Week 6 – Analogue Video – Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik | Smithsonian American Art Museum

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Who is the practitioner? When were they practicing?

Nam June Paik (1932-2006) was a Korean American artist who is considered to be the fore founder of video art. During Paik’s early life he was trained as a classical pianist. Later he moved to Germany to study at Munich University, here he met John cage (American composer, artist and music theorist), and as a result became associated with the with the Neo-Dada art movement, known as Fluxus.

 

 

What is the title of the photo or video you have chosen to analyse (can you provide a link?)  

A video by Nam June Paik titled Electric Opera #1.

With the video you are examining, when was it produced (date)?

The Video titled “Electric Opera #1” was produced by Nam June Paik in 1969.

How was the video authored?

This video was authored by Nam June Paik in 1969 by manipulating, altering and saturating the recorded figures of “a topless dancer and three hippies … Richard Nixon and other well-known figures” (New Television Workshop; Medium Is the Medium, The; Nam June Paik’s Electronic Opera #1, 2015). Voice overs issues commands to the audience throughout the clip, such as “This is participation TV”. Paik further instructs viewers to open and close their eyes at particular intervals throughout the clip. At the conclusion of the video a voice instructs viewers to “turn off your TV set”.

How was the video published?

This analogue video was published as an analogue Tv signal. As analogue Tv and videos  “exists as fixed physical objects in the world, their production being dependent upon transcription from one physical state to anther” (Lister, 2009). This includes transcriptions such as cables, aerials, television monitors. Therefore, there are various instances where the signal can be interfered with. Interference became an essential component fo Paik’s work. Paik ensured that the audience questioned whether interferences occurred during the work or they were intentional choices. This video was originally published on an analogue television. further, Paik’s works have been subjects of many exhibitions in museum, for example the Name June Paik Art Center in South Korea.

How was the video distributed?

Till this day Paik’s art works have been distributed and exhibited around art galleries throughout the world. (Guggenheim, 2019). Since the video’s publication in 1969 it has been distributed through various museum sites as well as  online video platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. As a student studying networked media I have also had access to this video through my university, thus it can be concluded that the video is also distributed in an educational way.

References:

Openvault.wgbh.org. 2015. New Television Workshop; Medium Is The Medium, The; Nam June Paik’s Electronic Opera #1. [online] Available at: <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_462A21CAF90A4C5FABE73D9FBCD25BF6> [Accessed 1 May 2020].

Guggenheim 2019, Nam June Paik, viewed 21 April 2018, Guggenheim Collection Online, <https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/nam-june-paik>

Lister, M, Dovey, J, Giddings, S, Grant, I & Kelly, K 2009, New Media: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, New York.

Week 5 – Analogue Photography (practice analysis)

Henri Cartier-Bresson | Highbrow

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Who is the practitioner? When were they practicing?

Practitioner Henri Cartier Bresson, is a world renown french photographer. He was considered a master of both candid and street photography. He was also one of the early users of 35mm film. Bresson predominantly practiced photography in the 1930s and 1940s. famously, Bresson viewed photography as a capturing a decisive moment.

What is the title of the photo or video you have chosen to analyse

A documentary titled ‘The decisive moment’, narrated by Henri Cartier Bresson.

With the photo or video, you are examining when was it produced (date)?

The documentary formerly titled “the decisive moments photographs and words” was originally recorded in 1973, it is narrated by Henri Cartier Bresson. However this particular documentary was published in New York, by the International Center of Photography in the year 2007.

How was the photo or video authored?

