What's a meme?

I have never really put much thought into where the term meme comes from, or what it's really meaning even is.  I suppose I just assumed that the letters stood for something and that the name was given to them by their creator, such as "gif." For me, memes seemed to come out of no where.  They became extremely popular over night and I, along with the rest of the world, quickly learned to use their comedic power.  However, after doing some research, I have found the name goes much further back than their creation, 1976 to be exact.  In his book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawson states, "We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to ‘memory’, or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘cream’"(http://www.todayifoundout.com).  To me, this made a great deal of sense.  A meme is an imitation; it is a photo that has been taken from somewhere else and used over and over again with different words and phrases.  The same picture can produce hundreds of memes, and considering that it is a new cultural wave, I feel that Richard Dawson hit the nail on the head.  Here are some I've used recently:

 

Mixbit Attempt

Mixbit

Remix Inspo

Here are a few of the video remixes that I found either funny or inspirational, but definitely all entertaining! 

Letters to a Young Contrarian: Chapters 6 and 7

                Although these two chapters brought back the confusion that I felt when I first began reading, the themes seemed to be along the lines of compromising one's self and precedents.  In Chapter 6, my confusion first began with thew capitalization of "Absurd," and the statement, "You can't hope to change human nature or Human Nature…"  What is the difference?  The chapter never really explains what makes these words and phrases important enough for capitalization, and what the difference is between them and their lower case partners.  Hitchens goes on to quote an excerpt from George Orwell's "Through a Glass, Rosily."  From this passage, two important things caught my attention.  The  excerpt started off by discussion an opposition between two parties, and how anyone standing up for one party was immediately assumed to be against the other.  Orwell then discusses constructive criticism, which leads to the statement that truly stood out for me; "And from this it is only a short step to arguing that the suppression and distortion of known facts is the highest duty of a journalist."  For some this may just seem like a whiny opinion, but for me, it immediately related back to the Introduction to Journalism class that I took last semester.  In it, we learned a great deal about the ethics of journalism and how, although a reporter's first duty is to the truth, facts are often skewed by a biased view or a conflict of interest.  I found it very interesting that the author decided to discuss this in this book, considering that I had never thought of how well it pertains to the idea of being a free thinker and and speaking one's mind; journalists that sell out are the exact opposite of what this book teaches.  A second quote that I took away from Orwell's excerpt says, " A truth that's told with bad intent, beats all the lies you can invent."  This spoke to me because it once again deals with ethics.  Even though we are taught from a young age never to lie, is the truth really a better choice if we use it to hurt someone?  If someone is better off without the truth and we tell them just to ruin their happiness or make us feel better about ourselves, are we really doing a favor?  Surely everyone has their own answer to this, but I do feel that sometimes the truth may cause more problems than it is worth, and although this may not be the "rebellious" way of thinking, it is sometimes best to hold the truth off to a later date, or to never release it at all.
                 In chapter 7, I finished reading with two ideas left in my mind; two ideas that go along with this chapter's theme of avoiding a rut.  The first quote reads, "We are an adaptable species and this adaptability has enabled us to survive.  However, adaptability can also constitute a threat; we may become habituated to certain dangers and fail to recognize them until it's too late."  I do feel that there is some truth to this.  There are some things that we become so adapted and accustomed to in our daily lives and society that when they start to become less beneficial or even harmful, we do not notice.  Being a creature of habit can be a bad thing when changes that are better come along and we push them aside.  The second statement was at the very end of the chapter and continued this idea.  "Try your hardest to combat atrophy and routine.  To question The Obvious and the given…"  This relates directly back to what was said previously.  We must not stay living a certain way because we are content with it.  There may be a better way to live waiting for us if we simply question everything and stay curious and open to change.  As someone who revolves around routine, I take this lesson to heart and hope for the strength that I will actually be able to apply it to my life.  Overall, despite some chapters of this book being harder to comprehend than others, there is always a lesson that I end up taking away.

