With this image I opened a .jpeg file in TextEditor on my Mac and copied and pasted the jpeg code, effectively creating digital scrambled eggs but without the joy of eating scrambled eggs afterwards. Instead, I was left with this thoroughly glitched image.
This image was the result of converting a .jpeg file to a .tiff file and opening it in Audacity and adding an echo filter. Different filters resulted in different effects, as you can see with the next two photos, the last of which is slightly more subtle rather than extreme glitchy death metal.
M. Dias, et. al’s Asynchronous Speeds: Disentangling the discourse of ‘high-speed broadband in relation to Australia’s national broadband network’ discusses the term ‘high speed broadband’ and how this term presents problems.
We discussed this reading and the issues it delves into in quite a a bit of detail in the workshop this week. Why is Australia so behind in internet speeds that we need a convoluted, politically loaded broadband plan to try and fix it?
Firstly, Australia is a large country. Although most of the population live in urban areas, rural areas still needs to be serviced with phone and internet, which can be expensive.
Secondly: The Telstra Monopoly. Telecom networks used to be owned by the government, but it was privatised and renamed Telstra. Since then, it has been actively trying to crush competitive providers that threaten to provide better service and faster broadband speeds.
With the future of fibre to the home proposed in the original NBN plan looking grim, our internet speeds will remain inferior to the rest of the world. In today’s internet age, speeds of 1-6mbs down are not acceptable. See this article for a discussion on how Netflix has affected internet speeds.
Speeds is so important, especially media makers. A video that takes 12 hours to upload puts a significant dent in your workflow. In my opinion, it’s embarrassing to have Australia falling so far behind the rest of the modern world.
Keith Sawyer in Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (2007) discusses Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi’s coinage of the world “flow” to describe a “particular state of heightened consciousness.” This can be achieved by a task suits a person’s skill, there is a clear goal, there is constant and immediate feedback, and they are free to concentrate fully on a task.
This led me to think about times when I’ve experienced this “flow,” like when I’m painting or drawing. When I’m drawing something difficult, my skill does not match the task, and so I can become frustrated won’t achieve this state. However, at times when I’m able to concentrate and I’m drawing something that makes me feel comfortable, I can be so absorbed in what I’m doing that I lose track of time. The constant and immediate feedback is the progress that I’m making on what I’m doing.
“Flow” can also be achieved as part of a group. Sawyer sets ten conditions that are necessary for group flow to occur:
The group’s goal is clear
Close listening > deep listening
Complete concentration
Being in control
Blended egos > meeting in the middle
Equal participation
familiarity > problem solving
communication
Moving it forward
Potential for failure > not all ideas will work.
It’ll be helpful to apply these ideas to the upcoming Project Brief 4.
Textual analysis was the key topic from today’s Lectorial. In order to analyse texts, as the topic suggests, we first have to realise what a text is. Texts are vehicles for the production of cultural meaning, or the evidence of the way other people make sense of the world. As Alan McKee proposes, ‘to understand the world we live in, we have to understand how people are making sense of the world,’ and it is through textual analysis that we can attempt to do so.
Therefore, textual analysis is an attempt to guess the most likely interpretations that may be made of a text by its audience. There is no ‘correct’ interpretation, just as no text is an accurate or ‘real’ representation of reality. We can use certain methodology, such as semiotics, however, to attempt to make ascertain the most likely interpretation of a text. Semiotics is the study of signs in texts, which can be visual, linguistic, aural and more. There are two parts to a sign: the signifier, and the signified. For example, the colour green is a signifier, which can signify jealousy, or nausea, or nature.
Importantly, the context in which these signifiers are place alter its meaning. Context is always needed to accurately interpret a sign. As McKee demonstrated with his example of the colour ‘brown’ not existing in Welsh, signs can mean different things to different people or groups of people. The majority of a certain society may interpret green to be related to jealousy, a different culture may more strongly associate it with something else. Similarly, placed within a different context, like a garden, it can be seen as natural and relaxing.
