Generative

Every individual has the ability to make changes in daily life. The most possible reason in the contemporary age is mainly due to the rapid development of media technologies. The easy reach of digital applications such as smartphones and tablets will be a common tool to assist changes. Re-creation of arts, which refers to a re-production from a single production, have now emerged. The derivative works re-produced have been recognized by the public, especially by the artists of the original art work. Photos or images, which have been existed for a long time, are found to give inspirations for individuals to create derivative works.

Figure 1: A photo mosaic of Marilyn Monroe.

Photo mosaic is an example of new style of arts. It is re-produced by placing a large number of different images together. A new single picture can then be created with another meaning or even keeping the same meaning from the photos used. Sometimes, as a viewer, I can feel emotionally touched by mosaic photos. The fusion of old and new art presentations has directed a new age of contemporary arts or designs.

Figure 2: ‘Big Mac’. Apple or McDonalds?

Parody is another derivative design method to demonstrate generative approach. From the photo above, re-creation of art works with Apple logo and the vertical intertextuality use of McDonald’s labelled ‘Big Mac’ hamburger has been illustrated. The creative idea with re-generation of new meanings is also found applicable in product advertisement. The emotional stimulation can extend the reach of different types of audience.

Figure 3: Vivid Festival in Sydney.

Vivid festival in Sydney demonstrates different dimension of generative concept. The cross technology of tools such as lights, colours, drawings, digital projections of animations and musical instruments has created a new form of arts. Specifically, traditional drawings are being illuminated on Opera House; and the lightening of Sydney Harbour Bridge has also been performed.

Reference:

Paul, S., (2011), “What are Derivative Works Under Copyright Law?”, LegalZoom,
http://www.legalzoom.com/intellectual-property-rights/copyrights/what-are-derivative-works-under, accessed 5 June 2013

Roos, M., (2013), Vivid Sydney: The Enlightened Piano, [electronic print] Available at: http://smartlightliving.de/vivid-sydney-internationales-licht-spektakel-in-down-under/#prettyPhoto>, accessed 5 June 2013

Silvers, R., (n.d.),  Photo mosaic of Marilyn Monroe, [electronic print] Available at: <http://www.photomosaic.com/>, accessed 5 June 2013

Youhnis, M., (2012), Big Mac, [electronic print] Available at: <http://designyoutrust.com/2012/06/advertising-parody/>, accessed 5 June 2013

Hauntology

Figure 1: Aradale Psychiatric Hospital.

Hauntology – a term that I have never heard in my past 20 years. Either, it is not easy to find lots of information of this term. The general definition of hauntology is being described as, “a theory that highlights the discipline of academic history and eventual significance of them in human history”. To go a bit further, it explains the paradoxical state of the spectre, which is generally being called as “ghost” in today’s society.

The intangible idea of hauntology has generated the creation of ideas in the artistic field such as fashion, technology, musics and movies. I have also inspired by the hauntology expression expressed by Pilkington. Pilkington has stated that the musical hauntology is trying to pull the ideal listeners back to the past and also the future state of life. It allows us to understand via the feeling of future is actually the routine of past life, which is constantly bringing us forward and backward with a similar event but in a different stage of life perception. Musician, Burial, has been trying to emphasize on the feeling of loss as a kind of catastrophe. In other words, to connect back to the idea of Specters of Marx suggested by Jacques Derrida in 1993, individuals are actually haunted by the living souls, i.e. ghosts, of the past, and in a sense the ghost of the futures. This complex concept has also been brought in the movie “Ghost Dance”, directed by Ken McMullen in 1983. The film outlines Derrida’s argument of interconnection between opaque arts and science ghosts.

We can also find hauntology existence in the technology field. The smartphone and tablet adoption will be one of the examples. This example has suggested to investigate how the past brought human beings forward in that era, which many technological ideas and possible inventions were covered by the media, for instance, in the 90’s. And now, in the contemporary age, a higher level of technology investigation has been found as a sublimation of ‘furturistic’ ideology.

Reference:

Eldraque77, (2011), Ararat Lunatic Asylum – Aradale Psychiatric Hospital. [electron print] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ararat_Lunatic_Asylum_-_Aradale_Psychiatric_Hospital.jpg>, accessed 22 May 2013

Pilkington, M., (2012), “Hauntologists mine the past for music’s future”, BoingBoing,
http://boingboing.net/2012/10/12/hauntologists-mine-the-past-fo.html, accessed 22 May 2013

Wikipedia, (2013), Hauntology,
http://www.howtothinkaboutthefuture.com/?p=75, accessed 22 May 2013

hiperf289, (2007), “‘The Science of Ghosts’ – Derrida in ‘Ghost Dance'”, YouTube,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nmu3uwqzbI, accessed 22 May 2013

Social organization

Major control now does not only fall into the hands of politicians in the Senate, but also in the hands of every individual in the society. The on-going development has allowed citizens, who are in similar local levels, to have the right to manage their opinions in the society via online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Their works have gradually become the essential elements in constructing the political structure within a country. In this blog post, it is going to discuss the fact that how the power of social organization in the base level of community influence the top influential parties within the society.