Remix Culture

                  I must admit, when I first heard the term "remix culture" in a class last semester, I was quite skeptical about how much of a "culture" there really was for it.  Sure, I knew that there were people on youtube that would take content from a movie and put it to a song, or who would take clips of the President in order to give the illusion of him saying something comical, but it wasn't until this semester that I realized there are in fact a large group of "remixers" that use this art form to get messages out to the public.  Reading about Elisa Kreisinger and her battle for feminism only drilled this concept further into my mind.  I loved how the article, How a Video Artist made Don Draper a Mouthpiece for Gay Rights,  showed Kreisinger's thought process when it came to her art form.  She knew that shoving her feministic views down the throats of the public with drab, straight forward, preachy methods would not be the way to go about things.  As the article puts it, "Pop culture, she realized, could be the sugar coating on the bitter pill of feminist theory."  The moment I read this, I finally felt that I understood it all.  This is exactly what remix art is.  It is a fun, entertaining, and interesting form of video art that people love to watch, little do they know though, that they are being exposed to important issues and messages at the exact same time.  It is a win-win for both the artist and the viewers.

                   As far as the actual topic of remixing and sharing other media content is concerned, I think that this article alone is proof enough that there is really nothing wrong with it.  Even before the digital age, artists had been taking ideas or actual images from other artists' works and re-creating them in fa way that was completely original.  This is no different than what remix artists are doing, yet their lives are much more difficult.  As their work continuously gets mixed up with actual pirated media, these artists struggle to keep their messages and other work out in the public view.  Overall, remix art is constantly growing, and every day new and innovative clips are published to the internet in the hopes that issues will be addressed.  I feel that remix art is the way of the future and I truly enjoy and respect it. 

  

Letters to a Young Contrarian: Chapters 4 and 5

                For me personally, this book is a constant battle between statements and explanations that I completely understand and that have meaning to me, and those that go right over my head.  Fortunately, these two chapters supplied me with plenty of lessons that spoke to me, and they further proved that the book will get better and easier to understand as it goes on.  In chapter 4, my favorite of these two, the first thing that spoke to me was a quote from Sigmund Freud's memorial that states, "The voice of reason is small, but very persistent."  Whether or not other philosophers and theologians associate themselves with this statement, as Hitchens goes on to explain, does not necessarily matter to me, considering that I can relate to it so well.  The voice of reason is small, yet it is probably one of the strongest and most stubborn voices in my head.  The other voices are large; the voices that will allow you to be lazy, or bad, or take the easy way out, but the voice of reason will eat away at you until you do the right thing.  It is your conscience, and I truly can relate to this quote because I too am someone that enjoys to take the easy way out.   However, my voice of reason always comes through, and with a sigh, I usually listen to it.
                 A second part of this chapter that truly resonated with me and my life (it's starred in my book and all) was a message that said, "Conflict may be painful, but the painless solution does not exist in any case and the pursuit of it leads to the painful outcome of mindlessness and pointlessness…"  I literally feel that I should tattoo this on my forehead, or at least write in on my wall in the hopes of living my life this way.  The statement could not be more accurate, and it can apply to the little things in our life.  There are conflicts everywhere, in our work, exercise, home life, relationships, and more.  As said earlier, it is sometimes easier to give up in difficult situations, even though we know that facing these situations will make us better and stronger in the end.  I feel that more often than not, I give up in times of struggle; I don't fight for what I want or what I feel is right and I merely settle.  This chapter alone has given me more confidence not to do so, and therefore I think it reached its goal.
                 Finally, in chapter 5, the more confusing of the two, Hitchens discusses the concept of "as if" living.  I was very confused by this throughout the chapter until it was compared to the great Rosa Parks.  Hitchens writes, "…Rosa Parks (after some arduous dress rehearsals of her own) decided to act "as if" a hardworking black woman could sit down on a bus at the end of the day's labor."  I know understand that this way of living is almost like living sarcastically, or "behaving literally" and acting "ironically" as Hitchens has put it.  It is a person's way of standing up to authority simply by living out what is morally right.  People have been doing this since the beginning of time, and from Rosa's example alone, we can see how it truly changed the world.
                   Overall, these chapters spoke extremely personally to me; they did their job of getting me to  think about my life choices and make ones that will allow me more freedom and a more content state of mind.
                 
