W7: The Unlecture from W6

Some key things I took away from the W6 ‘Unlecture’:

Hypertext in terms of storytelling in different media…

Elliot: YouTube annotations kind of tried to do it, but it hasn’t taken off. Korakow is a more successful example of this.

Jasmine: still have to watch things from start to end in order to read the whole story. When you take away elements of linearity, you experience the narrative in a different way.

Brian: The 2012 London Olympic Opening Ceremony was an example of hypertexts that have become second nature – it’s one story and about one thing (linear) but still jumps around from music and cultural aspects.

Adrian: Multiple points are always available to the viewer in the hypertext experience. It’s about structural and formal relations between parts but not navigation. There are affordances of comp and system – experiences you want to ‘author’, and experiences desired by the viewer.

My favourite take-away idea from this ‘unlecture’ was that despite this idea people have of being ‘authors’ or ‘experience designers’, you can never guarantee intent – but hypertext willingly embraces this and uses it to an advantage.

W7: The System – Watts’ Six Degrees

“How does individual behaviour aggregate to collective behaviour?”

Watts’ poses this as the ultimate question when we consider complex systems, their affordances and their downfalls in his article ‘Six Degrees: the Science of a Connected Age’.

It is, as he says, one of the most fundamental and pervasive questions in all of science. It lends ideas of infectiousness, collaboration, social compulsion, synergy…

I’m a little bit stumped to answer the question beyond that. Mostly because it depends how you look at it. As Adrian has mentioned, it is a question applicable to a broad range of things from disease, to social media to information systems and so on. Each of these carry their own set of nuances and possible explanations for why individual behaviour aggregates to collective behaviour.

In any sense of networked system that spreads, evolves and augments, I figure there’s a cause, an enabler, a catalyst.

Ultimately, it results in some kind of network that augments the impact of the individual part.

I’ll be interested to hear what others have to say on this in the tute tomorrow – until then, I’ll leave you with this:


 

TV Cultures – Blog Post #2: Geographies – National to the Transnational

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Broadcast television has traditionally been linked to ideas of nationalism due to the role it plays as a cultural technology. By its very nature, broadcast television is localised by the airwaves that transmit its signal, geographically reaching only so far and thus limiting its influence to particular audiences.

While this has historically carried many affordances in developing specific public spheres, modern media practices and technologies have transformed broadcast television such that it has triggered a “deterritorialisation of the imagination” (Appadurai 1996) by expanding and diversifying the global television market. Cross-border satellite TV channels, international and regional news channels, joint ventures between production companies and adaptations of series have transformed television into a transnational medium.

The Bridge (or Broen/Bron as it is known in its countries of origin) is a perfect example of transnational television production and the affordances offered by this globalised medium. A Danish/Swedish coproduction, it encapsulates the ‘Scandinoir’ genre and represents a cultural cross-section of the two neighbouring countries. It also presents a political/crime genre and narrative format that has proven internationally translatable.

From the outset, the show is assigned a transnational identity as it opens with shots of the eponymous bridge at night, with flashes of seedy orange and blue lights. Long shots of the bridge are cut together with shots of Malmö and Copenhagen’s cityscapes and their most famous monuments. The opening credits include both Danish and Swedish languages and therein contextualise its transnational setting.

The night time shots and dark colour palette used in this opening sequence also establish the ‘Scandinoir’ genre of The Bridge. As a genre, Scandinoir depicts crime and detective stories with complex and imperfect protagonists who are “far from simply heroic” (Economist, 2010). They often deal with uncovering political issues in Scandinavia whereby seemingly idealistic social systems are used to mask injustice.

The opening sequence closes in on the bridge, where a body has been found and the two central detective characters meet. This frames the ‘whodunit’ procedural quality of the crime/detective/Scandinoir genre, and then plays with the narrative expectations that come with this generic code.


