Remixes and Mashups

Digital Storytelling Mashup from Tatiana Piatanova on Vimeo.

Reflection:

According to a popular site WhatIs.com, a mashup is “a Web page or application that integrates complementary elements from two or more sources.” It is different from a remix, which is “made when separate media elements are joined to form a new, different piece of media with an entirely different meaning than the original” (Kreisinger, 2011).  On a personal level, I see the difference between the two as mashup being an aggregation of content without necessarily altering the meaning or creating something that is completely different from the meaning of the original works. Whereas remix is taking pieces of content and creating something entirely different. To simplify, if you take a piece of music and overlay another piece of music over it thus creating a completely new song, that would be a remix. It is akin to a DJ performance. In the case of a mashup, I think more in terms of Storify, a site that lets you aggregate the information from the web without altering the information itself.

For this project, I chose to do a mashup aggregating bits and pieces from popular TedTalks to define my own experience and thought process in this course. I looked at a large number of TedTalks and cut short bits that resonated with me the most using Screencast-o-matic screen recorder. During this process, I made sure that the snippets did not go over few seconds or 10% of the original works for copyright and Fair Use considerations. After I had a fair number of video snippets to define my experience I then constructed a video narrative using YouTube’s video editor. I found this process to be addicting and rewarding. It was almost like putting pieces of a puzzle together to construct a picture on a box which is not unlike the experience I had in this course itself.

As we traveled through the semester, the process of storytelling was revealing itself and morphing into different themes, forms, and shapes with the aid of technology. It was fascinating to make connections between (or ascertain the differences) the traditional modes of storytelling and the digital ones. On one hand, both are narratives, on the other hand, they are completely different in their construct and how we experience them. What digital tools allowed us to do is create a non-linear narrative that is intertwined with the stories of others either through linking within the hypertext or through mashups and remixes. For the first time in history technology also allowed the shift of our stories into 3-d mode through VR. However, the experience of these technology enhanced stories is also becoming too literal as there is a little less room left to the audience imagination. But! The stories themselves becoming more imaginative and travel through different genres like Pokemon (from a cartoon to an app) and Final Fantasy (from a video game into a film).  And that is another shift in paradigm that begs further investigation. Another big question that this course inspired is did the change occur because of technological advances (i.e. the shift is a direct effect of technology) or is it human-initiated adaptation to the extension of our life into a digital realm? It brings to mind the idea of technological determinism and on some level, it is possible that this is just a “chicken or the egg” dilemma. Regardless, as all of these pieces were being put together one thing became clear: being human is being a storyteller and our need to tell stories transcends the means by which the story is constructed.

References:

What is mash-up? – Definition from WhatIs.com. (n.d.). Retrieved July 26, 2017, from http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/mash-up

What is a remix, exactly? (2014, May 02). Retrieved July 26, 2017, from https://elisakreisinger.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/what-is-a-remix-exactly/