Author: Kat Valachova

Reading this article, I realized how little I actually know about what plagiarism is and how it is defined. To me, it has always compromised of an immoral act with the intention of appropriating someone else’s idea and using it under his own name in order to profit from it. It has never occurred to  me that  even inspiration, as has been mentioned in the article, is also a form of plagiarism. How can be such an innocent and beautiful thing such as inspiration guilty of the ugly act of plagiarism?

And so I looked up the definition of inspiration. According to the Oxford Dictionary, inspiration is in its essence a “process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative”. This implies stimulation has to inherently come from somewhere. Does it then really mean we are all guilty of appropriation no matter what? To humans, inspiration is a natural occurrence. Without inspiration, humans wouldn’t invent instruments, that consequently distinguished us from other animals. I remember I have once read a scientific article about how human brain cannot imagine something completely new, his imagination is bound to be a composition of things he as already seen and that have been stored in the part of his memory he may be unconscious of. And so the man imagines and creates based on the things that already exist.

In this sense, it seems like we have been born as plagiarists. Then what is the point of a law that condemns the entire body of people it should be aiding and protecting?

The question of appropriation in the name of art, is something that has been a painfully topical issue of not only the modern art scene. Because of the easy access almost everybody has to the internet, it is nowadays much easier to appropriate somebody else’s property, be it deliberately or unintentionally. In its core,the question of appropriation is of two kinds, moral and juridical.

As we have seen on the example of the Molotov Man, what is legal may not be inherently moral and vice versa. In regards the legal rights to the picture of this man, it is officially attributed to its taker, Susan Meiselas. On the other hand, where are the rights of the man captured in the mentioned still? In terms of copyright, they are more of a moral issue. Where the man is practically powerless, Meiselas has the right to say how and for what will this picture be used. She is the author, the owner, and from the point of view of law, the author is the responsible one for the decision making in regards to this immortalized fragment of history. And responsible, she is. Because she understands the story behind the photograph, in order to protect the faith of the man in the picture, she speaks up through the legal forms. She, in her own way tries to also advocate the moral aspect of the picture taking and its further use. 

As Meiselas suggests, the photo of Molotov Man has been appropriated and his iconic form has been on many occasions employed for various campaigns. Moreover the photo has used as it suited the cause, without any consideration for the wishes and feelings of the man himself captured in the photo. Reading the article one gets the clear understanding he has been misused for various causes, that may have many times been against the man’s values. But does he have the right or power to refuse and speak up against these? Who is the one responsible for protecting his identity? It is impossible to control what will happen with images nowadays, as once they have been published, everybody can find their way to them on the internet and use them as he sees fit.

The sound recording of Homecoming is a great example of how the sound can be a form of narration too. Spending several years on the music studies, I have a learned a lot about how to listen to the story-lines of classical music pieces, learning how to “read in between the lines” and recognize how a combination of rythm, the height and choice of notes, their length and the manner in which they are played tell the overall story with focus on the mood. To me, the Homecoming is just an extention to it. It uses the speech to give a more clear idea about what is taking place, leaving for the listener less to guess, while using the sounds (not including the speech) as a form of background, that helps to set the place and time. The story Homecoming is based on a story, that happened in the past, towards with all of the other story “windows” refer to. This past narration’s backgroud is clear, all of the sounds one can hear are with clear purpose to further describe the sitting, and compared to the other story windows, it’s without any disturbing rustle. Compared to other typical audio stories, Homecoming is not “played” in front of the microphone, it’s speech is not evenly spaced and from the recording, it is obvious the actors are situated in a space with a varying distance from the recorer, giving the listener more indications on how to imagine the whole scene, as if drawing a 3D map.
I believe sound is not at all inferior to other forms of narration, such as written ones or visual forms. It brings to play the sense of hearing we are not so prone to relay on in everyday life, as we are prone to relay on the sense of sight.

(pink box – the op-up window, image in frame, under image back and forward buttons and describtion text box)

Link:

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~kv795/comics/comics.html

The project

Our project went since the start through a huge change. At the beginning we (I and Winny) have decided to choose a topic which we would both be passionate about. In the end we have discovered our shared interest in coffee. This led us to create an education oriented storyline about a boy who is slowly being persuaded by his childhood friend to try his first cup of coffee, that has much more to it than what meets the eye.

We had a lot in mind we hoped to realize, in order to bring even better experience to the reader. Sadly, do to various reasons we had to drop some ideas, such as bringing to the attention of the reader the problems coffee industry faces, that may in the future threaten its existence. I am very interested in this topic, which is why I still plan on finishing this project in the future.

Coding

Me and Winny had decided to split up the work as evenly as possible, meaning that every step of the process, from drawing, picture collecting, to coding was done by both of us. We decided to make the whole story line appear in one frame on one website, for which we chose the parameters 9:7, with the goal that once put into a website, it would not change the size and would look uniform. All of the slides would be pushed into the frame through JS, together with the related describtion and pop-up windows. It is possible to move about the slides with left and right arrow keys. For the pop-up windows (that carry additional information), we have planned to appear after hovering over the slides or after pressing Alt key (the function for this is ready in the js code).

Post-mortem

After seeing the other groups’ presentations, I have realized how many details we have overlooked, from introducing ourselves as the authors, introducing the overall project on the website, to the visual aspect of the buttons.  We have also struggled with the overall communication, like keeping the other parner up to date with the progress and codes, and being able to properly explain the idea one had to the other. If I did this project again, I would have changed the way we shared the files (it would save us so much time if we didn’t work on two separate files and didn’t have to compare and unite them at the end), as well as how we made sure everything was cristal clear so that misunderstandings wouldn’t happen. But overall it was a pleasure to work with Winny.

I haven’t encountered any issues while doing this exercise. The hardest part was to come up with an algorithm/loop that would help me execute the task. Once it was done, all went very smoothly.

Here is a link to my JS conditionals exercise:

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~kv795/week4/js-exercise-conditionals/