NMA- blog 12

This is the last week of my new media art class. This course was one of my most challenging as I struggle with most computer programs. The course was focused on the program Adobe Flash, in the beginning I was completely lost and thought I would never get accustom to Flash. However as I spent many hours working on simple button projects I began to become used to the little specifics that need to be done in order for my projects to run smoothly. I can now build a website that can navigate with buttons back and forth successfully, make photo slide shows, open external links, incorporate videos, add moving effects to images, and include movie clips and animations.  I definitely saw great improvement the more time I spent on the program.  

This is the first time I ever wrote a blog and really became engaged in the online blogging world. Through exploring the internet and different blogs, I find myself returning to a few blogs that entertain me or that are useful and knowledgeable. Postsecret is one of my favourite blogs, the idea of everyone posting anonymous secrets interests me. Seth Godin’s blog is also one that I follow frequently and take advice from. One of my good friends introduced me to him earlier in the semester; he generally focuses on marketing, innovation and business in general, speaking about work life balance often.

I also learnt a lot about the development of technology and how it affects the way we consume and share information. The ability and accessibility of the internet to most of the world allows for us to experience and explore cultures, ideas, news, books, videos and much more. User created content is growing as the devices to upload information grow and become faster. 

NMA- blog 11

Patricia Piccini is an artist who explores the concept of what is natural in the digital age. She focuses on the human form and its potential for manipulation and enhancement through bio technical intervention. Her work includes a lot of science as she incorporates activities such as growing human tissue and organs from stem cells. Her work is a scientific process and ethic is often questioned.

According to the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia,

“Piccinini has an ambivalent attitude towards technology and she uses her artistic practice as a forum for discussion about how technology impacts upon life. She is keenly interested in how contemporary ideas of nature, the natural and the artificial are changing our society. Specific works have addressed concerns about biotechnology, such as gene therapy and ongoing research to map the human genome… she is also fascinated by the mechanisms of consumer culture.”

Below is one of her most famous pieces she gives the sculpture of what seems to be an animal feeding its babies human qualities.

Her work mixes humans and animals, the idea of post human and emergence of theory of evolution can be explored. Piccinini’s art can be considered to be bio art.

Another interesting artist is Orlan who is the only artist to use plastic surgery as her medium of choice. Since 1990, she has undergone a series of planned performances during which her face is surgically morphed through the use of plastic surgery. Her intention is not to become beautiful but rather to suggest that beauty is unattainable and the process horrifying.

Cosmetic surgery on its own is a sense of cultural identity and the way society and culture impacts on individuals and their choice of appearance. It has been brought into art and reality.

NMA- blog 10

We often discuss how the advancement of technology affects us; here is an artist that pushes the limits to show how far our body and technology can go. Stelarc is an Australian performance artist, with most of his work stemming from the idea that the human body has become outdated. Stelarc has altered his body using technological advances because he thinks that along with computers, our bodies must be constantly upgraded to help adapt to the technological culture we have created. In the pieces in which he has used technology with his body, you can see the intelligence and research that must have been done to successfully complete his work.

Stelarc also used suspensions in a lot of his work. When first seeing pictures of this, I was freaked out but after reading more about him, and staring at the pictures for a little bit longer, I began to actually appreciate the piece. He pushes his body to the limits, suspending himself above the ground by the hooks in his body.

 He says he doesn't see himself as the art, just the person who is using his body to complete the piece. I find Stelarc extremely dedicated, and each of his pieces is unique.

Below Stelarc implanted a third ear into his arm it is said that he’s also going to implant a mic inside the ear that will connect to a bluetooth transmitter, so the ear can broadcast audio from the internet wirelessly.

NMA- blog 9

Week 9- Geoffrey Batchen-

Phantasm- Digital Imaging and The Death of Photography [1994]

This article discusses photographs and how their creditability is changing over time due to the increasing development of digital imaging. Viewers will question the medium of photography as a conveyor of information. This results in photography having to deal with the crisis of technology and changes in ethics, knowledge and culture. 

The article talks about manipulation, how photographers intervene in every photo taken, just by their decisions of what they decide to photograph and what is cropped. Digital imaging allows for humans to be creative which can be seen as a problem, putting a marking on a photo to allow individuals to know that the photo has been manipulated will result in people casting doubts on its creditability. The change in technology will cause the disappearance of the photograph and the culture it sustains.

NMA- blog 8

I explored the web site of one of my favourite artists named Andy Goldsworthy, a British artist who collaborates with nature to make his artworks. Through art and nature we can use this to get closer and better understand our selves, feelings, environment and much more. His art is powerful and somewhat spiritual to me, it gives me a great feeling and I really enjoy looking at it. Below are three of his creations that are similar using different elements of the earth that I think are amazing!

I looked up his web site; it is very simple and easy to navigate through. He has 5 main buttons on his home page that also appear on each link. They are Biography, Philosophy, Works, Credits and Exhibitions. His web site is effective but I think it could have had a better way to view his art, possibly in a slide show compared to medium size images that don’t open to a bigger version. The exhibitions tab allows you to navigate to external main sites. I also think even though he went for a simple layout to display his art he could have maybe incorporated a little more to its style and a few more of his artworks. Another useful tool he could have added was possibly a way to purchase images.

