In week 4 we explored visual social media, reading about, discussing and creating contemporary visual content such as ‘memes’ and gifs. Both of my memes created for class this week relate to the idea of ‘appropriated visuals’ put forward by Tim Highfield and Tama Leaver; that is visual media that employs “the use of pre-existing media items, applied in new and unrelated contexts as signifiers of particular emotions, opinions, punch lines, and reactions.”

The above meme uses the ‘shocked Pikachu’ format that was largely popular in 2018. It is used in this context to comment on the planned national rent-strike during the COVID-19 Pandemic, expressing the idea that tenants being unable to pay rent during times of mass un0employment should, in-fact, not come as a surprise for landlords, yet it is.

Far less political, my gif created for class this week is also an example of an appropriated visual. Using a professional player clip from the video game “Super Smash Brothers: Ultimate” to illustrate Tom Hanks’ recent ‘fight’ with Coronavirus.

I did not make an original green-screen work for class this week, as my current technical limitations makes ultra-key work far too time consuming; even for small projects. Instead I chose to upload a previous looping-visual I have made for a friend’s performance that used green-screen recordings of flowers, I hope to develop my green-screen and general after affects skills throughout this course; as demonstrated by the green-screen work I uploaded, my abilities are quite basic at this stage.

In week 3 we explored sound design and music supervision; as well as privacy concerns regarding smart speakers. I was not able to join the online classes this week, but sound design is an area of media I really enjoy. I assist volunteers at SYN Media with production elements for podcasts and radio shows such as scoring and SFX creation where necessary (being the podcast manager last year); as well as doing commissioned sound design works outside of my studies. When sound designing I consider the emotional and physical response of a sound, ala arousal and valence when using the circumplex model of emotion.

For the activity this week I created a soundscape that further communicates my ideas form the “Future Starter Pack” we created in week 1. To communicate the emotional escapism of flight simulation I used soaring digital strings and synthesisers with no foley or inclination of real world sounds. After this we hear an idea of facial recognition technology, as people walk through the slightly unsettling atmosphere of a future city, a camera identifies and ‘clears’ them with an audible beep; someone does not get cleared and we hear them pick up their pace. Finally I once again did some light scoring for my predictions of hologram advertisement, with this music being placed into the soundscape abruptly to pull the listener away from the darker scene that was just alluded to, hence predicting the bright and abrasive future ahead, with the more sinister elements peaking out in-between the wonders.

This week we explored synthetic media, media generated by computers, mainly looking at AI-Systems that are able to create audio-visual pieces; such as deep fakes. Public discourse surrounding deep fakes generally paints the technology as dangerous in the fake news era, this was explored by Jeffrey Westling in our reading this week. This reading demonstrated through historical examples of manipulation in media that, despite current social anxiety surrounding the technology, the public will generally adapt to this technology. From readings and course content this week I also gained an appreciation for the positive uses of synthetic media; such as arts, education and missing persons investigations. Exploring synthetic media gave me a deeper understanding of how complex positive and negative dynamics of such technology can be and how it will develop in the future; as society continues to adapt as well.

Practical work in class this week included Luminar 4 and Assemblr. Luminar 4 allowed us to create our predictions of AI in the future workplace. By using current AI systems, such as synthetic sky generation. As seen in my portfolio, I attempted to create a possible example of AI in the arts scenes/industries, with body modulations to humanoid AI no doubt being a future ethical debate. I planned on adding more machine layers, but my laptop seems to be fairly incompatible with Luminar 4, crashing constantly. With this said I do not think I will be using Luminar 4 for Assignment 1. Assemblr is an augmented reality application, I used it briefly, but felt I already had a pretty decent understanding of AR technology, using it at a web-series film festival I interned at last year.

• What key learning did you do in this weeks workshop?

In this weeks workshop key learning focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and an introduction to the concept and history of futurology in media.  In a section of The Age of A.I. documentary we viewed during a workshop, AI was defined as “a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behaviour in computers,” we were encouraged to identify the presence of AI in our everyday life, including a class exercise in which we photographed six examples of AI around the RMIT campus, something I hadn’t thought of actively before this week and found surprisingly easy.

• Reflect and describe the main conceptual elements of this studio that you learnt

The main conceptual elements of the studio this week was an introduction to futurology, my understanding is still very introductory at this stage. Although looking at past trends to predict the future makes sense to me, I have not actively engaged with the historical examples presented in class, and have not questioned the implications of the idea and how it can intercept with other ideas and concepts. My understandings and engagement with the idea in my own media practices will undoubtably progress as the studio continues.

• Reflect and describe the main media making elements you experienced and completed

In this weeks studio the class used the photo animation application Enlight Pixaloop to start engaging with the idea of futurology in our media practice; I edited photos I had taken around campus of examples of AI. I gravitated towards the idea of futurology often seen in films, being predictions of the future using trends in current social and technological anxieties. My predictions of the future were quite pessimistic, exploring surveillance, environmental neglect in the pursuit of capital and the use of advancements in technology as a means of consumer escapism, although, I feel such advancements will also have a positive effect on education; as explored within the studio already.