OBJECTIVES OF: Remix
- Become acquainted with copyright as a historic, cultural and economic paradigm and its value and pertinence to creative works.
- Explore the changing nature of copyright in the context of “Remix Culture” and the “Fifth World”
- Examine your own and others values and paradigms of ownership and authorship of cultural media.
- Evaluate the meanings of real and fake and examine their intersection with personal and cultural identity and authenticity.
ORIGINAL POST: Spreading Creativity
December 5, 2013
I think the idea of using other ideas and material to create different ones is an interesting topic. I see how some people facing copy-write laws could really be held back from creating that next art piece or song, but if I were the original artist I would probably be upset if someone took my idea and made it better. That is why this subject is so controversial. I have made music using parts of other songs and I know that my song couldn’t contain more than 4 measures of content from another song. This was hard because I felt like it would have sounded cool to use more parts. I think the Ted Talks that addressed how the laws stopping these actions from happening was accurate when he said it was blocking creativity and advancements in our cultures. The essay we read in class had a sentence that stated, “the most valuable contribution to our economy comes from connectivity, not content (Lessig 89).” I see this happening in companies like apple where everything is connected and easy to work with. Although they are actually a rather simple and less content oriented company I think they see success through their efforts to support connectivity with all of their products.
REFLECTION:
I think this controversial topic was interesting because I wasn’t origionally aware of the laws expressed about copy-write. The Ted talks gave a great example of the course objective for understanding Remix Culture. A basic example of taking someone else’s work and adding one’s own twist to make it different can sometimes be against the law. Many people like me wish that laws like this were more open Lessig also agreed with me when they wrote “the most valuable contribution to our economy comes from connectivity, not content (Lessig 89).” I think this demonstrates multiple course objectives by acknowledging other’s point of view, and relate them to my own views.
I demonstrated the other course objective when I related my troubles I had when I tried to mix a song into my own. Trying not to get in trouble I had to incorporate no “more than 4 measures of content from another song.” This shows how I was personally restricted by copy-write laws when I was trying to create a song using other songs. The picture I added above is as collage that I made using other pictures on Google to exemplify how someone can use others’ works to make new ones. This collage was also a part of this Remix unit of discovering copy-write laws and its relation to the spread of creativity. The remix culture text image below is a display of the direction of remix culture that I think our media is already heading, but will be leaning more towards in the future. We are already finding it necessary to remix previous ideas in our culture so it will be interesting to see what we do next.
IN THE FUTURE:
I will have to continually explore the laws behind copy-write especially if I wish to create more music or art in the future. I am also planning on voicing my opinion about these issues if these laws were ever to be debated further this Remix assignment helped me understand that using other work is important but it must be done rightfully so that no laws are broken. I think much of mine and others’ creativity will be based off of other people’s past works in the future especially because of how many ideas that have already been established.