Last day and last project
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Today was the last CommLab class for the semester. It was great to check out everyone's projects and to see what they have been working on. I did a stop motion/time lapse video.
posted by Amanda @ 12/11/2007 03:11:00 AM, ,
Marshall McLuhan
Monday, December 3, 2007
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
A couple of weeks ago, we were asked to read and comment on the first two chapters of Understanding Media. I had a hard time finding the book, but this weekend found it online and was finally able to sit down with it.
It took me a little while to get into it, but when I did I found it insightful. The line that resonated with me most was For the "message" of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. Many of the readings that we have done for class this semester were written long before the internet, and much of the media that we have been looking at, was created. For that reason, I found McLuhan's work particularly interesting, as it seems to have carried forth and remain accurate.
The medium is the message because the medium "shapes and controls" human action, reaction and interaction. So, is he saying that the message is always less important than the medium through which it is conveyed? Yes, I believe he is. It would be my take that it is, in fact, a combination of the medium and the motivation/thought behind the message that is the message. I would argue that the medium is never the totality of the message. I do agree, though, that changes of pace and scale are critical points in this discussion. Without scale, is there a message at all? (Thinking about the current state of digital media).
McLuhan's use of light as a focus of his discussion is interesting in a lot of ways. He writes that electric light "escapes attention as a communication medium", though I'm not sure that's the truth. At least not entirely. Our media is largely based on light. Photography and film were developed specifically to build upon the foundation of light and to harness it; to write with light. We are using light to interpret, while simultaneously interpreting light.
McLuhan's argument is persuasive, though could be well served by a touch of nuance. Clearly media informs our experience and the ways in which we absorb and react to information, but I think it is simplistic to claim that our reactions are informed solely by media. I would contend that, at least on occasion, there is an independent message that deserves equal consideration.
In Chapter 2 McLuhan approaches the idea of hot and cold media. Again, on this point (that a hot medium supplies the viewer/listener with more information and thus leaves less room for interpretation) I would argue that this needs to be examined delicately as well. By virtue of his elevation of certain senses, it would seem that this argument isn't completely infallible. What about someone who is blind? I would be willing to bet that the radio should be approached differently with that person in mind than it should be for someone who is sighted. Additionally, I would take issue, at least at this point, with the notion that hot media leaves less room for participation. It just seems all to general. I understand his point, and though I think it is valid, I would say that he fails to consider the idiosyncrasies of individuals. There is something to be said for the participation of the mind when listening to a lecture. I wouldn't say that a lecture is inherently less participatory than a seminar. I would say it really depends on how one defined participation.
posted by Amanda @ 12/03/2007 11:40:00 PM, ,
Flash Animation
Our assignment this week was to do a 30sec. animation using Flash. I strayed pretty seriously from the storyboard that I had done earlier, but the concept was pretty much the same. I wanted to have a group of people waiting for a light or a bus or something, who were just sort of standing there. The main character was to have something to happen to them, and the others were to have no reaction. I had a vision of the kinds of characters that I wanted (photographic bodies, with plain colorful, stick-figure style heads). I spent a lot of time working on the characters, and had a lot of problems with my machine (RAM?). What I managed to get up was a framework for what could potentially be a rich animation, though it really is just a framework. It would be the kind of thing that might be a good project for the last week if I hadn't already started something else.
Blogger isn't uploading video right now, but here's a link to the QT file.
posted by Amanda @ 12/03/2007 10:23:00 PM, ,
Animation in Flash
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
This week, we are working on Flash animations. As a first step, we storyboarded out or animations to help in the planning. I storyboarded something pretty simple - a line of people waiting (either for a bus to change, or for a walk signal). They are all fairly non-descript, though one stands out slightly (clothes? hair?).. they wait and wait, expressionless, the 'special' character looks around cautiously, eyes back and forth, and then begins to dance wildly. No one else notices.. the character stops, the light changes and they all cross (or board). It seems simple, but I know the animation is going to take a long time, and the idea has been tweaked slightly since going over the program in class. It's been years since I've used Flash, and even then I never really used it for animation. The last version I used was v.5, obviously there have been a lot of changes made since then. I'm looking forward to trying it out.
posted by Amanda @ 11/27/2007 08:41:00 PM, ,
Sound
Monday, November 19, 2007
This week we worked on sound in CommLab, so I learned a little bit about Audacity, Garageband and general compression and audio issues. Vikram and I made a spoken word/vinyl sample piece. Here's the aiff.
