During today’s tutorial, Dan was basically just looking at where we at in terms of project 4, and our overall progress as a group. Over the past week, my group and I have been working on the general aesthetic of the website and how we want it to look. We were also giving everything we are including in our website a place and a page giving a rough outline of what each page will include,etc. just to give everyone a general idea of how it will finish. Dan’s feedback was very helpful, and helped us with any elements of our research and final project we were having trouble with. We have decided to keep our articles a lot more general in terms of relation to our research as we believe that there is a talent to writing in a ironic or funny way and it doesn’t always appeal to all audiences. After having a discussion with Dan we also set a length for our articles as well as any extra little bits we feel we need to add on.

Throughout our lives we like to mix things up and change things all the time. In a way we like to ‘remix’ our lives. We do the same old thing every day get in a routine then something flicks in your mind and you think, ‘no, I need to make a change here’. Things get boring so you do make a change.  Much of the same in the virtual or media orientated worlds. If a TV show isn’t doing as well as it should be or a radio station isn’t getting as many listeners as it should be, something needs to change; change is good. Change is what keeps us going. Change is everywhere and it needs to start happening on a bigger scale…

I would have loved to be my parents generation instead of now, grew up through the 70s and 80s. Sure we have come far since then and their was obviously issues back then… Since, society has managed to distinguish equality between men and women, racism has come a very long way and we are getting there on gay marriage!! But we have unfortunately gone downhill in many ways as well. When our parents were our age, there weren’t clowns running the country (well they actually had a choice between liberal and labour… now it’s all basically the same). People weren’t so entranced and obsessed with technology. I know it is kind of ironic of me to say that when I am studying media, but even though technology was supposed to be for the better, all I think it has done is made things worse. Everyone has become so reliant on these tools to make life so much easier, but in turn has made us as human beings so lazy. We have big CEOs who run the world and are all so power and money hungry… They don’t see what they are doing to the world because they are so bewitched by money. We are getting self service checkouts and robots are on their way to start taking the places of workers. Everyone is so aware of how downhill everything is going but something really needs to change and we all need to start using our voices to make a change. I don’t know how or where we will start but if something isn’t done soon, I have no idea what it will be like for our children when they are our age. But all I can do is hope and pray that things will make a change, by also creating this conversation with everyone to spark the change in everyone else too.

In today’s lectorial the topic was ‘the Remix and the Glitch’; how people break things in order to make or get art. Unfortunately there is no such thing as an original idea… someone always had your idea first. Dan, delve further into this topic by posing the questions, how does reproducing something change it; how is the reproduction of something considered to be authentic? He also spoke about the use of social media, whether it is authentic or not in terms of portraying someone. Dan argued the point that it is authentic as it adds another layer on to how people connect with the world. He believes than you can get an aura or a sense of somebody through their engagement with social media as the interact with the different social mediums and that it is a somewhat pure mode of engagement. I personally agree with this to some degree, but I feel as though sometimes people only show you what they want you to see, or they even convey themselves to be something that they’re not. It is a debate which I’m sure will be coming forward more very soon.

The section of the lectorial that I found most interesting, was that focused on djs (disc jockeys) and more specifically Girl Talk. We did an activity where we listened to one of Girl Talk’s mash up songs ‘This is the Remix’ and we had to write down every song or artist that we recognised in the mash up. To be honest I wasn’t that great at recognising songs in this task and only recognised about two! However, with the help of other students we put together a list of the ones that we recognised. We got these ones out of the total 31 used:

• Jackson 5 – I want you back
• Another one bites the dust – INXS
• Cecilia
• Justin Timberlake
• Lil Jon
• Lil Kim
• Far side
• Lady Gaga
• Busta Rhymes
• Beastie Boys
• DMX
• Clash
• Donkey Kong
• U2
• B.O.B

Listen below to see how many you recognise:

(video source: https://youtu.be/DZu_lLGFDtM)