Audio MashUps
I am not well versed in popular music so I went into the readings a bit naive. I never really understood mash ups except for the late night radio mash ups they do back in the town my parents live in. The first article, “Grey Album Producer Danger Mouse Explains How He Did It” talks about the Gray Album, which is a mashup of The Beatles White Album and Jay Zs Black Album. I have not listened to it yet but after reading the third article and how it stats how that the song becomes unrecognizable from it’s source, makes me think is it even still a mash up? While doing my undergraduate degree my professor encouraged my peers and I to take “found” objects and turn them into our own. Is a mashup your own work, a collaboration, or is it just another version of the original artist’s piece?
How the Gray album was created and the space he was in is very DIY. It relates to how a lot of people create work now, being an artist, in a way, has become a lot easier because of the resources that are available to us.
Critical MashUps
I am the most interested in physical mashups. How do you take a computer based idea/object and make it physical? I found the piece, “What It Is Without the Hand That Wields It” to be my favorite mashup so far because it shows a shooter game in a real world way. People are exposed to violence all the time, especially in games. The video game the use it Counter-Strike, which the player is going around and killing people. Creating a virtual reality where you can kill people sounds crazy. People don’t realize what they are exposing themselves to because it’s all “fake”. This mashup brings this game to a physical reality, to a place where a person can comprehend it.
The wii mashup was not really anything new. I have seen rowing machines at the gym where there is a TV in front of you and you “row” to your destination. It is a different way of thinking when working out and does help motivate people. Seeing it attached to a game is net but I would honestly rather just go outside and hula hoop.
Web-based MashUps
Web-based MashUps are a little overplayed for you me. It is something our society is exposed to everyday, mostly with map quest and locations. Facebook, twitter, and tumblr have been connecting themselves to each other, along with many other sites. When attending the ITP Winter Show last yeah I did see a piece where someone built robots that react to tweets. If they were happy tweets the robots become close, if they were sad the robots repealed one another.
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