Uncreative Siberia
Kenneth Goldsmith is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and he teaches a class called Uncreative Writing where the students are encouraged to plagiarize and the more plagiarism the better the grade. Goldsmith goes on to describe the content and expectations in the classroom where he explains that his students transcribe audio clips, write screenplays for films, and as a final he has them purchase a paper online for them to present as if they had written that paper. I feel that this is an exceptionally informative class that allows students to be creative in a different way. This class allows the students to rewrite works and bring great ideas together into one work in a way that gives those ideas new meanings and perspectives. Yes, plagiarism is stealing, and stealing is wrong, but if everyone including the writer already knows that, then why is it so wrong? Many give credit anyway to the works they use, but writing seems to be the only work that is criticized for using other's ideas in a creative way. Why does writing have to be so publicly perfect in the views of others, if the work is a creative recreation in the view of someone else? If artwork was as criticized as writing is, then only one artist could do particular types of landscapes or objects, or even people as well as different types of painting, drawing techniques, and so forth. We would have very limited pieces of works with only one perspective to look from, and that would get pretty boring after awhile. Fashion is the same way, if one person wore a certain shirt then would it not be stealing their look of you also wore that shirt? That is plagiarism, but nobody looks at it from that perspective. Think about this more deeply and you may just have viewed the subject from a different perspective.
Sydney's Siberia was a very interesting piece to read and interact with. The piece started with an image with a red square that the reader can voluntarily move. The reader then clicks a section of the image only to be zoomed into more images. Next the reader chooses an image to reader and the process is then repeated infinitely. I sat for about two hours just repeatedly going through the piece, because you never knew what images were going to pop up next. The images did not relate to each other in any way, and each one had a phrase or two that somewhat pertained to the photo. Also each phrase was slightly vague on the concepts, but it kept me thinking about them all individually. My whole goal in reading this for as long as I did was to read everything and see every image which is probably achievable, but I do not think I got to that point. I kept seeing new images every time I clicked to see more, and I kept telling myself that I would eventually see everything. It was a very interesting process, and I started to use tactics to try and see everything, but to my knowledge, if I would have kept going, it would have been for a long time more. I do believe this piece was fun and very interesting, but I recommend viewing it when you have time on your side.
Kenneth Goldsmith is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and he teaches a class called Uncreative Writing where the students are encouraged to plagiarize and the more plagiarism the better the grade. Goldsmith goes on to describe the content and expectations in the classroom where he explains that his students transcribe audio clips, write screenplays for films, and as a final he has them purchase a paper online for them to present as if they had written that paper. I feel that this is an exceptionally informative class that allows students to be creative in a different way. This class allows the students to rewrite works and bring great ideas together into one work in a way that gives those ideas new meanings and perspectives. Yes, plagiarism is stealing, and stealing is wrong, but if everyone including the writer already knows that, then why is it so wrong? Many give credit anyway to the works they use, but writing seems to be the only work that is criticized for using other's ideas in a creative way. Why does writing have to be so publicly perfect in the views of others, if the work is a creative recreation in the view of someone else? If artwork was as criticized as writing is, then only one artist could do particular types of landscapes or objects, or even people as well as different types of painting, drawing techniques, and so forth. We would have very limited pieces of works with only one perspective to look from, and that would get pretty boring after awhile. Fashion is the same way, if one person wore a certain shirt then would it not be stealing their look of you also wore that shirt? That is plagiarism, but nobody looks at it from that perspective. Think about this more deeply and you may just have viewed the subject from a different perspective. 
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