Remixing Australian Literature
CCI researchers Amy Barker and Elliott Bledsoeare currently running the Australian project “Remix My Lit” (RML), the world’s first remixed and re-mixable short story anthology. The RML website invites members of the public to copy short stories by a selection of Australian authors and re-submit their own derivative versions of the work before the end of August 2008.
The participating authors have applied Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licences to their short stories so that interested readers are free to copy, remix and release the material for noncommercial purposes. A selection of the best submissions from the public will be published in an anthology under that same Creative Commons licence.
So far, short stories up for grabs are a work of flash fiction by Emily Maguire, titled Cherished, Damian McDonald’s young adult short story, Dara’s Firebird Lovesong, and Renovator’s Heaven by Cate Kenney who describes it as "a sort of speculative, open-ended, little bit supernatural little bit horror short story.”
Other authors rumored to be involved are Stefan Laszczuk, Lee Battersby, Philip Neilsen, James Phelan, Kim Wilkins and Danielle Wood.
Why? Some inspiration from the organizers:
“The term 'remix' may be new but the idea itself is time-honored. Remix is all about taking existing material and making something new out of it. It's a familiar concept in music but extends to all creative content so why isn't the literati getting amongst it? There's no reason why writers can't mix, match, push and pull content to create remixed works. And that's why remix my lit exists. We don't like buzz words, but if we had to use them we'd probably say we are a web 2.0 online collaborative space for creative people who want to get stuck up to their elbows in remixing!”
Remix My Lit has been funded by Story of the Future – an initiative supported by the Australia Council for the Arts in partnership with the Australian Film Television and Radio School.
For more information about this project, visit the website or send them an email.
Date: 13/08/2008
