English 201 for ... now what?

Although class is officially over, and this post could technically serve as the first on my blog that is nonacademic, I had a few lingering thoughts about English 201 that I wanted to express, even though most people from the class will not be reading them anymore. After listening to other people's comments in the discussion today, I realize that the course was organized in a manner where we moved from more traditional, Romantic writting in the begining of the semester. Writting the first paper and reading more complex, philosophical authors was probably the largest contributer to this factor. The focus, assignments, and discussion gradually progressed to the less traditional as we went from ghostwritting to plaigerism to sampling and remixing. In doing this, our collective view of the modern author was constantly challanged, for just as we became comfortable with a less conventional view of the author, the course moved a step further and we had to revisist the view of the author in a new, even less traditional light. I realize now that this factor kept me engaged and interested in the course throughout the semester. Just when I thought I'd figured out who the modern day author is, my view became skewed and I had to reconceptulalize my ideals.

Overall, I was very suprised with this course and my own enjoyment of it. I came into the semester thinking that I would have to write four or five formal essays and was pleasantly suprised to learn that our focus would be the opposite of this. Learning about new media forms that influence the present author not only gave insight to the course focus as a whole, but also introduced me to new technologies and writting mediums that I can use and still be an author. As I have never been a blogger before, my first experience with it was a learning one. I kind of knew that I would enjoy blogging even before I began it for the class. For this reason, I titled my blog "english 201 for now" with hopes that I would continue blogging after the semester is over, change the title, and make it more personal. With 15 weeks of blogging behind me, i now know that I would like to continue posting my random thoughts on a personal blog. From this point forward then, I will alter my "English 201 for now" blog to,... well I'm not exactly sure. English 201 is done...now what?

REmixed

So I decided that I still had more to say about my cd project. After looking at some of my classmates reflections on their projects, I have decided to post my tracks and liner notes to give a better picture of what exactly my project was all about. The theme of my cd was the impossible relationship and the things that complicate a relationship that could be, but doesn't work out. I titled the cd "Faded" to help depict an image of a relationship that can no longer exist for some reason or another. I wanted to title something short and seeminly simplistic to allow me to expand on it and further explain this broad title throughout the cd. The album artwork is also simplitic and portrays the image of two hands. There is a gap between the two hands suggesting that they either once were held together but have seperated or that they are reaching for eachother but are unable to connect. I think that both of these interpretations of the image contribute to my theme and what I am trying to convey.

This project was a good opportunity for me on many levels. I was able to turn in a piece of work to be graded even though i completely enjoyed the experience of creating it. I make cd's for my friends frequently, and this was an opportunity for me to share some of my music with the class. Also, making this cd was a learning experience, as it allowed me to critique my own compilation methods based on class readings. I learned new rules for creating cds and had to put more of a focus on transitioning between tracks and genres within the cd. Parhaps most important though, my completed cd allowed me to convey something about myself to the class using an untraditional writting and composition style. I think that in order to complete this assinment, I had to be a writter and not simply a mix artist. I picked a message and theme for my cd and consequently, used each track and transition to tell a story. When I started making this cd I decided to cater it to one of my friends who was just getting out of a serious relationship with one person and starting something new with me. My intention with this cd was not to come off as pessimistic or portray a sense of doom, but rather offer comfort. A lot of times, even the strongest and most promising relationships don't work out. Instead of dwelling on the past I wanted to express my belief that you should take the past as a learning experience and keep an open mind to something new that could come along in the future.

Adding a little mix

The mix tape assignment was an interesting one for me. Not only was this project much different from anything I have been expected to do for my previous classes, but it was also somehting that I very much enjoyed doing. I frequently make mix cd's for my friends and am constantly arranging new playlists in my itunes library. To be able to do this and get graded on it was a rewarding experience to say the least. Aside from the fun that I had putting together this project, it also served as a learning experience as it taught me about writting and composition that is present within music. In this case, I realized that mixed cd's are comprised of writting within each individual track and their arrangement into one collective whole helps tell a story. For this reason, mix cd's are dominated by writting by the artist on an individual song level and exhibit the writting, ideas, and composition techniques of the person creating the mix tape as this person conveys a message within their finished piece. In order to help better tell the story, I think that writting the liner notes contributed to effectively getting across any points or songs that the listener could be confused by. For me, the liner notes offered an opportunity to justify why I chose to include the songs that I did along with offering an interpretation of their meanings as they pertained to my overall theme of impossible relationships.

