Blog Post #10

Writing can be described as the art of putting words together and forming meaningful sentences. This year in this class I learned that writing is more than just a form of communication, writing brings people together by creating a new different form of entertainment.
A remix is a way of making new things out of things that already exist. For example, a producers song being taken and added a singer, and the singer makes it her song featuring the producer.
Without writing remixing would never be able to work out. Writing is the foundation of every kind of entertainment. Therefor if we have no original entertainment remixing would never be able to happen. So yes there is a very clear connection between the two.

Blog Post #9

While thinking about making my last project I decided that I wanted to focus on something that would matter to me on a larger scheme than just a school project. I had 3 ideas but my favorite was making a poster to motivate kids to join the arts. The exigency was that in the recent years the arts have been starting to be cut, if we dont motivate kids to open their eyes and see that the arts dont have to be a nerdy thing to do but in fact something great and fun to do. If no change happens soon the arts will be gone from the standard K-12 curriculum there for, I believe making something like this shows how important the cause is. Im trying to mimic the got milk posters. 

The second idea I had was to make an add for drunk driving. The exigency of this event is huge because it is clear intoxicated drivers put themselves in huge danger and put everyone else on the road in danger as well. I would make an ad to add on the DUI ads and not just include drunk driving but in fact include all types of intoxicated driving.

My last idea was to create a stay above the influece poster. I think that drug abuse in college campuses are extremely high, therefor I believe one should make new posters that could be more relatable with college kids.

Blog Post #8

Bitzers explains that there are three main components of rhetorical situation, they are exigency, audience, and constraints.

So Bitzer explains that exigence is a reason or the urgency of something to be done. Although he explains that exigence is not always rhetorical, he makes it clear that only exigences that can be modified can be considered to be rhetorical. In other words only exigence capable of positive modification and when this positive modification can be assisted by discourse is when exigence can be considered rhetorical. The in-text example that Bitzer uses is the example of air pollution, because the reduction of air pollution is brought on by discourse producing public awareness and action.

The second constituent of his rhetorical situation is audience. He describes audience as people able to be influenced and able to receive knowledge. So since rhetoric produces change by the influence that it has on people (since people act as mediators) it is obvious that an audience is necessary for rhetoric. He uses the example of scientists and poets that do not require an audience in order to produce their end.

The last constituent of rhetoric is constraints which are persons, events, objects, and relations. These are parts of the rhetorical situation because they have the power to limit or constrain decisions and actions needed to modify exigence. Bitzer explains that there are two main classes of constrains, ones which are operative and those that originate by the rhetor. 

Blog Post #7

Multimodality and genre in my opinion have a very strong relationship, I believe that without one you really cant have the other. The reason I believe this is because genre can be described as a way of organizing things by their similarities. Meanwhile multimodality is the different forms and ways that we can relay messages. So in other words multimodality uses modes to relay messages based on different types of genres. For example, the news about the Mayweather and Pacquiao fight is released through the TV on a sports channel at night, this all happens because of the genre the fight is in, this differs from lets say a murder case that is released instantly through a news channel and a prime news time.
I believe that the main relationship between multimodality and genre is that the type of mode used to portray information is determined by the genre of the information, making so that multimodality has a direct correlation with genre in the sense that it completely relies on genre to determine the way the information is going to be relayed.

Blog post #5

My Genealogy was based on the way in which Gustav Holst piece "Mars" from his symphony "The Planets" was remixed or one might even stolen by John Williams to compose the "Imperial March." From then on I went ahead to find out that other bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Zabbath had sampled mars as well but instead gave credit to Holst. My remediation is to focus on a breaking story, either in a fictional way or even a non-fiction way, that states that Holst is to sue John Williams for ripping him off and stealing his work.
 Anyways, since generally people that listen to classical music enjoy star wars I thought it would be clever to maybe make it an online article, and make it pass as maybe an Onion article. Which is cool because it is something that they could find online while checking social media. So basically my 1st targeted audience is perhaps classical music enthusiasts who love Star Wars, that are young enough to always be on social media but old enough to understand the content of the article.
The second audience I would like to target are young adults, perhaps college students that are music majors. The medium I would use is a news paper, mainly because I would like to make it sound like it was a serious matter, this would be more appropriate because of the audience is older and sophisticated making a news paper a great source for them to read about this.
The last medium I thought about using was a television news report, this would help me target the older crowd of people. Generally because the elderly spent most of their time watching TV and most of the elderly enjoy classical music, many even have profound knowledge on classical music, which would be great because they could relate and understand whats going on with my story.

