Remixing is defined as the act of rearranging, combining, editorializing, and adding originals to create something entirely new. (Jessel 2013) and it is a form of distributed creativity as they are projects which harness the creativity of a large range of participants to build on and extend an existing pool of artistic materials. (Bruns 2010) It is said that we live in the age of the remix.
The first thought that comes to mind upon leaning about the notion of remix culture, is the association with remix in music, like Australian DJ, Flume’s work, covering an song by your own twist or combing tunes into a mash up. However, it take many forms in our day to day lives and multiple media formats.
An example of remix culture is internet memes which according to Know Your Meme is a “piece of content or an idea that’s passed from person to person, changing and evolving along the way. A piece of content that is passed from person to person, but does not evolve or change during the transmission process is considered viral content.” The idea of remix culture is seen in the famous internet phenomena, Doge. It evolved to innocent photos of a Shiba Inu on a Japanese Kindergarten teacher, Atsuko’s blog to the “I Swear On Me Mum” meme to it’s final ultimate form, Doge, creating 2013’s trend of speaking ‘doge speech’ like “wow such happy many fluff” and when in written form using the much hated font, Comic Sans as a form of irony. These memes spread across the internet from Reddit, 4chan, Tumblr and eventually as the popularity dies, Facebook. Although, usually the essential image of the Shiba Inu is present, images, words, and meaning interchange while basing its relevance on the existing format.
Know Your Meme, (2008). Know Your Meme. [online] Available at: http://knowyourmeme.com/ [Accessed 15 May. 2014].
M.I.A, Lorde, Diplo Street (2014). Paper Royals. Available at: https://soundcloud.com/dj-eliz-1/paper-royals-lorde-ft-mia-remix [Accessed 16 May. 2014].
McFly, M. (2014). Doge. [online] Know Your Meme. Available at: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/doge [Accessed 14 May. 2014].
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