Do it For the VIne...

"Do it for the vine" was a trendy saying regarding a little girl in a dance outfit who didn't want to dance, but of course she did it for the Vine.  Vine or Vines are short-form videos of six-seconds that users have recorded and edited to continuously loop and for other users to share through other social media platforms.  According to techcrunch.com Vine became the most popular used video app.  This app spawns personalities, creativity and keeps us stimulated within every six seconds.  

Vine has grown in popularity so much that Dunkin Donuts was the first to use a Vine video for a commercial.  The art world has even seen the creative use of Vines when the first Vine video was sold at #SVAES (The Shortest Video Art Ever Sold) in NYC offering Vine videos to purchase for $200 vua thumb drive.  Tits On Tits On Ikea was the first to be sold.  

The creativity of Vines is amazing of what people can do within six seconds. Editing videos is timely, but Vine makes it fun and innovative while adding your own spin to how you view the world. Vine is a product of our remix culture by remixing videos with music that is totally opposite of the image clip to make a point or to be funny.

                      These Vines are very creative and amazing. How'd you do It?



Also Vines have the ability to change the way we see the world within a short time. Journalism has utilized Vine's short video capture when a bomb exploded in Turkey and the reporter recorded the most important facts of the incident. My favorite use of a Vine for Social Justice is when a young African-American teenager is constantly followed around a store by racist store clerks. This speaks to many young black males and others as well as a reminder that racism in America still exist on all levels.

                                #ShethinkImstealing -great hashtag.


So are vines the video version of twitter? And since everyone can tweet will everyone Vine regardless of technical skills. Twitter does not focus on grammar usage, but content. Vine seems to still have an impact regardless of shaky cameras and poor audio. Have we dumbed down our production for quality now that everyone can produce? I hope not...


And my all time favorite Vine accompanied by music from Atlanta Hip-Hop group Migos that was not playing when the video was recorded. Hash tagged as "when the school shooting goes as planned"

The Future of Beat Makers and Creators...

So I'm a fan of Hip-Hop.  That would be the music I identify with.  Growing up I listened to all music from Classical to R&B to Jazz.   As I became older I started breaking down Hip-Hop songs, I listened to and started asking questions about how they make these songs?

                                                 How producers construct a Hip-hop beat

While sifting through my mom's vinyl records I heard a familiar riff to a Hip-Hop song, but it was on this record from a group called Return to Forever.  The Hip-Hop song only used six seconds of the jazz-fusion song.  After having that Eureka! moment, I started playing all my mom's records.

                                             Hip-Hop takes Jazz and makes it very different

Now that hard-to-find records are available via Youtube and torrents the dust, dirty hands and heavy lifting of records is no more.  Crate diggers(searchers of vinyl records to sample or listen) are a slowly fading population.  Now you can find a very rare record online, sample it and create music.  It doesn't need to take a whole day of collecting records, sifting through what to sample and then creating a song, which was a staple of 1990s and early 2000s electronic music producers.

Afrika Bambaataa on his unique record collection in the Cornell Library and the fun of Digging in the Crates

Has this accessibility to music via the internet diminished the art form of digging for records?  Has technology given us easier routes of creating while at the same time making us content on how create?  Take a listen to some creative and some not so creative examples of sampling in current music.  

Keep Calm and Stay in the Present

The movie Children of Men takes place in the near future of the 2020s.  I feel hopeful for the future when watching this cause they kept that year similar to the year it was made.  Normal cars and no out of this world communication devices.  The only thing about this movies' future is that they cannot reproduce.

Films who attempt to tell a futuristic story sometimes get way ahead of themselves.  Back to the Future is set in 2015.  That's next year!  Even though the film was right about the technologies we'd have like the flat screen televisions and small cameras everywhere,  they were off by how we live our lives with the new technologies.

(Skype)

I am all for the new technology that opens our minds and pushes our boundaries.  I think it is critical to develop new ways to create and function in society, but it seems like these technologies can limit us from society.

The film Lawnmower Man is a prime example of a techie who got so involved with his virtual world that he started drinking more, became depressed and lost his wife.  Just think if he had Facebook?  He gets so isolated in his virtual world he invites a new friend to join which turns out to be the worst decision ever made.

What I want to say is that with all this technology we need to find a balance and make it intentional when we use these media tools.  Stories are powerful.  Sci-fi films like Soylent Green  and Planet of the Apes have the ability to foresee what can happen in the future.  I enjoy films like these but lets try to stay in present to address the issues of now so that the technologies made today do not get misused.