Category: About

1. Bonnie McKee’s “American Girl” video and song.

My jam for the fortnight. So vacuous, so catchy, so neon ombre, so versace chain pattern. Bonnie wrote all of Ke$ha and Katy’s songs, and this one is the best mix of their entire body of work. Wish I could use this as my Year 12 anthem… sigh oh well we had Rebecca Black.

2. Marvellous Creations

A marvellous creation indeed. The fusion of all facets of joy and lust for life in one chocolate bar. Eat along with caramello icecream and haloumi mi goreng with girlfriends or apply liberally to very tired friend at the casting for her new short. Or just eat alone and don’t feel an ounce of self loathing, it just defies it all… until you spend more time with it than your boyf/pets.

3. My boots

Industrial, made for hospitality and sheep shearers, my boots have withstood a lot of crappy part time jobs. They are also incredibly supportive for my long suffering ankle…. basically I managed to tear a ligament in my right ankle a few days before the debut of a children’s theatre show I did over summer, I left it for the two month season whereby I danced to gangnam style twice a day (poss the worst dance to attempt with a sore ankle) because I was too excited to miss out on the opportunity. Then I went to the physio, who was shocked and appalled that i had done a very physical theatre show with an ankle the size of jupiter. Anyways, last week I was going to Bounce for a friend’s birthday, it was raining bucketloads and metres away from the entrance of the hallowed emporium of fun I managed to stack it and roll the ankle all over again. The people of Bounce are a generous culture, so I got a refund as I could not bounce. Other than some industrial strapping, my boots are a comfy and stylish (in a muckish sort of way) alternative to a moon boot or crutches!

4. SNL breaking Supercuts

My fave:

 

I have already written on how cool I think Hypertext and storytelling is. It sets up a kind of ‘choose your own adventure dealio which I cannot wait to study academically in Integrated Media 1 next year’s focus on Kosakow films! It will be great to see if Jasmine’s fascinating comment “take away a story’s linearity makes us experience stories in a completely different way”. 

Hyper-textual stuff thinks about narrative seriously. When I first heard about it I thought it sounded a bit gimmicky, like getting a box of cards and arranging them to form a 400 page novel does not sound like a fulfilling reading experience for me. Of course I am of a completely energised mind set now about the wonders of Hypertext!

I liked the discussion of small parts and how they are created multiple points of connection, to many other meaningful pieces in a multitude of meaningful ways. Until now I’ve usually thought of Hypertext as something super empowering for the reader but Adrian made the great point that such systems give agency to the computer… for example we have Hootsuite to publish status updates 50 years into the future, to every hour on the hour depending what your company needs.

Now I’ll just describe briefly some secondary takeaway ideas:

I liked the discussion of Hyptertext as a musical, poetic form of repetitions and loops.

Reading for the same intent as the author, nope, we all interpret and reapporiate meaning with a snap of the finger.

POP culture leaves smaller gaps in meaning, art has bigger ones, placing more importance in the reader/viewer. No one can guarantee that meaning will come across.

Expressing ideas helps us form them.

Blogs do not exist until the moment someone requests to see them. We are writing publicly whether we have an audience or not.

Write for audience we imagine, if we do this well the audience will come into existence.

If there are fewer books does this mean there are more creators with the rise of self publishing

How incrediballs is this? I have already reflected on this reading in a previous blog entry! I became a bit obsessed with it actually.

The reading by Yellowlees regarding Hypertext also influenced a piece I did for EMT last semester, as my sound narrative aims to be an act of ‘reading as guided creation’.

My narrative centers around a group of socially awkward boys at a party and follows the tale of their quest to kiss a girl on the dance floor. The piece references other texts heavily, with dialogue from films like Napoleon Dynamite, Lord of the Rings, Anchorman and Space Jam as well as the tv show Workaholics. I chose these sound clips because of their clearly recognizable nature, some (such as the Workaholics, Anchorman and Napolean Dynamite clips) aid in creating the social ineptness of the characters as the texts depict similar figures, while others further the narrative as they refer to ‘being on a mission’ (LOTR).

