Eduardo Navas
THE AESTHETICS OF SAMPLING
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SpringerWienNewYork
Eduardo Navas, Ph.D.
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
Information Science and Media Studies
University of Bergen, Norway
With financial support of The Department of Information Science and Me-
dia Studies at The University of Bergen, Norway.
This work is subject to copyright.
All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is con-
cerned, specifically those of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations,
broadcasting, reproduction by photocopying machines or similar means,
and storage in data banks.
Product Liability: The publisher can give no guarantee for all the informa-
tion contained in this book. The use of registered names, trademarks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific state-
ment, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and
regulations and therefore free for general use.
© 2012 Springer-Verlag/Wien
SpringerWienNewYork is part of
Springer Science+Business Media
springer.at
Cover Image: Eduardo Navas
Cover Design: Ludmil Trenkov
Printing: Strauss GmbH, D-69509 Mörlenbach
Printed on acid-free and chlorine-free bleached paper
SPIN 86094050
With 60 figures
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012939340
ISBN 978-3-7091-1262-5 SpringerWienNewYork
Contents
Acknowledgments [vii]
Preface [xi]
Introduction: Remix and Noise [1]
Chapter One: Remix[ing] Sampling [9]
Sampling Defined (11) —The Three Chronological Stages of Mechanical Repro-
duction (17) —The Four Stages of Remix (20) — Analytics: From Photography to
Remix Culture (22) — The Regressive Ideology of Remix (27)
Chapter Two: Remix[ing] Music [33]
A Night at Kadan, San Diego, CA (35) — Dub, B Sides and Their [re]versions in
the Threshold of Remix (36) — The Threshold in Dub (37) — Dub: From Acetate
to Digital (39) — Subversion and the Threshold (42) — Analytics: From Reggae
to Electronic Dub (44) — Dub in Hip Hop, Down Tempo and Drum ‘n’ Bass (47)
— Dub ‘n’ Theory (50) —Dub-b-[ing] the Threshold (53) — Dub ‘n’ Remix (58)
— Bonus Beats: Remix as Composing (60)
Chapter Three: Remix[ing] Theory [63]
Remix Defined (65) —Allegory in Remix (66) — Analytics: Variations of the Re-
flexive Remix in Music (68) — The Regenerative Remix (73) — Remix in Art
(76) — The Waning of Affect in Remix (86) — Remix in the Culture Industry
(89) — Mashups Defined (93) — From Music to Culture to Web 2.0 (100) —
Web Application Mashups (101) — The Ideology Behind the Reflexive Mashup
(103) Analytics: From Music Video to Software Mashups (105) — Sampling and
the Reflexive Mashup (108) — Resistance in Remix (109) — Remix in History
(111) — Remix in Blogging (120) — Bonus Beats: Remix in Culture (124)
Chapter Four: Remix[ing] Art [129]
A Late Night in Berlin (131) — Remix is Meta (133) — The Role of the Author
and the Viewer in Remix (134) — The Role of the Author and the Viewer in Per-
formance and Minimalism (137) — New Media’s Dependence on Collaboration
(141) — The Curator as Remixer (146) — Online Practice and Conceptualism
(150) — The Regressive Ideology of Remix Part 2 (155) — Bonus Beats: The
transparency of Remix (157)
Conclusion: Noise and Remix [161]
Periférico, Mexico City (163) — After the Domestication of Noise (167) — Bo-
nus Beats: the Causality of Remix (170)
Index [175]
Remix Theory
3
We must know the right time to forget
as well as the right time to remember,
and instinctively see when it is necessary
to feel historically and when unhistorically.
Friedrich Nietzsche
My goal in this analysis is to evaluate how Remix as discourse is at play
across art, music, media, and culture. Remix, at the beginning of the
twenty-first century, informs the development of material reality depend-
ent on the constant recyclability of material with the implementation of
mechanical reproduction. This recycling is active in both content and form;
and for this reason throughout this book I discuss the act of remixing in
formal and conceptual terms. I focus on Remix as opposed to remix cul-
ture, which means that I consider the reasoning that makes the conception
of remix culture possible. Remix culture, as a movement, is mainly preoc-
cupied with the free exchange of ideas and their manifestation as specific
products. Much has already been published about Remix under the um-
brella of remix culture in terms of material development: how it is pro-
duced, reproduced, and disseminated. Its conflicts of intellectual property
are also a central point discussed by activists such Lawrence Lessig, a
copyright lawyer whom I reference throughout my investigation. As I
evaluated the principles of Remix for this analysis, I came to the conclu-
sion that as a form of discourse Remix affects culture in ways that go be-
yond the basic understanding of recombining material to create something
different. For this reason, my concern is with Remix as a cultural variable
that is able to move and inform art, music, and media in ways not always
obvious as discussed in remix culture. Remix culture is certainly founded
on Remix, and for this reason it is referenced repeatedly through my
chapters; but remix culture is not the subject of this investigation mainly
because it is a global cultural activity often linked specifically to copy-
right; and Remix, itself, cannot be defined on these terms.
Throughout the chapters that follow, whenever I refer to Remix as dis-
course I use a capital “R.” Discourse is commonly understood in the hu-
manities as an ever-changing set of ideas up for debate in written and oral
form. However, I also consider discourse to include all forms of communi-
cation, not just writing and oral communication. When the term is used in
the humanities, it is often linked to Michel Foucault. My use of discourse
is certainly informed by his definition (debates within and among special-
ized fields of knowledge), and I do extend Foucault’s definition to media
Eduardo Navas
4
at large, because at the beginning of the twenty-first century it is media as
a whole that is treated as a form of writing; or rather, media is discourse.
1
Therefore I argue that Remix is not an actual movement, but a binder—a
cultural glue. Based on this proposition, the analysis performed in the fol-
lowing chapters should demonstrate that Remix is more like a virus that
has mutated into different forms according to the needs of particular cul-
tures.
2
Remix, itself, has no form, but is quick to take on any shape and
medium. It needs cultural value to be at play; in this sense Remix is para-
sitical. Remix is meta—always unoriginal. At the same time, when imple-
mented effectively, it can become a tool of autonomy. An example of this
can be found in the beginnings of Remix in music.
