Today was a day just like any other...

Except for the fact that it was this day 21 years ago that I made my long-anticipated arrival into the world. As I sit here at 11:30pm at night on my 21st birthday, I am struck not only by the thought that I have not blogged away for a solid amount of time but also by the shock of how time comes and goes. I have been aching for my 21st birthday for such a long time that now that it is here, it has come and gone in a blink of an eye! I love birthdays, and this one was particularly lovely. I was given the most extravagant gifts which make me feel incredibly spoilt but beyond that was lathered in love in the form of texts, calls, and video messages. I'm a lucky one. 
I guess the point that has struck me tonight is that time goes quickly, hence one should always be living to make the most of it. 
From here on in, I vow to you dear blog one that I will make the most out of everything.
Hoorah. 


This is a rather random post but one with an important message, and one that I will like to be reminded of. 


May the blogging begin. (Or 're'-begin in my case.)

Assignment 3, Question 4

Q.4: When publishing changes, so does society. Investigate and compare the impact of two publication technologies, one pre-1900 and one post-2000, on a specific aspect of society (e.g. education, politics, creative industries, science, entertainment, social relationships).


Please find below the references for arts2090 final assignment:


Beacon Learning Center 2004, Brief History of Cave Paintings, pdf, accessed 3 June 2012, <http://www.beaconlearningcenter.com/documents/1137_01.pdf>


‘Publishing’, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishing>


Innis, Harold, The Press: A neglected factor in the economic history of the twentieth century. London: Oxford University Press1949, p. 5, date accessed 29.04.12


Kamdar, Sachin (2012) ‘Why Publishers are about to go Data Crazy’, Mediashift: Your Guide to the Digital Revolution, January 17, <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/01/why-publishers-are-about-to-go-data-crazy017.html>


Kluth, A. 2006, A survey of new media: Among the audience, The Economist, Available at: http://www.economist.com/node/6794156, Accessed 01.06.2012


Suciu, P 2007, The Rise Of The Prosumer, Tech Crunch, accessed 6 June 2012, <http://techcrunch.com/2007/06/15/the-rise-of-the-prosumer/>


Naughton, J. 2007, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, Oxford, accessed 3 June 2012, <http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/>

Presenting Data

5'10". Brown hair. Blue eyes. Native english speaker. Lebanese heritage. Australian. 

This is a glimpse into the immense amount of data pertaining to an individual human. For all seven billion people who live on earth (http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/), similar data exists on each person. For most people, data collections have occurred from the time they were born, with their initial statistics being recorded on birth certificates. Over many years, data similar to human characteristic data has shifted to adopting a stronger digital format. Today for example, almost any data you are after can be sourced online with the most up to date research and statistics available at the public's disposal. 


It was only last night, that after watching a documentary online into the life of Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg did I realise the phenomenal power of online data that is constantly sourced for the benefit of other businesses, a prime example being Facebook. In the online environment, data is constantly being collected from web users by large organisations to meticulously target individuals with customised adverts. Facebook analysts who through thorough data collection on their 900 million active users (http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/entertainment/25-Apr-2012/hits-900m-users-values-77b) are able to provide all of the data collected to large firms, for example advertising firms to offer plans to market and advertise various products through the technological platform on a customised basis. 

On the topic of human data, I got thinking towards a way to present data that perhaps has not been visually presented previously. A topic that always interests me are the 8 Millenium Development Goals. Perhaps it was after seeing the eye opening BBC production The Girl in the Cafe (which is worth a watch!) that triggered an interest in global development, however I managed to come across data pertaining to each of the eight major goals which I thought would work extremely well as a visual graphic. Given that we are in a group, the goals will work well to form a creative presentation. I feel that in order to make a presentation of our respective 'goal' successful, we need to look at ways to uniquely represent our different data sets. My goal is the number 1 goal: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger in developing countries by 2015. While this may seem like a simple task to some, the statistics prove otherwise. The below inset image is a pdf of the way I chose to represent my given data, and instead of listing the points of information, I attempted to leave a little up to the imagination...

