remixthebook

2011
Author:

Mark Amerika

A model of contemporary remixing and a groundbreaking reflection on digital media

Remixthebook explores the mashup as a defining cultural activity in the digital age, tracing the art of the remix to previous forms of avant-garde and modernist art through mashups of deftly sampled phrases and ideas. Mark Amerika captures the unique and continually shifting digital moment in which we live and situates the remix as an art form and literary intervention.

Think of remixthebook as DJ Tool made from rhythms downloaded, ripped, mixed, spliced, diced, and burned into our collective hard drives, then re-uploaded. It's a piece of conceptual hardware that exists somewhere between how we experience information and how information aesthetics has transformed the human condition. It's that deep.

Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid

Digital technology has transformed contemporary culture. New social media, hyperlinks, and cut-and-paste techniques have changed the way we write. E-books, which allow us to carry entire libraries with us, are bringing new browsing and reading habits. Digital editing and other on-the-fly postproduction processes have altered how we make music, films, and visual art. A key rhetorical trope employed in all aspects of digital media is the remix, the creation of innovative new works of visual, literary, and performance art through the mashup.

In remixthebook, Mark Amerika explores the mashup as a defining cultural activity in the digital age. A pioneering media artist and acclaimed cultural theorist, Amerika offers a series of philosophical essays that trace the art of the remix to previous forms of avant-garde and modernist art through mashups of deftly sampled phrases and ideas from a wide range of visual artists, poets, novelists, musicians, comedians, and philosophers—among them Alfred North Whitehead, Guy Debord, William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker, and Allen Ginsberg.

A provocative textual performance that is at once a dazzling model of the literary remix and a state-of-the-art reflection on remix culture, remixthebook captures the unique and continually shifting digital moment in which we live and situates the remix as an art form and literary intervention. To coincide with the publication of remixthebook, Amerika will launch a companion website, remixthebook.com, to facilitate new ways of participating in remix culture by inviting other artists and writers to create remixthebook mashups of their own, pushing the boundaries of art and literary culture further, beyond the current publishing paradigms.

Mark Amerika is a cult novelist, media theorist, web publisher, and VJ artist. He is the author of many books, among them The Kafka Chronicles, Sexual Blood, and most recently a collection of artist writings, META/DATA: A Digital Poetics. His artwork has been exhibited in several national and international venues, including the Whitney Biennial, the Walker Art Center, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. His literary writing and artwork have been featured in Time Magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and Village Voice. He is professor of art and art history at the University of Colorado at Boulder and principal research fellow of media studies at La Trobe University. More information can be found at his website, http://www.markamerika.com.

Think of remixthebook as DJ Tool made from rhythms downloaded, ripped, mixed, spliced, diced, and burned into our collective hard drives, then re-uploaded. It's a piece of conceptual hardware that exists somewhere between how we experience information and how information aesthetics has transformed the human condition. It's that deep.

Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid

The apparent simplicity coupled with the multifarious outcomes are intoxicating. . . . Remixthebook asks us to consider the idea of remixology as part of the work of modern artists. The tone and style of the book is a blend of ideas, voices and thoughts with a myriad of concepts, which attempts be the very embodiment of the ideas it espouses.

furtherfield.org

Mark Amerika has been, and still is, one of the pioneering authors of this remix culture in the digital age.

Leonardo Reviews

Mark America delivers a series of free flowing essays regarding the influence of technology on mashup/remix culture and the creative process rather than a straightforward theoretical narrative. remixthebook is a sturdy paperbound volume, with a cover design representing the ideas which the reader is about to encounter.

ARLIS/NA Reviews

A provocative textual performance that is at once a dazzling model of the literary remix
and a state-of-the-art reflection on remix culture, remixthebook captures the unique and
continually shifting digital moment in which we live and situates the remix as an art
form and literary intervention.

Book reMarks

remixthebook is an entertaining and challenging read.

Art Monthly

remixthebook ... enacts (performs) Amerika’s practice by doing what it says. That is, rather than being an extended didactic panel that describes (de-scribes, un-writes) his artistic practices, it is inscribed by the practices of which he writes. It is an extended theoretical, creative work whose subject matter is the work itself.

RealTime Arts Magazine

At a minimum, one can say that remixthebook is an unconventional publication, at least according to current academic standards. Formally, the volume resembles any other book, but it is astonishing in terms of content, if not explosive. Mark Amerika has been, and still is, one of the pioneering authors of this remix culture in the digital age.

Leonardo Reviews

Contents


Acknowledgments
Play All the Remixes (An Introduction)

remixthebook

Source Material Everywhere (The Alfred North Whitehead Remix)

Mind Bank Network (The Allen Ginsberg Remix)

Artist, Medium, Instrument (The Nam June Paik Remix)

The Renewable Tradition (Extended Play Remix)

Why Video Games Suck (The Ad Reinhardt Remix)

Mark Amerika Nature Photography (Studio Remix)

Situationist Comedy (Alternative Laugh Track Remix)

Premonition Algorithm (The Big Kahuna Remix)


Source Material

 

remixthebook.com


New: A remixthebook remix

 

UMP blog - The art of literary mashup

One of my collaborators on the new remixthebook.com website, Gary Hall, also a University of Minnesota Press author, recently published a blog post entitled "What do we have the right not to call a 'book'?". In the post, Hall writes:

What seems much more interesting is the way certain developments in electronic publishing contain at least the potential for us to perceive the book as something that is not completely fixed, stable and unified, with definite limits and clear material edges, but as liquid and living, open to being continually and collaboratively written, edited, annotated, critiqued, updated, shared, supplemented, revised, re-ordered, reiterated and remained.


This description of the emerging forms of what we might refer to as
a book per se, directly applies to the recent appearance of remixthebook, my new hybridized print / web / publication / digital / performance of contemporary art theory. The professionally edited and designed print component is something I am proud of and is clearly situated within the cutting-edge editorial direction of this prestigious press. The UMP editorial and marketing team were very excited by and encouraged the development of the digital / web / performance aspects of the Web site and its array of innovative remix contributions that further expand the concepts of experimental writing and publishing in digital culture.

Read the full article.