Remix and copying/sharing is a natural occurrence of humanity. Pablo Picasso said “Good Artist Borrow;Great Artist Steal. Most ideas in history are in some way inspired by something or someone else. Looking back to our traditional folktales so many versions exist because every so often someone wanted to put their own spin on it.
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| Many Versions of the Vampire myth exist as well as any Myth that one can name |
Remix Culture has existed longer than the term itself when Arthur Conan Doyle stopped writing Sherlock Holmes the fans continued it without him. It's like this Doctorow quote “Embodying a personal recommendation between two people who trust each other enough to share bits” Remix is an act of love towards an idea. Remix can bring in new people to appreciate a work by adding elements that weren't there,before I bet a number of people who don't care for Jane Austen read or were at least mildly curios at something like Pride and Prejudiced and Zombies due to people who have a love for weird fiction mash-ups or potential exploitation films ala Abraham Lincoln Vs The Supernatural.
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| Sherlock Holmes through out the ages. |
Remix is an important culture tool I believe it helps keep works out of obscurity Doctorow says ““For me -- for pretty much every writer -- the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity “. Remix is powerful tool to bring something back to popular conscience after it's fallen into a relative obscurity. One example of this I believe is “The King in Yellow” by Robert Chambers which has in the past year has risen back a prominent state of a novel everyone and their grandmother is reading. This is no accident though it is thanks to it's themes and lines of dialogue contained with in it featuring heavily in the HBO series “True Detective” (Great Show by the way)
That of course is may not be considered a traditional remix but it is taken something someone loved and found interesting a re purposing it for a brand new idea.
Remix is an art form just like film making,video games. writing,etc. There exists bad remixes,good remixes and everything in between. But, just like every other art-form that exists it is done out of love and not for a quick grab of fame or whatever else there is to achieve.
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| Numbers Turned into an Image a form of Remix |
Again I come back to old friends Andrew “bunnie” Huang says”
"Hackers are explorers, digital pioneers. It's in a hacker's nature to question conventions and be tempted by intricate problems. Any complex system is sport for a hacker; a side effect of this is the hacker's natural affinity for problems involving security. Society is a large and complex system, and is certainly not off limits to a little hacking.”
I believe that those that remix as well as those just consuming look at works of art and ask themselves what can I do with this to make it more personal. Questions are brought up in group or individually” wouldn't it be cool if they did this?”. There is also the popular “I would have done this instead”
Remix and hacking are both an art from of the new media age.
