Category: Leon Eckert

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Week 6: Response to Theft and Artistry – Taylah Bland

This piece on Theft and Artistry was actually a very interesting read. It was similar in style to the articles on plagiarism and the Molotov Man that were read last week but presented deeper insight into the topic of originality. 

This piece actually examines the effects of cultural appropriation on the artistic industry, in particular, the music industry. 

I didn’t actually consider how much of an impact (statement) could be made by using a particular country as a background in a music video. What I found quite interesting was the following quote that was made: “When we’re presented with caricatures of other cultures, she says, it’s easier for people to view them as sub-human”. This was one aspect that I did not actually consider. I didn’t consider that cultural appropriations (or caricatures made of other cultures) could actually contribute to maintaining a cycle of systemic degradation and dehumanization that can act as an enabler for political manipulations. 

One can definitely not underestimate the power of the artistic industry especially with those stars who are currently in the limelight. They are the ones who truly hold the power of influence and what comes with that power is en even greater responsibility. However, this does come with a double edged sword as quite often these public figures are more highly scrutinized and held to higher standards. Yet, through this, they do have a chance to create positive change. 

There is a difference between theft and artistry but drawing that line of what constitutes appropriation can be quite difficult to navigate. Being mindful of respecting cultures and traditions is certainly important but one must also be careful to not completely blanket ban the incorporation of culture into art. Cultural awareness can actually be heightened through exposure but only when executed in the right way and clearly, this is what the artistic industry needs to pay more attention to. 

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Week6: Response to Molotov Man (Steve)

i don’t like this photographer…

she allows the reappropriaiton of her photo only in the theme of the rebellion in Nicaragua, and doesn’t allow any other interpretation of her work. in fact the author was doing something that is far away from the theme the photographer wanted to express, and has nothing to do with this or any other photos as well as whether they’re copyrighted. 

after reading this article it became clearer to me that it has to be under the same range of area that we can talk about plagiarism. for example we have to be another academic article writer– and most probably is writing about the same or similar topic–to be a potential plagiarist to another article. same here, the photo and the drawing is conveying totally different things, so there was nothing as plagiarism happening here, and same is all the recreation of the drawing of Molotov Man.

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Week6: Response to The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism (Steve)

there was a meme on the Chinese internet which says that any usage of Chinese language is a plagiarizing the Kang Xi Dictionary (the biggest chinese character dictionary ever). and also chairman mao once said that plagiarizing sometimes can be good bc you’ll learn from the thing you copied. 

so who knows? maybe what i’m saying here in the post has already been said by someone else who also read this article? so i am — to some extent– plagiarizing.

but i do feel that there is a clear line between plagiarism in a narrow sense and its complementary set in plagiarism in a wide sense. or in other words, me copying someone else’s article as your graduation thesis must be different from me writing about plagiarism here.

but i don’t know how to express it emmm.

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Week6: Response to Serial (Steve Sun)

Honestly i was having a hard time trying to understand the plot, however i did enjoy the piece as i kept on reading.

i was rarely a fan of detective stories, like a crime case that involves a lot of people while each person tried their best to prove their innocence and all. but i think the point of this “listening” is that how people tend to remember things far ago, and how difficult  it is to prove anything. 

human logic is weird. it’s unbreakable while it’s changing from person to person; it’s always true, but the things done according to it might not be right; it’s supposed to be the just, yet it can sometimes be so cold, so brutal that even the brightest man cannot justify it. when people do shameless thing to make profit or survival, there is certain logic that they are following, which is at the aim of their own interest. but how can we blame them? it is indeed their rational choice after all. 

human mind is weird too. it fascinating how people forget and remember things. how people remember a certain whole day better simply because there was a memorable event happened in that day; how people lose their memory of a certain day and suddenly pick it up someday later; how people forget what they’re gonna do all of a sudden but are so sure that they were gonna do something. i just find all these so fascinating that i don’t have any comment on them :p.

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Response to Ecstasy of Influence (Thomas Waugh)

This article helped me to understand the difference between stealing someone else’s work and contributing and building upon it. It draws a good distinction between what is outright plagiarism and what is just part of an ever-evolving creative process. I think that this is a very important thing to note because in the modern world, and with modern art, fewer things are original and more things are becoming samplings and remixes of previous works. Nowadays, it is easier than ever to sample the work of others thanks to computers. In the past, if an artist wanted to remix someone’s image, they had to paint it themselves which would take a long time, but now I can just press command+shift+4. It’s pretty dope. For music, I can just copy the link into another website and download the song. I love the internet and how it has evolved the way artists work. However, this is also problematic for where there is art, there are people who want credit for what they have created and the internet has made this easier and more difficult simultaneously. Nowadays, people care less about citing their sources, but if they do, they can simply add a link instead of pesky MLA or other kinds of obnoxious citations. All-in-all, the internet has revolutionized the ways artists work in an amazing way, however we must be careful to give credit where credit is due.