Rethinking the Rhetoric of Remix Copies and Material Culture in Digital Networks Margaret Borschke M.A. University of Toronto, B.A. (Hons) McGill University A dissertation presented in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Journalism and Media Research University of New South Wales 2012 Abstract What roles do media technologies, artifacts, and users play in cultural change? This dissertation focuses on the shift from analog to digital media and concentrates on the role played by copies and replication in both systems of representation to identify and analyze material practices and rhetorical claims about their cultural influence. Specifically, it identifies and critiques the influence of recording formats qua copies in the history of three forms of composition in popular-music culture—remixes, disco edits, and MP3 blogs—to ask how something that is just the same can bring something new into being. I show that a focus on an artifact’s status as a copy—an object that can be said to be the same as other things—can illuminate our understanding of the cultural changes associated with digital and network technologies. By simultaneously identifying new cultural practices that are dependent on pure copying and resurrecting histories of media use, I critique the rhetoric of remix and participation as common tropes in digital discourse. This thesis examines the ways in which digital technologies were shaped by analog ones, as well as how and why analog formats persist in an era of digital networks. This exploration highlights the materiality of all media formats and shows how everyday users have played with and exploited material affordances over the past half- century. It also ponders the persistence of romantic ideals about authorship and expression within modes of expression and discourse that seem to challenge such constructions. What do these continuities and contradictions suggest about the networked experience and the social and cultural pleasures we derive from it? By teasing out unspoken assumptions about media and culture, this thesis offers fresh perspectives on the cultural poetics of networks and artifacts and poses questions about the promises and challenges of network visibility. 2 ORIGINALITY STATEMENT ‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. 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Date .............................................................................. 3 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Catharine Lumby, for her encouragement to pursue the project in the first place and for her intellectual and professional guidance along the way. I would also like to thank Professor Gerard Goggin (University of Sydney) and Associate Professor Kate Crawford (Microsoft Research) for their generosity as co-supervisors. Many thanks to the DJs, producers, MP3 bloggers, dancers, and record collectors who took time to talk with me about their listening practices, and special thanks to my partner, resident DJ and philosopher, James Bucknell for his intellectual guidance and support along the way. This research was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award and a UNSW Faculty of Arts and Social Science Top-up Scholarship, and travel to conferences was made possible by grants from UNSW and through the generosity of my parents, Jayne and Bernard Borschke. 4 Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction............................................................................... 7 1. Overview..............................................................................................................7 2. Approach............................................................................................................12 3. Chapter Summaries ............................................................................................16 Chapter Two: Listening to Copies................................................................... 22 1. Introduction and Overview ................................................................................22 2. Music and Copyright: The Regulation of Copies.................................................27 Copyright and Creativity .....................................................................................36 Copia and the Ghost in the Digital Machine .......................................................40 3. Copy as a Property—and Why It Matters ...........................................................42 Sameness, Difference, and the Problem of Universals .........................................43 The Problem of Universals ..................................................................................45 Copia: Copy as Abundance.................................................................................48 Copy as Transcription .........................................................................................50 Listening to Print .................................................................................................54 4. Copies and Repetition: Listening to Loops ..........................................................56 Consider the Listener...........................................................................................61 A Sociology of Listening......................................................................................65 Material Media....................................................................................................75 Chapter Three: Rethinking the Rhetoric of Remix .......................................... 80 1. Introduction and Approach ................................................................................80 2. Remix as Trope...................................................................................................85 Does Metaphor Matter?.......................................................................................86 The Rhetorical Effects of Metaphor......................................................................88 Remix as an Explanatory Metaphor for Digital Culture ........................................90 3. The Extended Remix in the Popular Press...........................................................92 Remix in Popular Discourse................................................................................92 Popular Use: the 1980s.......................................................................................94 Popular Use: the 1990s.......................................................................................97 Popular Use: “Remix Culture” in the 1990s.........................................................98 Popular Use: Remix and “Remix Culture” in the 2000s.....................................100 4. The Extended Remix: Scholarly Uses of Remix as Rhetoric...............................103 Remix: Critical Assumptions and Arguments .....................................................105 Lawrence Lessig’s “Remix Culture” ...................................................................108 New Media: New Scale or New Meaning?........................................................109 Falling Down the Analog Hole, or Why We Never Were “Read-Only”.............114 Speak, Memory: The Generation of Meaning and a History