Throughout the episode, story information is revealed as the detectives uncover the mystery. The plot evolves as a series of questions whereby every answer raises a new question. As such, the series conforms to the characteristics of a complex narrative that is serial yet somewhat episodic in presenting issues particular to each episode.

The Bridge is a critically acclaimed and popular program, and its success can be largely attributed to its specific dealings with transnational issues between Denmark and Sweden – the bridge itself operates as a metaphor for issues in the show. However, it contains narrative and structural elements as a series that transcend cultural specificity and allow for adaptations in other countries.

US network FX has programmed an American version of The Bridge that adapts the story to focus on a similar crime at the American-Mexican border. Sister production companies Kudos and Shine France are also producing an adaptation called The Tunnel, which focuses on the murder of a French politician in the Channel Tunnel between France and the UK.

The international success of The Bridge as an original series and a format/franchise indicates a shift away from the proliferation of American media products across the globe. Once identified as having a “mediacentric capitalist cultural influence which emanated out to the rest of the world in the form of television programmes” (Sinclair Jacka & Cunningham 1996), the influence of American television programs is now balanced in a globalised media economy whereby “non-Western players also actively collaborate in the production and circulation of global media products” (Iwabuchi 2005).

Broen/Bron not only stands as a milestone for Scandinoir as a genre (which usually pertains to literature, such as Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy), but it has also been key in demonstrating the importance of locality and cultural appropriations of media products. As Nacify explains, “globalized culture provides a shared discursive space” wherein media products are localised, domesticated and indigenised according to culturally-specific uses. Thus, Broen/Bron as a media product demonstrates the ability of broadcast television to transcend cultural specificity and proliferate through transnational appropriation in a globalised market.

 

2010 ‘Inspector Norse’, The Economist, 22 March, viewed September 1 2013, <http://www.economist.com/node/15660846>

Sinclair, J, Jacka, E & Cunningham, S. 1996 ‘Peripheral  Vision’, New Patterns in Global Television, Oxford UP

Iwabuchi, K (2005) ‘Discrepant Intimacy: Popular Culture Flows in East Asia’, in Erni, Nguyet & Chua, Keng (eds.) Asian Media studies: Politics of Subjectivity, Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, p.19-36.

Appadurai, A 1996, Modernity At Large, Minnesota UP

TV Cultures – Blog Post #1: Live Television

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Since the mid-20th century, television has been a significant fixture of the Australian home – a centrepiece of the Aussie lounge room as families gather ‘round to view some of our greatest televised moments. To name but a few, broadcast television has brought into our homes the first moon-landing, Cathy Freeman’s gold medal win at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and an unforgettable 80’s soap wedding with more bleach jobs and tulle than you can poke a stick at…

photo scottandcharlene_zps7fb27e82.jpg

Just beeeewdiful!

But it’s not just the remarkable spectacles that have made the Australian television landscape what it is today. The everyday and weekly programming on broadcast TV have not only refined a fundamentally ‘Australian’ market, but have served to bolster and influence our overall sense of national identity through these shared experiences.

Sunrise conforms to Weiten & Pantti’s model of a breakfast show “obsessed with identifying itself with the daily world of the television viewer” (2005). Broadcast live from 6am across Australia’s eastern states and delayed for the nation’s other time zones, it links together a nation-wide audience and unites them through a collective viewing experience. Sunrise’s hosts, live elements and content are specifically catered to a broad but nuanced market of Australian viewers.

Firstly, we have the male/female hosts who represent the nuclear family and fit our Australian tastes for friendly, funny, wholesome parental archetypes.

Male host David “Kochie” Koch is the business analyst and “daggy dad” of the show, known for cracking cheesy jokes and translating the economic reports into layman’s terms for the viewers. Samantha Armytage has recently taken over the chair that was occupied by Melissa Doyle throughout most of the show’s time on air. Blonde, sweet-natured, aged 35-45 and with a tendency to giggle at Kochie’s dorky jokes – they both fit the bill of the stable “motherly” figure.

