For some reason, when I was reading about remixing, constructive plagiarism, and all the other things Harris talks about in the last chapter, I couldn't stop thinking of blackout poetry. For those unfamiliar, blackout poetry is when someone takes a chunk of text, originally like a newspaper clipping but these days often social media posts or blog posts, and blacks out chunks of text in order to make it say something different.
For example, this piece by Trista Mateer, made from the book Mockingjay.
There's also a long and pretty interesting thread of it here, where one person was waxing poetic about blackout poetry and a ton of other people, obviously, made blackout poetry out of it.
I think this is a really good example of remixing, quite literally taking someone else's words and, in this case, physically altering them to say something different. No words are put on the page, only blacked out, and yet the message is something completely different. I find it really enjoyable to look at, for whatever reason, and thought it tied in well to the topic of how you can say new things with old words.
Great example of remixing, Lee. We (Sigma Tau Delta) did blackout poetry at our last Poetry Festival on campus (the last BIG event we did on campus before everything shut down). It was really cool to try it, watch it happen, and talk about it.
ReplyDeleteomg, that would have been so cool! Shame I missed it!
DeleteWe'll do it again!
DeleteI’ve never thought this was a “thing!” This is so interesting and looks like so much fun to do. I did a project when I was on the debate team where you compile multiple poems together to make one poem that flows together, so this is kinda like the opposite!
ReplyDeleteWow, such a cool remix, Lee! Why have I never heard of this before? I have to do this to the next newspaper I get my hands on. It's just so cool and creative and what a fun way to kill time. Thanks for sharing, Lee!
ReplyDelete