by: Emily Moseley

My idea for this remix and adaptation project started as a sort of play off Ham4Pamphlet. I am a visual thinker and every time I listened to Hamilton’s songs I had to stop what I was doing to really picture what was happening in the song and most times I was able to create a mood, font, and graphic in my head. So my original idea was to do something similar, but for a few of the people of Hamilton. This was a great idea; however, I quickly realized that I’m a typography and structured artist, not much of a people-drawing artist. So in my revisions and feedback, I was able to reshape this idea into what it is currently. I stuck to having two of my graphics being people-based (off Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton) and the third was meant to be something more my style, a graphic of the Ten Duel Commandments.

The student who reviewed my proposal gave great, critical feedback that helped shaped my project. I came to him with the Hamilton/Jefferson/Ten Duel Commandments plan (pictured below), and he hinted at small tweaks I could make as well as small additions that would help tie this to Hamilton and make it even more historically accurate.

On the left you can see Alexander Hamilton, fairly similar to how he looks in his final form. I used oil pastels to create his rough, aged face and was unsure what I wanted to put in his eyeglasses so I drew some sketches around the page. Ultimately, I relied on the description I had come up with for each eyeglass for the final painting; however, starting the conversation early helped a lot.

In the middle, I have a much rougher draft of my Thomas Jefferson piece. This started when I found a sassy drawing of Jefferson portrayed as Daveed Diggs (right) and it gave me an idea for this graphic using one of his lines from Cabinet Battle #1. His personality in the show was so strong and I felt that it was a perfect candidate to show how two-sided politicians can be, especially back then with issues such as slavery on the table. It wasn’t until my feedback from the peer-review that I added the farmscape with his slaves in, giving his snapping fingers more of a purpose and an opportunity to show his home life.

Lastly, you can see an early version of the Ten Duel Commandments graphic. This idea did not change much under peer-review, though I did try to emphasize the “secret” nature of dueling in it’s final state because dueling was illegal in New York at the time. This was an unofficial, unlawful document that signifies the rules that we learned in the show Hamilton. Each bullet point is a line taken directly out of the show, or tweaked slightly for context purposes. Essentially, this piece was made to represent that song, and be a document that looks like it could have been created at the time that this show’s events happened.

Below you can see each of my pieces in their final state, after all the revisions, additions, and tweaks.

All in all, this piece on Alexander Hamilton is supposed to capture the trials and tribulations he went through to shape this country. From his early childhood, he suffered many loses including his mother (who’s lying in bed in his left eyeglass) and his home (because of the hurricane that destroyed everything he knew). Despite everything, he made a name for himself, worked hard, and became a Founding Father. His greatest contribution was the Federal Banking System and he is pictured presenting it to other congressmen in the right eyeglass. Zooming back out, Alexander Hamilton himself is wearing his famous reading glasses that hold these two images and he is clearly aged, worn, tired, and bleeding. The bloody nose represents the blood he shed to get to and shape this country. This is to honor his time spend fighting in the Revolutionary War and his early death in the duel between him and Aaron Burr in 1804.

 

The goal of this piece is to show Jefferson’s strong personality, two-faced politics, and influence on this country. The quote on the right is from the show Hamilton, Cabinet Battle #1, and his crazy hair is also a reference to the show and Daveed Diggs. By putting the French flag in the background, I’m showing his history with France and his time spent overseas. His stance and snapping fingers are a tribute to his cocky character and the slaves and farmland on the left are showing how partial he is to Virginia and his old way of life. This shows what most people don’t know about Thomas Jefferson: he was far from perfect and very selfish.

 

Even though dueling was illegal in New York at the time, the show Hamilton had such a structured way of talking about dueling that I felt it required a somewhat official documentation of the illegal act. The song The Ten Duel Commandments in the show was a large turning point, and is what ultimately killed Hamilton. The reverberations of Hamilton’s death were felt by just about everyone at the time, which is represented by the fire that consumes the page. The page is meant to be an old document from the 1800s which is why it is so worn, from being hidden from the law and passed around between many people. Finally, the two handguns at the top of the page represent the weapons one would bring to a duel, as well as the ones that Hamilton and Burr used in their duel.

By: Ian Byers

Compared to my original vision of what my Remix and Adaptation Project would be, I believe that the final version I submitted was quite faithful. However, I did make some changes, mostly based off of feedback that I received in my peer review. I also added an additional component to my project from when I turned in the draft to when I turned in the final version.

When I recieved my peer feedback, I was happy to see that in all, my partner understood the purpose behind my project and the audience that I intended it for. Some of the feedback from him that I used to improve my project was going into more detail and giving more context about historical events and legislation. I originally wanted to make this part of my project only a short summary, as I was worried about making something extremely dry and boring to the reader. However, I did decide that this ultimately would make readers potentially more engaged if they were more informed. Another suggestion was that I should include some figure of how many immigrants would have wanted to come to the United States during certain time periods. I agree that this would be interesting and would improve my project. However, I could find no way to accurately estimate this statistic, so I was unable to include it in the final version.

