Category Archives: Network Media

Five Minds for the Future

The synthesising mind, the disciplinary mind, the creating mind, the respectful mind and the ethical mind. According to Howard Gardner these are the “minds” you need to succeed in the near future and in retrospect represent different types of intelligence that should be present in our thinking.

Synthesising – Being able to gather information and idea from multiple places in a generative manner and then communicating them to others

Ethical – Considering your role and it’s affect on the those around you – working together

Creating – Put forth innovative and new ideas, ask fresh questions, thinking outside the box

Respectful – Acknowledges the difference between opinions and people

Disciplinary – The mindset of perseverance, to practice a task until done well

These five minds might seem simple enough might take a little more work to achieve. It’s easier enough for me to do this with my own workplace however when it comes to school work I found myself slacking in certain areas and mindsets. This might be due to the environment – I get paid to work but not paid for school work, or that I simply find the type of work easier in one environment and the other more difficult. However, it think it’s due to consistency, disciplinary mind should be the first one to put into play whenever you begin a task/job, working continuously at a singluar role will aid you through experience and memory. Then respectful and ethical mind and so you can make connections and grow in your role and finally creating mind, for when you are confident and comfortable in your role so you are able to make better judgements.

Work Vs Play

What was once described as a “Wibbly wobbly timey wimey” mess, time neither proven to be linear nor encased inside a reality of it’s own. In the case of this week’s reading Judy Wajcman discusses technology’s ability to distort and alter our perception of time and the manner in which we allocate our priorities. Technology was perceived to be developed to better dictate our organisation of time, however the opposite might have occurred due to the accessibility of information. The blurring between work and play has become an pillar in society and thus we “lose rhythm of our lives”. The ramification of growing technology involves the culture that pressures you to over consume rather than relaxing for pleasure.

It’s rather strange if you look at our society from a differing perspective, we promote smart phones, new technological developments and more efficient means to everyday tasks. However further use of this technology then transfers us push ourselves to work harder, we save time to create time, forcing ourselves to pile our workload higher and higher. There’s a sense of disgust that comes from simply “stopping” instead of working/creating/consuming, I’m constantly flooded with uni work, intern work, regular work and if I was ever to ask for a holiday there would be a limit placed upon that parameter.

I do believe it’s unfair to dictate that failure is linked to relaxation or “laziness” yet someone who is busy is considered successful. There is the saying “busy idiot” which doesn’t fail to comply with this theory, and as such it’s important to prioritize goals with a healthy balance between work and play.

Annotated Bibliography (Part 2)

O’Flynn, S. (2012). Documentary’s metamorphic form: Webdoc, interactive, transmedia, participatory and beyond. Vol 6. Toronto: Intellect Limited, 141-157. Viewed 1 August 2016, http://docserver.ingentaconnect.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/deliver/connect/routledg/17503280/v6n2/s3.pdf?expires=1470140064&id=88304120&titleid=75007871&accname=Royal+Melbourne+Institute+of+Technology+%28RMIT%29&checksum=65384BA48722709CB62BD16B81295485 

O’Flynn discusses the multifaceted platform that is interactive documentary, in her article she explores the evolution of documentary and transmedia with the impact of modern technologies. The article dives straight into detailing the evolutions of i-Doc’s in the past decade, each documentary is investigated as independent and without a template due to the dynamic nature of it’s platform. Experimentation is a crucial aspect of this new model, in particular with social media and new age media are all accelerating this market. Due to it’s unique nature, crowdsourcing has become it’s most important model of communication for fans and even to the extent of crowdfunding. O’Flynn makes it clear that the fluidity of this digital space is what allows i-Doc’s to exist and thrive in today’s society. Gaudenzi’s previous research regarding interactive documentary is also mentioned and referenced in regards to more traditional modes of documentary, and the viewers experience. The contrast between webdocs and i-Doc’s are also delved into, while webdocs distribute content through websites, i-Doc’s are “designed as databases of content fragments”. Further on, Transmedia expands this mode of storytelling to a deeper level and adds to narrative content. This articles plays mainly on the two developing aspects: we no longer follow the generic mode of storytelling but instead choose to explore the open space of i-Docs, and secondarily the influence of new age technology – especially social media.

Rosenstein, J. (2005). Documentary Filmmakers Speak/Documentary Storytelling For Film and Videomakers. Issue 2. Columbia:Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 226-229. Viewed 31 July 2016, http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/docview/215288830/fulltext/8DCD8FDA284B487CPQ/1?accountid=13552

In this article Rosenstein reviews the opinion’s of Liz Stubbs and Sheila Curran Bernard and their ideals of documentary storytelling. He begins by stating the more involved and innovative storytelling method is documentary during this era, it reaches masses of people and brings a new level of acceptance for this medium. A documentary maker is described as someone who has rejected publicity and work in anonymity. While there are some exceptions to this rule, however many dedicated documentary filmmakers won’t ever see fame during their lifetime of working due to limited publicity. Rosenstein then dissects Stubb’s book, “Documentary Filmmakers Speak”, as the title suggests is a collection of interviews from historically rich documentary filmmakers. He compares and contrasts Stubb’s book with Bernard’s book of a similar nature, and while Stubb’s book focuses on emphasising the filmmaker’s point of view, Bernard discusses filming processes and techniques. While the previous readings I’ve discovered focus primarily on modern technology and it’s effect on i-Doc’s, this reading provides insight to the difficulties that directors and filmmakers will face with documentaries. However it is through social media and online influences that provide more leverage and publicity that is currently lacking in the traditional documentary community. As previously mentioned by O’Flynn, filmmakers can crowdsource and fund through new media platforms and thus gives i-Doc’s a wider viewership.

