Picture slice by Chang (Archibald 2011)



Monday, 26 March 2012

2.3 Entertaining the world: using media across cultural boundaries.

Globalisation.

The current convergence of western style media with a culturally diverse mix from many Asian and Eastern countries is gaining a momentum that couldn't have been dreamed of a decade ago.

The cartoon, an American staple has seen a switch from local characterisations to an increasingly Asian influence. It started with voice and storyline adapted versions of Sailor Moon, Power Rangers and Pokémon, et al becoming the norm and increasingly the cartoons themselves are being created in Asia for an adoring western market.

Music has now diversified and we embrace influences from Jamaica, South America, the Middle East and our own indigenous cultures all blended and mashed into rock and pop and given mainstream releases.

We now have access to and watch movies from just about every corner of the earth and think nothing of it we choose to go to the cinema and watch subtitled film and bring the diverse nature and aspirations of other cultures into our own productions, where there once was a cult following of Bollywood film, they are now created by us for us. Albeit with a western sensability.


The Internet and indigenous Culture.

The first thing I identified about the work of our assigned reading for this week Indigenous, ethnic and cultural articulations of new media.[19] Is a sort of generalisation that all dispossessed cultures are in limbo waiting for a means of connecting with their similarly lost countrymen. If an ethnic group have left their homeland for whatever reason then all connections to that homeland are lost. And it would seem that they are just waiting for our author to provide them with the means to reconnect.

I acknowledge that many ethnic groups struggle when on mass are forced to leave their home due to war, drought, or other natural disaster and may have no way of keeping in touch with other countrymen or even members of their own families when far flung across the globe. It can be just as much of a problem for those, when by their own choice they immigrate to another country and encounter a feeling of becoming lost and alone in a country that bears no similarity to their native land. The internet is a way many people can keep in contact with the familiarity of family and their own culture.

For many this may not be possible due to what is described as the digital divide [20] a situation where those with money, power, infrastructure and education i.e. first world countries have access to the internet while the rest of the world (as much as 80%) doesn't.

In his article The Internet and Indigenous Groups, [21] author Steve Cisler states that many indigenous groups; while having knowledge of, or access to the internet reject its use as not relevant or not a pressing need within the problems facing them, or even worry about the changes that may happen to their cultures and traditions if too much "western" influence or technology is embraced.

At the same time many cultures or ethnic groups are embracing the internet. They see it as a way to preserve their traditions and beliefs and open them up to an audience that may have poor understanding of or stereotypical ideas about a certain culture and it is also seen as a method to educate and inform their own people, The Kitikmeot Inuit Association's website [22] and Australia's indigitube [23] being just two who provide an education service and online meeting and information space for their respective populations. The Native American tribal initiative Tribal Peace [24] is an information portal that endevours to link the 19 native reservations of San Diego County (California) and bring them together in a single database of information.

 

My Chosen Text (re-revisited)

I finally have my two ideas to remediate into a single work. Over the rainbow is definitely something that has been significant to me for as long as I can remember, from deeply personal parts of my life to being the oldest piece of music that I remember ever hearing. The second piece of work is the internet itself, having been a geek from the first days of personal computing and the rudimentary forerunner to what’s now known as ‘online’ I have seen lives lived and life stories told online and it is the blending of these two images that I have that I will try to build into one new story.


Since handing in assignment 2 and discussion with Richard Seale, I have resubmitted the text associated with my remediation. The final work would be one of the remediation of over the rainbow against a story of the  media and news publication and how the message is told, by who and with what meaning.  


Monday, 5 March 2012

1.2 The Medium is the Message? When the media converge.

New Media is becoming far removed from what we have been served up in the past, no longer are we solely at the hands of established media players who deliver their brand and version of news and content. The internet and its associated hardware's has given the average person access to a multitude of information feeds and the ability to seek information not just to observe a selected and limited; possibly biased range of content.

With this freedom to view an ever increasing amount of news, entertainment and opinion, comes a fear of information overload, a dread that you cannot process all that you need to know. There are also many fears around the two way nature of the internet; not only are we pulling in so much information but the reverse is also true and we are giving out so much of our own personal details and we are not sure who is viewing, collecting and using all this information and for what purpose.

