Let us first consider the visual image – in digital terms, the most common type of image is a JPG. That’s the technical taxonomy. However, different classes of JPG may variously be, perhaps most commonly first, photographs, but also scanned paintings, drawings, etching or photographs of material objects such as sculpture, models, architecture, people, landscapes – anything that can be seen with they eyes and captured in a single still frame. So, if we use a photograph as an example – let’s imagine a photograph of a man standing in front of the front door of his house. In order to remix it, the photograph must first be considered a ‘finished’ or ‘completed’ piece and the measure of this is generally publication – going to press or even exhibition – when the creator deems the work ready to be seen by the public. So, it may be published in a book, or more likely, on a photography website like Flickr or perhaps on the photographer’s personal portfolio website. Another general trend is that a remixed work is generally not created by the original artist of the source published photograph in this example. It is appropriated from wherever it has been published, whether scanned from a book or downloaded from a website and then altered by the remixer using some kind of software, most likely Photoshop or equivalent in this case, usually without the permission or even knowledge of the original creator.
Perhaps a point may be made that there is now so much media content online, that if you ‘publish’ your work, you have to be willing to make it available for reuse in future works by other people. Perhaps someone likes the image of the man in the photograph – they may use editing and image manipulation techniques to cut the man out of the original image and paste him into a new document, perhaps in front of a different background, like a beach or a forest. So, we end up with a new image, which is a composite of two different images created by a remixer, author ‘C’, without the permission of either author ‘A’ or author ‘B’. But what does author ‘C’ do with the new image then? Is it a ‘finished’ or ‘completed’ work now? In itself? Arguably, yes. So, if author ‘C’ publishes it via the same distribution platform as authors ‘A’ and ‘B’, i.e. on Flickr, and takes credit for the creation of the composite image, even if giving acknowledgement to authors ‘A’ and ‘B’ for their unknowing contribution, surely the original photographers would be less than pleased to see the unauthorized appropriation and repurposing of their work as well as the publication of it in the same market as their own work, thus becoming direct competition to the originals. This is an ethical question. Should author ‘C’ be allowed to create work from author ‘A’ and ‘B’s work without their knowledge or permission?