NMA- blog 7

Find an example of an idea/image/etc being ‘appropriated’. Look for media or advertising for examples. Do you think this example is ‘appropriation’, as we defined in the context of the artistic world, or do you think it could/does border on plagiarism or copyright issues?

Banksy a famous unidentified UK graffiti artist has many artworks that can be considered appropriation. Below is a series of art he has ‘appropriated’ from the Mona Lisa. His work always has a deeper meaning and a lot of the time he just adds to something that may already be there. 

He pushes the limits with appropriation and copyrights. Appropriation basicly is the the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work. In the visual arts, to appropriate means to properly adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects of man-made visual culture. Strategies include "re-vision, re-evaluation, variation, version, interpretation, imitation, etc. Appropriation can also refer to the new work itself.

This is a classic example of what Banksey does, he “stole” this quote from Pablo Picasso who said, "Bad artists copy. Good artists steal."

In 2005 artist Banksy secretly installed his own artwork in four of New York’s major art museums: The Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Natural History. He went in during opening hours and stuck his artwork up on the walls between famous paintings. Asked how he was able to hang his works without being noticed by museum guards or security cameras, Banksy responded rather opaquely. "You just have to glue on a fake beard and move with the times," he said. He also stated that “I've wandered round a lot of art galleries thinking, 'I could have done that,' so it seemed only right that I should try," he wrote. "These galleries are just trophy cabinets for a handful of millionaires. The public never has any real say in what art they see." Below is a still image of Banksy putting up his artwork in the museums’, each image complete with a legitimate name plaque and explanation.

Below are a few more appropriated artworks by Banksy-

NMA- blog 6

Wow, i just spent over an hour checking out the postsecret blog before writing this, I LOVE it. I was laughing out loud at some of them. All of the postcards are creative and many have hidden meanings and are quite deep. The variety of post cards range from light hearted jokes to meaningful, touching secrets. Some have political meanings and others state the most random things

A twist to this blog was that at first i just thought it was a cool site with only post card creations that  people posted, but then I realized how deep and meaningful and advanced Postsecret is. There was a “PostSecret Live” which is a multi-media presentation by Frank Warren, founder of PostSecret. You can see the postcards that were banned from the books and hear the stories behind the secret.

Postsecret can actually act to positively help and inspire individuals. There are different chats with secrets categorized in topics such as, secrets of addiction and recovery, mental health, spirituality, LGBTQ and many more. You can click into a blog and post a question and others interested or in the same position give you feedback and advice on how to handle a situation.  

There are video blogs showing people sharing their secrets. They also show Frank giving seminars and helping voice their secrets so they can open up.

NMA- blog 5

Reading: User created content and online social networks- By Jean Burgess and John Banks

This article discusses the way the internet has changed because of user created content and social networking on the web due to the availability to consumers to upload their own videos, ideas and information. It talks about how major corporations and companies such as you tube and flicker rely on consumers to keep their web sites running and interesting. “People participate in creating content and online social networking for a range of cultural and social commercial purposes, taking advantage of the affordances of online platforms and services.” (Burgess and Banks p.297) He says how some content is just personal and creative for users and others are using it as a way to make money.

Video games are also being enhances and developed by users who now have the ability to create or edit their own levels and share them with users. Social networking sites are developing quickly, flicker went from a network to share personal photos to a respected platform to showcase professional photography. People are open to comment and ask questions about the photos and share skills. Cunningham says, “uploading a clip to YouTube is now almost as ordinary an act as chatting about it.”(Burgess and Banks p. 299)These accessibilities are making life faster and more advanced.

Privacy is a concern with social networking like facebook, people post a lot about their lives that could be used against them. This result in the literacy for computer skills to be improved so that they can protect their personal information and not let the world be able to access it. Piracy and personal copyright is always a concern, “should uploading a favourite song to YouTube without the permission of the copyright holder be treated as piracy?” (Burgess and Banks p. 304) The internet has allowed for the connectivity around the world, giving people the platform to share and experience different cultures, activities, and stay in touch.

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electronic literature- Hayes

Will the distribution/broadcasting mechanisms of the internet and the Web, by opening publication to everyone, result in a flood of worthless nonsense?” (2008: 2). Reflect on this quote with relevance to the act of blogging.

I believe that distributing and broadcasting work over the internet definitely has benefits. By opening publication, it gives everyone a chance to voice their opinions and knowledge. Even though some publications may not be worthwhile I do think that they will just fade out while the ones that are will be seen for their value. The internet allows us to share information all over the world at an instant pace. This allows for our knowledge to be broadened without many obstacles. Online publication speeds up the process of making books also saves trees!