In terms of my own personal changes to the project in the final version, I added another document which was a compilation of statistics. I did not include this in my first draft as I had not yet put this data into a easily readable format, and I did not want to cause confusion. Instead, I waited and made a more nicely formatted document instead of just a spreadsheet with no context.

Overall, I think that I fully achieved what I was going for in making this project, although the initial draft that I submitted did not achieve this.

by Noah Hammond

For my Remix and Adaptation project I decided to use the two Cabinet Battle songs from the Hamilton soundtrack and turn them into the form of a Twitter argument. Hamilton and Jefferson have pretty heated debates about a couple of political topics and that just reminded me of the arguments that people have over Twitter these days.

I started off by going back to the genius annotations of the Cabinet Battle #1 and Cabinet Battle #2 to see their lyrics again. I went line by line, reading the annotations on the website and researching further into the subject of their disagreement. After I felt I had a pretty good grasp on what was going on during that time period, I started turning Jefferson’s initial arguments into tweets. This part was difficult since the original discussions were in an older form of English and the song lyrics were in rhyming verses. I tried to recreate language and habits that people on Twitter these days tend to favor. I also added gifs to most of the tweets to reinforce the message and add a multimodal aspect to the project. Since the technology is available to us, I see why people like to communicate using words and images online. I also had to create multiple new Twitter accounts which took some fiddling with due to Twitter’s privacy and safety policies.

If I had to improve my project, I would like to incorporate tweets from other people, whether they be subtweets, replies, or just other people commenting on the debates. This would make the conversation fell more real since the way social media is today, anyone can come in and give their opinion. If I added a series of tweets from George Washington trying to moderate the two over Twitter, it could be very interesting. There are still a lot of things that Twitter offers that I haven’t explored yet, but I feel that I learned more about it as an online platform form this project.

By: Arfa Ul-Haque

For my Remix and Adaptation Project, I made a painting paralleling the musicals Hamilton and The Greatest Showman. When I began this project, I hoped to make its purpose clear to everyone, even those unfamiliar with the musicals. But as I worked on the project, I realized that it would be difficult for everyone to understand the symbolism and themes of the musicals. Consequently, my intended audience changed as I became closer to finishing the project.

I came across a few challenges while working on this project. I was conflicted on making decisions for a few parts on the project and asked my peer reviewer about his opinion, so that I could more clearly convey the similarities between the two musicals. My peer reviewer provided me with great feedback but did not respond to my questions, so I chose what I believed was best.

Another challenge I faced was that I drew my sketch on a rough sheet of paper, before deciding to create the final project on a vinyl record. I chose to make my final painting on a vinyl since both Hamilton and The Greatest Showman are musicals and vinyl records store music. In choosing to paint my project on a different sheet than my draft, I had to redraw my sketch onto the vinyl and then paint over it. Therefore, I indirectly made the project take much longer than I anticipated.

I appreciated the feedback my peer reviewer gave me and took it into consideration when creating my final piece. My peer reviewer suggested adding more detail to my final project by having an object on The Greatest Showman side to reflect the gun on the Hamilton side. Initially, I had the gun on the Hamilton side to represent one of the main songs, “My Shot”, and was planning to the reflect it on The Greatest Showman side by drawing clouds to represent one of the main songs, “A Million Dreams”. However, after the workshop, I realized that the connection would be hard to see by the audience and it would make more sense for me to compliment the gun with a baton on The Greatest Showman side, as P. T. Barnum (the protagonist of The Greatest Showman) was a ringmaster. I also painted both halves of the vinyl different colors in order to highlight the differences between the musicals, as suggested by my peer reviewer.

The only piece of feedback that I did not agree with was adding more characters from each musical to my painting. In my opinion, adding more characters would take away from the main focus of the painting and from the main characters. I want to draw attention to the protagonists, their wives, and their lovers when people see the painting rather than introducing other characters in order to highlight those relationships.

Overall, I enjoyed working on this project and analyzing two of my favorite musicals. It made me feel more confident in my artistic skills and allowed me to be creative.

