So Jules told us in tutes that the aim of our culture jam was to get out there and get noticed.. so WE DID!
A couple of facebook groups.. a little commotion and a bogus email and one of Queensland's leading newspapers are calling up to run a story. This just goes to demonstrate the power of cyberpunking.
This hoax could have been orchestrated by a 7th grade high school student quite easily... scary the way we are manipulated by the media isn't it.. do they really know what they are talking about? The flip side of this is if you do wish to raise awareness about an issue technology and social media give us the best platform to get mass exposure in a short period of time.
Ive posted a pic of the email from the Courier Mail below:
Long live media watch!
SOME EARLIER STUFF ON OUR PUNK...
Parking Fees increase to $10 at Parklands...say what??!!!
It seems clear that this lady we snapped above has been trying to find a god damn park at Griffith University! To make matters worse we have just uncovered a leaked Gold Coast City Council document which says matters are going to be getting a whole lot worse.
We are going to have to start a MASSIVE student revolt against this!
Heres the link to the facebook group we created... we currently have 150 members and counting... people think this is real! tee-hehehe
This week we again talked history, this time something alot more interesting for me. 'The History of Film'. Its incredible to think that the cinema was born in 1895 yet we didnt get television in Australia til the 1950's. I found it really interesting that good old 'Snow white' was the first animated feature film.. and the fact that it grossed 8 million dollars way back in the 1930's is absolutely unbelievable! That sort of money in those days is totally & utterly unheard of.
We also looked at the impact that the internet is having on film makers. It is quite to the detriment of the Film Industry that anyone can post a dodgy film on YouTube these days and call themselves a film maker. The fact that YouTube managed a whopping 100 million views daily in its first year exemplifies just how much impact the internet is having on video & film.
Source: Lecture material
Image: Google images
Lecture Review 5 -Consumption and production
This lecture really made us stop and think about the how much the way in which we consume content. I looked at the way I consume media and how much it has changed in say the past 5 years or even 1 year.
5 years ago - My mobile phone would have sent text messages and had a basic camera. I would have only consumed the internet at work on the computer there, no home internet access, only myspace for social networking & that was very limited use. I would have never have watched a video or streamed radio online.
Today - I have an Apple Iphone which is linked to my facebook which updates me about 5 times a day, sometimes more if I check it. Same for both my Griffith Gmail and hotmail accounts. I have wireless internet on my small laptop which I take with me to uni and am on most nights. I am constantly on Youtube and my friends have started getting me into downloading videos off the net.. True Blood has me hooked.
What a massive difference! Im no computer addict.. or am I? The internet and computers are infiltrating our lives and we don't even realise its happening!
Source: Lecture material
CULTURE JAMMING!
Think anit-consumerism, social activism, transforming mass media to poke fun at itself, parodiesm think facebook groups against big companies..
Culture jamming is the art of hijacking the mainstream media, corporate advertisers, and the public domain to get across a message against one-way communication. Basically, culture jamming is sabotage of corporate or public property for political purposes. (Wikihow.com)
A masters thesis on culture jamming, worth a read:
http://www.nassio.com/sven/ Sven Woodside (2001) Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, Final M.A. Thesis
ABC Link - How to make trouble and influence people:
Cody Simpson was a regular Gold Coast twelve year old.. until he posted a YouTube clip of himself playing music online. The clip had hundreds of thousands of views in a few weeks. A record producer in the US viewed the clip & invited the young boy to the US to record. Within a few short months Cody has been shot to stardom, has recorded a music video with the famous artist FLOWRIDA and is said to be the next JUSTIN BEIBER. All of this demonstrates the immense power of YouTube and internet videos.
Cody's original single he posted online, 'One' can be seen below:
Source:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-ZuRlvggMo
ABC's Australian Story covered his rise to stardom & the power of internet films in this episode:
You don't have to be an aspiring star to have huge exposure on the internet.. the parents of this toddler have had over 6,000,000 views of their funny home video.
