According to David J. Gunkel in his reading “Rethinking the Digital Remix: Mash-ups and the Metaphysics of Sound Recording,” remixing and mash-ups were inevitable with the way technologies replicated sounds, songs, and art forms. When comparing remixing to the works of writing the spoken word or Thomas Edison’s study of the phonograph, sounds and words have been replicated and reintroduced in many different forms thanks to technology. Those who originally considered remixing as unoriginal were those who felt as if their art form (or product) was being replicated without profit. Remixing and mash-ups took the music industry’s creations and transformed them. When artists such as Jay-Z or networks like MTV took interest in this expression however, the music industry had to adapt. “Whatever critical interventions it might have deployed are now made to serve the system it was to have subverted, and what had been an outlaw underground movement is repackaged, repurposed, and retailed as a legitimate corporate product,” (2).
But even with the music industry’s approval can remixing all of a sudden become considered a professional, original, and unique type of music creation? Considering the history of art being passed through generations by new technologies, I would argue it should have been considered as such since the beginning. The original song that is being remixed with new sounds can be considered a newly created musical track. “Considered in this way, mash-ups can be situated as the most recent development in “musical quotation,” a practice that is evident throughout the history of music and that predates both analog and digital recording technology,” (9). When listening to music on the radio today there is a sense of replication in background tracks, but not in lyrics. Yet the addition of the words or new sounds make that sound seems more original.
Gunkel goes through the history of story repetition, sound recording, and remixing. All of which were just new forms of a story being passed through and stores by different forms of expression. “Writing is situated as the proxy of something else from which it is derived and to which it refers and defers,” (5). Is a story inauthentic because it is written down, because the storyline derives from myths far before our time? I would again argue no due to the adaptations and liberties writers and storytellers take on old works of literature and film. There are many films based on the tales of Shakespeare but rarely does an audience or Hollywood dub this as a copied version of one original work. Without recreation there would be a great decline in film, television, and even fan work. The development of new technologies allows media consumers to become producers. Remixes, stories, and other art forms can now be shared for a profit or for fun. While media producers try to neglect this side of the industry, media fans are swarming to find the latest and greatest creations by any artists, amateur or not.