I had a different experience for this assignment because as much as I wanted to, I couldn't be at the actual fireside chat. There were a lot of possibilities I considered. Like all the assignments we've had this semester, there were a lot of possibilities and directions I could have taken it. In the end I decided that I wanted to talk a little about art itself and where our inspiration comes from.
My original idea was to make a kind of "rube goldberg," the same kind that I talked about in my story. I wanted to be able to design beforehand but put together as I talked to the class to use at the end. I even had a lot of it put together before going to the classroom and realizing that the layout of the class wouldn't work for what I was working on. So admittedly what I ended up presenting was kind of a last-minute job. But I did my best to present the same kind of idea--mostly that what we create draws on many different sources that have influenced us, and that we can create using scraps of other things and reform them to create something new. Overall the change in medium weakened what I was trying to say a little bit.
As to the actual creation of the mashup I made, I probably spent more hours getting it more or less the way I wanted it than I would have on my original idea. I wanted to draw from a number of different genres (hip-hop, alternative rock, classical, etc.) and use bits and pieces to share kind of a story-within-a-story during my presentation. The different clips of music worked together to form a story of loss of love and recovery. But more important than the story itself was the idea behind its creation. Since I was a little kid I have loved the process of turning something or things into something new as a way of expressing myself. This class has empowered me to be able to do that more effectively, and my fireside chat project was a means of me expressing appreciation for that process and my belief that art is a just a remix of the experiences we have had throughout our lives.
Here is the mashup (not exactly as it sounded during the performance, as some of it was improvised:
List of songs (including those used in performance):
Bittersweet Symphony--The Verve
15 Step--Radiohead
Ridin' Solo--Jason Derulo
Wake Me Up--Avicii
Under the Bridge--Red Hot Chili Peppers
Erase Me--Kid Cudi
Bohemian Rhapsody--Queen
Tubthumping--Chubawumba
Single Ladies--Beyonce
All By Myself--Eric Carmen
My Heart Will Go On--Celine Dion
Where is My Mind--Pixies
Wonderwall--Oasis
Hey Soul Sister--Train
Starlight--Muse
Wanna Be Startin' Something--Michael Jackson
The Darkness--I Believe in a Thing Called Love
Till I Collapse--Eminem
Can't Hold Us--Macklemore
