View Content #26936

By Christopher Daradics, CASLS Language Technician

“Remix culture” refers to the practice of using old media (e.g. language, video, audio, text, analog materials) to make new media (e.g. language, video, audio, text, mixed materials). The notion simply highlights the fact that the creative recombination of material is always at play in communication. Remixing culture is a context-aware, iterative style to communication that conscientiously reintroduces ready-at-hand, culturally significant visual symbols, sounds, and/or gesture to generate higher order communication.

A helpful way to think of remix culture is to envision a whirlpool. Think of how a whirlpool remixes the environment (water, movement, rocks) into a new, interesting, and identifiable pattern. Whirlpools emerge from the recombination of features that were already at play in the stream. They demonstrate the emergence of a dynamic stability which draws our interest and holds our attention.

In the case of human communication, remixing happens when the flow of recognizable elements (sounds, gesture, visual symbols, and media) are spun into new combinations with new meaning potentials. Memes are an excellent example of remix culture in action. Often times memes emerge from a single photo with a host of different captions (or a single caption applied to different photos). With each recombination new interest and communicative potential are generated. Over time, the captions (or photos) evolve, branch, resurface, etc. This movement is remix culture in action.

The comparison between communication and whirlpools is a helpful way to think about language because it simplifies the basic dynamics of emergent systems (which occur in both whirlpools and communication). The metaphor breaks down, however, when we consider the vast resources and intention humans bring to communication. The metaphor breaks because, unlike streams, communication is hyper-contextual, driven by conscious purpose, emotion, and a host of other subterranean features.

Students are wonderfully adept at noticing and playing with a broad range of communicative resources. By helping learners understand that communication is always a dynamically stable activity where available resources are always contextually mixed and remixed, we can help hone their skills for courageous and playful experimentation. Memes, manipulated screenshots, voiceover, humorous product reviews, “emoji codes,” and other remixed approaches at the fringe of convention encourage exploration, inspire confidence, and cultivate higher order communicators.