This has been quite a long semester of blogging. Have I always done the 3 blog posts a week? I have not. And just as I was writing this I half expected a S.W.A.T team to break all the windows around me and arrest me. Not really though. I’ve hidden my location too well. I can never be found.

Anyway, I must say that I have been a little bit lazy. But what I’ve found with the things easy to be lazy about, such as group assignments, is that communication is key. How does one communicate effectively? Honestly. Aaaaaaand heres another classic segway.  In less than a week, my dear friends, whose tally adds up to 3 million I’m sure, these media one blog posts will be over. People create the things that often tend to have the ability to reinvent them. The idea of blogging, was one which I was a little bit hesitant too. I don’t think expressing yourself to millions of people, as I’m doing right now, is too favourable.

But I think that something positive may have happened through these blog posts. I’ve found that I’ve shifted my self from thinking blogs are very un-useful and tedious, to realising it’s not only a way to get some easy marks. But it’s a way for me to show a bit of me. I don’t think writing in complete properness and soliloquies is my way of writing, that’s why I find this blog to be okay.

So blog posts, however many of you I may have done, I think it’s fair to say that you’re not too bad. As is the case in this weeks lecture, you are not going to overtake my life into a post apocalyptic world. But you’re a part of my life that I can kind of tolerate. So I guess I’ll just keep on keepin’ on with you for now.

Who will win? Who will die? Anyway, anthropocene is a really strange word. And apparently it means something. I don’t know what it means yet. Technology is the consolation of skills, techniques and cultures. They include cultural values and ideology. Culture is about identifying sub groups within populations, seeing the world as culture and more obviously, relates to cinema, creative expressions, art and theatre. Culture is something that is around us and is also what we are.

Technological determinism changes the way people view the world. It’s often seen as the extension of people, and are ways to capture complexities.

There’s also ocial constructivism, in which it’s the flip side of techno determinism, technology is controlled, regulated by us. It’s up to the peoples. THE PEOPLES.

Anyway, ‘SC’ accounts for humanity and the imperfection people. We are only human. The blurred lines in organic and mechanic is a big issue within pop culture. Blade Runner is a movie, which explores this tension, and questions the ‘more human than human’ motto within real life. Are robots gaining too much prominence? These days people rely on the little robots in their jeans. It’s an interesting issue because imagine a day where you are completely without the personal technology. That would suck. No entertainment on the train, no laptop to write this blog post on, no way of contact you group for that assignment you should all probably start on… These are some real issues, man. But either way, this argument I feel will continue to get bigger and bigger, the more technology grows and the more humanity relies upon it. The idea of the necessity of resources is a big economic political issue which shows in modern, post apocalyptic narratives, and again, could one day become an issue. But other than that, I think that may just be the end of this post. And nobody dead. What a bad season finale.

P.S. Remember that weird word at the start? Apparently it refers to the human effect on the changing climate. So there you go…

I’ve found that over the course of making this Project Brief, we’ve been pushed to include some arguments from a more intellectual level. I’ve found that finding ideas about social media and mediums were fairly easy to find.  I think something that would be really insightful could also be confusing. In a bit of feedback towards myself, I’ve found that I tend to go off on a long typing spurt, and realise afterwards in reading it, it makes very little sense, grammatically and often in general. I think I need to proof read everything and to figure out whether or not it has a presence of intellectual ideas.

At some times whilst writing up my social media/the modern Internet section of our medium segment, I’ve found it difficult to incorporate Brian’s feedback to include different aspects of having varying ideas be prominent, such as Marshall McLuhan or Meyrowitz. But I feel as if they’re valuable ideas to think about and they’ve helped a fair bit in creating a viable analysis.

Surveys. Statistics. ADMINISTRATION. Those are 3 fairly boring terms. That is all.

Not really, thats not really all. The reason I’m talking about these things is because today we took two different survey’s which are reflections on how the semester has gone. Its been pretty okay, spoiler alert… But anyway, we made a graph which demonstrated our levels of satisfaction and attitudes towards things like how we took in feedback, understanding of blogs, how we went independently learning things, and what we’ve learnt. Also, I found out that all of my work so far for my project brief 5 had a lot of spelling errors. It turns out I makde aloot of spelilng erors.

Also, an idea that arose was one which is pretty important with our project brief, that we should be aming to have intellectual ideas be the prmoinent within our assignment, and to be the most prominent aspect. The balance between that and the need for creativity is usually one which leans towards having things very creative. But for this assigbment, I’d like to think we have some pretty valuable ideas within our analysis. But theres always time for more!

That grammar was on purpose by the way.

So. These blog posts will soon be coming to an end. And what a sad and tragic day that will be. I know that all 3 million of you who view this will have something missing in your life. But as life moves on, so must we.

I realised that within this course I’ve found out that I’m good at being lazy. On this weeks idea of remixing, I’ve remixed myself from a highly motivated and inspired school student to a typical Uni student who likes to make excuses and cut corners. But that’s progress for you. Now lets move on… The group assignments are on track. I think. As it turns out, all of these people I happen to be working with are good at doing things like making websites, videos and arguments. So thats nice.