This audiovisual presentation provides a unique insight into the photographer Henri Cartier Bresson. During the documentary Bresson is recorded speaking fluently in English, offering a concise yet also a wide range of observations on the essence of the photography. His examinations are paired with some of his famous photographs. In this video Bresson conveys the photography’s many possibilities and constant challenges. Looking particularly at how the documentary was authored, it is important to note that even through this is a video it consists of photographs overlaid by audio. therefore, it is necessary to note or understand the equipment used by Bresson to take the photographs used within the video. firstly, there was definitely a recording device that created the audio for the documentary this enabled Bresson to speak over his photographs and give insight into the photography medium whilst using his work as an example.Secondly Bresson was known to use analog film cameras in order to capture his pictures. This means that Bresson would have known how to use and operate both the camera device efficiently as well as understand and practice the stages of film development.

Picture

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in focus, Bresson structured his photos in a way that affects the way the documentary has been authored. “Bresson would often say that his greatest joy was geometry”. In terms of his photographic mise-en-scene, Bresson always took into account the “geometry”  of his photos. This meant that he was “preoccupied with” the “structure” in which each photo was taken. He constantly took photos that were thought out in term of everything within the frame being “in the right place”.

Example photo in the documentary:Cartier-Bresson: A master's black-and-white world - CSMonitor.com

This is a perfect example of how Bresson utilised geometry in order to capture the moment. There is different shapes and lines here that compliment each other aesthetically.

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How was the photo or video published?

The documentary was released in 1973, and was published in the form of a short film. This was produced by three different companies;

The video was published in a way that attracted fans and students to Bresson’s work. As the video features a selection of Bresson’s famous photographs, alongside rare commentary by the photographer himself. The film did not take away from his photographs but in fact gives people insight into Bresson’s mindset.

How was the photo or video distributed?

The video was distributed to those who would take educational value from the contents of the film. It was distributed by being placed in an exhibition at the ICP Museum in New York, where multiple intellectual and culture seeking individuals had access to not only the film but a wide range of publications from Henri Cartier Bresson. Further as a university student studying Networked Media, it is also important to note that I too have had access to this short documentary as a result of my studies. therefore through distribution the film also reached those in fields of study related to photography.

Bibliography:

International Center of Photography. 2020. Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Decisive Moment. [online] Available at: <https://www.icp.org/exhibitions/henri-cartier-bresson-the-decisive-moment> [Accessed 30 April 2020].

International Center of Photography. 2020. Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Decisive Moment. [online] Available at: <https://www.icp.org/exhibitions/henri-cartier-bresson-the-decisive-moment> [Accessed 30 April 2020].

IMDb. 2020. The Decisive Moment (1973) – Imdb. [online] Available at: <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2071616/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt> [Accessed 30 April 2020].

The Decisive Moment. 1973. [film] Directed by C. Capa. USA: Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, International Center of Photography, Scholastic Magazines.

Week 4: New Media and Social Media

When I wake up the first thing I do in the morning is check my phone. After looking at the time and seeing if anyone texted me my thumb autopilots to instagram and will continue to do so throughout the day even if I don’t realise it or consciously go looking to check my instagram feed. Listening to the lecture and doing my readings this week on the topic social media, I began to think about how instagram fit into the concept new media. Elaine my tutor explained “when talking about new media, you are also talking about the existence of social media” to understand this better she gave the class the pot plant metaphor:28 Pot Plant Clipart planet Free Clip Art stock illustrations ...

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The Pot Plant is a Micro environment. Where the bowl (Pottery) is new media, the roots inside are social media and the leaves are the platform for example; Instagram. This helped me understand that you cant just look at Instagram you have to look beyond the platforms and at the concept of new media to understand how social media and the platforms work.  What intrigued me the most was the concept the people or the users of these platforms and social networks and the impact the users have on the eventual progression of platforms and occurrence of new ones all together.

Another Huge insight I gained from this weeks lecture was the notion that New Media is different to Media in three ways. firstly that new media is digital, its online and its ALWAYS evolving with how society progresses. According to Cambridge Dictionary new media means “using computers or the internet” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2018). I guess thinking about this in more detail or in terms of my course prompt which looks and examines Instagram. The ever evolving platforms looks at the fact that there are new platforms being created all the time. Before Instagram, facebook was the leading social media storm and was the number one platform used to connect online. however due to progression and a shift in the way people digest visual media Instagram was born and quickly become one of the highest rating platforms to date. I guess I found the concept of new media very interesting to me as its broader than just looking at a platform on its own or thinking about social media. New Media according to Eugenia Siapera, author of “Understanding New Media”, is a way to study the link in the way technology interacts with society as a whole.

