New
culture made from old culture. The term was, I believe,
originally coined by
the Tape-beatles. Popularized further by the
Detritus web site.
In the present postmodern era, we often think of recycled culture as fine art created via artistic appropriation, like Picasso or John Oswald. However, it is important to realize that culture is more than "Art" with a capital A (and different than Culture with a capital C), more than the rarified elite activities of the Art World or even the "fringe" or "underground" worshipped by hipsters. Culture is all around us, all human activity, really, and as such, it depends on recycling. Turning pre-existing ideas into new cultural artifacts. We're talking folk music, quilts, hip-hop, activist street flyers, jazz "quotation", intertextuality, Shakespeare.... the list goes on and on. Virtually everything (and especially Everything )is built on what has come before it, and nothing is new.
"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the
shoulders of giants".
- Isaac Newton