A Brief History of Remix. From Caves to Networks

For most of human history, remix practices dominated the creative process. Cave art is arguably the first form of mass collaboration. The post-Romantic individualistic view emphasized absolute originality and sidelined imitation, collaboration, cumulative creativity, and what we commonly call “remix” today in the discourse on creativity. The reuse of the Homeric verses by the Theodosian Empress Eudocia in the Homerocentra was a form of creative rhapsodic art, tightly correlated with the oral-formulaic tradition. According to modern studies, there were three forms of imitation in ancient Roman literature: interpretatio, imitatio, and aemulatio. The art of rewriting, whose principles Macrobius’s Saturnalia illustrated to medieval authors, characterized most of the medieval romance literature. Tightly connected to the mouvance and episodic nature of medieval text, rewritings were created by bringing together different versions or episodes of the legend to form new works.