Archive for Video & Sound

Story of a lightbulb… having a bit too much fun?

With Aaron Sherwood, Mack Howell, Sarah Rothberg & Me!

Music by J.S. Bach (played by Daniel Philipp Stotz). Thanks to James George for his RGBDToolkit, and Ryan Bartley for use of hard drives and video knowledge!

Xuedi, Mack, Sarah, Aaron

Bleep Bloop.

V&S_09242012

With Christina & TianYu.

The articles and videos discuss in great detail about historical and modern examples and implications of plagiarism and what it means to be influenced or inspired. I especially enjoyed Kirby Ferguson’s series, Embrace the Remix and his definition of innovation: copy. transform. combine. All innovations, historical and present, take inspiration from other sources, combines these resources and makes improvements. Even the most celebrated creators and inventors do this and some are quite open about it, like George Lucas and even Steve Jobs.

We see it across the board in all fields from engineering to the arts: In literature we often see repeating themes, the same plot line just in different context or era. There are authors like William S. Buroughs who incorporates snippets of other writer’s texts into his work. In art we see movements and popular styles or the use of iconographic images. In music we see remixes, samples and covers. There are musicians like Girl Talk who’s creations only use small samples of other songs and clips (legal under fair use law). In Lethem’s article, The Ecstasy of Influence, he goes as far to say that animation is basically built on plagiarism! These works rely on borrowed material or cultural icons((i.e. Gone with the Wind, Disney characters, Band-Aid, Campbelles, etc…) for inspiration.

Is culture considered property? In such a litigious society like our own, intellectual property is a very touchy subject. Everyone wants full ownership and commercial profit for his/her work and the laws currently supply that. Piracy currently carries the same criminal offense as steeling a car or a handbag. Lethem makes a good argument here. He states that once a car or a handbag is stolen, it is no longer available to it’s owner but the acquiring a piece of intellectual property does not disturb or change the original. Copyright and patent laws are supposed to protect the creator but the other purpose is also to promote progress, as in use the protected item as reference and build upon them for improvements. That part has pretty much been forgotten and the laws now pretty much exist to create jobs for lawyers as well as hindering and restricting innovation and creativity.

How far can the current laws sustain this model of ownership especially in the digital age? On the other side of things, there is the Creative Commons license, which allows the distribution of copywrited material to use and to build upon or the open hardware license, which publishes all aspects of a design for personal and commercial use. We as future innovators will have to take careful consideration when it comes to publishing and protecting our work because we will inevitably take inspiration from other sources and we will definitely get ripped off…

Mini movie fest

With Aaron Sherwood & Alizarin Waissberg!