“It’s not TV, it’s HBO”: Branding, Genre and the idea of ‘Quality TV’
No contemporary show is ‘pure’ in terms of genre, they instead have a multiplicity of genre conventions. Jason Mittel wrote, “Genre definitions are no more natural than the texts that they seem to categorize. Genres are cultural products constituted by…
Week 8: Symposium 0.5
Why is hypertext considered influential in the future development of media making and storytelling? Interplay between hypertext and network and story and history itself Causal logic: this event happened to cause this event but that’s very rarely the case Hypertext…
Week 8: The 80/20 Rule
Influential Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto formed The 80/20 Rule after he observed that 80 percent of his peas were produced by only 20 percent of his peapods. His observations are based on the uneven distribution of wealth and theorises that 80…
Week 7: Symposium 0.4
What kind of genre is an interactive documentary? Is it still a documentary, or would you say that it is a new genre because of the hypertextual interface? Documentary: A document of physical reality. Mediated by author and technology Mixing…
Her
Soon to be released, “Her,” is a new film from director Spike Jonze and looks to be an insightful look into the influence of modern technology on the intimate aspects of our lives. The trailer certainly has me thinking about…
Week 6: A jumble of symposium notes
How does hypertext relate to storytelling in different media formats? Youtube’s incorpoartation of annotation to incorporate visual media (not particularly successful) Hypertextual video (Korsakow) Non linear storytelling strategies Korsakov is navigated through the choices you make (short videos), randomness, take…
The Television Fan
French scholar Michel de Certeau asserts that audiences are not passive consumers but instead active interpreters of media texts. This follows Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding model of communication first developed in 1973 in which he proposed that individuals create their own…
Humans of New York
I think Humans of New York has won the title of my favourite blog. Self taught photographer, Brandon Stanton, began the HONY blog in 2010. He photographs New Yorkers he meets on the streets with accompanying quotes and short interviews….
Live Television: The Ordinary and The Extraordinary
As a technology, the television’s introduction was negotiated through a series of discourses bringing the family together as people gather collectively to watch a program, and quite often these shows are dramas about families like The Simpsons and Modern Family….
Is youth wasted on the young?
After listening to Sir Ken Robinson’s highly entertaining and profound speech about children and creativity, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated about society’s predetermined hierarchy of the educational curriculum. He elucidates that children are prepared to take risks and explore…