Remixes Hijack Our Brain By Using The Language Of Nostalgia

YouTube, as a platform for creative expression, has inspired a new form of modern creativity. In this video essay, there is an exploration into how the remix, a product of this participatory creativity, hijacks your brain. Why do we love watching things we've probably already seen be reproduced in new ways?Show more

A guy from New Jersey, John Sedano, creates covers of various songs. This Japanese creator played the songs just using calculators because art is not such a straight line. This extra meaning and relevance was generated by the audience where disparate individuals interacted to create together. This video will look into creativity through the lens of the remix. All the remix songs have one thing in common - we all want to watch them. Why is so enjoyable to watch something already seen or heard by being reproduced in a new way? At the heart of the remix is the idea of participatory creativity and it is not a product of a single individual but of social systems, and what is being produced in this way is a novel variation of ideas already floating around in that system, and right now you are in one of these systems - on YouTube!

The easiest way to understand human creativity today is by studying the Internet which has given rise to this particular easy to digest format. YouTube has been called a remix culture and through this culture collective intelligence merge. So why remixes hijack our brains? Because repetition is the most convincing and compelling way to make a point and we crave repetitive, easy to digest pieces of media. We get an emotional boost from humor, nostalgia, and love finding evidence that confirm something we have long suspected or we already believe. Remixing is the language of the Internet and it’s a new way our voices can be heard.