Remix has its roots in the musical explorations of DJ producers; in par-
ticular, hip-hop DJs who improved on the skills of disco DJs, starting in
the late sixties. DJs took beatmixing and turned it into beat juggling: they
played with beats and sounds, and repeated (looped) them on two turnta-
bles to create unique momentary compositions for live audiences. This is
known today as turntablism. This practice made its way into the music stu-
dio as sampling, and eventually into culture at large, contributing to the
tradition of appropriation.
Cut/copy and paste is a common feature found in all computer software
applications, and currently is the most popular form of sampling practiced
by anyone who has access to a computer. Cut/copy and paste extends
many of the principles explored by DJs and previous cultural producers in
the twentieth century. Keeping in mind the link of sampling and appro-
priation to cut/copy and paste, I argue that Remix is a discourse that en-
capsulates and extends shifts in modernism and postmodernism; for if
modernism is legitimated by the conception of a Universal History, post-
modernism is validated by the deconstruction of that History. Postmod-
ernism has often been cited to allegorize modernism by way of fragmenta-
tion, by sampling selectively from modernism; thus, metaphorically
speaking, postmodernism remixes modernism to keep it alive as a valid
epistemological project.
3
To come to terms with the importance of Remix during the first decade
of the twenty-first century, then, we must consider its historical develop-
ment. This will enable us to understand the dialectics at play in Remix,
which at the beginning of the twenty-first century is the foundation of
1
For the concepts of discourse and episteme, see Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New
York: Routledge, 2001).
2
This is a reference to William Burroughs’s views on language as a virus. See Williams S. Bur-
roughs, The Ticket That Exploded (New York: Grover Press, 1987).
3
This is a reference to the critical positions of Jean Francois Lyotard and Fredric Jameson.
Their ideas are discussed in chapter three.
Remix Theory
5
remix culture. Remix came about as the result of a long process of experi-
mentation with diverse forms of mechanical recording and reproduction
that reached a meta-level in sampling, which in the past relied on direct
copying and pasting. Certain dynamics had to be in place in the process of
mechanical recording and reproduction for sampling to become part of the
everyday, and they first manifested themselves in music at the end of the
nineteenth century, framed by the contention of representation and repeti-
tion.
Political economist Jacques Attali has reflected at length on the relation
of representation and repetition, arguing that the power of the individual to
express herself through performance, a primary form of representation,
particularly of musical material, shifted when recording devices were mass
produced. Once recording took place, repetition—not representa-
tion—became the default mode of reference in daily reality; a common ex-
ample, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, is the willingness of
individuals to purchase and listen to a music compilation in CD or MP3
format. This form of musical experience is different from a live perform-
ance. Following Attali’s line of thinking, the power of repetition here is in
the fact that the user sees a practicality in listening to a recording as fre-
quently as desired. Going to a performance, on the other hand, implies a
different experience that requires a deliberate commitment to a social ac-
tivity. Often the material one expects to hear live is compositions of which
one already bought recordings, or at least heard previously on the radio;
thus the live performance is linked to some form of reproduction, defined
by repetition. For these reasons I argue that repetition and representation
have a contentious relationship in contemporary culture and play a key role
in modernism, postmodernism, and new media during the first decade of
the twenty-first century.
Attali sees music as the domestication of noise during the nineteenth
century. Music became, and is, a political medium that enables Capital to
become the default form of cultural exchange. He considers this domesti-
cation important in the understanding of culture throughout modernity and
argues that it is in the domestication of noise where one can learn about the
effects of the world:
More than colors and forms, it is sounds and their arrangements that fashion societies.
With noise is born disorder and its opposite: the world. With music is born power and its
opposite: subversion. In noise can be read the codes of life, the relations among men.
Clamor, Melody, Dissonance, Harmony; when it is fashioned by man with specific tools,
when it invades man’s time, when it becomes sound, noise is the source of purpose and
power, of the dream—music.
4
4
Jacques Attali, Noise The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: Minnesota Press, 1985), 6.
Eduardo Navas
6
Using Attali’s theory as a conceptual framework and starting point, my
goal is to demonstrate how Remix is closely linked to the domestication of
noise, which eventually became a model for autonomy in modernism and
postmodernism. I approach Remix as Attali approaches Music. He consid-
ers music the result of the domestication of noise; I consider Remix to be
the result of the domestication of noise on a meta-level of power and con-
trol, as simulacrum and spectacle. Applying Attali’s theory of noise to
Remix exposes how and why Remix is able to move with ease across me-
dia and culture, both formally and conceptually. For this reason, my inves-
tigation of Remix in art, music, and media is not primarily concerned with
productions or objects popularly considered remixes, such as music
remixes or video mashups; instead the popular understanding of remix is
taken as the point of departure to look at works and activities that clearly
use principles of Remix, but may or may not be called remixes. My analy-
sis also considers how Remix principles originally found in the concrete
form of sampling as understood in music remixes move on to other forms,
though not always in terms of actual sampling, but as citations of ideas or
other forms of reference. In other words, my investigation traces how prin-
ciples found in the act of remixing in music become conceptual strategies
used in different forms in art, media, and culture.
I argue that Remix, starting in the nineteenth century, has a solid foun-
dation in capturing sound, complemented with a strong link to capturing
images in photography and film. Given the role of these media in art prac-
tice, it became evident to me that art is a field in which principles of remix
have been at play from the very beginning of mechanical reproduc-
tion—hence the prevalence of art aesthetics throughout the chapters.
During the 1970s the concept of sampling became specifically linked to
music, and, towards the end of the ‘90s, all forms of media in remix cul-
ture. It is the computer that made the latter shift possible. This does not
mean that Remix is not informed or intimately linked with other cultural
developments; on the contrary, Remix thrives on the relentless combina-
tion of all things possible. However, for the sake of precision, I emphasize
the role of textuality in terms of structural and poststructural theory. Ad-
mittedly, my definition of Remix privileges music because it is in music
where the term was first used deliberately as an act of autonomy by DJs
and producers with the purpose to develop some of the most important
popular music movements of the 1970s: disco and hip-hop.
