I hope you’re ready to travel back in time.
Here’s an idea: Remixes hijack your brain.
There are some ideas, based in science, that explain why.
[BrainCraft intro]
In mid 2016, you were reminded that... you’re an allstar when Smash Mouth's hit song from
1999 saw a sudden resurgence.
All-Star became a popular remix meme and videos like this started sprouting up.
This guy from New Jersey, Jon Sudano, creates covers of various songs only with the lyrics
to All-Star.
This Japanese creator played the song just using calculators.
Very quickly, All-Star went from a 90s earworm to an artistic medium.
This extra meaning and relevance was generated by the audience, where disparate individuals
interacted to create together.
My last videos explored the Neuroscience of Creativity and practical tips to be more creative.
This video will look at creativity through the lens of the remix.
And by remix I mean a new work that is composed of reorganised or reinterpreted pieces of
an existing work.
Like a video meme such as All-Star, an auto-tuned song, a supercut or a mashup.
And there’s one thing all of these formats have in common: We love to watch them.
So… why?
Why is it so enjoyable to watch something you’ve probably already seen or heard being
reproduced in a new way?
At the heart of the remix is the idea of participatory creativity, where what we call creativity
is not the product of single individuals, but of social systems.
Imagine the creator is part of a system of influences and information, and what they
produce is a novel variation of ideas already floating around in that system.
Right now, you’re in one of these systems… on YouTube.
One of the best ways to understand human creativity today is by studying the internet.
Broadcasting used to be one of those hard to access and incredibly difficult to get
into mediums.
The internet, with all its distractions and blinking animated GIFs and pictures of cute
cats, has given rise to this particular and particularly easy to digest format.
YouTube has been called a remix culture, “in which youth, operating collectively, combine
existing material to produce their own work.”
Through this culture, a collective intelligence emerges, a group intelligence that comes from
the collaboration of many individuals.
Collective intelligence and participatory creativity fuel each other.
We generate more ideas and influences into the system and more work comes out of it.
Creativity is often seen as a mental process, but it’s also a social and cultural event
as much as a psychological one.
Because together, we can
“build a happy little cloud.
Let’s build some happy little trees”
So why is it so enjoyable to watch something being reproduced in a new way?
Well, the repetition of the remix and a familiarity with the original content makes it particularly
easy to digest.
At the core of this is cognitive fluency–it’s a measure of how easy it is to think about
something.
Your brain is drawn to information it can fluently process.
Let’s build a happy little cloud.
And the remix appeals to our sense of nostalgia.
“Let’s build some happy little trees” Nostalgia is a complex human emotion – research
has found songs that make us feel nostalgic hold disproportionate power over our emotions.
Nostalgia makes you feel better about yourself.
More research found that feeling nostalgic can make us feel physically warmer.
It makes you feel like you can...
Just do it.
In 2015, more than any other year, it was particularly hard to avoid Shia LaBeouf.
This full thirty-one-minute compilation video was created for a show at a London art school
and because the green screen footage was designed to be easily manipulable, professional remixers
around the world sprung to action.
The original instructions from the art school weren’t intended to be humorous, but the
funny remixes were how we chose to participate.
And the appeal for us to watch the remixes was in their absurdity.
We find things funny when they don’t match our implicit assumptions – This is known
as incongruity theory, where comedy is derived from an unexpected cognitive encounter between
two incongruent or unexpected elements.
In these videos Shia is wild and robotic yet appears to interact with the environments
he’s placed in.
To our brains it makes sense, yet is completely unexpected.
This motivational speech became, arguably, the most popular art piece of the year.
And at this point, you may be wondering:
Why should anybody care about this in the first place?
Well, the remix can have a big impact.
In 2011, the remix “Zenga Zenga” was a rare criticism within Libya of it’s then
leader Gaddafi or his four-decade rule.
And this critique only used his own words and actions to do the critique.
It was just remixed and autotuned.
The creator, Noy Alooshe, said Gaddafi had been well known for his eccentricities, which
had made him seem relatable.
He then said, “After the remix, after the ‘Zenga Zenga,’ it became the opposite
. . . he became like a cartoon, you know?”
“It changed the way people think about Gaddafi”
Now, no world leader can escape from the remixes that accompany election cycles, political
events and continued protest.
A supercut in the language of the original creator can strengthen an argument or make
it more compelling.
We see a narrative form from disparate works, that’s often mesmerizing in the scope of
material involved.
This remix often plays to our confirmation biases – with no commentary we interpret
the information in a way that confirms our preexisting beliefs.
Many supercuts provide hard evidence of the existence of tropes long suspected but never
quite proved
The point of Sorkinisms is much stronger than me telling you, “Aaron Sorkin uses the same
phrases.”
Or that, “Alex Trebek is a stickler for accuracy“.
My argument is accentuated by just showing you the evidence.
The repetition is the most convincing and compelling way to make a point.
Remixes hijack our brains because we crave repetitive, easy-to-digest pieces of media.
We get an emotional boost from humour and nostalgia, and love finding evidence that
confirms something we’ve long suspected or already believe.
Remixing is the language of the internet – The products of this participatory creativity
are just as wonderful, curious and even confusing as we are.
And it’s a new way our voices can be heard.
So… consider the power of the remix.
Go on.
Just do it.