Monday, April 18, 2011

Blog 12: Movie & Lessig

    In the movie we watched in class it had a lot connections with our reading of Remix by Lawrence Lessig. To start off, in the book Lessig stated “sharing economies build value” (pg 177). With sharing it allows for much more creativity, the spread of the the creative work, and much more enjoyment for the public. In the video, it focused on people miss using copyrighted material, specifically Girl Talk. With his remixing of various copyrighted music, he then takes his newly created pieces and plays them in clubs and various venues. He is very well known throughout the US, and with his music he has added value to his creative work, music, and to the US culture
    In the book Lessig talks about a tag in Flickr that users may add that states “you are free to share this work” (pg 192). Sharing can mean a lot of things. On Facebook my friend posted a link from YouTube of Bruno Mars’s new music video to “Lazy Song” which I would have never seen otherwise. Was she breaking the law by sharing that? Was the person who posted it on YouTube breaking the law? This ultimately spread like wild fire through all my friends in thinking it was one of the best music videos, thus getting the work out about Bruno Mars, which leads to his popularity even more. This is exactly what Girl Talk (in a sense) is doing. He is using well know, forgotten, and new songs and promoting them further with his creative style and popularity.
    Lessig states “the fans were where the money was” (pg 210). This is completely true in that the fans are the ones who give all the money to the music industry. However, how do the fans given money to the music industry for their music if they don’t hear about it from their friends, online, or from their favorite DJ. Although copyrighting music does lead to money landing in the wrong pockets, or no money at all, there should be a limit on how far copyrighting can go. In the movie they mentioned that patenting laws have gone so far as to patent live organisms. There needs to be a limit on copyrighting and patenting, before it gets out of control.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Blog 11: Commercial and Sharing

In chapter 7 Lessig stated that a “commercial economies build value with money at their core” and that “sharing economies build value, ignoring money” (page 179). These two economies, although different in their values both benefit us. But what if there was a combination of the two. 
What Lessig argues is that with a mixture of the two economies a hybrid economy could be created and be even more beneficial to us and allow us to grow and change. “The hybrid economy is either a commercial entity that aims to leverage value from a sharing economy, or it is a sharing economy that builds a commercial entity to better support its sharing aims”. 

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Blog #10 Online Remix and Lessig

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N618fLxQP6w

This is a remix of the very famous YouTube hit, David After Dentist, which gives a very fun and entertaining twist to the original by turning it into a song.

    In the book Remix, Lessig states on page 37 “The business model of both these distributions of RO culture depend upon controlling the distribution of copies of culture”. This I believe links to the remix I chose because of the way I got it. In today’s world just about everything is copyright protected and huge companies are trying to take control of who has access to it and not. Which has led to people wanting to revolt and get around their copyrighted material and post themselves. With this remix up on YouTube, it has no intent to give some people permission or charge people to see it, it is up for everyone to enjoy and share their creativity. This I believe has really expanded our RW culture in being able to showcase people’s talents as well as inspire and entertain others.

    Another thing in his book I thought was very interesting that connected to my remix was Lessig’s story about trying to record the Oscars (page 45). Two of his friends were going to receive Oscars so he decided to record it on his VHS player. Well to his surprise it didn’t record and he was unable to see his friends win. He then searched online, iTunes, etc and it was no where to be found. To his surprise people had posted it on YouTube and he was then able to see it, and for free. Although YouTube contains a lot of copyrighted material (songs, shows, movies, etc), it has allowed information to be wide spread and known. It has almost become like a blog for some with adding clips of their favorite songs, tv shows, or in this case Oscar highlights where people can then comment on the video. Along with that it has also become a place to find information, sometimes more reliable then tv stations websites etc.

    On page 56 Lessig stated “Remix is an essential act of RW.” This I believe correlated with my remix very closely in that with Remixes it allows people to create their own version or spin of an original. With David After Dentist (original) it was just a home video of a boy who is drugged up from a tooth extraction. However, with the remix someone took the time and creativity to add a beat and edit it in a way to add humor, a song, and completely give a whole new showcase of the over played original.  

Monday, March 7, 2011

Blog 8-REMIX

    The first quote I came across that caught my eye was “sometimes the best way to get an idea across is to simply tell a story” on page 80. I thought this was very interesting, because I feel like all songs have some type of story from them. Although country music is looked down on, on just being sad drunken hick stories, I feel that all songs have a message or a story being told. To convey feelings (which most artist tend to want to do) you have to have a background story. For instance, if I were to tell you this 25 year old women got mugged and shot, your first reaction would be “oh sad”. However, if I were to give you a background about her and how she took a cancer patient from the hospital  on her dream day trip to the zoo and was mugged and shot on their way home from not giving the mugger the child's gold necklace, it would convey a lot more feelings and horror. (I know horrible example all around).

