Movie Maker Video Draft

Final Paper - 11/17

Click here to read my final paper.

Creativity Gallery

After our discussion in class I have decided to go with my audio-video idea of interviewing random people about their interpretations of Urban Dictionary words. I think this will support the idea of my project about "taking something and making it your own". Using a word already submitted by a previous user and allowing someone to put their spin on it free of influence from the original meaning posed for the word. I will do this by using the software introduced to us in class, and possibly uploading a YouTube video.

Part 2 - 11/12 Discussion of Project

I have focused my project more since the last time we blogged about it. I plan on creating a "WVU Dictionary". I compiled a list of terms (places, people, buildings, streets) that are commonly known and widely used in Morgantown by WVU students. These words are popular within our micro-community because they have meaning to the students. However, if an outsider were to be asked about any of the words, they would probably not know what or who they were referring to. I am going to get audio/video of people from WVU and from home (NJ), about each of the 20 words. They will be asked to say what the word is, and use it in a sentence. By doing this, I will show how 'slang', similar to words on Urban DIctionary, are influenced by particular cultures. This will show why and how remix culture thrives today, especially in language. Whether it is words that apply to sports, cooking, music, art, fashion, or in this case, WVU, they all hold the most meaning to the people who are engulfed in that certain culture. The remix of language is necessary for creativity purposes, common knowledge, and to create a balance between a culture and its people.

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Creative Response to Topic

Using detournment in my project could be difficult. I am working with language, music, and texts. Taking the ideas for any of these, and turning them into something that "mocks" the original will take serious creativity. What mocks a dictionary? or music? or texts? Turning something that deals with language, words and reading, and developing it into a visual image is one idea. In terms of anonymity for my project, the idea that all the 'authors' work under an anonymous name could be fun to work with. What if everything posted was directly tied to the person who posted it. Creating a site that shows picture and name identity would mock the idea of the sites I'm working with.

After class presentation..

Now that I have a more clear idea of what detournement is, I realized that my project is based around it. Taking something old and changing it into new. This is the remix idea I am working with. A creative project I could do would be to incorporate remixes of my remixes.. so from Websters to Pandora to ..possibly mixing together "average joes" singing a particular artists music. From text to TFLN to ... texts telling a story by combining them together. From websters to Urban to .. using slang terms in literature writing.

I could take my "remixed" multimedia and take them back to the past or spring them onto what could be coming next. I would have to explore ideas of what would be most accessible to me and which ideas would accommodate my 3 topics best.