Altermodern: Mixtape

There is so much music out there that you just have not heard it all. This is the view I promoted to WLFM to describe the intentions of Musicanator. The same song will not be played more than once unless it has been “remixed” by another artist. I am fascinated by this reuse of artistic material. There are an unending amount of possibilities to present one song. “Another hypothesis: could it be that what has been called ‘art of appropriation’ operates not to seize but to abolish ownership of forms? The DJ is the concrete popular embodiment of this collectivism, a practitioner for whom the work-with-its-signature-affixed is merely one point in a long and winding line of retreatments, bootlegs, and improvised variations. Borrowed from the vocabulary of the DJ or programmer, ‘playlist’ generally designates the list of pieces ‘to be played.’ It is a cartography of cultural data but also an open order, a path that can be borrowed (and infinitely modified) by others.” (Bourriaud, 161) Any appropriated or recorded sound that can be translated into radio waves may be used, in combination with any other sound. This is shown by albums entirely made from remixes, such as with Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’s album “Listzomania,” remixed by a multitude of other artists.

“A matter of organizing an encounter between two or more objects, mixing is an art practiced under the ‘cultural rain,’ an art of deviation, of capturing flows and arranging them through singular structures.” (Bourriaud, 155)

By assimilating different sounds that have already been produced, mixing is a mainly secondary art. Yet original artists may be part of the cloud that precipitates “cultural rain.” As in postmodernism, it is all very difficult to distinguish what is an “original” song nowadays, if inspiration of historical musicians and formal music structures are taken into account for song creation. Remixes may be seen as original works if perceived as different enough from what it is being mixed from. However, from this point of view, “to practice citation is to appeal to an authority: in measuring him- or herself against the master the artist claims a place in a historical lineage and thereby legitimates first of all his or her own position, but also, tacitly, a vision of culture in which signs unequivocally ‘belong’ to an author, to whom the present work refers, ironically, aggressively, or admiringly.” (Bourriaud, 166) I believe that a remix can be unrelated enough to its original that it becomes “owned” by the remixer. If you are familiar with “Love Like A Sunset,” then my example is Animal Collective’s remix of that song (coupled with the slideshow of psychedelic sunsets, instruments, and new vocals). The song has a whole new aura of originality.

“Today, music continues to provide a procedural model. When a musician uses a sample, when a DJ mixes discs, they know that their own work may in turn be taken up and serve as material for new operations…The work of contemporary art is no longer defined as the endpoint of the creative process but rather as an interface, a generator of activities.” (Bourriaud, 172)

Through a creative process of organizing playlists for Musicanator on Garageband I am in effect translating the songs by inserting audio clips from cultural references in movies, other songs, and live recording, “…the meaning of the resulting work is entirely different from that of the original.” If songs may be considered having their own essential “color,” similarly to color relationships (any color is perceived differently when placed side by side with another color) when the order of songs is altered a song following or followed by another song will be perceived differently. The original song can be perceived in innumerous ways according to the listener. “‘It is the viewers who make the paintings,’ Duchamp once said, an incomprehensible remark unless we connect it to his keen sense of an emerging culture of use, in which meaning is born of collaboration and negotiation between the artist and the one who comes to view the work. Why wouldn’t the meaning of a work have as much to do with the use one makes of it as with the artists intentions for it?’ Such is the meaning of what he might venture to call a formal collectivism.” (Bourriaud, 161)