So, I'm not really an R Kelly fan at all and I didn't really know what I was watching at first. My first reaction was, "Hey, isn't that that pedophile, singer, clown." Well, read some of the other responses and looked up some stuff and found out what Smith's piece was actually showing. I haven't ever seen R Kelly's original series and couldn't really match up one visual part with the corresponding words, but I found the video pretty interesting. It's funny how even if you have never seen the original video you could kind of put the story together. For someone like me, who has never seen the original, I don't really know if I'm putting the story together correctly but since the scenes have been overlapped to the point where nothing is very clear I can just kind of invent one for myself, which I think is also one of the "take aways" from these pieces. Smith's work and the Super Mario Clouds by Cory Arcangel are works that have been manipulated to create a new story or piece of work.
As far as the clouds go, it seems like an interesting project and I wish that Cory could have done more like them with a bit more interaction. But, after viewing the clouds and reading the info on his site about how to crack open the cartridge and work with the chips I viewed some of the other projects he has done and some of them are quite funny. His "Starbucks center of gravity" and "tension between Simon and Garfunkel" are quite amusing but you have to read the blogs that go with them to really appreciate it. He describes the Starbucks data and says, "Think of it like being at the North Pole for overpriced coffee...The power center / death star if you will allow me to go that far...." All in all I think the two videos we watched are a good example of how many artists use existing materials or already finished works to create their own work.