Symposium week 12- Protocol’s

Protocol- the customs and regulations dealing with diplomatic formality,precedence, and etiquette.

Law courts have protocols

RMIT has protocols

Online protocols?

For example if you retweet someone’s tweet or you take somebodies tweet and not acknowledge the source that is a breach of protocol.

In order to work in the space of blogging, instagram, facebook, emails, you have to work within the protocols.

An email address, is a protocol. You can type in anyting to create your email address as long as it uses texts, has the @ symbol and fullstops etc.

IP- Internet protocol

Policy/Protocol/Law- all different things

To get good answers you need to ask good questions

One interesting point that came up in this weeks symposium discussions, is that some people may have expert skills that are no longer needed because their field of work is obsolete. Mediums are always developing and shifting into something better and that got me thinking what in my time will be obsolete? Where would we need to move our focus? I know the latter question is one I can’t get the answer to now, because no new technologies have made current skills obsolete, so I guess something’s are down the line. However I did think of what have other people done when their skills have become redundant. Do they just give up on everything? Or do they shift their focus on another area in their medium? The latter would be a very tough transition.

I started to think about the certain technologies that were popular ten or twenty years ago, but is hardly used nowadays, and one of method that came into mind was stop motion animation. For people who may not know stop motion is where animators build three-dimensional models of characters and physically manipulate them, to create the illusion of their movement. In Hollywood the most well known figure that provided stop motion for films would Phil Tippet. To give a brief overview of his career, in 1975 he worked on Star Wars to create a miniature moving chess set and as the films progressed he was brought in to create various puppets and stop motion creatures, and over the years he worked on many other motion pictures such as Robocop.

In the 1991 Tippet was hired to by Steven Spielberg, to work on Jurassic Park, his task was to use traditional stop motion to find away of brining the dinosaurs, that were featured in the film, to life. However they results of the technique were not bringing the depth and texture that would have been required to make the dinosaurs believable to a modern audience of that time, and the decision was made to use CGI to animate the animals. The stop-motion technique was abandoned for the project, but Tippets background in animal movement, motivated Spielberg to keep him on board to supervise the animation of the dinosaur shots. The technology developed by this film-helped open the floodgates for CG creatures in films, and stop motion ended up being obsolete or extinct I should say.

Tippet later on found him self, moving from stop motion to handling a fully CG facility. Now I don’t know the whole story of what the transition was like for him, one can only imagine what’s like when you find everything you know, trained for, and love is no longer needed, more importantly that makes you as a person not needed. The transition wouldn’t have been easy and Tippet would have taken time to develop a set of skills fit to work in digital effects, but his journey shows that its possible to gain a new set of skills in the medium of film. I suppose an individual just needs the passion to continue on and find something new in the field you love, without allowing yourself to completely fade away.

Why do databases matter?

1.Database is not just about storing information; it’s about retrieving the information too.

2.Database is not like a narrative, because narratives are a sequence of events, in which everything happens as a result of something and leads to another thing.

3.They are lists, not stories. Yes list can be turned into stories but they are not stories on their own.

Production:

4.With the mixed media essay you can only invite the audience, and not tell them what to do.

5.Your role as a media make shifts from being the boss, to someone who creates or choreographs opportunity’s and experiences for your audience. E’g when you organize itunes, and arrange your playlist to your liking, it creates an experience to how you listen

In this weeks reading Database as Symbolic Form by Lev Manovic, he talks about databases being symbolic form of the computer age. He defines a database as a structured collection of data. This term is most commonly used and associated with computer science, and you normally think that a database is a computer term, however he makes comparisons of things in the material world to a database, such as a museum, as it stores collection of artwork and several other items, I found this interesting, as I wouldn’t have thought of it in this way. He later takes his comparisons further by comparing narrative with a database, with he make his point by bringing up the fact that narratives can be a collection of images, sound clips, video clips.

This was an intriguing notion, however he never explored it further in this reading. So in order to wrap my head around this idea and to expand slightly and give it a bit more meat, lets say, I began thinking of film narratives as databases, and not just in the terms of films containing sounds and footage and all that jazz. To my understanding if a database is a collection, and with the comparisons to a museum, the data within the database can only be seen once it’s accessed somehow. That idea made me see more clearly on how a film or other forms of narrative could be considered as database. Apart from the technical or physical aspects of narratives, for example a written piece can be a book that has pages, a cover and texts, or film that contains the footage, sound; music and dialogue, narratives at its core are stories. The breakdown of what stories can be will help see how narrative can be seen as database.

A story is a sequence of events told in a particular order from beginning to end, but what can told, is a different matter all together. The type of stories I like, to read or watch are the ones that are firstly fictional, then within that my kind of well written story is one that has strong plot, strong characters, a journey, a good mythology or world built around it. Now when a story is well written and then put on film, it resonates with an audience and connects them in ways that it feels real. I well made film, doesn’t feel like actors reading off a script, or the special effects people rigged and explosive, it all feels like reality, and its in this way we can see narrative as database.

