Category Archives: Networked Media

Unlecture No. 4: The First Symposium

Posted on by

The lecture yesterday was without a doubt the most interesting lecture of the year, probably of university so far.

I think finally, after the first few weeks of talking about it, and waiting for Brian to return from wherever he was (holiday?), the dialogic structure has fallen into place. It needed to happen this week, as people were getting slightly miffed at the fact we were being told about a revolutionary method of teaching that treats us (students) like capable human beings (as opposed to blank but vaguely keen slates that need to be written on in order to make us appear employable), but the ‘unlectures’ had a distinctly lecture-like feel to them. We were still listening to one person speak for at least half an hour (though we were allowed the enormous privilege of asking one question at the start that may or may not have been answered in that half hour).

(forgive the parentheses)

Things I loved about how this unlecture/symposium was run:

  • More that one person spoke. Not only this, but there was less of a sense of hierarchy among the tutors. Brian seems to have balanced the numbers to achieve zen.
  • Students in the audience asked questions when they weren’t necessarily asked to (“So, does anyone have any questions about that…?” *crickets chirp and a dust ball rolls across the front of the room*). This, I think, will give other students the confidence to engage more openly, with less fear of being made seem like an idiot in front of the rest of the cohort.
  • The content was very interesting. Not to say that the last few weeks have been dull, or that what Adrian was saying was things I already knew, but I think having the other tutors to bounce off made what he had to say a lot more fresh, and much less rehearsed. As the tutors have different ideas about the subject, and the material within the subject, they challenged each other when they spoke. Everyone was thinking, rather than reciting.
  • We rehashed over things that we had already talked about from previous weeks. I think this is important in university subjects more generally, as the content that is covered is usually so massive. My friend studying Nursing at La Trobe said they covered the entire content of year 12 psychology in one week. I understand that you are expected to do much of your learning out of university hours, it is still helpful to go over things, just to make sure they were understood, or even to elaborate on them as a segue to the next topic, rather than segmenting each week as a different section of information.

For me, the most interesting part was the last example used by Adrian, about how you intend to get paid in this industry and what you have to do to achieve that. His example was that of a wedding photographer (a past student’s plan for a business).

Why on earth would anyone in their right mind (even if they had cash t throw around) spend $10,000 on hiring a photographer for their wedding when they can just ask Uncle Clive with his digital SLR and iMovie to make it for you. Clive would be keen to do it; then we wouldn’t have to buy a wedding present.

His answer? You must sell the experience, not the product. You must sell the fact that you can film an entire wedding, ceremony and reception, without being noticed by anyone so they feel they are being filmed. You sell your discretion, not your hour of footage. You sell that you will archive the footage of their wedding forever, for free (in case of housefire, flood, loss of the dvd, etc…). That you will send them uncut, additional footage every anniversary to remind them of their special day. You have to do the things that Uncle Clive won’t do.

The industry must not be about selling a thing. Because now, everyone can make these things with software that everyone gets for free on their computers. It must be about selling the experience of the thing. Which I personally, hadn’t thought enough about. It is not enough to just produce great videos, because there are thousands of teenagers with their webcams, with millions of followers, who are able to do the exact same thing, to a much greater audience.

It tied nicely into my conversation this morning with a friend who wants to start up a coffee shop. He was telling me about his connections in the industry and how he would be able to get discounts on the beans, how he has friends who would be willing to invest money into the business to get it started. And while you need these things (a coffee shop without premises or beans wouldn’t be a great coffee shop), you need customers. And you need a reason for customers to come back to your shop, as opposed to the one a block from their house that serves the exact same coffee, for the exact same price.

My answer (thank you Adrian), was the feel of the place. Everything from the decor, to the music playing, the staff that work there, the cups that people will drink from, and the sugar they will stir into their drinks. A customer must feel comfortable and at ease using a product (or buying a cup of coffee) or they won’t use it, because if they are willing to sacrifice comfort, they will find a very cheap solution to whatever the problem they face, or service they need.

The Moat, under the Wheelers Center, is where I go for coffee when I’m at uni. Why? The one on campus is cheaper. Druid’s Cafe is much closer. Mr Tulk serves the exact same stuff. And if I do a quick google search; “coffee shops swanston st”, this is what Google maps tells me.

WHY ON EARTH WOULD I GO TO THE MOAT IF THERE ARE THIS MANY OTHER OPTIONS WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE?!