The beauty of a presentation is that it allows a directed interpretation of information for an audience. As opposed to simply relaying facts and figures which are so easily sourced, a presentation and a visual one at that is allowing for facts to be transmitted and a message to be received and interpreted by the audience. Perhaps this particular presentation may not contain such 'visual hypertextuality' (Gye, Munster, Richardson, 2005) as other visual art forms, yet it contains enough graphics for an audience's mind to interact with.

The final point I wanted to mention on this talk of graphic presentation, takes me back to the point about this constant shift we are experiencing with our average, everyday objects gradually entering this virtual environment. In the online article, Distributed Aesthetics from The Fibreculture Journal, the author raises the point made by Vince Dziekan that, "art galleries are increasingly both virtualised (their Web presence often producing entirely different aesthetic and cultural modes of engagement) and their infrastructure digitised." Upon reading this, I immediately thought back to when my sister who works at Google Australia, was explaining the launch of The Google Art Project to me. This relatively new concept relates back to what Dziekan is talking about where it encourages both the 'aesthetic and cultural' engagement from an audience situated anywhere in the world. 

Edwina Bartlem in her article ‘Reshaping Spectatorship: Immersive and Distributed Aesthetics’ argues that "both immersive and distributed aesthetics...can effectively shift our understanding of art spectatorship from passive to performative mode and transform how we interpret and experience community, the human-technology relation and our own corporeality and consciousness." Being able to source Van Gogh and Monet online from an extensive data collection such as Google Art Project, people can begin to interpret art differently and in turn experience it in a very different light, given the its distinct presentation.

Lisa Gye, Anna Munster and Ingrid Richardson, December 2005, Distributed Aesthetics from The Fibreculture Journal, available at: http://seven.fibreculturejournal.org/ , date accessed: Tuesday 1 May 2012.

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/entertainment/25-Apr-2012/hits-900m-users-values-77b

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Roasted Beans, Steamed Milk...and a Cheeky Smile

Different twist to a favourite part of my day. 

Visual Media Vs Other Media

Here is a little (12 minute!) snippet into my visual and verbal thoughts on visual media while I address the question of "do visual media work differently to other media forms?"

Something a little different...

Today Was A Day Unlike Any Other

Enjoying the most beautiful day at Kitchen by Mike to celebrate my lovely Mum's birthday.

Let's Discover the Unknown

So there we were, my sister and I stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on the M4 motorway in a frantic attempt to get away to The Blue Mountains for a rushed 24 hour holiday. All in all it was a successful trip, it was only the two breakdowns along the motorway which made our initial plan to get there in one and a half hours skewed as we resorted to sitting in the car trying not to go crazy. As we sat there, I think my brain was still some what hot wired into thinking of publics, publishing and in particular visualisation. My mind is easily stimulated. As my brain is wandering off into its own little world of obscure thoughts, sure enough we crawl past this sign over head which immediately alerts me to firstly the fact that what I am witnessing is visualisation of text and secondly to indeed wake up! 

I got a little overly excited and whipped out my iPhone, and with one hand on the wheel I snapped this photo while moving at 10km/h on a 110 km/h road. Life.
The fact is, this form of visualisation is working in a number of ways to stimulate and interact with the thousands of minds of drivers that are passing under this sign every hour. Instead of communicating audibly or through colour pictures, the sign is working with words to help us visualise the message which is clearly to 'wake up' and concentrate on driving. 
Information graphics, a rather complex term pertains to the idea of visually representing information, data and knowledge. If we were to get overly technical one could say it is the aesthetics associated with the publishing of data and it usually stems from this concept of archives that collect said data over a period of time. 
After pondering over the idea of data visualisation, I figured it would be too easy to include a subway map of the train systems of a busy city like New York or London, or to include a strange graph with data people only pretend to understand, hence I got thinking of the data visualisation of another sort. The sort that follows here...

