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.

Video Spring

Two weeks ago must be years ago, at least it feels like this after intensivley producing video for 2 weeks. Although I've already taken a course about producing video, it was all so new with the ds106 assignments I've chosen. I already knew about making clips and editing them to something, but I didn't know anything about searching movies and other materials and make something new, and I did not know about being creative with this. The mentioned course just taught about producing interviews and reports with a certain content and to use certain technology, which I anyway have not available for my private production.
Browsing through the ds106 video assignment bank, I loved reading about producing funny or personal videos like, "Exercise the awesome power of MS Paint to create a music video!" or "Make a video that represents who you are."
In addition to this I now know even more about video producing technology, like how to record your screen or how to download youtube videos, and after this third video week I'm far more experienced in video editing. I feel as if I can nearly take any editing challange now. Still, I presume if I don't proceed in editing video I may forget much of what I've done this 2 weeks. I realized that this could be when I used sometimes audacity to eidt my video sound and did not know any more how to do this as qualified as during the audio assignments of this course.

The following is a list of the posts of the assignments I chose from the assignment bank for the video weeks 10, 11 and 12:

Harmonium Love: A modern movie turned int o a silent movie http://stefaniejeskestory.blogspot.com/2013/04/harmonium-love.html

Troll Beauty: 5 seconds from 5 clips about trolls
http://stefaniejeskestory.blogspot.com/2013/04/troll-beauty.html

Delusion: Ambiance for a poem.
http://stefaniejeskestory.blogspot.com/2013/04/delusion-video-peom.html

The Lion and Me: Foley added to a silent film
http://stefaniejeskestory.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-lion-and-me.html

Interactive Spiderwick: An essaylike comment on a vidoe game.
http://stefaniejeskestory.blogspot.com/2013/04/interactive-spiderwick.html

Actually I am amazed by this list but also confused about if really it was me who produced them. I feel like a stranger in my own realm.
I also now watch movies in a different way, which has become stranger, too. I guess it is the nature and amount of information which now reaches my awareness. This surely can be scary.

Video Run-Up

I've started out learning about video production 4 years ago, when I did a two month course on it. The course was specialized on making video for the internet and included working with a video camera, lighting, learn to speak clearly, green screen, presenting videos in the internet and marketing and law, in case we want to build our own startup. I did not mention the video editing, but I learned also about video editing. We used Final Cut and I wish I could work with it for the next two weeks, but I can not.

Since the above course I've used Video Pad to edit any video, which was OK, because my video projects have just been small projects, mostly combine images to an animation. Yet, I recently changed my operation system to Windows 8 and Video Pad is just available for free when you use earlier windows versions. I tried Windows Movie Maker, but it is a catastrophe, mainly because it crashes all the time. This way I had to decide weather to purchase Video Pad or a different editing software and I decided on Premiere Elements, which has better audio options. Its not Final Cut, but it will do and it hasn't crashed once yet.

However, this week was anyway not about editing except from a little piece, you easily could manage with Mpeg Streamclip, at least nearly because this software does not adjust different formats you may have to combine automatically. I actually fixed this in Premiere Elements.
The just mentioned clip was the sum of some analysis of parts of the first Matrix movie. You can find two posts on this at my blog.
First a post about a scene which has been watched in a special way: first without audio, being attentive to the visual part, especially the camera angles, second just listen to the audio and how this matches the visual part, and third watching the clip the normal way, becoming aware how both parts work together or if something was overlooked.
The second post went further with the analysis of "The Matrix". I've found out interesting facts about the making of the film and illustrated this with two more movie scenes. Then I combined the most important discoveries in an extra clip.

I did not like much the assignment where Youtube genres were the topic. Actually I don't fancy Youtube much but rather vimeo. I just use it to be more conform to the ds106 possibilities. I like to keep for my vimeo account at least a touch of professionalism. On my new Youtube account are vidoes I enjoy because I can see a great deal of personal achievement I have made since I've done some ds106 video assignments, but I feel very uncomfortable with the fact that anyone can watch them, in particular the ones where I myself am displayed. It is more getting used to self representation, but it is far away from being ready for an audience of strangers.
However, I tried to make this interesting to me by observing that Youtube clips, different from the movie industry, are often about reality, not fiction. I in particular were interested in the various videos about animals doing remarkable things and the possibility that the clip is all fake.

The most challenging task this week was to do some planning and post production for two video assignments anyone could choose freely. I am used to just start with what is in my mind and I have to admit this could end up in some chaos and unnecessary delay. This week I tried to sort my thoughts and ideas in advance to produce some good video the next week. Find here which pre-production I did to create a silent film clip and a clip about a video game.

During this week 10 there have been some interesting dailycreates, from which I've chosen two. This way I've produced my first little shadow play, which I always wanted to do, but did not dare. DS106 is a place I feel I can try out things as all participants do and I just made some shadow puppets without reading a book about this at first, which I previous felt I should do. It was rather interesting to figure out how to record shadows on the wall or if anyway rather record the back of a screen, but I realized that the shadows get larger when further away from the screen, which did not fit to the impression I intended to achieve.

Watch yourself the result which displays a dance.

I also made a drawing of a nice present I once received, which was a chamber orchestra in a yard, when I had my first art exhibition, which by the way was one of three or so, because I don't like exhibiting my artwork.

 

 

This week has been challenging in its own way. For me it is always easier to create something visually or audio. Writing is different. Not really the language which one might expect with English as a second language, but more to put ideas together and try to make it interesting just with words.

Yet, I felt as if I have grown a great deal to be more serious in my approach of communicating ideas. It might be important to speak out and display issues of interest and to inform friends and people in general about what I've found out. I have never had this feeling with my visual work.