I tried to focus my cd on different things that complicate relationships, often causing them to fail. It was important to me that we were able to chose our own topic/message because I was able to pick a theme that I am genuinely interested in and knew I would be excited to craft a cd around. This aspect of the project helped me realize something that we've been discussing all year. Anyone can be a writter. I initially thought that I was just going to be throwing some songs onto a cd and turning it in, taking a few minutes to do the entire project. After spending several hours thinking about and working on the cd though, I realized that my passion and interest in my theme drove me to be a writer here. I spent so much time thinking about the best way to convey my message through the selection and arrangement of my song that I ended up not creating a cd with a bunch of songs on it, but rather a story that links very closely to my personal experiences. Overall, I realize that being passionate about my topic for this assignement allowed me to compose it from the perspective of a writter and not just a person randomly throwing some tracks together.

All cut up...

My experience completing the cut up assignment was certainly an interesting one. I never imagined it being so easy to create a new writting piece by simply rearranging my old writting. For the assignment I used four different papers I have written this semester and took a section of each of them. When chosing these selections, I based my decisions on what fit together best. For example, a page with a lot of indentations in it left gaping holes in the middle of my final piece, so I tried to shy away from using these and instead used ones that looked better. In general, I see the cut up style of writting as more of an art form than a writting assignment. Perhaps this is a result of the non-traditional style of writting that this utilizes. On another note we talked in class about writers who use the cut up as their predominate writting form and do so by writting an essay or story with the intention of cutting it up later. Although this is both adventurous and creative, I could not see myself actually writting something and putting time into it, only to later cut it apart. I guess that since I used old papers I had previously written instead of papers I wrote specifically for the purpose of this assignment, I had a more possitive experience with it than I may have otherwise. That said, here is an excepert from my cut up which combined a CommArts essay about film, a paper about education in the US, a Sociology paper about gender portrayal on reality television and a reflection on my ghostwritting experience for this class:

"Not only is it critical to identify the lear placement of each character in relation to one an essential to explore where that style stems from who shamed such gender relations, imposing legas an individual. The second writting sample is enforcing abandonment from the community. To class. It was a useful sample piece to use because alternative genders is fairly common among NatiWorld television show that the paper is based on."

Clearly, any individual reading this that was not already familiar with the assignment would see it as being nonsense. It is pretty obvious where the cut up pieces come together, as the topic of writting shifts from one thing to the next with no clear transition. I guess that if you sit down and try and analyze this piece by piece it is possible to make some sense out of it and generate a meaning using a large ammount of creativity. Luckily, I did not have too many words that blurred together. Though this makes each word easier to understand, it is also more of a challange to determine where the writting splits are.

After transcribing this passage, I have decided to change my mind and say that if I were to do too much more cutting up in the future I would not be philisophically inspired or feeling more creative. Instead, I think I would go through my writting with a massive headache.

Giving Spooky a second chance

So, after leading discussion on Monday, my thoughts about this book have changed slightly. I got the impression that most people in the class had at least some confusion surrounding what they read, which was comforting to me. Also, once I gathered my thoughts together and actually settled on my main discussion points, things got easier. I think that part of understanding this writting style and content is merely getting used to it by reading a portion of it even if you don't understand what you are reading. I found that after a certain point in my reading, things got easier. Also, I decided to pull out the few points that I really felt comfortable with and just focusing on those. As I continued to read, I was able to expand my knowledge of these points and slowly gained a further understanding of those and the reading as a whole. Part of the problem with this text is that it is written in such a unconventional style. The sentences are fragmented and Spooky jumps from one point to the next, never clearly connecting them together. Perhaps this is intentional. Just as sampling is utilizes a musical style that is artistic and abstract, perhaps he intentionally wrote this way to give is readers a taste of what it is like to sample. Also, I think that sampling is something rooted in creativity, and likewise, this writting hinges on the same creativity. Spooky might not one, common interpretation to surface from the text and so he wrote it to have some ambiguity in attempt to foster multiple interpretations of it. When I read further in the book I think that I will keep these things in mind. Instead of stressing about whether or not I am pulling the intended message out of the text, I will just try and pull some interpretation out and try and think of other possible ones that could be present. Also, if DJ Spooky reverts back to his writting style of chapter one, I am going to try and avoid becoming overwhelmed. I don't think you need to gather meaning from everything he says. Especially since we will discuss the reading in class and everyone can bring something different to the discussion, I will try and focus on the things that I do understand rather than feeling overwhelmed with the ones I do not.

