Journal 7: Everything is a remix?

This Journal topic intrigued me very much. After watching Kirby Ferguson’s episodes, “Everything is a Remix,” I noticed just how true that statement he makes is. In the first episode, when he quotes Sir Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." This alludes to just about every creation, whether it be in the world of music, invention, media, you name it. I believe that copying, reworking, and then combing ideas is just a way that we work and it is very hard to imagine a world any different than this.

As for the problem with remixing and copywriting.. Especially with music. I find that an incredibly risky territory to set foot in. As a music major, I am diving deep into the music world, discovering what actually makes up harmonies and why our ears love certain sounds so much, and hate particular ones even more. Notes have tendencies to them. I am learning about certain chord progressions that make people feel a certain way: happy, sad, comfortable, resolved, agitated, etc. The fact of the matter is, there are a finite amount of progressions used (let’s just focus on the western world because music changes drastically culture to culture). The difference between the songs we hear is the tempo the embellishments on the normal, used progressions we know and the instruments used to play them. This is how I find it incredibly hard to not “reuse” or “remix” someone else’s work. However, it does rise a question in me: do the original writers of these progression attach an emotion to the songs based off what they were writing about? Or do the sounds actually well up emotions inside of use based purely off the frequencies heard? If this question is ever answered, it could start another series of questions: in movies, does the remix’s bring up familiar emotions to us based off the old movies we have already seen or does the aesthetic cause us to feel certain ways due to the shapes and colors and lines. It’s a chicken or the egg scenario that I find to be the biggest question of all.

I believe with the remix of movies cause us to keep the old things that everyone likes, but also gets to stick with the fads and the change of the times. I have always seen horror movies in general to have a similar premise, but each year I see more gore or crazier stories and even better technical effects. This is an example of how we reuse good ideas (motifs, archetypal characters/settings) and still grow and innovate to keep the public on their toes (special effects, new actors, etc.)