This piece draws upon elements of Hypertext in that I present the listener with very little linearity or causality so it is up to them to form their own connections between these familiar yet disparate parts of sound. However, at the same time their interpretation of the narrative is guided by the parameters I have set up in the editing process, ie. Adjusting volume to draw the listeners attention to particular sounds, the structure of my narrative building to a climax.

 

As a Professional Communication student, I sometimes feel as though I am drowning in the flood of technical skills my Media student friends bring to their courses.

I especially found this in first semester, having spent a year working upon theories of persuasion and manipulation (in PR) and professional writing (in the Journalism strand), suddenly having to work with editing software and media equipment was a foreign concept to me.

I want to write Media texts, but in a different way to my Media friends. Instead of utilising incredible practical skills and amazing equipment, what I want to do is literally write. Thus, I am ecstatic at the blog component of this course. Where Writing and Editing Media Texts focused upon academic reflection being evident in technical production, this course allows me to engage with theoretical concepts on my own, more literary terms.

 

Additionally, the hyper-textual element of blogging allows me to construct richer meaning for my reader through the ability to link out to other things. In the process of embedding, linking and creating widget buttons readers are referred by association and implication to many different worlds, texts and understandings complementary to my own original intention. It all reminds me personally of Jacques Derrida’s idea of a matrix of communication. In the Derridian matrix meaning kind of inconspicuously flits about the system, waiting to be recognised through it’s association with something else. To me, this is how I understand the elusive concept of a ‘network’, with ‘networked media’ the particular matrix we are concerned with in our professional studies (for other disciplines it might be a matrix of anthropology, prior court decisions, fashion trends etc.).

 

Thus far, I have used my blog to curate my own little communication matrix. I’ve linked to the readings whilst discussing them closely, as well as other stuff that has struck me in my trawling through the internet. I’m a regular visitor to reaction gif centred blogs such as ‘what should we call me’, so I’ve been mirroring that style a bit in my posts ie. Putting inane gifs under titles like ‘When I realised the point of this course before my friend did in my unlecture’. I’ve vented about popular culture a bit (when Patrick died on Offspring, my thoughts on the manic pixie dream girl character type) and included some writing pieces I’ve done.

 

Blogging has definitely motivated me to keep up to date with the readings for this course. One of the distinctive things about blogging is that it chronicles thoughts/academic writing etc. so if you are doing Week 1 reading reflections this week ahead of this submission, it won’t really fly.

 

Since I love to write I find blogging an incredibly satisfying experience. Having written a diary since I could physically write, an online version of this activity just meant a switch in mediums for me from notebook to mac. What I have found difficult however is the feeling that you are cutting down that tree in the forest and no one is there to hear it- your writing not properly existing until someone else has read it. Thus, I’m ashamed at how excited I was each time Adrian linked to my blog on the Networked Media home blog!

 

In future I’d love to use the blog as a little exhibition of myself to future employers. I’d include any projects I’ve undertaken related to my degree as well as more informal stuff. I write a lot, so it would also be great to use the blog as a self publishing tool. Finally, I am prone to fixating upon particular academic areas I am introduced to at uni, so perhaps I can use my blog to undertake my own kind of Honours study until I actually can specialise that much!  

• Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity? 2007. Film. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

In the absence of the unsymposium today, I checked out Sir Ken Robinson’s lecture ‘Do School’s Kill Creativity?’. First off, I’d love to be one of his besties as he seems like the loveliest man, was this why he got a knighthood? I’ll do some research.

He presents his arguments in an endearing and personable way and I can’t help but say ‘HE’S ABSOLUTELY RIGHT’ outloud in the student atelier. He mentions something Pablo Picasso said about every child being born an artist and how the doctrines of education kind of quell this child like ingenuity and brainwash us into measuring the happiness of life and a person’s merits on superficial things.

If you google it, there are some super famous high school drop outs. Albert Einstein, Tarantino etc. People who have obviously defied the constraints of education and managed to completely own life and pursue their passions like the choreographer of Cats Ken mentions (I want to be on a first name basis with him).

As a gal paying an upwards of I don’t know what to be taught stuff (or indoctrinated, though I’m not quite at Jane Eyre’s Lowood school for Girls) at uni, I don’t quite know if I want to accept what Ken has to say but as a consolatory thought I’m reflecting on the creativity and general wonderment of children and im sure you will too with this gif:

Why didn’t we read the Landlow text weeks ago? It’s a dynamite piece of blogger fodder for people new to the game of Hypertext.

