A beginning, a middle, and an end.

Step one: push play on the video below

Step two: read blog post while song is playing

I loved podcasting. It was like monologuing without having to perform live or in person…it allowed me to write a script and yet speak as if I were in a conversation. But the best part about podcasting was that I was able to put music to a story.

For me, music always enhances life. Whether it is melancholy or cheerful, it has the ability to make life feel like a movie. And the thing with movies is, they aren’t real.When I walk down the  street with my headphones  in and “Daylight” by Matt  and Kim (the song you are  currently listening to) is  playing, the world just  seems to work. Everything  works in harmony with the  music.

Step three: press pause on the video.

Listen to your surroundings void of the music.

It’s as if reality suddenly hits you, and nothing is as worked out as it may seem. In a song, in a story, and in a podcast, everything is written. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. But when the music stops, and you realize life’s not a movie, it’s not already worked out, and it’s not written, it’s scary.

So I love podcasting. Because podcasting is a fake reality. You pretend you are having a conversation, and yet there is music, and there is a storyline, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Step four: push play.

Groove Is In The Heart

Over the past two weeks I have had the pleasure of playing with the apple application, Garageband. Exploring this application has been extremely fun, and for someone who has grown up in a very technological world, it was very simple to figure out.

I had worked with Garageband in the past to create songs for fun, but using it to create a podcast was slightly different. It’s strange to hear your own voice talking back to you, and it’s slightly uncomfortable at first.

The thing that distracted me from this discomfort was the ability to add other sound effects. I have always loved adding music to films and talk shows so this was one homework assignment I didn’t mind doing. I love being able to rack my brain for the perfect song that would fit in, adding a sarcastic or emotional tone to the piece. If you find the right song, the listener doesn’t even realizing that the music is effecting their reaction, it just does. I look forward to working with Garageband over the next two weeks and building up to higher technical equipment that makes it sound even better.

Anyone can attempt to make music on Garageband. You don’t have to play an instrument or be able to read music. Garageband makes music accessible to all, and everyone should have the opportunity to try making music. After all, groove is in the heart…

Groove is in the Heart by Deee-Lite

Podcast: The Tivo-Time-shifting-Radio-Ipod

Everytime I open my itunes, I notice that little purple microphone icon emitting radio waves . Podcasts, it reads.

What on earth is a podcast?!? I truthfully didn’t know the definition of this little purple icon that always sat innocently in between Tv Shows and Audiobooks until tonight. A podcast is like the radio version of tivo. “A podcaster records something–anything from music to philosophical ramblings, professional news or snorting noises–into a computer with the air of a microphone, then posts this audio file onto the internet” (The Economist). And from the internet, people across the globe “subscribe” to this persons “show” and it is automatically downloaded to their ipod. What appeals listeners to such a media? “Heard on the Street”, an article from The Economist says the appeal is composed of three aspects:

1. Listeners can mix the music and talk feeds that they want.

2. Podcasts are free of the endless advertising on radio stations that keep listeners switching from station to station in frustration.

3. Podcasts have a “time-shifting” component (this is where the Tivo aspect comes in), since they can listen to the podcast whenever and where ever they chose.

Will Apple’s Podcasts change society the way the Ipod has? The Ipod changed the music business in “not only the means of distribution but even the strategies people would use to buy songs. No one envisioned subway cars and airplane cabins and street corners and school lounges and fitness centers where cast swathes of humanity would separate themselves from the bonds of reality via the White Earbud Express” (Levy 359). In writer Steven Levy’s article “The Perfect Thing”, he says that the podcast may become the radio of the twenty-first century.

I downloaded  the audio comedy  podcast by John Hodgman called “Today In the Past”. (Image of Hodgman on left.) The short posts range from 20 seconds to a few minutes and there is a post for each day containing a fake fact about that date in the past. The specific podcasting experience was a lot like listening to a comedic audiobook. This one podcast had only one speaker, John Hodgman, which can differ from the radio when there are anywhere from two to four people talking. It was not conversational like the radio might be and included no type of commercials but was intimate knowing that Hodgman was simply speaking into a microphone. It constitutes new media in that it is an evolved version of previously existing medias, combining the Tivo time-shifting option, the radio, and the Ipod all into one.

Media Distorts Memory

How do you see yourself in your memories? Has Media effected this?

