Reading Response- Chapter 4
For this week’s reading of Lankshear & Knobel I found myself looking at my experiences growing up. In this chapter Lankshear & Knobel discuss the topic of remixing and copyright. As I read the chapter, I began thinking about my experiences with media, gaming, and internet sharing. Lankshear & Knobel discuss the importance of remixing as a necessary condition for culture. An example that I found interesting from the reading was how individuals take an artifact and remix it into their lives. Growing up I would say that my friends and I loved anime and playing video games, in fact some of our more memorable times together were in video games. I believe playing and watching were our forms of read only or consumption of what we enjoyed, but the memories and meanings we made for ourselves during our experiences to be part of our remixing. The definition of remixing to me is taking something that already holds personal meaning and adding more. Much like in AMVs, individuals may take an anime that holds some meaning to them and add their own personal interpretations or spin on top of it. I believe remixing allows individuals to take a story and add their own personal meaning or relationship to it much like how stories have been passed down throughout the ages, but have different variations depending where it came from. With access to the internet, individuals are able to share their personal remixes with others to seek critique. With the internet promoting a maker culture, individuals thrive off of critique to grow as it is not always enough to make something as individual seek validation for their work. From a gaming perspective, I take remixing as an example of how individuals view gaming to be more than just a game. Many individuals take games and remix how they view friendship, loyalty, and social interaction. For example, cosplay is more than just about dressing up as your favorite character but taking on their personality and role playing that character. The individual who is cosplaying is not only role playing that character but also adding how they think that character may act. By adding our own personal interpretations on things we are remixing what we value to become a part of us.
I take for example a picture of a player I once knew, she recreated what she felt was a good interpretation of the people she played with into a drawing. She took the players she played with and remixed it to add her own personal relationship to it.
