Reflection

This first semester of university has been particularly interesting indeed. From the basics of a camera to the intense study of popular cultures.

 

And it is through these studies that we find some convention to push us backwards. I’ve learnt a lot about copyright this year, and certainly this reflects the industry. I’ve heard of it before, the notion of ‘red tape’ boxing us in, but never realised it would ever actually apply to us as students?

I’ve failed assignments I’ve worked on because of this, I’ve been told that I am completely and utterly useless at what I do, that I have no technical ability at all, and that all the hard work I put in really turns out to be nothing.

 

So why do it anymore? What’s the point? If you’re no good at the only thing you’re supposed to be good at, the thing that you care most about, then what good is it all? My latest film is my most technical piece yet, it uses only stock footage which is chopped, layered and spliced through adjustment layers to create a rich tapestry.

 

I wanted to simulate the mind…the way in which thought processes work, the notion of the birth of an idea which brings forth a mass phenomenon.

 

But… I saw the looks I was given. The contemptuous eyes staring back at me, asking questions; I can feel the hate radiating. Media is a rocky, fast, treacherous torrent of water. It’s forever changing and forever engulfing us in its crap.

 

I hope next semester is better, or I won’t make it to the end of the year.

 

I’ve been kicked down into the filthy hole beneath the gutters. Where the other deadbeats go.

The Final Week Begins

Reflecting on my previous classes at RMIT I am faced with shimmers of laughters and shitloads of boredom.

I’ve created some of the best stuff I’ve ever done, I’ve gotten better at what I do. I’ve been frustrated and bored and angry but we’ve made it.

Class today saw the presentation of my video, to which the lengthy essay I am about to start. I shall definitely not use the hats to assess my work cuz lolz.

I hate some people already, I love others already. Such is the way of university. Noticing has plagued me in allowing me to notice the tiniest details amidst every piece of media I absorb around me. None of this collaborative contract shit, nor this hat business. I want to make and do shit.

“A mixture of pop art and post-modernism”

 

 

“We can cut, copy paste and transform…. we can all create something different…tearing down the world around us”

 

Using premises born from the Matrix, glitch art alters the code of images in order to produce- what can only be called- a ‘glitchy’ effect.

 

I have to learn how to do this. The premise is amazing, it uses exploitation of a set regiment of code to create an image that is beautiful within its own right.

 

I just want to try using these in my next video, layering them over each other to create the most amazing visual scope ever. It can represent so much, it can be a symbol to revolution, to exploitation, to freedom, to beauty. All within the one image.

 

This lecture was amazing, I truly enjoyed it; I’ve never even seen such a thing

Media Group Assignments: A Brainstorm of Ideas

IMG_8051

 

Justin, Dea and I formed this through the use of Justin as a scribe. Ideas were being thrown left, right and centre, flowing like the water through the pipes above our very heads. We decided to each choose an aspect of the ‘Technological Timeline’, Justin chose TV, Dea the Printing Press and Radio for me, with all of us tying the internet together at the end as the internet unifies all such aspects.

 

Jasmine put forward a unique idea, an idea which was furthered in my Pop Culture Seminar a few days later, of the views and uses of Tor, the ‘Deep Web’ and the internet as a whole. This highlights both the good and bad aspects of freely available information and products. Both of which can be used for either good or evil.

A journalist in Egypt can use Tor to document the harsh reality going on around them, circumventing censorship, regulation and potential prosecution in order to ensure Freedom of Speech. But a member of ISIS can also use Tor to unite their front and wreak havoc amongst a society. It’s a fine balance and the exact reason why Net Neutrality is such a heavily debated subject.

 

In my research of pirate radio stations- bringing up memories of The Boat That Rocked- I’ve found that this debate is not at all a modern one, with regulation always being a main issue in all areas of media.

 

Media technologies are completely and utterly interesting to research. It is through such studies we can glimpse the history of the media industry, we can learn from our mistakes and attempt to rectify them, thus creating the best industry possibly imaginable in our current era.

 

The Aussie Indie Scene

 

 

And we’ll keep on through the shit storm
Until the metaphors are literal
Forced screams are guttural
And we’ll keep on through the shit storm
Until the metaphors, until the metaphors

‘And we’ll keep on through the shit storm’

‘And we’ll keep on through the shit storm’

‘And we’ll keep on through the shit storm’

Goodbye……Goodbye.

People often say music in its current form sucks, that it’s not nearly as good as it was in say the 60’s or the 70’s where revolution was key, where The Beatles and the Stones were kings of the airwaves. But people aren’t focusing on the right thing. Top 40 isn’t a reflection of society, far from it. Top 40 is a universal list of catchy, over-produced crap.