According to McKee there are three levels of context that can affect textual analysis:
The rest of the text
The genre of the text
The wider public context in which a film is circulated.
These must be kept in mind when analysing a text, as they are important in interpreting the signs accurately within their context.
This week heralded my long awaited introduction to Premiere Pro. Having been baptised in the fires of iMovie and Final Cut Pro X I was ready to find out how real editors work. The answer?
With tears. Lots of them.
But, thanks to Lynda, and evangelistic greyhound enthusiasts (“They are quiet, they are cleaaaan”), I have thus far made progress.
I had some serious struggles along the way, however, from figuring out in and out points, swapping clips, audio – just went I thought I’d made the perfect haiku video and exported it, I’d somehow added in a minute and a half of empty black footage. (??) I don’t know. Thanks to this gruelling exercise I do feel more optimistic about taking on Project Brief 2, and hopefully this time the process will be a lot smoother.
I wanted my haiku video to reflect a ‘modern’ haiku. In the spirit of experimental film, I experimented with some editing techniques to create interesting effect.
This was an interesting exercise (especially due to the ‘no-selfies’ rule), which lead me to consider how I would actually go about expressing myself through media artifacts, and then doing so, with varying levels of success.
Firstly, the three audio recordings were the most challenging. I am not musically talented, nor will I ever be, I am uncomfortable with the sound of my own voice; so I decided to reflect myself through the thing I do know and love: ambience. Sound is important – it can make or break a mood or atmosphere – so I recorded the ambient sounds that contribute to the atmosphere in places where I am most often. This includes the laughter and music of a bar, the relaxed chatting and familiar noises of a coffee machine in a cafe, and the soft call of birds outdoors.
Photography is the medium I am most comfortable with. For this first photo, I decided my subject would be a selection of my favourite plants I keep in my room. I adore green stuff and this is a key part of who I am.
The second photo is a quiet moment I captured in a cafe. I love early mornings and the beautiful lighting and atmosphere it brings. Being a morning person makes those 8:30am lectures a lot easier on the soul.
Thirdly, this photo is a close up of the miscellaneous cuttings I keep on my study wall. I change these around often, when I need new visual inspiration, hoping it will make me more creative, so it comes to represent my interests and thoughts quite well.
This photo further draws on my love of mornings and colours and light. This is the vista that usually greets me when I wake up in the morning to go to uni, and it never stops being amazing.
Next up is a shot of the times I carry with me every day. I think that the objects a person carries on them can provide great insight into their life and the kind of person they are, so that’s why I included this photo.
Finally, I took this photo because I love taking photos of interesting places and angles that people don’t usually consider unless they are looking for them.
Next up: videos. I had some technological struggles uploading these, so despite what you may think, they were not recorded on a potato.
The first video is a very art house pseudo-artistic video of me walking, to the station, as one who lives in the outer Eastern suburbs may be very familiar with. I certainly am. As this is an activity I do frequently, and sometimes even enjoy, I thought it was fitting for this project. I can even get really deep and suggest it is a metaphor for my journey through life, but let’s not go there (yet).
Time for video two: more walking, yay! This time, it’s a pretty morning. How quaint. Let’s ignore the fact that I’m terrible at handheld and compressing videos, and think about how beautiful this scenery would have been in person. Trust me, I was there – it was gorgeous. This is the kind of time in the morning where I’m feeling the most introspective and positive.
Last but not least, a somewhat confusing video of a fern that somehow survived being looked after by my mother whilst I was overseas for 6 weeks. This fern is representative of me: it gets a bit sad sometimes, but it always pulls through, and loves having fans pointed at him for dramatic effect.
Last but not least, here are some suitably abstract and poetic words that reflect my musings:
If we are made up of many parts of a whole, then what do those parts constitute? Are you your breakfast this morning, the TV shows you watch, that moment at 7:35 am when the sun shines just right through the clouds and washes the world in a spectacular orange?
