Rethinking the Digital Remix: Mash‐ups and the Metaphysics of Sound Recording

Abstract

Critical evaluations of audio mash‐ups and remixes tend to congregate around two poles. On the one hand, these often clever re‐combinations of recorded music are celebrated as innovative and creative interventions in the material of bland commodity culture. On the other hand, they are often reviled as derivative, inauthentic, and illegal because they do nothing more than appropriate and reconfigure the intellectual property of others. This essay does not side with either position but identifies and critiques the common understanding and fundamental assumptions that make these two, opposed positions possible in the first place. The investigation of this matter is divided into two main parts. The first considers the traditional understanding of technologically enabled reproduction and the often unquestioned value it invests in the concept of originality. It does so by beginning with a somewhat unlikely source, Plato's Phaedrus—a dialogue that, it is argued, articulates the original concept of originality that both determines and is reproduced in the theories and practices of sound recording. The second part of the essay demonstrates how the audio mash‐up deliberately intervenes in this tradition, advancing a fundamental challenge to the original understanding and privilege of originality. In making this argument, however, the essay does not endeavor to position the mash‐up as anything unique or innovative. Instead, it demonstrates how mash‐ups, true to their thoroughly derivative nature, plunder, reuse, and remix anomalies that are already available in and constitutive of recorded music.

Acknowledgments

This paper was originally written in response to an invitation from Paul Hegarty. It has benefited greatly from the comments, questions, and suggestions that he provided along with additional input from Gary Genosko.

Notes

1. The mash‐up, it is important to note, is not restricted to the field of recorded music. There are also graphic and video mash‐ups, which manipulate and recombine visual information, and “data mash‐ups,” which comprise the foundation of both the Semantic Web and Web 2.0. With data mash‐ups, information from one web resource, like restaurant reviews for a particular region, are combined with data from another resource, like geographical information, in order to present users with unique and integrated content. The technology that makes this possible includes the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Resource Description Framework (RDF) standard and markup languages, such as XML (extensible markup language), which describes actual content rather than the appearance of content. Although data mash‐ups and audio mash‐ups share similar conceptual and technical features, this essay will only address the former.

2. Grey Tuesday took place on 24 February 2004 and was coordinated by Downhill Battle, a music activist organization. For more information on the protest, its effects, and a list of participating websites, see ⟨http://www.greytuesday.org⟩. For more on Downhill Battle, see ⟨http://www.downhillbattle.org/⟩.

3. Information on the contest and its outcome can be found at ⟨http://www.davidbowie.com/neverFollow/⟩.

4. According to the ad copy for the CD, “Mash‐ups are usually associated with underground record shops, bootleg white‐labels and mixtapes changing hands between those in the know. Now, EMI has decided to change all of that and after a clearance process of biblical proportions, bring these explosions of creativity, and massive cut‐up tracks to the masses—legally” (Vidler).

5. It is customary in the introduction to an article to provide an explicit articulation of method. In order to honor and yet bracket this often unquestioned procedure, which itself is informed by a particular metaphysical narrative, I relegate this material to a note. If pressed to provide an articulation of method, I would have to say, borrowing a terminology that Slavoj Žižek (Organs 46–47) appropriates from Gilles Deleuze (Negotiations 6), that what I do here is “bugger” Platonism with contemporary innovations in audio recording and digital media in order to produce disturbing bastards and monstrous offspring. This “philosophical practice of buggery” (Žižek Organs 46) is related to and could also be described as a kind of intellectual mash‐up—an unauthorized concatenation and remix of different source material that produces noisy and monstrous progeny, which demonstrate alternative configurations and possibilities. This “monstrous practice” will become immediately evident in the seemingly unjustifiable and noisy mix of materials that come to be included in the course of the essay. In investigating the mash‐up, this essay samples and remixes material extracted from Plato, Theodor Adorno, Jean Baudrillard, Thomas Edison, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and others with what might appear to be little or no attention to the integrity and context of the original work. From a certain perspective, one that has the approval of the Platonic tradition and that does not question its original privilege of originality, this procedure can only be interpreted as a deficient and less than respectable practice. At the same time, however, this is precisely what characterizes the mash‐up, which not only comprises the subject addressed by the essay but constitutes the method to which the essay itself is and must be subjected. In pointing this out, however, I am not claiming that there is anything original, clever, or unique in this particular practice. In fact, the sampling and mixing together of different sources in the process of authoring a new composition is itself a standard operating procedure in writing. It is what Dick Hebdige calls (by way of a citation and transposition of an audio recording practice attributed to Caribbean music) “versioning.” And here I quote Hebdige for reasons he himself explains:

