Remixed Australian Literature: Through the Clock’s Workings

Date: June 17, 2009; Discussion: 0 Comments

Remix My Lit, a Brisbane, Australia based international, online writing community that focuses on remixed literature projects has released Through the Clock’s Workings, a 126-page anthology of remixed, Australian writing. The anthology can be bought through the Sydney University Press website or can be freely downloaded here.

Through the Clock’s Workings is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike license (the same one I use for most of my works), meaning it can be freely shared and remixed, provided it is kept noncommercial and placed under the same sort of license. This makes it a read and write anthology; it will be a living piece, so to speak. I’ve downloaded the book now to see what I can do with it myself.

Regardless of this book’s quality factor (as always, some will like it, some won’t, I’m sure), this is an important piece, as it will undoubtedly give rise to other remix writers. If we could build sites and communities around this concept, we might see a resurgence in experimental, remixed writing. We have it already for music, art and video, but writing has sort of been put to the side. While experimental writing, including some remix, is done by well-known authors, I have found very little of it among writing communities online, perhaps partially due to fears surrounding plagiarism. (And no, I’m not putting fanfiction in the same category as remixed writing.) With the proper licensing in place, we will probably start to see more “alive” texts. I guess the step after that will be as with all remix and the Internet: the need for organization.

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