Tag / week 11

by amandathai

Week 11 Video: “Level…1”

Previously on Amanda’s blog…

“Tune in tomorrow for my video post.”

Turns out “tomorrow” is code for “next week”.

How did you author the video you recorded for upload to Instagram?

This video was taken on and edited on the Instagram app on my iPhone 6S using the rear facing camera. The featured door of this video is the elevator near the back entrance of Building 9 at RMIT and I edited this video by removing the sound and adding a black and white filter, sticking with my video theme of ‘silent black and white videos of automated doors’ (catchy).

The story of how this video was authored is rather amusing.

I filmed a ‘first draft’ of this video in Week 10, during our tutorial’s allocated Instagram time. At first, I wanted to film opening the elevator doors from the outside, then closing them from the inside, using Instagram’s start-stop feature.

Unfortunately, that draft somehow disappeared from my Instagram’s draft section. And that’s why I couldn’t post the video last week because, in all the three days I was at uni, I forgot to film a second version of that video.

So come today, Week 12, and I have to film again. Having done a draft, this video feels much more staged and less spontaneous than any other Instagram post I’ve done.

I call the elevator, take my video, one hand on the phone, the other on the buttons, when suddenly, as I’m choosing a thumbnail in the closed, empty elevator, someone calls the lift up to Level 4.

So there I was just awkwardly riding the elevator up and down with a random teacher.

 

How did you publish the video you recorded for upload to Instagram?

The publishing process for this video was the rockiest it has ever been.

First, I accidentally filmed and posted this video to my personal Instagram instead of my student one (no big deal, I rarely use my personal one anyway). Thank god for the fact that Instagram saves a copy of your photos and videos to your phone because by the time I was posting the video, I was halfway down the Pakenham line, the elevator at RMIT far, far behind me.

Speaking of the Pakenham line, there are several dead spots of internet along that line, most notably between South Yarra – Caulfield and Dandenong – Hallam.

When I was publishing this video, I fell into one of these dead spots and hence, when I tried to correct my mistake, I was stuck with long loading screens, especially when trying to geotag.

It showed me something I had taken for granted:

Instagram is only as spontaneous as your internet is fast.

The internet itself, your access and your speed, is a constraint as well as an affordance.

Additionally, when I reposted this video to my student Instagram, I forgot to chnge the thumbnail so now it just looks like a black screen. (I don’t take a video for one week and suddenly I’m a noob.)

For my caption, I threw back to Week 9 and quoted the door itself, this time announcing “Level…1”. When I play D&D with my friends at Monash Uni, I always make fun of their elevator’s voice and the hilariously long pause between “first” and “floor.” Well, it looks like RMIT is in the same boat (unlike its revolving doors which are far inferior to Monash’s).

For my quirky hashtag, I referenced my lateness: #impostingfromthefutureitsnotactuallyweek11.

How did you distribute the video you published on Instagram to other social media services?

This answer has been pretty repetitive over the last five posts. However, today is a little different.

Because I was signed into the wrong account, when I tried to flick those handy little switches to cross post to Facebook and Twitter, it took me to the respective sites and asked me to sign in.

NBD, I thought. Maybe it just automatically signs you out every few weeks for security reasons.

I should’ve realised something was wrong.

I struggled with these external sites and bad internet for no reason, because soon enough, I was reposting the video on my correct account, where the switches worked just fine.

This brought to my attention the struggle of distributing across multiple platforms. I had to go to my Facebook and Twitter and delete the cross-posts because otherwise, I would’ve had two identical videos crossposted from separate Instagram accounts, which would’ve raised a couple of eyebrows.

However, after all that struggle setting up cross-posting on my personal account, I figured, why not actually post something for real on that account? (As opposed to these student posts as a door aficionado).

That’s when the centralisation of the network really hit me.

My Twitter account is largely connected to my Goodreads account. It has the same profile pic as my Goodreads account (a purple eye) and I used to use this Twitter account to follow authors, post links to my reviews and get writing advice.

My Facebook account is just a polished image of me, somewhere to send new acquaintances that want to contact me.

My personal Instagram has one photo of pasta and advertises myself as a Mercy main.

