UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Eduardo Navas, associate research professor of art and digital arts and media design in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture’s School of Visual Arts, has co-edited and co-authored the second edition of “The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies.”
The book approaches remix studies, which became a field of academic study in the early 2000s, from various angles, including sections on history, aesthetics, ethics, politics and practice, and it offers theoretical chapters alongside case studies of remix projects.
The first edition was released in 2015. For the second edition, 10 chapters were added for a total of 50. Other chapters were revised, and those that were not revised have a preface updating the chapters' relevance. Many of the new chapters focus on artificial intelligence.
“It is very special to have the book published in 2025 because now that remix studies is more recognized as an interdisciplinary research area, people can relate to the second volume with a better sense of the long-term relevance of the chapters that are included,” Navas said.
As an organic international movement, remix culture originated in the popular music culture of the 1970s and has since grown into a rich cultural activity encompassing numerous forms of media. The act of recombining preexisting material continues to bring up pressing questions of authenticity, reception, authorship, copyright and the techno-politics of media activism, especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence, which relies on remix methods and principles for content production.
Navas embraced remix as part of his art practice, and eventually it became the focus of his scholarly research. Through his work, he became part of an international community, and along with the co-editors of the book, Owen Gallagher and xtine burrough, developed the proposal for the book.
The book includes a collaborative chapter titled, "Remix Analytic Methods: A Collaborative Approach to Time-Based Media Analysis," written by Navas with data scientists Robbie Fraleigh and Kory J. Blose, from the Penn State Applied Research Lab, as well as music analyst and pianist Alexander Korte.
The chapter also includes research by visiting scholar Eduardo de Moura, who did research under Navas's supervision in 2018. De Moura is now professor of applied linguistics and data scientist at the University of São Paulo. Another contributor to the chapter, who collaborated with Navas while he was a doctoral candidate, is Luke Meeken, now a Penn State art education doctoral alumnus and assistant professor in art education at Miami University of Ohio.
The volume also includes a sole-authored chapter by Heidi Biggs, a Penn State College of IST doctoral alumna and assistant professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Media, and Communication, who worked with Navas during their dissertation.
“The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies,” is available through Penn State University Libraries.