In our memories, we as individuals imagine how things took place in different ways. How different types of media, most importantly film and photography capture and portray these are interesting to observe. In my mind, there are three different types of remembering…

1. The Invisible Observer

Some people remember a scene as though they are an outsider looking in, an invisible person in the memory. They can view themselves in the time period the memory takes place. This is exemplified in Harry Potter when Harry goes back in time and lives through the memory as an invisible observer. Nobody can hear or see him but he experiences the memory firsthand, watching himself from that time period.

2. Memory of God

Others will remember certain memories as if they are watching the scene from above. They can see themselves the same way as they do as an “Invisible Observer”, but instead of being in the scene they are watching from a bird’s eye view. An example of this is a music video by Oren Lavie, in which the entire video is shot from the ceiling.

3. Traveling Back In Time

The last type of remembrance is when a person remembers a memory as if they were their present self experiencing the memory again. For instance if the memory is of yourself when you are 3 and you went exploring in a forest outside your grandparents house, you picture the memory in your mind as your 18 year old self re-experiencing the scene.

I find myself in a group that is different than all three of these. I seem to remember things from the point of view of a different person, someone who is not completely me but not completely unfamiliar. I can never envision what I look like in my mind. In my memories, I am this other girl, but I remember in the same way I watch a film- as if through somebody else. I believe that media such as film and photography has influenced the way I remember.

Abnormal Destructo! No Ice Cream For You

Interactivity involves creating a story…be it choosing to take the elevator in  The Secret Location interactive advertisement (IA), or selecting which hairdo to put on an M&M character in the Become an M&M IA. We are the creators, and although most of the time this is an illusion, that is the genius of advertising.

I suppose I agree with Lev Manovich in that we constantly “mistake the structure of somebody else’s mind for our own” in interactive ads. We may be pressing the buttons and pushing the links but there is a limit to the pathways we may take and the designers knew that limit. We are never really in control when it comes to this type of advertisement, but it is the ads that make us believe we are that are the most successful.

I spent about two hours on Samsung Anyflims.net. This IA is an interactive film where there are “10 characters. 1 event. A mysterious suitcase. A fascination with underwear. 10 possible endings. 11,000 ways for the story to play out.”

You pick four icons and drags them onto the grid. They will dictate plot, style, mood, and content. The icon options are a Gun, a Cell Phone, a Martini glass, a pair of Underwear, a Flower, and a Toilet.  You then watch the scenes according to which icons you placed where and attempt to solve the mystery.

I tried 8 different films to try and figure out the mystery… each film had a title at the beginning, for example:

“The Highest Hate vs. The Nave Cherry”; ”The Covert Hegemony vs. The Decadent Frustration”; ”Abnormal Destructo! The Most Mysterious and Confident Train”.

First of all, Abnormal Destructo! sounds like it should be in Harry Potter. Second of all, none of the eight films led me to any  sort of conclusion. I knew more and  more about the characters, who shot  who, what suitcase got placed where,  etc.. However, there wasn’t any  storyline to follow, because I was the  storyteller. I loved this, and I hated  this. I was finally acting out my  childhood favorite, Nancy Drew (the  girl detective), but I couldn’t solve the  mystery and go to the ice cream shop at  the end!

There was no mystery, I was simply fooled to continue on and create grid  after grid. At the end of each film it  would egg me on with “Nice work. But there’s more mystery to unravel. And the only way to figure this thing out is to make more films. What are you waiting for?” And back to the grid I’d go.

This ad aimed to get a Samsung phone that could play these IA films on your cell phone. Did it make me want a Samsung? No. Did it frustrate me? Yes. Did it entertain me? Yes. It was well made, interesting, and made me feel like a detective and a film maker all at once. Perhaps the ad didn’t make me want the phone, but it held my attention for so long, I at least have to give it props in saying it was indeed, interactive.

Steve- Authentic Boyfriend Jean

“The Diesel consumer likes the idea of being a Diesel consumer. It’s the image that is worth buying”, wrote Calvin Callaway, a senior at the University of Southern California in his analysis of Diesel ad campaigns.

Diesel makes their buyers feel rebellious, intellectual, liberal, and like someone who defies the norm. They do so, by creating advertisements that mock advertisements. It is an “anti-corporate commentary” that runs through their campaigns, making Diesel consumers “feel good about themselves by recognizing the corporate duplicity of companies like McDonalds”.

So perhaps it isn’t always the clothing that draws in the fashion consumer…but rather the idea behind it.

My favorite fashion ad campaign is J Brand jeans. Why I was so attracted to this type of advertisement, I never understood until now.

J Brand creates advertisements with minimal text. They  portray woman who are beautiful in a unique, high fashion  way. However, instead of placing them in a studio, they use  a setting that provokes emotions of serenity, relaxation, and  beauty. These girls are laid-back, comfortable in their own  skin, and confident with little makeup and a pair of jeans.

