A Brief History of Remix: From Caves to Cyberspace

Abstract

This chapter sheds light on the evolution of pre-modern, modern and post-modern notions of appropriation, reuse, creative collaboration and plagiarism. This might be of use to contextualize how the humanities function today. In particular, this brief history of “remix” helps explain conceptual positions extrapolating how digital humanities has changed the way creative acts are understood since the early days to emerging forms of today. In addition, the application of digital resources and computational tools and methods to the study of the evolution of these notions, which is well ongoing, will hopefully bring about further understanding of the mechanics of creativity throughout history. In turn, this understanding can help clearly highlighting the role of reuse, appropriation and collaboration—all acts that are part of remix practice today—in the history of creativity. This insight should then lead to changes to the regulatory framework, so that remix, rather than being a practice just tolerated or outright prohibited by the law, will regain a central role in the creative process.

The version available on SSRN is a pre-print substantially different and longer than the finally published chapter.

Keywords: remix, digital humanities, creativity, history, art, copyright law, intellectual property