I feel as if everybody who has stepped out of such a high-pressure, year 12 environment has remixed themselves into a more carefree self and ones who don’t exactly care about the pressure anymore. They care about getting work done. And that will help in life, the ability to ignore pressure, such as starting an assignment the day it’s due and handing it in all finished. Thats some real confidence for you..

If this blog post has any sort of motto, its that pressure should be there, it helps you grow. But don’t let it affect you, or else you miss out of the fun 3 weeks you have to start assignments before you cram it in the final hour.

REMIXES

There is no such thing called an original idea. The content isn’t always new, the 1930’s saw people remixing, creating remakes or sequels to be sound films for instance. Reproducing things can change things, the original may no longer be considered authentic.

• It’s interesting to see that artifacts made for cinema are the samw despite different contexts of cinema and home media.
• Work of arts can be seen to be designed to be reproduced.
• DJ’s are a prime example of how things are remixed, tweaked to be merged together.
• Properties of art often are seen as ones own intellectual property, whilst others in remix culture want to see previous ideas be reworked. This can cause conflict.

ACTIVITY: Which songs are comprised in the girltalk song:

– That song from Karate Kid

– I Want You Back

– Cicellia- Simon and Garfunkel

– That INXS song with that guitar riff

Apparently there were up to 34 songs. So maybe I should learn more songs. But this exercise shows that things that once were can be remade and remixed into something almost completely different and unrecognisable. But in my defence I listen to different things so I’m mostly off the hook.

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Today was a day of giving the class an update of what it is we’re all doing. Today is one of those days where not too much ahas changed from last week. And thats okay. Our group is going to focus on our concept from last week. What we’ve discovered is that this idea is one which will may just work. And that seems to be all. So, leave your answers and comments in the section below. I know millions of you read this and forget to comment.

Institutions:

• They concern with the structures which organise society.
• The Wire is focused on institutions; its narrative focuses on different institution such as the police, unions, local governments and journalism.
• Marriage can be seen as a social institution. Within it, there are many expectations and values held and it has a legal framework.
• Bmm Bmm Bmm Bmm Bmm Bmm Bmmmm Bmm Bmm Bmm Bmm Bmm Bmm Bmm Bmm Bmmm (try and guess that song)
• Other examples of media institutions can include The News, Journalism, Cinema, Broadcast Television.
• Media institutins are practices which are developing, there are expectations upon values and ultimately enduring.

The group activity was to explore the benefits and values of community media, which are having diverse options, being accessable, low budget and beneficial to the local economy.

People were talking about their projects progress and this is what groups had to say:

• Mediums: (The other medium people, not us… Just to make it clear there were 2 groups of medium people.) Print Newspapers definitely have a declining rate of popularity in such a digital age. People can so easily see things without making the effort of purchasing, news is online, and literally jumping out to you.
• How audiences are everywhere, theres no segregation in that everybody is an audience to something. Audiences are changing more now than they ever have, with digital medias upsurge, people are changing in how they react to things, how they are actually interacting with the media. People want to consume instantly, theres very little wait, and how peoples priorities are changing.
• Feminist culture within films, and seeing texts from a perspective from a woman’s point of view.
• Texts: They showed a juxtaposition between a cigarette advertisement from the 60’s which has an upbeat tone, compared to a disturbing, modern add showing its damages. The meaning definitely changed through intercutting these to adds together, having a graphic add with upbeat music is definitely interesting as meaning. Remixing culture in re-defining things with a new meaning.
• Technology: Slactivist vs activist: the contrasting action people decide to take. The highly passive keyboard warrior vs the real activist. One gets recognition for little action, and one gets does action with little recognition. Its pretty interesting.
• Mediums: (Us) We are thinking of having a common theme of having a video, photo still and chunk of text basically saying the same thing, but analyzing different meaning. I think what we need to work on is something which has more relevance to media perhaps? I suppose we’ll figure it out.

These all have really valid points of argument. And perhaps we can take some of these ideas into our argument…

Audiences are cool. I am often in an audience. But did you know that audiences are not just people in crowds? Well today is the day you learn the truth. Audiences are everywhere, not just in crowds.

Back in the late 1930’s people in North America heard a strange radio program. It began as your run of the mill news program, but morphed into a news broadcast on an alien invasion. The result? Pandaemonium in North America. Thousands of people not only were convinced by this radio program, but reacted to it by packing their belongings and fleeing their house. Did aliens invade? Nope. Instead it was Orson Welles and co. creating a fictional radio drama. It definitely caused drama. This not only shows that people are not always the sharpest, but shows that audiences can be passive.

A normal observer would perhaps see these audiences back in 1939 to be completely passive, but perhaps their circumstances and context should be considered. 1939 was the year the world shifted into a state of war. When people hear of invasion, especially in a context of World War and Nazi Germany, they freak out.

But are audiences different? I wonder how many people joined Facebook for instance, because they really wanted to not just because a bunch of friends did. But people are people. Not everybody is perfect in decision making, and taking things out of context can demote audiences to sheep. We should be aware of what we’re doing, not just having a decision be made by somebody else for us. It’s important to analyse things and not just decide something based on others.