       

Triumph of the Nerds: Reflection

It all began with the poor, eventually lost, soul that was Xerox in Palo Alto.  In 1973, Xerox released what would have been the first PC, if it had ever actually been available for sale.  Without this computer, both Microsoft and Apple would not be what they are today.  With the first use of a GUI, or Graphical Interface Unit, Xerox was completely ahead of it's time.  Enter Steve Jobs, a young entrepreneur who co-founded Apple in 1976.  During a visit to Xerox at which they revealed three new inventions to Jobs, he claims that he can only recall one, and this was the GUI.  Jobs says that he was so blinded by the genius of this idea that he could not have cared less about the two other items that Xerox showed.  He immediately knew that GUI was the future, but he also knew that Xerox's version of it was flawed and incomplete.  He went back to Apple and demanded that work on a GUI would begin.  "Xerox could've owned the computer industry," said Jobs, he merely got to their idea and enhanced it before they even had a chance.  While work on the GUI continued at Apple, IBM had bigger plans.  They were already releasing their first PC with a GUI in 1981 and were at the top of the computer world.  Apple needed to do it big, and their entire fate lay in the launch of the new Mac.  Upon its launch, the Mac did not do as well as expected, and IBM was still on top despite Mac's easier and more user friendly GUI.  The price of the Mac was just too high.  Mac soon realized they needed better software, and this is where Bill Gates, a true software wiz, came into play.  Jobs attempted to recruit Gates to Apple, but Gates forged ahead with his own company, Microsoft.  While Microsoft got down to business creating Windows, and IBM slowly fell of the map, hard times at Apple caused Steve Jobs to basically be forced out of the company he had helped create.  Scully, a man that Jobs himself had persuaded to join the Apple team, took over with his own vision for the company.  As more and more releases from Microsoft came out, Apple decided to sue them for clearly copying the ideas of Apple, unfortunately, Apple lost this battle.  The documentary ends off with Bill Gates releasing Windows 95, and being proud of his status as the richest man in the world.  It seemed as though Microsoft was on top of it all.  Little did they know that Apple had a lot more in store...

Internet Art: Influences

Although my copy of Internet Art has not yet arrived, I felt that I could easily do this blog post based on the notes that we took in class and with the help of the internet of course.  The first artist that has clearly been influential to internet art is none other than Nam June Paik.  I feel a strong connection with this artist especially after learning about him in Santi's Art and Technology class last semester.  The fact that he is being related to another one of my classes is fantastic.  Thanks to Paik's use of electronics, he has inspired the new generation of internet and technological artists.  Despite the many different mediums that Paik has used, he is most well known for begin the founder of video art.  It is almost silly to say how this has influenced internet artists today.  The majority of present day internet art is video art.  The concept of "remixing" and "spoofing" has spread like a wildfire, and youtube is the place where millions of self-proclaimed video artists share their work.  Without it's founder Paik, none of this may have been possible, and we may not have the fantastic video crazes that sweep the nation every day.  The difference between Paik's art and the video artists of today is that Paik went the extra mile.  His work not only incorporated video, but lights and sculpture as well.  Nam June Paik's work revolved around multi-media, and it is said that he created the term "Information superhighway."  To me, this is exactly what Paik's work can be summed up as.  With the many different mediums coming together, each representing or playing their own form of art, a lot of information is being thrown at the audience. This "superhighway" is the act of bringing these different art forms together to create one form of multi-media.  Paik's best example of this is in his piece "Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii."  The piece, created in 1995, brings togethers hundreds of images and videos on television screens, all incased in florescent, colored lighting that creates the shape of the United States.  Looking at the art piece, one might be overwhelmed with all of the information that is being displayed.  Once again, this brings us back to the information superhighway, and to Paik's goal of using it in this piece to inform his audience of America's obsession with the media and with bright, shiny things.

The second artist that I chose in order to show the influence on internet art and the art world in general is not a singular person.  In fact, it is not a person at all, but a movement, the Dada movement to be more precise.  Once again, as someone that has come from Santiago's Art and Technology class, I feel that I truly understand Dada and therefore am able to see how it obviously has influenced the internet art of today.  Dada is the anti-art.  It was artists rebelling and showing the world that art can truly be anything and that it did not have to stick to the rules that society had given it.  Internet art is basically the same.  Since the beginning of the art world, people have thought that art should be something created physically, whether it be painted or sculpted, simply with one's hands.  In today's age, art is being created on machines, and this is something completely radical and new, and therefore it is one hundred percent Dada.  Internet artists often take something that has already been created, such as a song, image, or video, and they make it their own.  This reiterates the idea of "remixing," and shows just how big it is in today's art world.  To make a long story short, the world of internet is new, endless, and has absolutely no boundaries.  It is completely influenced by Dada and Paik for these reasons, and will no doubt continue to grow. 

