Love your parents have left to give Number of family minivans Time you have alone to masturbate Times caught masturbating alone Odds you live in a polygamist compound Closeness of family How Irish you are
How many of us have a life chart that looks like this? Meanwhile, unfortunately i was not able to attend this week's tutorial, but i have continued to work on my production project (B). My geo-narrative is coming along. I haven't finalised my story, but it is loosely based on my own travels around Europe and the U.K. in 2007-2008. I'm fascinated by the new features i am learning about on GoogleMaps. While of course i have been working on my assignment and studying for exams, i have also managed to find this great cover of Kanye West'sHeartless by American band 'The Fray'. Check it out :-)
Brand My Day is a really cool website where you can create a map of all the brands you use in a normal day. Check it out :-) As our lectures have finished up we only had a computer lab this week. I haven't been working on my Geo-Narrative this week as i've had other assessment to do so i worked on my blog in our labs. Although i've been taking notes during the semester, i have had to catch up on a few of my posts. It's been a good way of immersing myself in networked media as i would never have done a blog if it wasn't a piece of assessment. I find it's also going to come in handy when studying for our exam.
This week's lecture with Michael Honey was one of the most interesting we've had this semester. He discussed the idea of Data Visualisation. Before the lecture i had a rough idea of what Data Visualisation from just piecing together the words data and visualisation, but i couldn't have shown you an example or anything.
Data Visualisation is the representation of abstract or non physical information. Basically it's presenting data in an effective, visual way. The point of it is to collate meaningless data in a user friendly medium, bringing more context to information. While graphs and charts are an easy and efficient way to present small values, Data Visualisation should be employed in representing large numbers. As Michael re-iterated, statistics and figures are thrown at us every day, on the news, in the papers, at work and university and much of the time it is either ignored or taken lightly because of the way it is presented. It is a fact that humans group things in their minds to visualise and take them in easier, otherwise known as 'chunking'. The size, colour, shape, movement, position and scale of information presented visually heavily impacts on how it is perceived. I really believe in the idea of Data Visualisation, mainly because it worked on me, with the examples Michael showed anyway.
[During the lecture, Michael's computer had an error so we couldn't proceed for about ten minutes, he said we should blog about this fascinating experience, so here you go]
Hans Rosling explains how Data Visualisation works with various different statistics on TED Talks (an annual conference of informative speakers, all online for free, check it out!):
You can see examples of Data Visualisation in many things you view online, like the most popular viewed articles on Digg, most searched terms on Google and Wikipedia represented in a larger font, with those that are less popular shown as smaller font in the background. Besides relieving boredom and adding necessary humour to complex issue, complete and understandable access to data like this could save lives and bring context to many issues that people don't understand. Jonathan Harris is another motivational speaker that has created the 'We Feel Fine' initiative, an 'exploration of human emotion'. Jonathan captures thoughts, feelings and actions (under six different groups) from all over the online world and presents them in a data visualisation. It really is amazing and i guarantee that all will find it thought provoking and enjoyable. Follow some of the links i've attached at the end of the post also as it's a subject that deserves attention and understanding.
Following this week's lecture by Michael Honey, I found Multiplicity to be quite complex, but after having a look at a few examples online, i feel i can understand it now. Basically Multiplicity is adding other elements to or 'remixing' an original piece of media. In this post I've shown examples of how it works in photographs but most people would be familiar with parodies of politicians and celebrities that have been 'remixed' and edited to create a new product. For example, in our tutorials Nathan showed us a video of ex-U.S. President George Bush singing 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. The artist has taken snippets of George Bush's voice from one of his speeches and created a whole new product for comedic effect. One of my favourite examples of this is a video clip made by Pauline Pantsdown (satyrical impersonator of ex-politician Pauline Hanson) entitled 'I Don't Like It', which was also very successful on radio when it was released 1998.
During the lecture, Michael also explained that Multiplicity works with popularity. Obviously something is going to sell a lot better the more popular it is and websites such as I-Tunes, Ebay and Amazon thrive on ratings and customer feedback. Next to advertising and marketing, consumers are most influenced by the opinions of other consumers and these websites are current proof of how social networking and Multiplicity is successfully making it's way into the market place. Although many of us would like to think it's the most credible site out there, WikiPedia at the end of the day is a bunch of submissions from people around the world, put together to produce information. Much like this, online forums and groups convene and combine from a common interest or to achieve an answer. In the case of photography and video production, Multiplicity can be very time consuming but at the same time (as long as defamation and copyright lawsuits do not ensue!) it is mostly cost effective. When you think about it, Multiplicity is using a product that has already been created. In all its forms, Multiplicity can send out a powerful message, assist or just make people laugh.
