The Art of Copying

New York-based film producer Kirby Ferguson establishes the importance of copying in this remix keynote. The notion of remixing came into the scope of pop culture with hip-hop in the 1980s by using sampling. However, remixing applies to any and all realms of creativity and has been in culture for hundreds of years. Presently, there is a folk art culture of remixing where everyone can remix everything -- music, video, photos -- and distribute it globally.

Ferguson states everything is a remix and eloquently creates a metaphor of remixing to represent any type of creativity. The idea of remixing is to make something new out of chunks of old. The basic elements of both is to copy, transform and combine. As, Ferguson states, "we collect our materials and influences combine them and over time we create our own voices."

From Bob Dylan to Hunter S. Thompson, we learn from copying and emulation because in order to create and communicate in a culture, even if we want to subvert it, we need to be able to be able to understand it. When being creative one must realize that all ideas contain other ideas.