That's what a quotation in a book or on record is. It's an invocation of someone else's voice to help you say what you want to say. In order to e‐voke you have to be able to in‐voke. And every time the other voice is borrowed in this way, it is turned away slightly from what it was the original author or singer or musician thought they were saying, singing, playing. (Hebdige 14)

This essay, therefore, following the example of the subject matter that it investigates and employing a practice that is already operative in scholarly writing, quotes from a diversity of sources and mixes them together in a version that is not, strictly speaking, an exact reproduction of the original work but is, to quote the words of Hebdige, “turned away slightly” from the “original.”

6. Plato's Phaedrus was presumably composed in 370 bce and is considered to be a contemporary of the author's two major works Republic and Symposium. Although usually read as a dialogue about rhetoric and the art of speaking, the Phaedrus contains, as I argue here, what is probably the first recorded debate about recording technology. For the ancient Greeks, this technology was writing, a recently introduced innovation that allowed one to record, to preserve, and to replay spoken discourse. The Phaedrus, then, occupies a curious position, recording in and by writing a debate about the social impact and effect of the new recording technology of writing. This particular reading of the Phaedrus is indebted to Jacques Derrida's “Plato's Pharmacy” in Dissemination, Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy, and John Sallis's “Beyond the City: Phaedrus” in Being and Logos. For a more detailed investigation of this dialogue and its significance for contemporary understandings of recording technology, see my Thinking Otherwise .

7. The ancient Greek word τέχνη (transliterated techne) is usually translated as “art” and denotes “a system or method of making or doing” (Liddel and Scott 804); it is the etymological root of the English words “technique” and “technology.”

8. For Jacques Derrida, the myth of Theuth and Thamus that is recounted toward the end of the Phaedrus is understood to be constitutive of the logocentric privilege that he argues characterizes mainstream Western thinking, and his essay “Plato's Pharmacy” traces the way this particular legend functions within this tradition. For Neil Postman the story is interpreted as articulating both the problems of and possible solutions for an increasingly technological society. And he begins his book Technopoly by recalling “The Judgment of Thamus” and extracting from it “several sound principles from which we may begin to learn how to think with wise circumspection about a technological society” (4).

9. See, for example, Steve Wurtzler's critical investigation of lip synching.

10. On the importance of the “bastard” in contemporary philosophy, see David Farrell Krell's The Purest of Bastards.

11. Walter Benjamin's essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” is often interpreted as an indictment against technologically enabled forms of reproduction. A more generous and sophisticated reading has been provided by Jonathan Sterne in The Audible Past. “At first blush,” Sterne writes, “Benjamin appears to advance the ‘loss of being’ hypothesis since he coins the term aura as ‘that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction’” (34). Interpreted in this way, Benjamin would appear to be the perfect Platonist, positing supreme value in the aura of the original and lamenting its unfortunate destitution in mechanically reproduced copies. But Sterne finds this reading to be inattentive to the text under consideration. Specifically, he argues, it ignores a note that Benjamin included early in the essay: “Precisely because authenticity is not reproducible, the intensive penetration of certain (mechanical) processes of reproduction was instrumental in differentiating and grading authenticity” (Benjamin243). “In this formulation,” Sterne writes, “the very construct of aura is, by and large, retroactive, something that is an artifact of reproducibility, rather than a side effect or an inherent quality of self‐presence. Aura is the object of a nostalgia that accompanies reproduction” (36). Understood in this fashion, Benjamin's work would need to be situated closer to the innovations that come to be introduced by Baudrillard instead of being interpreted as a mere mechanistic reproduction of Platonism.

