Category: Essentials

Participation Week 3

Publish a review of a link to an article or academic work related to this week’s reading topic

http://www.arthistoryunstuffed.com/definition-avant-garde/

Following the vein of this week’s reading regarding Bordwell and Thompson’s analysis of the film industry and its developments, this week’s article by Dr. J Williete outlines the definition of Avant-Garde through the lens of its precursors of societal and historical context. While not necessarily proposing any particular diversity in academic opinions, the article focuses on the author’s perspective toward’s the genre’s definition based on Peter Burger’s postulations of Avant-Garde as a systemic approach to art due to the rise of the middle class.

Dr Williete details how following the romantic era, the identification by artists of a lack of genre that disregarded freedom of aesthetically expression was lacking in society due to the domination of bourgeois values and the disinterest of the remaining middle class. As such, Williete explains how historically the association of this experimental genre is linked to the individuals that saw such a divide which called them to action in prompting the genre. From there on Williete goes further to detail how this evolved to an inform development and its own subdivisions as future proponents saw deeper criticisms with the system of Avant-garde art.

Ultimately, Williete attempts to assert most importantly the observation of how this genre and form of art had come to rise from the romantic period and how much it positioned itself as a challenge to mainstreamed norms of art and appreciative culture. From what Williete is suggesting, the key premise fueling Avant-Garde art is the concept of restructuring normalized Values.

Provide Progress report on Ongoing work

With Week 3 underway, I have begun the production of my third Konstraint. After familiarizing with the Korsakow interface, I have become more acquainted with the software and its potentialities.

The process of producing short ‘vine-like’ videos has proven to be an unordothadox approach to film production that has required me to consider a different set of aesthetics than what would be expected of a traditional film production model.

Questions such as : How may I best use the format, How do i create a powerful piece given time constraint, How can I approach given Konstraint limitations both thematically and technically

My new approach to this frontier has nonetheless been an interesting journey and I feel the biggest lesson has been learning the implications of using such a new means of production. As presented by the questions, these type of notions have come to arise due to the fundamentally simplified nature of this new form of documentary making given our weekly ‘Konstraint’ Limitations, I look forward to the remaining weeks of producing my Korsakow Film.

http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3286349/blog2/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/im3.jpg

Personal Assessment Matrix

Personal Assesment Matrix (Total Grade for Matrix is Sum of points= Total % weightage)
WEEK Analysis Execution Reflection Learning Total

 

3 3 5 4 4 16

Provide link to Multimedia

For this week’s media link, I am going to be linking a Vine Video of a popular internet identity KingBach. His claim to web stardom had begun with the introduction of his Vine videos. Catching popularity for its comedic value, his continual contribution to the sphere of Vine videos has abetted to his rising popularity.

Personally I had chosen this individual as I felt he best exemplified the integration of time constraint into the production of video. The notion of how he uses the 6 second time constraint of a Vine video to Jam pack a package of comedic content much inspires my quest to understand how well limited mediums can be used. Without further ado, I present you KingBach.

 

The concept of Design Fiction, explained by Bruce Sterling (Week 2.1 Reading)

As described by Bruce Sterling, Design Fiction is the use of ‘diegetic’ prototypes to suspend disbelief about change. Essentially it means using ideas that project very closely towards objects and services that people can relate to in a manner that has them speculating about the potentiality of its existence.

Diegetic- A type of storytelling that presents the detail of a story’s interior world. As such design fiction would fall as something diegetic as it attempts to tell a story to individuals through the design of narrative, more likely physical, artifacts within the world of a story.

From an interview with Bruce Sterling, one of the biggest proponents of design fiction, we come to understand more about this new conceptual genre of
fiction that has been gracefully propelling itself in more intricate ways.
In his conversation with editor Tori Bosch, he explains how the ideal, effective use of design fiction is by showing people the interaction of services and objects with seemingly normal activity.

So no avatar-like heroes, as Bruce describes, but rather something along the lines of this:

From here, Bruce further goes onto explaining the essential quality of design fiction is the fact that it relates more to technological advancements hence working effectively as a neutral interest that anybody could hold fascination to regardless of their standpoints and opinions.

He makes the distinction between Hollywood’s purpose and design fiction as something that CAN correlate, but not necessarily to replace one another, primarily to the fact that elements of designed fiction can be used in support of purporting a potential technological story world rather than replacing the qualities it has.

Using space odyssey as a example, Bruce demonstrates how the object such as the Ipad like idea which was used in the film shows the success of a diegetic artifact that was, and has become acutualized, as a relatable protoype, being the Ipad.

 The Bad

Further into the interview, the points Bruce Sterling makes towards bad design fiction builds a clearer picture of the rubric he sees the genre through. As he describes, a concept with a lack of aspiration towards inspiring others to imitate. With the example hes given of a guy thinking of ‘flapping’ his arms to get to the moon, he shows that it is imagination that lacks a compelling factor.

As such, it can be understood from Bruce Sterling that successful design fiction would have to attain a compelling quality, or rather, an ability suspend disbelief about change with its success as a piece of design fiction determined by the extent to which it can do so effectively.

(Im sure Bruce Sterling wouldn’t be too approving of something like this, [picture credits to www.organizationalphysics.com])

Bruce wraps up by commenting on design fiction’s presence as a new set of tools society has at hand to engage the world with. Despite uncertainty to whether it is something  that will lead the economy (as implied jokingly by Bruce), it certainly raises interesting ideas and implications, or perhaps thoughts toward a practice that will more intricately be able to fortell the potential future.

