Remixing involves taking existing cultural works like images, video, audio, or text and mixing elements together to create something new that often mimics one or more of the source works. Remixes are sometimes meant to be satirical or political but satire is not essential. There is a difference between remixing and remediation, which is transferring a work to a different media. Additionally, an assemblage is a text made from original and pre-existing parts, so almost everything can be considered an assemblage as it does not distinguish original from existing elements but focuses on what works and has social effects. Examples of remixes discussed include DJ Danger Mouse's "Grey Album" which combined elements of the Beatles' White

1. September 25, 2014

2. Today:
REMIX

3. Remix is Like…
Remix is the act of taking one or more cultural
artifacts-- visual, video, audio, and/or alphabetic
texts- and deliberately mixing elements together to
create something new that often specifically mimics
one or more of the sources. Many remixes are
meant to be satirical or overtly political, though
satire is not essential.

4. Different Similar Things
There’s often a mistaken conflation
between the idea of remix and the idea of
remediation. Arising from the work of Jay
David Bolter and Richard Grusin,
remediation is transferring something from
one media to another.

5. Selber & Johnson-Eilola
There’s also a third element in this
discussion, explicated by Selber and
Johnson-Eilola: the assemblage. An
assemblage is a text made from original and
pre-existing parts. So… almost everything is
a type of assemblage.

6. “…the assemblages do not distinguish primarily
between which parts are supposed to be
original and which have been found and
gathered somewhere else; assemblages are
interested in what works, what has social
effects. The distinction between original and
existing fragments in a text is, if not
meaningless, at least secondary.” p. 380

7. Examples of Remixes
(and hence assemblages)

12. "This architecture demands... the right to remix
culture."
Enter DJ Danger Mouse. He felt that the Beatles’ White
Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album went together.
So he created
“the Grey Album”
To YouTube!

13. Remix: from The Daily Show
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14. Remix: from Marvel Comics
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15. Remix: from random net site
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16. Another Example
The New Yorker ran a piece on Danger Mouse and the
idea of mash-ups. This gives us yet another term for
“remix”
“Mashups find new uses for current digital
technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-effect
relationship behind almost every change in pop-music
aesthetics: the gear changes, and then the music
does.”

17. A Stroke of Genius
“In October of 2001, a d.j. named Roy
Kerr, calling himself the Freelance
Hellraiser, sent Temple-Morris [a
mash-up show duo] a mashup called “A
Stroke of Genius,” laying Christina
Aguilera’s vocal from “Genie in a
Bottle,” a lubricious pop song, over the
music from the Strokes’ “Hard to
Explain,” a brittle, honking guitar song.
“

18. A few more remixes
• Shining
• Brokeback

19. Time permitting: remix a Pony

20. For Tuesday:
read: WIRED piece on Kim Dotcom
Watch: Lessig
We talk IP Law