Is UNSW Confession on the Facebook page a P2P sharing? I may say, “Yes. It is.” The purpose of creating the page is to allow peers, i.e. college students, to share, comment or like the sharing of photos, interesting stuff or academic issues happened on the campus on the digital community. This society engagement allows the bottom part of individuals such as us to group together and place the influence to the top management team, i.e. the school. This supports the bottom-up theory proposed by Terranova. This bottom-up system illustrates how loose elements join together to create a rapid and connected interactions with each other.

To imply the UNSW Confession case to politics, micropolitics will be another example which involves a higher degree of engagement and can be able to create more significant impacts in different angles inside the community. In similar sense, it also falls into the category of P2P sharing since things are welcomed to connect to one another peer governance, peer property and peer production levels. Social organization, thus, can help to generate various of ideas in the community to create techniques for politicians. Its importance has networked to a hard political power transversally. In other words, bottom-up system is also existing in constructing the political influence of power.

Reference:

Schollmeier, R., (2001), A Definition of Peer-to-Peer Networking for the Classification of Peer-to-Peer Architectures and Applications, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing, IEEE

UNSW Confessions, (2013), Facebook,
<https://www.facebook.com/pages/UNSW-Confessions/372929322804947>, accessed 7 May 2013

Transversality

Transversality refers to the a line crossing the borders, for example, the boarders of the frames, in a single medium such as music. It dynamically transfers information from a frame to the other. In understanding this concept more specifically, let us take Twitter #Music mobile application as an example.

The launch of Twitter #Music application allows smartphone users to track what songs are being listened or tweeted by the people they follow. Musics charts of new emerging and fast growing tracks are also provided. This illustrates how transversality among different frames, i.e. Twitter and musics, in a single space, i.e. the digital online platform. Social media users can nowadays explore popular songs via the access of their Twitter accounts whilst music popularity is formally being framed to be represented by charts such as Billboard and ARIA. Even these charts can show the popularity of singles or albums based on the sales, the frame of non-mainstream tracks are not likely to take a position on these charts. On the other hand, by being explored the songs via Twitter #Music mobile application, Twitter users can also purchase the songs via the link to Apple iTunes. Thus, transversality has expanded the music explorations for the public individuals via dynamically transferring information across varies of frames. The rigidity of framing tracks by charts are being cracked.c Framing and transversality mutually support each other to increase the flexibility of information flow within music consumption sector.

So, whoever knows that what will be the next sector for the existence of transversality?

Reference:

Gardner, J., (2013), ‘How three Australian took Twitter into music’, Financial Review, <https://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.afr.com%2Fp%2Ftechnology%2Fhow_three_australians_took_twitter_6MrUxN4KGOItnCkEnWOAeN?tab=people&uname=andersand>, accessed 01 May 2013

Murphie, A., (2006), ‘Editorial’. The Fibreculure Journal. Issue 9, 
<http://nine.fibreculturejournal.org/> accessed 01 May 2013

Pocketnowvideo, (2013), ‘Twitter #music Hands-on’, YouTube,
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfF8nLZ2nLw>, accessed 01 May 2013

Augmented

Not until getting to explore more on the media ecology, I have never thought that we, the human beings, are living in the community which reality is being augmented around. So how does it different from the general reality? Augmented reality refers to which the environment is being mediated, or computerised with sounds, images, figures that contribute to make the surroundings more virtually and dimensionally tangible in life. The more developed mnemotechnology allows a larger room for the development of the augmented world.

As being a digital mnemotechnology user, I often use the laptop, iPad and my smartphone for Google maps. The navigation, especially with its 3-dimensional street view, provides me more information on directions, nearby shops and restaurants, as well as the public transports when I am at the place where I am not familiar with. By comparing this to the reality contributed by the traditional forms of media, e.g. print maps, reality can be segmented, and, at the same time, provides a larger volume of extra but useful knowledge which allows us to experience more by exteriorising our realities through the perceptions constructed by mnemotechnologies. This not only enhances our daily consumptions on media, but also saves us so much time to seek useful information from different platforms.

In the gaming world, for instance, Wii, also entertains our lives via group usage in the augmented reality extended by mnemotechniques. It allows us to communicate, as well as to experience activities that we seldom have the chance to engage in, e.g. car racing and gun shooting.

To sum up, the augmented reality not only can ease our time in information seeking, but also brings us a more entertained world through the advanced mnemotechnology.

Reference:

Christina, Warren (2012), ‘Nokia City’s Lens Hopes to Make Augmented Reality Mainstream’, Mashable, September 6,
<http://mashable.com/2012/09/05/nokia-city-lens/>

Drell, Lauren (2012) ‘7 Ways Augmented Reality Will Improve Your Life’, Mashable, December 20, <http://mashable.com/2012/12/19/augmented-reality-city/ >

Havens, John (2013) ‘The Impending Social Consequences of Augmented Reality’, Mashable, February 8, <http://mashable.com/2013/02/08/augmented-reality-future/ >

Experience

Recently, something keeps making me wondering on during these rainy days. That is – how much memory do I actually have since my birth? 1000 kg 1000 things? Memory probably is an uncountable experience but this certainly exists in every individuals!

