three years, but as things developed, it became evident that it would take much longer to finish. As I did research on Adorno, I inevitably developed related interests and ideas that took me in other directions, and led to different projects and publications. For this reason, at the time of this writing (2017) I am about half way through Adorno’s 153 aphorisms, and it is not clear when I will eventually finish remixing his book. But for now I can reflect on how the project started, where it stands, and how what I have produced can be reconsidered in terms of remix and rhetoric.
[1] This is a direct quote by the Roman rhetorician Quintillian which was previously quoted in an essay that discusses the relation of rhetoric and remix at length, see Scott H. Church, “A Rhetoric of Remix,” The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies, eds. Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher, xtine Burrough (New York: Routledge, 2014), 43.
I am very happy to share news about my book Spate: A Navigational Theory of Networks. Published by The Institute of Network Cultures (INC). The book is free for download; a print copy can also be ordered online.
Spate: a Navigational Theory of Networks is a critical and theoretical reflection on networked communication, developed with repurposed tweets (@poemita) posted between 2010 and 2014. The original tweets, which were written as critical commentary about online communication and information exchange, have been rewritten from different points of view to develop five chapters. The five chapters function as an anti-story about multiple perceptions within a decentralized network.
I want to thank the Geert Lovink, Miriam Rasch, Leonieke van Dipten, and Léna Robin at The Institute of Network Cultures for supporting the realization of Spate.
Diran Lyons has been producing political remixes for some time. I recently received a tweet of his latest mashup “Political Remix Video: An Interview with Dr. Colin Gardner” which combines selected clips from Lyons’s own previous mashups with an interview with Dr. Gardner, who is professor and chair in the department of art at UC Santa Barbara. Following his previous approach, Lyons’s video mashup questions the way we perceive the moving image, which in this case is redefined as the time image by Dr. Gardner, according to philosophical writings on film by the late French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The time image questions our expectations of cause and effect; it is an image that reminds us to look beyond the surface of movement. Based on this premise, Lyons goes on to show clips from several films, mass media, and speeches by politicians on the left and the right of American politics. The result is a mashup that takes no sides but questions all things persons could possibly assume about power and absolute positions on right and wrong.
Figure 1: “Do You Want Fries with that?” by Ian Stevenson
The following is an interview conducted for the exhibition Pictoplasma: White Noise, curated by Lars Denicke and Peter Thaler, which took place at La Casa Encendida, Madrid Spain from May 23, to September 8, 2013. I was asked questions on how remix functions in art practice, if there is a difference between remix and sampling, among other issues that the concept of remixing raises with digital and non-digital forms of production. This interview was released as part of a print publication that complemented the exhibit, but it was not made available online. I am now making it public because my answers raise issues that I have not discussed in other texts or interviews. I thank Lars and Peter for their interest in my views on the subject of remix.
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Pictoplasma – Remix is what we all do now: cut/copy and paste. You have defined remix culture as the creative exchange of information made possible by digital technologies. Can one only speak of remix in cultural production if it is digital? Or if digital is not a prerequisite, how are analogue remixes embedded into digital culture? What is the difference between remixing and quoting or referencing?
E. Navas – First it should be noted that the concept of remixing is specific to contemporary times. Not everything is a remix – this is hard for me to say given that I was a DJ for almost 15 years (and would love to make such an overreaching claim), but it is precisely because I DJed for so long that I know that remixing is a very specific act. Having said that, the principles of remixing, or remix as discourse, have become important across culture, and this is why remix culture is so popular today, especially when discussing creativity as endorsed by Creative Commons.
When looking back in history you will notice that as a concept for daily creativity, remix was not that popular until remixing became a driving force in music, particularly in disco and hip hop. This means that the concept of remix is popular today not because anyone in particular decided to talk about it to promote some sort of organized movement, but rather because culture as a whole began to use the term to describe the type of creative production that is possible with contemporary technology. The reality is that remix is synonymous with the digital because it was the digital that made the concrete act of taking actual samples from recordings to then manipulate them into something new, while leaving the sampled source intact. This was not the case with collages, which were created by cutting out from images or photographs to create new compositions. In collages the”‘sampled” material was destroyed because it was cut out, but with digital technology, the sampled source is left intact, this was done before in photography, of course, starting in the 19th century. When you take a photograph you are sampling from real life, but the subject of your photograph remains untouched. People at this time, however, did not think about this as an act of sampling, but of recording. But in fact early photography was sampling from real life.
At the end of July, I was interviewed for KulturWelle. Their radio feature titled Fade In/Fade Out, Remixing Culture, which aired on September 3, 2014, presents excerpts of interviews with musicologist Fabian Czolbe, media and communications researcher Steffen Lepa, Ramón Reichert, and, myself, Eduardo Navas.
The feature is literally a remix in German and English of our reflections on the recyclability of culture complemented with music and sound excerpts. Even if one does not understand German, one should listen to the hour long show. It is a true rhetorical soundscape equivalent to a well mixed music recording. Many thanks to Nikita Hock, who first contacted me, and all the producers of the radio show, including Anastasia Andersson, Bernadette Breyer, Lara Deininger and Angelika Piechotta.
This is a recording of a DJ set practice session for a performance which took place at the Remixed Media Festival IV on April 26, 2014 at Culturehub/La Mama, NYC. The recording was done on April 23, 2014, and features all the songs that were mixed live. The improvisational aspects of transitions and remixing of tracks in the recording differs from the live performance as it is in these areas where a DJ takes artistic license to improvise.
Description from the Festival’s website:
Eduardo Navas’s research and writing on remixing as a creative act across culture is founded on his long term interest in DJing as an art form. His DJ set for RE/Mixed Media Festival IV will consist of a mix of early funk tracks, heavy Hip Hop bass samples, and selected reggae and caribbean-influenced beats.
Many thanks to Tom Tenney and Robert Prichard for making the Remixed Media Festival Possible for 4 consecutive years.
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.
