A Rough Idea for My Project

For my trailer I want to construct a compilation of today's poetry-- refrigerator poetry, beats poetry, free verse, etc. mixed with the poetry that we are all familiar with.
What I hope to accomplish with my trailer is to show audiences poetry in a new hip way that provides poets with resources that will help them write their poetry and also provide them with different styles to try in their writing. Along with this I would also like to include different exercises to help with writer's block.

Remix

Larry Lessig in the first chapter of his book "Remix" talks about how culture has changed from a read-write (RW) culture to a read-only (RO) culture. He, also, discusses what is considered plagarism. Lessig uses John Philip Sousa as an example and his trip to congress to protest the use of recording devices for music. Sousa was concerned that recording devices would eliminate amatuer music-- such as people singing outside or around the house. He was afraid that amatuer music would be replaced by these recording devices. He was also concerned that people would stop attending concerts and only listen to music through these recording devices and the profit that he made from his concerts and ticket sales would cease to exist. I think this is something that as a culture we experience with every new technology that hits the market. When the radio appeared, musicians were concerned that people would stop buying their recordings, newspapers were afraid that people would stop buying newspapers, because they could hear the news faster on the radio. Same with television, the radio was concerned that they would go out of business, because this new medium could deliver the news and stories with the same speed, as well as with pictures. Then the internet came along and all mediums were afraid that they would disappear, because the internet could deliver all of these features in one swift click of a button. Below is a link to a speech that Lessig gave that I had to watch for a previous tech writing class and journalism. He talks about Sousa again, as well as a new term of today called mixing-- where the younger generation is taking clips of music and clips of tv shows or news pieces and making their own video clip and posting it on the web. Lessig poses the question is this plagarism or stealing other people's work? --From what I gather from his lecture that it isn't, it is taking other people's art and molding it to make their own. Kind of like what Lethem was stating in his article, "The Ectasy of Influence"-- that no idea is really original, but rather copied over and over in different ways and different styles. Kind of like Obama's campaign video (as seen below) against Hilary Clinton in the 2008 election. Where he took a clip from the movie "1984" and applied it to his message of change for the United States.

New Wordle

The Ecstasy of Influence

Johnathan Lethem states, in this article: "The Ecstasy of Influence,""You, reader, are welcome to my stories. They were never mine in the first place, but I gave them to you." I think what he is saying in the section "Give All" that artists should be allowed to choose who they want to read their stories/novels or their poems or view their art or their paintings. Yet, they should understand that when it is published, when it out there for the entire world to see they can't choose anymore. And by allowing it to be published, to allow for it to be seen by any reader or viewer they are relinquishing the control that they have over it. It doesn't become theirs anymore, it becomes the readers' or the viewer.

Lethem, also, goes on to say that there is no new story out there. That writers are writing the same stories over and over again in different versions and in different ways to the same expecting audience. I believe this to be true. As a writer myself, you find it hard to branch out and write about something that is completely unique and completely different from anything else that anyone else has read or written before. The situations and the experiences are the same, they alter from generation to generation, they change with the people, but they stay the same. So, how do we define plagarism? I would say it would be taking word for word of someone else's work. But then you have to ask, what about stealing the idea? I once had a poetry professor tell me, that all a poem is or ever will be is stealing lines and ideas from other ideas or stories or lyrics to create something that said those feelings or emotions in a different way-- from a different angle.

So, what does it mean to be an artist?-- To replicate and make better the art that came before? I once had someone tell me, you write about what you know. This is true. I can only write about the things that I know and have experienced. Other writers have also experience the same things as I have, but in different ways. But the way that I tell my story is going to be completely different from how they tell theirs, and that is what makes it different. That is what defines it as unique.