What is it about remix that holds an appeal for so many people? For me? For so long I have been consumed by it and I have yet to tire of it. Perhaps I never will. It is more than a fad. It’s a way of thinking, a way of being. When one hears the word remix, long associations and connotation in the media cause the average person to think of music, in particular, DJ and HipHop culture. But this is such a narrow aspect of a much wider culture, although it may have been the first instance of the use of the word ‘remix’. It has many meanings. The word ‘mix’ is often associated with music and sound engineering. Since music could be recorded on multiple tracks simultaneously or in sequence, in other words, layered up and separated, composited together to produce one coherent sound, it was known as ‘mixing’. Very much in the same way a chef follows a recipe using a combination of fundamental ingredients together to produce a specific type of food. The very same way we use letters to produce words, to produce sentences, to produce conversations. A conversation is a mix of words and letters combined in a particular manner to produce a coherent, comprehensible piece of language. Taking the fundamental elements and using them and combining them in increasingly sophisticated ways to be perceived by our senses in different ways.
And just as one may deconstruct an Italian cuisine, or a beer or wine and identify the various individual ingredients that make it up, that constitute it, so too can we deconstruct any mix, whether it is taking a sentence and focusing on the specific letters or listening to a piece of music and picking out the bass line, the drums or the vocals, or watching a film or tv show and identifying the elements that make it up, the acting, the mise-en-scene, the camera work, editing and so on – all of the elements of ingredients that go into the creation of a mix – a composite – a ‘complete work.’ A finished work? We can also listen to a song, watch a film, read a book without deconstructing it – that is, we can perceive it as a whole. We can also do this with natural beauty – e.g. standing on top of a hill and gazing out over a beautiful scene of nature – we can try to take it all in at once, awe-inspiring wonder, or we can focus on specific individual elements, like the clouds, the river, the shoreline etc. Another obvious example is the human face – we may look upon someone’s entire face and see their expression, or we may focus on the individual elements – their eyes, mouth, nose etc. Artistic beauty vs natural beauty. But can a work ever be truly considered finished? Or complete? Adding another brush stroke to a painting, another layer to a song, another chapter to a book, another scene to a movie…who decides when a work is finished and who’s to say they are right? What are the fundamental ingredients that make up the soup of culture? In colour, we may say it is the elements which may not be reduced any further – primary colours, prime numbers, scientific table of elements, letters and so on. That is a mix. A remix then is taking someone’s so-called ‘finished’ or ‘complete’ work and using it as an ingredient in a new work.
CriticalRemix.com
Dr. Owen Gallagher, SFHEA
