This watching and reading response intends to apply the remix methodology, literally.
When we are trying to figure out who we are, no matter which path we take, ultimately we will find out individuals are mashups of everything we decided to let into our lives: the food, the music, the books, movies, education, etc. As the title of the series suggests, “everything is a remix”, human beings are no exception.
The thing I find most interesting watching the series is the gap between the reality of the remix creation and our mindsets of craving for the “original”. Essentially, it is human nature that we want to achieve something unique, indigenous, and that has not been accomplished before. The part we tend to miss is that almost nothing is original by definition. But it doesn’t mean nothing is new anymore. Copy, transform, and combine are the key of understanding creativity in today’s world, which are also the fundamental differences between rip-offs and remix.
Copy from “Everything Is A Remix” and “Steal Like An Artist”
The opinion on the genealogy of ideas in the book resembles the main idea the series is based on, that it is imperative we get rid of the creativity phobia which implies the preexisted work of other people makes ours seem impossible to surpass. As a matter of fact, André Gide, a French author has already provided his comforting remark on this: “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” Almost in all great work can we observe the shadows of other previous work by innumerous artists, be it in music, movies, technology products, or anything else.
There is no shame in trying to copy as much as possible that inspires us, because in that process of copying, we are acquiring something worth learning and processing it in our own way. The book also points out that as human beings, we have one inevitable yet perfect fault, that we cannot copy something completely and exactly. I recall when I was in elementary school, the teacher would sometimes give us assignments to recite poems. Before the class began, everyone would rehearse the poem to one another, and that was when the interesting thing happened. You would find everyone was fluent or stammering in different parts, and erred variously. But it was the same lines, from the same verse, of the same book. In retrospect, each of us was performing the copying part. What led to the derivatively different versions of the verse was our respective internalizing processes. When you try to memorize a poem, naturally you will have pictures in your mind, forming a graphic description of how you interpret the words, and that interpretation belongs only to you. It is unique because we process the presented information based on our own experience, on how we perceive the world, and above all,
Transform from “Everything Is A Remix” and “Steal Like An Artist”
When I was reading the chapter of the book that touches on procrastination, I began to understand the reason lying beneath my problem of procrastinating. Most of the times I would wait until the last minute to start off and finish it mainly just because it needed to be done. I procrastinated not because I did not have any ideas in the meantime, rather, I had so many ideas that I wanted to wait for a better one to show up and polish it, then another, and another, but all I did was thinking and waiting instead of doing. It becomes a problem when we are not creating just because we are trapped in the idea of “creating”. At this point we need to realize that creating has more to do with transforming the old into the new, and reshaping the art in our own perspectives.
Essentially, this is not only about work or school. I have been a procrastinator of life in light of the idea of trying to find the purpose of something even before that something could take place, which results in depression and anxiety in many cases. Nevertheless, the purpose of anything in life will hardly reveal in the beginning. It is in doing, creating and repeating that the purpose becomes clear to us.
Combine from “Everything Is A Remix” and “Steal Like An Artist”
The writing is my combination of the series and the book, to which I am glad of having done because I wouldn't have known how much I reflected those ideas on myself had I not started writing the response. Before typing the first word, I tried using my hands to generate ideas in my sketch book, one of the things that was mentioned in the book, which turned out more interesting than getting the computer involved in the first place. Technology products are good at executing our commands, but at the same time they limit the endless possibilities of our imagination and creativity. Inevitably, we become perfectionists when facing the screen, and we are used to deleting things before they could even possibly grow.
Sometimes it is exhausting when we keep thinking how we can think “outside” the box. Instead, we might as well collect as many boxes as we could, to the point where we realize there is not only one dimensional space that we thought the original box was at, there is infinity to be discovered.