By Andrea Soler
This visual essay will show how remix – in the sense of appropriation – has been present in art history for centuries. Through a combination of digitally-collaged images and quotes about remix, this series of images addresses the question: Is the remix culture fundamentally at odds with older media institutions and practices?
The challenge of producing 20 images, instead of curating existing images, makes Gilberto Gil’s quote “Nobody creates in a vacuum” in
RIP: A Remix Manifesto truly comprehensible. Taking, using and modifying existing content is now ingrained in our digital culture. Creating new content, even if it is a collage of existing one, could be daunting. However, this visual essay will illustrate how remix existed long before the advent digital media.
Flickr link to photo set:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/78193356@N07/sets/72157643387323723/
1. The following images will show how the act of remixing in the sense of appropriating to create something different has been around for centuries. These series of images mainly focus in the visual arts, while touching on fashion, music, technology and TV.
2. The remix is “a conscious process used to innovate and create. In fact, it’s no exaggeration to say that the cut-‘n’-paste culture born out of sampling and remixing has revolutionized the way we interpret the world” (Mason, 2008, p. 71).
3. The word “remix” is no longer about music alone, it is a fluid movement that captures how society participates and creates. According to Guertin (2012) “reflexive remixing creates a unique and original work from pre-existing parts” (p. 120).
Girl Talk photo by Moses Namkung CC / Chef John Horne by photo by Renée Suen CC
4. If “Remixing is about taking something that already exists and redefining it in your own personal creative space, reinterpreting someone else’s work your way” (Mason, 2008, p. 71), then remixing is present throughout history.
Food truck client: My father / Cropped gallery photo by Kyoss Magazin
5. The history of art is full of examples of how remixing existed long before the digital era. Most art movements know as “isms” like Realism, Impressionism, pointillism and Modernism are reactions and reinterpretations of previous artistic movements.
6. ...Impressionism was once controversial.
7. Creative expressions and avant-garde movements as Cubism have been met with opposition before being accepted. With the benefit of time we begin to understand the context of why these artistic changes happened, what triggered them and most importantly what they set in motion.
8. In 1913 Duchamp created the first ready-made by mounting a bicycle wheel on a stool, followed by the “Urinal” a few years later. Much like the remix, “ready-mades illustrate the proposition that the work of an artist consists essentially of the assembling of pre-existing materials” (Britt, 1989, p. 306).
9. After Duchamp everything was possible, including movements like pop art, which in the sixties appropriated popular images of mass culture and transferred them to the art world. Warhol is a good example.
10. Even controversial artist Damien Hirst and his famous formaldehyde shark, used Duchamp’s conceptual remix (appropriation) of existing materials/works as a foundation for his work. A few years earlier Jeff Koons had a similar approach with his “Three Ball 50/50 Tank.”
Shark photo by Gazanfarulla Khan C
11. In contemporary art almost everything is product of “spheres of influence across centuries of art history”(Guetin, 2012, p. 121). Contemporary art often refers to existing artwork to create a statement that is relevant to our time or to question previous beliefs. A creative spiral.
12. In a similar way that pop art appropriated images from mass culture and TV and brought them to the art world, so too we have seen how TV and movies have taken ideas and stories from books and comics.
13. This applies to arts, literature, music, theater, movies, TV and even fashion and media technology.
14. According to Mason (2008) fashion illustrates how encouraging remixing, copying, and reinventing can trigger creativity and innovation. “Without any intellectual property protection, a ferocious multibillion-dollar industry thrives and survives because designers share ideas and are free to remix the works of others (p. 96)
15. Says Gilberto Gil, Brazil’s former Minister of Culture during the RIP: A remix manifesto (2008).
16. Media technology is not an exception to this remix culture. In “Everything is a Remix – Case Study of the iPhone” (2014) Ferguson illustrates how despite iPhone’s innovation many of its initial functions purposely resembled other technologies (keyboard sounded like a typewriter, iBooks displayed on virtual shelves).
17. Ferguson (2014) says that as people got used to smartphone technology, Google’s Android operating system evolved Apple’s iPhone ideas moving away from resembling older technologies. In turn iPhones evolved Android’s ideas. According to Ferguson everything is remix.
18. Beyond technology’s fight for market share, remixing is about creating and participating for the joy of it. Guertin states “it is the experience of the act of sharing creation – the process of circulating – that has become the aesthetic of production for the multitude in a digital age”(2012, p. 124).
19. Creative Commons licenses are an option for creative people who like sharing their work and allowing others to make something different out of it. These licenses are meant to work alongside traditional copyright laws. Wonder what Warhol would have thought about it?
20. Can we say that the remix culture is fundamentally at odds with older media institutions and practices, when we have witnessed the presence of remix in centuries of art history and culture? Quoting Jean Luc Godard, Guertin (2012) highlights the essence of remix: it is were it takes us, its creative potential.
Godard photo by Garry Stevens CC
References:
Britt, D. (Ed.). (1989). Modern art: Impressionism to Post-Modernism. Spain: Bulfinch Press.
Ferguson, K. (2014). Everything is a remix – Case study of the iPhone [Video]. Retrieved from http://everythingisaremix.info/blog/everything-is-a-remix-case-study-the-iphone
Gaylor, B. (Director/Writer), EyeSteelFilm & National Film Board of Canada (Co-Producers). (2008). RIP: A remix manifesto. (Documentary). Canada.
Guertin, C. (2012). Digital prohibition: Piracy and authorship in new media art. New York, NY: Continuum International Pub.
Mason, M. (2008). The pirate’s dilemma: How youth culture is reinventing capitalism. New York, NY: Free Press.
Flickr link to photo set
https://www.flickr.com/photos/78193356@N07/sets/72157643387323723/
