Tag Archives: creativity

Life Imitating Art, Remixing Art, Art Imitating Life, and Remixing Life

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This entry is part 72 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Aside from the sad (but expected) death of Dick Smith, one of the greatest special effects makeup artists of all time, there’s a lot of creative stuff going on in the feed today. Not all of it is what I’d call “good” creative–that new Sprint plan that kind of steps all over the idea of Net Neutrality is definitely creative–but all of it does show some very different ways of thinking and how much really buying into those patterns can change things.

For better or worse.

On the “better” side are “The Four Agreements.” If you’re not familiar, they’re four relatively simple precepts to live one’s life by. They focus on understanding the power we can let others have over us and just how much autonomy we can assert over ourselves. I first heard about them decades ago, when the book first came out (even though I never bought it or read it).

Good stuff, highly recommended for anyone seeking to feel a bit more fulfilled.

On the “questionable but probably awesome” side, we have a group of fans who’ve taken it upon themselves to remix Akira by redrawing all six volumes of the original manga using Simpsons characters. It’s… odd. Especially since each artist (there are hundreds) is only doing five pages and there’s not a lot of coordination going on–so motorcycles and bicycles keep switching back and forth in the beginning and art style varies wildly. It is, however, utterly creative and wild.

And then, on the “bad” side (other than that Sprint thing) there’s the continued consolidation and homogenization of media outlets. In particular the demise of FearNET as its assets are folded into NBC/Universal (which already has a horror-themed outlet in Chiller). FearNET was a bit of a wild and spunky upstart–a bunch of horror fans who really wanted to give their fandom somewhere to thrive. Through tenacity and a lot of hard work, they built a nice little niche that grew into a cable channel, a website, and some pretty solid original content. I haven’t been anywhere near as impressed with what I’ve seen from Chiller. And it doesn’t look like that’s going to change, as most of the creative staff from FearNET appears to be free to pursue other career options.

Even though it has Chiller and SyFy, NBC/Universal seems determined to make this once vibrant and different channels into the most generic things possible. All the creativity is being applied to figuring out how to appeal to the lowest common denominator so the most money can be pulled in as quickly as possible. This leads to low-quality (but annoyingly popular) fare like Sharknado.

Such is life, I guess.

Thankfully, for now, we still have the wild and brilliant denizens of the Internet to keep things interesting and disruptive.

Here’s hoping that keeps up for a long time.

On with the feed…

Creative Living, Tone Deaf ‘Comedy’, Brain Science, Net Neutrality Sniping, and Reset the Net

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This entry is part 41 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

A year ago, a light got directed into a dark corner of our government.

How that light got turned on is a bit questionable, but it happened and now there’s no way to deny that our intelligence agencies are more than a little out of control. Without the knowledge of a large part of the government, and most certainly without a mandate from the population, massive amounts of data were being collected on American citizens.

Gleaned from every electronic network you could imagine, “metadata” was being harvested hand over fist… just because. They’re calling it “metadata” because that belies just how revealing it can be by masking it in techno-babble. “We’re not listening in! We’re just getting the metadata!” (So, y’know, they only who you’re talking to, when, for how long, and where both parties are… noting invasive in that, right?)

There’s a fight going on now. A fight for our rights to privacy. A fight for our right to know what our government is up to. A fight for the future usefulness of the Internet as a whole.

Yes, this ties into the whole Net Neutrality battle, too.

There’s just far too much at stake to not take some sort of stand, to not speak out. Remaining on the sidelines isn’t an option if you want things to change for the better… if you want to know you’re not going to suddenly find yourself on a watch list, or banned from air travel, or just constantly under surveillance for no good reason other than “they can.”

If you’re not ready to speak out loudly, then at least listen. Take the time to actually read a few articles. To think about the road we’ve been on for well over a decade. About the rash decisions that have chipped away at the freedoms we, as Americans, tend to cling to. Freedom, Rule of Law, Presumption of Innocence. “Little” things that are the cornerstones of everything we tend to think of as kind of important… things we’ve fought shooting wars in the name of and that we cheer whenever another nation steps up to those who would crush those ideals.

Some will say “Why bother? Nothing’s going to change anyway. They may be listening, but they never listen when we call for change. They’ll always just do what they want, anyway.”

If you don’t speak up, you only ensure you won’t be heard. You prove “them” right when they argue back that they have to take such an active role because people don’t care enough to take any action themselves… “after all,” they’d likely add, “no one’s really complaining about it.”

Be loud. Be active. Make it so no one can ever say We the People don’t care. So no one can ever think they can just walk all over us.

That can only happen if we let it.

We still have power.

Use it.

Reset the Net