So are these videos good? Well... the answer is they don't have to be. Internet videos have to the power to reach such an incredibly huge audience that if your exposure is great enough, someone out there will. As you can see in the 'Cody Simpson' example his first video was not fantastic quality but he gained the right exposure to launch a career.
What is the weight of the world’s biggest machine? How much did it cost to build?
In the coal stripmine Hambach in Germany, there was a machine so big that it boggles the mind.the Bagger 288:
This is the 45,000 ton Bagger 288 digger built by Krupps in Germany, and it is the largest land based machine built by humans on the face of the planet.
It’s not fast, moving at about 2 meters a minute, but boy can it shift rubble.
It can dig up 240,000 cubic meters of dirt a day. That’s about the same as a football field sized hole that’s 30 metres deep.
And why do you need a machine so absurdly big? So we can strip mine coal out of the ground, transport it hundreds of miles on massive trains and take it to power stations where we burn it to make electricity. And where does quite a chunk of this electricity go? Strangely back to the digger, as it requires 16.56 megawatts of electricity to operate. You’re not going to find a lot of solar panels on this leviathan. Once it starts digging, it literally will not stop. Anything in its path will be chewed up, including this 60 ton bulldozer. How, I ask you, do you miss a 60 ton bulldozer?
or four people could drive a cheap 4 cylinder car for approximately $160 in fuel. Thats only $40 each! ROAD TRIP!!!
5. Who is Hatsune Miku? What company does she belong to? What is her birthday?
Hatsune Miku is a female anime character on a singing synthesizer application, she was developed (or belongs to) Crypton Future Media. Her voice is sampled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. Her release date (or birthday) was August 31, 2007.
6. Find a live webcam in Antarctica. Find a place to stay in Antarctica.
The Australian Government's department of The Environment, Water, Heritage & The Arts has 4 live webcams streaming at its Antartica project website:
There are no official hotels or accommodation in Antartica. The The Frei Base (established in 1980 under the name of Teniente Rodolfo Marsh) is the only accommodation available.
7. What song was top of the Australian pop charts this week in 1980?
In the 1980's our current Aria Charts were called the 'Kent Report' the number one song on the 11th of August was "Funky Town" by Lipps Inc.
Source: www.wikipedia.com
8. How would you define the term 'nano technology'? In your own words, what does it really mean?
Wow.. this was a difficult concept to get my head around!
My understanding of 'nano technology' is it is the science of building something from starting at it's smallest atom or molecule. This technology is becoming widely used by engineers, chemists, biologists etc.
How it works:
At the nanoscale, objects are so small that we can't see them -- even with a light microscope. Nanoscientists have to use tools like scanning tunneling microscopes or atomic force microscopes to observe anything at the nanoscale. Scanning tunneling microscopes use a weak electric current to probe the scanned material. Atomic force microscopes scan surfaces with an incredibly fine tip. Both microscopes send data to a computer, which can assemble the information and project it graphically onto a monitor
Source: Encyclopedia Brittanica
Useful links on nanotechnology:
http://www.nanotech-now.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology
These YouTube clips helped me understand the concept:
Source: www.youtube.com
9. What type of camera is used to make ‘Google Street View’?
The camera used was Dodeca 2360, a camera had the shape of a ball that his measurement almost was the same as the measurement of the ball softball. This camera could take the picture in several angle (the corner) at the same time (consisted of 11 lenses) with the resolution 2400 x 1200 pixel with the speed until 30 frame per the second (fps).
Lecture Review Week 3 - Short history of computing & the internet
Hmm... this has been my least favourite lecture thus far.. history, especially of the internet and computers is as rivetting as watching paint dry. Lucky I have been enjoying the rest of the course!
Nethertheless I did learn something! learned that computers originated from basic adding machines.. well at least thats where the concept has evolved from. I also learned that 'The World Wide Web' and 'The Internet' are actually 2 different things.. the web is actually just a 'use' of the internet.
I still cannot seem to grasp how the internet actually works, even though I have been brought up with all of this technology at my disposal. I do know that the internet and our new technologies are amazing, but I would have a lot more time to study if it wasnt for the invention of Iphones & Facebook!