I think this is a fantastic representation of data of another kind...a human and the way it changes over the course of time. Instead of looking at statistics on paper of weight, height and age we see it before us transforming on the screen of this man and a visual representation of him every day over the space of six years. Phenomenal! 
I believe it is this sort of visual information graphic that uses images to allow us to structure different epistemologies surrounding human quotidien development. 
Please ignore the irony surrounding the fact that I have clearly written far more on a topic of visual and graphic representation than I have inserted graphics...however hopefully this has been interesting and provided some food for visual thought. 

Where is Piracy Taking Us?

With a whopping 60 hours of video content alone being uploaded to Youtube every minute, there is a phenomenal amount of content circulating the world wide web through the endless number of platforms allowing for user generated content uploads. Hence the evolving problem of piracy is constantly emerging and the response from the public has generated the interesting outcome to the way we interact with the thing that plays such a big part in all of our lives, the internet. 
Although a rather controversial issue, the Internet has propelled our society forward to be discovering and connecting in new and more advanced ways each day. Even the most moral have admitted to illegal activity through the ease of access the Internet provides. Yet on the other hand, through this constant sharing of content there are obvious problems recurring from the owners of the content who are not receiving their owed loyalties and credit.
The music industry is renowned for being the industry which has suffered the most from the development of P2P sharing networks like Limewire and uTorrent. With its ease and accessibility, Limewire turned the most moral of us into 'pirates' yet there was always that looming threat of a virus attacking your computer, however by the time most of us discovered uTorrent that threat had long disappeared into an archive of old wives tech tales. 
One of the music industry responses to this threatening sharing network evident on the internet has been to adapt reverse psychology and eliminate the guilt associated with illegally downloading and offering the artist's album for free but not before being prompted through a pop up saying pretty much that they are thrilled that you want to listen to their music and we only require that you pay as much as you think it is worth. This method has been successful on many accounts as it toys with the human guilt. Here is someone saying yes sure have our music, we would love you to have it. And then there is the hold on one moment, you realise we work our backsides off to give this to you, please feel free to give us something small back in return. AND IT WORKS. Perhaps Danny B sums it up the most succintly through his testimonial to Bandcamp.

Bandcamp is the best thing that's happened to music in the last 5 years. I find myself using Bandcamp almost exclusively as my website these days. Being able to set my own prices is great, the staff is helpful and responsive, and getting paid immediately is soooo much better than waiting months for a check savagely slashed by 30%.

 Through the lecture given on the topic of piracy, evidently there are multiple problems in the ways in which information is available so freely and in saying this is empowering people in ways they have not been accustomed to previously. As initially stated, given the phenomenal amount of content surfacing on Youtube, there are an unbelievable amount of law suits evolving from the apparent misuse of an artist's music that has not been pre-approved by the music label before it appears on a Mother's upload of a video of her baby dancing. It is when these stories surface for example this one which gets you thinking..."how far are people going to take this!?" However needless to say underneath the absurdity of it all, the problem is still there and what are we going to do to fix it? Is the modern answer SOPA laws? 


The final interesting point I found upon researching this topic stemmed from some research into Lawrence Lessig and I stumbled across a talk he conducted with Shepard Fairey. Fairey, who is the famous artist of the Obama HOPE poster. Offering free downloads on his website of his unreal posters, Fairey shares his views on piracy and where he draws the line on stealing. Lessig offers the interesting opinion on the piracy debate that...

It's an important line to try to draw, because some people think that this debate is between those who want to make money and those on the free culture side who don't think money should be earned by anybody anywhere. And that's not the decision, artists need to earn money to flourish and do their art. That's the purpose of the copyright system and an important purpose for the system to play. The critical thing is to draw the distinction between places where someone has been caught ripping you off and places where they have been inspired by you and to celebrate that inspiration.