The ads involve a lot of natural hues with only the pants as  the brightest color, everything else slightly faded and of the  same tones.

These images appeal to me because of who I am: a young,  caucastian, upper middle-class girl who wants to be thin,  confident, and naturally beautiful in a pair of jeans.

 

This image uses many of the techniques I just explained. The colors are dull except for the jeans. The girl is relaxed on a rocking chair, slouching in a comfortable position.

The image of the dog in her lap makes her relatable and her hand on his head gives her character- she is caring and animal-friendly. The man’s feet that come out of the left hand corner are overlooked at first and then realized.

Both the dog and the girl are looking at the pants, which draws the viewers attention to the main component of the advertisement. The man’s feet also lead the viewers eye towards the pants.

And finally- there is the text. “Steve- Authentic Boyfriend Jean”. The man’s feet finally have a purpose! This little addition of text adds a story- Steve the boyfriend and the girl live with their dog in some nature-like setting where they can relax in the afternoon on their porch.

“It’s the image that is worth buying”… I don’t necessarily want to have short hair and a dog and a life of relaxation on the porch, but it’s the emotion the ad gives me that makes me want to have the essence that is possesses. And how can I do so? By buying J Brands, of course! It’s the idea of being a J Brand consumer that makes me feel like I can be that relaxed, naturally beautiful girl in the image wearing her boyfriends jeans barefoot on the deck. I am buying that feeling.

When Pigs Fly

ADVERTISEMENT FOR TROJAN CONDOMS:

Multiple components make up this advertisement. Together they work to pull the consumer in, inspire subconscious thoughts or opinions, and spark desire.

The book “Picturing Texts” breaks down the different methods of creating a successful advertisement or image. The text describes balance as the first element of an image. People are in a constant subconscious search for symmetry. They want equilibrium, be it putting the fork on one side of the plate and the knife on the other, or balance in imagery.  If an image is unbalanced, it creates tension that can be both disturbing and engaging for the viewer (Faigley 26).

In this advertisement, the two pigs in the front create a balanced  base for the image. There is a horizon line where it is lighter  towards the top of the image and the viewer’s eye is drawn slightly  to the right to see the couple standing together. This makes the  image more interesting by not being perfectly symmetrical. The  four girls in the image are placed parallel to one another creating  another sense of balance but allowing the one in the light to stand  out.

The visual imagery of the pigs is a use of metaphor, comparing the  men who don’t use a condom every time to pigs, which in our  culture symbolize something dirty, greedy, and animalistic.

Using comparison and contrast the advertisers set up a man who  ”uses a condom every time” to men who don’t (the pigs). The  woman with the “evolved” man is happy and flirtatious whereas  the women with the pigs are unhappy and disgusted. This creates a juxtaposition not only between the man and the pigs but also between the engaged woman and the repulsed ones.

The use of light and dark in the image not only draws the readers attention to the light but creates yet another contrast between the pigs and the evolved man.

The text says “evolve”, which indicates that the men who don’t use a condom every time are more primal. The women’s reaction communicates that women are more interested in evolved men, and therefore men who use condoms.

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

“The maker’s eye is never satisfied”, wrote writer Donald M. Murray, “for each word has the potential to ignite new meaning”(Murray 108).

A writer reads differently than all other readers. According to Murray, each time a true writer reads a piece of writing, he or she knows that it is unfinished. A true writer knows that no work is ever finished, each word can forever be “changed and rearranged, can set off a chain reaction of confusion of clarified meaning” (Murray 105).

In her novel Writing Down The Bones,  author Natalie Goldberg compares editing to a garbage dump: we gather our experiences and “from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones of our minds comes nitrogen, heat, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil” blooms our writing from the very core of our experiences. It takes a long to time get to this core, “our senses by themselves are dumb. They take in experience, but they need the richness of sifting for a while through our consciousness and through” the garbage until the soil can be made and the true ideas can be realized (Goldberg 15).

–>The Editing Process–>

Subconsciously, something in our minds chose a topic to write about. By drafting our minds can further develop our thoughts, coming closer and closer to the reason why it was in our subconscious in the first place, the reason it drew us in.

As much as I understand Murray’s idea of infinitely unfinished writing, I believe that writing can bring forth a realization in the writer. This is not necessarily an end to the piece but rather a consciousness achieved that was floating in our subconscious mind longing to be exposed. ”The power is always the act of writing” (Goldberg 35). Write until you feel satisfied with what you discovered about yourself through the process of writing the piece and then let it go.

