So in continuing with Eliza’s blog post (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/eliza-mcevoy/2015/05/22/225-week-11-connection-st-kilda-film-festival-opening-night/)  about the St Kilda Film Festival opening night, I would also like to write my own post about it!

Heading into the Palais Theatre was an absolute nightmare. It always boggles my mind to think about how poorly planned some events are. You would think that they would have more than 5 staff handing out tickets to thousands of festival guests.

Anyway, the festival itself was absolutely genius. As media students, it was good to go in there and to not only enjoy ourselves immensely, but to also analyse and understand these incredibly creative films on a much deeper level. There weren’t any films that utilised the art of remixing as such to relate it back to this week’s lectorial, but that doesn’t really matter. We walked out of it feeling so inspired and ready to approach Semester 2 with a new spark. I know what I did wrong in Semester 2 motivation wise, so now I can go into Semester 2 bigger and better than ever. Probs a bit fatter too, can’t wait for the 6 week break.

Today’s lectorial was based around the art of remix.
Fun right? Dan gave an incredibly engaging speech explaining Eduardo Navas’ art, as well as an indepth analysis of Girl Talk’s music. I found it really interesting exploring the scope of Girl Talk’s prowess in the art of remix. The sheer thought that goes behind his mash-ups is truly incredible. I counted about 12 songs that I recognised in the example that we heard. So interesting when compared to a single mash-up of two individual songs. I also really found it interesting that the ‘common’ mash-up is created by juxtaposing two opposing genres (think Sex Pistols aligned as a mash-up with Christina Aguilera) to create something spectacular and quite mind-bending.

In today’s prac class, it was PB4 draft presentation part 2.

Again, as a group, we came together to present another rough, but more polished draft of our assignments. This time around, I presented a vlog of my friend Tess explaining how she uses her smartphone. My vision is to get different types of smartphone users to give me their perspective on the way that they benefit from technology and how it negatively affects them. This way we are able to get a varied look at the different ways that technology is utilised in our society. I dunno. It makes sense in my head.

Dea is in charge of formulating interviews with some of her people whilst Seb is in charge of providing research on the Tor network. Jesus, the Internet is a scary place.

So unfortunately I just finished quite possibly one of the best books I have ever read.

“Just Kids” by Patti Smith.

Quite possibly one of the most inspirational books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I went into the book knowing nothing about Patti Smith but came out feeling like she was a part of my family. I definitely had a bit of a cry as I read the last dozen or so words.

The Chelsea Hotel featured in the book as a major turning point in Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe’s life. They resided there for quite some time in the 70’s and served to be quite an important institution in their lives. Here they were socially connected with many like-minded artists who had the same hopes and dreams as them. It also got me thinking about how people would’ve communicated in the early-mid 20th century without instant forms of communication such as mobiles. There’s a part of the novel where Patti is attempting to apply for a job and all she can do is drop an application off in the store and hope that they hire her on the spot. There is no waiting period, no employer will give her a call on her non-existent mobile phone.

I’m not thinking about this idea in a really juvenile way, it genuinely just really boggles my mind. I doubt Patti Smith would have imagined that 30 years later, she would be using a mobile phone to communicate with people. It makes me wonder what we forms of technology we will have at our disposable in 20 or 30 years time. It’s terrifying.

Anywaaaaaaay, here is a beautiful photo of Robert and Patti Smith together.

Today’s lectorial was on the topic of Institutions – what are institutions, who uses them and the practices that shape them.

Some key points I took away from this lectorial is that:

• Values are created by institutions and exclusive to that specific institution.
• Institutions are expected to deliver to their audiences the information that they have been trusted to produce.
• Institutions are made up of a body of people with the same objectives, goals and values to produce work that is reflective of this.

As a group, we went off and thought of different media institutions and attempted to de-construct what they’re all about. My group mutually agreed that Facebook was the most relateable one to us, as it’s such a prevalent institution. We established that the point of Facebook was to connect people, and noted how other social-media platforms link through Facebook (think instagram; when you upload a photo and it automatically feeds through Facey). Facebook regulates itself through its T&C’s and uses these to establish trusts with it’s users.

Another prac, another nervous breakdown having to get up in front of the class to explain how incompetent I feel.

Seb, Dea and I have been working hard on our PB4. Previously, we’d been strugglin’ a bit trying to figure out our direction of research and mode of presentation but have finally all agreed on exploring the notion of technologies by setting up a tumblr and having a bit of a audio/visual onslaught of imagery that portray the different kinds of technology users. The class gave us some good feedback and seemed happy in absorbing our information through an easily-navigable blog. Loves it.

So far I have sneaky/creepy photos of people that I have passed on the streets of Melbourne as an example of how prevalent smartphone technology is in our society. We want more of these repetitive images to cement this idea. Technology is here, technology is everywhere, technology is here to stay.

We just also recently discussed the idea of having interviews and vlogs on our blog… Stay tuned.

Okay, so any mention of a popstar always gets me really amped up.

In keeping with the theme of Madonna and the way the audience perceives her, here is a pretty good song that deals with the theme of female empowerment.

I’ve always thought the line between sexuality and exploitation is quite a blurred one and I think the above track just serves to enhance that idea. Madonna may feel empowered by her image, which is amazing, but I can’t help but feel that a popstars image is just subliminally crafted by a bunch of educated, old, white men in the elite upper ranks of a record label. It’s pretty scary to think about the power that these guys have over an artist’s demographic, the targeted audience.

AUDIENCES.

I am the audience.

In today’s lectorial we discussed the importance of the audience in the context of the Media. We used Madonna’s success and legacy on her fans as a good example of the power of the ‘fandom’. It’s interesting to perceive what the audiences thought of Madonna at the time? From what we discussed, she was empowering and exuded an extreme female energy that really pushed boundaries. So cool.

I’ve definitely always taken an interest to the cultural impact that television had on us as a human race. Television has had an impact on the home-life of families all over the world. Beginning in the 60’s, families everywhere still eat their dinner with the TV on. Most families probably don’t even watch it, it’s just on as a source of comfort and familiarity. It’s almost become some sort of mass-media tradition. We can all bond over the happenings of television.

In this weeks practical, my group (consisting of Seb, Dea and myself), really knuckled down and figured out which direction we would like to head down for our Project Brief 4.

After sharing our ideas with the class regarding the history of technologies and potentially centering our project around that. We’ve actually scrapped that idea and will now be focusing around the idea of smartphone usage. Why smartphones? We came to the conclusion that smartphones are a central part of who we are as people in this day and age. The smartphone is basically an extension of our physical body, almost like a third hand.

The smartphone.

Following along from yesterday’s lectorial, my cinema studies class was based around the idea of a story-world in which a narrative exists. The movie that we studied was Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Age Of Innocence’ (1993). This movie was executed in a way where the narrative flowed fairly smoothly. The editing in between scenes was used in a way to convey a notion of time passing, whilst also maintaining an easily definable flow.

I guess we are all so conditioned to watching Hollywood movies without really taking note of the processes that go into it to make it a standalone reading. Which is where we as Media students come into play. I like that we are slowly becoming a bit more conscious to these techniques and understand how they operate and influence the wider audience.