YAY almost done with the semester (but I will certainly miss ds106). This is one of the last weekly summaries that I have to write up, so it’s a bit sad, but exciting at the same time.

These past two weeks were really jammed with so many different things to do for this class it was a little bit overwhelming (especially when you save some of it for the last minute).

For starters, what is a remix? I watched a few movies which talked about a remix and then I watched a few on my own. After all, in order to really understand what a remix is, you have to be able to notice one when you see it. I feel as though a lot of different things we have been doing throughout the semester could be considered a remix, but I certainly did some things on my own. Want to hear my opinion of it all though? Click here!

Up next was my least favorite portion of the night by far. I mean I tried doing this project for DAYS and I just kept giving up. It was extremely frustrating to work with, and I really don’t suggest it for anyone. However, I got it done (hopefully). It took a lot of planning to try and get everything in this vacation planning to work out, but I thought I did a pretty good job incorporating the two things that I have used throughout the semester, math and princesses. Does it get any better than that?

This next assignment of using recycled material I was really dreading. It’s hard to find material that is all the same and then tell a story behind all of it? It’s a really large challenge, but I hope that I was up for the occasion. And sure enough I opened the vault (for lack of a better term) and I found tons of Disney stuff! Happy day! I decided to portray the story in a different way though, why not remix a recycled remix right? Here’s what I did!

Next up for the week I was being encouraged to change different photos and share it for others to change in a new project  that is being tested throughout the Internet. It’s actually a really cool concept, the idea that art is digital now, such a huge part and influences of art come from the online world, and there are even things that can’t be produced tacitly because it can only done online. This is a great way to see what other people may see, by allowing them to show it. I decided to do a math remix on one of the photos which you can see here!

The next assignment I was really excited to do, I think it is crazy how I have never seen the remix button on projects before, but there it is! I ended up doing a random remix until I found an idea that made me laugh, and I was super excited. I retold the story of how a greedy Spanish troll got his money. A troll is always a troll and they are dirty and rotten and always up to no good!

Finally came to the part where I got to pick what assignments I wanted to do. I decided ending up doing a remix on Anne Hathaway, which was a lot of fun to do. Coming off of video week all of the conversions were fresh in my head and I was ready to work. This was a remix that did a lot of telling of her progress as an actress and how she goes from playful movies to ones that are much more serious and get her a lot more awards.

Last but not least I created my own assignment and decided to do one about acoustic songs to pop videos. This way we could get two different perspectives on the story at one time, which I think is a really cool premise for mashup. Hearing and seeing are two different things, and seeing a song makes people understand it more (unless it’s Lady Gaga), but hearing an acoustic song really makes people feel the words instead of them simply just dancing to them. Therefore, I think it’s a cool idea to do. You can see my example right here.

Overall I am not sure how I felt about the remixing and mashingup. I thought that the idea of it was really cool, but I don’t always see the story behind it. You are retelling a story that has already been told, something that I have done a lot throughout this semester. It’s hard to keep something original when there is so much content behind it. However, I see people do it every day with something like  a Harry Potter fan fiction website. People put ideas out there so that others can hear them and build off of it. If we couldn’t build off of each other, how would we ever develop not only as people, but as a society as well.

Thanks for reading,

Princess Karissa