Final Blog post – Handmade Leather Craft

Finally got this video done. To be honest, I am not satisfied with it because of some uncontrollable limitation. First thing is the voiceover. It took me some time to decide the voiceover script and gave it to my friend after I received the audio, I found it was recorded in several environments which means the voice could be unmatched. My friend also struggled in her final assessment, and I had no time to record again because I have returned the recorder to school. I tried to use Adobe Audition to fix the problem, but it didn’t work.

Another thing which struggled me the most was the footage finding, little footage I can find especially the ancient part, because of this, I cut many periods out which made me feel a little bit undetailed. Due to having too many different resources, the video cannot have one unified style for all the clips; I feel quite messy while watching the final cut.

I was thinking about using background music or not, and I chose to use for better participation sense. However, looking for one suitable background music is annoying especially it must be creative commons. Maybe I should save more soft creative commons music at normal times in case of need. Some music is good at the beginning and getting louder and annoying in the climax phase. So, I cut the beginning part and make it on a continuous loop, which was much suitable than using the whole song but sounded plain.

Also, I have applied the PTV permission for allowing me to film in the Flagstaff Railway Station, but it will take more than two weeks to get the reply, and I don’t think I can receive before the due day. I will upload to Google Drive as soon as I receive it even though it will be late.

In the course of human history, the handmade leather craft had a significant impact in the industrial revolution, due to the low price and faster production efficiency, machine made almost replaced the Handmade craft, which was not only in the leather field. There were some people like William Morris as I mentioned before have stood out and helped plenty of crafts retain until now.

During the whole semester, I have thought a lot about what does OLD and NEW mean in our daily life. Like the fashion trend, vintage style becomes popular every year, many designers just add some new ideas on the vintage style, and the clothes will sell out rapidly. Does this mean people like old stuff or just following the public? This also makes sense in the handmade craft field.

China is an old country, during thousands of years, lots of crafts became extinct. Some are still available, but it is disappearing. People are filming some of the crafts and not all the documentaries can get a high level of attention. However, you can always find articles or reports online about those disappearing crafts. Are people caring about the extinction of handmade craft, or just for attracting public’s attention?

Like Luanne Martineau said: “My interest was in the subservience of craft, the use-value of craft, the fact that craft has fought for legitimacy within the visual arts realm.” “Craft is always about having either the time or the money to produce something that is materially realized.” (Becker, 2011) Yes, nowadays, I think the biggest obstacle that people don’t want to learn a craft because it cost us too many times and cannot have proportional giving and taking. Like me, I was only interested in it and decided to make some simple gifts at first. Of course, I still not making money relying on this craft.

After this project, I think I already had a more particular idea about what should I do with this hobby. By craft, Bailey and Townsend seek to address the revival of the ‘handmade’ as an arguably complex currency within the practice and contemporary culture. From traditional economies of ‘making-by-hand’ to new technologically informed modes of making, ‘craft’ is exercising its diverse skills and practices on a global and local scale, for different causes, initiatives, and audiences. As part of an expanding landscape of both commercial and public sector platforms, contemporary applications of the handmade can serve to generate new experimental modes of thinking and make which not only challenge our preconceptions of what craft is, but also what it has the potential to evolve into. This is not solely relegated to the historical, material and technical developments of the handmade as a distinct mode of practice-led research. Craft is also established, received and played out in the world, through the channels of collective endeavor and co-creative exchange. How these two positions intermingle is evident in the contents presented for this special issue, which showcases the wider contexts within which handmaking may be thought about/through, understood and activated as a social mechanism or channel for new modes of research inquiry that reveal aspects of craft’s often intangible heritage. (Bailey & Townsend, 2015)

As a practitioner, who reflects on her creative process through the shared experiences of stitching with others. This allows for deeper insights to be generated about how craft thinking is not necessarily an isolated encounter, but the knowledge that is shared, negotiated and passed on through collective hands and making activities.

References:

Becker, Noah. (2011). Handmade: Luanne Martineau sets craft on a new trajectory.(Interview). Canadian Art, 28(1), 102.

Bailey, R., & Townsend, K. (2015). Craft and the handmade: Making the intangible visible. Craft Research,6(2), 157-163.

