Video Game Meme

Uncreative Writing

For this post, we created uncreative writing by reacting to an exercise in class where our group of four had to simultaneously transcribe what we were hearing from a set of videos into a Google hangout. The videos we transcribed were Shia Labeouf’s original “Just Do It”, a press session with Marshawn Lynch, a selected segment from Oprah Winfrey’s commencement speech at Stanford, and a mash-up of Donald Trump quotes. After we finished with all of the transcriptions, we took the chat and put it into a google doc, removing our names and time stamps. Take a look at our poem, Millennial Force Just Did It, to better understand what this blog is talking about!

To start, I looked at our transcript of the Shia Labeouf speech. Interestingly, it looked a good deal like something that Eminem would rap, especially with how often certain lines were being repeated. After this portion, we transcribed the Marshawn Lynch “interview”, where even the reporters gave up on trying to get him to speak. As several people know, Marshawn Lynch is a notorious recluse around the media. With Lynch being the only speaker, reading this sounded more or less like a toast given after getting out of prison. When we reached Oprah’s speech, we somehow stumbled across her complaining about going bald after a hair perm. This led way to a part where she complains about how she did not want to be reporting, yet she wanted to be helping out instead. The only way I could see these two transitioning smoothly was with Oprah complaining about hate. The last we heard from Oprah was her choice to be a better Oprah. After this, we took a look into a mashup of Donald Trump, which was where things started getting hectic. This started off with Donald Trump’s notorious habit of firing people, and then diving into his presidential campaign with clips bragging about his wealth and how he considers himself to be a nice person. The next portion was a rapid fire of Donald Trump saying China. Since at this point, I was getting completely bored, I decided to spam China into our chat repeatedly (and also later in the video when he stopped saying China I still spammed it in a little). After this, Donald Trump points out how assertive he is, using things such as saying that he personally would be the best for striking fear into ISIS, threatening to sue someone over the phone and then hanging up, and saying how it couldn’t have been any better. If we had to put this all together and give it some sort of storyline or meaning, I would say it was a rap/speech about how a man gets motivated to leave prison, going bald, doing charity work, and suddenly teaming up with China and earning a huge reputation, and then looking back on their life.

Now, the real question is, is our poem considered plagiarized? Our poem consists of lines that other people have spoken, that are in no way original to us. Although we have taken the lines from multiple videos, I don’t think our poem should be considered plagiarized because we only took small fragments from each video. It reads as if the random lines in the poem could have been taken from anywhere, since there is really no context surrounding them. What this unique type of poem does is make for an interesting mashup of popular videos featuring well known cultural figures, which also makes for a very interesting read. Though, the way we acquired the information for this poem might make some wonder if there is really any true meaning in it. Because of the comedic nature of the specific video clips that we selected, I’d say that there really is no deep meaning of this work, other than it’s ability to make you question what you’re reading. However, I do think that if a poem like this would be comprised with of videos with more substance, such as motivational or inspirational videos, readers could be able to individually interpret it. Any poem can be very meaningful or not meaningful it all. The meaningfulness of a poem relies on the reader’s unique mind and opinions, making it possible for different people to find different meaning in anything, even if most people view it as meaningless.

Corrupted photos of corrupted politicans

Corrupted images

I found the Battlefield 4 Servers!!

I knew I could make you go blind!

Generative Texts

A Self Generating Poem is a poem that generates on its own with the help of the author and a software that uses the specific code, made by the author, that creates the poem. One example of a self generating poem is Taroko Gorge by Nick Monfort. This poem focuses on Taroko Gorge National Park in the mountains of Taiwan. The poem consists of lines describing or admiring Taroko Gorge, such as “Mist roams the coves. Flows hum. Shapes sweep the stone.” Although these lines were generated by the computer, they are still able to paint a picture in your mind and take your mind to a peaceful place. Another example of a self generating poem is Camel Tail by Sonny Rae Tempest. What makes this poem especially unique is how all of the lines come from Metallica lyrics. An example of some of the lines in this piece are, “While I tend to how I feel; Like a misery that keeps me focused though i've gone astray; Just listen, they play my song; Exploiting Their Supremacy”. So, this self generating poem is pretty much just a scrambled up Metallica song, which is pretty interesting. Although it’s obvious how unique and intriguing the idea of this poem is, the true author of this piece is not quite as obvious. You could say that the credit for this piece should all go to Metallica, since it is just a reorganization of their lyrics. But on the other hand, the code that made this idea possible was written by Nick Monfort and simplified by Tempest, so they could also be given credit as authors. Even though the code was written by Monfort and Tempest though, the computer is ultimately what put the lyrics in the order that they appear in, which is the end result of all of the previous lyric and code writing. This is what makes settling on one true author of these works practically impossible to do. Everybody can have an opinion on who the true author may be, but the more important question is whether or not everybody can find meaning in poems that have been generated by a computer.

Each self generating poem has a meaning to it. Sometimes, the meaning to the poem is too hard to see due to what may be at first a confusing pattern. Most of the self generating poems we looked at are modifications of Taroko Gorge. Taroko Gorge originally was made by Nick Montfort to give the reader a poetic perspective of walking through the Taroko Gorge national park, and it’s meaning is to convey nature. Camel Tail was a modification made by Sonny Rae Tempest, and it turns Taroko Gorge from a peaceful poem maker into a thrashing Metallica song generator. Nobody can truly understand a self generating poem’s meaning until looking at it as an author and a reader. For instance, when I wrote The Infinite Road Trip (http://web.archive.org/web/20160422184634/http://www.pitt.edu/~jtb87/InfRT.html), I did not truly see how much work was going into it. All I did was just edit some of the spacing of the lines and the word pools. Little did I know that what looked like light program editing was such a heavy modification. I just wanted to edit it into something that would show a sample of what it looks like for a child with ADHD (me) on a road trip. To me, it was a scraped together program, but to the professor, it was a perfectly chaotic view of what it looks like being on a road trip with ADHD. How do I view the roles of the reader, the author and the computer? While the computer views self generating poems as a thankless job, the reader can view it as the piece of endless literature, and the author can view it as an infinitely long mind unpack handled by the computer.