Failing to find the rhythm or understand the science behind it

So, I am supposed to do a short presentation in class tomorrow based on our first reading assignment from DJ Spooky's "Rhythm Science". Before we try and grasp some understanding of it as a a class, I thought it was entirely necessary to express my complete confusion regarding everything I just read. The look of the book is deceiving. It is thin, there are pictures every other page, and there is an unavoidable hole in the middle of each page. The unique design and overall look of the book is not only fascinating, but also mislead me to believe that this would be a quick, enjoyable read. After reading only a few lines, I knew that all of these preconceived notions were inaccurate and that I was in big trouble. I read the first page three times and had my friends do the same, each of us trying to grasp some sort of meaning embeded in the text. Unfortunately, these efforts did not lead us to any sort of understanding of what Spooky is trying to convey. At this point, all I am thinking is that perhaps this is the point of the text and it is only going to continue in this same direction. Maybe it is supposed to be just as complicated as we perceive it to be. Just as art, entertainment, muisc, sampling cannot be clearly described and portrayed through a few simple sentences, maybe Spooky is making this writting exceptionally hard in an attempt to portray the complexity of each of these other media forms. Right now, I am comfortable with making this assumption even though my initial assumptions regarding the ease of this read were undoubtedly proven to be wrong to me over the past hour. Even though this first page was a challange to even get trhough, I thought that, perhaps, the read would get easier and more understandable once I got into it more. Once again, I was proven wrong. I spent so much time trying to make sence of the fragmented sentences and seemingly disjointed thoughts that I fell short of ever seeing the big picture of the argument, if there is even on that exists here. Basically, all of this has lead me into a state of complete and utter panic. How am I supposed to present and teach the class about what I read when I have absolutely no clue what I read? How do I summarize the overall argument made here when I cannot even disect the meaning of most given sentences or sets of them? At this point, I am thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is give Spooky a rest for awhile and give it another look in the morning. If this does not solve my problems, I am very afraid that the only thing I am going to be able to convey to the class in discussion tomorrow is my unending confusion and overall frustration with what I read but failed to make any sort of sense of.

These are the images that i created for my sampling assignment. the first one is the one that I developed utilizing copyrighted material while the second one relies on my own original work. This second one consists of photos that I have taken at concerts and images that I drew using different computer programs.

Mixing it up...a reflection on sampling

After completing the sampling assignment, I have generated a few lingering thoughts regarding copyright and sampling which, consequently, have sparked this reflection on my own sampling experience as well as the larger role of sampling and copyright in our entertainment industry as a whole.

Copyrighted Material: With my sampling piece I focused on copyright, plagiarism, and sampling from a musical standpoint, as we focused much attention on musical downloading and the RIAA’s role of regulating musical content. My canvas features three separate aspects of the music industry and the images are blurred together when looked at from left to right. The first portion or panel of the canvas portrays musical production by the artist while the third, far right, panel is a take on musical reception by the general public. In the middle portion of the canvas, there is a focus on everything that happens in between production and reception. This specific picture is a snapshot of someone sampling music, mixing it up to make it their own. The edges that border the middle photo blur into the ones beside it. Likewise, the entire canvas has been changed to grayscale. The first picture is much darker while the last one is much brighter. Once again, the middle photo serves to link the two together as it is a gray tone somewhere in the middle of the outer two. I chose to present my image like this as a suggestion that the things we have learned about regarding sampling, copyright, and similar regulations are not clearly defined in a black and white fashion. Lessig demonstrates the potential for each individual to interpret the meaning of such regulations differently, and consequently, the entire canvas features different shades of gray. As there are various viewpoints, interpretations, and opinions about copyright, there is no clear black and white coloring defining the canvas. The images and edges blend together in shades of gray further suggesting this ambiguity. Another attribute of my completed piece which connects the artist to the industry to the audience is the headphone cord that stretches across the entire canvas. It is the only image that touches in each of the three panels and serves as a subtle marking of the interdependency of each part on the others. If there were no audience to receive the work, there would probably be no need for copyright. Similarly, if the copyright section were to be removed from the canvas and society in general, there would be nothing to connect the artist to the audience or regulate the relationship between the two. Overall, this canvas suggests the need for copyright in our entertainment culture, but also addresses the caution that needs to be taken when considering copyright. In class, we have been addressing the different viewpoints that one can take on such issues and through my canvas, I hoped to further the vagueness of such regulations as well as the role they should play within our entertainment culture.