With creative thinking and visualization becoming a common meme of society, especially with more user-based outlets of expression, it is interesting to see how far contributions to design fiction will go and how much people are able to stretch the perceived boundaries of this new ideation.

However, Matthew Ward continues where Bruce stops and looks further into the possible implications of this concept and how it be stretched beyond the aspect of literature.

 

The power of Blogs In Our Lives (with assistance from Adrian Miles) (Week 1.2 Reading)

With the start of the new year, my introduction to the world of Networked Media has been, to say the least, interesting. However i express my thoughts regarding that in another post.  In this post, i attempt to unravel the seemingly simple but enigmatic world of blogging with the help of RMIT’s own Blogging expert, Adrian Miles and his perspective through his written work ” “Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning.”

In this writing, Adrian has expressed the functionality of blogging, its benefits and how it works in the world of social media and in an education field such as our course Networked Media. By understanding what a blog is first, we can attempt to unravel the mysteries that follow the process and technology.

What is a Blog?

As explained in detail by Adrian, A blog is a web-based publication consisting of entries of varying length submitted by an individual (Miles, 2006). However, not limited to its functionality of showcasing published works, a blog works as a networking tool allowing individuals to provide web links and references to other spheres of media publications and concurrently, other bloggers as well. As such, a blog can help work as a platform in giving the world accessbility to your inner sphere of opinions and thoughts, it is the ideal platform for canvasing your personal views and ideas. Futhermore, the system of a blogroll, which allows you to create tags and related categories, allows the organization of your posts and as such allows others to search for ideas and thoughts that you have posted in relevant categories.

See, its simple. Your write posts, other people can read it.

So what?

Honestly how much of a difference can that make in my life?

These were the thoughts that iterated through my mind when I first encountered the world of blogging because honestly, what more can blogging do.

However, when i read more of Adrian’s work and relevantly looked into understanding the networked world of blogging and its implications, I started looking at it through a different lens.

With that, I introduce to you the concept of Online Identity.

Online Identity

Ever since the early commerical emergence of the internet through the 90s, the web has become a vastly inter-connected network between various individuals. However, in the past there werent many tools for people to express their opinions, thoughts and ideas in various ways with only internet facilities such as messaging boards and relay chat at hand. With the initiation of ideas such as the blog, and earlier social networking sites such as myspace, this need was further catered to, however not as detailed as it could have been at that time.

Enter, (Drumroll), WEB 2.0! A concept many people referred to as the pivotal point at which each and everyone of us hooked up to the web could have a say and expression of their opinions through various forms of media. This started occuring with a critical prescence of  websites catering to uploaded user-videos, picture sharing platforms and multimedia messaging boards, user based media. This welcomed the world to the idea of a user-based web, which has now become the imminent reality

As such, this user-based wild web west has given rise to the concept of this, Online identity.  With each of us possibly holding access to social-networking services, blogs and user-uploaded media, we are in a sense, representing aspects of ourselves virtually through the uploads that we make. Through the use of a search engine or a provided link, another individual with no apparent connection to us is able to build perceptions about our personality, tastes, interests and lifestyle. This brings about a sense of online identity, in which our online activities and shared information are essentially representative of who we are as well. At times, it may not necessarily be the case as people are different and some might perhaps even share things they normally wish not to express in their normal lives.

However, regardless of what the nature of our intentions are, what we put online ultimately reflects back on ourselves. As Adrian had detailed, information disseminated through our online prescence allows others to make judgements and understandings about our personality, such as a prospective employer who is looking to understand who they are hiring (Miles, 2006). As such, it proves necessary for us to understand the concept of online identity and the implcations that it can make to our personal lives.

A key thought would be understanding how this may serve as a double-edged sword. While having an online prescence may prove great in selling yourself to a prospective employer, a picture of you smash drunk passed out on a club speaker sitting publically in Facebook may not.

(Credits to thepeoplescube.com, Taken from site)

We have to understand that without a foresight of the potential areas in which user-based content can affect our presentation of our online personas, it can at times work against our favours. With that comes the sensibility of understanding the added ‘weight’ our uploaded publications have both within a social and moral context of representating ourselves (Miles, 2006)

Education and Blogging

As explained by Adrian, the use of blogging in a networked course environment (such as this) brings about great implications and benefits to students With an ability to share information, fellow students are able to understand their peers better and share insights or ideas with one another (Miles, 2006). As a consequence, we are given an enhanced ability in adapting and learning by reflecting on our peers and even helping in validating their opinions (Miles, 2006). This even reaches out to relevant teachers and lecturers who can derive understanding from their students and provide their own inputs in helping further guide and assist students in their learning. Ultimately, its a networked system that allows educational groups to share thoughts and ideas and catalyse the learning and understanding between themselves and the subject they are studying.

On an ending note, I’d like to leave you with some inspiration on how detailed a blog can be. Here are some links to some of the most  accredited blogsites (some of which you’d be shocked to realize was a blog in the first place 😀 ). It simply shows the true potential of what blogs really could be and how far their visual and conceptual design can be extended to create a vast network on connected thoughts and opinions.

1.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

2.http://www.lifehacker.com.au/

3.http://www.gizmodo.com.au/

I hope you enjoyed this post and look forward to sharing more with you in the days to come. Be a true clint eastwood and operate through the wild west of social media like your backyard.

(Credits to www.ew.com)

In a similar vein, fellow Networked Media classmate Vanessa has a great post regarding SEO and how to help boost the your page ranking.

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/li-wen-ho/