Pieces of Herself

The work of electronic literature, Pieces of Herself, is an interactive piece that delves into the complex idea of womanhood. The creator, Juliet Davis, focuses her piece on the subject of gender identity and the role of women in places such as the home, work, and the community. The environments that you encounter are all in black and white. As you move through the house and the outside area, you come across multiple colored objects that you can drag onto the woman’s plain body, that make her more colorful. As you drag these objects, the woman’s voice also tells different stories that involve what object you’re placing onto her body.

For example, in the shower you are able to drag strands of hair onto the woman, and she proceeds to talk about how her hair is getting grayer as it grows, so from time to time she decides to color it. The place of women in society as well as in their own home is explored in this piece through objects, sounds, and commentary in a very interesting and attention grabbing way.

In Pieces of Herself, as a man, I felt like I learned something. I got to see an in depth look at what makes up a woman, and how pieces of herself are taken away from every scenario she is in. Males do it too but in a different way, guys keep things to their self and don’t really let out information. Whereas in the piece that we view it shows a woman basically wearing it on her sleeve. This piece is very interactive, as you can create the woman by bringing pieces to her body. In a way this piece has you look at your life and what you have been through, by where you choose to put certain pieces. This is interaction that not many digital pieces have, which is what makes it so unique. In every scenario that mostly everyone has been in, the shower, the bedroom, and so on, you create the woman by the pieces you choose. I really enjoyed the creativity side that this piece gives you. It is totally up to you to design this woman, and create her in your own way, this again brings in the personal side, but also the person’s own creativity.

From a female’s perspective, this piece really highlights the stereotypes that women are boxed into every day. When you reach the church scene in this story, the woman talks about having a baby. This has been a stereotype for a long time, that women are expected to have children whether they want to or not. The shower scene where the woman talks about coloring her hair that was mentioned earlier, offers another example of how women feel like they must look a certain way. The references to covering up gray hair and getting botox show the viewers what it is like to be an aging woman in society, while the kitchen scene brings up the issue of women still being viewed primarily as homemakers. This piece also shows the importance of feminism and that even though society has come very far in regards to equality for men and women, women are still held to unfair standards.

Mr. Plimpton's Revenge

Mr. Plimpton's Revenge is a piece of electronic literature, also known as a Google Maps essay. A Google Maps essay is a story that is told on the Google Maps webpage, and that walks you through the locations in which the characters were to make you feel as if you are part of the story.  This piece was told by Dinty Moore, a college student, in the year of 1977. Dinty and Mr. Plimpton met because Dinty was chosen to be Plimpton’s chauffeur when he was in the city to speak at the University of Pittsburgh. After this first encounterance, the two individuals ran into each other in many other places such as Harrisburg, New York City, and Baltimore. As readers read through this piece, they will question what Plimpton’s revenge actually is. But the real question is, is there any revenge at all?

This story is basically about an accidental stalking by a man who cringes at the thought of the first impression he gave to famous author, Mr. Plimpton. Every time Dinty unintentionally runs into Mr. Plimpton, he is afraid that Mr. Plimpton only remembers him as his scraggly, stoned college self. Dinty believes that the reason he ignores him in New York City is because Mr. Plimpton remembers him, but not very fondly. Though Dinty spends years worrying about the first impression to Mr. Plimpton, he soon finds out that Mr. Plimpton doesn’t even remember him. Mr. Plimpton’s revenge doesn’t really exist, since he does not even remember Dinty. What makes this piece entertaining and funny is having the two main characters be seeing things in a completely different way. The “revenge” that Mr. Plimpton gets is simply playing along with Dinty’s coworkers and pretending to remember that he drove him the the airport, when in reality all those times he saw Dinty in Harrisburg, New York City, and Baltimore, he wasn’t ignoring him, but just didn’t remember him.

This story being on Google Maps made it more of an interactive experience. As you can see to the right, the Google Map shows you all the locations you have been to help you understand the storyline better. You can see where the Pittsburgh Airport is, where the two characters had first met, along with many other significant locations that are marked for the reader.

This is not the first time I have seen an interactive map project, although I did find it relatively unique. Most of the others that I have seen before include just a simple commentary/anecdote on the marked location, a photo of the marked location, or (like this piece) telling a story with several locations. The way this story works out is that a student at the University of Pittsburgh ends out giving George Plimpton (a well known author at the time) an awkward escort for the first part (things such as having an odor, Plimpton having to pay for a restaurant check), and the second part focuses on the author having more awkward run-ins with Mr. Plimpton. At this point, the story shifts away from telling a story, but instead appears to be the author keeping a log of run ins. This keeps up until the last part, set in Baltimore, where an assistant to the author is chatting with Plimpton, and notes that the person he kept running into was the student who gave a sloppy escort. I found it interesting that the author uses both a journal and a story in this project, as it gives a background to the story, and also paces the story well. Overall, I found this piece to be well made and to communicate a good story.