Group Blog Post #4; Uncreative Writing and Commentary

During Friday's class our group created an original work of uncreative writing via popular YouTube videos. We were instructed to pick out lines or words that stood out to us as important. From this our group created this piece of Uncreative Writing. One thing our writing shows is a strong sense of trends on the internet. Trends are continuously changing, we see current trends through the topics of the video clips we viewed.  The subjects who are at the focus of these clips include Bob Marley, Gordon Ramsay, Billy Eichner, Nicki Minaj, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.  Each of these popular icons represent a certain aspect of culture and each are authors of many different products including their interview responses.  If we transcsribe the dialogue into a poem, the result is a product which should be credited to each original source as well as we the interpreters.

The material that we read and created were composed of multiple persons thoughts and ideas. As Kenneth Goldsmith noticed, In today`s digital society everything is shared, replicated and sampled.  Citations are necessary if you are referencing someone’s thoughts or research and then putting their findings into words of your own. This has taken the general thought of authorship as to who originally came up with a thought or idea and including them into new authorship. Although no intellectual property is lost, it is merely a collaboration of two authors thoughts and creations, one piggybacking off another`s viewpoint and twisting it around making it their own. Therefore, uncreative writing is a gathering of someone else`s ideas and then creating a new piece of work based on all of the information and inputs you have gathered on the subject. Being able to write or think uncreatively could lead to a huge gain of intellect in the fact that you can use very credible sources to cite your thoughts or ideas but also including the original author will make you look all the more credible, and that being what uncreative writing entails.                                                                                                                                                                   

      

An example of a piece that challenges the concept of ownership is Stephanie Barber's Night Moves.  In this conceptual novel, Barber uses text from the YouTube comment section on Bob Segar’s Night Moves.  Anyone who has ever interacted or read a YouTube comment section knows that it is a world of many views and values.  Usually, the thoughts shared in these comments are short and quick and not intended to become a published novel.  Barber brings attention to the validity of the comment section as a source of information.  The comments belong to each YouTube account owner who posts, but now they are also a part of Barber’s creation.   The sharing of information can create incredible results and it’s always important to give credit where it’s due.                                                                                                                                                                    

By: Mary-Lynn, Connor and Robbie