Nature's concept of Mashup & Remix

"Everything is a Mashup" (by Kirby Ferguson) was one of the statements I've thought a lot about while exploring the concepts of remix and mashup. In this series it is not just about songs and visual media but also about different areas like the Apple computer. Apple took for example the idea to arrange icons on the screen as if it were the top of the desk. They add the drag and drop idea and have been successful with that. Still Apple could not have done it without ideas which already existed earlier.
I like nature and think it is the basis of all what people concern. I don't think there have been aliens, who brought us media, but we developed them from natural concepts. In the case of media this is the concept of communication and sharing experience to add to the collective knowledge.
Back to mashup and remix I remember that the basics of living organisms are tiny proteins which are combined to the genetic make-up. Further this genetic make-up tells what the cells will be like and the cells add together will be organs and a set of organs are a human being, animal or plant. That's it. Everything is a mashup, even us.

I started my remix creations with  Alan Levine's funny assignment idea to send him on vacation after an exhausting ds106 semester. It seemed easy and except from that I didn't get along with Popcorn the remix software, it was. It was also fun, but I often thought rather to be careful what I mix into the video of someone I know somehow. For example I've found several songs for which I was worried they could be offensive, or I did not want to add something completely stupid. This was rather different with the following assignments, where I had no relation at all to the author of the media I've remixed. I sometimes thought about what they would say to my changes on their creations, but not more. You can find the video here.

Some thoughts of what a person might say to my remix I had with Cory Doctorow, who I display in my way as a colorful creature according to the assignment to remix a photo of him. I did not think much about of altering  Jonathan Worth's photo, but rather if Cory Doctorow likes being seen like I do see him or at least displayed him.

A third remix was about using the remix generator of ds106.
I got this, taking some artwork and reinforcing its meaning and adding some of the Seuss styles. For this I took a work which was done by an earlier student and remixed it to the Seuss' Twilight Gothic.

My first mashup assignment was to combine some given media. First I thought there's nothing I can do with the media, but then I had some ideas and in the end it was really fun to do the assignment, which has become animated gifs and  an audio mashup.

I further chose creating a mashup of the trailers of a triology (assignment details), which has become a rather dramatic piece of media. The same drama appears in a mashup of two songs (assignment details). This lead me to the assumption, that the mashup concept is good to create dramatic content. You can also find this point in my essay about mashup and remix.

I did even more, which is a daily create where I created a poem. I later mixed this up with a screenshot of an animation I did years ago.

Green Lioness

Wings

Wheeling high above in the sky,
Independently,

Nearly Lost,

Gliding towards a wildlife sanctuary,
Sunnily.

And now I have to take some food and mix it to a meal from which I will take the good things. The rest will go back to nature where it will be decomposed by little living beings and where then a mashup flower might appear from the new available minerals.

I should not forget to tell you about my character and story for my final project.