Original Material: It was much more of a challenge to make the same argument regarding copyright using my own artwork and photography. Although this can most obviously be related to the fact that relying on other people’s acclaimed work is easier than developing and utilizing one’s own, I think that part of this challenge had to do with the mere fact that it is difficult to recreate something that you have already created once before. Moreover, it was easy creating the first canvas because I had my message and ideas ready; however, when it was time to create the second, I had nothing new to bring to the assignment. I expelled most of my good ideas on the first canvas, and essentially began to run out of new ones by the time I completed the second. Instead, I was left trying to duplicate my previous thoughts in a new way, which was much harder than I had imagined. For this canvas, I utilized some of the same techniques such as blurring the edges between the photos to signify a blurred distinction between copyrighted material and our understanding of it today. Instead of utilizing only three main panels for this canvas, I assembled it in the form of a collage, consisting of multiple images. Like the first canvas, all of the images are grayscale. This was helpful when it came time to blend the images together, as the colors easily and quickly faded into each other. Although my attempted message for this piece was the same, my means of getting their differed. I think this collage method of assembling the canvas was a little more difficult as my pictures were less organized and it was harder to manage the canvas as a whole. In addition, I think that my overall message is better portrayed and can more easily be understood by the first canvas of copyrighted material; however, the second one attempts to recreate a previous idea, and does so adequately at least. Overall, reconstructing this second canvas to make my same argument was more difficult to do and presented me with some unexpected challenges that affected my sampling experience as a whole.

Sampling with this sampling assignment

After being introduced to the sampling assignment in class, I am anticipating a good experience completing it over the next few weeks. I, personally, have virtually no experience with the program we are working with (or any similar programs for that matter) and am interested in becoming more seasoned with it. I think part of the exciting yet daunting aspect of this assignment is that the possibilities of what a person could do with it are endless. Essentially, this assignment is more creative and expressive than writing based, yet is another opportunity to experiment with how composition is something that can focus on more than merely traditional formal writing. As we’ve experimented with such things as ghostwriting and plagiarism and will continue to learn about music composition in completing the mixed tape assignment, this assignment will allow an opportunity to compose something non-traditionally. At the same time, I think the idea of having an assignment centered purely in one’s own creativity is also overwhelming. I am starting to think deeply about what my finished piece will portray. Do I want to express something about myself? Society? Life in general? College? My past experiences? It’s exciting that I have so many options to work with, but I am also not sure which direction I want to go with this. Especially after looking at the sample piece in class, I realize that this is an opportunity to say something in an artistic and creative way, without writing it out. The artist who composed the sample we viewed clearly had some message that we were supposed to find within his work, but each class member had a slightly different analysis of it than the next. I am already starting my own sampling piece to this example one, wondering if it will be sufficient compared to that one example. I think the only way I am really going to answer any of these questions is to play around with some options over the next few days and see what I come up with. Hopefully I will find some good ideas and be able to weed out some less sufficient ones and finally be able to move forward from this brainstorming stage.

