What Comes After Remix?

I’ve been wanting to read Lev Manovich since I had the pleasure of publishing (and interviewing) UWM MFA student A. Bill Miller.  He does some interesting (provoking, pretty) gridworks and 3D video/sculpture that have a lot to do with digitality, language and – ta da! – transcoding.  Check it out (and buy the new cream city review when it comes out in a week…)</endplug>.

Manovich’s Remix, however, turned out to be more of a brief history of the digital remix and its origins in mostly music, with a bit of film/photo thrown in.  If anything, this lineage confirmed my eliding of collage with mash-up video.  

If I were forced to guess – which I’m not, but I will – I’d assume that this was a keynote that he delivered.  There is brief mention of issues of copyright wrt the production of remix from published materials.  The most interesting aspect comes from the contrast between contemporary digital remix and its predecessors.  One of these elements is what Barthes (this time through LM) refers to as “clash” in modernist aesthetic collage, whereas digital music remix has the opportunity for “blend”.  The other is producers of digital remix art now understand that their work is likely to be sampled and remixed itself.  

I’m not sure if I believe in the binaristic “clash” v. “blend” debate.  I think that remix art can work on multiple levels; in my project, I’m looking for clash in delivery method and content (audio/visual, moving/static, fiction/nonfiction), but I’m also looking to blend these elements together, in the sense that I want the contrast to be nuanced and problematize expectations in a subversive, sneaky manner. 

The self-awareness to future remixing seems directed more at music (as much of the article is), but I wonder what the implication might be for writing.  I think looking to this format – the blog – might be germane.  I know that I can easily link and pull quotes form various source and compile them into a post.  (Or write a critical paper. Or review five articles and quote them.) Fiction, though is another story, potentially.  Perhaps the closest analogies I can think of involve appropriating characters from other writers or citing other fictions (fictitious fictions or not) in works of fiction.  I’m thinking of Borges here. 

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