The Remix

The remix is defined as ‘a piece of media which has been altered from its original state by adding, removing, and/or changing pieces of the item.’
A remix can be used as detournement, where a message is completely changed to conflict with its original intentions. Guerrilla semiotics are a prime example of this being utilised in an ongoing war against consumerism

A recent example of detournement can be found in Kendrick Lamar’s recently released album ‘Damn’.
The album opens with BLOOD, an intro track that wraps up with a sample of Geraldo Rivera, a Fox news presenter (Not Gerald of Rivia), who criticises Kendrick’s lyrical content, and ‘remixes’ his original message of hope into one that suits Fox’s interests – Hip-hop artists being everything wrong with America.

In return, Kendrick has sampled the presenter at the very beginning of the album, using him as an example of everything that he sees wrong with America, and setting the scene for one of his repeated themes – systematic discrimination against the African-American population.

Remixes can be powerful tools, but they can also be utilised in less serious formats. In this case, I remixed a lecture with the goal to entertain. Something I learnt here was that Audacity is a very clunky program, and (unfortunately afterwards) there are more effective ways of quickly remixing content.

– Loud noise warning –