Favorite topics? Least favorite? Explain yourself
In looking back over the topics discussed in this class, I would like to think I learned something new about each one. Some granted I took more away from than others, but I think that each was important.
In terms of my most favorable topic, I would have to say blogging. GASP! The topic that many people found to be disposable, or a grade check, I found extremely interesting. The way that authoritative roles are broken down when writing a blog post is fascinating when compared to the real-world counterpart. I don't understand why people feel more free to express themselves via blog post. Is that inherent to asynchronous communication? Or is it the written communication that offers this freedom over verbal?
I think in the future there should be some type of feedback system implemented into the blogging aspect of the course. As the course progressed, blog posts seemed to fall off from students. I imagine a utopian scenario where a student posts a blog comment, and receives feedback within a day either agreeing or disagreeing. Questioning beliefs or giving backing to ideas. Similar to a forum or bulletin board, a mashup of multimedia and textual information. There seemed to be confusion initially about what the purpose of the blog was, and I imagine some students refrained to avoid embarassment from a "wrong" post. Ironically there is not such thing as a "wrong" post, but rather only a lack of communication.
In terms of least favorable topic, I would have to say Cyber Feminism. I say this because it is obvious my own lack of knowledge on feminism topics occluded my perception of the big picture. Even after reading the piece several times I do not feel I have a strong understanding of the underlying intent. I would like to revisit this piece outside of an art class, to focus more on the literary meanings. I think once I understand what the piece is trying to say, I will be able to better interpret.
This class has been very rewarding for me. As a computer scientist so much of my reading is spent on algorithm exploration or new methods. My heart is in art and music, and the fact that 2.5 hours a week (4.5 if you count office hours) in class time was dedicated to this class has given me a great perspective on how art and technology interact.
I look forward to the final project presentations. I am very excited to see what everyone has come up with.
-Bobby
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
week 13 pt ii - Cory and Lauren's presentation
I think Melissa hit on a key point in regards to law and digital ownership here. Current laws are far behind the technological advancements that have been made in the last few decades, and we're reaching a point where society is noticing it.
Remember the recent writer's strike over dvd sales? Should writers be paid for dvds of their material that are sold? Aren't they already paid for it once? What about other distributions? iTunes sales or network website streams? What about podcasts of episodes? Where does the line get drawn for ownership and compensation?
This is the return of the art and money conflict. What is it to be a successful starving artist? In this sense does the term artist redefine successful? To be successful at being a starving artist, don't you have to not succeed by conventional terminology, ie monetary success?
People will always want to be paid in some form. Recognition or salary have similar values depending on the culture.
It's funny when people say that the law is a living thing, yet it's so far behind technology trends. I don't know what the answer is to make everyone happy. I honestly don't think everyone will ever be happy. It's a conflict of interest, doing something you love, and people making money off it. Two very important, yet distinct things.
Remember the recent writer's strike over dvd sales? Should writers be paid for dvds of their material that are sold? Aren't they already paid for it once? What about other distributions? iTunes sales or network website streams? What about podcasts of episodes? Where does the line get drawn for ownership and compensation?
This is the return of the art and money conflict. What is it to be a successful starving artist? In this sense does the term artist redefine successful? To be successful at being a starving artist, don't you have to not succeed by conventional terminology, ie monetary success?
People will always want to be paid in some form. Recognition or salary have similar values depending on the culture.
It's funny when people say that the law is a living thing, yet it's so far behind technology trends. I don't know what the answer is to make everyone happy. I honestly don't think everyone will ever be happy. It's a conflict of interest, doing something you love, and people making money off it. Two very important, yet distinct things.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Week 13 pt i - Kay's Presentation
Design a successful activism strategy based on any kind of information technology and your own new media art skill!
One of the strongest tools you can play off of when dealing with people is vanity. If you make them feel unique, special, righteous, etc you can hold their attention. Along those lines, a new media art skill should play off of something that is flashy. Flashy in terms of getting public attention, and also flashy in the sense of holding an individual's attention.
Right now the latest and greatest toy is the iPhone. Consumer-grade enough that everyone knows what it is, but geeky enough to have lots of potential. Below I'll list a theoretical scenario.
An issue that has taken mainstage on college campuses is drinking. Underage drinking, drunk driving, drunk dialing, etc. Alcohol is cool to most undergraduate students. As a statement about drinking, there could be an iphone application that estimates your BAC. You would enter your weight, and press the start button when you had your first drink. Every time you wanted a new drink, you could wave the iphone in the air to signal a waitress. that gesture movement would trigger the iphone to increment a drink counter, and based off of your weight and the overall time, the iPhone could estimate your BAC. After a certain BAC level, the iPhone could limit the phone numbers you were allowed to dial, to avoid drunken phone calls. You would be able to call a designated driver, 911, and local taxi services based around you. The taxi services would be determined off of the GPS device in the iPhone.
