http://www.gamethemesongs.com/Galaga.html
Webspinna Artist’s Statement
As soon as
I heard that our Webspinna project would be a collection of sounds, I
immediately thought of Star Wars. I then
imagined branching out and mixing other movie themes and well-known sound
effects… then Ben demonstrated his example in class. So even though his only started with Star
Wars, I decided to nix that idea.
Nonetheless, as I thought about my original idea, I realized I could do
essentially the same thing with video games.
It wasn’t
hard to find websites with video game soundboards and theme songs. In fact, one of my biggest problems was
deciding which video games to cut from my little roster of sound. I simply couldn’t manage that many links and
tabs, so some had to go. My decisions
came down to using elements from video games that most people would recognize
(I use the word “most” tentatively).
Even after deciding to cut several of my
games’ theme songs and sound effects though, it was still incredibly hard to
put them into a coherent remix of sorts.
My goal was to make a bridge between old classical games, and some
popular new ones, in an effort to demonstrate how gaming culture has evolved in
lots of ways, but its core fandom attitude remains the same. I figured that by bringing together popular
and well-known sound elements from games of all generations, it would show that
gamers today still geek out over the same types of things that gamers of old
did, and its all brought together through my own love of the medium.
It’s hard to pinpoint a specific
outside inspiration I may have had for my mix, not because there aren’t any,
but because there are so many. Pop culture is absolutely filled to the brim
with references to other instances of pop culture, and my mix is essentially a
collection of references.
Within my mix itself are inspirations, for instance, the Ocarina of Time; “The Lost Woods” dub
step remix. The artist took a simple and
beloved Nintendo 64 soundtrack and mixed it with the popular dub step music
genre; not only is it funny, but to many, it’s also legitimately cool. It’s definitely its own thing, and the artist
isn’t said to be a hack for making the N64 track loud and high pitched.
In our reading this week, Bourriad
said, “It is up to us to judge artworks in terms of the relations they produce
in the specific contexts they inhabit.
Because art is an activity that produces relationships to the world in
one form or another makes its relationships to space and time material.”
The artist of the dub step remix is
simply using a medium they are proficient in to reference an outside source
that they have a connection with. They
didn’t invent either dub step or “The Lost Woods” soundtrack, but what they did
with it is art. My mix probably isn’t as
original as that, and again, is mostly a mix of references to things I enjoy,
but meaning can be found within and is therefore art.
Our gathering as a class on Friday
was pretty enjoyable, despite my performance of my mix not going as smoothly as
I would’ve hoped. The funny thing is, no
one noticed when I messed up except myself, but it would’ve sounded a lot
cooler if I hadn’t. Regardless, the
experience was pretty interesting and I haven’t ever done anything like
it. I really wished I could’ve seen
people performing their mixes though.
That was half of what was so interesting about it to me.
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