blog post #4

Although Richards writing was very difficult to understand, reading the highlighted passages simplified the main points and through context clues and my basic knowledge of old English style writing I was able to come to an average understanding of each excerpt. For example, in the first excerpt I believe that Richards main point was that there is no wrong way of using a word. Which relates to our discussion of remixing in class because we are focusing on the idea that everything is basically recycled words, we reuse and "remix" sentences and words to make this new meaning, similar to what Richards is saying except we focus on the bigger picture (like combining sentences or even changing little modes in movies to come up with a completely different story line) opposed to him focusing on singled out words.
In an overall focus of the excerpts I concluded that Richards main idea was the faults of the traditional doctrine of usage. Hes argument is that the doctrine brings up misunderstandings of how a word could be used and that although there is no wrong way of using a word, a words overall meaning stands the same and its up to the surrounding context to be able to understand the true meaning of the word. This is why there is no wrong way of using a word, there is only misinterpretation of words but not a misusage of them.
Basically his excerpt was very confusing to understand, and very difficult to read. But overall I believe that he was trying to exemplify that words alone don't have a pre-determined meaning, but in fact they get their meaning from what surrounds them. Which is relatable to our discussion of remixes because just like the word, it is about the change of modes and the way that the creator portrays the work that make it "original" and not a plagiarized idea.

Blog Post #3

The way in which Johnson-Eilola and Selbers concept of assemblage relate to Remix is because they mainly talk about the way that plagiarism is actually not always that bad, which is similar to what were talking about, which is how different sources of entertainment relate and are remixed to one another, which is completely different than stealing a song, which is just what they say. They specify that just because a piece of information is already released by someone else, its not bad for someone to come in and add a bit of input on the subject. A big important key word on that matter is "add" if one is just stealing another persons work without putting in any input then that's when it can be considered plagiarism
The weird thing about this article is the way the information was presented to one. It felt like it was, well for most of the time, talking about pretty much the same thing, which led me to believe, at least the first time I read the article that there is really no line between plagiarism and originality. Johnson-Eilola and Selbers really focus on the fact that the reason its so hard to determine this "line" is because there is really no place where one can say that all the information they found is original, most findings are all based on previous peoples information and the fact that today's generation is so intertwined and information is so easily accessible, societies standards have made the writer or composer focus on not plagiarizing so much that it can sometimes alter creativity. That is the mere fact that confused me about the article, maybe a question asking what the thin line between creativity and plagiarism is would make more sense, but still, after reading the article twice I still don't know where one could draw, this so called line, between plagiarism and originality.

Blog Post 2

So as I was thinking about writing my genealogy, I thought it would be interesting to write about something that is meaningful to  me, which is music. I am a music major so this opens me up to a variety of melodies that have been remixed and one can even say stolen from their original versions. At first I thought about doing a remix on some 60's songs. Many great artist came around that time, such as The Beatles. Throughout the years we have been able to hear their compositions in many different mediums. Many of their songs have actually been converted to a completely different form style, such as going from a rock band concert style of playing to an orchestral mellow way. But then my oboe professor made play an excerpt from the planets and that's when it hit me. I remembered how the planets is the place how the whole Star Wars trilogy soundtrack got its main melody. So I went and started to even research more into that and found out that the "Imperial March" is actually almost a complete replica of the 2nd movement of Holst Symphony "The Planets"  the movement being "Mars." So this opened up a much larger window because it led me to songs that had sampled the imperial march. That led me to songs that had sampled songs that had sampled the Imperial March. This was obviously the best choice for me but I also came up with one more idea. My last idea was to use the conversion of fairy tales into real life movies with human actors. The plays went from being just an idea type of thing and more of an imagination past time, to a real life event where the princes acts in a real place such as New York. This was seen in the 2015 Cinderella remake where Ella (Cinderella) is doing everything she does in the real Cinderella but in real life events. Well those were all of my ideas I had for my genealogy project.

blog post 10

"What is writing? What is remix? Is there a connection between the two?"