I also pay specific attention to the foundation of Remix in music be-
cause, according to Attali, it is in the domestication of music where we can
find the roots of modernism proper: “For twenty-five centuries, Western
knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that
the world is not for the beholding. It is for the hearing. It is not legible, but
Remix Theory
7
audible.”
5
Attali, by providing a critical reading of music as domesticated
noise, is able to expose how specific conflicts are at play in different areas
of culture; conflicts such as subversion of individual expression in an
economy of specialization, as well as the control of knowledge in a global
class struggle. My focus on the origin of Remix in music aims to have a
similar effect for remix culture, as well as new media, in close relation to
art practice. My reading of Remix and its intimate relation to music should
be viewed, then, as one way of theorizing about a culture defined by recy-
clability and appropriation. My hope is that my research will be considered
complementary to other studies of Remix and remix culture. Throughout
the chapters I implement cultural analytics methodologies, meaning that I
make use of statistics and graphs, and other types of data visualization in
order to better understand information that otherwise would function as
abstract footnote references. The implementation of cultural analytics
makes this publication a contribution to the interdisciplinary research
practice of the digital humanities, which consists of the adoption of com-
puting by the humanities.
6
The four chapters of this book were written to note how Remix has its
roots in the early stages of mechanical recording and reproduction, starting
in the nineteenth century. As noted above, a crossover between art, media
and music was inevitable, hence the chapters reflect on these fields in or-
der to demonstrate how the principles of Remix constantly shift across
media. To accentuate how Remix is at play in a micro and macro level,
some of the chapters contain personal anecdotes in which Remix was ex-
perienced.
According to the critical framework that I have proposed in this intro-
duction, chapter one, “Remix[ing] Sampling,” defines the roots of Remix
in early forms of mechanical reproduction. It outlines seven stages begin-
ning in the nineteenth century with the development of the photo camera
and the phonograph that lead up to the current state of Remix, and evalu-
ates how recorded material redefines people's concept of representation.
The first three stages are called “Stages of Mechanical Reproduction,” and
the remaining four “Stages of Remix.” The chapter also outlines the differ-
ence in sampling at play in visual culture and music culture, and explains
how such differences collapsed with the rise of the computer.
Chapter two, “Remix[ing] Music,” explains the rise of dub in Jamaica
during the 1960s and ‘70s, the experimentation with remixing in New
York City during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the development of remix as
a style from the mid ‘80s to the late ‘90s, and the global rise of remix cul-
5
Ibid, 3.
6
To learn more about cultural analytics, see http://lab.softwarestudies.com/
Eduardo Navas
8
ture from the end of the ‘90s to the time of this writing. Chapter two also
expands on the definition of Remix outlined in chapter one to demonstrate
how Remix moves beyond basic material production into an ideological
realm, where it becomes a political tool. To accomplish this, the chapter
re-evaluates the writings of Hommi Bhabha and Michael Hardt & Antonio
Negri in relation to Remix as a form of critical production. This is done to
reflect upon not just the historical development, but also the cultural poli-
tics that inform Remix.
Chapter three “Remix[ing] Theory” consists of a concise definition of
Remix as a proper action in music. It makes use of the historical and cul-
tural contextualization set in the previous two chapters to define specific
forms of Remix. Chapter three focuses on Remix’s beginning in music
during the 1970s and its eventual influence in art and media. It includes
analysis of modern and networked art projects, software applications and
literature, including Remix’s evolution as blogging. Attali’s definition of
noise and music are explained extensively, and linked to arguments by
Theodor Adorno. Craig Owens’s and Fredric Jameson’s theories of post-
modernism are discussed in detail throughout the chapter in order to gain a
better understanding of the development of modernism and postmodernism
in the twentieth century. Chapter three explores Remix in art, music, and
media, and lays the ground for the study of other critical strategies that
also inform Remix, which are considered in the last chapter and conclu-
sion.
Chapter four, “Remix[ing] Art” expands on how principles of sampling
considered in chapter one share strategies as a political tool with forms of
appropriation at play in conceptualism, minimalism, and performance art.
It examines specific new media works in order to assess the interchange-
able role of artists and curators. This chapter applies the theories of author-
ship by Roland Barthes, as well as Michel Foucault to networked projects
to better understand how collaboration has become a conventional act in
media culture, informed by the concept of textuality and reading as defined
in terms of critical discourse. Sampling is linked in this case to the preoc-
cupation with reading and writing as an extended cultural practice beyond
textual writing onto all forms of media. In the conclusion, I reflect on the
history and theory I outlined throughout the four chapters of the book.
In this publication, I deliberately leave an open-ended position for the
viewer to reflect on the implications of cultural recyclability. I do not at-
tempt to provide a specific answer, but rather offer material for critical re-
flection that may be considered a contribution to various fields of research
in the humanities and social sciences. I do, however, take a critical position
which I believe is already apparent in this introduction, but is further de-
veloped throughout the following chapters.
Chapter One: Remix[ing] Sampling
© Springer-Verlag/Wien 2012
E. Navas,
Remix Theory
Remix Theory
11
Before Remix is defined specifically in the late 1960s and ‘70s, it is neces-
sary to trace its cultural development, which will clarify how Remix is in-
formed by modernism and postmodernism at the beginning of the twenty-
first century. For this reason, my aim in this chapter is to contextualize
Remix’s theoretical framework. This will be done in two parts. The first
consists of the three stages of mechanical reproduction,
1
which set the
ground for sampling to rise as a meta-activity in the second half of the
twentieth century. The three stages are presented with the aim to under-
stand how people engage with mechanical reproduction as media becomes
more accessible for manipulation. The three stages can be marked with the
first beginning in the 1830s, when the rise of early photography took place;
followed by the second in the 1920s, when experimentation of cut up
methods were best expressed in collage and photomontage; and ending
with the third, when Photoshop was introduced in the late 1980s. I also re-
fer to the last as the stage of new media. The three stages are then linked to
four stages of Remix, which take place between the 1970s to the present;
they overlap the second and third stage of mechanical reproduction. This
chapter, then, defines three stages in the development of mechanical re-
production to show how sampling became a vital element in acts of appro-
priation and recycling in modernism that then became conventions in
postmodernism, which eventually evolved to inform and support Remix in
culture.