    The second quote that caught my eye was “you can never play a record the same way for the same crowd” on page 113. I believed this to be very true in that no matter how much you love a song, there is always that point where you don’t want to hear it again. With remixes it gives your song a whole new beat and feel to it, making it almost like new again, or just a new fresh version of it, or even to some a whole new song.

As I was looking and listening around Who Sampled, I couldn’t seem to find just one song to fit with my quotes. I thought that the idea of all of them combined really related to my quotes. All the songs tell a story, with the remix versions it just bumps up the beat thus changing the meaning of the story the artists are telling (such as with Britney Spears and Aerosmith). As for its correlation to my second quote, it goes along with what I mentioned above with remixes. It gives the songs a whole new beat and feel to it, make it almost like a new shiny toy does.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Blog #7 eBourgoing and Miller

Some of the main arguments Marguerite deBourgoing stated was artists “express their own individuality” with wearing a certain style of clothing, and even creating their own, clothes. Music is a way to expressions ones self in not just the music, but in their appearance, thus adding to their music and making it more memorable and giving it an image. Another argument she made was that with the digital revolution, hip hop is constantly adapting, innovation, and become more creative through time. One can see the changes in music and beats by looking back through time with Elvis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Backstreet Boys, Lady Gaga etc. Technology has been a huge factor with that in allowing us to create beats and rhythms that were not otherwise possible.  

I believe that Marguerite deBourgoing and our class discussion have many things in common, however one major thing stands out to me, technological determinism. In class we continually talked about the different technology out there available to us, how it has changed, and what the future looks like, along with how our culture has changed behaviors with new technology. With deBourgoing’s article she talked a lot about how music has changed with the digital revolution. Music can be seen and heard online as well as offline, and can be changed and mixed with various technologies. With the wide usage of technology, people are beginning to come up with new beats and mixing various songs together to make new songs. Technology has also allowed music to spread rapidly with the usage of the internet, allowing individuals to get a hold of songs easier and edit and mix them themselves. 

In the book Rhythm and Science, Miller makes many arguments with music. He stated that people have some type of emotional approach to music, whether to reach out and touch someone, or emotions from themselves, “genres are about the morphology of structure- how forms and feelings transmute from on e medium to another”.  With this music that is created, DJ’s are then just the next step in the transformation of that song with their alterations and giving it their own personal identification. Music now a days isn’t by just one person, it gets altered and then sometimes becomes even more popular then the original songs such as with the Grey Album, a mix of The Beatles and Jay Z.   

Through reading the article by deBourgoing and the book by Miller I found many connections between the two. They both mentioned a lot about DJ’s and how they are a big part of music creation now a days, especially though technology. They also both made a point about music being an art form and a way to communicate. Miller stated “I write because I want to communicate with other human beings” while deBourgoing stated “Hip hop is an art form that exists in a society with a strong written tradition yet it is an art form that travels mainly orally”. Both of these statements go very well together in that music is a way to communicate, a way to communicate in an artistic oral way.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Blog #5 The Third Order


What the Author Weinberger means by his quote “the meaning of a particular thing is enabled by the web of implicit meanings we call the world” is that there is more then one word to describe something. Rather then just looking at the name of something and nothing more, we should look more into the understanding of how everything fits together, its purposes, what it is made out of, how it works, how it helps something etc. So in a nut shell, an object is more then just what is it, it has a relation in the world and to everything around it.
This is very relevant to the third order of order in that looking at objects this way it gives it many terms that it is related to. In the book the example they used was a hammer, by using the third order you could find hammer by typing in tools, wooden tools, nail etc. The hammer is much more than just a hammer, it is something we made with various materials, something we use to connect other things, has a strong correlation to nails etc.  

Monday, January 31, 2011

Blog #4


In the article “What is Web 2.0” it explains the new features and advancements we have made to the web by comparing it to Web 1.0. One thing that I was able to link between this article and the book “Everything is Miscellaneous” was on the subject of tagging. In web 1.0 we had only come up with the idea of directories (taxonomy). With all the advanced feature, websites, applications etc. we have advanced to a more useful and practical way of organizing these things with tagging.
                Web sites can literally go under several different topics, depending on how users are using the site and how it relates to them. With tagging, the user is able to create their own key words to search and locate the site again through all the sites they have tagged. The user is able to use multiple key words to tag each page, thus putting it under several different categories, unlike Web 1.0 was able to do with just their directories.