During this period of social distancing, the days are starting to blur together because of the repetitive routine of watching lectures, studying for exams, completing assignments, while finding moments in between to spend time with my dog, eat dinner, and watch some Netflix. I think that some good things are coming out of this period of social distancing: more family time, cooking family meals, going on walks, and getting some time to slow down and take time for myself to read or watch some movies or series on Netflix. Last week I had my first online test for biology. It was on plants and some animals. I spent so much time last week studying for that test, and honestly it wasn’t an easy test to study for or take. This whole semester I have been trying different study methods from study guides, to flashcards, to flowcharts, to try to do my best in this class. I am not really sure what the best combination is for studying, but hopefully this class will he...
I thought the video “everything is a remix” that we watched in class was very interesting. I could not believe how many things I thought were completely original were actually bits and pieces of precious things strung together. The video really forced the viewer to rethink the definition of originality. It really makes me wonder whether the sampling of a song or movie scene was intentional or if it was just subconsciously done based on the artists personal interests. As students I feel like we are constantly worried about accidentally writing something (in an essay for example) and having it be plagiarism. While we worry about our ideas possibly being someone else's, it is happening in the real world too. With the music we listen to and the movies and tv shows we watch. We are constantly being influenced by the things we hear and see that it is possible there have been things that we have mistaken the original source. This all reminds me of a concept we learned in psychology where a person can remember a bit of information but completely forget where they acquired it. This is called source amnesia and it can happen to everyone. A memory or bit of information, like a tune for a song or idea for a movie scene, could pop into your head randomly in the middle of a conversation or part of your day and because you can identify a source for where you got it, you convince yourself it was you own original idea all along. I think that this could be the reason that everything in our lives is actually a remix. We fall victim to source amnesia and then claim ideas as our own when in reality we heard them somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, Led Zeppelin's song “Bring It On Home” was heavily influenced by Willie Dixon’s song of the same name. Willie Dixon sang blues music in the 1960’s, which was just a decade before Led Zeppelin was the most popular. Personally, I had never heard of Willie Dixon before watching this video in class and because Dixon’s music was not as mainstream as other songs it makes sense that Led Zeppelin may fail to recall where the tune came from. They could not look it up anywhere to verify that they were not copying and they probably were not even aware of what they were actually doing. Although the songs have very similar lyrics and overall tempo, Led Zeppelin took the song and made it the way they knew how, in the style of heavy metal. Although the song itself was not completely original, their concept of changing it from blues to metal definitely was. Personally I still think they should have given credit where it was deserved but I do not think that their creativity should be thought of as anything less than. They along with a few other bands, paved the pathed for this new genre of music which still influences the music we hear today.
Lexie Frost: First Blog Post
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