- This assignment meant learning a few new skills such as recording, editing, uploading, and sharing my very first podcast. As I was thinking about what to say, I found myself thinking back to podcasts I’ve listened to and emulating a few of their stylistic choices to get a starting point for my own. It was very different writing out a script that I knew would have to be recorded and not just listened to live; it did make me more aware of how the sentences flowed and the subtleties of certain word choices. I learned how to work Audacity, which I had never done before, but with the aid of their instructions and a few YouTube videos, it went pretty smooth. I had made SoundCloud accounts in the past, so that was the easy part. All in all, a cool opportunity to learn some new skills around editing sound clips and layering music.
Month: November 2021
- “ They can engage with that original purpose of the Web – sharing information and collaborating on knowledge-building endeavors – by doing meaningful work online, in the public, with other scholars. That they have a space of their own online, along with the support and the tools to think about what that can look like” – Why ‘A Domain of One’s Own’ Matters (For the Future of Knowledge) → This quote seems to fit in quite well with how our ePortfolio work in class is; a place to get our work out there and start to understand how to take advantage of that. In high school, I never thought of creating a webpage-type account to keep all of my work. Although I did, and still do, save all of my writing assignments and more significant projects because I never know when I might want to look back or use them somehow. Having a platform like my ePortfolio to organize those projects and academic accomplishments definitely makes that looking back part much more manageable and easily accessible. Another important positive mechanism that ePortfolios can have on education is collaboration and engagement with others. Whether or not everyone wants to embrace our reliance on the internet and online structure for academia, it is not going anywhere. I think that making this a part of students’ academic lives will encourage them to continue to share their work with others online and feel comfortable with the growing technologies. This can lead to people later in life having the mindset to grow and adapt to forms of sharing work and creating a place where they can showcase their own accomplishments.
- “…it becomes apparent that appropriation, mimicry, quotation, allusion, and sublimated collaboration consist of a kind of sine qua non of the creative act, cutting across all forms and genres in the realm of cultural production”(pg. 61) → In some ways, I see how this quote hold true in the sense that human nature leans toward copying and mimicking things you like or admire. I think that it is a necessary step for some tyes of creation, whether within literature or art, that to find one’s uniqueness, it helps to draw from areas you connect to. What comes to my mind is the endless adaptations of Romeo and Juliet. Some are serious versions that wish to hold true to the original intent as much as possible, while others take different directions. If I ask my grandmother which version she likes best, she will go with the one within her generation; she feels comfortable with it and has sentimental value. In comparison, my Aunt swears by the 1996 version even though it is drastically different from the traditional story. Regardless of what version, however, no one implies that the initial play from 1597 has lost value. The creativity that each generation seems to have felt is based on a connection with the original; though they may have reinvented aspects, it inherently gives hommage to the influentialness of Shakespeare’s work. My question is whether or not the line is drawn on appropriation, mimicry, quotation, etc., based on what light they are being perceived in? What if a chosen work is copied to showcase a viewpoint that disagrees entirely with the original intent? Would copying in admiration or in a positive way blurs the line of plagiarism?
- “Lastly, does our appetite for creative vitality require the violence and exasperation of another avant-garde…or might we be better off ratifying the ecstasy of influence – and deepening our willingness to understand the commonality and timelessness of the methods and motifs available to artists?” (pg 67) → I found this quote to be really thought-provoking in the sense that humans might not be as original as we think ourselves to be. What might genuinely be the creativity and originality are the solutions and deeper connections we make with age-old problems and aspects of the human experience that are truly timeless. With technology, for example, we think of all these amazing advancements and wonder how anyone could ever have not known about something some universally excepted, say germ theory. However, we rarely think about how someone at one point in time thought that they knew all there was to know about medicine and disease until a new generation used their thinking process and ideas to make something new. With art, culture, music, etc., it seems to be the same thing. We are a society that constantly wants to diverge from the old and make modern inquires, yet at the same time, so did the people before us that we now use as creative starting points. I agree with this idea of the ecstasy of influence because if you look back through time and history, it is so remarkable that we shared so many of the same emotions and problems that why not look to previous expressions of literature and creativity to help us navigate our own lives. I wonder at what point did we decide to put so many labels and laws on what can and cannot be used? Does it vary based on culture? I understand the necessity of allowing authors and creators rights to their work, but should it be more personalized and up to the artists themselves
