Transcript

The remix culture

Mark Amerika

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Meghan Lodwick:

Welcome to a La Trobe University podcast. I'm Meghan Lodwick and today I'm interviewing Mark Amerika, Principal Research Fellow in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado. Mark has been named one of Time magazine's A Hundred Innovators, has displayed his internet artwork worldwide and is the author of many books including his recent on remix culture, remixthebook. Mark, thanks for your time.

Mark Amerika:

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Meghan Lodwick:

Mark, you're here in Melbourne to give a lecture on remix culture and practice. Can you explain what that is?

Mark Amerika:

Well, everybody has their own take on what remix is. In my book I refer to it as remixology, which is both the study and practice of remix. Now of course the more simplified or traditional way of looking at remix is that you might take two different soundtracks or video recordings from different artists and then mash them up and create something new out of it. That's something that I do and a lot of artists do and of course it's very easy to do these days because we all have access to these digital technologies and the source material's available on the internet. But something that I'm doing in the book and that I'm interested in pursuing in my own research is going a bit deeper philosophically, into the concept of what remix is, since in a way, at least something I propose, is that we're all born remixers.

Meghan Lodwick:

We're all born remixers. So, what does that mean?

Mark Amerika:

Well, if you think about it, we're always dreaming, daydreaming, altering our memories, and to me, that's just part of the remix process. We also read a lot and then we speak a lot, we write a lot in our daily network and mobile-media (1:31) communications and what we're doing is we're accessing all the source material that's available to us and that really we immerse ourselves in and reconstructing our own identities over time as part of this remix process. So there's more to it than something as simple as taking one audio source and another source from a different place and then mashing them up and coming up with a sound track.

Meghan Lodwick:

So in a sense, would remix art be a reflection of our daily lives?

Mark Amerika:

Yeah, exactly. I call it the revolution of everyday life. So what we're doing is we're accessing the data of everyday life and reconfiguring our own identities in the process. That's something that's happening on a global scale and it's part of the notion of social media art practice. Maybe those of us who are online and all of us who are participating in the online culture are also social media artists, who are just naturally born remixers.

Meghan Lodwick:

So is social media a big component of remix art?

Mark Amerika:

I think it is. I think it's becoming a bigger component for sure and that's because that's where we're all going in terms of our network and mobile media communications. So you might have noticed for example, in say, literary history, someone like William Burroughs employed something called the literary cut-up, and he would literally take scissors and cut into magazine articles and short stories and some of his own biographical writings, and he'd mix them up and come up with new text. We don't really need to do that any more because we have this cut and paste as you go lifestyle that we all kind of do naturally without even thinking about it.

Meghan Lodwick:

In reference to the magazine cut-ups, is that kind of the linkage between remix art and traditional art?

Mark Amerika:

There is definitely a link between older forms of remix art and contemporary forms. As I mentioned, the literary cut-ups of someone like William Burroughs and he did that with a painter named Brian Gysin, they are the ones who invented the cut-up method, it goes back to Dadaism as well. Tristan Zara, the Dadaist poet, he'd take words, he'd cut them up in a magazine word by word, throw them in a hat, and pull them out one by one and that would form the new poem. There are also appropriation artists. Think way back to someone like Marcel Duchamp, who would find something in a hardware store, maybe a shovel, or he'd go find an old men's urinal, turn it upside down and call it the fountain. Those were called "ready-mades". Ready-mades were also a kind of remix art but very much so as part of what we now think of visual art culture. At the time, though, we didn't think of it as such, we just thought of it that it was kind of blasphemous.

Meghan Lodwick:

So in relation to remix art, what kind of materials are generally used in it?

Mark Amerika:

I think everything's possible. In the book I refer to it as source material everywhere. Because of our digital culture, the one and zeros, right, the binary data, everything now is easily accessible and comes across the screen as potential remixable source material. It could be images, sounds, text, code etc. But something else that I'm really interested in is how we also remix styles. Remix gestures. Remix rhetoric. The way that we speak. So oftentimes you'll notice that someone speaks like their mom, or their dad, or their sister, or their friends. How do you do that? Why are they all talking the same. They're essentially sort of remixing their own styles and intonations, voices, that was kind of a remixing process as well. It just happens everywhere.

Meghan Lodwick:

Now Mark what exactly is the remixthebook project?

Mark Amerika:

Well, the remixthebook project is a hybridised publication performance web project. So there is the print book version, which is published by the University of Minnesota Press, and in addition to the book though, there is a website at remixthebook.com. And on the website, what I've got going there are various contributions from over twenty-five international artists, writers, musicians, etc, who I sent excerpts of the book to and asked them to create their own remixes, in whatever media forms they wanted. So we have some really interesting video art, some music videos, some experimental poetry, and also some internet, net art.

Meghan Lodwick:

Given that it's mostly digital media that's being remixed, does it have the potential to disappear quickly?

Mark Amerika:

Yeah, I mean, it could. There's definitely a lot of stuff that, for example, artists that I know, including myself, that we made in the late '90s that was on the internet that may not be available nowadays. Part of me is sort of sad about that, but another part, is sort of, get over it. You know, there's a lot more out there to remix, and to keep plugging away at it and having a good time sort of inventing your life, your practice as you go along.

