CCTP-5032: Remix Practices Projects

CCTP-5032: Remix Practices

This lab-based seminar deploys “remix” as both an analytic framework and a method of critical practice.  Remixes can be found in music, text, images, education, games, art, technology, fashion, and wherever something intended for a particular meaning or use is redeployed and reinterpreted within a new set of constraints. Digital technologies have catapulted remixes to a new level of visibility. But the remixing of culture precedes these technologies.

The course begins with a theoretical opening discussion in which remix theory is unpacked, unmixed, and re-assessed as a semiotic process accelerated by new media technologies. We will also touch upon a variety of cultural issues raised, inspired, and/or challenged by the remix. Throughout the course, we will apply remix practices that uncover novel connections and new meanings across sources. Hands-on experiments explore the remix across a spectrum of media forms: text, sound, image, video, and simple interactive animations. By the end of the course, you will have practice applying the remix as both an analytic paradigm and a technical method. You will remix your own work and the work of others throughout the course, and your final project will be a research remix.

Check out some of the recent 5032 Projects:

Haoqing Yu

See Haoqing’s Remixed Artworks here

Haoqing’s project, “Invisible Chinese Migrant Workers on the Transcontinental Railroad” is a series of remixed artworks including C.P.R.R. payroll sheets, abstract drawings, blackout poetry, existing poems/songs/ballads from or about Chinese immigrant workers, and academic scholarship surrounding the history of the Transcontinental Railroad. Haoqing’s goal for the exhibition was to highlight the absence of and evoke the presence of Chinese immigrant workers, making them visible via remixed abstract art.

Arjun Chawla

See Arjun’s full Remixed Projects here

Arjun’s project, “Remixing Data Privacy” is a brief journey into the past and present of data privacy. The audience encounters remixed privacy policies, images, blackout poetry, and videos. The project also remixes literature reviewed in the Remix Practices graduate seminar such as the Story of the Three Alert Peas. The project asks the audience to take a step back and ponder how, if at all, privacy policies should be improved in the emergence of new technologies.