Sampling Defined
Some specialists might propose sampling as a term reserved for music.
However, the principle of sampling at its most basic level had been at play
as a cultural activity well before its common use in music during the
1970s. I do not argue to change the term recording for sampling when dis-
cussing film, photography or early music recording; rather, my goal is to
point out that recording and sampling are terms used at specific times in
history in part due to cultural motivations. Sampling as an act is basically
what takes place in any form of mechanical recording—whether one cop-
1
Mechanical reproduction here is understood according to Walter Benjamin’s well-known essay,
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” At the time that Benjamin wrote
his essay, it was not possible for him to see completely where new technologies would lead
the mass-produced image. Yet, he did set a methodological precedent to deal with possibili-
ties when he explained how mechanical reproduction freed the object from cult value. Once
taken out of its original context, the object gains the potential of infinite reproducibility; it
enters the realm of exhibit value. See, Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the End of Me-
chanical Reproduction,” Illuminations (New York, Schocken, 1968), 217-251.
Eduardo Navas
12
ies, by taking a photograph, or cuts, by taking a part of an object or sub-
ject, such as cutting part of a leaf to study under a microscope.
The concept of sampling developed in a social context that demanded
for a term that encapsulated the act of taking not from the world but an ar-
chive of representations of the world. In this sense, sampling can only be
conceived culturally as a meta-activity, preparing the way for Remix in the
time of new media. Early recording, in essence, is a form of sampling from
the world that may not appear as such to those used to the conventional
terms in which the concepts of recording and sampling are understood.
According to the basic definition of capturing material (which can then be
re-sampled, re-recorded, dubbed and re-dubbed), sampling and recording
are synonymous following their formal signification.
Sampling is the key element that makes the act of remixing possible. In
order for Remix to take effect, an originating source must be sampled in
part or in whole. However, sampling favors fragmentation over the whole.
At the moment that mechanical recording became a norm to evaluate, un-
derstand, and define the world in early modernism, the stage was set for
postmodernism. Postmodernism is dependent on a particular form of frag-
mentation, whose foundation is in early forms of capturing image and
sound through mechanical recording, which, technically speaking, sampled
from the world beginning in the nineteenth century.
Recording is a form of sampling because it derives from the concept of
cutting a piece from a bigger whole. Because cutting was commonly un-
derstood as a form of taking a sample, the disturbing element of photogra-
phy is that an exact copy appeared to be taken, as though it had been “cut”
from the world, yet the original subject apparently stayed intact. To better
understand this, it is necessary to evaluate the basic definition of sampling.
Random House Dictionary states: “a small part of anything or one of a
number, intended to show the quality, style, or nature of the whole; speci-
men.”
2
This general definition defaults to cutting, not copying materially.
Looking back on the history of mechanical reproduction, it becomes evi-
dent that this definition was in part contingent upon the technology avail-
able for capturing images. It was in the nineteenth century when mechani-
cal copying became possible, with machines designed to copy at an
affordable price. The first form of mechanical copying with certain accu-
racy was the lithograph, which became quite popular in the 1830s.
3
So,
2
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Random House, Inc. 2006,
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sample.
3
Barbara Rhodes & Heraldry Bindery, “Materials & Methods/The Art of Copying,” Before
Photocopying: The Art & History of Mechanical Copying, 1780-1938 (Massachusetts: Oak
Knoll Press & Heraldry Bindery, 1999), 21.
Remix Theory
13
while the notion of copying from pre-existing texts or sampling a piece to
represent a whole may have been at play to some degree in this time pe-
riod, it was so with great possibility of inaccuracy or error in having some
of the information missing. Prior to the popularization of mass printing, it
would be up to scribes to copy as accurately as possible, but during the
nineteenth century other forms of copying would start to be employed
more pervasively.
4
Once the idea of capturing from the real world (as a form of copying)
entered the material world via mechanical reproduction, a major shift in
culture began to take place in the nineteenth century with photography: the
first technology that is fully invested in capturing as a form of sampling.
While printing can be argued to have the basic elements of recording by
way of sampling, the difference with photography is that photo media
could in theory record an image of anything—it created accurate copies of
the world; of course in the beginning this was unstable, as the success of
developing an actual image from, say a calotype required great devotion
and care in the process. Eventually, even text would be treated as another
element from which to copy, capture (sample) in part or in whole: the mi-
crofilm is the most obvious example of this transition. Before digital scan-
ning was possible, microfilm was one of the first databases of information
relying on scanning as understood in new media. Most importantly, pho-
tography introduced the possibility for everyone to record images. In other
words, with a broad sense of the term: to sample the world as they wished.
Potentially, any person with the right equipment could take a piece of the
world by making an image copy of a moment in time.
This challenged the control over mechanically produced material. The
principle that enabled people to use a medium for private use was not the
direct intent of print; if anything, print promoted the contrary. Print was
and still is a one-way form of communication, in which the publisher holds
ultimate control on what is printed. While it can be argued that today read-
ers have greater power on what is published, it is still the publisher who
will decide so based on politics. Print, then, is about quality control; its
authority lies in the fact that from the very beginning only few people
could learn and afford how to edit and print books properly. Today this is
further complicated with the rising complexity of copyright.
5
Photography
challenged this control during its cultural introduction. During its early
stages, photography validated itself as a mass medium by promoting the
opportunity for anyone potentially to take photographs; so in photography
4
Ibid, 7.
5
A good account of publishing control directly connected to emerging technologies, especially
online can be found in, Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in
the Connected World (New York: Vintage Books, 2002), 111-112.
Eduardo Navas
14
a tendency that is vital to new media and Remix at the beginning of the
twenty-first century manifested itself as a mass phenomenon: the acknowl-
edgment of the user to complete the work, or do the actual labor.
Sampling, then, has its seeds in 1839, as Lev Manovich argues when he
cites a Parisian who commented on what followed after Louis Daguerre’s
famous presentation of his daguerreotype: “A few days later, ‘opticians’
shops were crowded with amateurs panting for daguerreotype apparatus,
and everywhere cameras were trained on buildings. Everyone wanted to
record the view from his window, and he was lucky who at first trial got a
silhouette of roof tops against the sky.”
6
And this frenzy is a natural ele-
ment of new media culture, taken as a given.
