September 6, 2016: Body Modification - Documentary or Mockumentary?
Today we watched a video of a man named Jerome, a "collector of custom wearable art" as what he claimed in the video. He has many tattoos all over his body and had decided to take one step further, he wanted to get shot in the shoulder and he's paying for that. Body modifications are viewed differently, globally, depending on cultures, religions or locations. No matter how different our values can be, we could all probably agree that throughout the years, people have become more and more unique with their expression of self through the alterations of different part of their bodies. I personally think that the video was pretty convincing, but I'd still like to think that it is a mockumentary. I understand that there could be various, various reasons for someone to modify his/her body as an expression of individuality, but I still need an extensive explanation of why Jerome wants to seek his identity in a form of a new, painful scar. I also know that some people had their body modified to create a new understanding of an injured part of the body, just like how our fellow classmate, Veronica told the class about her friend who got a flower tattoo on top of her scar to after the tragic event. But when someone is willing to put himself under a lot of pain, I just don't think that is the socially acceptable way. Anyhow, it is a free country. As long as he is happy and he is not hurting anybody, he can do what he wants to. Nevertheless, the team behind the video definitely did a great job at provoking thoughts.
October 3, 2016: RIP: A Remix Manifesto
Today in class we watched the short movie about copyright. RIP: A Remix Manifesto is a documentary that talks about a very popular music artist know as Girl Talk. Girl Talk consists of one man named Gregg Gillis and he takes part from different popular songs and creates new music of his own. He doesn't use much of his material at all. A lot of people consider his work as stealing and what is known as copyright infringement, even though he changes the music so much, people can't even tell what songs he used. Girl Talk is known as mash-up artist, and according to the movie, mash-up artists have stirred up quite a controversy with both the copyright company and other artist they take the material from. A copyright is the legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic or artistic work. Copyright was once a means to guarantee artists a decent income. However, from what we saw in the movie, it is now the tool that conglomerates in the music, publishing, imaging and movie industries use to control their markets. There are a lots of levels of copyright, but copyright in its simplest form exists to protect the ownership of materials or ideas. In the short movie, the copyright issue was focused on music-making, specifically DJs. Copyright is a huge issues with music, particularly with recent downloading capabilities via the internet. The internet as a whole has created a lot of copyright issues, due the inability to manage the vast number of users and access. I do not have any experience in the issue but what I can tell and what my opinion is based on seeing the issue all around the world, and of course from the movie is, copyright is necessary. It protects you from from plagiarism, and messy and expensive lawsuits against people trying to pass off your work as their own. Imagine copyright like a lock on your front door. That's super important from people breaking into your house, right? When I was in the class AD105, one of my work was plagiarized. I was shocked, the guy who stole my work and claimed as his own, totally blatantly copied my work, without even altering an inch of the work. The assignment was to create smooth organic shapes using Adobe Illustrator and I don't know what makes he thinks people wouldn't find out. It was so obvious he literally copy and paste my work. I was cool at first, but when I think about the hours I have spent doing it, cracking my head finding inspirations and ideas, I couldn't let him go so easily. Si my instructor talked to me and we agreed that as a result, the guy who plagiarized my work will be getting a 0 for that particular assignment. Well, it may seemed a small problem, but it's affecting the creatoe, who is me. And I can only imagine if it's a bigger issue like in the entertainment industry. However, above all this, on another part, I feel like this copyright issue is burdening us, the users of entertainment. We are being charged for wanting to listen to songs (Apple Pay/Spotify/Pandora Music). I understand that the artists spend a fortune and years to create their music, but we just want to listen. Music is still being downloaded illegally today off the internet via other peer-to-peer sharing networks. This proves that society is not going down without a fight, control of the future still within its reach,
p/s: Does anyone miss the days when we would get very excited when our favorite band/artist came up with new album and we would rush to the store to purchase the physical album? I know I do! :P
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