That was an interesting video. It opened my eyes to several things: The process of  innovation copying and how it is widespread in society (throughout the ages), the advantages of appropriation and the downsides (as a result of society/human behavior) and copying. I did not know that so many movies, inventions and products were copies. The way that society likes to brand creativity is in such a way that portrays creativity as truly original without any form of copying, however, this is false and very far from the truth because everything that we have today is as a result of copying.

 

Watching the video and looking at the innovative process as explained in the video (Copy, transform, combine) made me realize that I too have been following the same steps in my creative process and this process can best be illustrated when I tell stories (I pride myself in being a good storyteller). When I tell stories, especially impromptu stories (freestyle stories), I basically take elements from different things that I have experienced and piece them together to make a complete, ‘original’ story. The innovative process also made me realize how my brothers and I (I have 3 brothers) come up with lingo that we use regularly that some people may call a language: We basically take speech from several things we experience, then appropriate it into our regular speech. The appropriation we do might either be in the original context of the word or term that we experience it in or a context that we deem fit. For example, Hearing a person mispronounce the word “congrats’ as ‘congrates,’ we now use the word ‘congrates’ in place of congrats when any of us does something that deserves congratulations.

 

The video also opened my eyes to the selfishness of human beings and how we are all really awful people. We think it is okay to copy other peoples’ work but get very annoyed at the fact that our work has been copied. I am also very disgusted at people that make a living by suing people for copyright claims.

 

In general, I wish that we would all acknowledge that copying is part of the creative process and accept that some form of copying is essential to creating awesome original pieces. Imagine how wonderful hip-hop beats would be if an unlimited amount of sampling was possible.

 

 

Thoughts on the Other Videos (Everything is a remix)

The other videos had more or less the same ‘topic sentence’ as the original video, “Everything is a remix.” However, watching the videos made me come up with a few thoughts and concerns:

• J.J. Abrams copied enough work as a director for him to develop a style as a copier.

• Apple is a criminal lol. It keeps making it’s users think that features it comes out with today are innovative when other smartphones have had those features for years.

• Imitation is the best way to come up with you best original.

• I want to learn to create work that is novel yet familiar.