In my first blog post, I defined writing as the act of expressing and idea or sharing information through the use of written language. I defined remix as an imitation or transfomation or combination of different pieces of literature to create a new piece of literature; examples range from music, to books, movies, and more. I said the connection between writing and a remix is "that the idea can originate through writing it down, and writing can also be a part of the process to create a remix". I still think these are good definitions and an accurate description of the connection. However, I've learned that writing can also be a form of a remix. Not all writing is based on original ideas, in fact, almost everything in one way or another is a remix.

blog post 10

       Writing is a method of representing language in visual or tactical form. it is also a way to use symbols to represent the sound of speech. A remix is anything that is not original or anything you take and change it slightly. Everything is a remix because everything steals something from something else. Every form of writing is a remix because every word or sentence or even thought came from something else which makes it a remix.  

Blog post 10

In my first blog post I said writing is a form of communication for others to read, translate, and learn. While I guess that is still correct, my view of writing has grown since being in this class. I now think of writing as different types of modes that are made up of letter and punctuation. I used to think of writing as just an essay but writing is everywhere. Writing is an essay but also texts, books, letters, emails, posters, signs many things in everyday life. A remix is everything in this world, from words to songs, movies, books, literally almost anything you can think of is a remix. Everything derived from something or is here because of something else. People find ideas and inspiration from other things and then change and transform those things into a remix. I can't think of anything that isn't a remix. Both of my views on these two subjects have changed since being in this class and learning a new perspective.

blog post 10

As stated before in my premier blog post, different people have their own interpretation on what writing is to be. Some say it's a profession while others say it’s a process of using the alphabetical letters to create desired words and texts to express an idea or personal thoughts. I would however like to add a small component to my first blog post idea. Writing is the use of modes (i.e. letters, punctuation and words) that are used to convey a certain idea to a specific audience most likely, which are knowledgeable to the topic at hand.

Previously I defined a remix as the reformation/remodeling of an existing piece of media or an individual’s original idea/work. It is impossible to have a remix without first having some existing form of media/work. Remixing has been going on since the beginning of recorded sound in the 1940's and the 1950's. This mainly coming from online sources, as I did not have much prior knowledge of the term at the onset of this course. Now I can tell you that a remix is essentially everything that there is in this world. Books, movies, computer and electronic software... you name it. Once there a process of copying, combining and transforming an original idea to get a more "improved" product you have created yourself a remix.

I believe the connection between the two is simple. Whenever you produce a form of text you have also produced a remix. Whatever you chose to write about was an idea that popped up in your head from some pre-existing text. You then basically combined that pre-existing text with some of your ideas and transformed it into you own piece of work hence it being a remix. The same way i took my first blog post and incorporated my initial responses of the topic into this blog post and transformed them into more in-depth answers in this blog post very well makes this one. Justifying my point that everything is a remix.

Blog Post 10

Writing is the use of modes such as text, letters, words, all pieced together to communicate an idea or thought to an audience. My answer has changed a little since the first blog post, but I still think that writing is more than just the words that go into a novel, but in a different way than I first thought. Writing yes can be an essay, art form, all of that but writing also falls under the letters used to send a text message, email, or flyer. Remix is everything we see and know in life. I first thought remix as a song from a playlist, but sitting through this class I have learned my words, other peoples words, movies, everything is a remix. We are gaining ideas from past ideas everyday in life and that defines what remixing is. I think the connection between writing and remix is what I just said. Phrases people use are remixes from past phrases changed or perhaps cut down for twenty first century use. The movies we watch are often times remixes of old ideas or genres that have been past created. I have a new outlook on remix and writing and the correlation between the two now. 

Blog Post 10

Writing (as stated in my previous blog post) is a form of communication. Letters, spaces and punctuation is used to communicate your thoughts and ideas in a formation that can be read and studied. Although my basic definition for writing has somewhat not changed since the beginning of the semester, I have learned about the many different conventions of writing and how to apply this knowledge to genres (as every genre has its own conventions).

Everything is essentially a remix. Everything (from songs, movies, and literature to technologies, buildings and even cars) can be analysed and simplified to have been created through the process of copying, combining and transforming. When you adjust or improve something from its original form through the use of these three processes, the new form is considered to be a remix of its original. You start by copying other original ideas and then adding and combining these ideas and eventually transforming them, you create a remix.

To write is to make a remix. Editing is a way of improving and bettering your previous work, therefore you are creating a remix of your old work. When producing a new piece of writing, one uses the three key processes to create your remix. Consequently, all pieces of writing-I can now confidently say- are remixes.

Whilst writing my first blog post for this class, I was unsure of the definition of a remix and just how broad this term stretches. Like most students, I thought the term only applied to music. The connection between writing and remixes is evident- they are one and the same.