 

When did social media start? (history of Instagram and Facebook ...Image Source 

readings: Siapera, E. 2013, Understanding New Media. SAGE Publications, London (Section: pp.1-16).

Dictionary.cambridge.org. 2018. Cambridge Dictionary | English Dictionary, Translations & Thesaurus. [online] Available at: <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/> [Accessed 29 March 2020].

 

 

 

Week 3: Networks

This week Networked Media focused on exploring ‘the network’. By looking at the readings and lecture slides I was able to understand some of the key ideas of what the network means in regards to our course prompt; How the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published, and distributed in the network.

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One of the readings “New Media: A Critical Introduction”, authored by Martin Lister gave me insight into the notion of User- Generated Content and the way it has affected the way we interact and use the web. Lister suggests that everyone in our modern world no longer needs to know the intricacies of coding in order to share and market on the internet. Lister explained “the increasingly interactive user is constructed as being part of an ever more intimate feedback loop with media producers” (Lister et al 2009,223). This means there has been a large shift in the way people are marketing, advertising and sharing now that platforms are easy to use and user friendly. Instagram is an example of a platform that highlights this concept, the way the platform allows ordinary and everyday users to promote their products and brands is a dramatic juxtaposition to how brand promotion was done in traditionally. Further, content making and distribution as a result has become more equal as people with fewer expertise in digital media softwares are afforded the same access as those who do harness complex software skills.

Image result for cartoon of someone sitting on couch social media

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My Own example of this is Instagram Influencer Stephanie Claire Smith.

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She is a famous social media influencer on Instagram with 1.6m followers. She started off as just a model posting both about her shoots and outings with friends, however due to her high demand and publicity on social media she was able to start using her platform to promote two business’. Steph constantly posts content on her page for her own fitness brand ‘Keep it Cleaner’ and retail brand ‘Soda Shades’. This works for her as she is both passionate about her brands and fits the part with her sporty physique and summer life style (always wearing sun glasses). She was able to turn her social media account into a business account as she changed the way she was posting and began promoting on her page. This new way of advertising has worked in this instance as the way these two brands attract customers is through her online presence and influence. I believe that this is a great example of Listers concept User- Generated content.

READING: Lister, M et al 2009, New Media: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, 2009. (Sections: Networks, Users and Economics pp 163-169; Wiki Worlds and Web 2.0 pp 204-209; The Long Tail pp 197-200; User-generated content, we are all users now pp 221-232.)

 

 

Week 2: Affordances

At the beginning of the year I was lucky enough to upgrade from my retro IPhone 8 Plus to the new and improved IPhone 11. There was only one issue… how was I going to adapt to a buttonless iPhone?  for the first few days I tirelessly dragged my thumb across the bottom of my screen forgetting that the task was made redundant by the new face recognition technology. 

Since the beginning of time innovation has caused a common struggle and frustration for people learning how to grasp new technologies and new object functions. In other words, working out the affordances of objects and technologies. Explained during our tutorial we discussed what it means to look at objects or software and determine how we can interact with it and use it.

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According to Donald Norman an affordance “refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used”(Norman, 1998, pg.9). An example of this can be a book. The pages of a book logically are meant to be read, by turning the pages and using our eyes we can digest the words and make sense of them. This is an action. Books however afford many other things that the book designer may not have necessarily have imagined the book could be used for. For example: using the book as a scratcher or as a shield from the rain.

 

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As the prompt for Networked Media relates directly to the platform Instagram, I thought it would be important to highlight the same frustrations people face when interacting with Instagram software. For someone who is not overly educated on social media and technology it can be hard to grasp Instagram’s many functions, thus becoming one of the constraints associated to affordances.

