Collage and Found Footage within a Cultural Context

How many letters in the alphabet can you link to a brand?

Earlier in the semester, I posted the Humument project as an example of a collage work. Though Tom Phillips was working in book form, you might easily draw a parallel between what he did and what you as a collage film/videomaker might do when you arrange nuggets of media together to create a new meaning.

Below is a talking point that does not necessarily express absolute truth but will be a jumping off point for class discussion:

Both the Lethem and the the Garnett and Meiselas articles have argued, in one way or another, that painters, filmmakers, musicians, photographers etc. do not live in a void and are not only directly influenced but quite often borrow from other artists' work.

Though this has been going on for centuries, it can easily be argued that this is especially the case in the 21st Century, where we are indundated with the omni-presence of media. Brands, TV shows, movies, advertisements, and so on make up our cultural landscape. It is not as simple as chosing to either embrace or opt out of this cultural landscape. We can not decide to turn our backs on the media culture - unless we choose to live in total seclusion. As we walk down the street, advertisements becon us from buses, bilboards, the bumpers of cars, TVs in restaurants and so on.

As filmmakers, we can not help but be influenced by this steady stream of media and create work that, intentionally or not, borrows from artists who create this media and who themselves have, no doubt, been influenced by the media stream as well. So how does this effect our views of plagerism?