Free Culture..with consequences

Overall, I found the first 60 pages of Lessig's "Free Culture" particularly enjoyable. I think part of this has to do with the fact that I am a Communication Arts major and I've been studying a lot of this in my other classes. In fact, I think we've actually read excerpts from Lessig in the past. For this reason, reading about some of the history behind radio and internet formation, for example, simply reiterated some of the things that I have been learning about for classes in my major. And since they are for my major, I guess that this explains why I found the related reading so pleasant. One thing that I found particularly interesting and disturbing was the story about the college student, Jesse Jordan (starting on page 48). Although we've been discussing lawsuits by the RIAA involving Napster, youtube, and the two UW students, I found this one to be unique and reading it struck a nerve with me. When we read about the UW students who are facing the lawsuit for illegal music downloading, I was upset because I know this means they are going to end up losing a lot of money (and sleep) over something that many, many people do simply because the RIAA is chosing to make an example out of these students. In Jesse's case, they made him an offer: pay them every penny he has to his name in a settlement agreement or go to court and risk paying upwards of $250,000. I know that the industry is trying to do what they can to stop people from downloading illegally but I just don't think that this is the way. What if they imposed smaller fines on more people for illegal downloading? Say, if they catch you you owe 50 bucks or something? Then, they could impose the fine on more people, teaching them a lesson and deterring them from downloading illegally while not destroying the lives of a few unfortunate few who get caught. I'm not sure if this is a plausible solution to the way the RIAA is handeling the issue, but I am convinced that there must be some other way from what they are doing now.

Plagiarism at its finest

Upon reflecting on the plagiarism assignment, I realized that I had a great time breaking the rules that typically apply to writing. I think that one of the most difficult aspects of this assignment was picking a topic to write about. I settled upon basing my paper on affirmative action because I have taken a few sociology and history classes that delved into this topic. I already had the background knowledge to write the paper and was also able to use a few sources from readings that I had to do for class. I thought this would be a really good idea because i wasn't sure if these would even be able to be found on the internet. As it turns out, they are searchable in google, but my partners had a difficult time figuring out which sources I actually used. A lot of the material and information about affirmative action is rather repetitive. I guess this was to my own advantage as my partners were able to distinguish certain passages of my paper that were not my own writing, but they also were not able to determine which source I actually plagiarized. My sources that I took from the internet, I knew would be easier to search. For these, I experimented by paraphrasing or changing around the word order so they wouldn't come up as quickly when typed into google. I think that overall I was able to hide my plagiarism fairly well, or at least successfully blended it into my writing. I think that this was a good experience overall. I realized that it is actually very easy to accidentally plagiarize by forgetting to cite a source or by paraphrasing but then never attributing the work to the source it is based upon. In the future, I think I will be forced to think more closely about what I am writing and make sure not to accidentally plagiarize. On one final note, I have also realized that I would not be a good TA or teacher because when I was trying to spot plagiarism in my group members' papers I had an extremely difficult time doing so. In one paper, I was not able to find a single source that was used. Perhaps it is better that I am the one writing my papers rather than reading them.

Some lingering ethical issues in relation to ghostwriting...

Perhaps I am in the minority in our class, but I think that we need to look at ghostwriting as a profession. When people engage in it they are usually bound by contract, are paid a certain specified amount of money, and make the personal choice that they would rather not receive credit for their writing if it means getting paid. And as for the people paying others to ghostwrite for them... I think that if they are willing to pay someone to author something with them it is their own choice to do so. I understand the ethical concerns that many people have with ghostwriting, but I think looking at it as a profession changes these issues in my mind. In all actuality, there are many professions out there that people consider unethical but exist nonetheless. Just becuase something is not ethical does not mean that it should not be allowed. I think it is important to consider ethics and legality as two separate issues when it comes to ghostwritting.

Ghostwriting Reflection

While some people may have found difficulty in writing about a topic outside of their realm of expertise, my difficulties with this assignment were more closely linked to writing style and voice. As the individual I ghostwrote for has a very different writing style from my own, I had to rewrite parts of this paper several times in order to make it fitting with my subject's own voice. I guess I never really thought much about my own writing style before now, but this assignment forced me to do just that. I now realize that in my own writing, I tend to utilize the passive voice more than the average writer and my sentences are on the longer side, frequently broken up with parenthesis and semicolons. In addition, my incorporation of sentence splices is another attribute that may distinguish my writing from other people’s. Perhaps some of these differences can be attributed to our different academic focuses. Since I am a Comm Arts major here, I am very familiar with writing papers for Comm Arts classes, while my subject is more used to writing a different style of papers in her education classes. For this reason, our personal styles are noticeably different. In total, these factors came into play during my ghostwriting. After completing my first draft, my subject read over it and voiced concern that the style did not really match her own. We then had to sit down together and revise some of these troubled areas in order to make the paper more applicable to her own personal style. I’m not quite sure how this turned out, but I think that we at least made some progress. Overall, this assignment was helpful to me as it not only allowed me the opportunity to try ghostwriting but also gave me insight to my own writing style and how it differs from that of my peers.

