MediaCity: Neighborhood Narratives

BLOG HERE in response to the reading, "The Neighborhood Narratives Project: Dialogues with/in the Mediated City," by Hana Iverson & Rickie Sanders, from MediaCity: Situations, Practices, Encounters,

Locative Narrative and the Landscape

I found this article to be interesting although, like most of the other articles, still beyond my vocabulary. I liked Jeremy Hight's ideas, especially the idea of creating something that will never be finished, and how through a local narrative he was able to create a kind of scattered or non-linear narrative.

-max hull

The Story Engine - Erin Fitzgerald

The Story Engine sounds like a worthwhile project. On one hand, as an experiment, it would be interesting to watch the

narratives develop because of the controlled factors of participators and base story. It could be noted how different people interact

with each other, as well as to whatever the story in focus is. On the other hand, as a literary endeavor, the end result of a narrative

might be fun to read, or even present an entirely new way of reading and writing stories. It definitely breaks some of the confines

put on Wikipedia, because of the editing and control, and Coover's workshop, allowing several writers/artists to participate in one

narrative. The comparison to Game Theory is definitely topical, as the internet and online networking are playing such a large role

in society. As for ideas of defining the self and one's role in the world, I think it's hard to determine what effect this will have on

them without studying the process and end result of a narrative created by the Story Engine.

Sal Hamid

Response to Andrea Grover:Phantom Captain

I couldn't find any posts on the blog for this reading and I have no idea who was supposed to do the responses to the reading. Anyway, I thought the idea of crowd sourcing was pretty interesting. It kind of reminded me of how the little people tied up Gulliver in Gulliver's Travels, and about how even though they were so little their combined power was enough to incapacitate the giant. The sketches from swarmsketch were interesting, but some of them were just gobbledygook and hard to tell exactly what you were looking at unless you read the title.
This article reminded me about the kind of stuff they used to talk about on the cable channel called "Tech TV" before it became "G4TV" and their programming changed.

Rob Bell

I enjoyed this reading. I think that what MAdV did was amazing. I think examples like this is what makes YouTube great. At the end of the day, this medium of film/video is just another way of self expression. A way to get people to feel something about the world around them and thats exactly what he did. I don't think it needs to be classified as a documntary or an experiental video. I think when you try to classiify something like this, it takes away from the range of things it could be. The fact that most people in this age have some form of video equipment and a computer, and we have a platform like youtube, people who would never express themselves or make statements about the world are now doing so and its adding to popular culture. Me and my friends talk about youtube videos more now than we do about the mainstream movies and tv shows we see.

Rob Bell

Hot Spots, Avatars, and Narrative Fields

I would like to start this off by saying that I completely regret volunteering to write about this article. I also would like to apologize for posting late, but to be honest it took me a long time to KIND OF understand this. Basically what I got out of this was Marsha Kinder's explanation of the methods used by, filmmaker, Luis BuÒuel. Kinder talks about "surrealistic jolts" which seems to be when something random appears or happens in the film that takes the viewer out of reality. While I find this experimental technique to be appealing and interesting, that may just be due to my fascination for the weird and creative. Most of the time I also don't quite understand the meaning behind BuÒuel's aesthetics descisions, unless I am told. For example, in one of his films there is a cow laying on a bed for, what appears to be, no real reason, but apparently as Kinder explains: "The cow on the bed in L'Age d'or is one of Bunuel's most notorious incongruous objects, helping to transform the heroine's bedroom into a warp zone that transports her directly into the realm of desire." Maybe I'm just being ignorant, or perhaps if I saw the film i would understand it more, but I would never think of a cow as a symbol of desire. What I found most interesting about the whole article was the relation between BuÒuel's techniques and dreams. Because dreams are so spontaneous and are a mix between reality and subconsciousness I find BuÒuel's methods accurate in a depiction of a dreamworld.

-Max Hull

pat white

It seems that it should be easy to discern the difference between the definition of "myth" and its synonyms after reading this selected work, but these answers remain elusive and hard to decode. Sal does a great job at breaking down the culturally selective attributes of myths, using the example of a Christmas tree. It seems relevant to keep in mind culture when speaking of mythology; interpretations may vary.

pat white

It seems that it should be easy to discern the difference between the definition of "myth" and its synonyms after reading this selected work, but these answers remain elusive and hard to decode. Sal does a great job at breaking down the culturally selective attributes of myths, using the example of a Christmas tree. It seems relevant to keep in mind culture when speaking of mythology; interpretations may vary.

pat white

It seems that it should be easy to discern the difference between the definition of "myth" and its synonyms after reading this selected work, but these answers remain elusive and hard to decode. Sal does a great job at breaking down the culturally selective attributes of myths, using the example of a Christmas tree. It seems relevant to keep in mind culture when speaking of mythology; interpretations may vary.