For example take the film Inception. It had strong characters, the lead being Dominic Cobb played by Leonardo DiCaprio, it had a mythology, which was in that reality people can access your mind through dreams, and it had a journey that the character of Cobb had to take. Every aspect of this film to me feels real. I don’t feel like I am watching a piece that was put together, I felt like Cobb is a real person, and I’m talking about the actor, the world of the dreams where so real it even felt like a possibility. Now all these factors are something that can only be seen in the film Inception, now do not misunderstand me, I am not saying no other film can have strong characters, a mythology and a world to explore, I’m simply saying these characters and this world can only be found in this film, and can be seen no where else. So in a sense narrative, is a data base for this film, because even though you can see over ten films with Leonardo DiCaprio in them, he isn’t playing the same character, he transforms every time, and if you wish to see him play a particular character you have to watch him in a particular film. In other words, if you want to see him play a man who can access peoples dreams you have to watch Inception.

What is a database?- a structured collection of data

Its a very common term, used in technology, mostly in I.T, which is any file or system or device that stores data.

In life there can be other objects that are databases, such as a museum. It stores collections of artwork and other valued and aged objects

He briefly describes narrative as database but doesn’t really go further with that statement.

In life I think its safe to say they choices you make lead you to wherever you end up. Any person who has lived a full life, has to have been either successful or not, but the factor that determines their success would be the choices they made to achieve it, sometimes life provides people with an opportunity and they have to make the decision to peruse that or not, and if they choose the latter, they could have possibly missed out on something big or just avoided something horrible. Now that’s just looking at the idea in a very broad sense as people tend look at themselves and other based on the big decisions they make in life. However I believe that smallest of choices can affect the biggest outcome of our lives, because I believe the choices we make especially in the early stages of our lives define who we are.

To elaborate on my point I will give an example from my own experience. During this period of uni, I have a few more weeks left and a bunch of assignments to finish, so friend of mine and I are working on assignment together, we agreed to meet after our morning class for an hour, because I had a lecture to get to, and I told him I would come back afterwards for another hour. Now after the lecture another friend of mine and I usually have lunch together, and he asked me if I wanted hang out as usual, now I could have said yes, and left my teammate alone working on our project. Now I didn’t do that but to be honest part of me wanted to because I was so hungry, but I went to help, but if I didn’t what would the outcome have been?

Firstly I would have had a friend mad at me for not helping out since we are working on project that is meant to be a collaboration, and without my contribution I wouldn’t have gotten any marks, but the positive in this case would have that I would have eaten one good meal, which really isn’t worth compared to what I would get if I worked on my assignment instead.

It’s a small choice, but it would affect the outcome of my day. It would have gone from being a good productive day for me, to being just another ordinary day with precious time wasted. Now its hard to say how this one choice would affect my life in the long term and as definition of my character. That would all be dependent on number of other factors, like for example, if I was to repeat this again. I did this once but now in the future I have the choice to repeat it over and over again, now if I where to do that, I am bound to be a person who just doesn’t care about my work and considerate of other people.

Its interesting to look at the amount of choices we are presented with on a daily basis, some big some small, but all contribute to a web of possibilities were anything could happen when take one step, but then you always wonder what it could have been.

In very brief bullet points, here is some of the things I took down for week 10 during the symposium:

Blog idea- choices you make

Use foot notes for essay

Long tail, from last weeks reading.

Shelf space, is that stores would only stock products that they know are going to sell- another possible blog, expand further

I cannot believe how fast this year has gone. I moved to Melbourne last year, I remember that time so well. I had left home for the first time, not living anywhere else, realizing that I’m going to be starting university soon, even though it was just the foundation course. It was big step and a change for me, although it wasn’t too bad because I was living with my sister and I had visited Melbourne quite a few times before hand, so I wasn’t facing a culture shock. It was the beginning of a new chapter in my life, it was exciting but at the same time terrifying.

I remember the first few months; meeting new people, adjusting to the life as a university student, getting to know my surroundings and whole system on how to mange my life now that my parents were not there, trying to be careful with my finances, to sum it all up learn how to be independent. The whole year of 2013 changed my life, and it changed for the better, I met new people, I became a totally different person, I grew up. Melbourne has become my home away from home, in ways that I never thought would happen, the people I met became my family, I found a place among my new friends, who made my feel welcome from day 1, and without a doubt it was the best year of my life, and just like breath on a mirror its over. I cannot believe its already been a year since I moved and I met all my friends, and became the person I am now, and 2014 was is about to come to an end too. It already September, soon it will be December and well another new beginning for all of us.

But right now, even as I am writing this post, as the next part of journey in Melbourne has come about, things have changed even more. I recently move into a new apartment, (a note to, whoever is reading this never move during a semester), the old apartment I lived in, was owned by family, so I my dad was paying a mortgage instead of rent, and this apartment was in my family for seven years. Now I never lived in it for all that time, my two older siblings did, but when I visited Melbourne over the course of those years that’s where we stayed, that apartment was one of the things that helped me feel like I was at home. When it was sold and I had to move out it was difficult, saying bye to something that was a big part of my life.

I also found that my surroundings wouldn’t be the only thing that’s changed. My life has taken a turn, new house, new responsibilities, and new life. Now I won’t specify how it has changed but it has, and I think for the first time in my life I am experience real change, where everything is a mystery, and now what I have to do is figure out how to adjust. The point of all what I am writing is that , as I have mentioned before is that time is going so fast, and it feels like everything is going to be over soon. Personally I don’t want it to, but since it beyond my control I guess I have to make every moment count.