Week 15 - Nearly holidays!

By: Chrislrmo on Flikr (3/07/2006) Some rights reserved.

Yay, nearly holidays! This week i've been working a lot on my Geo-narrative. Although i planned much of it earlier in the semester, i've had to put it off for a while due to my other assessments. Originally i planned to do a non-fiction narrative based on my recent time overseas, but after thinking about it for a while i realised it would be hard to make that into a interesting tale. I also think it would limit the use of alternative media products. Instead i am mixing some non-fiction with fiction to put together something worth reading, although i wouldn't hold my breath. I'll be using some photos of mine as well as photos off the web (Flikr etc.) The Geo-narrative is a clever concept and one that i didn't know exsisted until i began this piece of assessment. Basically it is a story told through Google maps, which you can set to private or public and it is free.

By: ~BostonBill~ on Flikr (4/06/2009) Some rights reserved.

Although our lectures have long finished, we finish up our computer labs this week. After discussing our upcoming exam with Nathan, we continued to work on our assignments. I'm not sure how i feel about our exam as i have missed out on a few lectures and have had to rely on the notes provided, but i'm going to brush up on htose as well as the definitions of the different mediums we've studied this semester.

Week 11 - Multiplicity

By: HuNo (On & Off) on Flikr (11/01/2009) Some rights reserved.

By: Bobasonic on Flikr (18/06/2006) Some rights reserved.

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.

By: AaronFarquhar on YouTube (10/08/2008)

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.

By: vernhart on Flikr (17/06/2007) Some rights reserved.

Week 4 - Remix, API, Mashup

Remix, API and Mashup - something that meant absolutely nothing to me before this week. Although i was familiar with HTML, XML and CSS - i was certainly unsure of what Remix, API and Mashup involved. Luckily this was all explained quite well in Max Wheeler's lecture on the subject. Application Programming Interface (API) which is basically a bunch of functions that you can interact and manipulate within the data of an application. It's a good way to see what other people can do with what you created. Mashups basically combine services using the different API's of those services. Max showed us a bunch of examples of API's and Mashups. They were really cool, especially one created from the Twitter API - Twistori. It basically shows all the posts displaying the words: Love, Hate, Think, Believe, Feel and Wish in real time. Also, while searching for some videos about API's i found a cool Google Earth API on YouTube and an overview of YouTube's API and Tools

publikaccion.es on Flickr (29/06/08) Some rights reserved

As i mentioned last week, i had settled on doing an Information Flow for my Project A, but since chatting about each option during our Tutorial i've completely changed my mind and am going to focus on curating an Online exhibition. My subject - Antoni Gaudi. I'm not an art critic or an expert of architecture, but when i recently travelled to Barcelona i learnt a lot about his work and saw a lot of it too. I look forward to creating something that really shows his works off.

During the Tutorial with Nathan we further discussed API's, looked at different examples and started working on our own Pipes. What are Pipes? Pipes are basically an application that you can mashup, manipulate and aggregate different content online. It's a service offered through Yahoo and i initially found it wuite difficult, but after watching a few starter videos i got the hang of it.

-Sean

Çult of the 'Snuggie'

By: aurvondel on Flikr (11/02/2009) Some rights reserved.

Have you seen the ads on TV for 'The Snuggie'? They're absolutely hilarious. Apparently, they're good for sporting events and gardening! Check them out: www.snuggie.com.au