Writing these blog posts have made me realize I could never run a blog. I can never think about what to write about. As much as I want to mix things up and write about something that has nothing to do with quarantine or corona, that fact that I have been trapped in my house with nothing to do doesn't give me much else to talk about. I guess I can use this to vent about how much I dislike learning about plants. On Thursday I have a biology exam about plants and animals. Studying about plants, their structures, and how they reproduce, is one of the most boring things I have ever had to learn. Memorizing everything about gymnosperms and angiosperms is not my cup of tea to say the least. The fact that we have to be tested on it I find quite ridicules. I mean I get it, we are in school, paying thousands of dollars to learn, and I chose this major. But being forced to cram a shit ton of information about plants, their structures, and their behaviors, in my head in order to be able to ans...
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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