In Class Experience: Mix tape

On Monday the class shared their mix tape and I was impress with most of them. It seems like everyone put time and thought into their mix tape. I felt that the mix tapes were made for people that were important to them.

Mix Tape Reflection

The Mix tape was another interesting project that Scot assigned. The mix tape was a challenging project for me, because I don't really listen to music, and in addition that person I was making my mix tape for does not listen to what I listen too. Also another challenging aspect to this project was transitioning songs, which songs to include, word selection of the artist, style and genre of artist, but more important to me the beats and tempo of the songs. My theme was to remind my girlfriend how much I love her and miss her before she goes to sleep and wake up in the mourning. I wanted to do this because we've been together for 3 years now. In some relationships it tends to get dry and sometimes your partner does not feel that you love and appreicate them as much as you did when you first met. I wanted to make this for her so she knows how I feel about her and that my love for her is growing. Most of the songs on the mix tape were slow to moderate speed because I wanted her to be able to fall asleep listening to this kind of music. Also half of the songs told her how much I missed and needed her and the other was how much I love her and the things that I would do for her. Also the songs I selected were not in English. Selecting the songs were the most challenging part because I don't listen to traditional Hmong music so I decided to include modernize Hmong boy bands, and two songs that I thought she would like. Also another tricky obstacle to making the mix tape was which songs should go first to second to third and to last, just not the first and the last song mattered to me. I wanted to take her on a journey in my head and how I would say things to her. At the same time I wanted to make sure that the songs had similar beats, speed, and style. I ended up using two to three songs from the same artist to keep the meaning and the mix tape to sound smooth and consistent with the theme. The artists I used tended to make a song on how much they miss the person then told them how much they loved them so it worked out for me.

Not only this project but Scot has taught me for the whole semester to become a better person. Meaning that this project and Scot has challenge me to perform ways of communication that I am not used to using. The project has taught me that there are a lot of ways to communicate and that it is really hard to say what you want. On a serious note, the project has taught me to carefully listen to music and extract the meaning of the songs. Also the mix tape has taught me that when you are communicating your idea to another person every word you use is important, when you use the word, how you use the word, and the style that you use to make your piece plays into the impression that the reader receives.

Mix Tape

I'm in my room thinking about the mix tape project. I'm not sure who should I create it for and what songs should I put on there. The mix tape project is so hard to make. Thinking about it makes my head hurt. There are so many factors to consider for the best mix tape. Plus there are so many songs from so many genres that I like. Also I never listen to only one genre. The problems that I am having is: who to make it for, what genre of music, the meaning to the mix tape, the meaning of the songs, the artist, artist style, genre that person prefers, and transitions.
I think the problems I will be facing next is what the order of songs go in and does each song belong in the mix. Back to work.

Smashing and Mashing Sampling Projects

Smashing and Mashing the sampling projects was a tough challenge. I thought that the projects were insightful and amazing. Not only that most of the projects were very creative and well thought. I felt that I understood most of arguments that the projects were making. I took what I thought the projects were saying and made then say what I thought. There were some projects that looked similar so I cut and paste those projects in the background. Also there were other projects that had very creative ideas and I used those to transcend the message. In conclusion the background of my mix sampling project was a lot of copyright and creative copyright signs and symbols, and then I incorporated the superman, comic strip, and judge ideas to illustrate the copyright.

Sampling Experience

Sampling was a challenging, interesting, and frustrating experience. The challenging parts of the sampling experiment was : the topic, pictures to include, finding the pictures, placing the pictures, and getting the right idea across to the viewer. Then came the interesting and frustrating experience when I had to crop, resize, and clean the pictures. The interesting experience about this sampling project was formulating my ideas into images. The frustrating and painful experience was finding the pictures, cropping, and cleaning the pictures.
The sampling experiment that I liked more was the one where you could use Google. There was an unlimited supply of pictures that you could use for your collage. The second collage was painful. Either you drew the images or found them in the public domain. Even though it was painful, I felt that the 2nd experiment best captured my argument. The second collage forced me manipulate arbitrary pictures to say what I wanted about authorship and copyright. The experience has taught me that being an author is very hard. Especially the second experience, it has taught me that coming up with your own thing takes a lot of talent and creativity. Also I learned that copyright protects the author's idea and creativity. Authorship and copyright are very simple concepts, but has very powerful meanings.

Sampling Project

In class Wednesday we learned how to use fireworks to create our collage, but I think I'm going to use Photoshop because I am more uncomfortable with Photoshop. I think that this project is going to be fun.
Lawrence Lessig brings up interesting points in his book, like: copyright, creativity, piratically, property, lawsuits, and personal stories. The book is very interesting too. Lawrence's book also brings up mixed feeling. To be honest I don't know what to feel sometimes when reading. I'm not sure whether or not I should agree with big corporations or sympathize with the individual. He makes very good points for both sides of the agreement. But I tend to go with the underdog so I usually sympathize for the struggling individual anyways.
I have a funny feeling that my sampling project is going to convey a weird message to the reader after reading Lawrence's book.

Plagerism Reaction

I had fun trying to find out where my fellow students plagiarized. I had a method to sniff out plagiarism. I would read their paper and any place that a sentence seem to be well structured or written then I would look it up on Google.com. Also most plagiarized sentences were longer than student students and in plagiarized instances there were slight changes in vocabulary. Also I noticed that if there was a common word used throughout the paper the word was a word used by its source excessively. Another strategy that I used was to was to type in their thesis onto Google.com, because I figured that if you were to be plagiarizing then there would a good chance that you would have the same or similar thesis. Lastly I combined all the knowledge above and tried to analysis the writing style of each classmate. I found myself to be effective at finding an instance of plagiarism the first time I searched Google.com. It was an interesting experience and I learned a lot from this experience. It's way easier to write your own paper then trying to conceal your writing with someone else voice because I spend more time trying to hide the evidence.