Experience comes from our memory, which is one of the components that construct our mind. We can use eyes, ears, paper, pen, drawings, photographs, or even musics to help form our memories. These mnemotechnologies are perceived to change from time to time. For instance, I used to write diaries by hand on a little cartoon journal. When I got into high school, the popular use of computer had lead to the establishment of online blogging. The influence of peers made me start using Xanga to record my thoughts, instant feelings, inspirations and other interesting stuff online. However, with the continuous development of new scientific technologies, the use of smartphone had made me easier to access Facebook and Pinterest. With the convenience, I have then switched my media habit to share my mind, photos and other interesting things from other applications or websites by  just a simple click on my phone. Every time when I view back the past statuses and photos, I feel like my memories are being re-constructed, and, at the same time, higher cognition to my personal experience is formed.

Exteriorisation, the extension of mind area, is also experience with the development of technologies. The use of GPS is one of my experience on exteriorisation of memory since I do not need to remember or go search the route from an 10-inch map to the destination before I get to drive. Thus, my driving experience can be eased significantly.

To sum up, media experience in relation to memory and mind is found to be accomplished with the development of technologies. Exteriorisation of memory has also increased the “volume” of memory via mnemotechniques.

Reference:  Stiegler, Bernard (n.d.) ‘Anamnesis and Hypomnesis: Plato as the first thinker of the proletarianisation’ <http://arsindustrialis.org/anamnesis-and-hypomnesis>
Noë, Alva (2010) ‘Does thinking happen in the brain?’, 13:7 Cosmos and Culture <http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/12/10/131945848/does-thinking-happen-in-the-brain >

Metacommunication

Figure 1: Social networking communication.

In today’s society, the public is all being covered by the digital network, for instance, the online spectrum. The popular use of smartphones and tablets has driven the media culture from the traditional print to a diverse online network. This does not simply demonstrate how today’s media technologies improve the social communication, but it is also a controversial issue on investigating how close the connection in the real society among individuals will be in the opposite dimension.

According to Levinson, the invention of alphabets in the ancient age has been treated as a remarkable culture evolution since history can be recorded. This was to extend the knowledge of the public not only in that age, but also for investigators to get to understand more on the background culture over that period. Bible is one of the scholar examples to demonstrate the influence of linguistic reform . The establishment of alphabets also allows individuals to convey their own ideas or messages in their mind in written words. With this tool, intangible knowledge can then become tangible via communications between individuals in different decades.

On the other hand, the referencing of scholars’ ideas can increase the credibility of our personal opinions. Thus, listeners can then be persuaded to believe and engage in the public discussions on a particular topic. Physical presentation skills such as eye-contact, body language and the speed and pitch in speaking are also found to be important for catching the attention from the audiences. One of the most representable models will be Steve Jobs, the former Chief Executive Officer of Apple, who has able to deliver the company’s goals and improvements in its new product press conference.

“Who you are is the way you perform.” – this idea of self-identification from metacommunication has inspired me from the article written by Noe by discussing the concept of reproducing virtual messages in our minds into real actions by physical gestures.

Reference:

Helmond, A., (2009), Social media social networking connections. [electronic print] Available at: <http://www.integr8group.com/social-networking-in-the-workplac/>, accessed on 26 March 2013

Levinson, P., (1997), ‘The First Digital Medium’ in Soft Edge; a natural history and future of the information revolution London: Routledge:11-20

What is media event?

What is event about? At the time I heard of this word, my mind immediately came out with parties, strikes and celebrations. Are these events? Of course they are! They all share same identities such as media, culture, society and technics and these four basic elements are dynamically inter-related to each other.

According to Foucault, an event are generally defined with a start and an end under certain degree of control. Human experiences, activities, ideas and beliefs can be some examples of an event or a series of events. An event is actually a constant and an ever-changing process of changes. For example, Mardi Gras, the annual gay parade, can be considered as an event. People who support same-sex marriage are free to join the parade and the exclusive parties held on that day. The institution of the event management wants to share their cultural ideas and hopes in order to gain support from the public. The media technics, i.e. the usage of social networking sites has played a key role to connect different parts of society and culture together. This is why this event has started emerging in different countries nowadays.

Different perceptions on the same event can be explained by the theory suggested by Wark, the weird global media events. Public with various cultural or social background such as regions may find it weird, or even unacceptable even though the activity is being changed with the same elements. Yet, to be specific, it is being changed in different patterns of changes. Thus, it should not be categorised as an eternal activity. It requires mutual involvement to form networks of practices. Power tactics are also required to construct, as well as, manage a complex event.

Reference:

Foucault, M., (1994), in Wark, M.,  Virtual geography: Living with global media events. Indiana University Press

Mardi Gras, (2013), <http://www.mardigras.org.au/>, accessed 12 March 2013