This weeks lecture was called 'Consumption & Production'. Unfortunately I was in Canberra yesterday so I missed the lecture, but I have the lecture notes here with me so hopefully I can sum it up anyway!
The way we view and consume content can be divided into two sizes of screens (Big and Small Screens). I always thought of the Big Screen as the cinema, and the Small Screen as television however television also falls under Big Screen. Small Screens apply to things like mobile phones and iPods.
A major part of the lecture was the idea of 'Citizen Journalism'. These days it's so easy to pick up a camera or a phone and record something that will get on the news. It's so easy for people to make up stories and have them reach a large number of people. I remember in year 8, I read a story about how someone snuck Green Day's 'American Idiot' album onto George W. Bush's iPod. He was so upset he wanted Green Day banned from America. This was something I totally believed, and I proceeded to tell my whole family and heaps of people from school. I later found out that whole news website just made up article they posted. It's hard for us as consumers to tell the difference between a news story or a piece of fiction, as we rarely check the sources (if any) in the article.
As with last week, the lecture touched base on the idea of an short film made solely for the internet. It seems like this is becoming a massive part of the internet consumerism. I guess it's a cheap, extremely fast way for new and young directors to display their work.
Mobile phones are becoming used in news and entertainment more and more often. Was it Beyonce who last year filmed one of her videos using only camera phones? The quality is still not as good, but now you can get mobile phones with higher camera quality than actual cameras (however cameras still have more options in terms of creativity and technique).
Thanks to the internet, mobile phones, iPod's, iPad's and a variety of other technological devices we can get the news where ever we want and whenever we want (I'm always on PerezHilton.com and Dlisted.com in the lectures). Sometimes I think quality is compromised because everyone wants their news immediately so the journalists don't have the same amount of time to research their leads, check their sources and edit it all together.
That's pretty much what I got from this weeks lecture.
The Tute*Spark for this week is to research 'Culture Jamming', and to find out one of the first Culture Jam is, one of the most influential, and one of the most damaging.
Immediately when I think of the most damaging Culture Jams was the 'Balloon Boy' story. Apparantly, 6 year old Falcon Heene had climbed into a balloon which was then accidentally released into the air. I remember seeing it on the news and watching the live footage, waiting for him to fall out or for the balloon to land. It was later revealed it was all a hoax, and now the parents of Falcon are in prison. This damaged their whole family (not to mention the prospects of a reality TV show I heard they were in talks of starring in), but it also damaged the credibility of the news crews who reported on it. They did not check their sources, they were so eager to get this thrilling news story they let quality fall by the wayside.
One of the most influential Culture Jams that I've seen was when a video was released featuring some guys graffitiing the Air Force 1 plane (aka the plane of the president of the U.S.A). It can be found here. This video went viral, and I remember seeing it on the news. Some people still think it's real with one commenter, just a month ago saying "it ain't fake you dump shit". Hmm. It was actually a hoax created by designer and entrepreneur Marc Ecko. According to Ecko's website, the video began circulating in 2006. The video became so well known, apparently people from the Pentagon were checking just to make sure no one breached their security and actually reached the plane. This was hugely influential and a big success for Ecko.
I couldn't find the FIRST instance of Culture Jamming, but when I started researching about the origins of it I came across this website: www2.inow.com/~sam/cultjam2.html. It said that the idea of Culture Jamming originated in medieval Europe, but the modern Culture Jamming we're talking about didn't start until the late 1970's when Jenny Holzer began flashing shocking messages on things like electronic billboards.
Those are my responses to the three aspects of the Tute*Spark this week.
Thanks for reading,
Emily
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