The idea of ‘mashing’ applies to the act of extracting and recombining already existing sources for a new work that either pastiches its primary source or exists as a new, albeit derivative, composition. The term is relatively recent but the idea itself is as old as the act of mimesis. It is a truism to say that any work of art is a tissue of others that have gone on before it, and that artists have quoted, borrowed and reformulated their progenitors and peers. T.S. Eliot famously stated that average poets borrow and great poets steal—which was more than a passing reference to himself since the Wasteland is a multi-leveled dialogue with poets as different as George Herbert, Gérard de Nerval and Dante Alighieri. Yet the idea, let alone the funky hip-hoppery of the word ‘mash’ would have been anathema to the eloquent Eliot. For the main issue surrounding digital mash up is that it is a form of derivation that belongs to a medium where such derivation is easy, if not expected. YouTube is saturated with redubs and reconfigurations. We are in an age that, when applied to any form of digital footage, the words ‘homage’, ‘take’, ‘borrow’, ‘steal’ and ‘appropriate’ are all but interchangeable. This is the universe inhabited by the collaborative duo Soda_Jerk (Dominique and Dan Angeloro). Their world is a series of surfaces to be cut and reshaped. The question of the real has long been eroded. Everything floats, nothing is solid, everything is metatext. Love is to be found in the collision of digital fragments.
One of the Art101 explanations for Pop Art is that the new nature was no longer trees and fields but... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Pixel Pirate 2: The Director’s Cut, 2011. Still from digital video, 52 mins. Courtesy the artists.
Astro Black (Episode -1: The Race for Space), 2010. Still from digital video, 6:34 mins
