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Symposium Week 8

Apr28

Yeah so, I’m sadly running out of motivation to write these blog posts, I am trying though… I haven’t written a post about any of the symposiums thus far in this course, so I thought I’d post here my notes from todays lecture. There’s not many, but here are the main things I found interesting or important from todays discussion 🙂

. Set of rules and constraints are good in creativity – get things done!

. Our clips mean things, not in themselves, but in the relations in Korsakow.

. Hard to narrate a multilinear sequence of footage

. Intend doesn’t always get across. – No guarantee your audience will think of or interpret your work the way you plan for them too.

. K-Films are good at expressing relationships – without having to include a hierarchy of importance.

. As soon as you categorize a piece of work, audiences will bring their own values and speculations along for the ride.

Symposium week 11

Oct10

This week I have really struggled to come up with a take away idea from the lecture/symposium. To be honest, a lot of the time, what is being discussed and talked about in these symposiums goes right over my head. It’s quite frustrating as I feel like I should be understanding and comprehending more of the information being shared – But I really am just not doing that so well.

So on that note, these are the extremely brief notes I typed out while sitting in this weeks symposium.

. Gift economy – Free – good and effective – not yet competitive  with paying structures and such.

. Internet protocals –

Galloway notes that the future is already here but not uniformly distributed (paraphrasing William Gibson).

. virtual – viable future – actualised – becomes true

. Cowbird – web project. – eg gift economy – people contributing media on their own terms.

. narratives are intentional cause and effect

As next week is the final week of this course, I know that I will try my best to find a decent take away idea to write about. Until then though, notes will have to do.

This entry was posted on October 10, 2013, in Unlectures.

Networking at its finest

Oct8

So, throughout this course we have been learning about networking, and how the web functions with the use of hyperlinks, where the world wide web is a giant playground, and at the click of a button we can be transported to a million different places and times. The internet is a revolution in which will keep evolving throughout time, and with it, we as people continue to learn and grow alongside it.

When it comes to networking and the whole idea that through the internet, we can meet, talk to, discover, and find so many various people around the world, one example that stands out in my mind is Justin Bieber. The kid who went from posting You Tube videos of his singing contest at the age of 13, to selling out worldwide arena tours in a matter of minutes. His story is one that has been plastered everywhere and if you haven’t heard of him then it’s safe to say that you’ve been living under a rock for the past 4 years.

Justin Bieber’s story is quite an amazing one, and it has a lot to do with this process of networking via the world wide web. His mum began posting videos to his You Tube channel after he sung in his local singing contest. These videos started to get lots of hits (views) and then suddenly people were sending him messages requesting more videos and more songs. The idea that people from all over the world could sit and watch this kid sing songs on his youtube channel was a true establishment of this concept, and then the fact that this would eventually lead into him being offered a record deal proves that networking actually is a big deal in society today.

However, after being offered his record deal, radio stations still would not play his first single, as there was no platform for a 14 year old kid to be catapulted into the charts with. So, this is where major networking came into play once again.  All those ‘fans’ that had been tuning into his youtube videos and requesting songs, began writing into radio stations and tweeting and facebooking and spreading the word that THEY wanted Justin Bieber to be played on the radio. More and more people joined in and then suddenly Bieber had his own following, built from the ground up, purely on social networking sites. This following grew and grew and grew, and eventually he was played on one radio station, then two, then five, and then all over the world.

We live in a day ‘n’ age where the internet, and networking via social media sites, can play a giant role in our lives, and a major role in our careers. All due to networking on Youtube, and then branching out to twitter, this Canadian kid went from a 14 year old YouTuber, to a 19 year old global star.

And that’s the power of networking on the world wide web for you!

Where it all started – First ever You Tube Video posted on Justin Bieber’s user account – which now has

6,624,615 views

. 
6 years since he posted his first ever youtube video, which launched him into the world of craziness he lives everyday now.

Thoughts on technology

Oct1
Unfortunately I was unable to attend the symposium for this week, however, I did read through the discussion points and thought I’d have a go at answering one of them for myself.
  • We often forget that technological inventions are made within a society that has particular values. How does this context get embedded into the technology and shape the way it is used?
With this, I strongly think that the context of the society that produces a technology is definitely embedded into that technology in a lot of ways. Ideologies and particular values shared by a society help inform the creation and invention of new technologies. This concept refers to the cyclical co-dependence, co-influence, and co-production of technology and society upon the other (technology upon culture, and vice-versa). After conducting my own research, it is clearly understood that this relationship has occurred from the dawn of humankind, with the invention of simple tools, and it continues into modern technologies such as the printing press and computers.The development in modern mobile phone technology, like increasing speed of phone processors, the use of touch-enabled screens, and the implementation of mobile internet access, are further examples of this cycle of co-production. Society’s desire for widespread, frequent, and easy access to communication lead to the research and development of an ever widening range of mobile phone capabilities. Access to these capabilities, in turn, has had huge influence on the the way humans live.Within this, there is also the impact of societies values on the way in which technology is used. Continuing with my example of the mobile phone, I guess I can say that such technological devices are mostly used in reflection of the values of the society they were created in and for. People use mobile phones to call, text, book appointments, online shopping, etc. The list of uses is endless. And yet, each use of the mobile phone comes with the idea of a value shared by society. These values seep through in all uses, and embed themselves in the day to day lives of people and their mobile phones.

(… okay so maybe not the clearest explanation of my thoughts here, but I tried my best!)