My answer? The feel of it. I like the place. I feel comfortable there. At home even. I’d be quite happy to spend the day there, just reading or writing. I like that they play quite classical or jazz over the speakers. I like that there is a different kind of spoon with each jar of sugar. I like that I know one of the waiters is called Stewart, and that he plays golf and used to own his own restaurant. I like that he knows I teach children to swim and do triathlons. I like that I don’t even have to talk to them anymore, I just sit down, and within a few minutes, a flat white will appear in front of me. I like them enough that I have brought at least a dozen people there since the beginning of the year, who had never heard of it, and some of them have become regulars too. It is comfortable, and easy, and I will probably keep going there till I finish my degree, spending hundreds of dollars on coffees and snacks, and probably even go there if I get an office job in the city after I finish uni.

Why? Because as Adrian said, I’m not paying for the coffee, I’m paying for the experience.

Photojournalism in Conflict

Posted on by

Again, while scrolling down the infinite wall that is tumblr, I saw a photograph (down the bottom of the linked page) of some hands against the back window of a car. It was a grainy photo, the hands were dirty and the car was several decades old (rust spots showing, paint missing and grime tinging roof green) and it was under the title, “Chechen Hands”, by photographer Stanley Greene.

I googled his name and found the company he was attached to, Noor Images, which contained what I can only assume is his entire body of work. Greene mainly seems to photograph conflict, wars and famines, capturing the different scenes that come with those types of environment. As his profile reads:

“For the last 25 years, Stanley Greene (New York, 1949) bore witness to births of new dawns, rising and falling empires, invasions of countries, liberations of others, mass migrations, deportations, displacements, famines, conflicts, wars and destructions. He worked on the five continents trying to document the human condition. “Sometimes I wonder if societies just lust for tragedies.”

I had a look through some of his works, and his most recent one, “Snipers Life in Aleppo“, reminded me that I has read about Aleppo for the first time only few weeks ago, in an article that I wrote a blog post about.

As coincidence would have it, or perhaps a reflection on how little this is being covered by the more general media, the description of the photographs is written by Francesca Borri, the same freelance journalist and human rights activist who wrote the article I wrote a blog post. She tells chillingly about tells of the level of death present in Aleppo.

“Iyad is 32, a broken expression nestled in strong muscles, he was a carpenter. “My workshop is at the end of the corner,” he tells you, even if at the corner there’s but a slid ceiling, the stump of a wall, and even if he now is a sniper, two hours per day, every day, he sleeps here, a mattress and a blanket next to a door’s skeleton, his brother died his father died, his best friend died, everybody died, his two-year-old daughter died, in his Nokia the photo of her body covered in blood, and now he is a sniper, that’s all, two hours per day shielded by sandbags, you look through the hole where he shoots from and the helmets of the last soldiers he hit are still there, in the street.”

Week 3 Reading: Bruce Sterling on design fictions

Posted on by

One of the readings for this week was an interview with Bruce Sterling, an award winning science-fiction writer, but also a vocal advocate of what is known as “design fiction”. He defines design fiction as being, “the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend belief’s about change.” Sterling is appearing at a conference at Arizona State University, called ‘Emerge: Artists and Scientists Redesign the Future‘, which serves to facilitate lecturing and discussion about what the future might look like.

I found some of the things said by Sterling to be quite interesting, especially at his mention of a legal case between technology giants Apple and Samsung. In the lawsuit, there was reference to an iPad-like tablet that was used as a prop in the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which you can watch, here. Sterling used this as an example of a design fiction that proved to be successful, 45 years later, as you can now walk down to your local electronics store and purchase one.

Another interesting observation by Sterling was in his response when asked what it was that made design fictions work so well. He replied quite reasonably, “Talking about a future gadget isn’t like talking about a future government or women’s rights in the future or other hot-button problems. Plus people are interested in things like that.”

A pretty reasonable statement to make, that electronic toys are more likely to grab people’s attention than social rights or political issues. Perhaps a reflection of people’s general exhaustion at the topic of politics, or anything ‘serious’, or maybe more a statement about the imagination within everyone that needs, at least occasionally, to be exercised.

 

Something to Like?

Posted on by
Reply

I had been thinking a little bit about charity and activism in relation to social media, specifically, if it actually does anything more than feed a persons philanthropic sense of themselves.

I read this article which speaks about a new advertising campaign brought out by Crisis Relief Singapore with the slogan, “Liking isn’t helping”. It speaks to a generation of people (my generation) who commonly ‘like’ or ‘share’ a charity page on Facebook, Twitter, or any social media platform, with the intention of… Well, I’m not actually sure what their intention is, or what they hope to achieve by the click of a mouse.

