Remix Culture

After reading the article entitled "What Comes After remix" by Lev Manovich I would have to say that we can distinguish between different kinds of remix aesthetics. There is obviously a difference between remixing a song and remixing a political video. One is about sound and one is about the visual components as well as what is being said. Furthermore they have different messages.

A song can be remixed to make it more of a club hit or to show how one song can be interpreted by another artist. The message is more about the music and what is being done musicaally and the primary aesthetic is auditory.

When it comes to a political video the remix is more in terms of the message they want to get out to the public. They may be spoofing it to show how stupid they think one party might be or they may be trying to get laughs by editing together a string of things said by one or more people in power. The aesthetic here is visual.

The art of remixing became extremely popular due to up and coming technology but it has been around for a long time in forms such as collage and montage. Therefore there is a close relationship between remixes made electronically and remixes made through earlier forms. Both can involve cutting and pasting (images, sounds etc.) they are both forms of art and they both take from many sources and combine it into one piece of work in the end.

The similarities between these two forms of remixing (visual vs. audio) is of course the fact that they take certain components and mix them with other ones. They are both works of art and they each have a message.

The differences are of course that they use different mediums and that remixing songs is more common. Also the messages they have can be different. As one is more about the music and the message the DJ wants to convey musically whereas the visual remixing can have a political message or a more serious type of message.

Overall I think this was an interesting article that really brought to my attention how important remixing is to our culture and how relevant it is.