After finishing Production Project A, an assessment filled 'holidays' and being sick i am now back, fully concentrating on Networked Media Production. Unfortunately because i was sick i was unable to make it to Week 10's Lecture and Tutorial, but i read the notes that Nathan posted about Web 2.0. and social media. Web 2.0 is considered to be the next generation of the world wide web, with several web communities and social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo etc.), Blogs (Blogger, Tumblr etc.) and video sharing (YouTube, Blip TV). This next generation increases the amount of elements of interaction on websites and although previous to Web 2.0, the Internet had achieved huge change in the world and it's conception revolutionised technology, Web 2.0 is taking that next step up to alter the way people interact with one another.
One of the more interesting points i found in the articlesNathan posted was the fact that the introduction of I-Tunes has changed the way people purchase music. Besides the fact that music can be purchased without leaving the house or accumulating heavy CD's, the option of purchasing individual songs instead of a whole album has yet again increased popularity of the idea of 'singles'. Also, the low cost of 99cents (US dollars) attracts consumers. Although it's obvious that the Internet does not just effect I.T., I felt that was a perfect example of how Web 2.0 is changing other industries.
I haven't given much thought to Production Project B as yet because I'm a tad weighed down with other assessments, but i think i'll explore the 'Geo-narrative' option a bit more. This week I came across two very different YouTube videos on that i felt were post-worthy. The first is a really funny scene from this years Celebrity Apprentice (airing in the U.S.) I won't ruin it too much, but basically it's showing Joan and Mellissa Rivers' reaction to Mellissa being 'fired'. It's worth watching the WHOLE 3 minutes and 55 seconds:
Naturally 7 are an American singing group who perform their own complete sound (vocals and percussion) Although they started off as a viral video a few years ago, they're quite well known in the U.S. and Europe these days:
First of all, sorry about the corny title, i was going to have 'The Final Climb', so be thankful! Really i was aiming to reflect this cool picture i found, in the title of this weeks blog post. Anyway...In our final week of classes before holidays we worked on our Project A piece of assessment. Although i had a bit to go, i was confident what was left would be completed during our final tutorial. Really my main difficulty was working out exactly how much material to include, but i thought i would make it more of a visual exhibition rather than textual because what Gaudi had to show was the most important part (even though i have included a lot of text). Although I will be making a few tweaks here and there before i submit, take a look and feel free to comment on my Production Project A, a blog exhibiting Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi's life and most important works:
This week, Michael Honey gave us a really interesting lecture: 'Carving up the world'. What grabbed my attention was when he spoke about the limitations of the Internet. The internet is lacking in the types of structures or default conventions that are oh so familiar in our everyday 'physical' worlds. This is a hurdle for the Internet because it something that humans learn from other humans and then it just becomes normal - it is hard to mirror this in technology because there are so many different possibilities online. This was how i understood it anyway, so hopefully this makes sense to everyone else!
In the Tutorial, as with the last couple of weeks, we worked on our Production Project. As i've said in previous posts, i've chose to do an Online exhibition about Antoni Gaudi, a Spanish architect. I wish i had of given myself more time to refine my research on Gaudi as well as refining the finished product but because of all my other assesment, i've put this last - i'll just have to devote more time to it in this final week before it's due. I've found it a really fun assignment (if there is such a thing) because i've been able to reminice about my trip to Barcelona and learn about something (architecture/art) that i normally would be far too lazy to immerse myself in. In other words, thankfully the assignment hasn't been too arduous.
I'm still quite unsure exactly what the tutors expect from us (not that they havn't been massively helpful, because they have) because i've noticed other people's work which seems to be a lot more thought out and attractive than mine and they certainly seem to be going to a lot more effort. Nathan did tell me i'm on the right track so i guess i should just stop worrying!
Now to finish off this blog post, here is something totally unrelated and very bizarre that i found off a blog i follow - Boing Boing. Apparently there is a new trend of 'Crushed Smartie' smoking - with kids! I'll let you watch it...
Love your parents have left to give
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