In that way the iPhone application would encourage alcohol education. The importance of the program would be that it would have a simple fun factor to show off, but also have a useful feature set that would not become unintentionally intrusive as the participant became more inebriated.
One of the strongest tools you can play off of when dealing with people is vanity. If you make them feel unique, special, righteous, etc you can hold their attention. Along those lines, a new media art skill should play off of something that is flashy. Flashy in terms of getting public attention, and also flashy in the sense of holding an individual's attention.
Right now the latest and greatest toy is the iPhone. Consumer-grade enough that everyone knows what it is, but geeky enough to have lots of potential. Below I'll list a theoretical scenario.
An issue that has taken mainstage on college campuses is drinking. Underage drinking, drunk driving, drunk dialing, etc. Alcohol is cool to most undergraduate students. As a statement about drinking, there could be an iphone application that estimates your BAC. You would enter your weight, and press the start button when you had your first drink. Every time you wanted a new drink, you could wave the iphone in the air to signal a waitress. that gesture movement would trigger the iphone to increment a drink counter, and based off of your weight and the overall time, the iPhone could estimate your BAC. After a certain BAC level, the iPhone could limit the phone numbers you were allowed to dial, to avoid drunken phone calls. You would be able to call a designated driver, 911, and local taxi services based around you. The taxi services would be determined off of the GPS device in the iPhone.
In that way the iPhone application would encourage alcohol education. The importance of the program would be that it would have a simple fun factor to show off, but also have a useful feature set that would not become unintentionally intrusive as the participant became more inebriated.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Week 13: Empowerment via internet
Do you feel empowered by the internet?
Discuss in relation to the recent federal election in USA
I think that empowerment is a natural reaction that many feel as they cope with the internet. I say that because the internet, like losing a loved one, has an emotional work flow that people go through. Initially, people are scared of the internet (like many are with new technology in general). There is a common fear of doing something irreversible, or detrimental to the internet. This comes from an individualistic experiential view. As people become more accustomed to using Google, and yahoo news, eventually they discover blogs or social networking sites. Here they realize the next stage in the internet, socialization. Their computer is connected to others computers, and they can see the same things! AMAZING. Now everyone can watch the perplexed ground hog at the same time!
In terms of feeling empowered, I think that many people will naturally transition from recognizing a social internet community, to trying to communicate with it. For example, in the early 2000's mySpace.com saw an explosion of mediocre bands spamming individual users for "friend" status. These bands would actually use these relationships as a bargaining tool when booking shows. The internet itself was a communication tool used to gain fans. The bands saw this as a way to increase their public footprint.
Realistically the internet in it's current form is a communication tool. Video, audio, or a combination of the two. This is similar to the hippie movement of Haight Ashbury. Pamphleteer and soap boxing were analogous to blogging, twittering, or even trolling. Websites like blogger and twitter.com offered live updates of posts, which can be grouped by tags. As a means of communication, the internet has the ability to empower anyone who chooses to use it to spread their message. Along with the power to spread "the word" is also the power to spread the image. This past election, president elect Obama was able to secure a trendy middle-upper class vote by putting out an iphone application. This allowed him to communicate with people using the internet, but also show that he is tech-savvy and on the cutting edge of technology. Besides spreading opinion and image, what else can the internet project about/onto an individual/group?
Discuss in relation to the recent federal election in USA
I think that empowerment is a natural reaction that many feel as they cope with the internet. I say that because the internet, like losing a loved one, has an emotional work flow that people go through. Initially, people are scared of the internet (like many are with new technology in general). There is a common fear of doing something irreversible, or detrimental to the internet. This comes from an individualistic experiential view. As people become more accustomed to using Google, and yahoo news, eventually they discover blogs or social networking sites. Here they realize the next stage in the internet, socialization. Their computer is connected to others computers, and they can see the same things! AMAZING. Now everyone can watch the perplexed ground hog at the same time!
In terms of feeling empowered, I think that many people will naturally transition from recognizing a social internet community, to trying to communicate with it. For example, in the early 2000's mySpace.com saw an explosion of mediocre bands spamming individual users for "friend" status. These bands would actually use these relationships as a bargaining tool when booking shows. The internet itself was a communication tool used to gain fans. The bands saw this as a way to increase their public footprint.
