Nagini's Blog

Individual research

Platform: instagram

Instagram as a simple, fun & creative way to capture, edit & share photos, videos & messages with friends & family. Instagram stories, a new feature that lets people share all the moments of their day, not just once you want to keep on your profile. With the stories, people don’t have to worry about overcasting, it allows you share as much as you want to be through the day, with as much creativity as you want. The photos and videos will diaper after 24 hours and won’t appear on their profile anymore. Our project wants to collect those moments even though it doesn’t exist anymore.

When I search the online media project on Instagram, I saw a lot of projects relates to Tag, by using the tag, we can see the same category of one thing, therefore tag makes our media more globally. It builds a relationship with people to people. I hope our project can also build the connection of people.

https://www.instagram.com/explore/locations/248311235/the-online-project/

 

There is a project named a day in the life of a media student, it talks about a University of Tasmania student who takes the bachelor of media degree’s daily life. Compare to only one person, our project focuses on a group of people, we target more people, and our audiences will have different visions of this project. From my experiences, I feel people will post everything they feel interested in three daily life. So by collecting those moments, I feel it is very interesting as well. By watching those stories, I realized that it is hard to stop. For example, I just want to continue to watch it unless something makes me stop watching it.

http://www.utas.edu.au/news/2018/1/22/516-a-day-in-the-life-of-a-media-student/

Thus, after I watched server project, I got the idea of what I want to make for our project, by collecting the online media pieces and add them together. Although each piece is individually and it may disappear, but I want to use online media to keep that moment and see if there was any relationship between others.

Assignment 2 – Reflection

How does your small-scale work respond to your characteristics of online screen making?

My small- scale work combining videos and photos around the world, I said around the world is because some of our friends are in other place and country, so even I didn’t go to that country, I can also know what their daily life in there digitally. I think this remains me the characteristic of using internet sharing with others.

When I started collecting my friends’ stories, I realized that I am not making a whole, I am making parts. From the reading “Network Literacy: The New Path to knowledge” by Mails, Adrian, the literature of network is on the internet everything is individual, but we can link it together, the part remains part. I think our work defiantly respond the modularity of new media. Each of the stories has it own narrative arch. However, when I add those little pieces together, our project create the connection between those little pieces, a nonlinear story. For online screen making, we don’t need to online make it meaningful, audiences will interactive what they think work or not, we can collect every single information that we think can add to our project.  It seems to me that online screen media has more freedom than other media. As our project topic “Everything ”, to be honest, this topic already talks about our work, we collect everything that in our friends’ story.

To see the whole project, we link each story together, it becomes a big story of people’s daily life which relates to our first project Tag, we attach labels “story”, “daily” “life”. Hence, I think our project respond to the characteristic of nonlinear, modularity and tag.

What did you learn about online screen characteristics and platforms through conducting your test?

Through the process of doing the project, I guess I don’t need to know what I want to get for the final piece of my work, I just continue adding stuff that I think is useful for my project. The project is more about searching stories rather than making stories. All the Instagram story will disappear by the next day, however, we use media to keep those moment and make it more globally, those piece doesn’t need to exist their anymore. Thus, to my mind, this is what internet returns to us, the variability of media.

How does this making expand upon what you learnt through your development posts?

In my development post, when I keep watching and thinking other people’s project, several questions come out, how does online media helps our life more convenience and comparing to other media, what does online media do for us?

Fiction and non- Fiction projects, especially _6/4 project, it talks me as a media practitioner, online media is not saying whatever you want, it is more about seeing one thing from the different perspective, you can give the evidence of your thought. Online screen media doesn’t also give us the freedom of doing whatever we want to make, but also the most important, sharing with other. It connects the people around the world.

What questions remain for you in terms of thinking about and making online screen works?

After finish the second assignment, to my mind, I want to learn more about the skill of making online screen project. I get the idea of what is online media and what can online media do for me, for the next step I want to learn how can I make an online screen work.

Assignment 2 – Project & Promotion

 

 

permission letter link

Assignment 2 – group discussion

• Group member: Gigi, Rico

During the class, Gigi, Rico and I shared the projects that we found on MIT’s Docubase, Gigi has  , Rico has Life in a Day(I can’t find the link of the peoejct).The orientation of our project should be modularity and nonlinear. The idea is to see different people’s daily life without being with them. In a way, we can use media to collect those moments from an individual.

The sources of our project are Instagram’s stories from our friends, in this way each part of the project is individually and it all relates to our daily life. What do people post their story? The answer for this question is ‘Everything’, so we named our project as “Everything”, you can see a lot of things had been posted on the story, the function of the instagram story allows people easily common and add the time, location and weather on their story. We want to create those story by collecting and editing them. On the other hand, each piece of media does not need to exist there, we can use mobile screen record to record all the stories, and edit it together.