But it’s when you delve into the deep sub-cultural landscape that surrounds music as a form of media that you strike gold. The Smith Street Band, formed in Melbourne in 2010 amidst the Northern Suburbs’ sea of Hipster Mania. Their lyrics are intensely vivid, abruptly striking and real. These are not generated through a computer, they are not written by some long-forgotten musician. They are written from the inside and sung to the world in a shroud of heart-wrenching, rocking guitar riffs and torn vocal chords.

Bands such as this lend hope unto the world of music. Bands like this are what we need within this world of superficial self-absorption. These bands pull people from their phones, wrench people from the 9-5 and plant them down into a mosh-filled cess-pit of bodies, all moving in unison, yelling as loud as their lungs will allow. These bands allow for a sense of unity that is missing. They create a subculture of like-minded people, tears streaking down our cheeks as we scream out of ‘[keeping] on through this shit storm’.

Check out these guys:

https://www.facebook.com/elkandmammoth?ref=br_rs

 

They even make their music free, and for all the exact same reasons.

 

 

In this modern day world where media flows freely and indefinitely around us, sometimes we need to notice. Sometimes we need to pause in our everyday and look out for these people; those who are attempting to alter that landscape, to emerge through the dust and rubble and deliver a product that is far beyond the standard.

 

Studying the invention of the wireless, annotating articles on the concept of pirate radio, has assisted in such a realization- an epiphany of sorts. We need to dig through record pools, plunge our fingers through Bandcamp, Soundcloud, YouTube and community radio; because that’s what makes it so good, finding something so unique and amazing after hours and hours of searching. For taking that chance with that one record you’re not fully sure about. Because they always turn out the best.

 

“I was wrapped up in my doona | And wrapped up in my own head”

 – I Don’t Wanna Die Anymore- The Smith Street Band

With each pill the pain engulfs
It will never cease to exist
For it is too dark to speak of

It casts people into silence
Relatives into someone else to avoid

There is no true reprieve
Only momentary lapse in awareness
For it is always there
A monster dormant inside

The body is dark and full of terrors
Things we can neither see nor hear
It challenges our notion of abstract
Yet makes us feel all the physical aspects

Yet there the cat lies,
It’s coat shiny and sleek in the dark
It’s eyes glinting amidst the cloud

Suddenly you are on your knees
You don’t know how you got here
You just woke up like that

No matter how many pills you swallow
No matter what you smoke
What you throw at the beast
There is no release from this place

This is not a purgatory.
No, it is far beyond that
As if Dante had come to a sudden halt,
At the worst place imaginable.

Now it roars.
It’s ugly head rearing about the space
It can see, you can not.
And now it has power over you.

The limbs move
Yet I do not.
And within lays only oblivion,
A dark abyss of sorrow

They say it found me when I was you
Waited then it won
Some say that you can’t beat it
Most seem to beleive

All except those who know better.
Know that what lies beyond that door
Will never be affected by me
Life will go on even if I do not pass by

It’s dark
It’s cold
And all I can hear is the soft purr,
A faint whisper from afar.

Why not? It says
Why not?
Why not?
It never ceases to ask
It constantly goads

It is with that
And a nerve is strung
You can’t look at a moving vehicle
A piece of rope
A medicine cabinet

The ideas don’t stop
Neither does the voice
Softly, quietly.

One can not climb from a place with no ladder
Nor can one take enough to make the light come back
It always comes
It is the only thing you can now rely on

Dante would not wish this upon anyone
It would cripple the soul of even the strongest man
Sifting the ashes through its thick and feathered hand
Fragments of men left behind in war torn land,
Amidst the stench of anger and abuse

There are no means to an end,
For the world will still go on to spin
People will still kill
People will still die
But we will continue to spin amidst our own cloud of materialistic ignorance.

In the end, Dante will lead us all
In the end, we will no longer be tall.

Space Station 76

This movie was stumbled upon one Friday night, as I was flicking from Lifestyle HD on Foxtel, through the movie guide. It’d just started on Premiere and I flicked over, waiting to be disappointed yet again by mediocre movies Foxtel claims as ‘exclusive’, but thankfully I was pleasantly surprised.

 

Shot in the style of an 70’s sit-com, this movie employs the use of tracks, dollies, cut-ins and cut-outs to emulate the conflicts and contrastingly harmonious relationships on-board a space station suspended in 1976.

 

Thwart with internal and inter-relational character developments, this film somehow manages to pull it all off. Not for a second did I not believe in the characters’ motivations, nor the reasons for the over-prescribtion of Valium (Diazepam).

 

Seriously get around this movie, it was awesome, it also showed how collaborations can and can’t work, and why.