remix, an Inevitable force
featuring Kevin Kelly, the SPICE GIRLS, and George Costanza
“what has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.”
— Solomon the wise, ~3500 years ago
Ecclesiastes 1:9, ESV
note:
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you might also like my books. you can find them at skidmorep.com/books.
if — like me — you’re interested in how the world will change over the next few years (particularly with regard to technology, media, & art), Kevin Kelly’s book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future is one of the most important books you can read.
for a quick peek, you can see a list of all 12 forces on the wikipedia page for the book.
to hear Kevin Kelly talk in-depth about 3 of these forces, here’s an ~hour-long presentation from SXSW:
remix
force 8 is “remixing: unbundling existing products into their most primitive parts and then recombining in all possible ways”.
we understand this well from the world of music.
covers
perhaps the oldest version of remix is the cover — simply singing someone else’s song. a favorite song of mine is Say You’ll Be There by the SPICE GIRLS. don’t judge; it’s catchy.
recently the artist MØ covered the song in her style, and it’s wonderful:
this is a version of remixing, because she has broken down the original into its essential parts and chosen a few — in this case the notes and the lyrics — and added her own components — in this case her style, voice, and tempo — to create a new work.
literal re-mix
when he hear the word “remix”, though, we generally think of a “re-recording” of the original. in other words it is going through a final production mix again, a re-mix. and different decisions are being made, because there is a different decision-maker behind the mix panel. this can be as simple as adjusting levels and recutting the song into a different order or length (radio mix vs. studio mix for instance).
that’s mostly what’s happening with this remix of The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News for the film Back to the Future:
but remixing can also mean adding completely new elements in order to create a different work, such as with this remix of The Power of Love:
sampling
some artists take a different route with remixing. they take pieces of the actual song but use it to create an entirely new work — new lyrics, new music, etc. this is sort of the inverse of covering, in a way.
consider Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince:
which uses samples from the I Dream of Jeannie theme:
breaking out of music
here’s the trailer of Ready Player One, which has a remixed/cover of Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka, mixed into the films soundtrack / digital score.
the film is itself a remix — human actors mixed with digital animation. and beyond that, it’s a film adapted from a book — the book boiled down to essential parts, then re-written as a screenplay and made into a film. and the book is a remix, pulling in existing franchises such as Back to the Future and the Iron Giant into a new story. and the story is a remix, about human beings remixing themselves into a virtual world.
look at all the levels in which this trailer demonstrates the idea of remix.
and it helps us to break this idea outside the world of music and into a greater understanding.
art
has any other painting been recreated more times than the Mona Lisa?
the most famous remix of this painting is Marcel Duchamp’s irreverent “L.H.O.O.Q.” made from a gift shop poster of the Mona Lisa. in French, when pronounced quickly, the title sounds like the French phrase for “she has a hot ass.” the juxtaposition of a preeminent piece of classical art with a vulgar pun scratched onto a cheap, gift-shop poster (and the comically drawn-on goatee) definitely elicits a reaction (and different reactions from different observers).
and we can enjoy them both for what they are.
i do, anyway.
memes
memes are the ultimate modern remix for the instagram age. here’s a good primer.
in a way, the first meme (as we know it) may be this comic from 1921:
and yes, it seems to be legit.
real life
i mentioned DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince above. here’s someone who took the Fresh Prince theme and remixed it into a prank call on a live religious television program:
master real-life remixer Nathan Fielder creates hilarious nonsense using real people and real situations on his Comedy Central show, Nathan for You (some nsfw language possible.. it’s been a minute since i’ve watched this whole thing):
here is the whole Smokers Allowed segment as seen on the show. first the “play”, then the play of the “play”, etc. so many meta-remixes it becomes absurd.
fashion
every time we get dressed, we remix. we take someone’s designs (almost always varied designers from multiple companies) and decorate ourselves with them to create a statement that is uniquely our own.
i sent out a post about Virgil Abloh a while back. he is the remix king in the fashion world. all of his creations are modifications — or real-world “samples” — of existing works — Caravaggio, Champion hoodies, Air Force Ones, throw rugs — which he modifies by hand or light process (like screen printing), then passes along to the customer, whom he hopes will modify it further to make it their own, part of their unique personal portfolio of expression.
consider his book, Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech, an anthology of his design work. the more expensive Special Edition features a blue cover with the word “ARTWORK” and includes some special add-ins for those willing to pay the higher price:
the cover on the less-expensive version is a phone photo of Virgil holding the Special Edition book:
so that when you get yours, you can post a photo of you holding the book on your instagram…
see? remixed.
clever.
but more than clever, it makes you, Book-Owner, part of the design now. you’re not just consuming or observing. you’re now participating.
a large part of his design philosophy is to expose the process and let anyone in… to connect “purists” and “tourists” — the great artists with every day personal expression.
here’s a talk he gave that explains it well:
(this talk is also available in book form, because… remix. also, probably the least expensive Virgil Abloh product you can buy.)
in addition to the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2020 Men’s Line Show, here are some of Virgil’s remixes:
^ Virgil
in the above photo, Gigi Hadid wears a coat made from fabric covered in graffiti artwork, spray-painted less than 48 hours before the start of the runway show. classic Abloh.
Virgil’s latest line for his fashion label off-white features huge holes, especially hilarious for purses, as the huge design features seemingly prevent the accessory from actually being used to hold anything:
the holes theme runs through shoes, boots, dresses. and gloves, like the ones seen on the recently-released Dua Lipa album cover:
which also appears to be a remix of Tesla’s Starman:
and here’s Seinfeld Current Day remixing the Dua Lipa cover:
and now i’ve taken these remixes and put them into this article…
you see how remixing has no end in sight…
word
“after all, this is how authors work. we dip into a finite database of established words, called a dictionary, and reassemble these found words into articles, novels, and poems that no one has ever seen before. the joy is recombining them.”
— Kevin Kelly in The Inevitable
this post is a remix of Kevin Kelly’s thoughts on remix. his thoughts are better researched, more thought through, more practically applied. he discusses how digital makes remixing easier (and therefore inevitable), and where it may take us from here. if you’ve read this far, you’ll be as enamored with Kelly’s thoughts as i am, i assure you.
and actually, this whole blog is a remix, boiling Scripture (or my writing process) down to essential elements, and re-presenting them for you.
and many of those Scriptures — Jesus’ parables or the Sermon on the Mount, for instance — are in some ways a remix of the existing Scripture of the time, helping the people of the day to better understand The Word of God.
when The Lord made humans, He did it in His image. and so God was the first Creator, and the first Remixer. and after the Judgement, He will create a New Heaven and a New Earth and a New Jerusalem — the Ultimate Remix. and just as He gives us a version of His power to create, He gives us a version of His power to remix.
what are you ingesting, distilling, rebuilding, and sharing so others can have fresh eyes on Old Truths?
“therefore,
if anyone is in Christ,
he is a new creation.
the old has passed away;
behold,
the new has come.”