Most creative disciplines have grappled with the concept of remix. For mediums such as film, and music entire communities of appropriation (legal or otherwise) have emerged. Artists whose creative practice is contingent to the adaptation of and addition to existing creative products populate this space. But other creative disciplines are practically devoid of this creative technique.
Read/Write has always been a dichotomy in literature. The author on one side of the production process, toiling away in solitude to produce the manuscript which is read by many, in solitude. But is there a more collaborative space for literature? Can your pages be Read&Write?
Remix My Lit is a Brisbane based, international remixable literature project. The project aims to apply the lessons learned from music and film remixing to literature. It is designed to explore where remix fits into literature. It will provide a space within the discipline to encourage and foster a community and culture of remix. It will spin out a number of projects, each of which will endeavour to embed legal appropriation of works into aspects of the publishing environment. Remix My Lit is as much a research project as it is an exercise in creative practice.
To be part of RML, email your remixes of our CC licensed stories to anthology@creativecommons.org.au.
COMMENTS / 6 COMMENTS
Victor Barker added these pithy words on Jul 09 08 at 8:51 pmI have a feeling you are fifty or sixty years too late. William Burroughs and Brion Gysin really worked the idea to death.
admin added these pithy words on Jul 10 08 at 9:37 amHi Victor. As we say on our homepage it’s just the word ‘remix’ that is new, the concept is long established. We did a post on Burroughs’ cut up vs. remix. RML exists in the web 2.0 environment where the internet offers greater opportunities for interactive and collaborative writing than ever before. Digitilisation changes the very ‘form’ of works beyond anachronistic ideas of print and text. There are new modes of distribution. In Burroughs’ time there weren’t whole remix & mashup cultures surrounding music, film & video. And here’s where Creative Commons comes into its own. RML is just as interested in established Australian authors writing new works that are licensed under a CC license - and also how this may or may not affect their creative process - as we are in offering remix artists a space and quality texts to work with.
Victor Barker added these pithy words on Jul 10 08 at 3:24 pmSounds better to me - authors writing new works. I spent a lot of time studying Burroughs, and others, even stayed in the hotel where his pages blew out the window and were collected back in a complete muddle. Bit like throwing sticks for the I Ching - a lot of interesting things can appear out of apparent chance. But I think Burroughs would have been the first to agree that that his considered works (even through a haze of yage) were a whole lot more interesting and influential than his cut-ups.
I feel likewise about the European authors who write books without using the letter ‘e’ etc. Great fun. So is scrabble. But to be encouraged as being creative writing.
Victor Barker added these pithy words on Jul 10 08 at 3:44 pmJust posted a comment where I should have said NOT to be encouraged or included in the idea of creative writing.
Creative writing has to be just that. Seldom is more than one person involved in creative writing. Film scripts? Often a hotchpotch of rewrites by different people but not creative writing.
But the ideas and emotions brought up and put onto paper by one writer are essential for creative writing as such.
You probably, perhaps unwittingly,trip over the matchstick when you write ”
anachronistic ideas of print and text”. Yet you have to use these selfsame print and text to speak to us on the net on our screens.
Nothing anachronistic about them. I can understand people not liking print and text, or being frustrated by them, or being unable to handle them, or just not wanting to have anyhthing to do with them. That’s fine, each to their own.
But it is most misguided to encourage the cut and paste under the banner of creative writing or literature.It’s a good fun pastime and helps to flex the mind, like crossword puzzles or scrabble. That’s all.
admin added these pithy words on Jul 11 08 at 9:34 amSuggest you check out the remixes we’ve received so far. None have actually been ‘cut up’ style. There’s a lot of original content, which certainly constitutes ‘creative writing’ and/or ‘literature’. ‘Cut up’ is simply one approach to remix. Yes we use text on screen; however it is a new form: it’s digital. And this allows for different forms of interaction and distribution than traditional hard copy texts.
melissa delaney added these pithy words on Aug 15 08 at 1:17 ami tend to think there is a place for “cut and paste” within creative writing and literature. it’s approaching text as a creative medium, just like a painter would approach paint, and through random and intuitive engagement with the text, through a process, a new generation is reached, or made.
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