Being very stressful this week, the only craftsman who said yes did not reply to me afterward, which means I have nobody to interview, also means I need to change the whole structure for my video. Now, I need to create a new outline about what I will display in this video, excluding the interview part, the rest video length is a big hole for me to find other information and fill in. What Dan told me today is the best idea to concatenate my everything together. If I could make a timeline about leather industry changing for thousands of years, the video would appear more meaningful, and the content would be more clear.

I was confused about how much I should show in the video which is enough to demonstrate the understanding of Old and New Media. Maybe how to show the relevance clearly in the video could help me to figure out this doubt.

What I still need to do is find more creative commons footages about the history of leather and the industrial revolution, it is difficult to find a useful one. However, asking the permission from many public online resources seems much more impossible to me.

Luckily, my roommate’s friend, who is an amateur about hand making leather stuff, brought some necessary tools from China to Melbourne, and she was happy to lend them to me but refused my suggestion about filming the interview. I asked her about what made her feel interested in making handmade leather goods; she said her original intention was making a birthday gift for her mom, but she was deeply caught in this craft now.

While I was editing the video, I started to search and do some readings for my final reflection. William Morris is the one I mentioned in the first blog post. I think some of his proposition helped to keep the craft survived in the industrial revolution. I will do more research about him because my friend told me he is a very famous people in the craft field.

It is a pity that I cannot film the process of making leather goods. Also, this project makes me want to shoot a detailed video about this craft while I go back to China which can let more people know it and be interested in this work.

I chose to do the Handmade Leather Goods topic because I think I am quite familiar with this industry. I used to make leather bags, leather wallets and Leather covers for the notebooks. I searched lots of information about different types of leather and compared the style trend between the 18^th-19^th century and now. Which also Making easier for me to connect with the OLD MEDIA and NEW MEDIA topic.

I already have a brief idea about what I am going to do, but unfortunately, I am stuck in some realistic situations. Two weeks ago, I started to contact as more craftsmen as I can, people whom I found on Instagram and wanted to use their photos and videos, I emailed them and got most of them replied positively. Individuals who have a workshop or store in Melbourne, I called them, emailed them and also texted them, some of them replied me and rejected persuasively. They said they are too busy in the workshop to have people taking videos at this point. Only one craftsman said yes but no more progress after I started to check the interview time with her. Currently, I am very nervous in the video part, what if I cannot have any interviewee, this will be the biggest part for me to figure out next.

The history of leather can be dated back as early as 1450 B.C. in Egypt. The Romans used leather both for footwear and clothing and for making shields and harnesses. In the Middle Ages, the union system has developed in Europe. Leather manufacturers also produced a trade association, so the technical progress and production also became more flourished. The rise of the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century led to the study of leather manufacturing science and the opening of the workshop to increase the production. Especially in the nineteenth century invented the chrome leather, but also improved the mechanical class, lay the foundation of today’s leather industry. After creating the engineering industry, why are people continuing to make leather goods by hand? How can craftsmen find the balancing point between the mechanical industry and 100% pure handmade? What are the differences between the line production leather goods and handmade leather goods?

William Morris, who was a leading member of the Arts and Crafts Movement, showed a better way in the 19^th century how passion The Arts and Crafts Movement (1850-1900) was a reaction against the Industrial Revolution. The members of the Arts and Crafts Movement included artists, architects, designers, craftsmen, and writers. They feared that industrialization was destroying the environment in which traditional skills and crafts could prosper, as machine production had taken the pride, skill, and design out of the quality of goods being manufactured. They believed that handcrafted objects were superior to those made by machine. What I think is this movement makes lots of handmade skill come down. I’d also like to ask how new craftsmen think about William Morris’s proposition and this movement.

As the filming, I think I will do more extreme close up to show details about all the leather goods. Also, if I cannot find any interviewee, I would like to change the video to another style which is not determined yet.

Reference:

http://www.leatherresource.com/history.html (History of leather)

http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/graphic_designers/william_morris.html (William Morris)

ARE PAPER BOOKS HEALTHIER?

