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More Dispatches from Remix Culture
By RR | February 1, 2009
It’s a little early: Aidan woke up at 5:30 and wanted to play “Diego” video games. So, I’ve been catching up on Google Reader for the last hour or so. I found a couple of articles that initially seem unrelated, but are in fact part of a larger meme: remixing culture.
The 
first struck me as hilarious and then interesting: a new novel by Seth Grahame-Smith (and Jane Austen) entitled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; the book promises to be “The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!” Apparently, Seth Grahame-Smith skillfully interweaves horror passages into the existing text, remixing the original text (sorry Austen fans) into something altogether different. My interest in vampire literature doesn’t extend to zombies, but I may have to check this out just for fun.
The second item was the new music mixing service by Microsoft–entitled Songsmith. Songsmith allows you to record yourself singing and pick out a cheesy accompaniment from a range of musical styles. Along with their own voices, people have been uploading vocal tracks (and videos) from popular classics, resulting in a ridiculously incongruent musical retakes of old favorites. Witness the banjo version of “White Wedding” by Billy Idol.
Of course, what both of these have in common, besides hilarity, is that they are further evidence of our remix culture. I’m not sure they are anything but an intellectual exercise at this point (it’s hard to imagine any serious new art coming from this culture, except perhaps hip-hop like Danger Mouse and the Gorillaz), but it is interesting nonetheless. And since classic texts are widely available in electronic text archives like Project Gutenberg, students could produce their own remixes of the novels they study. How about Great Expections . . . for Blood?
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