We have now become participants and this has opened us up to an obligation of honesty as we now have the ability to be our own broadcasters and publishers. The type of content we choose to add to the internet is only edited by ourselves and the correctness and moral or social boundaries we choose follow or bend is purely our own choice. Sure there are policing mechanisms in place that may prosecute those who slander or incite others, but depending on where the information is uploaded to on the internet it may only ever get seen by a select target audience or your own social network. Usenet [1] is an example of a lesser known region of the internet that is used for targeted groups of likeminded people and is still regarded as the wild west of cyberspace. [2] While social media sites, personal blogs and web pages are the primary places for people to host their own lives and opinions, Usenet and other subscription only website are places only the devoted may ever see.


My Choosen Text.

I had an eureka moment while looking through my music library and came across the song Brazil, [5] it's the title track from a film of the same name. I love this films retro futurism and its crushing bureaucracy. Brazil [6] is a 1985 British science fiction fantasy/black comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam.

"The film centers on Sam Lowry, a man trying to find a woman who appears in his dreams while he is working in a mind-numbing job and living a life in a small apartment, set in a dystopian world in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained (and rather whimsical) machines. Brazil's bureaucratic, totalitarian government is reminiscent of the government depicted in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, except that it has a buffoonish, slapstick quality and lacks a Big Brother figure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(film)


Now eureka moments often have a follow up ripple effect I've found and another song is also creeping in as a contender, a special version of 'Somewhere over the rainbow' by Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo. now if I layer these two with some video and ........ And Blade runner, now that’s a real fav movie. Hmmm.

Weekly Read.

Four Puzzles From Cyberspace [3] is an interesting collection of stories that seem to be written to provoke a response from the reader. They ask you to choose a morality that fits the "society norm" and at first it appears to require a simple black verses white answer, but none of the scenarios is that simple. To impose a set justice to all would seem to deny freedom to all as well.

In the story Jakes Communities we are shown in real life (not online) Jake is a meek, mild, nondescript individual who goes unnoticed throughout life, but when he slips into his online persona he transforms into a sought after author who is loved for his stories by those who subscribe to his style of subject and depravity. But Jake is reviled by any 'normal' measure of society because these are not the sort of things we do in our everyday lives. Jakes subject matter would anger any parent and morally, rightfully so. But in a legal sense what is Jake guilty of? Is it a crime when we write something that disgusts someone else or may incite an individual who you've never met to commit a crime? I'm sure that every modern crime show on our televisions can be held to the same criticisms. CSI [4] and shows of the same style routinely feature episodes that cover topics such as paedophilia, rape, torture and murder. One CSI spin off CSI-SVU is dedicated to sex crimes and graphically recounts these crimes to a main stream audience. The only difference I can elicit is that the criminal (nearly) always is brought to justice by the end of the story. We must be careful not to blur the line between thought and action; because once we censor thought we will have given up all of our freedoms.

In Worms That Sniff we are asked if it is acceptable for our governments to spy on us for our own good (or for the good of the government) the major premise is that if we don't know it's happening can it hurt us and the governments can go about their business and all is well. I personally cannot see any difference between a physical property search which is bound by mandated laws and an invisible cyber search. Sometimes privacy must out way safety concerns; so as to still give us some control over our own lives.


Borders is a different story, it is based in a make believe world of online gaming and asks if the hard programming of the scenario can change the experience or outcome so that it benefits the player; then should it do so. In the real world we don't have this option generally. We as individual citizens rarely have the ability to manipulate the rules that govern us. Not just in legislature but the physical, take gravity for example, we as people on this planet have no ability to turn it on or off, that is a given. But in cyberspace if the programmer wishes us to have the ability to control it then it can be coded for us to do so.

In the story, one characters gameplay was destructive to a neighbouring player's enjoyment; a plant the player designed was poisonous and killed the neighbour's dog. It would be entirely possible to program the plant to have certain characteristics that gave the first player all the freedom to design poisonous flora and for the neighbour to keep his animals safe. The ability to create custom environments is the major draw card to these games; it can be a utopian dream space or a realm of magic and dragons that can offer the participant control that they don't have in real life. But the question is, should each player be worried about the feelings or wishes of another player, or is that premise just trying to enforce a niceness on a world we could control because we can't in the real world.

The final story Regulability, is again one of control. When local government has no power over how its citizens behave online In this case gambling which has been banned within the city's boundaries and because the servers hosting the gambling software can be located anywhere outside the city's jurisdiction what avenues can the government pursue to stem what it sees as a scourge to the city. It is especially tricky when one of its own citizens is the person running the gambling site.