Filming for Signal Assignment/Changes to Plans

Today was the day I filmed all my footage for my final Signal video/visual! I decided to ultimately follow the theme of “compression” and had a few of my friends over and I filmed them outside in my backyard behind a window. It was a solid 30 degrees today and so we used the natural lighting we had and with a white background we filmed throughout the afternoon and into early evening.

Of course when you’re filming you have a few bumps along the way, the first one was getting anyone here in the first place, my first person came on time, however had only an hour to film before they needed to commit to other appointments. My second person was late because of daylight savings and so we ended up filming an hour later then what we thought. And finally, my third person was coming after work and so we had to wait until the evening, which was risky because we were using natural lighting. However, it all came together and we finished shooting all the footage we had before the sun went down.

🙂

Week 10 Symposium – THE CONE

Hi Interwebs,

It’s the final day of Uni so I’m going to try and file as much work as I into the next couple of days.

During week 10’s symposium we discussed writing essays and critical analysis in relation to the plethora of essays that we needed to complete after uni ends.

Adrian, uses the example of a cone: in a normal essay we begin at the open end of the cone, we start on a broad idea and eventually move our way towards the point towards the end. We begin by discussing many different points, however each point gets denser and denser until we reach the one point at the end of the essay.

In our critical essays, we’re expected to start the other way. We begin with a dense idea and then gradually we expand out from that one point. Therefore the essay we’re writing can technically have no “ending” it will keep expanding if we want it to.

We also talked about the paranoia music industry and how it was before Steve Jobs came crashing in on his wrecking ball with his digital downloads and iPods. It was obvious that before online downloads became a thing, that it was expensive, heavy, and painfully time consuming to buy CDs and carry them around with you. Nowadays we can carry about 1000+ songs on our phones alone, so I don’t think it’s much of a surprise that we were willing to pay for online downloads.

Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.
– Steve Jobs

Peer Reviews (Weeks 8+9+10+11)

Allo Interwebs,

Okay so I know I haven’t been consistently blogging lately and I am SUPER behind in terms of peer-reviews and since I write like 2 lines per blog post in regards to think I’m just going to smush them all together.

Week 8

Claudia mentions the “Oracle of the Bacon” as previously mentioned, where any actor can be linked to Kevin Bacon in a limit about of references.

Kenton tried to trick the system… but nada

Marcus focused on similar aspects to what I gathered from the Symposium in terms of net neutrality…etc

Week 9

Monique discusses not only the Barabasî reading but also another called “The Fabric of the Cosmos” and then continue to delve deeper in the power rule and the 80/20 rule

Simone‘s hilariously titled “20% of this post delivers 80% of the information” not only talks about the 80/20 rule but also asks: How does order emerge from disorder?

Stephanie wondered if a “network was just many webs?” in class and then furthered her understanding by determining that it was important to remember that the “concept of a web is that there is a centre”

Week 10

Coming back to Marcus, he basically just reiterates what occurred during the week 10 symposium… which I should probably get to as well…

Monique believes that there is an infinite amount of “creativity to be harnessed” in terms of databases, they will continue to grow and much like hypertext have no real end.

Stefan on the other hand is having a hard time with algorithms. Agreed.

Week 11

During week 11’s symposium the topic of conversation was also DataBases so Claudia listened for the first 20min but soon dozed off before Adrian mentioned “Design Thinking” and recaptured her attention. This basically means that we (as in Media Students) should start looking at ourselves as designers as we create material.

Cassie mentioned something about a “Fern-y Book”…

and finally Stephanie gives us a good low down on what is going on during the week 11 readings, which just makes my life easier.

Phew, glad that’s all out of the way.

Mwahx

Week 8 Symposium – Pavlov’s Dog

I know this is like 5 weeks late. Yolo.

During week 8s symposium we talked about multiple issues including: digital media, how it has affected the print media industry, how it has affected technology, neutral technology, the internet… etc

In this blog post I’ll be looking at neutral technology and the idea behind Pavlov’s dog in relation to technology today.

So the idea is that technology is neutral in a sense that he can do anything, however that is not possible due to the fact that each form of technology no matter or complicated or simple has a specific use. Despite that fact that you can use a technology with a different manner then it’s original intention is simply can’t perform every task it’s designated.

E.g. Eammer – has to come out of a history, who wanted a hammer, wanted to know how to make a hammer? (even a hammer is not a simple technology, how do you make one?) A Hammer is only used for certain jobs, it can’t be used to saw wood or even write with, therefore it is not neutral.