Hidden Stories

It was Web Week and for me it has revealed beautiful stories I alone could not have told.

Still, you can start here with a story I made up with the help of some dailycreates and the magic of linking pages one to each other.

I will not explain how I've created any dailycreate and I will not link to them, because I've learned this week, revealing this, destroys the magic of the story.

In this sense look at two more stories that were hidden in the infinity of media and texts of the web.

'Looking for a Real Princes' is motivated by the fairy tale 'The Princess and the Pea' by Christian Andersen. Storify enables you to look up media in the to Web use them to tell a story. You can add text between the media to connect them easily to a story.
Make your mind up yourself to interpret the story. I myself like the tale, because it says that only a real person, who has their own feelings and views, can be a real princess or prince I suppose.

The other story is 'The Dream of travelling fast', where I combined Google maps  and some text to a narrative.
It really is fascinating to browse through the maps, meeting people even, although they are past and just pictures of them.

I shall not forget to tell you about 'Ds106 Sweeties looking for Adoptive Parents', which I explain here.
I thought it may be possible to improve the links by creating more pages and link to them instead of linking to the original page. I mean to alter these original pages for the purpose of deepen the story, but I decided to maybe do so later, for the amount of time this would take.

Looking for all these stories in the web and the reading about some good ideas how to find them (ds106 web assignment page) revolutionizes my approach to story telling. When I started the week I felt strange with the idea of telling stories through the web, but it has become a familiar idea to me now. I always have looked in the direction of traditionally valued texts and media, but the web adds something fresh to a story. Inventing a fairy tale anew with Storify connects its content to modern life and makes it better understandable. This also may be valid for people who value the traditional stories more, for they do live in a modern world often very different from ancient tales.

This week I've also uploaded media to the ds106phonor drop box at http://dropitto.me/ds106phonar.
It wasn't easy to find them, because I usually delete anything I don't use. In the end I've found some media and interesting enough I started to value them as exciting and worth to be stored.

• CarbonicAcidBubbles, which I did not use for my Bubble Video, because the auto focus of my camera drowns out the noise the bubbles make
• MovingPavement, which I did not use because it was just a wrong setting of my camera. I only wanted to take a photograph for the Design Blitz assignment and did not need the video.
• ShortMovement - JacketCloseUp, I unintentionally pushed the record button during my camera's video mode while shooting the Bubble Video.
• PartOfStuffedAnimal - Ladybug, I did this for the Photoblitz assignment but decided not to display it.
• WinterGardenBirds, is a sound file I've downloaded from freesound.org, but did not use it, because the birds are too noisy for the atmosphere I intended in part of my Radio Show. 

Leaving Past

Summary of week 7 and 8

A long, long time ago I've started week 7. I started with making a rough script for my radio show.
I also created a bumper to announce the show and a commercial to invite people to the next show of Radio Earth.
For the first scene of the radio drama I was inspired by the ds106 audio assignment 'Poetry Reading' and I also was inspired a lot more by the ds106 audio assignments while browsing through them to choose which one I may also take for a week 7/8 assignment. I think doing some of these assignments might result already in a good show when put together in an interesting way. However, I already knew what I am going to do.

Then the long way of creating the rest of the show starts.

To have some rest from audio I created a poster to announce radio earth.

At last I put together each part of the show to get the final radio drama including bumper and commercial.

In the end I felt freed from some past, because together with creating the show I will leave behind thinking about the difficult childhood of my parents. Their telling me about this has been a heavy burden for a long time. This should find peace now.

Besides of the radio show I took part in the lovely idea of ds106 of creating some Foley sound for Charly Chaplin in a Lion Cage. This is three minutes long and any students had to choose a 30 second part according to their birthday. I suppose that the pieces will be put together again to have the entire 3 minutes provided with Foley. This is my contribution.

I even left more past behind when I decided on the ds106 audio assignment 'Text Impersonation' for which I have selected a conversation on Facebook four years ago. I took part in this and at that time was shocked how fast a communication can change from happy to unfortunate. I as German actually felt a kind of responsible for this, because all the world still remembers what Nazi Germany did to human beings, especially the Jewish people. With this I will leave behind feeling responsible for any racist mood in whatever people.

To underline these intentions of feeling less responsible for the crimes of Nazi Germany I created some weather according to the ds106 audio assignment 'Imitate some weather'.

One of the origins of my audio assignments of 7/8 and the radio show is the dailycreate: Hum your first musical memory.



By the time I hummed this I was not sure if this is my first musical memory, but I suddenly remembered me making noises and humming when I was a child. This memories I used to create parts of the radio drama. I also remembered that making noises and music like a child was part of my talks with my professor in art university. By that time I was not able to make some art of this, but I was now, thanks to ds106 and their guidance and digital knowledge.
I also consider looking on the information about Foley, which ds106 provided, a step on my way. Here I especially remember a video about Fred Newman making noises.
Unfortunately one of my artist colleagues called this radio stuff, and I presume she meant this can not be art, but I do.

Until now sound has just been something I like playing around with, when creating videos or animations and I remember that I have experimentally composed some music with the help of very early audio editing software (Maybe ten years ago). Yet, I never thought I could produce such an extensive peace of audio. I can now. I thought about producing audio books and talked over this with a friend, who in the end made me just angry, for he said if I really want produce an audio book I can do it. It is not true. I may have had the minimal technical equipment for this, but to be taught how to do produce audio may be even more important.

I am also educated in music, which, concerning music, was a more serious matter to me than my early sound experiments. It wasn't possible to deepen my education for I have been already an adult when starting the education. In the end I was not able to compete with professional instrumental musicians, but I can see a chance now to make some really good digital audio.
However I ever was very able to compose, which I could not really include into my audio assignments. Maybe I should this make a future plan.