living in such a technological age, it is interesting to see the change in the definition of a certain word or ideal. The word book, in the reading it talks about the slow extinction of print books and the idea of a never ending book. I read other people’s blogs to see their opinion on it as well as read Adrian’s own post on how this book was written before the invention of tablets etc… I think Douglas’s theory that books will not die is very true, even with the rise of tablets and what not according to Adrian i believe it will not die. Why? When a book is in the form of an ebook, to the current generation it is still a book. The pdf that the reading it is on, it is still a book. Maybe according to the definition of the dictionary a book is a “printed” press, then maybe the almighty book will die out. It is a funny way of thinking, everytime you read the newspaper online or read a pdf essentially you are supporting the extinction of the very rare and soon to be extinct “book”.

Hypertext is an example of those create your own adventure books as a kid. Pretty annoying to read, but in a way those style of books can be seen as the start of hypertexting, the physical version of hypertexting. Oh tom is met with a split path leading into a jungle or a river; Turn to page 15 for the jungle, page 89 for the river. I had the worst luck as a kid , my character always died so in a way the never ending books ended for me… In a way wikipedia is the ultimate hypertext which i can see in my time. It not only has hyperlinks everywhere, but it also sorts of never ends. It is sort of a never ending non fiction hypertext.

When i was first given the topic of Henry Jenkins, i was bored more than anything. During my weekend as i was watching some Comic-Con documentary by Morgan Spurlock i was met with a brief probably 10 seocnd interview with Henry Jenkins himself. This sparked my interest as i began my research into this man’s accomplishments.

His blog… what can i say? It pretty much details his life’s work and his everyday thoughts. He is a very interesting man, reseraching and studying fields of interest which i can really relate to or feel intrigued by. Comic books, films, internet fads you name it, he has written something on. Its intriguing to see that a fairly elderly man is so in with the times and even more so condones the usage of such technology and entertainment. When was the last time you heard someone older than 40 say “Video games are a separate art form”.

His work on New Media Literacies draw many relations to this subject, Networked media. Instead of learning practical and hands on studies, he focuses on the social thinking and skills needed to interact and work with any form of technology. He lists a series of long steps, but the one thing that i noticed was that all of his steps were intuitive. It was more of a fancy way to categorise and label the actions that we as humans perform in order to learn and interact with new media. I love it when learning something is very straight forward and practical as you end up finding ways to apply it and can see first hand its effects. As they say “Seeing is believing”.

I’m mainly writing this based on my experiences with the year 12 vce system. Growing up I was terrible at English and probably still am, but according to the education system I was fairly decent at the time of my assessment, earning myself a solid 40. 40 to some is a very average score at best, but to me it is a satisfying accomplishment. I was never that amazing at being creative, but to receive an A from my teacher on my creative piece was really overwhelming for myself. Like any other skill that you don’t practice, it slowly digresses into this terrible and grammar filled mess which i hopefully can be able to call English.

This was an interesting read as it dives upon the true nature and purpose of the essay. An essay is the exploration of one’s thoughts, but as the writer states it is a polished and concise verseion of your original thoughts. This coincides with the with the definition we have grown to believe and understand in high school, we always start with an intro to provide an outline of our thesis and explain our 3 points. We then continue on to provide an elaborate detailing of our 3 contentions and finally we conclude it. The one thing that strikes me as interesting is the writers focus on how essays are not meant to be persuasive, maybe persuasive essays are (duh!??) but then why have we been conditioned into striving to make it so. The historical information of being lawyers, essays being for law school etc… it makes sense and in a way i like that in our modern day interpretation of the essay we have both expository and persuasive.

one thing i remember clearly from my English tutor was that she said ” Everyone has an opinion on everything, and if you say you don’t you’re an idiot” I think her quote sums up the extent to why we have been conditioned to be persuasive. We all have opinions, fair enough, but why did you come to this conclusion? Its one thing to believe in your own ideals, but to be able to convince the masses to see your point of view is a skill. I respected my english teacher, i always thought she was the smartest person i know.

Get this man a mic, he seriously provides some of the most entertaining educational commentary I have ever listened to. I would pay to listen to this man do stand up comedy, the amount of laughs in the video is phenomenal for a talk. He has the feel of Michael Caine if he was an educator.

