It’s spring and now is the time for concerts to spike! Ramshead live , 9:30 club, Sonar and other venues are opening with rock and metal shows. First on the list: Halestorm. This band has just signed with Atlantic Records and they are at their peak. 
Deftones is a band who’s new album blew my mind. They have really changed and evolved their sound over the years. They keep challenging themselves and it’s always a pleasure to hear what they will come up with next.
My mash-up on gay rights, and more specifically targeting prop 8 came together through a mix of still images, interview audio, and background music. I wanted people to view this video and understand the pain gay people and people who support gays were in. With my still images I wanted to shock my audience with protesting images and signs barrating gay rights. Then I incorporated the gay’s repsonse to this unjustice. I did not use much Ken Burns in my video because I wanted the images to speak for themselves and not be overpowered by techniques.
The audio I chose for the video was a popular Black Eyed Peas song question “Where is the love?”. I also included clips from interviewers at a protest and an exert from Harvey Milk’s speech many years ago to remind viewers how difficult and long the process has been for obtaining equality for gays. I did not want to overpower my video and overwhelm my viewers like I said before, so since I had a lot of images I just used audio to lay over them and did not include video. I thought the images were more powerful and more relevant than staring at a person speaking for 25 seconds.
I feel like all my still images are powerful and flow nicely through out the video, creating a story sequence (sequence of events). My written dialogue on the slides were included to make viewers think and then promote a reaction to the rest of the video. I concluded with the gays response on their violation of liberty and I feel that the last two slides are powerful, leaving the viewers knowing that they will never give up the fight. That this is a matter of love and liberty, not about sex or perversion.
A well written essay is clear, organized, concise and contains a planned out thesis. A mashup or a created project including a compilation of images, audio tracks and more can be anything. It has freedom to morph into something else entirely. It can represent a political argument, a political issue, etc without any written words through a selection of images and audio. The obvious way words can express an opinion, pictures and audio can be a more understated way to make a point. It makes the viewer think, observe and come to their own conclusion from the art created than having the information/argument given to them in an essay. In a quote based on Breitz’s art form Lawrence Lessigs “Remix” piece she says, “The act is creative.Active. Engaged.” (5).
Also mash-ups are more appealing and sometimes more objective than essays.Younger generations relate to mash-ups better than older generations since we have been living, accepting,using and accessing different ways to create in this high-tech digital world.
We relate better with multi-media mashup/projects because they reinforce the material. A photo of an abused animal with a sad, yet hopeful song in the background will cause the viewer to be empathetic. The photo shows the topic and provokes a response from the viewer, while the music reinforces that feeling resonating in the viewer. An essay is one type of media, one way of communicating a message. This makes essay writing and reading a closed off way of learning.
That is why mash-ups are beneficial, because they allow all types of learners discover new information on exciting and thought-provoking topics. People react to photos or songs or images the way they do based on personal experience and connotation therefore multi-media mash-ups allow a new way of expanding ones knowledge and growth as a creator, viewer and decision maker while essays just leave a person with a more closed mind on a subject.
Lessig says , “Each of us connects differently. The connection runs deep in some; it skips across the surface of others. Sometimes it catches us and pulls us along. Sometimes it changes us completely….What goees hand in hand with the moment of reception is a dimension of personal translation”(4-5). I believe and agree with Lessig, furthermore I believe mash-ups are the type of media that can make a deep connection to many different people.
There is also is a mash-up project I’m currently working on
Twitter is extremely different from Facebook. It allows users to constantly update things of interest and user’s thought processes, than what action you’re doing this exact moment in time. It allows the spread of commentary on pop culture and entertaining comments and critiques of a certain group of people or place.
Twitter is more of an immediate reaction to something than the deep dark feelings and extreme emotionally driven posts that seem to occasionally clutter Facebook feeds if your in high school or college. However, like most social networks, Twitter also has its own downfalls. The people who run Twitter seem to be a little more laid back than the ones that manhandle Facebook( see Tom Hodgkinson’s scary a*$ article that goes into a deep description of Peter Thiel and Jim Beyer, 2 out of 3 of the top-heads of Facebook). However Twitter’s agency and the big-brained administrators behind it are also called into question. Twitter is still a Big Brother type program, ann is used as a servallance program by many people; such as journalists, politicians, foreign governments, etc.
As stated in the article, “Explosion” by Paul Farhi, journalists can use a search application in Twitter to find out news, events, and leads of stories that relate to their search topic. And if they can do that, them who is to say our foreign enemies are not doing the exact same thing, Twitter is just a big pool of intel disguised as a social network.
Freishtat and Sandlin compared the Internet with the Great West, a promise of endless possibilities and opportunities; and Facebook as the main social connector, dominator, trend-setter and dictator to todays youth. However Twitter does not seem to have such a power-hungry agenda but it still calls unnecessary attention to itself. Twitter is used by an older crowd compared to Facebook. Therefore more educated and highly opinionated users(usually older users) are giving valuable critiques and information on major cultural interactions, influxes and trends.
Twitter says it allows anyone to post “tweets” about what they are concerned about, thinking about, mulling over or dwelling on. It provides absolute freedom and independence. But Freishtat and Sandlin would disagree, for Facebook, one of their main concerns was that all of this so-called freedom puts users into a false sense of security. This concern would also arise with Twitter, since information spreads so fast on Twitter Freishtat and Sandlin would want users to take time to consider what they share on Twitter since it would be viewed by many, many users around the world.
