Sampling

Sampling, in its most basic form, is the reworking of existing culture, usually by technological means, much as collage does. The term originates in music production, where a sample is a fragment of an existing recording embedded in a new work; in a broader cultural sense, sampling means the appropriation, recombination, and reinterpretation of existing images, sounds, or texts. In the visual arts, sampling is connected with practices of appropriation, in which an artist deliberately borrows others' images — advertisements, mass-media stills, famous works of art — and places them in a new context, questioning notions of originality, authorship, and copyright. This strategy became especially prominent in postmodern art of the 1980s, in the work of artists engaging with mass culture. Sampling is a descendant of collage and photomontage, but it emphasises the digital and media-driven nature of contemporary culture, in which images are continuously copied, disseminated, and reworked.