This is not a remix

Description

Invited Research Talk
Faculty of Information, University of Toronto.
Room 728, Bissell Building (attached to Robarts Library)
University of Toronto
140 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 3G6

Widespread distribution of recorded music via digital networks affects more than just business models and marketing strategies; it also alters the way we understand recordings, scenes and histories of popular music culture. In my recent monograph This Is Not a Remix (Bloomsbury 2017), I uncover and examine the analog roots of digital practices and bring the long history of copies and piracy into contact with contemporary controversies about the reproduction, use and circulation of recordings on the internet.

This talk will discuss some of the innovations that have sprung from the use of analog and digital  recording formats in grassroots music scenes, from the vinyl, tape and acetate that early disco DJs used to create remixes and edits to the playlist curators and vinyl revivalists of the 21st century. This is Not A Remix challenges claims that 'remix culture' is a substantially new set of innovations and highlights the continuities and contradictions of the Internet era.

Through an historical focus on copy as a property and practice, This Is Not a Remix focuses on questions about the materiality of media, its use and the aesthetic dimensions of reproduction and circulation in digital networks. Through a close look at sometimes illicit forms of composition-including remixes, edits, mashup, bootlegs and playlists-this research ponders how and why ideals of authenticity persist in networked cultures where copies and copying are ubiquitous and seemingly at odds with ideals of romantic authorship and poses questions about the promises, possibilities and challenges of network visibility and datafication.

Period	3 Oct 2018
Held at	University of Toronto, Canada, Ontario
Degree of Recognition	International