Blog Post 5 - Collaborative Poem

     In class, we watched four different videos totaling roughly 4 minutes of content. During this time, in a Google Chatroom, our tribe listened to the videos as they played and typed whatever was being said in each one. The four videos that we watched involved Shia LaBeouf, Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, and Marshawn Lynch. The thing that was very interesting about working on this assignment was the fact that when the person in the video said something, there was the possibility of having that same thing typed four different times. However, even though the same thing was typed four different times, there was a possibility of having each one of them looking different in the end. This is because when there are four different people typing the same thing, they might have different interpretations of how it should look. Also, when typing quickly, there is some room for error. Another reason why this type of assignment is very interesting is because when one looks at the end product and has no knowledge of what it came from, it can easily be mistaken for random gibberish. However, in some cases like in the sections involving Donald Trump and Shia LaBeouf, the reader may be able to pick up where the information was coming from because of how popular the sayings are. In the end, working on this collaborative poem was quite enjoyable while we were watching the videos. When reading through the final product, it makes much more sense to those who were involved with making it, however, those who are reading it for the first time with no background could find it to be very interesting and somewhat peculiar.

     The practice of uncreative writing is an interesting idea. To what point do people own the words they say? To what point is this piece both the authors', and to what point is credit due to Shia, or Oprah for instance? We took bits and pieces to transcribe into a work of "poetry" that, in itself, has utilized the words of other people, written by 4 people simultaneously, to form a cohesive work. There is a gray area of ownership that digital humanities can challenge one to think about. We, the authors, did not create any original thoughts or ideas other than choosing the videos we wanted to transcribe, and choosing what we wanted to transcribe. Other than that, with a little formatting, all we did was repurpose the words of others. But again, Shia, Oprah, Donald, and Marshawn are not the authors either. If anything they are the inspiration. Should authorship be accredited to the chatroom? It organized our transcriptions into the work of poetry, or is it merely just the medium of creation? Finally, is there no author? We may all be contributors, but at the end of the day, we created nothing original, neither did the people we observed in the videos, neither did the chatroom.

Collaborative Poem Link