During the tutorial we identified that constraints can be either physical, semantic, cultural or logical.  Looking directly at Instagram, we can determine some of the constraints that users face while on the platform. For example; A person who has little to know knowledge about social media platforms may have trouble interacting with the platform as they don’t know how to use the software. To like photos on instagram you must double tap the image for it to work, this function is unique to Instagram and thus would make it difficult for non-Instagrammers to use.

So how did they fix this?

Instagram understood that the interface of their software had to be easy to use at the same time as being unique. They decided to make alterations in order to help users understand their actions. For users who couldn’t grasp the double tap motion they added a small heart that would appear as a reaction to your double tap- this was done to show confirmation for users that they had made the ‘like’.

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My example of instagram constraints is comparing my own understanding of Instagram to the way my mother uses the platform. My mother to this day still cant grasp the way the platform works,  countless times she has asked me how to save a photo, how to take a photo and EVEN how to like a photo. It comes down to cultural affordances and logic, I have grown up in the digital native generation where coming across any new software on a platform doesn’t take too long to get the hang of. Personally I find every platform a variation of the  one before. However, my mother didn’t grow up like I have and these things don’t come so easily to her. But you know what I can’t use a VCR.

READING: Core: Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things , Basic Book, New York (Sections: Preface vii-xv; Chapter one pp 1-13; Chapter 4 (constraints) pp 81-87; (computers) pp 177-186).

 

 

Week 1: Networked Media Introduction

As this is my last semester of my Bachelors Degree I wanted to make sure the electives I chose were going to be useful going forwards. I know finishing a degree can be a bit daunting, questions have been bubbling up in my head any minute it gets the chance to… Where do I go from here? Where do I even look for a job? With that I explored my different elective options on enrolment online and came across the course Networked Media- ultimately I chose this course because of the word networked, I know I would like to be as networked as I can to find a job after the next few weeks.

So as I was sitting in my first lecture of Networked Media, honestly I had no idea what to expect. Would it be a group of students just networking and pitching each-other cocktail in hand where they have worked previously sand what skill set is their best? no idea. Image result for networking?

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I came to realise that Networked Media would not be about resume conversations and trying to build up personal network’s but rather about exploring the online networking world. Taking Instagram for example, studying it’s software and dissecting its being. We would learn what the software means and how people interact with it whilst even developing our own projects on it to test our theories. This class was definitely not what I expected it to be but I am looking forwards to learning what it has to offer. Further I believe that the skills I’ll learn from this course will definitely aid my career outside of my degree.

 

Final Reflection Natalie Aarons s3601713

Final Reflection Natalie Aarons s3601713

  1. In what ways do you hope your screenings/exhibited/screened work (whether individual or group produced) engaged its audience and communicated a key concern of the studio?  

I believe that our final piece that was screened at the final exhibition for class tied well into the key ideas of what the studio Sonic Materialities was about. The final piece which incorporated both sound and visual materials explored the notion of communication with sound, tone and gestures in terms of communication on a social level.  For example the piece screened engaged the audience with the idea of tone (which is sound) being crucial to how we communicate with people universally and thus has everything to do with the study of sound and the studio Sonic Materialities, the concept or concern of the studio was to explore sound through history and what sound is. Through our own research which we learnt through classes in the studio and out of class research we were as a group able to tie in the key concepts of the studio and create something both exploring sound but also going further than that and exploring what sound means universally within a social structure like language and communication.

  1. Imagine you are going to keep working on that media piece (e.g. to screen it somewhere else like a festival, or develop it in to a different kind of work, and so on) – what would be the core things you would want to improve and extend and why? 