Is school killing creativity? Yes it is, what Sir Robinson says is completely true. The world focuses primarily on the subjects which will most likely be applicable to finding a job. The mathematics, the sciences, the languages etc… Are these jobs the highest paying in the world? Probably not, but it will provide a decent income. Are they easy to find? Yes. Well when these subjects lead to fields of studies such as science and commerce, there is no wonder that jobs are easier to find. How broad is the term commerce? I recall a conversation with my cousin in year 8, I asked him what he wanted to do? He said “Probably commerce” and I asked him for what job and he promptly replied “I don’t know whatever it leads me to”. Globally, students are being funneled into this mindset that doing art or pursuing anything besides a mathematic or science base career is in the words of my parent’s “Shit”.

“Intelligence is diverse”

This quote is the definitive answer to Ken’s rants. There are differing versions of intelligence, you may be great at maths, the best doctor in the world, but can you play this video game competitively as well as this 16 year old? You, might say yeah I could if I dedicated my time to that goal. Perhaps, most likely than not though you won’t. If you’re great at maths and science, sure by all means pursue that path. Art is the main underdog subject when it comes to determining “intelligence”. VCE scales down Art subjects by 4-6, why? Is it not difficult to also draw a masterful picture or perform a beautiful musical piece? Is it not 1 in a million to become a famous actor? This notion that these subjects somehow are ranked on an intelligence scale is simply flawed.

“She thinks by moving”

http://thedissolve.com/news/251-dude-these-movies-would-be-amazing-if-you-didnt-ha/

An article by Matt Singer I stumbled across garnered a large amount of responses from the internet, it revolved around how the general movie goers now days want a shorter more concise version of films, stripping it of all other elements besides the plot. I’m on the fence for this as I do believe some films do feel a tad too long, but most of the times I feel this way after a long drawn out day never on a first watch so I might or might not be guilty of this modern day movie goer stereotype. Films sometimes need that extra mileage in order to create the depth and interest which spark the post movie conversations; it gives that oh what was that about? Why do you think that was put in? I agree with his belief that a movie experience if only complete with the aftermath, the debates and theory crafting which follows any interesting film. I can’t recall any films which I believe would be bad without the extra minutes, but the examples in the comments and in the article seem to speak to me. I do think Benjamin Button was a bit too long, but I don’t feel as though it should’ve been cut or anything, those few extra scenes may mean more to someone else. Even for other films today, people want the director’s cut which is normally a longer version of the film. More often than not it is a better version of the film which we wished we had seen.

A interesting point that Adrian brought up was the idea of being a content creator vs being a media producer. I thought that this negative light that came with being a content creator was kind of unwarranted. In some cases being a content creator is more suited towards some people, from what I understand it is creating content based upon the vision of others. In a way, the content creator can still impart part of his creative style upon the content. Some people are just more suited towards envisioning others projects than creating their own media, a particular example in my opinion is Zack Snyder. He does particularly well when his source material is already provided and builds upon an already established world or content. Let’s look upon his work, his most successful and critically acclaimed work have been all adaptations; Man of Steel (Arguable whether good or not, I thought it was decent), 300 and Watchmen. Where as his attempt at producing and creating whole new worlds have been abysmal such as Sucker Punch, I don’t even know what he was thinking with this film…. People like Snyder seem to function well as a content creator where he already has the ground work and characters and just builds upon that idea.  I am not saying being a media producer is bad in anyway, it is true that generally when you start in the industry you will be a content creator as the higher ups will do the producing.

I recently went to watch the new film Now you See Me which i have been waiting to see for ages. From the moment i saw its all star cast with Morgan Freeman (seriously who doesn’t want to see Morgan Freeman as a villain), Mark Ruffalo and Woody Harrelson and its interesting plot line, the trailer instantly grabbed my attention.

The film was great in its visual effects and ambitious plot. However, like any movie with too many main characters many of the characters were unfleshed out and seemed to be there just for star factor and a means to an end. Jesse Eisenberg, Woody, Isla and Dave seemed to be a the main characters, but were left mysterious and kinda just tools to drive the true sub plot of romance between Mark Ruffalo and Shoshana from Inglorious Basterds (Yeah i forgot her name). The romantic love plot seemed to be forced into the whole film about magic, Why did they fall in love? and worst of all the film left you feeling empty and needed closure.