No limit

Sep25

A main idea that I took from this weeks symposium is that – The Internet has no limit. I guess I knew this in a way, but never really thought about it until now. The idea that the internet is a space where information is stored, produced and shared, by people all over the world, is quite amazing, and to think that this has no limit, that it can just keep growing and expanding, is even a little more amazing. We can keep filling the internet with stuff, and it will just keep expanding, and I found this idea seriously striking in the symposium.

This entry was posted on September 25, 2013, in Unlectures.

Old VS New

Sep22

My dad and I were having a conversation the other day, about society these days and how we communicate. As he is in his early 50’s, and I’m 19, it was really clear to see the difference in opinion and observation when it came down to the point of discussion.

To me, using your phone to text, Facebook message, tweet, email, etc, is a perfectly normal way of communicating. But to my dad, he see’s the use of phones and social media making people more anti-social. He feels that texting all the time and talking to people via text on social networks, is not equipping us with the basic ability to strike up a conversation face to face.

When we were talking about this, I got really defensive, and wanted my dad to understand that to me, texting and social media communication has somewhat improved the way we communicate with each other in todays society. I feel like it has made the world a smaller place to live, and has opened up a world of new possibilities, and ways for us to keep in contact with people from our past and present, and meet new people who could play significant roles in our future. To me, the world is a much more social place these days.

By the end of this discussion, my dad and I both got our points across, but both didn’t really agree with each other. Which is fine by me. I’m sure this discussion will come up many more times in our household.

Hypertext:

Sep11

So, I wrote this little blog in week 6 of the course, saved it as a draft, and totally forgot about it over mid semester break…. yeah. But alls well, I’ll just post it now:

To be honest, for the past few weeks that we have been discussing Hypertext, I haven’t really fully understood it. I havn’t really been able to pin point exactly what it is and what it’s purpose is. But, in yesterdays tutorial, we had a short conversation with Elliot about it, and it helped me wrap my head around it a bit more.

Two main points I took away from this discussion were:

Hypertext exists in formats: Writing and video. Writing the most common. However, some audio projects occurring right now.

An idea from Landow – Hypertext mirrors the way we interact with the world. In many ways it reflects our way of thinking.

 

Just some very brief notes from todays Unsymposium…

Sep10

. generative procedural system – heart of hypertext and networked

  • Interactive Documentary – still a documentary, just in a different form.
  • genre is never just about textual form
  • All stories have to make truth claims.
  • engaging in truth claims about THE world!
  • Authors cannot control interpretation of what they write – eg – Bible — They can in a small way.
  • we interpret texts – not authors or directors –
  • magical thinking
  • multi-linear – speculative!
  • causality
  • Communication is a gamble – no guarantees what we think and intend to get across will actually work.
  • context cannot survive – time changes meaning in many cases.
This entry was posted on September 10, 2013, in Unlectures.

RIP books?

Aug28

Is the book dead? This question seems to be a hard one to answer for me. And after reading through one of this weeks readings The End Of Books – Or Books Without End?: Reading Interactive Narratives, and listening to all the ideas raised in the symposium, it made me think a bit. I grew up reading books, and I grew up loving books. I still like to read, but to be honest, it is not as frequent as I used to. Technology has definitely played a major role in changing the way I, and many other people around the world, make use of books.

In my personal experience, the fact is that my iPhone is just a bit more interesting and fun to use/read/play, than a book. I was about 16 when I first got my iPhone, and since that day I have probably read about 1/4 of the amount of books I would have if this new distraction hadn’t been introduced into my everyday activities. To me, this suggests that the book is definitely slightly more irrelevant in todays society.

Why would we choose to read a giant and heavy book about film studies, when we can read the same version of that book online, as a PDF file, that has no weight and is easily accessible? The convenience of eBooks, online material, and devices like iPhones and iPads, has made it easy for the world to move on from books, and even begin their downfall.

However, in saying this, there are still many people out there in the world who still read books, go to libraries, and enjoy the feel of a physical book in their hands while they imerse themselves in a story world, or drown themselves in facts and histories.

So is the book really dead? Is it on its way to being extinct? These questions are difficult to answer, but the use of new technology has for sure  increased the likelihood of this happening in the future, and has increased the demand for electronic reading, rather than reading physical books. Which is exciting in the innovative world we live in, but also kind of sad.

Symposium 0.2 notes.

Aug28

Here’s some notes I wrote down during todays Symposium.

(warning: they may be jumbled and not make much sense to you, but they do to me haha)

Hypertext and storytelling

  • Film can’t use hypertext
  • In film, story might be broken to non linear, but we have to watch it from start to finish – no choice to how we structure films
  • Corsacow – you choose what you want to view next.

‘Hypertext is dated but present here’ (Adrian)

  • small parts and how they are connected.
  • multiple relationships
  • when editing film it’s exactly the same – multiple points of connection.
  • Not just about the reader – the computer can also be programmed to work with the reader.

Validation of our work posted online:

  • Write in a personal journal – help us remember things, think through things, express our ideas and think out loud.
  • writing for an audience, posting online – other people reading it doesn’t make it any more valid

With this, I think I slightly disagree….. I feel that if my work is read/seen by other people, it holds more validation as a blog post ….. HOWEVER ….. I do very much agree that just because no one may read/see a blog post, that is not a reason to not write and post.

Linking from my stuff to someone elses – economic transaction – building the structure of the web! We do this, all of us, everyday.

……. and then I kinda stopped writing notes and just listened …….