In terms of improvement for the final piece and making it something that could go on to more showcases, I would like to potentially spend more time in the production side of things.For example: getting the lighting perfect in every shot. I think some of our shots are a bit too exposed and sometimes the camera was not white balanced. The continuity with white balance was lacing throughout the piece.  Further making more informed choices for the composition of the camera angles. In regards to the types of camera angles we were using in filming I think composition sometimes wasn’t at the forefront of how we were filming I would like to focus on that more.

I think we could have also had more content as the video was short of ten minutes and that was our goal time. Lastly to make sure the sound was at the best possible quality and maybe even adding in some more foley sound.

  1. Reflect on an aspect of two other students/group’s media work at the event in terms of specific insights they produced about a key idea addressed by the studio? 

The video about the bacon I really enjoyed, I thought the concept was both funny, light hearted and very thought provoking. It actually made me think about what sounds are actually coming from the source you are visually seeing and what are made up to make you think it is what you are visually seeing. Further, the presentation which was in the form of a podcast discussing feminism and the historiography of electronic music I also found very informative and well scripted. Coming from doing my concept report on the same subject I found that the podcast piece did intact consolidate my knowledge and open my eyes up to personal experience of those in my class who had put the podcast together.

  1. How did being part of an audience at an event like this impact your experience of your own and other’s work? 

I think experiencing work in this environment does two things. One, I think sitting down in a professional environment and viewing your hard work gives you a sense of validation. It also gives a sense of praise for the tough work you have done all semester, it is recognition. It also sets you up for the potential to receive negative feedback. Negative feedback is really a positive and learning it through university is important. I mean to say that exhibitions liked this create a safe environment to receive feedback from peers. Secondly, it is very differ sitting down watching a movie alone in you room as pose ti sitting in an auditorium, it could be the same film but watching it in an environment with other people enhances the experiences and opens you up to watching the film through different eyes based on how those around you are reacting the film to: in this case I think the exhibition creates a space where you aren’t alone watching other peoples work the exhibition gives you that experience to bounce off other peoples thoughts and reactions throughout, you never know you might even think something you never thought would pop into your head if it wasn’t for the person next to you watching with you.

The Audience made me feel proud of my work because I saw a great reaction out of them. I was also able to compare my work to others in different ways. For example I gaged that our piece had a bit more humour than the others, however It lacked detail in terms of editing, and theoretical in terms of the information we presented in our video wasn’t as informative as the podcast for example. It made me aware of the things I liked about our work and the things I think we could have improved on.

Development 3

This week the group presented a progress report to the class, I wasn’t able to be there however I know that the group had the opportunity to show Georgia and the rest of the class what our concept was and how we as a group were exploring it. Further it gave the group the opportunity to get feedback from our class mates. From this we were able to consolidate ourselves as a group both on our concept, how we were going to move forward with our project in terms of production and our communication as a group.

Through the presentation the group ran through the concept how it would look and sound in the final edit.This also gave us the opportunity to hear some feedback from Georgia and our fellow classmates, luckily the feedback was positive which gave us as a group the confidence to produce the rest of out project. With the knowledge that our concept was not only solid but explored well we were glad to move forward knowing we were right on track. Further, a concept that was brought up was the stereotyped languages, without wanting to come across racist and offend anyone we as a group were nervous we might do this as stereotyping and generalising people and their languages can be touchy for some people. However the class and the teachers took it on well and it left us room to look into how everyone interprets thins differently bass on their own ideas.

As the group presented without me that day I asked them what research I should do to catch myself up. Allegra told me to look into a guy called John Cage because he was mentioned throughout the class and that she thought researching him would benefit us with out own presentation. Upon my own research I discovered that Cage is an American Composer who spent a large component of his life studying sound and more importantly the study of silence as a sound. A well known piece 4 33 is legitimately a video of a composer going to perform infant of an audience with a piano but not playing anything at all, after four minutes and thirty three seconds he walks off stage. Specifically the point Cage was making with this piece is that sound or music is more than a voice or an instrument being played. Even extraneous factors play into a performance, for example in 4 33 you can hear the audience in the background, Cage is making a point that instruments don’t necessarily mean everything in music. Cage came up with the theory that silence doesn’t even exist because even in silence you can hear the human body working. What Cage experimented with in music and sound strikes right at the heart of what our group is trying to achieve, taking away words (sound) within our own video means there is silence for people to interpret and hear the extraneous variables.