Apple-ution

Technology always triggers one thing in humans- desire. Desire of something new, something shiny, something you don’t have. Desires, wants, “needs”. But is it ever really needed? Has it ever been?

Mom, I need an Iphone so I can have internet, so I can have a map, so I can have the world at my fingertips. But there was a time when none of this existed and we survived. We feel as if our parents owe it to us or we owe it to ourselves to get these new devices. And then after a year or so when the next edition comes out, we need the updated version. Why? Because the world is constantly updating. Do we need it in actuality? No. Do we desire what we don’t have? Yes.

“A related psychological explanation for consumption involves curiosity-the desire to encounter new pleasures and experiences.141 Here, a “new” item is valued not because it is pristine or because it can fulfill a given need more efficiency, but rather because it represents a novel experience.142 Under this theory, the consumer is an explorer of goods and marketplaces: whether browsing through a mail-order catalog, bargain-hunting at a shopping mall, or wandering dirough other “cathedrals of consumption,” such as amusement parks and tourist resorts.143 Even more exotic opportunities for exploration are now readily available dirough the Internet.144″

Article about new media & consumption

New media allows more advertisement, new media provokes more desire, and new media is the object which we want. The human being is never satisfied and new media is a huge component of this discomfort we constantly feel as people. We are never whole in our desires, there is always gong to be something we want that we cannot or do not have. Progress in new media will only lead to an increase in this defect of the human condition. We will always want and new media will always provoke that wanting, tell us that we need it, and that without it, we are not whole.

But it feels so real…

There is “chairness”. Chairness “is an abstraction, an ideal” (Gibson 1). It is the broad idea of a chair. When you hear chair, what do you think? What is it that makes a chair a chair? Must it have four legs? A seat? A back? Is a stool a chair? 

There is a chair. It is there, you can use all of your senses to feel it, touch it, smell it, see it, and hear it when you knock on it. The chair is there, it is reality.

Then, there is a painting of a chair. According to Plato’s example in the Republic (Bk 10) this painting “is twice removed and hence it is” a sham chair, a simulated chair, a virtual chair (Gibson 1).

According to Plato, the carpenter who made the chair “would be allowed in his utopia, the painter would not” (Gibson 1).

There is telephone-ness. There is a telephone. Then, there is talking on the telephone. Gibson states that the conversation takes place in the “matrix”. This is an example of cyberspace: of being in your own reality and having a virtual experience, something not real in the sense that the telephone is there or in the sense that the chair is there. 

Going beyond this, there is Jaron Lanier’s idea of virtual reality (VR). This is “a matter of technology that can create the illusion of actually being in another possible world while remaining in the actual world” (Gibson 2). One example might be a flight simulator.

The difference between cyberspace and virtual reality? In virtual reality you can actually believe you are in it. When talking on the phone, you do not feel like you are in the matrix. While your body is in a flight simulator, you mind is flying a real plane. The simulator is “telling me–creating the illusion for me– that my body is there also” (Gibson 3).

Gibson further states that you have not just one “reality”, (the one which contains a chair and a telephone), but rather, many realities. You have the “consensual hallucination” such as the telephone conversation and similarly “consensual reality”. But in addition, you have “designer realities” and “electronic LSD.” Getting DSL in your home is, many people joke, getting LSD in your home. It’s a simple palindrome” (Gibson 3). 

Plato and Aristotle agree that this “illusion of being elsewhere is not good” (Gibson 3). I agree with these great philosophers in that I think the convincing nature of these false realities can be dangerous to society. Games including gun warfare can seem so real that a child may believe they are actually in the game. They kill a character in the game and yet the same character shows up again when they lose and play again. Yet when a child takes this into his or her real life, and a shooting occurs, the person shot does not usually come back to life. There is no reset button in reality. (Incidents like this have happened on multiple occasions.) People can get so caught up in virtual reality it becomes intertwined with true reality. 

A sense of imagination can be part of childhood, believing in myths and fairytales involving other worlds/realities. And yet once this becomes realistic and they are truly able to go there through VR electronics, imagination changes from something that was more of a cyberspace reality (they knew it was not real) and becomes a virtual reality (where it is so close to real life it basically is real).

There is a chair. It is there, you can use all of your senses to feel it, touch it, smell it, see it, and hear it when you knock on it. And yet you have no other proof that the chair exists other than your senses. Therefore, if virtual reality provides every sense that reality does, how will we be able to decipher what is real and what is virtual?