Letters to a Young Contrarian: Chapters 2 and 3

While further reading Letters to a Young Contrarian, I am further understanding Hitchens' words and his meaning for writing the book.  He continues still with the theme of dissenting and of thinking outside of the box.  I definitely enjoyed these two chapters more than the first, and I hope that my enjoyment will continue with each chapter.  The main highlight that stuck out to me from chapter 2 was this statement: "You must feel not that you want to but that you have to."  Hitchens' uses this to emphasize how important writing is to being a dissenter.  He even follows up with, "It's worth emphasizing, too, because there is a relationship; inexact to be sure but a relationship, between this desire or need and the ambition to rely upon internal exile,or dissent; the decision to live at a slight acute angle to society."  I truly admired this idea that writing down one's thoughts every day aids one in becoming a rebellious or radical thinker.  As someone who loves to write, I have to agree.  Writing is something that allows me to turn the thoughts in my head into physical objects that I can always return to.  It allows me to vent my feelings and clear my mind, thus to make room for greater, deeper, and different thoughts.  Moving on to chapter 3, another singular statement stood out to me as I read.  Hitchens' writes, "However, this can't alter the fact that in life we make progress by conflict…"  This is an age old concept that has been said in dozens of ways, but it's message has always been true.  "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger;" our hardships and struggles are what teach us the lessons that allow us to better ourselves.  This contributes to the idea of radical thinking, because a majority of these thinkers have faced difficulties in their lives that gave them a different or creative outlook on life.  I feel that sometimes struggle is a good thing because of the positivity that can come of it.  Overall, these two chapters dealt with concepts that are very inspiring, and I enjoyed reading them.

Instagram Photo Project

When first assigned this project, I was sure that I had it in the bag.  I would take pictures of what I felt represented my life, and hopefully present them in a creative, vintage way that would represent my style and taste.  The first part went well, above you will see 20 photos that begin to represent me as a person; they display people and places I love, my vegan lifestyle, my leisure activities, my favorite foods and animals, and mementos that are important to me.  However, when it came to displaying these creatively in a way that showed something I care about, I struggled greatly.  I first attempted polaroids, not real ones, but printing the pictures and leaving white edges to give a polaroid effect.  It had the vintage feel I was looking for, but it was completely overdone, so that idea was tossed.  Then, as I hunted for inspiration in local stores, I remembered the art of the "newspaper nails," where one can dip their finger in rubbing alcohol and press newsprint on their nail, and it will stick.  I assumed the printed photos would work the same way, and that I could actually wear them on my nails.  After buying all of the supplies, I soon came to find that this was not the case.  Another failed attempt had been made.  Finally, just in time, the idea to create each photo into a fortune teller came to me.  I can't quite recall how it did, but I knew it was the right choice for my project for more than one reason.  First off, each of these pictures show something that either represents my past, present, or both.  Yet, they are all things that make me who I am, and thus set me up for my future.  It seemed only fitting that the pictures be folded into an object that represents what the future will hold.  A second reason that this project is suiting for me as a person is because I myself am very future oriented.  Sometimes it can be a bad thing, and I often find myself worrying about what the future will hold for me.  My past and present definitely keep me grounded, and using them in a way that also shows my future is a nice reminder of how great of a life I have.  Inside of each fortune teller is a quote having to do with the future or the past, and they are meant to inspire others to cherish what is dear to them.  After many failed ideas, I am finally happy with the project and the meaning that it conveys.  

Letters to a Young Contrarian: Chapter One

I must admit that my overall impression of this first chapter was not the most positive one.  With many words that are not normally in my vocabulary and many historical figures I had never heard of before, most of the chapter went way over my head.  However, I was fortunately able to grasp the general concept: the idea of dissent.  In this first chapter we are introduced to the idea of being a "radical," or "rebel," or basically anyone who goes or has gone against societies grain.  Without the people mentioned in the first chapter (although I was unaware of their existence before) the rebels of present day may not have found their inspiration.  It is these radicals before us that pave their own paths, and thus, allow us to do the same.  Although the chapter gave general information on this idea of dissenting, it gave me quite a lot to think about.  I sat, and sit here now, wondering what kind of person I have been all these 18 years.  Have I been following the crowd?  Is it holding me back?  THese are definitely questions that I will further explore as I continue to read from Letters to a Young Contrarian.  As the chapter came to a close, its final sentence stood out to me the most; "It is something you are, and not something you do."  To me this means that being a trailblazer is not merely defined by actions, anyone can muster up the courage to do something radical once in their life.  Instead, it is defined by your entire being; how you carry yourself and how you relate with others, along with your thoughts, ideas and actions.  The concept of dissenting is usually rare, but it is always worthwhile.