Realistically the internet in it's current form is a communication tool. Video, audio, or a combination of the two. This is similar to the hippie movement of Haight Ashbury. Pamphleteer and soap boxing were analogous to blogging, twittering, or even trolling. Websites like blogger and twitter.com offered live updates of posts, which can be grouped by tags. As a means of communication, the internet has the ability to empower anyone who chooses to use it to spread their message. Along with the power to spread "the word" is also the power to spread the image. This past election, president elect Obama was able to secure a trendy middle-upper class vote by putting out an iphone application. This allowed him to communicate with people using the internet, but also show that he is tech-savvy and on the cutting edge of technology. Besides spreading opinion and image, what else can the internet project about/onto an individual/group?
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Week 12: Blogging worth dying for?
Absolutely! well in the right context anyway. Blogging is a medium of communication. Is that medium specifically worth dying for?
Communication, freedom of expression certainly is. The increase of populous knowledge is directly related to freedom of mass speech. It doesn't matter if what I have to say is relevant to a specific topic or not, because relevancy is the perspective of the user. I would not go so far as to say that what I have to say is worth dying for, but my ability to do such allows me a voice, and a participatory role in society. Defining norms and social constructs through various expressed opinions.
The obvious rebuttal to all of this is to question the importance of a blog post. No, we don't need hundreds of posts about the last drink Jessica Simpson had before leaving Le Deux on Thursday night. At least not from a micro-scoped view (more on that in a minute). I argue that it's not that this has nothing to do with the medium of blogging, but with the content. For example, teen people, tiger beat, seventeen... are each of these magazines making a positive contribution to knowledge in this country? More so than the New York Times or Boston Globe? In terms of serious news, pre-teen magazines are far from relevant. In a state where information is free, it's hard to look past content. But what about in China, a place where photography is limited, and electronics can be confiscated for national security at any moment. The entire internet (which most Americans view as an equal free place) is completely monitored and censored. What if you had to get information to the rest of the world about a horrible act your government was committing? Would you trust CNN? In a situation where your world is upside down, why would you trust an intermediary to spread your story when you had access to the tools to do so?
So content is taken out of the equation in terms of micro-view of importance. But when we want to analyze societal shifts of interest, viewpoints, opinion, then these blogs become windows into the minds of its authors. In times where so much is written about people (facebook, friendfeed, okarut) blogs provide a view of a person from that person.
So the question posed, what is the importance of blogging? Is it worth dying for? Absolutely. The positive aspects of information spread and analysis out weigh the fabricated negative of content. To say that blogging isn't important is like saying that news papers aren't important. As many mediums as possible, as long as they're well maintained, should be available to people for communication. Each medium offers unique characteristics. Blogging is the evolution of an editorial section. instead of having one-way communication, blogging enables a-synchronous communication with limited censorship (topic for another discussion).
On a side note, I think the administrative role is important to recognize, as well as the break down of roles in general. That break down normally only occurs in one direction though. For example, when reading a blog, the average user feels equality towards all other posters and responds to them as equals. This could be in response to doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. The point is to that person everyone is equal. But in the eyes of the doctor/lawyer/... they are being talked down to, their social role in the real world has not carried over to hold the same level of recognition in the virtual. This can lead to feelings of disrespect and foster hostility. How dare you talk to your superior like that?! This is where medium is outweighed by relations. Even though the virtual world offers an augmented communication method, the roles in the real world do not go away. This was exhibited in the early 90s-2000s in corporate emails, where co-workers would send informal emails back and forth. The emails did not retain the same level of respect that formal analog voice communication carried, so tensions built and interaction in the real world broke down because of it. This is an example of where the medium is secondary to the roles of the participants.
Communication, freedom of expression certainly is. The increase of populous knowledge is directly related to freedom of mass speech. It doesn't matter if what I have to say is relevant to a specific topic or not, because relevancy is the perspective of the user. I would not go so far as to say that what I have to say is worth dying for, but my ability to do such allows me a voice, and a participatory role in society. Defining norms and social constructs through various expressed opinions.
