blog post 3 plagiarism, originality, assemblage

Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s concept of assemblage directly relates to remixing. Remixing is considered taking previous works and transforming them then combining them together and assemblage is the act of combining previous works together. These two things are so close that in some cases could be considered the same thing. Assemblages dictionary definition is a group of people or things gathered or collected. Whereas, the definition for remix is to mix and re-record the elements of in a different way. Both Definitions are From Dictionary.com. Although by straight comparison by definition the words seem quite different, what we have learned to think of a remix so far in class makes these words much more similar then strictly how they sound. Especially when we consider all works to be remixes. By using any style or ideas from previous works you are gathering and collecting, which is assemblage, to finish your new piece. Which brings me to the next topic where is the line between plagiarism and originality. By taking information from and or the style of a previous work that could technically be considered plagiarism, but you are using that to attempt to combine different pieces to make something that hasn’t been built before. In school nowadays teachers nag and nag over the fact that plagiarism is bad and not to do it, but where exactly is the line between plagiarism and originality? How much do you have to transform a sentence or paragraph before it is considered new? Students everywhere try to figure this out while writing papers and doing projects. You have to get your information from somewhere which right off the back is plagiarism.  That’s the part of this whole thing that confuses me.