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Title

What now? the imprecise and disagreeable aesthetics of remix

Author(s)

Tofts, Darren;  McCrea, Christian

Abstract

It became a minor phenomenon during 2007. By September 2009 it was a virus out of control. Described in Wired as a 'popular internet meme' (Wortham, 2008), the obsessive serial mash-up of a key sequence from Oliver Hirschbiegel's 2004 film of the last days of Adolf Hitler, Der Untergang (The Downfall), is suggestive of the cultural logic of the contemporary formation known as remix. Remix culture is comprised of what could loosely be termed amateurs and professionals engaged in the practice of creatively re-using found material. The distinction is useful in identifying the aesthetic and material differences between dedicated intermedia remix artists, artists who incorporate elements of remix into a broader audiovisual practice and the vernacular audio-visual mash-up/remake/dub/scratch aesthetics associated with a broad range of online practices. The domestication of audio-visual literacies in the digital age has meant that the processes of sampling, editing and compositing – once the province of dedicated adepts – have become second nature for a generation weaned on computers and digital technology.

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology

Source

Fibreculture Journal, No. 15 (2009)

Publication year

2009

Keyword(s)

Aesthetics;  Audio-visual remixes;  Mash-ups;  The Downfall

Publisher

Fibreculture Publications

ISSN

1449-1443

Publisher URL

http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue15/

Copyright

Copyright © 2009 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/au/). Published version of the paper reproduced here in accordance with this policy.

Full text

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