Wanna D. Coker

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pat white

pat white

Sal Hamid

Sal's Response to excerpt from "Mythologies" by Roland Barthes

This reading was a little confusing at first, but after I reread it a couple of times it made more sense. When Barthes was talking about "tree as expressed by Minou Drouet", that got me to thinking of the Mythology of a Christmas Tree. To someone who is unfamiliar with Western Euorpean and American cultures or Christianity, a Christmas Tree would not have the same mythology as it does to one who is familiar with those cultures. When the author said "Mythical speech is made of a material which has already been worked on so as to make it suitable for communication", it made a lot of sense. If somebody talks about Cupid's Arrow on Valentines day, that "Mythical Speech" is made of material that has been worked on for millenia.
I was also a little confused by "Myth as a semiological system" at first, but from my understanding, it deals with the signifier, and the signified.
The signifier is an object, an image, etc and the signified is the meaning that is given to it.
The third part of the semiological system from my understanding is called "the sign" which is just the relationship between the signifier and the signified.
The fourth part seems to be "motivation" which is usually in the form of an analogy from my understanding.
I didn't not understand everything I read, but hopefully the class discussion Tuesday afternoon can shed some light on the reading.

f r o m Mythologies by Roland Barthes,translated by Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, New York, 1984
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~marton/myth.html

Posted by FMA Web at 10:38 PM 1 comments

Collaborative Remixability

The new age of cultural and technological convergence is a major topic covered in Lev Manovich's "Remixing and Remixability" article. His metaphor of a train shuttling information back and forth between stations (sender and receiver) to describe the old vs. new system of communication rings very true to me. As the lines between the various modes of distribution blur, communication and access to entertainment speed up rapidly. It also seems harder to justify what is work, and what is entertainment. Advertising firms often hire 'cultural consultants' whose job it is to know everything that is popular in various social scenes and demographics. They basically watch TV, surf the net, and read constantly to know what is trendy in the world. Marketing and promotion is set on finding the best way to please the consumer, and as Web 2.0 develops and quickens the spread of information, more people feed into the frenzy.
I remember hearing about companies buying advertising space on billboards within the world of Second Life to promote their products, or renting office space for board members to gather and have virtual conferences. Google has also created a beta version of software enabling multiple people, in different locations, to make alterations to virtual documents in real time. This is a prime exampe of 'collaborative remixability'. Individuals can sit at their computer in different parts of the world and work on a team project. This may be a useful tool in a business setting, but the same principles apply to the volumes of information being created by individuals who blog and post material on-line.
Lev Manovich discusses authenticity, and whether 'remixability' will take away the cultural significance of certain works. This a real problem that we face today. A university in New England was sued for photoshopping an African-American student into a sea of white faces at a football game to increase the diversity in their school's brochure. He did not in fact attend the game and felt that his rights were abused when they placed him in a location that he never visited for the sake of advertising. This example may not deal with art and creative works that must be maintained for posterity, but it does wrestle with the idea that manipulation can deceive. However, I believe that 'collaborative remixability' will usher in more creative thinking and motivate people who would not normally be moved to create, to utilize a different part of their brain and contribute more to society. It will also bring less legitamacy to certain works because they can fall into negative brackets (i.e. A filmmaker might have videos on YouTube, but is someone who posts content on YouTube a filmmaker?).

~Alex Favin

FMA Web Art & Design

Description
This class explores current developments in designing and implementing projects for the web. The student will work to cultivate an individual process that involves critical reflection, developing a personal voice and facility in using the networked digital tools, concepts and systems of contemporary media culture. How are interactive processes, networked producers and audiences, and the tools of Web 2.0 affecting the way media is produced, received and valued? How are digital and telecommunications media reshaping our concept and experience of space, our relationship to others?

Readings and Blogs
Two students each week will be responsible for blogging a response to the reading on FMA Web Art & Design. If it is your week to blog, you are expected to prepare a thoughtful, thorough response to the readings and post it on the blog Monday night by midnight. Your blog response should strive to connect to the esthetic, critical, and/or cultural issues being discussed in class. In addition, your blog response should make all appropriate connections, including connecting the reading to artworks/websites viewed in class, theories or technical issues that are being introduced, etc. You can upload images and links to the blog, being careful to respect copyright issues and to credit your sources.

→All other students in the class will then be expected to comment on the posted blog response each week.