Reflection

Reflect on the process of making this project. What did you learn? How does it relate to what you know about spreadable media? What would you do differently?

@tianjunm: 

Jessie: I learned a lot from this process; one being that you can never predict what anyone else is going to do. This is kind of a reflection on digital media as well; the original content of a meme is almost never what it ends up being famous for. Sometimes you have an idea, but people can grossly misinterpret that idea, and that gross misinterpretation leads to unintentional ideas that spread like wildfire. Something I would do differently is to maybe discuss the works while we are working on them; it was interesting to see the jump from layer 1 to layer 5 immediately, but it might have been a more in depth work if it had been true collaboration, instead of a semi-simulation of spreadable media. However, that does defeat the purpose of learning about spreadable media; I guess it depends on the purpose of your project, then.

Shangda (Harry) Li: The rule that we have to create something upon the previous person's work makes this process interesting and meaningful, as you are going to handle unexpected sources of inspiration and determine how to take advantage the current progress further. I learned to read the previous person's intention, and got to know strategies of adapting my ideas into pre-existent elements. I agree with Jessie that perhaps the purpose of doing this assignment is to personally experience how spreadable media grows, so I think it's acceptable that our final outcome is not an in-depth piece of art.

Tianjun (Jun) Ma: The process of team meme enabled me to appreciate the act of re-examining and conducting dialogs with others. I never examined a popular media such as meme as carefully as I did for this project. I learned to actually delve into a funny, sometimes absurd media and try to figure out the value and selling point in it. The work of team development also appeals to me because it puts me in the shoe of meme makers and it challenged my ability to "generate" popular ideas. This is a valuable experience that gave me a more in-depth understanding of seemingly superficial contents online.