Creativity, Influence, Ownership, and Art in the Digital Age

What is Digital Media and Why Study It?

The main point I essentially got from this presentation was that Digital Media is discontinuous, while analog is continuous. I knew about most of the information presented, so the presentation wasn’t particularly interesting to me. I did help to refresh my memory about some of the topics presented.

Lev Manovich

An interesting point on what we perceive to be “new media”. I find it interesting that the format in which something is presented causes it to become a certain type of media. A picture on a computer is considered new media while a physical picture is old media. The fact that the Analytical Engine did not take off the same way that the daguerreotype did shows how long it can take for a new idea to take off.

The Ecstasy of Influence

Quotes are always an interesting thing. They are taken, misread, manipulated, and re-quoted back, incorrectly. There is a major difference between plagiarism and remixing. Lets be frank, especially in film, everything has been done already, to an extent. Everything now is how well you can remix something by using bits and pieces of previous movies. But, it all depends on how well you can do it. James Camerons Avatar, for example, remixed the story of Pocahontas. But, he did such a terrible job of concealing it that everyone instantly recognized it for what it was. Essentially he plagiarized the story. That’s just not acceptable. To do something right, it has to take parts from many different stories, not just one.

Lawrence Lessig

To an extent, a copyright is incredibly important. They allow for artists and inventors to protect their ideas from being plagiarized. They are very important for giving credit to where credit is due.

Girl Talk

Girl Talk is great. I love how he remixes songs using existing ones. I don’t really view his work as stealing, more as recreating.

Steve Dixon

While the concept of Digital Performance is interesting, I feel like it ruins the point of a stage performance. To me, a performance is something that you have worked on, trained for, and put your own blood and sweat into. I almost feel like a digital performance is a cop-out.