Remix Culture: Using Combinatory Play To Create

Fellow Interintellect Alex Yao explores how polymaths and Internet remix culture use combinatory play to create new works.

“Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.”

— Albert Einstein

Nothing is original, everything is a remix. We build on what came before, and create by taking bits and pieces from our knowledge, skills, insights, and intuitions and recombining them into new creations.

Combinatory play approaches creativity from the lens of being willing to play with different activities and ideas until we find the combinations that create our “original” ideas. Einstein famously came up with some of his best scientific ideas during his violin breaks.

The Internet has accelerated our ability to remix our ideas. We are able to stumble upon ideas from all over the world and remix them together to create something new. Careers are built on top of remixed clips and audio. Hip-hop and rap represents remix culture in the music industry and has exploded in popularity around the world due to the Internet.

Are we currently all living in remix culture as users of the Internet? What are ways we’ve remixed content in our own work? Does remix culture speed up change on the Internet?

In this Interintellect Salon, we’ll be exploring these questions to understand how we can embrace remix culture in our lives and start creating instead of worrying about trying to be original.

We hope you can join us. – Salon Host Alex Yao

Reading List:

• How Einstein Thought: Why “Combinatory Play” Is the Secret of Genius
• Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity
• Everything is a Remix
• Remix culture
• Remixing Culture And Why The Art Of The Mash-Up Matters
• Rap 1.0: A History of the Early Hip Hop Internet
• Evolution of Rap: Who Changed the Face of Hip-Hop?
• Mickey Mouse will be public domain soon—here’s what that means

Image source.