Author Archives: simonelau

Allone @ MIFF

Sepideh-Film-Poster

Just came back from a documentary at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Sepideh – Reaching for the Stars (2013) by Berit Madsen, is a documentary about a 17 year old Iranian girl, Sepideh, who has a deep passion for astronomy and aspire to become an astronaut. The film explores some of the hardships  that arise from her daring modern dream and the fight for science within a society faithfully driven by religion and traditions. 

I believe tears started pouring down my face from the first few minutes til the last shot. Being a passionate stargazer myself, I was overwhelmed that the girl on screen believed in the same things I believed in. I was very self-conscious about my crying in the cinema, it’s something that I’m usually very embarrassed about. But I soon realised that there were many others sniffling around me. Usually, I would be watching something like this in my room on my computer screen. I would get emotional by myself and probably think that I am the only one feeling this way right now, or why is everyone else too busy with their little lives on earth to care about what’s out there and so on…(A bit like me vs. the world kind of mentality). However, going to this film alone was an incredible experience. If I had gone with someone else I know, my experience of the cinema will be that I am ‘watching a film with my friend’. (Us in a crowd of ‘others’). But being there ‘alone‘, I know yet do-not-know every one of them equally. Therefore, to me, no one presence overshadows any other. I feel each and every presence in the theater equally and feel as if I was just a part of this larger, bigger witness called an audience. And we were all a part of the same emotion that is bigger than us that we are experiencing.

SIM•ulation ONE

The title of this blog is borrowed from an idea in S1m0ne (2002), a film by Andrew Niccol starring Al Pacino. The story revolves around a computer generated actress who was titled Simulation One. In similar ways, this blog is a simulation of a persona. In a recent tutorial, the notion of an ONLINE PERSONA was briefly mentioned. This inspired the title and direction of my blog. My previous works in photography were mainly concerned with identity and stereotypes and how much or how little we know another person. Following this interest, I plan to use this blog as an experiment to document the manifestation of an online persona.

In chapter 1 of one of this week’s readings Small Pieces Loosely Joined, Weinberger lists many interesting examples of peculiar situations involving uses of an online persona or username. Through these examples, exploring the effects and phenomena that stem from the fundamental questions of identity. Perhaps it is nothing different from our role playing in daily life. At work I perform a sales assistant; within the family I assume the role of daughter, sister; in a relationship I act as a girlfriend; and here, I carry out the role of a blogger.

So what happens when there is no need for resistance anymore, and we can see our virtual persona in the same light as our personas in the real world? At the moment, we are living a dual life in the midst of such a transition between this seemingly real non-virtual world and our online activities. Some are still resisting the new, some choose to be so immersed in it that they have left the past behind completely.

I am blogging about blogging about… …

BLOGGING. This loop of infinity is just about how confused I feel when it comes to blogging! As I take my first few steps into a new routine that involves blogging, I realised I have to forget all the ideas I previously had about it. During tutorial this week, I shared my feelings on this issue. Jason made a very good point that has reminded me of the constantly evolving nature of blogs and the internet in general: blogs are not personal diaries. I am more excited to blog now because as this process take its course, I am also evolving with every post I make.

 

First Non-lecture

This week we had our first Q&A style symposium, it was an interactive discussion between a panel of teachers and the students. It was quite an effective way to get the specific information you want to know: although there was a general topic, the direction of the symposium was driven by questions from teachers and students. It was organic and non-directional. Its dynamic structure allowed spontaneity and free flow of interaction. It is constantly shaping much like the internet itself. And on many levels resonate with our blogging experience and this week’s reading, Literary Machines by Ted Nelson on hypertext. 

However, there are some cons to this ‘interactive lecture’. As there is no specific structure, the information that is generated (half-spontaneously throughout the discussion) may not be as clear as if it were planned and thought out sequentially. After all, it is also important to be able to communicate teachings and ideas in such a way that it is well received and understood by many. Also it would be less messy, if one question or answer were finished before jumping around to another idea or in a different direction. With that said, the benefit of a Q&A session is that it allows a topic to then be explored with more depth if it is done in a slightly more organised fashion. 

This week’s session revealed some intriguing and surprising facts: that the millions of Youtube song covers are actually illegal due to the breach of copyrights on lyrics! And that only the copyright owner can prosecute. It was no surprise though that we discovered more grey areas when it comes to policies in the virtual territory. All this makes me feel a little less comfortable than I already was about blogging.

Forever Flux, 2014

Untitled-1

Hey guys, I just submitted a video piece to a global project named Forever Now.

Forever Now is a project that aims to recreate the golden record which contains the sounds and visions of earth which was launched on the Voyager 1 space probe in 1977.

The works displayed on the website are undergoing the shortlisting process.

Please check it out.

Share and comment as you wish and check out all the amazing works!

Week 2 in Networked Media

This week in Networked Media, Adrian delivered another fascinating symposium. We were given the challenge to explain and define: What is a book?

Through this thought experiment, conventions and assumptions were once again challenged. Text, pages, words, meanings, beginnings and ends are part of a system we invented and have since been taken for granted as infallible definitions of everything we experience. As we progress in a new world of internet cultures, we are forced to adapt to a world where there is no beginning or end. As we discussed these changes to story organisation, I was reminded of a book I recently came across. In Douglas Rushkoff‘s Present Shock, the media theorist explains the narrative collapse in storytelling in the digital age. He does so focusing not just on the materiality of the traditional and new mediums, but the different temporal experience of the two worlds that affect the way we use them. From reading and watching books and movies that begin and end, we now shift towards a dynamic world of the internet, where we can create our own stories within interactive virtual spaces such as social media and open world RPG games. 

If anyone is interested, Rushkoff is on an episode of Joe Rogan Experience.

Creative Commons

I have thought a lot about how Youtube has allowed musicians to collaborate and virtually perform together. I also heard about actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s online collaborative production company hitRECord, it was a concept that was just as foreign to me as when I got my first email account. But this is the first time I have heard about Creative Commons. Where have I been?! And now it all makes sense!

Discovering this is quite a big deal for me. Thinking back to when I watched this BBC documentary, ‘Planet Ants: Life inside the colony’, about ant colonies as super-organisms that share all information in order to achieve outcomes that are impossible for one. It inspired me to think very differently about the way we should view our world and interact with each other. That we should aim to be absolutely selfless (or rather to expand, boundlessly, what we include as self) in sharing and responding creatively in order to produce an outcome that wouldn’t exist if we hold on to the idea of ownership and confine the way we define our ‘self’.

Just imagine if we behaved as a super-organism, instead of fighting and competing against one another, I’m sure space-travel would be a common means of transport by now.