WEEK 01: Overture - THE CREATIVE PROJECT

Hey,

I'm Dr Jim Nielson. I like it when people call me "Dr. Jim," as I used to want to be a DJ, and I still try to be a bit of a DJ as a lecturer and a writer of your lessons.

How this class will work

Each week there will be either new material presented by me (lecture presentations), on which you will eventually be quizzed and examined, or else participatory activities for marks in which you must take part to receive full credit. The course is designed so that there is something (generally small) for you to do for marks most weeks. This should ensure that you are staying in sync with the course and kept aware of how much or how little you are retaining. As a rule, no late submissions will be accepted.

There will be two quizzes, one in the middle of the first half of the course, and the other in the second.

Exercises and in-class participation cannot be missed or made up, except under unusual circumstances, and in a way that will be meaningful at the time of make-up (not just doing the missed assignment late).

The final project for this course will be an individual "remix" project (image, video, music, etc), creative and communicative (see below), in which you incorporate someone else's creative work and change it to make something new. You will be expected to have a multidimensional understanding of the work you have done. There are strict parameters around what kinds of things you can create and how you must do it. These will be discussed in detail below.

Your discussion posts, exercises and project work will be submitted in the Blackboard discussion forums. The quizzes, midterm and final exams will be live in class - bring a pencil or pen.

Appropriation: The theme of this class

This course is about creative appropriation. Appropriation in this context is the borrowing or theft of someone else's creative work for use as part of one's own creation. We will be looking at this phenomenon from many humanist points of view: aesthetic, economic, existential, philosophical, technological, political, ethical. The focus will always be on the human impact of appropriation from a philosophical, human rights, and cultural studies point of view (as opposed, for instance, to what gear you should use to remix a song or how to monetize your TikTok appropriations successfully).

Although it will be discussed from time to time, this is not actually a class focused on the musical appropriation mode called remix. The term remix will be used in a loose sense for creative appropriation in general. Otherwise, terms will be used in more precise and narrow senses than they are often used in informal conversation. You should know and respect the difference, for instance, between a medley and a mashup, in the strict senses.

The first half of the class is more of an historical overview, with the emphasis on how appropriation evolved as an increasingly common and eventually respected mode of creative activity in 19th- and 20th-century mainstream Western culture. The second half looks at how culture is changing and becoming more particpatory, and how creative remix has become a common vehicle of self-expression for an increasing number of people; there will be discussion of how appropriation has generally been used by mainstream corporate media creators as well as how ordinary people can potentially use appropriation to subvert, transform, or opt out of mainstream commercial culture.

If you miss the first class, I encourage you to watch this recording of material from it that I presented in the class when I taught it online in Blackboard Collaborate during the pandemic:

My goal in the course is to make you a more conscious and conscientious creative appropriator. The idea is for you to experiment with creative appropriation where you fully understand the meaning of the work you are appropriating; where that original context contributes to the meaning of what you are creating; and where you are using your creative work at least in part to communicate with others.

The Communicative Creative Remix Project

The Communicative Creative Remix Project will be due the second to the last week of class. The project itself is worth 20 marks, and attendance at the Project Showcase is worth another 5 marks. Ten marks on the Final Exam will be devoted to your project self-analysis. So at least 30% of your mark in this class will involve your project. The project is intended to be completed on an individual basis. Group or partnership projects must be okayed with me and will only be allowed under special circumstances.

Instructions

Create something that makes use of at least one other person’s previously created work. The mode of appropriation could be, for example, collage, adaptation, audio mashup, video mashup, culture jamming, re-editing (textual, audio, or video), etc. The creative work MUST include appropriation.

