Remix

At a conference in New York in March I attended a session on the subject of 'remix': the re-use of pre-existing textual material - writing, image, sound - in the making of new texts.

The presenters - Shaun Slattery, Jason Swarts and Chris Berg - argued that the conditions of composing in the digital world have changed so much that we need to think again about what the word 'writing' means, or can mean, today.

In a study of workplace writing the presenters found that people often have upwards of 20 'windows' open as they write at the computer. They constantly shift between locations, moving and manipulating bits of text between them.

Rarely did people in their study focus on only one 'text'. Their gaze was nearly always inter-textual.

Come to think of it, even as I write this blog entry I have a number of other windows open on my computer, and they are all contributing in some way to the writing environment I am currently in. I won't say 'context'. Instead, there are a number of contexts overlapping, merging with each other, establishing boundaries one minute and losing them the next.

So this new world of writing is not just about cross-reference or quotation or even borrowing, but remix: appropriating, combining, drawing together text chunks from different sites into one new 'text', which itself then becomes open to remixing. The writer becomes remixer.

We can see connections between language and music, art and film, where remixing is perhaps more obvious. And on the internet, companies like Yahoo are using the metaphor of remix (and variations on it such as 'mash-up') to promote the idea of user-controlled content in the web 2.0 environment.

So: 'Writing'. Don't we need a new word now?

I am interested in the practices of remix, but also why and how remix is possible, the quality of looseness and openness that makes 'text' remixable in the first place. What we might call the 'invitation' of text.

The internet, with its many languages and its pace of interaction, seems to hold out this invitation to participate as part of its structure and texture.

It's only when you stop thinking about authors and readers and give texts 'a life of their own' that you start seeing this dynamic phenomenon at work. Text can be moved around and is not just 'there', it's never static.

Perhaps it is contained in the etymological life of the word 'text', which recalls the Latin verb texere, to weave. We are so used to referring to 'the text' or 'a text' as an object or an entity, with boundaries and authors and attributions. But maybe 'text' is also a material, a fabric, a weave, and without borders.

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A short vignette about remix:

The Migrations of an Octopus

A few years ago my daughter, then aged 8, started a blog for her drawings. One day she posted a picture of an octopus. At that time we presumed her blog had a handful of readers, all family members.

However, within a few hours of the octopus making its debut on the internet she received a message from someone who had found the drawing and used it on his blog. The message was a request for permission to use the octopus to illustrate a critique of the entertainment giant SONY.

You can compare the two contexts - the original on laraspace and the remix at David Wilson's blog (scroll down to entry for November 6 2005).

What I find interesting here is that a drawing in the context of a child's blog is re-used on the other side of the world in the context of a campaigning political blog. The 'text' remains the same, but the 'sign' which it performs changes.

Or is it the other way around? The 'sign' remains the same, but the 'text' changes?

The octopus drawing, as soon as it appears, becomes a remixable text/sign, in this case acknowledged graciously by the remixer.

And all this happens in a matter of hours.

Thanks to Lara for letting me use - I should say remix - her painting of an octopus on this blog.