I started a timeline below which I have started adding to, I will use this for reference and revision as the course goes on:
1950's - IBM first commercial production
1965- Gordon Moore - Moores law - the notion that the power of a microchip doubles every 2 years
1975- First PC released - Around this time Bill Gates starts Microsoft in his garage
1976- Apple 1 goes on sale (source: library.thinkquest.org)
1977- Commodore PET born (souce: library.thinkquest.org)
1978 - Apple 2 released
1990 - Tim Berners-Lee creates the World Wide Web (Source: webopedia.com)
1994/1995 - First online videos emerge
2002- Blackberry born (source: library.thinkquest.org)
2004- YouTube is born, online video now available to the masses
This week's lecture was all about 'Cine-speak' or 'learning the language of the cinema' (nicholas 2010). In a nutshell the concept relates to what story or narrative we can tell from a shot without writing it in words. We can add so much extra to a story by simple using the right camera angles, poses and shots at the right time.
When we were filming our 30-shot short film we tried to use as many variations of camera angles as we could. We also tried to use shots that imply things or use 'pictures as words'.
You will be able to see this in many of our shots. You can see shots where we use just Jay (the stalker's) legs and myself (the victim) is off in the background. Or a very long camera angle from behind Jay looking at Sherie in the distance to create this sense of stalking. Another good example of pictures telling a story is the shot after Jay is punched. Here just from using a close up and facial expression you can tell he has been wounded.
I found this lecture really useful. I wish my mum had learned the rule of thirds back before we had digital cameras.. we have so many old family photos with copious amounts of sky and tiny little people in the shot! We are fairuly spoilt these days as we have so much editing software at our fingertips that if we stuff up a camera angle or position we can easily move and crop things.
Heres an image which demonstrates the rule of thirds:
Source: Lecture material Picture: Google Images
The following link is a really really great website on camera shots and angles:
Our week two task in New Communication Technologies was designed to show us just how quickly and easily you can collect data and display it to a wide audience in a very short time.
Our group of three Myself, Mitchell and Jay were given the title 'Trapped' to create a 30 shot narrative to be created and displayed within a one hour tutorial.
We took 10 minutes to brainstorm our storyline. Our storyline begins with Jay following myself into the bathroom... the story appears to be a horror throughout the video but the conclusion is that Jay is simply trying to return my wallet which I had lost.
Using an Apple Iphone we shot 30 images around the university. Then we uploaded the images into Iphoto, created a slideshow added sound and voila!
The final stage in creating our video was to upload the video onto YouTube.. the results can be seen below!
New Comm Tech was my very first lecture this semester! This course sounds really interesting & up my alley… even if I’m not a computer nerd. We are going to be doing a ‘Tutespark’ each week, which is like an interactive activity/question…like answering questions & combining your response with a short film, blog etc. I’m really looking forward to it rather than a stack of boring, dry essays like most subjects require.
The two lecturers Josh & Jules seem a little quirky… but it sounds like they like a bit of fun! I like their conversational approach to the lecture material, keeps me from almost nodding off like I do in some others and… I love the fact that Josh said there’s not much point taking lecture notes, woohoo!!!
Today’s lecture provided an overall insight into the concept of technology, Josh defined this as ‘The scientific study of mechanical arts and their application to the world’. Then we looked ‘Communication Technology’ and distinguishing ‘Old Technology’ vs. ‘New Technology’. I learned that communication technology does not have to have any relation to computers or technology… rather it is ANYTHING that helps humans communicate with each other.
Our Tute*Spark this week is:
How do we distinguish between old and new communication technologies? Under what circumstances will new communication technologies become old communication technologies?
I created these two images below to help you easily compare 'Old Comm Tech' and 'New Comm Tech':
Old Communication Technology:
New Communication Technology
I thought this 'Did you know' video was really interesting to show how rapidly changing technology is affecting us all.
I found this interesting article on Google Scholar which emphasises how buy investing in new technology we become more productive and efficient:
Long live media watch!
