NMA 2050

New York City. The city that never sleeps. No matter what. It keeps going and going. Big Apple. Monumental. So metropolitan. So energizing. It can inspire you. It can get you on a creative high. It may destroy you. It may be overwhelming. Spirit crushing. In my work, I choose to be inspired by it. New York is a place like no other. People coming from all sorts of corners of the country and the world to make their dreams come true. I hope to celebrate the spirit of this special place, but at the same time poke fun at the little things that people find annoying or simply just love to hate. I love playing with colors, throw some fun and unexpected textures in even more unexpected places. Keeping the overall feel of the work as positive, over-the-top, sometimes a little silly is important for me. I hope to make people smile with my designs, because I believe that we live in extremely stressful times and we take everything, including ourselves way too seriously. I feel that there is no need to do that and art might as well may become a stress reliever. I am hoping to learn more and follow the creative path.

For my final project I would like to create an animation that would include a soundtrack made by me.

From the very beginning, „RiP: A Remix Manifesto” surprised me in so many ways. The opening statement of the author in the first scene of this documentary, when explaining the nature and the concept of it – creating an open-source film – was astonishing, because I have never even heard about such an idea. Making a video project about the copyright issues and labeling the project itself as an open-source one and encouraging the audience to modify it, is a powerful, game-changing idea. It is a prime example of how form can perfectly connect with the content.

As part of the Remixer’s Manifesto, the author touches upon some major points, which pretty much make up the entire structure of the documentary. By introducing them in the beginning, and thoroughly following them step by step throughout the film, the author gives the audience a sense of direction, which helps the viewer to clearly understand the movie’s message. The four steps: „1. Culture always builds on the past, 2. The past always tries to control the future. 3. Our future is becoming less free. 4. To build free societies you must limit the control of the past.” make the movie more organized and easy to follow.

The author of the movie exposed a lot of facts that I find plainly ridiculous. For example, I was unaware that the song „Happy Birthday” – performed every single day in so many situations and despite being such an integral part of our culture is in fact protected by a copyright law. By singing „Happy Birthday” we violate the law, since we do not own any rights to use it. Interestingly, the licensing fees do not go to the creators of the song, but sadly to the corporation which is holding the rights to it.

The movie argues that our culture is constantly being build upon from the one of the past. For example, nearly all of the most well known Disney movies were not original ideas, but rather a modification of the past stories that were previously known to the society. This statement really surprised me, as I thought that Disney – a company that I really respect for its unique brand and creative approach to making movies – used only their own original ideas. As it turns out, even Disney is participating in the process.

„RiP: A Remix Manifesto” makes a very crucial point that we cannot fully thrive as a society and progress with our culture if our creativity is limited by large corporations, which hold on to every piece of intellectual property. In their view, the copyrighted material is not a library of infinite source of information that can inspire dozens of people to create new things. According to their actions that they have taken against companies, artists or just ordinary users – it is just another source of easy revenue. I agree with the fact that we live in the world where „consumers are now creators” and we need a free exchange of ideas in order for our culture to thrive.

http://bfpa.dreamhosters.com/nma2050/timothy/

I find the text’s title alone to be interesting – “A Hacker Manifesto [ version 4.0 ],” because of the number of the version, which suggests that Wark’s manifesto is not final and it constantly upgrades, just like the fast and ever-changing world of the Internet.

Mark attempts to portray hackers as people who create and bring in something new to the world. He argues that hackers are “hacking the new out of the old” and it is not always a good or a great thing, but it is usually new.  It may enhance and bring something new to culture, art, science, and philosophy or “any production of knowledge where data can be extracted from it.” He tries to justify the actions of hackers which are often harmful for millions of Internet users. In the third statement Mark acknowledges that  hackers have identity problems, by writing that they can be described as a class that “has yet to hack itself into manifest existence as itself.” Although these statements seem to be valid, I feel like they give an excuse to sometimes silly, irresponsible and often random behavior of the hackers. Calling hackers creators in my opinion is a bit of a stretch – the hacker community is not unified or cohesive and I do not think that it ever will be. Yes, the advanced knowledge of code is indeed powerful and it may result in creating something new. However, that powerful knowledge can also cause a lot of trouble if it is not in good, responsible hands.

Wark McKenzie provides interesting and unique perspectives on topics such as property, class, production or information from a hacker’s standpoint.  I find the statement: that “information wants to be free but is everywhere in chains. Information is the potential of potential” to be very true. With easier access to information, we would have more potential to grow as a society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezVcVo9tw7Y&list=UUZnsZhdaekVyELP97uHgyFg&index=2