Reflective Blog
by Ye Jun Kim

left: Jenny Lind (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Lind)

right: Maria Reynolds (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/alexander-hamiltons-adultery-and-apology-18021947/)

My adaptation was made by mixing two different original works with similar stories. I gathered insipration from the song “Say No to This” and came up with my remix. Listening to the song, there was a movie I kept thinking of, called “The Greatest Showman”. Although the real story of P.T. Barnum and Jenny Lind was not an actual affair, in the movie, the two were portrayed of having a short affair, like Hamilton and Reynold’s affair.
The woman in the drawing is Maria Reynolds and the man is Alexander Hamilton. However, the setting of the scene is in the movie, “The Greatest Showman”, after Jenny Lind performs at a big stage and kisses P.T. Barnum right before the curtain call. This is also right after Jenny Lind sings “Never Enough”, which is written on the background of the drawing.
I originally was planning on making this on pencil and paper, since I had no experience with computer graphics. However, as I kept thinking about making the remix, I wanted to try something different, even though it might not be as well drawn as if I drew on paper. So, after I submitted my proposal, I changed my mind to draw on the cimputer, which didn’t turn out that bad after all.
One thing I wish I could have done better is to better incorporate both original works into the remix. I also kind of regret not shoosing a more popular film to do the remix because after I drew the whole thing, I felt like people wouldn’t get the point of the remix.
Overall, there weren’t any big changes that was suggested, but tiny details were suggested to tweak to enhance the artwork. To reflect on the suggestion, I added more shading on the two characters and changed the hand written words to typed words. Adding shadow to the characters further defines the characters itself and allows the artwork to look more complete. I also changed the words to print because my handwritting didn’t seem to resemble the perhaps ‘old’ times.

By: Kristen English

The feedback I received for my project through the peer review was very helpful and insightful. It gave me a different perspective on some things and helped me to see what was relevant and what was not. I made changes according to some of the suggestions but decided to keep some elements as well. Overall I felt as if the peer review was extremely beneficial and I am glad that I was given the opportunity to participate in it.

One suggestion I was given was to rewrite the blog entries from my project and make them sound more formal as Hamilton would have. I decided not to take this suggestion into the revision process and I was not intending to tell the story as Hamilton would have in the past. My goal was to tell the story of the song My Shot from a modern perspective. I felt like using modern dialect would help to tell the story more than using dialect that Hamilton might have in the Revolutionary Era.

Another suggestion I was given was to rewrite the character in the blog posts political views to align with Hamilton’s views in real life. I also decided not to take this piece of advice, as my goal was not to make the character in the blogs exactly a mirrored representation of Hamilton. The goal was to get the spirit and to tell the story of the song My Shot and I feel like the background and views that the character I created has helps to tell the story from a modern perspective. I did however take into consideration my partners suggestion of getting rid of characters who do not add anything to the story. I agree that some characters were added who did not contribute to the overall project.

In conclusion I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to have another peer review my work and to tell me what could be fixed and what could be made better. I believe through this project I have gained a deeper understanding of the meaning behind the song My Shot and really admire Miranda for creating such an inspiring and deep piece.

By: Ahad Khatri

 

 

With the constructive criticism my partner offered me, I decided to change the dynamics of the song that I created as a response to “Alexander Hamilton”, a song that incorporated lyrics regarding my health and mental struggles compared to Alexander Hamilton’s political and social struggle.

While my partner understood the premises and the purpose of my song, as well as its intended audience, which she felt could be extended to Tech students as well as general fans of the song, she mentioned improvements I could have made in the flow, recording and the narration of the song, all of which I took drastic measures to improve. The rough draft I submitted was recorded early in the morning while the fan was on, without instrumentals, but I intended on bringing in the music to my adaptation to give the listener an interesting experience.

My partner appreciated the effort I made to create the song in such a short time; I enjoyed reading her peer review and felt like the changes that she recommended were both realistic and helpful at the same time.

I then sat down, opened my computer, took a deep breath, and put my final draft and my rough draft side-by-side. For rhyme scheme purposes, for example, I changed “hospitalized”, because the word felt awkward in terms of flow, to “admitted”. I made sure that each line of my song had enough syllables to fully capture the beat of “Alexander Hamilton”; as I was making minor changes to my song, I could feel my sense of creativity ebb and increase at different points. For example, I tried to mimic the lyric “I’m the damn fool that shot him!” from the original song; I had to think about what or who constituted the biggest part of my life, as I had already mentioned my parents. I decided to place God in my lyric, “God’s the one who saved him”, to emphasize the emotion I was feeling during my surgery and the miracle that saved me.