I am not sure if there is a correlation between my myopic eye and the screens, but my eyesight did become worse since my father bought me the first computer. I used to read lots of net literature on that computer about twelve years ago. There were plenty types of the net literature which attracted me a lot, for instance, Chinese style fantasy novel, alternative love story. Net literature was hard to be published at that time which means the only way for me to read is reading online. Nowadays, the consumption of the written word is changing. Newspapers, magazines, books and other paper products are being replaced by a complex system of interconnected electronic devices (Bull, & Kozak, 2014). Electronic reading devices are getting more and more popular because of two simple reasons: readability and portability (Delamothe, Tony, Savage, Richard, 2000).

There was a funny story few years ago, when I was deciding to buy a kindle as a gift for myself, I talked with my friend with her thoughts about the statement: are paper books healthier? What we finally got was no. With our shallow knowledge, we thought paper books were made by trees, as the trees getting fewer, the condition of the air would get worse, which was bad for our health. However, what we concerned has figured out now. From Henry’s research, we can see although the trees are renewable, the regeneration rate of the tree cannot catch the usage rate of human beings. Currently, recycling is the best way to produce paper. Recycling, including pre- and post-consumer recycled fiber distinctions; carbon footprints; forestry; chain-of-custody (CoC) certification standards; paper recycling methods and economics; worldwide practices and economic impacts; green production efforts; and reducing waste (Henry, 2008).

In a word, what I have done for the research is not enough to proof weather is healthier or not, only shows the point of view from me and be cleared that the whole world is improving the use ratio of the paper.

Cited by:

Delamothe, Tony, & Savage, Richard. (2000). Revel in electronic and paper media. British Medical Journal, 321(7255), 192.

Bjork, B., & Turk, Z. (2000). How Scientists Retrieve Publications: An Empirical Study of How the Internet Is Overtaking Paper Media. The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 6(2), The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 12/01/2000, Vol.6(2).

Bull, & Kozak. (2014). Comparative life cycle assessments: The case of paper and digital media. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 45, 10-18.

Henry, P. (2008). Association of American Publishers: Handbook on Book Paper and the Environment. Publishing Research Quarterly, 24(4), 294-295.

OLD MEDIA IS REDUCING

Recently, the chairman of Alibaba Group Jack Ma said, he would make cash disappear in China in five years. However, the top comment was: “unless the bank disappears, otherwise, the cash is not going to be disappeared”, which is just like the relationship between old media and new media. Old media is like the cash, no matter how you want to use the mobile app or bank card to replace the position of cash, it will always be there with its own mission.

Although the old media will not disappear, but it is gradually reduced. The term old media has become synonymous with the seven traditional forms of mass communication: books, newspapers, magazines, film, sound recordings, radio and television (Benjamin, Sky). It is easy to find the reduction of most of these stuffs.

This second-hand camera Canon AE-1 was a gift from my parents when I was a child. It was fresh for me to own a 35mm single-lens reflex film camera at the beginning, however, because of the camera’s weight, I left it in the storage for many years. After the first year that I studied abroad, I found the Canon AE-1 again and felt fresh again. Unfortunately, I searched the whole city that I lived and there was no film or film processing service. Film was easy to work out, an online shopping website called ‘Taobao’ had all different kinds of films, although the film producer was getting less. Meanwhile, I just realized that there was no more photo studio that can process the film, which forced to build a darkroom and process the film by myself. Luckily, I found and joined an online film camera interest group, people who have the same problem could join, and share their information about the film camera and film processing. Also, there were some film camera experts that could teach us more skill and method.

Records’ seemingly unique ability to connect us with the past allows enthusiasts to imagine a ‘sociotemporal network’ (Yochim, Biddinger, 2008). While we cannot stop the reduction of old media, we still can do records, just as every record serves as an artifact of another’s existence, so too might they be remembered by future generations.

Cited by:

BartmanskiIan,D 2013 ,The vinyl: The analogue medium in the age of digital reproduction WoodwardJournal of Consumer Culture Vol 15, Issue 1, pp. 3 – 27

Yochim, E & Biddinger M, 2008, It kind of gives you that vintage feel’: Vinyl records and the trope of death, Media, Culture, and Society, 30(2), 183.