I loved Landlow’s discussion of the adaptation of Samuel Pepys 17th Century diaries into a blog entry, enabling his work to be more accessible and relevant to modern audiences. This is a great example of how texts can be adapted via blogging, and reminds me lots of the 2012 web series ‘The Lizzie Bennet Diaries’. I watched this religiously last year because I thought the diaries were a fantastic way for people who studied P & P in Year 10 Lit and kind of hated it to delve back in to an important text. This was certainly the case with me, I read P&P for school and was like ‘jesus Jane stop with your long dissertations on the weather at Pemberly’. I love literature, but I didn’t really get why this was such an important text, particularly to feminism. I thought Lydia was an idiot and Jane (Bennet) was boring as heck. In the end I just watched the BBC Mini Series and then Bridget Jones.

But the web series really made me think. Unfortunately, I realised, in this case I might be one of those silly gen Ys who can’t respect anything that isn’t made relevant to them! The series ingeniously threads together the story of P&P in a modern context. Lizzie does the videos as part of an integrated media Masters she is undertaking alongside Charlotte Liu, her asian bff who ends up becoming a ‘partner’ at Mr Collins’ digital media company ‘Collins & Collins’. Lydia is your average party animal, who like every teen gal makes dumb decisions and goes out with silly guys. The coolest part of it all was that you could follow all the characters online through twitter, facebook and instagram. Who could forget the moment Gigi (Georgiana) Darcy followed Lizzie on twitter, the pics Lizzie put up on instagram of her lunch date with Darcy and the moment Kitty Bennet debuted as a literal Cat.

The series absolutely blew up and birthed the ‘welcome to Sanditon’ (an unpublished Austen manucript) series which I believe is a more intricate social media adventure built around an app the creators built called ‘Domino’ and another series on ‘Emma’ is coming soon.

How exciting is the capacity to combat anachronism in literature by bringing disaffected ex lit students back into the literary fold through social media!

I might try it soon, I’ve already made a short film based on Oscar Wilde’s work called ‘Wilde Thing’, recontextualising his plays in a girls high school. Think Mean Girls vs. The Importance of Being Earnest to The Troggs.

Just imagine, twitter would have been perfect for Oscar whose epigrams would have definitely fit into 140 characters or less.

 

 

Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale (N.J.): Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991. Print. 

Writing is the mechanism I will use to preserve and pass on my experiences of life.

Bolter sees writing as a mechanism for ‘collective memory, for preserving and passing on the human experience’. I found this quite touching, this idea of literary traditions handed down from generation to generation like some beautiful family heirloom or non life threatening birth defect. Writing of course serves as one of the best means we have to communicate and understand each other, but also it seems to be something we use to validate our lives in the eyes of future peeps.

My uncle flies helicopters in the Kimberly, during his amazing career he has discovered beautiful places no one has visited for thousands of years. Imagine entering one of these places and finding a drawing on a rock wall. Hundreds or even thousands of years ago I think someone set out to create something that would be his or her echo through history. They summoned whatever technology of extension was available to them, in indigenous culture’s case, art, and set out to make their physical mark on not just a wall but perhaps history itself. A rock wall was their archive, and on it they wished to show future cultures their heritage and beliefs.

I see writing as exactly the same thing. As a literate society, it is our culture’s best shot at showing future societies what we’re made of.

In this blog I’ve posted before about the way the explosion of different channels/technologies of extension has scrambled the way we communicate and receive information. This is a great thing because everything is much more democratised and empowering for audiences ie. lolz we don’t have to own a multi national media conglomerate to set the world wide agenda and draw attention to atrocities media outlets may not get around to caring about.

However, it also kind of sucks because there is alot more information to wade through in order to find the good stuff (which I think Vannevar Bush is on about, see my discussion of being a PR kid). Our archive may seem a touch trivial to future cultures….

Our entry in the tomes of history be pretty much-

1. An obsession with ill tempered cats

2. A need to document our every move and bowel movement through a status update

3. A culture of thigh gaps and ‘thinspiration’

Because if you look at the content of most of the world’s communication through the most accessible and effective technology of extension of all time, the internet, this very scarily might be our echo through history!