To fully grasp the importance of sampling in modernism, however, we
must also consider how recording in music evolved to incorporate sam-
pling as a vital part of music production. At the time of this writing, sam-
pling is commonly understood to imply copying in material form, not by
capturing from the real world, but from a pre-existing recording. This prin-
ciple of sampling, which became popular in the 1970s with DJ producers
of disco and eventually hip-hop, is a meta-activity that follows early forms
of sound capturing. Early sound recordings, with a similar approach as
photography’s, were also tools used to copy (sample) from the world.
Thomas Edison developed the phonograph in 1877 to record sound (Figure
1.2); his interest was not the recording of music but of voices.
7
It was not
until much later, around 1910, that the phonograph, along with the gramo-
phone, would be commonly used not to record but to listen to music. Edi-
son did not pursue recording music as he was interested in providing a
dictating service for corporations. (This pursuit was not successful.)
8
Thus,
the phonograph, like the photograph was developed with the same pur-
pose: to capture (sample) a moment and relive it later. This is particularly
true from Edison’s point of view. It must be noted here that while the kind
of sampling taking place in photography can be argued to be technically a
different process from capturing sound, from a cultural perspective it was
collapsed in film by Edison’s conceptual approach. He deliberately
thought of capturing images equivalent to capturing sound. He theorized
that “photographic emulsion could attach images to a cylinder, and they
could be played back like a phonograph.”
9
And he openly considered the
Kinetoscope a visual phonograph. Here we begin to see an intimate rela-
6
Cited by Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 2001), 21.
7
Theresa M. Collins, Lisa Gitelman, and Gregory Jankunis, “Invention of the Phonograph, as
recalled by Edison’s Assistant, by Charles Batchelor,” Thomas Edison and Modern America:
A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 64.
8
Ibid, 23.
9
Ibid, 20.
Remix Theory
15
tionship between image and sound; however, the process of capturing
would not become the same for them until the introduction of the com-
puter, a machine that treats both image and sound the same: as binary data
to be manipulated at will by the user. While early recording technology
carried this trace, people would not think of image and sound as equivalent
forms of recording; further, these two forms would not be called “sam-
pling” at this time, because the notion of sampling as it is used during the
first decade of the twenty-first century was not conceivable—in part be-
cause the conception of appropriating recorded material would not take
place until the beginning of the twentieth century.
Technically speaking, when considering the basic definition of sam-
pling, this is what takes place in this first stage; early technology enabled
people to sample from the world and eventually from sampled material. In
current times the latter becomes a default state with the computer: to sam-
ple means to copy/cut & paste. Most importantly, this action is the same
for image, sound and text. In this sense, the computer is a sampling ma-
chine: from a wide cultural point of view, the ultimate remixing tool. The
reason for this has to do with two levels of operation in culture, which I
define as The Framework of Culture. The first takes place when an ele-
ment is introduced in culture, and the second when once that element has
attained cultural value it is re-evaluated, either by social commentary, ap-
propriation, or sampling.
10
These strategies are vital to the practice of
Remix as the act of remixing takes place in the latter stage with the combi-
nation of formal and ideological strategies. Both the photograph and the
phonograph functioned at the first stage, setting the ground for appropria-
tion and sampling in modernism commonly understood mainly as forms of
recording primary sources. Photography and sound recording would take
full effect as a meta-action in postmodernism, to become friendly to the
simulacrum, once enough material had been gathered to be remixed.
10
This statement does not imply that the content is some how “new” along the lines of some-
thing completely “original,” but rather that the material introduced is different enough for
people to evaluate how it redefines conventions previously established. Once such material is
assimilated it can enter the second layer of the framework of culture. Some obvious examples
are the photograph, the phonograph, the computer and the Internet, which are all innovative
re-combinations of technology developed by many people, not a sole individual.
Eduardo Navas
16
Figure 1.1 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, View from the Window at Le Gras, Eight
hour exposure. Heliograph. Taken in 1826 or 1827, in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes.
Figure 1.2 Thomas Edison and his early phonograph. Circa 1877, Brady-Handy
Photograph Collection (Library of Congress) Author: Levin C. Handy.
Remix Theory
17
The Three Chronological Stages of Mechanical
Reproduction
Based on the material surveyed above, there are three stages of Mechanical
Reproduction (Figure 1.3): the first consists of early photography, begin-
ning around the 1830s (extended in film), and sound recording with the
phonograph in the 1870s and ‘90s; at this stage, it is the world itself that is
recorded—represented with images and sounds. The act of sampling as
known today was not relevant at this stage; instead, recording was the
word most often linked with early forms of mechanical reproduction. Once
mechanical recording became conventionalized and paradigms developed,
and most importantly, enough material was recorded and archived, the
second stage of mechanical reproduction is found beginning in the 1920s
in photo collages and photomontages, which relied mainly in cutting and
pasting. This is the first stage of recycling—an early form of meta-media
preceding sampling as commonly understood in new media. Social com-
mentary dependent on the recycling of mechanically reproduced media be-
comes feasible in this second stage, which first manifested itself most visi-
bly in photomontage, but became pervasive in music sampling during the
1970s, once sampling machines became readily available. In music, cut-
ting gave way to copying. During the ‘70s, music sampling leaned towards
leaving the original music composition intact; and with the right equip-
ment, music samples could sound just as good as the originating source.
The final stage of sampling is found in new media beginning in the
1980s—which I also refer to as the second stage of recycling. This stage
privileges pre-existing material over the real world. The tendency to look
for already recorded material prevalent in early music remixes, which be-
came the staple practice in hip-hop music, is now a shared tendency com-
monly found in new media when people opt to search for information in
databases—whether it be text, image, or video. In this case, both of the
previous stages are combined at a meta-level, thus giving the user the op-
tion to cut or copy based on aesthetics, rather than limitations of media.
This is not to say that new media does not have limitations, but rather that
most people adept in emerging technologies could concentrate with greater
ease in developing their ideas with efficient forms of recording and sam-
pling that simulated (to a believable degree) previously existing media.