So basically: it would have affordances, it is better suited to doing something’s than other things.

The second issue is about our phones, specifically our mobile phones, Adrian asked during the lecture: Why must we go pick up our mobiles as soon as they ring? Why is there a sense of urgency? Whilst some phone calls might be important there are those we can leave and call back later but for us, whoever it may be we always attempt to pick up the phone when it rings.

Ironically, I was watching Orange is the New Black (awesome show) during that period of time and it reminded me of a scene. Where basically two of the characters were getting… intimate *ahem* However the phone rings and so they stop what they’re doing and one of the girls goes and picks up the phone and has this full on conversation! What even. Like who in the throes of passion just goes: ah shit man, need to go answer my phone might be someone important… like my mum… or my cat.

Readings Week 9 – Maths Maths Maths?

Hello Interwebsites, Hope your week has been going well, as you don’t already know I’m just trying to catch up on my blog posts… Don’t hate me. Pls <3. Week 9’s readings were really strongly based on… maths stuff? Joy. I haven’t seen an equation since almost a year ago at High School, so it’s nice to be back to where I began. The readings looked upon the 80/20 rule and the Long Tail which talks about consumers and statistics.

So firstly the 80/20 rule, this rule is an odd phenomena that basically says: 80% of such is done by 20% of the population, like: 80% of profits are produced by only 20% of the employees. However it would be considered an overstatement to say that this rule applies to “everything” it’s more of a tool for estimation.

The Barabasi reading (80/20 Rule) also talks about the differences between Power rules and Bell curves, although it was discovered that the majority of rules in nature follow a bell curve, when we looked up the rule for online linking it followed a power law. Now children, let me use my extensive knowledge of mathematics to give you a crash course on why the two are so different. For those who have recently completed VCE you would be rather familiar with the Bell curve, the way it works is that the mean (average) is the middle point, and we move outwards from that point by cutting it into sections using the SD (Standard Deviation). Each section is worth a certain percentage and the more to travel outwards the smaller that percentage becomes.  As you can see from the image, the first section is always worth 34%, then 14% and then 2%.

Now for a Power Rule, we aren’t using a shape rises then falls, instead we can given a graph that begins as a large number but gradually gets smaller. And that is what the Long Tail is, however to explain what the reading discussed about, I’ll have to explain the actual shape of the graph.

The power rule is a exponential graph, where both ends head towards 0 but they never cut the axis. This is due to the fact that when the equation is written, when either the x or y values = 0 and substituted into the equations they cease to exist. Which isn’t important and will make a lot more sense if I just show you a picture.

When looking at the longtail graph the y-axis represents the “popularity” and the x-axis represents the product that is being marketed. This basically means, that the “narrow” section of the graph represents all the popular forms of media, such as large budget movies and those mainstream things that we often are exposed to on tv or the internet. Whilst the “infinite” section is the indie media, ones that we search for ourselves, one that are produced by those with a smaller budget and not part of a mass company. The long tail theory is the one that suggests that despite the huge popularity of mainstream media, it will me the indie media makers that have the overall larger profit combined due to it being “infinite”.

The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.
~Malcolm X

Week 8 Readings – Bacon and a Small World~~

Hello Interwebs,

Okay, I’ve been really bad lately and so today I am absolutely determined to get up to date with my blog posts! It is my time to shine!!! We’re doing readings today and for week 8, I had two readings: Six Degrees by Watts and Small Worlds by Barabasi!

LEGO~

Watts’ article seemed like a mixture between a dear diary and some science essay that went on for 26 pages to my displeasure.

Moving on…

Barabasi’s (that is a mouthful), seemed to follow a similar type of structure, but with more formal examples that are used to explain the point that was present.

Both articles discussed different types of linking between individuals and the strange logics of the universe. The idea that we are all oddly linked either loosely of through good friends is not a foreign concept for me. I grew up in a Chinese community where for reason whomever we spoke to that was from China originally somehow knew a friend of a friend of a friend’s, it was the most uncanny thing. One point I was at school where there was this other girl in my class who I didn’t really speak to, however one day as my dad was picking me up he saw another parent and it turned out they used to be best friends and guess who their child was… Yep, the girl in my class. Another time I found out that one of my neighbours (who ironically, not in relation to this story, went to the same kindergarden and highschool as me), worked at Donut King whose boss knew my mum… what? I don’t even.

Same thing goes for family back in china, I have nieces, cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers of family friends, sisters of aunts of nieces of step mothers I’ve never met before but somehow they all know who I am. I have a big family for a single chid I guess 😛

And then theres the Kevin Bacon Game. A game in which you could literally connect ANY actor to Kevin Bacon… Literally any actor, and they would be scaled based upon how many links in between. Majority of people I typed in were only number 2’s… except Lucy Lu, who was a 3. Success! I should be a detective.

Someone else give it a go?? I would love to find someone who Kevin Bacon couldn’t be linked to (instead of someone called Chris Evans the First…I couldn’t find out which one was the actual Captain America)