From chatting about current affairs, to cracking jokes between segments, the hosts are conversational and serve as familiar, upbeat mediators who put a light-hearted spin on the “newsroom” setup. Opening with news headlines, transitioning into a conversational and quotidian welcome from the hosts, taking a turn into a ‘meta’ shot of the new cameramen then switching back to formality by panning across to the weather reporter – Sunrise shifts in and out of formal and laidback styles to strike the right balance between informative news and more personalised entertainment.

The show’s structure and segments are designed such that it becomes a one-stop-shop for viewers as they prepare for their day ahead. It incorporates sports, news, economics, human interest stories and weather and presents them live – a crucial factor for establishing strong relationships with morning audiences (Weiten & Pantti 2005) as it adds to the notion of a “shared experience”.

The show’s use of live graphics also reinforces itself as part of their viewers’ morning routines, in what Ellis calls “a relationship of co-present intimacy” (1992). The banner fixed to the bottom of the screen provides a constant stream of headlines that instantly updates the viewer no matter what time they tune in. It also features weather information and a clock which add to the show’s functionality as a fixture of the everyday Australian’s routine.

Conforming to Benedict Anderson’s theories of imagined communities (1983), the Sunrise audience is united through individual viewing experiences of the same media product despite not having personally met one another. In fact, Kochie’s address to the viewers as “Sunrisers” reinforces the audience as a unified whole and part of the Sunrise “community”.

Ultimately, Sunrise is not a spectacle of nationalism, as with events like the Olympic Games, but rather a subtle, everyday representation and commodification of Australian identity and ideals. The Australianisms adopted by the hosts, their casual mode of address and the nature of the show’s broadcast across the nation each morning define it as a key fixture of our broadcast TV industry – one that represents and unites the nation’s audience as an imagined community.

 

Ellis, J 1992, ‘Visible Fictions: cinema television, video’ 2nd ed., Routledge, London

Anderson, B 1983, ‘Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism’, Verso, London, p. 1-9

Weiten, J & Pantti M, 2005 ‘Obsessed with the audience: breakfast television revisited’, Media, Culture & Society, 27 (1), p, 21-39

W6 – From Text to Hypertext

The extract from George Landow’s “Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization” pinpoints some important ideas about how stories and narratives are structured within new media forms.

He argues that “hypertext challenges narrative and all literary form based on linearity, [and] calls into question ideas of plot and story current since Aristotle.” For the most part, I feel that we think of this in terms of electronic forms of print, or making what was traditionally print media an interactive and interwoven experience. In this, we experience different kinds of media from different sources.

But I also think that this can be used to explain the ways in which we consume other media, particularly television.

It can be seen more and more that people want an interactive experience from television viewing. Michael Wesch explains how TV was traditionally a one-way medium, whereby people would congregate around a TV and watch a program at a time and in a way that is dictated by the televisions networks.

However, now people are viewing TV according to their own schedules, on any number of devices, on demand, out of order and so on. As such, it’s interesting to see media creators writing for these trends and technologies that support it.

Case in point: Arrested Development season 4. This show was originally broadcast like any other show, with up to 24 episodes in a season. It was critically acclaimed and had a cult following but was cancelled after 3 seasons. But in May 2013 it made its return on Netflix, the online subscriber viewing platform. Not only was it unique in being produced exclusively for Netflix, but its format was completely re-orchestrated to include 15 new episodes that could be watched in any particular order.

In this, the author “grants readers more power” to read the narrative in the order they wish. Whilst ultimately the narrative as a whole will be the same, the experience changes according to the order in which you view the episodes.

Although this alone may not explicitly relate to hypertext, it does lend to some of the ideas about why authors use hypertext, and particulary why it is so relevant to reading and viewing trends of today.

Furthermore, Landow’s point that authors use hypertext to create combinatorial fiction is relevant to almost any television program with a widespread following.