Eduardo Navas
18
Figure 1.3
Let us examine each of these three stages in more detail. To begin, photog-
raphy in its initial stage samples, in the strict sense of the definition, by
capturing a moment in time that can be reproduced as a print, assuming
that the negative is well taken care of, which is most obvious in one of the
first recorded images by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, View from the Window
Remix Theory
19
at Le Gras, circa 1826, (Figure 1.1) a heliograph which took several hours
to achieve.
11
The capture of time would be pushed by film language by
creating a series of images that when played in sequence gave a sense of
actual time lapse. During the second stage of mechanical representation,
cutting from images to create other images was explored as a legitimate
aesthetic. A prime example of this stage is the work of Hannah Höch, who
sampled by cutting directly from magazines and other publications. John
Heartfield is another artist who sampled by cutting to then create photo-
graphs (better known as photomontages) to be published in magazines.
While Höch may have a closer relationship to the notion of sampling by
taking actual pieces from a bigger whole, Heartfield and his contemporar-
ies offer a transitional moment; they set the ground for the kind of recy-
cling found in new media that privileges copying not cutting. Heartfield
explored copying or sampling as defined by the first stage found in pho-
tography when he produced cut and paste compositions to be photo-
graphed to then find their final form in the print Magazine AIZ, as criti-
cism on the politics of Adolf Hitler.
12
What is crucial in Heartfield and his
contemporaries practicing photomontage is that he developed work spe-
cifically for reproduction; they explored the visual language that would
become fundamental during the early ‘90s for the software application
Photoshop, where cut/copy & paste is essential to develop basic new me-
dia imagery. This is the default mode of photographic reproduction for
people who have access to computer technology at a professional or ama-
teur level. Photoshop, then, marks the third stage of mechanical reproduc-
tion, which I also refer to as the stage of new media, and the second stage
of recycling. This stage was marked in music a decade earlier, when DJs
turned producers during the late 1970s and early ‘80s were able to take bits
of different songs with sampling machines to create their own composi-
tions. This tendency now is part of remix culture.
Now that the three stages of mechanical reproduction have been defined
and contextualized theoretically, it is time to look at how these stages are
historically linked to four more stages that specifically support the devel-
opment of Remix in postmodernism and our current state of new media
production.
11
Mary Warner Marien, “The Invention of Photographies,” History of Photography: A Cultural
History (New York: Prentice Hall, 2006), 9.
12
David Evans,“From Idea to Page: The Making of Heartfield’s Photomontages,”John Heart-
field: AIZ (New York: Kent Gallery, Inc, 1992), 20-29.
Eduardo Navas
20
The Four Stages of Remix
The four stages of Remix overlap the second and third stage of mechanical
reproduction (Figure 1.4). As noted, the third stage of mechanical repro-
duction begins in visual culture when Photoshop was introduced; however,
as also noted, this shift happened in music a few years earlier during the
1980s with the introduction of sampling machines used to experiment with
different forms of remix. While this is taking place, the computer was in-
troduced to the mass public during the first years of the 1980s. IBM’s per-
sonal computer 5150 was officially released in 1980. And Apple’s Lisa
was released in 1983.
13
In this way, the aesthetics of constantly taking bits
and pieces of content begins to be shared across media, and is not limited
to music. Here we find a parallel in the aesthetics of sampling, which
would be combined in the late ‘90s in Remix. However, it is the concept of
remixing in music, as we will see that became appropriated to encapsulate
the tendency to recycle material in all media.
The first stage of Remix took place in Jamaica with the rise of dub,
during the late 1960s and ‘70s; that is, at the end of the second stage of
mechanical reproduction. The second stage of Remix took place during the
1970s and ‘80s when principles of remixing are defined in New York City.
The third stage takes place, during the mid to late ‘80s and ‘90s, when
Remix becomes a style, and therefore commodified as a popular form used
to increase music sales in the United States, at which time a new genera-
tion of music producers became active in England as well as other parts of
Europe and the world. This is also the time when the computer becomes
more popular and the aesthetics of new media are implemented with the
introduction of Photoshop. While the United States began to sell music
clearly informed by remix aesthetics as mainstream commodities, people
in Europe developed a subculture based on the principles of Remix defined
during the 1970s and early ‘80s. The North American styles of Detroit
Techno, Chicago House, New York Garage, along with the rise of main-
stream hip-hop, became the points of reference for subcultures to develop
their own material. The result was music genres such as trip-hop, down-
tempo, breakbeat and jungle, which were perfected throughout Europe, but
most clearly defined in England.
13
Paul Freiberger & Michael Swaine, Fire in the Valley (New York: McGraw Hill, 2000), 329 –
354.
Remix Theory
21
Figure 1.4
Eduardo Navas
22
The fourth stage of Remix takes place when the act of remixing becomes a
concept appropriated for things not always considered “remixes.” Remix
becomes an aesthetic to validate activities based on appropriation. This
stage takes place during the late ‘90s, and becomes most pronounced with
the concept of remix culture, as defined by Lawrence Lessig. The popular
online community resource ccMixter is perhaps the most obvious example
of how the principles of remixing, explored in the previous stages inform
online collaboration.
14
ccMixter encourages its members to share music
tracks and remix them, as long as participants respect the copyright li-
censes which have been adopted by the original track producers. But the
less obvious examples would fall in the diverse uses of Creative Commons
licenses which are designed to cover all forms of intellectual property pro-
duction, including, image, music, and text.
15
Here, Remix is in place, and
we are currently living through the fourth stage.
Analytics: From Photography to Remix Culture
The three stages of mechanical reproduction and the four stages of Remix become evident
in the use of key terms in print between the 1800s and 2000s. The visualizations that follow
demonstrate the rise of sampling moving towards Remix as discussed throughout this
chapter. Note that the queries are limited to books in English.
The Cultural Understanding of Photography and Film in
Print
The following graphs demonstrate how the words “photography” and “film” were popular
in print publications between 1800 and 2008.
14
ccMixter, http://ccmixter.org/
15
Creative Commons, http://creativecommons.org/
Remix Theory
23
Figure 1.5 The usage of the term “photography” increases dramatically beginning in the
1840s.
16
This is shortly after Louis Daguerre’s innovations. This corresponds with the First
stage of mechanical reproduction.
Figure 1.6 The term “film” appeared in print prior to the 1840s.
