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.