The Eye, oooooh the mysterious Eye. Not really no, this idea was shown to us for a mere 10minutes maximum maybe even less throughout the whole film. It like the love plot seemed to be the main attraction and probably would’ve made a better main plot, but fell short when there was no explanation on why its there, what it is and why is it important.

Overall i have only settled and discussed the negatives, but don’t let that dull or negate your wanting to go watch it. I assure you the visuals will stun you and the action and events will have you entertained.

With the stagnant progression of the lecture, we once again we asked to critique the lecture. The results were the same as previous weeks as the class felt tat at the moment they are lackign in progression. However Elliot reassured us that weeks 4 lecture and the return of Brian we will bees shown a more progressive and informative Class. The class discussion was based on the reading on design fiction. This topic as I mentioned in my previous post is quite interesting, members of the tutorial also felt similar to what I David as they related this option of design fiction to realistic applications of futuristic designs ine movies into our everyday life. Nothing much to say. Looking forward to week 4.

This film in my opinion was probably the second best in the X-men series if after X-men 2. It fleshed out (again, but lets pretend the other wolverine movie didn’t happen) Marvel’s titular character “The Wolverine”. It made the ever more immortal character vulnerable, this is the problem that  arises every time a superhero movie is released which revolves around a lack of better words “op” “imba” characters. Superman, The Hulk and Wolverine all have these factors which just make them unkillable. Superman is just impervious to any form of damage, Hulk… I don’t even know when hulk has even taken damage of any kind and Wolverine slowly through the years his regeneration has gone from healing minor wounds to regenerating himself back from a nuclear blast.

This pitfall often leads to either predictable and cliche weakness’ or either attempts at making them seem vulnerable through emotions. Lets take Man of Steel (spoilers to come if you havn’t seen) What was his weakness in that film? His love for human race after destroying half of Metropolis. Superman was always the god figure and epitome of a superhero in comics and in the film. Incredible Hulk’s downfall is himself. The unwillingness to become the monster, a Dr Jekyll and Hyde dilemma.

In the Wolverine they just strip all of his powers. His villain is stronger than he is in every way, the henchman (for once) actually deal damage and miraculously all have amazing aim. Maybe the Yakuza have better arms training than the thousands of CIA operatives in this universe. We can relate to him more as we see him faint, dream, etc… Noone likes seeing a one sided fight or argument its bland  and its overdone. I think the main downfall of this film was the secondary villain who was just there just to be evil. She had no motivation, no agenda. They presented her as a secondary 3rd party force, but ended up just working for Yashida. Overall the film was enjoyable, better than what i expected which wasn’t much after the last 2.

This reading really interested me as a whole as it related to designing the set or the world of a fictional world in which to suspend disbelief. We see this every time we go to the movies or go to watch anything not set in our current time. Even though the article mainly refers to the creation of a sci fi or futuristic design, i believe this still affects the past. We read about the mechanical inventions and the use of ancient equipment all through history classes, but we still do not fully understand how they are used in a realistic setting. Through design fiction, the creation of these worlds and atmospheres lure us in and immerses us in alternate worlds much like reading a book. When we read a book we design our own fiction, the characters clothing, their weaponry, their food, what they smell like? The list goes on and on.

I recently watched The Furious Gods, a documentary about the creation of Prometheus. This reading really backed up and solidified Ridley Scott’s stand point and creative thinking. Every single illustration concept art was highly criticised. If their was a tentacle there or a pillar, he would ask why? What is it there for? Does the design make sense in a realistic environment or is it just unnecessary artistic cover ups?

These design philosophies allow these fictional worlds to become believable. Artists draw inspiration from real life working models, why change what is not broken? However, as the second reading states “Fiction is the testing ground for reality”. In a way i found this to be a very key concept, yet it kind of pulls away from the “Normalise to persuade”. We normalise to make it seem realistic, but what is fiction then being unrealistic? I understand their viewpoint of just because its not real doesn’t mean it has to be illogical.

All in all this reading was highly engaging, both of them actually. Maybe I’m not getting the hidden message of these readings, but they are sure intriguing.