17
This, however, was likely
in relation to other denotations of the term. The term’s use increases around the 1860s. This
falls in line with the innovations by Thomas Edison and his contemporaries. The usage of
photography and film in print corresponds with the first stage of mechanical reproduction.
The Cultural Understanding of Recording and Sampling
in Print
The following graphs demonstrate how the words “recording” and “sampling” were popular
in print publications between 1800 and 2008.
Figure 1.7 The usage of the term “recording” increases from left to right, moving towards
contemporary times.
18
16
Google nGram: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=photography&year_start=
1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
17
Google nGram: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=film&year_start=
1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
18
Google nGram: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=recording&year_start=
1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
Eduardo Navas
24
Figure 1.8 The usage of the term “sampling” is basically non-existent in print until the be-
ginning of the 1880s. This corresponds with the relation of the concept of sampling with the
archiving of mechanically reproduced material from which to sample in order to create
collages and photomontages during the second stage of mechanical reproduction.
19
The Cultural Understanding of Collage and Photomon-
tage in Print
The following graphs demonstrate how the words “collage” and “photomontage” were
popular in print publications between 1800 and 2008.
Figure 1.9 The term collage did not increase in usage until around the 1920s. This corre-
sponds with the second stage of mechanical reproduction.
20
19
Google nGram: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sampling&year_start=
1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
20
Google nGram, http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=collage&year_start=1800
&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
Remix Theory
25
Figure 1.10 The term “photo montage” was not in print until about the 1930s.
21
Performing
the search for “photomontage” results in a slightly different pattern, which still corresponds
with the rise of the concept of photomontage in culture during the 1930s. I searched for two
words, as opposed to one because this would be the way the concept was initially printed.
The popularity of photomontage in print corresponds with the second stage of mechanical
reproduction.
The Cultural Understanding of Music Recording and Mu-
sic Sampling in Print
The following graphs demonstrate how the words “music recording” and “music sampling”
were popular in print publications between 1800 and 2008.
Figure 1.11 The term “music recording” does not increase in popular usage until the 1930s,
and takes a major rise in the late ‘40s, and then again in the ‘80s.
22
This corresponds with
the second and third stage of mechanical reproduction, and the first stage of Remix.
21
Google nGram, http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=photo+montage&year_start=
1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
22
Google nGram: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=music+recording&
year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
Eduardo Navas
26
Figure 1.12 Music sampling, although it had an apparent relevance at the beginning of the
1900s, is not consistently popular until the beginning of the 1980s.
23
This corresponds with
the rise of remixing in music within the first and second stages of Remix, eventually lead-
ing to the concept of remix culture.
The Cultural Understanding of Remix and Remix Culture
in Print
The following graphs demonstrate how the words “remix” and “remix culture” were popu-
lar in print publications between 1800 and 2008.
Figure 1.13 This graph demonstrates that the term “remix” was in use during the 1800s;
however, it becomes evident that the term’s popularity increased exponentially during the
1980s, which is also the time when dance club and hip-hop remixes became popular.
24
This
corresponds with the first and second stages of Remix.
23
Google nGram: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=music+sampling&year_start=
1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
24
Google nGram: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=remix&year_start=
1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
Remix Theory
27
Figure 1.14 The term “remix culture” was not in print prior to the 1990s, when it began to
be used to promote changes to copyright law by Lawrence Lessig and his contemporaries.
25
This corresponds with the third and fourth stages of Remix.
The Regressive Ideology of Remix
A theoretical evaluation of the fourth stage of Remix is necessary to un-
derstand better Remix’s development. The notion of time that was ex-
plored in music sampling during the 1970s became proliferated throughout
postmodern culture during the ‘80s. In the ‘90s—and certainly in the early
2000s—the notion of sampling became the intricate and undeniable default
form of consumption available to average listeners who normally would
not be considered content producers; users who, from time to time, may
want “to play DJ” by selecting music in their ipods, or “remixers” by re-
blogging on subjects of interest. Inevitably, because of the state of spe-
cialization which makes modernism and postmodernism possible, access to
sampling and ability to remix (of appropriating material which carries
cultural value and tends to reference itself) falls into the danger of sub-
verting history; and younger generations who may not know where the
sample came from may treat remixed material as original. This is key to
sampling in media at large, and this was the great fear of critical theorist
Theodor Adorno when he discusses the regressive listener in mass cul-
ture—the individual who the industry would gladly keep at a juvenile
stage, and can tell what to consume.
26
An example of this occurrence is the hip-hop song “Rappers Delight”
by the Sugarhill Gang, which during the early ‘80s was a popular hit, rid-
ing on the coat tails of hip-hop subculture. Early electrofunk artists, like
Grandmaster Flash dismissed the song as a cooption by the culture indus-
25
Google nGram: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=remix+culture&year_start=
1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
26
Theodore Adorno, The Culture Industry (London, New York: Routtledge, 1991), 50 - 52
Eduardo Navas
28
try of the thriving developments in the Bronx.
27
Some people thought of it
as the first rap song, but it was not; and further, it sampled from a song ti-
tled “Good Times” by Chic. The producers did not acknowledge the sam-
ple. Here we note how historical citation is by default subverted in Remix.
People were expected to recognize the “Good Times” baseline loop while
the MCs rapped on top. Giving credit and also royalties to music artists
whose samples were used would become a major issue in copyright law in
the 80s.
28
As can be noted with “Rappers Delight,” Remix, even when
used in regressive fashion, with a short history span, still demands that
people recognize some trace of history. Thus the power of sampling is al-
ways based on a diversion, one that can be presented, as a state of re-
pressed desire that is completely mediated, showing no solution except to
point to itself.
29
Part of the interest in sampling within the culture industry,
then, is in taking a bit of music that the listener will recognize, who will in
turn most likely become excited when she recognizes the sample. At this
point, sampling manifests itself as loops that can potentially go on forever.
It begins to expose the basic aesthetic of loops as vehicles of ideology in
consumer culture. Repetition, as defined by political economist Jacques
Attali, subverts representation, making the recording the primary form of
experience in everyday life; it becomes part of reality at this moment.