• Your project is intended to be an exercise in consciously COMMUNICATING creatively using appropriation. You are changing something to change, at least slightly, the direction the original was going in.
• You should begin (or end) with an IDEA - the project is about using THINKING as part of your creative process, and thinking will probably also be an aspect of your audience's response (at least in the context of this class).
• The idea is to take the appropriated material in a NEW DIRECTION - not to continue or reproduce the direction the original was going in.
• Your project should use the ORIGINAL MEANING AND CONTEXT of the appropriated material to add to the meaning of your creation.
• JUXTAPOSITION. If you combine two different sources, it will be more interesting if they are not similar and juxtaposing them is unexpected. (For instance, putting together two works by Eminem or two paintings by Van Gogh is not as interesting as combining "Last Christmas" (a gay romantic song) with Biggie Smalls doing gangsta rap.)
• If your main or only purpose is "entertainment" or "to create a light-hearted mood" you are doing something wrong.

***If you are looking for ideas, you may want to check out these links:

• Suggested project formats
• Sample projects from previous classes

When you have completed your project, you will create a new posting in the Blackboard discussion forum devoted to the projects and upload your creative work there as an attachment, or link to it somewhere on the Internet (e.g. on YouTube) from within your discussion posting. If you need to attach more than one file, create a second discussion posting for the second attachment.

At least some people in the class should be able to recognize the appropriated material, or deduce what kind of thing it is.
For the purposes of this exercise, it is important that at least some of what you appropriate will be recognizable by at least some of the people in the room. I would suggest you ask yourself if at least 35% of your fellow students will recognize what you are using, or be able to guess what it is or what kind of thing it is at least. So if you come from somewhere other than Canada, for instance, and there is a local music or tv show phenomenon back home that hardly anyone in the class here would be likely to know about, it will not be easy for us to appreciate or evaluate an appropriation from that, and your appropriation will not be meaningful to your audience.

IMPORTANT: What Not to Do for the Project

Despite the most obvious form of "remix" being a musical remix, you may NOT do a musical project in this class without special permission. This is because people generally find it difficult to communicate in a meaningful or controlled way through cover versions, remixes, mashups, etc. I know some people in the class are already making great beats, and I'm not saying I wouldn't possibly let you do a musical project, but I don't want anyone doing one without a thorough discussion of how it will fulfill the purpose of this course.

Though you may learn about these forms, you cannot do any of the following for your project, except with special permission:

• “Image macros, “Gifs with sound,” "reaction videos," and similar simple Internet “meme” genres
• A “readymade” (as discussed in lesson three)
• 1980s-style “appropriation art” (as explained in lesson three)
• Literary cut-ups
• Cover versions of songs that don't take the song in an unexpected new direction that sheds light on or changes its meaning
• Instrumental covers of songs
• Remixes of songs that just change the beats or the tempo etc
• Instrumental or mostly instrumental remixes
• A mostly instrumental dub
• Track hacks (Vaporwave, Nightcore, beat-swapping, chopped and screwed etc)
• Karaoke sing-overs
• A TikTok dance type of thing; something that is just your take on a viral trend

The purpose of the project is for you to practice making meaningful and communicative use of someone else's creative work and only secondarily to have fun.

The Use of AI

Generative AI is the remix artist of all remix artists, sampling untold media to synthesize new images, music, etc. You may only use AI incidentally to do your work for you. YOU are the remixer for this project. If you use AI to help generate or complete your project, you must explain thoroughly what you did with it and you should be sure you have added something "by hand" (or prompt) to make it "yours." Something created by AI does not in itself qualify as (your) creative appropriation, but you can use AI tools to modify whatever you are appropriating, as long as you explain what you did and what AI did. You should really discuss it with me before making your project if you want to use AI for it.

Technical skills

I will not be teaching you the technical skills you will need to create a digital photomontage, to re-edit video, etc. I encourage you to check out Humber Library's IdeaLab as they may be able to help you with your project (that's what they're there for, but they get busy). If you have never used computer programs or apps to edit images, etc, you may want to take this project as an opportunity to try to learn a bit, but you can also do something without a computer, such as creating a collage "by hand" or putting together an Assemblage of some kind.

If you have an idea but cannot make it happen, you can write up what you would have done in detail instead.

Most common ways to take something you appropriate in a new direction

Make an improved or radically alternative version
This is the ideal, and usually it will be people with talent and expertise that can achieve this. Examples would be Fan Edits, cover versions that are better - or more effective with some audiences - than the original, and Unofficial Music Videos that are better at illustrating a song than the official videos.