Blogging is a major means of spreading news, thoughts and knowledge over the internet. It allows for you to be the author. I think blogs are beneficial to supplying information, people are able to get reviews, share experiences and communicate to people who are interested in the same things or have a passionate interest in a particular topic. I do not think most of the information over blogs are worthless because people won’t spend their time blogging if they did not already have knowledge or interest in something resulting in informed communication between people around the world. A lot of information would not ever be shared if people did not blog.

NMA- blog 3

general net knowledge

HTML

What does it stand for?- Hypertext Markup Language

Where is it used?- Building block for web pages.

When was the first HTML language widely used?- 1980 by Tim Berners-Lee

What version of HTML does Wordpress use?- xhtm1 1.0

Write the HTML code for inserting a picture?-

<img src="url" alt="some_text"/>

log

What is the term ‘blog’ it short for?- stands for web log

When/where/why were the first blogs used? How did they originate?- It originated from online diaries in 1994.

URL & Domains

What does the term ‘URL’ mean? What does ‘domain’ mean?- Uniform resource locator

When did the standardized URLs come into function? The Uniform Resource Locator was created in 1994

WWW & the ‘net’

What do these terms stand for? WWW- world wide web & the ‘net’ refers to the internet; .NET is the brand name for a set of proprietary Microsoft frameworks and technologies founded on XML web services standards.

When did the internet first become widely available to the general public? It is generally agreed that the Internet broke into the public's consciousness in the United States in the mid-late 1990s, The Internet became popular on December 1, 1996

Search engines

What is the most used/most popular search engine in the world – right now? What are the statistics?

Search Engine	Total Avg	Dec '10	Jan '11	Feb '11	Mar '11	Apr '11	May '11
Google	78.48%	78.27%	77.41%	79.65%	78.37%	78.84%	78.51%
Bing	9.26%	8.99%	9.91%	8.69%	9.40%	9.07%	9.45%
Yahoo	9.14%	9.32%	9.67%	8.52%	9.11%	9.08%	9.06%
Ask	1.72%	1.98%	1.54%	1.68%	1.68%	1.71%	1.74%
AOL	1.38%	1.43%	1.45%	1.44%	1.42%	1.29%	1.22%
Other	0.02%	0.02%	0.02%	0.02%	0.02%	0.01%	0.01%

These were the statistics taken from start owl statistics website. 

NMA- blog 2

Discuss the reading by David Bell ‘Why Cyberculture’ (2007).

A few ideas for your discussions:

Bell uses the phrase ‘material storytelling’ (2007: 5) in discussing the relationships between us and technology. Do you feel that your relationship/history of interactions with technology could be presented in this way?

Much discussion surrounds the ‘digital divide’ (2007: 5-6). Find a definition for this. Bell suggests that in order to deal with ‘clusters of connotations’ in our material stories, we often are ‘invisibilizing those people on the “wrong side” of the digital divide’ (2007: 6). Agree/disagree?

The ‘digital divide’ is “the gulf between those who have ready access to computers and the Internet, and those who do not.” (http://oxforddictionaries.com ) The digital divide is definitely a tool that segregates the world into two groups, those who have access and are literate on a computer and everyone who does not have a computer or access. This is separating the world further as the poorer countries become less present and connected through the internet. I agree with Bell that “we often invisibilizing those people on the “wrong side” of the digital divide’ (2007: 6). Because they are not on the internet and we spend a considerable amount of time online and so many things are available on the internet, we put those not connected in the shadow. Not being online leaves you out of an entire different world of connection and information. The web allows us to share culture, experiences, information and ideas global instantly. This allows us to learn and experience things that we never could of instantly. Humans are continuing to develop faster due to the availability of information, those not able to experience this are being left behind.

NMA- blog 1

Write your thoughts on the article ‘Blogging to Learn, Learning to Blog’ by Jean Burgess.

Have you used a blog before? If so, why? Do you think blogging is a form of creative

expression?

Find a blog that you like which you think is ‘effective’.

The article is very useful in the sense that it explains the academic benefits to blogging. It revealed to me that blogging is an educational exercise, not only used by people who like to write about a particular topic. I have never written a blog before this class, the article tells me the style of writing that should be used, a mix between a formal essay and a friendly email. It shows your character and personality but still works as an informational database engaging the public. It forces us to take ownership for our work, resulting in the owner putting time and care in each blog in order to be portrayed in the way they want.

I definitely think blogging is a form of creative expression, by writing a blog you can speak about a topic of interest to you and portray it in the way you want using words, images, links, quotes and other mediums to express yourself. This is quite similar to an artist or poet in the sense that they express their creative side through their work.

Stephen Downes says it “is a process of bringing life into learning.” Through reading, interoperating, researching, and questioning topics of interest you have the opportunity to engage the community and reflect with your blog online. After being given a task to do in class, we the writers get to give our opinions and discoveries to the world through our online blogs where we can interact and comment upon others and receive feedback on out work.

Occasionally I read blogs to get reviews on a movie or country I am thinking of visiting. I prefer to read blogs than to just read website descriptions because it allows me to connect with people who have experienced it already with less bias to the subject being researched.