30
And with this form of mechanical repetition, with loops, time gives way to
space, because in modularity, time is not marked linearly, but circularly,
for the sake of consumption and regression. One can go back to a favorite
recording to experience it over and over again, thus making it the main
point of reference in one’s understanding of the world.
This is also the power of the photograph as defined by Roland Barthes.
For him, the punctum is a static form of repetition; it captures, freezes a
moment in time that the viewer can play over and over in his/her mind,
similarly to a music recording. For Barthes the punctum is a sublime expe-
rience with which the viewer tries to come to terms by negotiating space
and time. Barthes argued that an acknowledgment of a person’s inevitable
death is pronounced:
This punctum, more or less blurred beneath the abundance and the disparity of
contemporary photographs, is vividly legible in historical photographs: there is always a
27
Ulf Poschardt, DJ Culture (London: Quartet Books, 1998), 193-194.
28
Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, Last Night a DJ save my Life (New York: Grover Press,
2000), 244-246.
29
This is an observation made on postmodern culture by Fredic Jameson. See, Fredric Jameson,
Postmodernism or, The Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991),
51-54. Also, see my analysis of his work in chapter three, 86-88.
30
Attali, 7-22, see introduction for full citation, 5.
Remix Theory
29
defeat of Time in them: that is dead and that is going to die. […] At the limit, there is no
need to represent a body in order for me to experience this vertigo of time defeated.
31
For Barthes the ability of photography to freeze a moment in time was not
only a pronouncement of death in the future, but also the capture of death
within the image itself. It is because of the sense of “cutting” that was un-
derstood when people saw an apparently accurate reproduction of reality
why the punctum was at play. It appeared as though a “sample” from real
life had been stolen. The photograph records time, turning it into a frag-
ment that spans across space: a material record of a person’s mortality.
This disturbing element of photography, which is crucial as an early form
of recording, culminated in the power of film—in which the punctum
noted by Barthes is extended overtly pronouncing space over time.
Figure 1.15 View of New York, New York Casino, Las Vegas, Summer 2008
During the first decade of the twenty-first century, stills and moving im-
ages, informed by photo and film language, are used to advertise all sorts
of commercial brands. Images are displayed on billboards found all over
New York City and Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Tokyo to name but a few
31
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida Trans. Richard Howard, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981),
96.
Eduardo Navas
30
major international centers. In Las Vegas, as a concrete example, image
and sound are strategically repeated incessantly to create a seamless spec-
tacular loop. In this city with no clocks anywhere to be found, time is sus-
pended—night and day become one timeless loop, encouraging people to
stay up as much as possible and spend all of their time at the gambling ta-
bles. Kitsch art exhibitions and collections are promoted as just another
major spectacle on the strip; nightly performances by cover bands of The
Beatles, along with Elvis Presley impersonators, are naturally juxtaposed
with actual performers, including Cher, Prince, and Wayne Newton—as if
they belong to the same time period. In Las Vegas time stands still in the
name of the spectacle. With the efficiency in production and simulation
that mechanical reproduction has reached, the concept of time, and with it,
history, give way to privileging space—simulacrum in space. Thus, Las
Vegas specializes in presenting an ever-growing simulacrum of the world.
One no longer needs to go to Paris to experience the Eiffel tower, but to
Las Vegas to experience the pure myth of Parisian culture. What Las Ve-
gas offers is a culture where the copy is revered for being a fake. And that
fakeness attains authenticity based on the honest act of trying to be a par-
ody of, and admirable reference to the original. Vegas is the ultimate ex-
periment in appropriation—where critical distance is absent, where time is
dismissed and space is presented as something modular, which can be rep-
licated as simulacra proper, a never ending stage of make believe.
32
The
punctum is taken to its limit.
The ideology that makes Las Vegas powerful has a reciprocal relation-
ship with new media technology: once the computer database entered eve-
ryday reality, linear representation gave way to modular representation.
This consists of privileging the paradigm over syntagm; meaning that it is
not the story but the parts of the story that become emphasized as forms of
interest. Database logic consists of making information access the goal in
cultural production,
33
and narrative is subverted by the drive for efficient
information access that need not have a beginning, middle, or end to be of
interest to the user.
Music sampling was a transitional period toward privileging the frag-
ment over the whole; and it is no accident that sampling in music became
popular during the postmodern period. Fragments became the subject of
cultural tension. While it was the medium of photography that came to de-
fine our relationship of the world through recorded (sampled) representa-
tions, this tendency would take its first major shift towards what is known
32
My concept of the simulacrum is informed by Jean Baudrillard’s theory on simulacra. See,
Jean Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra,” Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2007), 1-43.
33
Manovich, 218 – 221.
Remix Theory
31
today as modularity not in visual culture but in music culture, in the explo-
rations of composers, like Stockhausen, who with tape loops aesthetically
alluded to what the computer actually does today. Tape loops run repeat-
edly until they are turned off, or fall apart from wear and tear; similarly,
computers check themselves in loops in fractions of seconds to decide
what to do at all times.
34
Looping, or modular repetition is what defines
media culture, and Remix as a form of discourse; in this sense, Las Vegas
is just one example of how this understanding of repetition is accepted by
the average consumer in the form of spectacle: images repeat with no be-
ginning or end. Looping in culture at large functions similarly to the
punctum in photography as noticed by Barthes: the loop repeats a moment
in time, just like a photograph presents a moment in time. Repetition, the
stability and negation of the passing of time towards death, is found in
consumer culture, not as a conscious recognition of history, but as super-
fluous and indifferent fragments of apparently unrelated events.
Hence, the principles of appropriation privileged in visual culture at
large during the first decade of the twenty-first century started in early
photography and printed media, moving on to sampling in music, finding
their way back into culture once the computer became a common item in
people’s homes. And today, principles of Remix in new media blur the line
between high and low culture (the potential that photography initially of-
fered), allowing average people and the elite to produce work with the very
same tools. Choice and intention, then, become the crucial defining ele-
ments in new media; digital tools can be used to support all types of agen-
das—which fall between commerce and culture.
34
Rob Young, “Pioneers. Roll Tape: Pioneer Spirits in Musique Concrete,” Modulations, ed.
Peter Shapiro (New York: Caipirinha Productions and D.A.P., 2000), 8 – 20.
