For my second project on remediation, I chose to transform family documents, photographs, and other family information into a visual tree that shows the family’s history. Specifically, the purpose of this piece is to take existing information and data about my own family and turn it into a comprehensive, visual representation that can be easily understood. I believe this satisfies more than the basic requirements as it is creating an entirely new piece of media out of boxes of old documents. I took the project further and also did my own research online to find more relative as well. This piece preserves my family’s history for future generations and also tells the stories of their ancestors that came before them.
To accomplish my goal of preserving my family history, I figured I needed to exhaust all research options to ensure that this is fulfilled to the best of my ability. I found a genealogy website online that allows you to enter existing family members and see if there are any public documents available to view for the given name. If there are documents available, such as marriage certificates or census records for example, then one is often able to find the parents of the individual as well. Using this process and the online tool, I was able to take the existing documents and family records and add an immense amount of information to the tree. Going into the project, I likely wouldn’t have considered using an online tool to add more information. However, after outlining the tree and wanting to include more information, I then consulted online tools like familysearch.org to verify and add relatives and information to the tree.
I decided to pursue creating a family tree as opposed to other applications of remediation because this one personally motivated me. As mentioned in my project before, I work much better and produce a much higher quality of work when I am passionate about what I am creating. I believe creating always has the potential to be fun and exciting, no matter the prompt. To make the project exciting, creativity doesn’t always necessarily have to be embedded in creating the project itself, but instead picking the subject. Then the rest will take care of itself. If I had chosen another project where I was merely fulfilling the project’s scope, I likely would not have created something as comprehensive and not invested nearly as much time into my work.
When creating my project, I kept the lessons learned in class and from readings in the back of my mind along the process. Two pieces that specifically stuck with me were the “Everything’s a Remix” documentary, and the transmodality project “Transmodality in Action: A Manifesto”. In “Everything’s a Remix”, the documentary argues that every piece of media and creation is in someway inspired or directly remediating an existing piece of media. As an graphic artist myself, I completely agree with this idea. There are most definitely still original thoughts and ideas that are formed every second of every day, however, I believe these thoughts and ideas are all contingent upon the creation of media before it. As human beings, it is necessary and crucial to our nature that we collaborate and share ideas; it’s how we evolved into the species we are today. To have an “original idea” in the way we typically thing is itself a negligence of our human nature and how we learn. As we have evolved, each invention has been built of prior knowledge or information passed down to us from those before us. The same is with art and media. Each artistic piece is an idea that is influenced or built off of those around us, but that doesn’t make it unoriginal. It just makes it a progression of existing ideas presented in a new form or way. The same concept can be applied to my family tree project. The information and data was there already, it is just presented in a new way. Not unoriginal, but instead a development on existing data. The other piece, “Transmodality in Action: A Manifesto” presented a concept and explained it through the use of multiple forms of media. The message was the same, but the explanation was tailored to a range of different forms of expression. For me personally, I found the video most beneficial in explaining the concept, so that’s what I was drawn to in the project. I plan to take this same concept and apply it to my project as well. I want to add text descriptions to each person to accompany the basic information like dates and photos. I think it is important to appeal to all forms of media possible given the initial information. Another piece to consider is the case of the Slenderman tale. Slenderman started as a short story online that grew in popularity rapidly. The story was then adapted to a video game. The game eventually drew a very large audience and the tale was cemented into pop culture. A movie was eventually made about the story as well. The story wasn’t new or original by the time the movie was created, it had just been adapted for different forms of media. I am treating my project in the same way. The information hasn’t changed or been altered, just the form of presentation has been updated. It’s not always about creating a new idea itself, but sometimes just about how it is showcased.
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