Revolution

The essential nature of a techno remix is the remashing of pre-existing material or content into something new, something the represents a slightly altered or even radically different perspective than the one responsible for the original material.  This means that new art can spring from old art.  New life springs from Old life.

In the 1960s and 70s American writer and folk hero William Burroughs wrote several discourses on the nature of a “pre-recorded universe”.  His theory was that if everything we are experiencing is already pre-recorded — God knows the plan sort of thing– then we can continue to re-record and remix the strands and information of our daily reality in dramatic ways.  Techno Magic?

The anecdote that accompanies Burroughs’ story goes something like this:

He’s angry at a cafe that has mistreated him and given him poor service.  So the next day he paces in front of the cafe, recording on a hand-held tape recorder the general ambiance of the area– the traffic, the customers coming and going, general chatter, dishes clattering, etc.   He then began to record over various random points in the cassette with “negative” sounds.  Police sirens, crashes, angry protesters, etc.  The ambiance track of the cafe was now remixed with a very negative and destructive feeling to it.

The next week he’s pacing in front of the cafe again.  This time, though, he’s playing the remix from the recorder.  The volume is just enough to blend in with the physical goings on and actual ambiance sounds.  This goes on for days before he considers his experiment complete and moves on.

Within 2 weeks, the cafe had shut down for unknown reasons.  After that, 3 other businesses tried to open shop in the same space and failed miserably.

The magician himself had remixed reality around the cafe simply with the understanding that by changing the ambient sound, he was reprogramming the area’s energy patterns or whatever.

Pretty amazing story of a reality remix though, right?