The big question with this sort of problem is, is gambling being banned in the city or being banned totally? And then it's a matter of determining where the crime is being committed. Is it where the person stands or where the action is being processed? Unless all governments can agree to abide by laws set in other countries and physical regions, then I believe it must be impossible to uphold any law that cannot set a physical boundary. This is the hardest part in regulating the internet as it is not just one thing and not just in one place.

I can see no chance of stopping this sort of activity and rightly so. Again it is our freedoms being reigned in to suit someone else's morality or to make their job easier and I personally think it's time for less nanny state and more personal responsibility. And of course this would mean more personal consequence.

Thursday, 1 March 2012

Bibliography and References.


1, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It was developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980 Users read and post messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects, and is the precursor to the various Internet forums that are widely used today. Usenet can be superficially regarded as a hybrid between email and web forums. Discussions are threaded, with modern news reader software, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.
One notable difference between a BBS or web forum and Usenet is the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers that store and forward messages to one another in so-called news feeds. Individual users may read messages from and post messages to a local server operated by their Internet service provider, university, or employer
2, The word "cyberspace" was coined by the science fiction author William Gibson, in his sci-fi novel Neuromancer (1984) when he sought a name to describe his vision of a global computer network, linking all people, machines and sources of information in the world, and through which one could move or "navigate" as through a virtual space.
3, Lessig, L. (2006). Four puzzles from cyber space. In L. Lessig Code version 2.0 (pp 9-30). New York: Basic Books
4, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (also known as CSI) is an American crime drama television series, which premiered on CBS on October 6, 2000. The show was created by Anthony E. Zuiker and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. It is filmed primarily at Universal Studios in Universal City, California.
5, Brazil, (Music) Ary Barroso's (1939) song "Aquarela do Brasil" ("Watercolor of Brazil", often simply "Brazil") in a version specifically performed by Geoff Muldaur
7, The promise is great: the blockbuster and the Hollywood economy. Media, Culture & Society March 2009 31: 215-230, http://mcs.sagepub.com/content/31/2/215
9, Cineplex, n, a complex of movie theaters; a multiplex ofseparate cinema screens; also trademarked Cineplex.  Etymology:  cinema + plex. (Source Dictionary.com
10, Cobain. K, Nirvana. (1991) Smells Like Teen Spirit, http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=416
12, Jesse Walker, reason.com (Aug/Sep 2008) http://reason.com/archives/2008/07/18/remixing-television
13, Blade Runner (1982) Director: Ridley Scott. Writers: Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/
15, Collins. S. (2008)  M/C Journal, Vol 11, No 6 (2008) – ‘recover’
16, Lessig. L. (2007) Laws that strangle creativity. http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html
19, Srinivasan, R. (2006). Indigenous, ethnic and cultural articulations of new media. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9(4), 497-518.
20, Digital Divides, concepts and orientations
21, Cisler Steve (2010) The Internet and Indigenous Groups. Cultural Survival Problems in Paradise: Sovereignty in the Pacific
22, The Kitikmeot Inuit people Kitikmeot Inuit Association
23, Australian indiginous online community, indigetube.
24, Native American tribal Initiative Tribal Peace
25, Thornton, H (2009). Claiming a stake in the videogame: what grown-ups say to rationalise and normalise gaming. Convergence 15 (2), 135-139. (electronic databases)
27, How To Justify Playing Video Games as you get Older (author not attributed) http://www.howtodothings.com/hobbies/growing-older-and-still-playing-video-games
28, Jenkins, H. War between effects and meaning: rethinking the video game violence debate. Buckingham, D. (ed. et al) Digital generations 2006 ch. 2 pp 19-31 Lawrence Erlbaum
29, Grossman, D. (2000). Teaching kids to kill. Phi “National Forum” Available at http://wwwkillology.org/article_teachkid.htm
30, Wright, T. (2002, December). Creative player actions in FPS online video games: Playing counter-strike. Games studies, Available at: http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/wright/
31, Ornebring, H. (2007) International Journal of Cultural Studies December 2007 vol. 10 no. 4 445-462. DOI: 10.1177/1367877907083079
32, Playing on the digital commons: collectivities, capital and contestation in videogame culture Author(s): Coleman Sarah ; Dyer-Witheford Nick
Source: MEDIA CULTURE & SOCIETY  Volume: 29   Issue: 6   Pages: 934-+   DOI: 10.1177/0163443707081700   Published: NOV 2007
33, Democracy and mew media (2003) Edited by Henry Jenkins & David Thorburn ; Associated editor : Brad Seawell ch. 17 pp 271-280