Development 2

With most of our brainstorming on concept out of the way, this week our group explored how to convey our message as a project. We decided that making a short film that had small snippets of footage matched up with sound would be the best way to go about it. We came up with ideas like, only showing small parts of the face in shot to communicate or capture the idea of facial expression, whilst layering the footage with the sound of another person for example matching a feminine face with a masculine voice. We thought that shooting some of the footage like this would be somewhat disorientating for the viewer and thought it would be a cool component of the film to investigate communication. Further to have shots where snippets of sentences are edited out so that the viewer has to fill in the blanks, this would be interesting in itself because viewers may come up with different words that fill in the blanks based on their own social cues. During the class the group filmed a small scene as a rough idea of what our bigger production could look like, this was a work in progress presentation.

Upon doing some of my own research, I came across an article called ‘Forming social impressions from voices in native and foreign languages’. The article is written by Cristina Baus, Phil McAleer, Katherine Marcoux, Pascal Belin and Albert Coasta. The article explores “acoustical properties of the voice (e.g., pitch)” and the fact that acoustic properties can be “very powerful” when it come to “forming social impressions.” The article was very interesting it spoke about “languages” being a pivotal competent to the investigation and research in regards to understand voice and the way people communicate regardless of their language. The results of the experiment or investigation done in the article “revealed that listeners across languages form very similar personality impressions irrespective of whether the voices belong to the native or the foreign language of the listener. A social voice space was summarised by two main personality traits, one emphasising valence (e.g., trust) and the other strength (e.g., dominance).”. This to me was very interesting as we as a group were planning to conduct our own version of this exact investigation. 

Forming Social Impressions From Voices in Native and Foreign Languages, January 2019, Cristina BausPhil McAleerKatherine MarcouxPascal Belin & Albert Costa https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-36518-6#Abs1

Development Post One

This week the class was placed into groups to brainstorm ideas for the last assignment, originally I was placed in a group that wasn’t communicative. After some attempts at trying to brainstorm ideas with them I jumped ship and joined another group (Allegra, Ebony and Dana) because their brainstorming ideas interested me and I had previously worked well with both Allegra and Ebony in another group assignment.

Once I joined the girls group they took me through what they had brainstormed: The idea being to focus and investigate the power of social cues in regards to tone and facial expression and manipulated sound. For example, investigating stripping away the sound from words someone is saying on film and seeing what information can still be interpreted and received without the words. To discover the difference between what noise is and information is that really just social cues and what society has told us to pick up on. Further what emotion can be picked up through sound and tone, without it can is emotion there at all? And lastly using manipulated sound as a means to test if a viewer would be able to interpret what a person is trying to convey over film. Luckily two of the group members were fluent in other languages like Greek and Arabic, so taking advantage of languages would be a great way for the group to investigate communication further. Looking at languages in particular and honing in on the notion that even if you can’t understand that particular tongue you might still be able to pick up on the meaning of the words based on facial expressions and social cues.

Allegra forwarded me onto a particular article that back up our investigation. Michael Bull and Les Back’s article ‘Getting a Sense of Listening’ brings up that “sound, combined with an awareness of sonic presence, is posted as a powerful force in shaping how people interpret their experiences”. This idea is at the very core of what we are exploring, that sound in combination with social cue has a powerful force to create meaning for people to communicate without necessarily having the ability to understand word for word what the other is saying. Our group is really trying to investigate what sounds means for communication. Communication has so many facets to it, the words, facial expression, tone and more, my group want to explore and boundaries of this concept and use it to see how manipulated sound scan effect another persons understanding.

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