12. On “versioning” and “dub,” see Dick Hebdige's seminal investigation in Cut ‘n’ Mix.

13. By his own account, Baudrillard excludes audio as an explicit object of consideration. In response to an interviewer's question about sound, Baudrillard provided the following explanation: “I have some difficulty replying to this question because sound, the sphere of sound, the acoustic sphere, audio, is really more alien to me than the visual” (“Vivisecting”49) Consequently, it looks as if Baudrillard says little or nothing about sound and sound recording. Even a cursory reading of his text demonstrates an overwhelming interest in visual artifacts and techniques, a rhetorical style that is dependent on metaphors and tropes derived from optics, and the use of examples that involve vision and aim to make theory visible. This visual orientation is not something that is unique to Baudrillard but is part and parcel of a long and venerable tradition within western thinking. “The concept of ideology,” W. J. T. Mitchell writes, “is grounded, as the word suggests, in the notion of mental entities or ‘ideas’ that provide the materials of thought. Insofar as these ideas are understood as images—as pictorial, graphic signs imprinted or projected on the medium of consciousness—then ideology is really an iconology, a theory of imagery” (164). This iconographic orientation produces, as audio theorists like Jacques Attali (1) point out, something of a blind spot when it comes to thinking about and theorizing sound. The blindness is not, we could say following Baudrillard, a lack of vision, but the effect of an excessive visibility and extreme dedication to the image and the imaginary. To say that Baudrillard simply ignores sound and sound recording, however, is inaccurate and not attentive to his published writings. As Mike Gane points out, Baudrillard is “haunted” by a certain concern with music, specifically “the technical perfection of musical reproduction” (60). For this reason, one can re‐read Baudrillard as an audio theorist even if his own remarks appear to exclude this possibility. I undertake such an examination, applying Baudrillard's work to an interpretation of audio recording and the cultural practice of the mash‐up, in “Blind Faith”.

14. In stating this, I do not mean to suggest that this feature is in any way a distinctive or unique characteristic of the mash‐up. Here again, the mash‐up is exceedingly and unapologetically derivative. As Kevin Holm‐Hudson points out, “the act of quotation in music (here defined as reproducing a melodic, stylistic or timbral excerpt of a pre‐existing musical work in the new context of another musical work) is arguably ageless and instinctual” (17). Blues musicians, for example, often borrow from and amalgamate familiar material into new shapes and configurations (Evans), hybrids like Afro‐Cuban jazz remix seemingly disparate sources into new and sometimes surprising compositions, and even composers of classical music often quote from and incorporate elements taken from easily recognizable and previously available compositions, whether folks melodies as in the case of Bartok's Hungarian Sketches or popular jazz tropes as evidenced in Shostakovich's Jazz Suites. Consequently, the mash‐up, true to its thoroughly derivative nature, does not innovate the practice of musical appropriation, quotation, and recombination but extends, exploits, and plunders it.

15. Mash‐ups do not in any way disprove Adorno or contest his admittedly unsympathetic assessment of popular music. In fact, the mash‐up proves Adorno correct—popular music is characterized by substitutability, repetition, or what Dick Hebdige calls “versioning” (12–14). Rather than directly oppose Adorno on this point with arguments to the contrary, the mash‐up agrees with Adorno against himself. For Adorno substitutability and repetition are, following the original Platonic position, essentially negative, deficient, and derivative. The mash‐up does not contest this point; it simply begins from and operates with a different set of ontological and moral assumptions. For the mash‐up, repetition and substitutability are not presumed to be deficiencies; they are celebrated as positive qualities. Mash‐ups, therefore, do not disprove Adorno, dispute his aesthetic insight, or turn his critique on its head. On the contrary, they demonstrate that his evaluation is absolutely correct. What are different are the ontological and axiological assumptions that already structure the analysis and constrain his conclusions.

