The professor stared. "Have you," he said, "really spent your time in studying such nonsense?"

(Haha, no, I don't actually think this is entirely nonsense; I was looking as I read for a good quote about study and research from Frankenstein that I could use as the title, and I found this one somewhat comical.)

In my revisiting of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, (I've only reached the letters and beginning chapters thus far) one thing that particularly stood out to me in the terms of remix was the use of  the captain's letters at the beginning. These letters don't necessarily pertain to remix in the sense of remaking something already done into a new version, but rather in the sense that it pieces together different media to tell a story, something which remix also does. Having the two different perspectives of the captain's letters and then Dr. Frankenstein's firsthand account adds a greater depth and texture and meaning to the story than it would if it was just Dr. Frankenstein's perspective or just the captain's letters. I think remix has a similar effect in that combining multiple pieces of media together give a new and different feel and meaning to the combined piece than any of the pieces have on their own.

I see this for example in my personal favorite remix, which I know I've mentioned in class before, but have never actually posted or showed to you. Here it is, the U2 music video to "Window in the Skies" which remixes countless examples of other music video footage to make something completely new and wonderful. I never get tired of it:

In combining each of these videos together, we get a completely different story and feel than each of the other music videos would have separately. Frankenstein does the exact same thing. Furthermore, this video shows that remix can be used  for things beyond often stupid parodies, but rather can be used for beautiful art.

As I  branched out further in my research, I encountered another remix video which I  also really like and which fits in quite well with our theme of remixing classic literature. This is a beautifully done remix combining footage from the PBS TV mini-series called "The Dust Bowl" with text from Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

It helps to bring Steinbeck's words to life and makes the text more accessible to a wider audience, and in turn his text adds greater meaning to the images that it's juxtaposed with. Again, this shows how remix can be used for something positive, useful, and even educational instead of just for comic entertainment.

Digital Missionaries

One of Dr. Burton's lectures that I have personally found most fascinating was the one on technology and the Church, particularly in regards to sharing the gospel via digital culture. As a personal little side project, I've decided that I want to start researching that more and find out how digital culture furthers the spreading of the gospel. I personally have some of my own experiences that I'd like to share in future blog posts. But first, I wanted to hear from others about how they use digital media to share the gospel. Here's the response that I got:

I'd like to hear actual specific stories on any results that may have come of this so I'm going to inquire further. But until then, I want to reference the first post here: http://inhisownlanguage.com/.  This is something I have recently discovered, even prior to this post. In His Own Language is a series of gospel webisodes developed by some members to strive to fulfill the promise in D&C 90:11 that "in that day, every man shall hear the fulness of the gospel in his own tongue." The site currently holds webisodes in Danish, Italian, Romanian, Swedish, English, with French, Dutch, Hebrew, Armenian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Norwegian, and German soon to come. This is just one example of LDS members being proactive and finding their own new ways to use new media to share the gospel.

Here's a sample of the first English episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLIzJWUAtR8&feature=youtu.be

Don't kill the messenger...

So yesterday in my interview with Dr. Burton, he was commenting on how our group seems to lack motivation, excitement, and/or passion behind our project. Perhaps it's just me, but I think I have to agree. (Or is it just me? What do you guys think?)

He posed the question to me, "If you could start over from the beginning and you were in charge of picking the project, what would you do?" I thought this was an interesting question, and would like to pose the same question to all of you group members. What would you do?

He suggested that perhaps we should start over and could perhaps even break up into different groups. Now, I know this might sound extremely painful to have to start over completely, but don't kill the messenger, I'm just relaying what he said to me. And it's not necessarily saying it will happen. But just think hypothetically, and ask yourself what would be something you really want to do if you could do it from the beginning?

What if we all just post on our blogs individually and hypothetically what we each would do if we could do a project that we were really excited about and actually want to do. That way we can see what really truly interests all of us, and see if we want to take a different route.

I have my own idea, but don't want to impose it on anyone, so I'll wait to post until later. So let's just all see what each of our personal interests really are, even if it's not something we're going to end up doing. Just so we can get a better idea of what would motivate each of us.

It just seems like we need something that we all care a little bit more about to help get everyone more motivated and excited about the project. Perhaps I'm just speaking for myself, but right now it kind of feels like we're lacking in that area and aren't making much progress because of it.

If you're all just completely in love with our current project, that's fine too, and we can keep going on it if we all want. Like I said, don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.

Self Evaluation

This class has truly been like no other class that I've ever had, and I've enjoyed learning many new concepts and applications, combined with various fascinations as well as frustrations.

Perhaps the hardest thing for me has been trying to establish a focus along the way. I began, thinking  I would focus on digital culture's influence on human relations and interactions. I read the non-fiction book The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives, with this focus in mind. However, this book expanded my view of digital culture beyond just this original purpose. I learned more about the wide-reaching effects digital cultures, that it goes beyond just human relations, but rather can even affect the quality of the human condition, influencing issues such as medicine in third world countries for example. This made me realize even further all of the positive influences of digital culture and that there are many ways that it can be used for good, rather than mere entertainment.

My reading of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried further aided me in my study and contemplation of this topic, particularly in that it helped realize even more the importance of having a worthwhile purpose when using digital media; to be active contributors rather than merely passive consumers. The Things They Carried helped me in thinking about this digital culture concept because of its theme of wandering aimlessly, and things losing their necessity if they don't have a clear purpose behind them. The soldiers wander aimlessly, and discard seemingly necessary supplies, regarding them as unnecessary, because of a lack of clear purpose of why they're in Vietnam and why they're even fighting the war. This made me think of the digital world and how many people just use it passively, and often pointlessly, simply wasting time, like these soldiers wasted supplies. For this reason, there are many critics in the world who assert that digital culture in general is a waste of time. However, I realized that this is only the case when people fail to recognize the numerous beneficial forms and functions of digital culture and social media. Viewed in this light--having a clear, meaningful purpose--digital culture actually becomes a necessity rather than a mere pleasure or simply a waste of time. This concept of comparing "Consume, Create, and Connect" has been one of the most intriguing to me.