We’ve all seen the ones. It might be a photograph of a horribly malnourished African child, wide-eyed with flies dancing on his lips, he is probably staring directly into the camera with a scabby hand outstretched. And below the photo will inevitably be the caption, “Like = Save, Ignore = Die”.

As the article says, it reminds us of the quasi-charity campaign by Invisible Children who started the KONY2012 movement, promoting the philosophy that by sharing a video through social media, you are building awareness that will affect social change. Leaving aside some of the criticisms of Invisible Children as a charity organisation, the idea may still be have legs, or at least still legitimately begs the question; can social media actually change anything in the ‘real’ world?

In the wake of the Boston Bombings it was seen clearly what can happen when social media flexes it’s muscles and takes matters usually left up to trained professionals into it’s own hands. Reddit users began to do a little bit of investigative detective work for themselves, spreading a wave of misinformation that was picked up by legitimate news sources and published by them as fact. Several people were wrongly accused as being responsible for the bombings after Reddit users began collecting photographs from the event posted on social media in an attempt to discover the perpetrators of the attacks.

So social media can obviously have a significant impact on more than just the virtual sphere. But that doesn’t quite answer the question, as the example of the Boston Bombings was quite reactionary, emotionally fueled and unorganised in it’s response.

So perhaps we need to rephrase the question slightly: is social media able to affect social change in an organised and controlled way, as was suggested by KONY2012 and feminists groups on Tumblr? Or are they just people with a little bit too much spare time on their hands and are looking for a way promote a minority group to reestablish their own altruism?

 

Day 01: No sight of land

Posted on by
1

Well, I suppose after a week of wholeheartedly avoiding this blog, I should succumb and publish a first post.

In regards to the second ‘unlecture’, there did seem to be a slight contradiction in what we were told was expected in regards to this blog.

  • On one hand, we were unlectured about the possibility of going to jail on child pornography charges if we failed to or incorrectly set up our spam fliters (which would serve to delete hundreds of thousands of potentially criminal messages attempting to weasel their way into our online existences), and that we could serve as a platform for people with slightly different values to hurl abuse and hatred at each other (Justin Bieber tweens on one side, Slipknot fans on the other, ready to wage bloody war on the battlefield of the comments section).
  • But on the other hand, we must frequently and casually post on it, sharing and publishing whatever takes our youthfully enthusiastic fancy, and hope that it vaguely related to the course (a minimum of 5 times a week).

The crux of these two things being that we were responsible for whatever comments were posted on this blog, which, as Adrian reminded us repeatedly, is here forever and will remain as a permanent digital footprint of us.

I see the contradiction rear its confused head now, with half of my brain telling me, “Oh yes Nick, write on the blog! Look how eager Cat is when she sees another dog at the park! Why don’t you have that unreserved enthusiasm for life?” (Cat is my dog, a Kelpie, nearly a year old with enough energy to solve Pakistan’s energy crisis and still have enough left over to heat a 7/11 sausage roll.) The other part of my brain, however, is slightly more reserved, and tells me in a cautious but understanding voice, “You might want to pass university, but staying out of prison is also nice.”

The issue seems to be, that I am struggling slightly to muster enthusiasm for a thing that could land me in jail through no active behavior of my own. To which I imagine Adrian’s reply, “You are legally able to purchase a gun, join the army and kill people, vote for the leader of this country and drive a car, I’m sure you will be able to manage a spam filter.” To which I would agree, I probably can. But the idea is still somewhat daunting.

Then again, I suppose I’d rather be informed and safe than sorry and eating canned peaches from a mess tray in Port Philip Prison. I guess it has to be viewed like a high school sex ed talk in health class. It brings the worst possible result of a behavior into harsh sunlight for all to see, which serves to temporarily frighten us away from risk taking fraternisation (with the internet…), but most likely will never occur. Not, of course, to suggest that it will never happen, but that if you take the right protective measures (the buzzword, I believe, is ‘careful’), you can significantly reduce your chances of any wrong-footing.

Which seems like a reasonable unlecture to have to sit through, even if at the time my main thoughts were focused around Barry, the overweight, wife-beater sporting pedophile who would probably refer to me as “fresh meat”, and would be my cellmate for several decades after being convicted of child pornography for failing to correctly set up my spam filters on my RMIT prompted blog.