The obvious rebuttal to all of this is to question the importance of a blog post. No, we don't need hundreds of posts about the last drink Jessica Simpson had before leaving Le Deux on Thursday night. At least not from a micro-scoped view (more on that in a minute). I argue that it's not that this has nothing to do with the medium of blogging, but with the content. For example, teen people, tiger beat, seventeen... are each of these magazines making a positive contribution to knowledge in this country? More so than the New York Times or Boston Globe? In terms of serious news, pre-teen magazines are far from relevant. In a state where information is free, it's hard to look past content. But what about in China, a place where photography is limited, and electronics can be confiscated for national security at any moment. The entire internet (which most Americans view as an equal free place) is completely monitored and censored. What if you had to get information to the rest of the world about a horrible act your government was committing? Would you trust CNN? In a situation where your world is upside down, why would you trust an intermediary to spread your story when you had access to the tools to do so?
So content is taken out of the equation in terms of micro-view of importance. But when we want to analyze societal shifts of interest, viewpoints, opinion, then these blogs become windows into the minds of its authors. In times where so much is written about people (facebook, friendfeed, okarut) blogs provide a view of a person from that person.
So the question posed, what is the importance of blogging? Is it worth dying for? Absolutely. The positive aspects of information spread and analysis out weigh the fabricated negative of content. To say that blogging isn't important is like saying that news papers aren't important. As many mediums as possible, as long as they're well maintained, should be available to people for communication. Each medium offers unique characteristics. Blogging is the evolution of an editorial section. instead of having one-way communication, blogging enables a-synchronous communication with limited censorship (topic for another discussion).
On a side note, I think the administrative role is important to recognize, as well as the break down of roles in general. That break down normally only occurs in one direction though. For example, when reading a blog, the average user feels equality towards all other posters and responds to them as equals. This could be in response to doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. The point is to that person everyone is equal. But in the eyes of the doctor/lawyer/... they are being talked down to, their social role in the real world has not carried over to hold the same level of recognition in the virtual. This can lead to feelings of disrespect and foster hostility. How dare you talk to your superior like that?! This is where medium is outweighed by relations. Even though the virtual world offers an augmented communication method, the roles in the real world do not go away. This was exhibited in the early 90s-2000s in corporate emails, where co-workers would send informal emails back and forth. The emails did not retain the same level of respect that formal analog voice communication carried, so tensions built and interaction in the real world broke down because of it. This is an example of where the medium is secondary to the roles of the participants.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
week 12: INSTRUCTIONS FOR CLASS
• Download review sheet @ learn.vt.edu under "Course Documents" >> Blog Review
• Review each peron's blog individually the review sheet
•Email blog owner copy of the sheet (See projection for email addresses)
•CC Simone on each email sent
If time... read over comments from your classmates and make corrections/updates
• Review each peron's blog individually the review sheet
•Email blog owner copy of the sheet (See projection for email addresses)
•CC Simone on each email sent
If time... read over comments from your classmates and make corrections/updates
Week 11: Theo Jansen
AMAZING!
Simply wonderful.
I think the concept of evolution is being recreated through Jansen's work. Evolution in a biological sense occurs as natural selection occurs, over hundreds of years. Species are permitted to live and die out naturally. Jansen set's a time limit to his creatures life cycles. The next jump in the evolutionary chain occurs at his whim, not at the point of natural advancement. Also, evolution is a continuum, what is being deemed evolution in his work is discreet advancement. The argument could be made about the granularity of steps required to be deemed advancement, but either way you're dealing with distinct types of measurements (think integers and floating point values).
The choice of material to build the creatures out of makes a wonderful statement about reusability and sustainability. What types of materials in the US are used for building that could easily be forged into art? I remember when I was younger taking scraps of plywood and 2x4s from construction rubbish bins and building skate ramps and rails. Not quite the same as art, but still a solid reuse factor.
I would like to see this taken to a more meta level. The reuse of representations of animals that evolve out of the creation of new ideas. OOooo that gives me tingles.
Simply wonderful.
I think the concept of evolution is being recreated through Jansen's work. Evolution in a biological sense occurs as natural selection occurs, over hundreds of years. Species are permitted to live and die out naturally. Jansen set's a time limit to his creatures life cycles. The next jump in the evolutionary chain occurs at his whim, not at the point of natural advancement. Also, evolution is a continuum, what is being deemed evolution in his work is discreet advancement. The argument could be made about the granularity of steps required to be deemed advancement, but either way you're dealing with distinct types of measurements (think integers and floating point values).
The choice of material to build the creatures out of makes a wonderful statement about reusability and sustainability. What types of materials in the US are used for building that could easily be forged into art? I remember when I was younger taking scraps of plywood and 2x4s from construction rubbish bins and building skate ramps and rails. Not quite the same as art, but still a solid reuse factor.
I would like to see this taken to a more meta level. The reuse of representations of animals that evolve out of the creation of new ideas. OOooo that gives me tingles.
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