Lipinski, D., & Neddenriep, G. (2004). Using “New” Media to Get “Old” Media Coverage: How Members of Congress Utilize Their Web Sites to Court Journalists. The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 9(1), 7-21.

Benjamin, H., & Sky, S. Old Media Vs. New Media

Old media not yet ready to disappear. (2001, February 01). Northern Echo, p. 12.

Yochim, E & Biddinger M, 2008, It kind of gives you that vintage feel’: Vinyl records and the trope of death, Media, Culture, and Society, 30(2), 183.

THERE IS NO MEMORY WITHOUT MEDIA

Media, after all, are not only “things”; they are also cultural constructions that shape our everyday experience, and provide us with meanings and narratives to make sense of the transformations and changes experiences throughout life. (Natale, forthcoming; Natale & Balbi, 2014)

When I was a little girl, one of my daily routine is reading comics from every day’s newspaper, because the comics was serialized, it also made me to expect next day’s newspaper. When I was a little girl, my mother used to buy me a lot of story tapes, such as Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Aesop’s fables and the Thousand and One Nights. I had my own silver Walkman which accompanied with me for a long time. When I was a little girl, I used to listen to the radio with my grandfather. Sometimes, I cannot understand the content and my grandfather would explain to me. Kid’s channel was always my favourite, there were some nursery rhymes I still could sing now. When I was a little girl, there was no way expect the television to watch the cartoons. If you miss the time, you will miss your favourite cartoon. I think cartoon builds everyone’s childhood. My homestay’s baby Zoe loves watching The Pig Peggy, but in my time, I watched many Japanese cartoons rather than English cartoons. Even now, I still feel quite involved when I watch the cartoons I watched many years ago. When I was older to go to the primary school and the secondary school, I felt in love with different kinds of magazines, magazines about the idols, magazines about jokes and stories, magazines about the school’s life. I loved to read and collect them. There were too many of them so that I created a specialized bookshelf for them until now.

There were plenty of memories about media in my head, although the story tapes stop selling today, my grandfather cannot listen to the radio with me anymore, Chinese government does not allow to play the Japanese cartoons on the television, and I hardly read the old magazines, but I still have the memory. Almost all my high school friends and classmates chose to study business and economics in the university, I still chose to improve my media knowledge, because I know with all those media memory, the interests about media would support me to go further.

Cited by:

O’Hagan, Sean (2016, July 3). ‘The digital age reshapes our notion of photography. Not everyone is happy…’ The Observer.

Wei, L., & Hindman, D. (2011). Does the Digital Divide Matter More? Comparing the Effects of New Media and Old Media Use on the Education-Based Knowledge Gap. Mass Communication and Society, 14(2), 216-235.

Neiger, M., Meyers, O. and Zandberg, E. (2011). On Media Memory: Collective Memory in a New Media Age. Palsgrave Macmillan, Hampshire, England

Really like Rebecca’s workshop today, had a great fun with the Lumen Prints.

I used to go to the archive when I do wanna research about movies both specifically and not specifically. The teacher there always helped me a lot with finding different information about the movies. the magazines and other original newspapers copies are very helpful in my assessment process. If I cannot find any useful information at the first time, the second time I go there, the teacher would find more for me preparatively.

Three things

The online library means a lot to me, when I am busy and have no time to go to the school library, I always search online. I sometimes search some articles from other website which needs me to pay and read, I usually copy and paste the articles’ name and read free in school library website.

library’s computer is my nightmare, I spent a lot of time before this computer doing my assignment. Strangely, I can be very concentrate to my assignment in library but when I am at home, games and phone would take all my time.

Printer is important! I am quite weird because I always cannot get used to read on the screen, I have to print every reading every week and feel comfortable to read with my highlight pen.

• Paintings on the wall, a brush which has Olympic Rings.

• I searched online and found out “painting on the wall” is called Mural. A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface.

• I saw many kinds of art works like this in Melbourne.

• Circles on the top of the Melbourne central.

• THE COOP’S SHOT TOWER has been built since 1889.

• Those circles always can attrack my attention to stare at it until I feel dizzy, haha.