I also started working on a song myself as well. Here's the aiff for that one.
posted by Amanda @ 11/19/2007 12:43:00 PM, ,
Clay Shirky's Fame versus Fortune and Scout McCloud's Misunderstanding Micropayments: BitPass, Shirky and The Good Idea that Refuses to Die
Monday, November 12, 2007
Clay Shirky's Fame versus Fortune and Scout McCloud's Misunderstanding Micropayments: BitPass, Shirky and The Good Idea that Refuses to Die
The readings this week were thought provoking. I have a tendency to agree with Clay Shirky, but I tried to put that aside for the purpose of evaluating and understanding his critique of micropayment systems, and Scott McCloud's defense of them (or at least BitPass). Shirky argues that BitPass is doomed to fail and that simple mental transaction costs will act as a deterrent to buying online content, regardless of how low the dollar cost is. All I can do to see whether I agree is to examine my personal behavior online. I buy content, but only through iTunes. I don't download other individual tracks, even though I can on other sites..figuring out where and how to do it is more time consuming than using iTunes especially in the last few years. Is this because I think the record companies deserve my money? not particularly. Do i think the musicians deserve/are entitled to my money? Definitely. Would I purchase a track from a musician's website? Probably not. Granted this logic is flawed. I don't claim that this makes sense, I'm just making a comment on my purchasing behavior. To put it plainly, I'm done with entering my credit card number on web sites.. not because identity theft makes me nervous (though it does), but because there is no reason for me to do it. I am tired of opening accounts and making up passwords and deciphering captchas. It's boring and I have better things to do. So, would I put in the effort to open a BitPass account so I can pay someone 25cents? No, I wouldn't. In fact, i'd rather pay 10 dollars for one of Scott McCloud's books than pay 25cents for one of them. A micropayment just isn't enough motivation to invest five minutes into setting up another account. From my perspective as a consumer of online content, this system was doomed to fail. Honestly, if it's 25cents, I'd rather not read it. If it's 5 dollars, then maybe it's worth the account setup. Yes, this seems illogical, but these are my patterns. Additionally, I think we live in a culture where value is ascribed by cost. I don't think the world should be this way, but often times it is.. people who charge more for their work (not content specifically, but hourly rate for example..) are taken more seriously.. shoes that cost more are more coveted.. On the other hand, the standard is largely free content. Though I was interested in reading op-eds in the Times and looking through the archive, I did not join TimesSelect. It just seemed crazy to pay for online content. It seems that the majority felt the same was that I did, given that TimesSelect no longer exists. We have millions of pages to choose from at any moment of the day... That being said, I donate monthly to some of the blogs that I read and support NPR, because I feel it's important to support media that is “free” to consumers. I think for me it's not paying for content that is a put-off, it's setting up accounts. I think that's why we see iTunes succeeding so famously.. one account, one password, one mass of largely commercial music. If I want something else that's not available on iTunes, I buy the cd .. or the record!
I like Scott McCloud, I think he's one of the most talented and inventive people creating media today. I own his books and I would buy more, but I would not pay 25cents to see one of his comics online. If I had been presented with the idea for BitPass in 2003, I think I would have predicted its demise as well. After reading both of these pieces, I checked out BitPass on Wikipedia: On January 19th, 2007 Bitpass announced that they were shutting down, and operations officially closed on January 26th, 2007. No immediate reason for closure was given.
posted by Amanda @ 11/12/2007 12:26:00 AM, ,
Video
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Yesterday Tymm, Kacie and I shot our video at Tymm's apartment in Carroll Gardens. Though we had story boarded the shoot entirely, actually carrying it out was more complicated than we had anticipated. The most difficult aspect of shooting was definitely the lighting. We took out a couple of tripods, a DV camera, a lighting kit, shotgun mic and a beachtek from ITP to do our basic shoot. We haven't watched the video yet, but hopefully we have enough footage to edit together something cohesive. It's much more clear to me now that pre-production is equally as important as the other stages of a film shoot.
Here's a super-compressed version of the video that we made:
posted by Amanda @ 10/28/2007 03:19:00 PM, ,