Although we no longer gather around a TV set to experience a show together as one imagined community, many people share in discussions online through social media and web forums. It is in these virtual spaces that many authors provide hypertext materials, things that add to the original and basic text.

For example, behind the scenes footage, interviews with actors and so on. These texts are available to viewers such that they have the power to extrapolate from the story worlds provided in the original text. They may explore additional areas of interest in ways that may not be immediately available through the primary text, but knowingly and readily available.

These examples embody Landow’s key characteristics of what hypertext includes:

  • Reader choice, intervention, empowerment
  • Inclusion of extralinguistic texts (images, motion, sound)
  • Complexity of network structure
  • Degrees of multiplicity and variation in literary elements such as plot, characterization, setting and so forth.

 

W5 – The Unlecture – Online Viewings

Out of the three videos I viewed as part of this week’s online/virtual unlecture, Michael Wesch’s “From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able” was the most poignant for me.

His points on how students of today use technology, approach their education and how this works within the institution of higher education are paramount to the ideas we cover in Networked Media, and how I want to be thinking about my education in general.

Being able to find, sort, analyse, criticise and create new information is something I think all students either think they will/have/can learn at university. However, I think many of us are misguided in how we go about this. I don’t think it’s just about learning how to research particular issues or topics of interest, and how we work through a process of finding some sort of ‘solution’ within them. But rather, our learning and higher education experiences should be about making meaning – by way of addressing real issues, utilising the human resources we have at university (other students, tutors, lecturers etc) and harnessing our informational resources.

I think he really gets it right in pinning together those three things. As Adrian said outright from the start of this Networked Media course, we have all the informational resources we need, we are able to connect with like-minded people across the globe, and we can seek out real issues. But within a higher education environment we’re able to practice how we utilise old and new media, harness old and new ways of sourcing information and collaborate.

Because it is a matter of practice. Creating meaning and being able to solve problems is a practice that takes training and some guidance.

As Sir Ken Robinson highlights in his Ted Talk “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”, education should be embracing the unique ways that students evidently absorb information and learn.

In the case of networking and utilising technologies, most of the information young people and students consume and share is via electronic, interactive networking platforms. So why do we still adhere to one-directional, outdated ways of learning such as essay writing or reading printed academic writings? It’s clear that these aren’t favourable or necessarily effective for students in the 21st century.

 

W5 – Hypertext

George Landow’s article “Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization” gives some interesting insights on how we read and analyse hypertext.

For me, a big part of practicing online networking and blogging is understanding the ways in which your work can benefit from the network itself. Your writing and ideas can be instantaneously linked with others. Landow’s description of the first kind of hypertext prose pinpointed how I had used networking and blogging sites in the past: placing links without hypertext into an HTML template that includes navigation links.

By utilising the features of hypertext more extensively (e.g. linking to other sites and content), we not only include draw on the benefits of this information, but instantaneously insert ourselves and our work into a larger context.

This is at once an exciting and terrifying thing for a student – many of us guard our work from peers and ‘the big wide world’ in fear of it not looking up to scratch. So I agree with Landow that it makes for excellent academic practice to introduce and utilise hypertext as a way of pushing students and writers in general towards connecting with like-minded creators/thinkers.

Furthermore, I like the idea of hypertext as reflecting non-linear reading practice. The way in which modern audiences consume/read texts in hardly ever linear, and certainly carries some ‘hyper’ characteristics. I hardly know a single person of my own ago who will sit and watch TV without checking their phone throughout the program, or work at a computer without multiple screen and windows open to constantly switch between.

Jay David Bolter also hits the nail on the head in the first sentence of his article “Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing”: “writing is a technology for collective memory, for preserving and passing on human experience”. Hypertext quintessentially directs readers between different forms of information in order to shape a particular experience. It draws upon multiple sources and directs the reader towards a particular experience and understanding.

Hypertext reflects and influences modern reading/viewing practices, so it makes sense that it should be integrated into our learning and writing process.