“There may be no such thing as an original idea, but we can choose to deliver content in new and original ways.”

Walter Benjamin

• Starts with photos and other mediums before talking about music
• On hashish – practice and culture of smoking hashish
• Started in 1930s
• Popularisation of sound – linked to film
• Alice in Wonderland and many other films remade for sound in the 1930s
• Predating printing press – mass communication, mass media
• Notion that ideas could be spread around the world easily, quickly and inexpensively
• How does reproducing something change it? How does it change the new version? How does it change how we see the original? How might it be considered authentic?

“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be”

• Art begins to be based on politics
• Concept of the aura – the experience/atmosphere/quality generated by a work – what is the relation to the original? How much of the original is captured in the remix (question of authenticity)?

Eduardo Navas

• Remix Theory: the aesthetics of sampling

Copy | Combine | Transform

“The quest of art: the moment between what was and what could be”

“My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.” – Robert Bresson

I was reading through quotes made by filmmakers and came across this gem.

I think it speaks volumes about the role of a filmmaker pushing through the challenges inherent in bringing a film to life. There are so many stages involved in this process and it is so difficult to translate ideas from imagination to a physical reality, that the process naturally flows up and down. What this quote also stresses is the importance of pushing through to see the beauty of the final product, which makes everything else worth it.

Making short films for the first time this semester, I had trouble at times carrying through the vision for my work through from conceptualisation to the end of production. This quote helped me to realise that this is a common challenge, and to think about the key times in the process when I really need to stay focused.

This week, we began constructing our website on weebly.com, adding pages and outlining the content we will be putting in each tab. Below is the draft theme for the “adaptations” page.

Note: we will now be using a Media Factory blog as the platform for our final product

Capturing the essence of a moment is no easy feat. I found that this was a particularly interesting topic touched upon in Dan’s week 11 lectorial.

In terms of creating media, it is so wonderful to have the freedom to create something you are passionate about, because this emotional attachment to your work shines through in the final product.

I think it is unavoidable that remixes often lose the unexplainable “magic” of an original. This may be because we’re hearing sounds we’ve heard before being used in a different way that sounds bizarrely foreign to us.

The same goes for photographs and other media forms. Though you can never get a moment back, occasionally you can capture it in still or video form and feel the same emotions again. Especially with new technology, you can recreate scenes from your life in your head triggered by a panorama shot, a video, even a 360 degree capture of a place (created through taking 100 different shots at different angles and piecing them together in an app). However, recreating this video or photograph at another time will still not produce the same effect.

 I think that often, moments are trapped in memories so no matter how imaginative, creative or altogether wonderful a remix or adaptation may be, it can never produce the same feeling or trigger the same memory, only new ones.

In my elective class, Rhetorics and Politics of the Contemporary World, I made a connection between what we were learning and the Media course.

Leith & Myerson reading:

• “There are four ways of making a book. Sometimes a man writes others’ words, adding nothing and changing nothing; and he is simply called a scribe (scriptor). Sometimes a man writes others’ words, putting together passages which are not his own; and he is called a compiler (compilator).” … “Sometimes a man writes both others’ words and his own, but with others’ words in prime place and his own added only for purposes of clarification; and he is called not an author but a commentator (commentator). Sometimes a man writes both his own words and others’; but with his own in prime place and others added only for the purposes of confirmation; and he should be called an author (auctor)” (p. 152-153).
• “There is no one who writes purely in his own words. Everyone writes with other voices” (p. 153)
• “Voices always quote each other, and words belong to more than one voice at a time” (p. 153)

The above quotes screamed adaptations and remixes in my mind. Especially in the first quote, there are distinctions drawn about the role of a creator, at different levels. I think that people who create adaptations and remixes may fit into any one of the categories listed above, depending completely on the work produced, how much imagination the person has used, the degree of sampling and new ideas, and to what extent the source material has been changed.

This also brings back the concept of there being no such thing as an original idea, a topic explored in one of our Media lectorials. Thinking about the possibility of “words [belonging] to more than one voice at a time” is an outlook I had not previously given thought to, but it is very true. Just because one person says something first does not mean others have not thought the same thing or that these words can never be said again without “copying” the original speaker.

I think the debate surrounding adaptations and remixes will continue on for a long time to come because there is no clear line between inspiration and taking ideas. I enjoy finding connections between my classes, as it helps put into perspective the importance and scope of the concepts we are learning about.