Create an unexpected juxtaposition of two source appropriations (or creating a “dialogue”)
For instance, when a mashup artist combines Nelly's rapping with the music of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" (often criticized as insensitive to concerns about anti-black Southern racism) they have created a kind of dialogue (and maybe even an imaginative reconciliation!) between two artists that wouldn't normally collaborate. Or when Aretha Franklin covers Otis Redding's song "Respect," where a man demands that his woman give him loving etc when he comes home, and changes it to a song from a woman's point of view, the effect is to set up a "dialogue" between the sexes.

Détournements
Taking regressive or normie media in a more progressive direction, or using the media of the powerful to undermine their power through parody and new truths. For instance, culture jams, where the media of the mainstream corporations and politicians is remixed to criticize them. (Eg, turning the Shell Oil log into a burning clamshell with the word Hell instead of Shell below it, to show that climate change is tied to the fossil fuel industry and our addiction to fossil fuels. See détournement, and lesson 9.

Personal idiosyncratic “perversions” of conventional motifs or franchise media
Fan art that takes characters or storylines in unconventional directions (eg, Slash, darkfic, etc). When your fan art wants to broaden the possibilities in a franchise character or motif, it can be interesting, innovative, and progressive. Or just trippy. ;-

The ideal

The ideal for the project (which few if any people will likely achieve, but which should remain your horizon) would be a project where

1. You have fully understood and have thought about the media you are appropriating and what it means in context
2. You do something with it to change it (add to, subtract, alter, change context etc)
3. You understand the impact your remix will likely have on your audience; you have reflected on the fact that you are shaping the world with your creative appropriation

(Optional: You want to “leave the world better than you found it,” not just laugh bitterly at it or ignore it for escapist entertainment)

You will not be evaluated on how talented your work is, but on how well it does what is assigned here: appropriating someone else’s work, changing it to make it your own work, using appropriation in an aware way, communicating something with it, etc.

IMPORTANT: When you post your project in the Discussion Board, you should explain in a few sentences what you appropriated and what your intention was in creating your remix.

IMPORTANT: Along with your project and the short description, your post must include a list of ALL materials you have appropriated, and details about where they come from. Please also attach or link to the source material(s) of your appropriations wherever possible!

Submission guidelines

You must list and link to everything you appropriate, and understand where it comes from and its original context.
Be sure to keep track of where you get media you are appropriating. You should understand the original context and meaning as fully as possible. Don’t just say “I found a bunch of pictures on Google – not sure where they appeared originally.” That’s the opposite of the kind of conscious and conscientious appropriation this class is about.

Your project should be something the class can see or hear (or read) and something they can experience in under five minutes for the purpose of the showcase workshop.
If your creative project is audio or video and it is longer than five minutes, you should also provide an edited version that is under five minutes for us to watch or listen to in the showcase workshops. You can upload or link to both the full version and the edited version.

If the project is a physical object, you should bring it to the showcase workshop and you should also photograph it or make a video of it and put that in your Blackboard post. If you are unsure how to present your project to the class, please discuss this with me.

Presenting your work on Blackboard

You are expected to upload a digital representation of your work to the Blackboard discussion forum created for the project. You can attach a file or link to an external URL where your work is stored. If you need to attach more than one file, you may need to create a second post (Blackboard used to restrict the number of attachments students could make to their posts I haven’t investigated this lately).

If you make something physical (rather than something digital), please bring the physical object to class for the workshop if at all possible. You should also, however, upload a digital version (image, video) so that we can get a sense of the project from the forum post.

Images (especially compressed ones, like jpgs) are fine to attach to your post in Blackboard.

If you have created a sound file (mp3, etc) or a video, it is best if you upload your project to a site designed for hosting audio or video files (Soundcloud, YouTube, etc) and link to it from your Blackboard post. Blackboard sometimes has problems presenting some formats, and streaming or download can be slow.

Remember: If your creative project is audio or video and it is longer than five minutes, you should also provide an edited version that is under five minutes for us to watch or listen to in the showcase workshops. You can upload or link to both the full version and the edited version.