Ideas for final project
Here are my ideas for my final project:
1. Privacy in the era of internet. This discourse has been on the wall for a long time but I think it’s an important subject and therefore I thought it would be interesting to do a project where I would “stalk” someone. It would be a friend that would be aware of my intentions. I would see how far I could go in finding information about this person online.
2. I went to the Meme Factory at NYU a couple of weeks ago and it struck me how many memes there are out there. Even though a meme could be anything really I would focus on internet memes. In this project I would create my own internet meme or build on an existing one and see it’s path online.
3. It would be interesting to join a virtual community, preferably a subculture and see how communication can flow beyond national borders and how new types of groups can form because of the openness of the Internet.
I’ve decided that my final project should be a video and therefore I want my project to be something that allows for me to be more practical in the sense that I would trace something online.
Mashup
I wanted to create a mash-up that shows the contrast between rural and urban. Therefore my mash-up became a little thaught on the decadent life of the city and the overload it can create.
Embedded version is coming, here’s the link!
CC: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
Mashup by Ellen Leijonhufvud is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Second Final Cut Pro Video
I used 383 pictures to create this video. Initially I wanted to do the exact same thing outside the Nassau stop on the G train because that’s where I live, but it was never enough people. Instead I stood outside the Bedford L stop looking for gentrification, hipsters, condos, art and indie bands.
:)
The meme I decided to trace is the smiley face. When I grew up smiley faces were connected to drugs, was first through text messaging and later online communication that smileys became a part of everyday activity. It is interesting to me that the smiley can be considered as such a powerful communication tool. Many of my friends, including myself at times, avoid using similes in text messages and chats, as it somehow becomes an indicator that you cannot put down your thoughts into words. But it really is a fantastic little icon and thinking about it, there is no doubt that a face smiling would be popular. The question is just why it ended up yellow.
The smiley has a quite complicated history and it seems that the smiley that we use today could be seen as a mutated meme. The traditional smiley as we know it today is a rather new invention. According to Wikipedia the smiley was first recorded in 1948 in Ingmar Bergman’s film “Hamnstad” where a sad young women paint a sad face with lipstick on her bathroom mirror. Another early smiley (and the original) was done by graphic designer Harvey Ball when he worked for State Mutual Life Assurance Company. Later on, in the 70’s the smiley became popular when Bernard and Murray Spain started to produce buttons, coffee cups and other items to promote novelty items. These items also had the phrase “Have a happy day” on them. It was not until the 80’s when the smiley was used on ecstasy tablets in British subculture that it became associated with house music culture. In this subculture the band Bomb the Bass used the smiley face from Watchmen comic strip on a LP cover. This smiley, I would say, is the traditional yellow smiley .
On the other hand the online emoticon smiley can be traced further back than the 40’s and was used as early as 1881 in the American satirical magazine Puck. About 90 years later it was started to be used in online forums as Arpanet and it was here that people started to use their keyboard to come up with figurative objects relating to emotions.
Today we use these emoticons in our daily communications, whether it’s instant messaging, on Facebook or when texting, and because technology has acknowledged what a popular meme the smiley is most software’s are now turning our emoticons into “real” smileys the second we type them in. I don’t think the smileys would have mutated if someone hadn’t decided that these emoticons were supposed to be yellow, just like the traditional one.
Psychogeography
My first Final Cut Pro video ever. I think it’s really interesting to see how a neighborhood can be interpreted by its garbage or just things lying in the street. For example; as people are moving in to newly built condos in Greenpoint where I live, I’ve suddenly starting to see Fresh Direct cartoons on the street. For this project in particular I was mostly looking at signs of any human activity.
McLuhan
When reading the Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan it becomes impossible to me to fully agree with his argument. First because even though the medium can be the message in regards to hot and cold media, the history of media and so forth implies that there will still be differences within these mediums. For example there is a huge difference in watching the news on TV in Sweden in contrast to the US, this is because of the message, so therefore the medium cannot always be the message. But to go back to his actual text, one of the things that becomes most interesting to me is examples of mediums and their relation to how we interact with them, as McLuhan states “For the ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs”. In that sense the medium is dependent on the cultural setting in which it works. Ultimately in that sense the idea of the medium being the message persuasive me.
Ad battle
Since this is a blog relating to media here’s something I found interesting the past week. NYC Health came out with a new ad a couple of weeks ago that received a lot of attention for its honest and gross visual of liquid fat coming out of a soda bottle. More interestingly, an organization calling themselves ConsumerFreedom came out with what seems to be a response to that ad earlier this week.
Culture Jamming
One of the most interesting organizations working with Culture Jamming that I have come across is Yes Men, according to Wikipedia they perform “identity correction” by pretending to be powerful people from big corporations for example. I first came across this group when a women handed me a copy of the NY Times about a year ago. This genius move, to create a morning newspaper filled with utopian news, for me really showed what media can create. Of course I soon understood that this was not the actual NY Times, but for a short time I was euphoric. What is great with this type of culture jamming is the fact that one believes it to be the actual brand (newspaper in this case) and that its timing was perfect. Even though some culture jamming’s seem to strive for “fooling” the viewer and that it’s actually published by the real brand, many seem to only hold that notion for a second. Other culture jamming’s seem only to want the attention, which in itself is not a bad thing but then the original brand image ends up being the thing most remembered in the end.
A couple of weeks ago I was given a NY Post filled with news about how climate changes are getting worse and I am still wondering whether that also was a move from a concerned organization.
I do think that it is possible to create a culture jamming without the original meme spreading, the NY Times issue being a perfect example. That particular instance was different though since NY Times in it self was not “attacked” but rather used at the medium to create this message. Other forms of culture jamming where the particular content is switched out still works as a reminder of the actual brand and often as the brand is “the thing” being jammed, it just leaves the viewer with a stronger memory of the brand as mentioned. Any publicity is still publicity. Still a great culture jamming can be so effective that it leaves the viewer seeing the brand in a new light.
In this hyper mediated society I found it hard to say that there is any real choice in media consumption. Even though the choices might be considered endless it is still impossible to turn away and only choose one medium. In the end it seems at the choice is left solely to the individual.