And as a quick comment on the ethics of ghostwriting in relation to my experience here: I didn't have too much of an ethical problem with ghostwriting before completing this assignment, and still do not. I think that this was much more of a challange to complete than I initially thought and do not think I will being a great deal of ghostwriting in the future...unless I am paid enough money to offset the hardship, that is.

Unknowing plagerism

After the discussion in class Wednesday, I have been thinking about all of the different ways you can plagerize. It is certainly not as black and white as I used to think. When the guest speakers were telling stories about students they had who plagerized without really understanding why the tings they did were wrong, I started thinking of the times that perhaps I have been in the same position. It isn't always easy to determine what constitues plagerism. I thought that reading UW's plagerism policy may clear this up for me, but I think it just complicates the issues further. Plagerism exists on a very large spectrum and the university deals with each case slightly differently it appears. I think that the past few days have made me aware of the importance of submitting drafts of my papers to TA's and the writting center before they are due in class in hopes of catching any accidental plagerism that I may unknowingly incorporate in my writting. It will be interesting to see what other people think about this during our discussion in class today.

Ghostwritting or Plagerizing?

After Friday's discussion about ghostwritting, I spent a few minutes over the weekend looking and thinking further about the issue. The distinction between ghostwritting versus plagerizing is a difficult one to define and may differ somewhat depending on the media form involved. For example, we talked briefly about music and plagerism in class. Artists are invarriably influenced by musicians before them. There are a large number of lawsuits dealing with an artist who claims that another took a portion of their own song. In some cases the lyrics of a part of the song are the same or very similar. Other times the controvercy involves the instramental rather than lyrical attributions of a song being too similar. How can we determine if an artist deliberately took a part of another person's song when there are so many songs that have been created already? I think that it is inevitable that there will be some repetition in music eventually. Sometimes this could easily occur on an unintentional level as musicians are probably not aware of all of the people and things that influence their music. I guess certain cases could be more visibly be defined as plagerism, but more ambiguious examples complicate our views of plagerism.

I know I have said this before, and hopefully other people feel the same way, but I am certainly finding this blogging experience a learning one. I realized just now that I do not have a blog roll for my classmates but am incapeable of setting this up do to my technological incompetence. It is on my list of things to do I guess. I know Scott is excited for us to learn how to do things like adding you tube clips and photos, but for me this is not in my foreseeable future. Instead, I have decided to spend my time on the things I am actually capeable of doing.

Even though our project due date is extended, I think it is time for me to settle on my topic for the paper. Since I am into all great "chick flick" movies, I thought I could get the most out of this paper by writting about something I am actually interested in...and therefore have settled on using "How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days" as the focus of my paper. For those of you who have not seen it, Andy Anderson (played by Kate Hudson) is a writer for "Composure", a women's fashion magazine. One of her assignments is to do an experiment/assignement where she must date a guy and then get him to dump her. She has to deal with writting ethics and struggles throughout the film with the fact that she desires to write about things such as politics, religion, and world problems rather than fashion. I know that I need to do more brainstorming to really pull this topic together but I am thinking/hoping that once I collect and organize my thoughts I will come up with something intersting.

An official blogger

After some technical difficulties getting my blog started (perhaps a result of my own technological incompetence) I am finally able to post. I am just getting ready to start reading the Foucault "What is an Author" article and am hoping it is a little easier to comprehend than our last assignment. I went back and took another look at Wednesday's readings and was still unable to wrap my head around the complicated arguments he is making. Perhaps it is the philosophical nature of it all that has me confused. I am looking forward to going to class tomorrow and seeing what the other groups made of the reading, since my group was the first and only one able to speak on Wednesday. I guess I am just hoping that everyone else is as confused as I am and it will suddenly all start to make sense at some point, otherwise I am in for trouble.

First Post Ever

This is the first blog I have ever had and am just now creating one as a requirement for my English 201 class. I am excited about the experience and hope to learn a lot more about technology in general through my blogging. I am looking forward to posting each week on things both related and unrelated to the course and will be able to use this blog to track my overall progress in the course throughout the semester.