Sample & Remix: Contemporary Cultural Production Across Arts & Media

Sampling & remixing of previous works is a major mode of contemporary cultural production cutting across media and cultural practices. This course analyzes its genealogy, technological underpinnings, legal presuppositions and aesthetic consequences. Tensions between copy and copyright, between claims to originality and mechanical reproduction characterize this contemporary regime, now deployed globally. Its cultural implications will be distinguished from related modes of making art and meaning (imitation, citation, collage, montage...) and tracked through various objects: popular and avant-garde cinema; videogames, ready-mades and Pop Art; Hip-Hop and Electro; literature and DJ culture.