As a writer, not a photographer, physicist or artist, I believe Writing is the best means I have at representing reality. I admit that I will never come close to capturing the ongoing ‘flux of impressions’ Virginia Woolf so beautifully describes in ‘Modern Novels’, as even Virginia admitted she would never be able to (though ‘Orlando’ is the closest thing I’ve ever read to the reality of love) but it is the perfect way for me to initiate my own ‘echo’ through history. It could be through a cherished message I sent to someone’s future great great grandfather proclaiming ‘I <3 u, mrry me cuz #YOLO’, it could be through my future best seller ‘Navigating Love in the Digital Age: How to propose via iMessage’…  It may even be in the form of a blog about my intensions to do these things….

Writing is the mechanism I will use to preserve and pass on my experiences of life.

PS. Know that I have no intention to propose to anyone via text message, I was using it as an academic metaphor duhhhh.

 

 

Jemima Kirke, why you so incrediballs?

Last week Mum and I sat on the couch clutching one another and blubbering ‘IT’S NOT REAL. IT’S NOT REAL’ as our beloved Patrick passed away on the hit tv show Offspring. ‘ITS ALL A BAD DREAM’ we shrieked as the males of our household tiptoed around us and checked to see whether some catastrophic news event/cataclysmic domestic injury had sparked our outburst. Spurred on by the worksafe ad in the ad break whereby another husband/chosen one nearly doesn’t come home I and a few of my friends sent cryptic texts to our long suffering other halves, who rang us back in concern or bemused amusement (had they realised Wednesday night is Offspring night).

I write this post in complete dread at tonight’s episode, which will explore Patrick’s funeral and Nina giving birth without the baby’s father there. ‘For the love of g-bang!’ Offspring fans lament, ‘how could you do this producers???’.

Never before have I experienced a show with such little incentive for me to suspend my disbelief. The Offspring world is sort of a bit close to reality, there’s a dysfunctional family as hilarious as they are tragic, a protagonist with endearing faults that, refreshingly, do not include narcissism and locations I frequent as a Melbournian obsessed with finding the perfect pho. Every character could be your bestie, uni tutor or barista… save for Patrick, god’s gift to woman, tailored to perfection with his effervescent ability to listen, grin and wear a bear skin cape.

Deb Oswald, creator of Offspring, also wrote a famous Australian play called ‘Dags’. I studied a monologue from it as a toothsome young high school student and found it incredibly easy to inhabit a character called ‘Gillian’. Now, this could be because I am the greatest actress of my generation save for Mena Suvari, but I think my ability to do this was down to how relatable Oswald’s characters are.

We are all Nina in some way, we’d like to think we aren’t Billie but most of us are because of our conspicuous desire to marry Eddie Perfect (no matter his hair colour). We’ve all had a boss like Klegg, an incredibly qualified individual completely out of touch with social relations (yet still endearing). We know a guy like Jimmy who describes life as ‘organic’ and is everyone’s favourite man child, we know an ageing partyrocker like Geraldine and even a beautifully awkward Gary McDonald character who is our Phillip Noonan (I once saw Gary McDonald crossing the road and then later that night saw him as Polonius and passed away with excitement).

The show’s charm is in the beautifully lit slice of realness it offers viewers, mostly of the female persuasion, and it’s ability to be funny and sad at the same time like life is.

However, last week it tipped the balance and was just sad. My Mum proclaimed ‘IT’S WORSE THAN WHEN MOLLY DIED ON A COUNTRY PRACTICE’, my friend vowed to boycott the show for his own mental health and my other friend, Mimz, who just got back from 7 weeks in Europe, painfully alleged that the whole experience had been ruined by Patrick’s death.

So tonight, when I’m weeping like a baby I want everyone to know that I am doing this out of respect for Offspring as a construct. Just as I have been carefully positioned to mourn Patrick, so to have I been carefully positioned to mourn him as if he isn’t a fictional character, but a well lit yet imperfect feature of my dream Fitzroy life.

It’s pretty weird, but a couple of million Aussie gals will feel me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gA25T5m_Es