Again with the freedom stance, Facebook allows the user to creat their own profile and therefore create their own opinions. Twitter does the same in that it allows users to discuss whatever they want in whatever tone, language or emotional influence they want. Facebook is not private, it is accessed by many people everyday, it allows you to be whoever you want to be and can become the maker of new identities and alias’. It’s the same with Twitter. Twitter turns almost everybody into an amateur entertainer. A users “tweets” have to be entertaining or nobody will follow them, nobody will respond at all.
Therefore like what Freishtat and Sandlin already concluded about Facebook, Twitter makes the general users into sheep, all of a like-minded purpose, to inform and entertain, depleting independence not enforcing it.
Basically, Freishtat and Sandlin believe that Facebook is tricking people, mostly teens and young adults believe that Facebook is the answer to their prayers, by giving them the freedom, independence and a voice in the technological community and in the vast, scary thing called the Web.
They go into a detailed explanation of why Facebook hits home to a lot of young people in the US, they also tend to lean on the belief that teens are “lured into a sense of empowerment through consumption, and democratic voice is diminished, further re-terrorizing individuals to the point of cultural myopia and consumer conformity” (506). It is also stated that today’s youth is centering their identity on a created style and image, which are produced by advertisers and big head companies that appear on Facebook pages. Furthermore, “any appearance of conformity belies an inner sense of individuality. Searching for a satisfying code to live by and code-tasting and testing are features….sometimes dangerous features”, features accessible on Facebook like applications and brands you can “like”. (508). therefore, summed up Facebook lures young adults into a sense of security. Allowing it to be okay if you have no idea of sense of self or self-worth since users tend to like what everyone else thinks, feels and say. All in all, by having a “voice” in Facebook, people can lose their individual and personal voice if not careful.
The article also compares the American West to the Web, solidifying that Facebook uses knowledge of control to maintain users and to help shape the community it provides. The Web is so appealing to the younger and tech savvy generations because it brings with it vast possibilities and endless dreams pointing towards the future. Just like the Great Western Frontier, the Web has provided jobs, new area or in this case, technology to get acquainted with and use and wield to our personal and economical needs. Therefore, Facebook, when it first came out almost seemed like a God-send. However with every site that promotes “world-wide connection” there’s a catch.
Facebook cleverly tricks users into thinking that they have control over their information and sadly, their personal accounts. In making a profile, users can be whoever they want, most people seem to make up an identity online on Facebook and only add fragments of their real self, creating a security problem. This threatens security because users making up information on their profile can be a different age, gender, live in a different city etc. This can lead to deviants, criminals and sex offenders covering their true identity and replacing it with one appealing to younger audiences to lure them in. Almost like self-inflicted identity fraud. Also, young teens who use Facebook don’t want to be themselves, they want a new identity that stands up to other peers, companies, brands, and other producers/entertainers standards. Facebook allows this. Facebook therefore is a host to the biggest identity lie on the planet. As it says in the article, “Joining Facebook’s community and adhering to its cultural norms gives users the social capital necessary to homestead in the digital world”(514). Facebook allows them to seem superior digitally and allow them to have a broader stronger voice in the world, giving them a sense of identity and power.
Overall Facebook allows conformity and acts as A Big Brother almost, in viewing, editing and conforming us into their community. We are all trapped in this cycle since the younger generations think making an identity on the web is freeing and a promotion of independence when all its really doing is restricting our liberties, not enforcing them.
SO my senior sem revolves around medieval arthurian tradition and its reappearance in the Victorian era through art and poems, and then again in the 21st century through novels, video-games etc.
During my research I found this dude: Howard Dvaid Johnson and his kinda dorky but cool tribute to Pre-Raphaelite art.
As a writer I wanted to focus on applications that would allow writing, editing and drafting on an online site. Writeboard and writely are applications of such, and have many different tool to help a person or group of people to advance their projects online. Obviously the convince of such an application is to have full access of whatever you are creating because it is found on the web and does not have to be accessed on the same hard drive.
Whiteboard
Writeboard is a professional writing collaborative site that appeals to many different people, such as students and professors, writers and song lyricists, bloggers and freelancers, poets and journalists, etc. Writely has the same set-up and forwards you to Google docs if you are a gmail user. Writely seems accessible to more people since many people have gmial accounts, but writeboard comes across as more professional and has easier “how-to” access, plus an easier and more readable and manageable layout.
GoogleDocs
Both allow uploading of files and multiple viewers and note of changes. However writboard becomes infinitely more superior in the fact that it shows each edit and correction by highlighting it and displays the time when corrections were made by each user. You can also compare various editions of the piece in progress and can comment on these editions as well. This application also allows the users to invite whoever they want to the project as well.
In comparison Google Docs allows minimum edit options and is not layed out as easily readable and professional. Also Google Docs does not allow comments or highlighted changes or informs you of who changed what at what specific time.
Therefore, writeboard is recommended for the more professional crowd in the editing and drafting business since it is more advanced and targeted to creative professionals, while Google Docs is an older vw=ersion of writeboard without the many options listed above. This app would be more suited for high school or college students who are not majoring in a professional writing field. Writeboard is targeted to a more advanced and specific field of writing individuals while Google docs is directed to the general public’s use.
Otep’s Blog
