Eduardo Navas’ doctoral research on “remixing”—and eventually the subject of his 2012 book, Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling—is based on his experience DJing in Los Angeles in the 1990s. “I was obsessed with remixes,” he says. “I realized that I would often like the remix of a song better than the original, because the remix was actually better. Commercially, remixes drove up the sales of a song. But as a DJ, I also became more conscious that there was an intentionality in remixing.” 

For Navas, interim director of the School of Visual Arts in the College of Arts and Architecture, art is constantly evolving. Every piece of art, no matter the genre, is derived from another that has preceded it, he says. In essence, “everything in art is a material or intertextual remix of something else. That’s the beauty of creativity.”

Always interested in integrating technology into art, Navas is now looking at how AI can enhance the artistic process, his own included. Some artists are leery of machine learning and might perceive it as a threat to creativity, but Navas is excited about AI as part of the creative process, as a new tool to further artistic expression. The “metacreativity” AI offers, he says, blends computational power with human intuition and can lead to unprecedented innovation.

That said, he understands that there are many complexities and unanswered questions that come with delegating part, or all, of the creative process to AI, including legal issues surrounding copyright, authorship, and ownership of works of art. Most importantly, AI can’t fully replace artistry: “You still need to know how to create something to adjust it,” Navas says. “If I didn’t know about how sound works when I was a DJ, I wouldn’t have been able to mix it to make it sound better.”

His own trajectory as an artist is itself a series of remixed experiences—each one, Navas says, melding into the next. He was inspired to draw by watching his cousins, who were “very good at copying things and making them look better.” He learned to pay close attention to musical form, texture, and function by listening to his older brothers’ vast collection of records—“They had everything from Chick Corea to Eric Clapton to Pink Floyd and The Hollies,” he says. That insight parlayed itself into DJing, into studying music and dabbling in piano, guitar, and drums—and even breakdancing, for which he had a special fondness and talent.