When this outlandish project was first introduced, to be honest, I
really had no idea what to expect. I had a hard time visualizing in my mind
what the end product would look or feel like and in some weird sense, that scared
me. I felt like I was going to be flying blindly without understanding where my
destination was.
I had heard the term “mash-up” before, but in a different context:
music. When two or more distinct songs are melded together in a meaningful way…
a way that enhances the depth or perspective of each song, it is called a mash-up. I realized that I could just
take this same idea and apply it to this project… but I soon found out that it
wouldn’t be as easy as I thought.
Instead of merely stitching together two songs, we were to create a
quilt, so to speak (I don’t’ know where all these metaphors are coming from…),
and make it seem as though all the fabric had been made by the same hand.
Soon, I found that my mind was being stretched in ways as outlandish and
I had thought the project was. Focusing on a single theme, the ways I interpreted
the different pieces of literature drastically changed. Suddenly, the melding
happened in a more subconscious way. Moving from item two to item three and
from item twenty-seven to twenty-eight was shockingly similar to the transition
between the chorus of “Halo” by Beyonce and first verse of “Walking on
Sunshine” by Katrina & The Waves in the popular musical mash-up from the
T.V. show, Glee.
My mind was making connections that I had previously not thought
possible, finding hidden meanings in seemingly one-dimensional words, pictures
and ideas. Working with my two partners also added to the experience, as they
would suggest links between items which I at first dismissed as being too far
of a stretch, but eventually recognized as being all the more effective.
As our ideas developed, so did our thesis. Our
original subtitle, a lengthy piece of semi-contrived half-thoughts gradually
transformed into a powerful, succinct concept: Independence… shouldn’t mean isolation.
Looking back on this project, I now realize the different paths my
thinking traveled on. While I had been mashing different items of literature
and media together to create something meaningful, I had also been mashing up
different ideas thinking patterns in my head, creating insights, and an
appreciation for a process I will definitely be turning back to in the future.
Anya, I enjoyed reading your blog because it gave me a new perspective on the Mashup project. Although of I course I knew that we had managed to create a new message, I hadn't fully grasped that the concept we had created was not actually a sum of all of the different parts of our Mashup. Instead, like a musical piece, extra meaning is added in with juxtaposition and order.
ReplyDeleteIf the order had been different, the Mashup would have been confusing, but also less insightful. And if a piece had been deleted it would remove much more meaning than contained within the piece itself.
This reminds me of the Matrix reading, where it was stated that in order for a thought to be false there must also be a true thought somewhere in that person's mind. This is what defines the falseness. In the same way, it was the contrast in our material that created the Mashup.
I thought the same was true of our group as well. I also hadn't realized this, but it was the sheer amount of discussing and quasi arguing which lead to the real insights. Nobody ever "won", or force a certain point of view. Instead, the project grew into an elaboration on the connections between our disparate perspectives. The group interaction was necessary to develop the thesis. This idead is contained within the thesis itself. "Independence shouldn't mean isolation."