16. The occurrence of the word “simulacra” in this context begs the question, what is the relationship between Gilles Deleuze's and Jean Baudrillard's understanding and use of this term? Although there is an important affinity here that exceeds linguistic coincidence, there are also important conceptual differences. Brian Massumi, for instance, argues that both Baudrillard and Deleuze (and Deleuze and Guattari by extension) understand “simulation” as a critical interruption in the structure of Platonic metaphysics. “A common definition of the simulacrum,” Massumi writes, “is a copy of a copy whose relation to the model has become so attenuated that it can no longer properly be said to be a copy” (91). According to Massumi's reading, Baudrillard and Deleuze agree on at least this much. Where they differ, however, is on the question of the “reality of the model” and the moral significance attributed to the concept of simulation. Massumi argues that Baudrillard's writings provide no suitable answer to the former. “Baudrillard sidesteps the question of whether simulation replaces a real that did indeed exist, or if simulation is all there has ever been. Deleuze and Guattari say yes to both” (92). Furthermore, Massumi finds Baudrillard to be something of a pessimist. “The work of Baudrillard is one long lament,” Massumi writes. “Baudrillard's framework can only be the result of a nostalgia for the old reality so intense that it has deformed his vision of everything outside it” (95). Whereas Deleuze and Guattari, following the precedent of Friedrich Nietzsche, are characterized otherwise, looking upon simulation not as a sad and gloomy loss of some original reality but as a new and promising opportunity. “What Deleuze and Guattari offer,” Massumi concludes, “is a logic capable of grasping Baudrillard's failing world of representation as an effective illusion the demise of which opens a glimmer of possibility” (96). Although Massumi's argument is persuasive and easily distinguishes these two thinkers of simulation, his differentiation employs an unfortunate and not altogether accurate caricature of Baudrillard. Although there are passages in Baudrillard's texts that can sound “negative” and “nostalgic” in the way that Massumi describes it, Baudrillard's own understanding of simulation is much more complex and varied. A better, albeit considerably less decisive, approach to understanding the points of contact and differentiation can be found in Daniel W. Smith's essay “The Concept of Simulation”. Smith not only casts a wider net but allows for a much more nuanced understanding of the problem.

The concept of the simulacrum, along with its variants (simulation, similitude, simultaneity, dissimulation), has a complex history within twentieth‐century French thought. The notion was developed primarily in the work of three thinkers—Pierre Klossowski, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean Baudrillard—although each of them conceived of the notion in different yet original ways, which must be carefully distinguished from each other.…It would thus be possible to write a philosophical history of the notion of simulacrum, tracing out the intrinsic permutations and modifications of the concept. In such a history, as Deleuze writes, “it's not a matter of bringing all sorts of things under a single concept, but rather of relating each concept to the variables that explain its mutations.” Such a history, however, still remains to be written. (Smith 89–90)

Consequently, what can be said at this particular juncture is that there are important affinities and crucial differences in the thinking of simulation in the work of Baudrillard and Deleuze, and that the account of this interaction can be addressed only in the context of a comprehensive reading of the history of philosophy that has yet to be articulated.

17. McLeod's use of the phrase “deconstructionist method” is problematic, mainly because “deconstruction,” as it was described and practiced by Jacques Derrida, does not constitute what is usually defined and characterized as a “method.” “Methods,” as Rodophe Gasché explains, “are generally understood as roads (from hodos: ‘way,’ ‘road’) to knowledge. In the sciences, as well as the philosophies that scientific thinking patronizes, method is an instrument for representing a given field, and it is applied to that field from the outside. That is, it is on the side of the subject and is an external reflection of the object” (121). This is problematic for an understanding of deconstruction precisely because deconstruction, as it was described by and exemplified in the writings of Derrida, constitutes a general strategy for intervening in these and every other traditional metaphysical opposition (e.g. inside/outside, subject/object, theory/practice, etc.). For more on deconstruction, see the interviews with Derrida collected in Positions, Gasché's The Tain of the Mirror, Briankle Chang's Deconstructing Communication, and my own “Deconstruction for Dummies” in Hacking Cyberspace .

18. In advancing this position, McLeod follows a maneuver that is well established in contemporary interdisciplinary research. Although he did not invent the procedure, George Landow's Hypertext provides one of the earliest examples. According to Landow, “critical theory promises to theorize hypertext and hypertext promises to embody and thereby test theory” (3). In demonstrating this thesis, Landow, like McLeod, creates a mash‐up, sampling and recombining research in computer science with recent developments in literary theory.

19. This is one of those places where, one could argue, Platonism is already (in) deconstruction and vice versa. For, as Christopher Norris describes it, “deconstruction is the vigilant seeking‐out of those ‘aporias,’ blind spots or moments of self‐contradiction where a text involuntarily betrays the tension between rhetoric and logic, between what it manifestly means to say and what it is nonetheless constrained to mean” (1). For a detailed consideration of deconstruction and the work of Plato, see Michael Naas's Turning.