My student Instagram doesn’t even have my name, it has my student number, and bunch of doors.

 

I am not the same person on any of these platforms. I don’t want to be the same person across these platforms.

But that is the world we live and work in today.

If I want to create a new online identity, I don’t just go to a new platform – I make a new account on every single platform.

I think I finally get it. With a centralised internet, you can constantly surround your audience with a certain image of yourself, consistent across platforms. And when your life is the internet, whose to say this online self isn’t your real self? You keep to the canon you wrote for yourself. You maintain a character.

Consistent. Centralised. Constant.

by amandathai

Week 11 Photo: Hidden

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Hidden. #networkedmedia #rmit #doors #tbhimgladthisisnearlyover

A post shared by s3656343 (@no_metaphors_allowed) on

How did you author the photo you recorded for upload to Instagram?

I authored this photo using the rear-facing camera on my iPhone 6S, all within the Instagram app.

I found this door by wandering through the Old Melbourne Gaol, past the door from last week, and to the side of what I think is Building 13.

Following the theme I set for myself last week, I placed the door on the right of the photo. For colour editing, I chose green for the shadows to emphasise the plant on the left of the photo, and orange for the highlights to put some warmth into the white building. I used the Adjust feature to make sure the door was straight, added a quick vignette and then added a linear blur (which I think looks awesome with the plant in the foreground).

I still don’t think this photo lives up to my first photo, but I think it’s better than last week’s.

How did you publish the photo you recorded for Instagram?

My first instinct was to take a photo of this door with it right in the centre. However, I soon remembered my theme and retook it with the door on the right side of the frame. It actually worked out for the better because I was able to get the plant in the photo, which created a nice contrast to the white building.

My one-word caption for this week is ‘Hidden’ because I think the blurred foreground plant makes it look as though I had to sneak through a jungle to find this pristine white building. The caption also works because I don’t think this is a very well-known door. I don’t even know if it works or is just decorative. Every time I’ve been here, there’s been no one.

My usual hashtags were used once again, however my ‘thoughts’ hashtag was a little more negative than past weeks. Where Week 9 was the funny and artificially desperate #thisismysecondinstagramposteverplshelp, and Week 10 was the self-aware #amithematicyet, Week 11 is just my thoughts on uni in general: #tbhimgladthisisnearlyover.

How did you distribute the photo you published on Instagram to other social media services?

As always, during the captioning and tagging phase of creating this photo, I simply switched on the buttons to share the photo to my linked Facebook and Twitter accounts. Easy as pie.

Swiping those buttons made me remember something. The first time those switches appeared on my old iPod Touch, I was confused how to use them. In the beginning, I would simply tap each one. Then I would over swipe. Now, my thumb knows exact how to swipe each one.

In Seth’s summary post from this week, he talks about affordances and their hierarchy. Hardware affords certain actions. Take for example, a smartphone, which affords tapping, zooming, scrolling, etc. Software, working within the constraints of the hardware, has its own affordances – things like sharing photos, typing notes, recording video, etc. What I found interesting was that the physical affordances of the hardware are then used to create intangible affordances in the software, which map our interactions. Eventually, these interactions become ingrained in our physical bodies.

Using a mouse is second nature to me. When I first opened up Mediafactory in Week 1, it felt relatively intuitive and simple to use because it looked similar to the book review writing page on Goodreads, a platform I am very familiar with. Perhaps that subconsciously influenced me to write my first blog post about book reviews.

Outside this class…

My mum has an Instagram account, on which she posts her handmade cards. Recently, she’s gotten more into it and keeps asking me how to do things. I told her that she should use the Story feature, despite the fact I’ve never actually used it myself.

Just recently, her card was featured in a video on the stamp manufacturer’s Instagram account.

I find it funny that, after this class, I can tell her how to use Instagram, despite the fact I’ve barely used it myself.

On a serious note, I appreciate this class for the new perspectives it has given me on design and the internet that increasingly grows and surrounds us. I think it provided me valuable information on the network as a whole and a platform that I don’t use but one day, most likely will.

I would write a better conclusion, but it’s Week 11.

Tune in tomorrow for my video post.