It caused me to start thinking and researching ways in which I could promote this concept. That's when I developed the idea of having a media diet--a balance between the good, "healthy" media consumption/contribution and the more "junk food"-type media. At this point, I feel that my self-directed learning increased a lot, because I had found something that really interested me and was excited about. But then I found out that we had to do group projects instead, and as I melded into another group, most of these original ideas got dissolved because they didn't really relate to other peoples' purposes in the group. That was fine, I tried to find new things to be excited about and ideas to contribute to the group; however it seems that these ideas keep failing to take root with anyone else, and no one is really interested in them, so they just get dissipated. After awhile of this, I start losing motivation to come up with ideas or do further self-directed learning, because I don't feel as much purpose or passion behind it, or that what I do has much consequence. I'm still working towards this and will do my best to find the same excitement in this as I had in some of the other topics I was studying. I do nonetheless greatly appreciate the help of my classmates, both in my group and in earlier topics as we have engaged in conversation on our various topics, and exchanged ideas and their interest and excitement often spreads to me.

Mashup Mocumentary

I mentioned in a post on Google+ a few days ago the concept of doing our mashup project somewhat like a mocumentary in which we can show the process of creating our mashup project and then show the final mashup project at the end, in a similar manner as the mocumentary, The Five Obstructions .

The Five Obstructions is a very sophisticated mashup. Back in 1967, Jørgen Leth directed a short film called "The Perfect Human." 

Then 36 years later in 2003 Leth along with another renowned Danish director, Lars von Trier did an interesting project to remix "The Pefect Human." In this mocumentawry, von Trier challenges Leth to remix his original short film five different times, each time based on a certain set of restrictions. For example, in the  first obstruction, von Trier sends Leth to Cuba and sets his first seemingly impossible rule: to make a film with shots that are no longer than twelve frames at a time.

We see the mocumentary portion, but then also the actual products that Leth makes. Meanwhile, in the process of showing this film-making process, the film actually tells a story with a point and meaning behind it, bringing you to realize that this film isn't actually a straight-out documentary but rather a scripted mocumentary. Here's the trailer for the film to get more of the general idea:

Now, how does this relate to the Monster Mashup?

Dr. Burton suggested the notion that our project of mashing up Frankenstein is in a way like the monster of Frankenstein itself: it's taken from various sources and put together in a new way to give it new life. Thus, we, in a way, are like Dr. Frankenstein and could potentially do a mocumentary of our process of creating Frankenstein (i.e. our project/video) in order to show the same themes and principles that Dr. Frankenstein learns and that we learn from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, applied to our modern audience.

This would allow us to be true to the themes of the original Frankenstein while additionally presenting our own mashed up monster video of Frankenstein, however we decided to do it.

I'm not saying that this is necessarily what we need to do, but it's just a thought.

What makes a good classical lit mashup?

In my research of  remix and mashup culture, particularly of classical literature, I encountered this excellent blog http://eskymaclj.blogspot.com/2012/09/mashing-up-literature-rap-fairy-tales.html that discussed what makes a good remix of classical literature.

I particularly liked this definition of a good classical lit mashup:

"To be read in my classroom, a mashup must maintain the core integrity of the original in terms of plot, character, narration (although this may change from the original) and complexity.  It must also add something new to the original that, because of the creative and interpretive nature of the mashup genre, makes the original text more approachable.  A remix is meant to be read with the original."

This blog also led me to discover this man called Baba Brinkman, a "rap troubadour" who does raps of classical literature, adhering to the above definition of a good classic lit remix. Here's a preview of his "Canterbury Tales" rap:

You can find his website here: http://www.bababrinkman.com/

I  think this info will prove very beneficial for our own Monster Mashup group, in helping us know that we need to adhere to the original themes of the classical text, but can still creatively break quite drastically from the original form to make it applicable to a modern audience.

He proposed... in binary code!

Haha, no not really, but he did propose last Saturday! (though he did actually give me a paper with a binary proposal just as a joke afterwards. :P) . Anyway, that's why I  haven't been updating my blog as regularly. I've been a bit busy and distracted with making plans this past week, but I'll work on getting back into my regular posting routine.

Feedback for LBP Group

Well, I keep trying and trying but for some reason I can only watch your video up to 0:57, so unfortunately I don't feel like I can give much valid feedback, but I'll do my best. I think it's fascinating that you want to combine video games with educating people in how to actually use and create the game itself. I think doing so will make video games a lot more purposeful, allowing people to actually contribute instead of just consume.
At the beginning when you used the word "edutainment" I thought the project was about using video games for educational purposes (i.e. to help kids learn school-related things) but as the video continued I began to realize that it was more about educating how to use the game itself. I don't know if you say this later in your video or not, but one thing that might be beneficial is to specify your target audience, particularly your targeted age group. And what do you think about also using the program more for educational purposes and teaching various school subjects? Is that possible with this program? Here's a website that I found that you might be able to use to bounce of for some social proof: http://www.etceteraedutainment.com/. Also, why is it important for people to know how to use this game?I'm sorry it's not much, but hopefully that helps to some degree. Keep up the good work, I'm excited to see how it turns out!