Finally, I felt that the hardest part about creating the song was both finding a quiet place where I could record my voice, as well as relating the high and low points of my life to Georgia Tech, or where I currently am. Like “Alexander Hamilton” somewhat narrates the life of Alexander Hamilton chronologically, I decided to take the past events of my life and view them as stepping stones to my present. The most important lyric that reflected the turning point of my hardship and “strife”, as I mention in my song, was, “In G.T. he could start a new life”, which related to “In New York you can be a new man” from “Alexander Hamilton”. It was an amazing experience writing the remix in third-person and incorporating an anonymous narrator into the performance of the song because I was able to express myself more freely and clearly recount the different moments of my life. Here is hoping you will enjoy my remix!

https://soundcloud.com/ahad-yousuf-khatri/ahadyousufkhatri-remixandadaptation/s-3trQB

By: Adair Garrett

The revision process of this project helped my project grow to become stronger and more informative.  Upon first reading through the comments, I was surprised by my peer reviewer’s understanding of my piece.  Multiple times he commented on how “dark” my piece was, which was interesting to me because most of the facts I included came straight from news that had been published within the past two months.  After receiving comments from my peer reviewer, I immediately began editing my letters. He noted that I had a few grammatical errors, which I took care to correct quickly, but I waited two days before going through and addressing the rest of his comments.   As suggested in class, reading through the comments at first left a certain impression – and triggered my impulse to defend my work – but time encouraged me to be more open to implementing some of the suggestions.

I didn’t agree with his idea to change the letters to specify an intended audience.  My peer reviewer asked whether I intended to write both for immigrants and for the families of immigrants living outside the US.  I did not change anything in my work as a response to this question because my intention was to write this for anyone whose lives have been touched by the detainment or deportation of immigrants.  He also noted that the use of Hamilton lyrics throughout the letters may impact the span of the audience.  Here, I agreed; I knew that incorporating lyrics within the letters would drive the story to be told a different way, but I also wanted to pull as much from Hamilton as I could to make it more of a “remix”.  

My peer reviewer left many comments that I did apply.  His questions drove me to reflect on my own project and how I could make the project better.  My peer reviewer suggested that I add a letter written from Ann Mitchell to Hamilton, stating that it would add to my project if “two sides of an overall story” were included.  Upon this suggestion, I read over again my draft and decided he was right, even though it required me to do more research about Ann Mitchell and about news stories I could pull from. I added a letter from Ann Mitchell but did not include lyrics from the musical in her letter because she did not have a role in the musical that I could draw from, and there was no character that mirrored her position in Hamilton’s life.  I decided to leave her letter empty of references to the lyrics within the musical and focused on making sure her letter relayed the difficulty in communication faced by parents of detained immigrant children. I also wanted to include historical information of Ann Mitchell’s life since her role was left unmentioned by the musical.

I continued to make changes after adding the letter from Ann Mitchell.  I tried to edit the letters so they could be a stronger means to make my argument about the similarities between the themes of the musical and the news stories of today.  I decided to add references throughout the document so audience members could refer to the article that lead me to make a claim (this was a continued response to my peer reviewer’s comment that my take on the news was so dark).  I also wanted to take the form of the document and put it into a more interactive and aesthetic form. After asking for suggestions from many people, I received the advice to use the templates for medieval-themed video game manuals.  When I formatted my project onto the letters, however, I lost the citations. I decided that I would keep the formatted documents as they were (without the references) and turn in both the PDF of the old, handwritten letters as well as a PDF of the original document including the references.  This way, I kept the aesthetic of a handwritten letter while citing the appropriate information in the original document.

Here is an example of my final product:

Or you can check out my entire project:

RemixandAdaptationProject

By: Keval Bollavaram

While I really enjoyed creating my adaptation to Hamilton, I believe I took on too much when submitting my original proposal. I originally planned to compare Hamilton to two other musicals with my analysis focusing mostly on cross comparisons between musicals. After doing more research, I learned that the amount of available scripts for musicals that are a good comparison for Hamilton are very limited. In the end, I opted to focus my analysis on aspects of Hamilton with some cross comparisons to A New World: The Life of Thomas Paine. The specific aspects analyzed were speaking parts in Hamilton versus number of mentions of major characters.

For the coding part of my project I tried to simplify phrases that I was searching for to keywords within the musical. This process actually gave me more interesting data to interpret than data I gathered from more complex phrasing. Furthermore, I originally intended to analyze more locations and possibly create a separate code specifically for this task but after testing some of the songs, I had a difficult time finding correlative data. So, I decided to leave out my location data and include only one location in my analysis in order to demonstrate insignificance.

The peer review workshop was with a doubt the most guiding part of the project. Not only did I get great feedback, but the workshop forced me to think from the perspective of my audience. The feedback that I received focused mainly on how my work was organized so that the reader could clearly interpret what I was trying to portray. From the feedback, I decided to take a deeper look at the meaning behind my analysis. I realized that some of phrasing and word choice was a bit bombastic and lacked true analytical substance. This led me to go back through my data sets and pay attention to the details in my work. I ended up going further into my analysis and drawing possible conclusions based on the statistics that I gathered; this is something I did not have in my rough draft.

Below is an interesting graphic I found on Hamilton ticket sales compared to other Broadway shows during Hamilton’s rise to prominence.