Our plan is each of us gets three friends’ story and give the Personal Release forms to them in order to collect the stories. Because each story is independent, there will be nonlinear about our project. Audiences can definitely see each media source individually, but it also works efficiently when we put them together. I hope our project can make sense because it may be watched independently of the source. And it remains me about our first project about the tag, this project is about tag “story”, people’s daily. I guess the characteristic of our project should be the tag, nonlinear and modularity.

The deeper meaning of our project is to see how does online media helps our life more convenience and comparing to other media, what does online media do for us?

Assignment 2- Reading

—What is new media?

 

It means of mass communication using digital technologies such as the Internet. The internet, websites games, live stream, any content observed on the computer called new media. It is interesting that the definition of new media all related to one intermediary tool：computer. So, the development of modern media and the development of computers began around the same time couldn’t surprise us, because there were necessary for modern mass societies. The history of media and computing shows that the computer becomes a media processor rather than just a calculator, communication device.

But to deeply understand new media, we need to the principles of new media. In the reading “The Language of New Media by Manovich, Lev”, from Manovich’s perspective, he looks the principles of new media as five, numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability and cultural transcoding.  One important thing is not every new media follows those principles. As he said, the last three principles are dependent on the first two. Before that, we need to figure out where does new media come from? Some new media object are created on computers, but many new media objects are converted from various forms of old media. Manovich points out the process that put converting continuous(old media) data into a numerical representation (new media) is called digitization, so new media has discrete units rather than continuous units. Discrete units create the language of new media, parts remain parts. Modern media allows the logic of the factory, once a new film, a photograph was introduced, numerous identical media copies from this master. When we produced more and more AI projects, instead it is very hard to let us find the existing work, and this let to the next stage of new media, media database, we can share the sources and recreate them, new media is variability. The data can not only be updated, but also media makers can using different paths to making the same source of media. Instead of ousting the same adoration to audiences, the online media workers can target each individual’s version of a project, to be free to modify by each user.

Base on the reading, and related the reading to my second assignment, I am really interested in the modularity of media, because it allows for several places of online media function together efficiently yet separate as well.  We are thinking use Instagram’s story as our main source, by collecting those stories for one day and add them together, I think it can show each element has to have a narrative arch, it can be watched independently, but also as a whole – people’s daily life.

 

Assignment 2 – Fiction & Non- Fiction Project

 

Non- Fiction Project

• _Gallery of Lost art

     Some artworks that had disappeared, destroyed, stolen, discarded, rejected, erased, ephemera, this project used the Internet to create a digital exhibition of artworks that could never appear in the physical space of a museum. They explored the project as three part, the artworks, the text and the film, parts remain as parts.People can interact those work, easily common and share. The interesting part I think is that each part of this project is individual, however, if we see it as a whole when it comes together, it likes a large- scale project through the individual artist. The characteristic I found about this online screen media is interactive and non-fiction. And also the way they produce new media project (digital photos, films) are converted from the forms of old media (painting, drawing).

Thus, related to our second project, I want to explore do an online media that already exist there, but I do need to actually go to that place and do the media, I want to make a media project more globally.

• _After 6/4

(I find a second non-fiction online media project, I really like this one, and I feel though it may not helps me about my second assessment, but it gives me an idea about what does an online media work do.)

  This fully illuminates the history of a censorship state, storytellers must show at least two sides: the view from inside the state and outside its walls. SBS Australia has taken advantage of digital storytelling to unearth the kaleidoscopic perspectives surrounding the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The creator used multiple choice as a way to lead us to think about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. As I am a Chinese, I know this event is still limit to discuss in China. So, my focus point to this project is it uses online media as a platform to criticize an issue and using multiple choice as a way to let the audiences see the two sides of one event. The characteristic of this project is interactive, illegal to talk it in China, and also make me had a big scope of thoughts. Although we can’t do common about this event we can use different perspective to look at the project. The creator also gives me a evidence for each choice that I made.I think this project is a really good example for me to understand what does making online screen media in a way offer me as a media practitioner.

Hence, this project helps me to think that even I am making a small-scale online media, I realized that I want my audiences can learn and interact something from my project, not just for fun, but also can in some way help them to think.

Project from MIT _docubase

Fiction Project

• A partial list of things for which I am grateful

This is a little lovely game where every letter is hyperlinked to other passages. Each passage is a single sentence fragment describing a thing.  The individual letter idea relates to the principle of new media, modularity, and variability. Different people will have a different vision, it isn’t related as a whole, it is scalability. It allows for several places of this project function together efficiently yet separate as well. And the distribution of this game is “I hope that this list will never be finished”. So we can see each word individually but if we continue to click the letter to next sentence, it makes as a whole. On the other hand, we can see modularity of the new media may fail, because see it’s going better when I see it as a whole.

This project helps me that even each part of my work is individual, but I can also make a connection between parts.

Project from IFcomp 2017