Meghan Lodwick:

It sounds like remix art is driven primarily by technology. Does that limit it?

Mark Amerika:

Well, I guess that what I'm saying, that it's not just driven by technology. It's a combination of what's going on in your mind, what's going on in your body, and what's going on with the technology. So, it's sort of a combination of those three working together. And also, how you move with it. I talk in the book about moving and remixing, I call it moving remixing. It's very gestural. You see this happening also just in one on one communication, or small groups of communicators sitting in the same room, they're sort of feeling each other out, nervously, you might say. The neurons are being exchanged without everyone even being fully conscious aware of it. In neuroscience they call that mirror neurons and that's how we're able to empathise with each other and get a feel for the people we're hanging out with.

Meghan Lodwick:

So does body language come into play a lot with that?

Mark Amerika:

Oh, totally. Sort of like embodying the language of others. That's how sometimes you might even know, you think you'll get along with someone or not. All of a sudden you feel comfortable with them because already you're able to mirror the neurons – you're able to sort of remix the body language and get to that space really fast. Maybe sometimes you know that you're going to get along really well with someone and then later on you find that it's getting better and that's because it took a while for you both to figure out how to jam with each other, you might say.

Meghan Lodwick:

It sounds like mostly the appeal of remix art is that it's a familiar artform and people can connect with it more easily.

Mark Amerika:

Totally. I mean, I teach a course called remix culture. It's part seminar and part practice-based research so you can actually not just read about it and study it but you can then take what you learn through reading and studying it and apply it to your own practice. And something that I'm finding year after year is that it's one of the most popular courses that I can teach, and the students love it because it's something that they can feel really comes naturally to them.

Meghan Lodwick:

As far as creating a body of work, what issues can arise through using different media and putting them together?

Mark Amerika:

One thing that's starting to come out a lot is where do you locate your audience? How do you distribute the work? So it used to be that if you wanted to make an audio album, let's say, of course you can put it out on an LP but then it eventually goes CD and then maybe you could do a web label, and then that would be that, that would be the sound distribution system that you are part of. But what if that sound distribution system now has some kind of hyper-text narrative element as well? So, now that it's embedded in a story that you're able to interact with on the internet, and now what if for some reason there is also a downloadable eBook that you can also print on demand, that also gives you another version of the story that relates to the sound you're listening to. All of a sudden you're seeing these multiple layers of media that inform each other and it relates to this culture of trans-media narrative.

Meghan Lodwick:

Do issues of copyright come into this at all?

Mark Amerika:

They're still there, that's for sure. Personally I have issues with the whole copyright maximalist position. If the source material is in fact available everywhere, pretty much for free over the internet, at least that's how we approach it, why would we want to stop ourselves accessing it and doing things with it that would enable us to innovate new modes of thought, new modes of creation. I don't think we should be in the business of trying to protect ourselves from ourselves.

Meghan Lodwick:

Now in what ways are the emerging generation of remix artists using the artform for social cohesion, political uprisings, anything like that?

Mark Amerika:

Well, if you just look around at the current Occupy Movements – there's a really interesting thread of thought going on around art and politics and the Occupy Movement, some of us are referring to it as "Occupy Abstraction" because there's a lot of talk these days about, well, what exactly do these protestors want. What are their demands? Who are their leaders? And there are no clear answers when those questions are being asked, but what you see happening are that they are in fact remixing a lot of the same kind of methods to get the word out and that's kind of interesting. Also some of the language too. So they're remixing language and method, tactics etc. It seems to be having a pretty strong effect, internationally.

Meghan Lodwick:

And I'm guessing social media is a vehicle to which people can access and interpret this artform?

Mark Amerika:

Oh absolutely. So if you again think about the Occupy Movement, one of the reasons I think why so many people are actively engaged with it, even if they're not in the physical location where the protests are being headquartered, is because the social media networks are allowing them to not only get the word out, but put their own spin on it. Like you might for example re-tweet with comment, re-tweet is also very much like remix especially if you add your own comment or manipulate some of the data to get it out there so that your own followers can get a sense of what's happening and then may be inspired to follow the link, see what's out there, maybe even get some of that source material and put their own spin on it.

Meghan Lodwick:

It sounds like art via 140 characters.

Mark Amerika:

Exactly.

Meghan Lodwick:

It sounds like this is an ever-evolving field. What's next for the remix culture?

Mark Amerika:

I think that the remix artists of today and the near future are actually going to be the ones who invent the jobs of the future. They're going to be more related to communications basically, getting the word out, spreading the word and inspiring others to think for themselves instead of being told what to think.

Meghan Lodwick:

That's all the time we've got for the La Trobe University podcast today. If you'd like to leave some feedback about this or any other podcast in the series, you can get in touch with us at podcast@latrobe.edu.au. You can follow Mark Amerika on twitter at @markamerika. Mark Amerika, thank you very much for your time.

Mark Amerika:

Thank you. Good to be here.