Take Me Back. I Command It!

Delightfully Beautiful

Today was a day that everyone in Sydney stopped to admire the most powerful friend of ours...the weather. The sun was strong, and a subtle autumn breeze was evident. After a glorious breakfast for lunch in Elizabeth Bay we wandered home and it dawned on me to take a photo of one of the most beautiful blooms I have seen for a long time. Previously the thought of stopping to take a photo of a tree in bloom would have bewildered me, however today it was the most natural thing to do...EVER! The glory lies below...

I felt it necessary to share these beauties while I sit here sipping on Lady Grey tea and listening to a Craig Armstrong classic. Lovely. 

Clear Signs of a Fever

A repetitive notion that I have been left with both after this week's lecture as well as reading into the notion of archives is the idea that even though one would think archiving is the way to contain the past, it is in fact the method of unveiling the future. As abstract as this sounds, I thoroughly enjoy this idea and have immediately started shredding apart all of the platforms I currently use to "archive" and realise the way in which this "calls into question the coming of the future".
The method by which archives are formed is through this concept of memory which is discussed widely by 90's philosopher Jacques Derrida who makes the vital observation on the impact of technology to its relationship with the human memory and in essence the conceptions of the archive: 

The technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the archivable content...archivisation produces as much as it records the event.

Considering Derrida was writing well before the immense rise in social media he should be credited for initially identifying the impact technology was having and indeed forecasted to have on the development of archives into the future. The most obvious archival platform that springs to mind upon archive discusssion is one that I interact with on an hourly basis belongs to the real-time web (Matthew Ogle) is Facebook. Facebook as well as its predecessor, Myspace is a perfect example of a technological archive constantly recording your presence, photos and comments that you make in the cyber world. With its latest development of timeline, it makes looking back through the years to find what you were 'thinking' in 2007 simply with a click of your mouse. Derrida makes note of the concept of archive fever focusing on the idea that:

"It is to have a compulsive, repetitive and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement”

I can relate to this idea personally as it is through Facebook that I am able to quickly see a snapshot of my life in England in 2010. 10 years ago, the ease at which one would be able to jump back to that time in your life would be completely different to what we have today. The 'desire' will come to me at random times and it is so simple to go back through various archived photo albums or messages sent to you from that time in your life.


Another platform of which I have only recently discovered is rather new and deals with purely image archiving. It is called Pinterest and is a perfect way to accumulate various images you find on the 'real-time web' and culminate them in the one place. The purpose of the site is to allow for an archive of photos of which you can look back through at ease. The interesting thing about Pinterest which I particularly love is that there is this complete network of people from around the world that will "Pin" photos from the internet to their respective "walls" and anyone can view them and get the option to "re-pin" or "like" them. This concept of merging private and public comes back to the idea of convergence and publishing in the public arena. As an example of the brilliant ways in which Pinterest allows you to archive work I have embedded some images of my "wall" as well as my "wall feed"...

Author(s): Jacques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression
(Summer, 1995), pp. 9-63, The Johns Hopkins University Press


http://julierenszer.blogspot.com.au/2008/11/archive-fever-freudian-impression-by.html


http://mattogle.com/archivefever/

Actor Network Theory...really?

Well at least that is what I am left thinking after madly trying to wrap my head around the rather verbose texts we read this week.
The best method I utilised to decipher this week's topic was through humanising it in my own way through firstly discussing the issue with my friends and then watching the Big Bang Theory excerpt which not only sheds some light on the complexities of the human brain, but managed this in an amusing way.  
The development of technology over the past century has led society to adopt a need of "always being up-to-date" and having constant access to news around the world. Social media in particular today means that we are constantly interacting with multiple networks that the roles that we play vary from adopting a semiotic presence to a material presence. Whether we contribute the thoughts, the physical presence, or the fingers typing into Facebook each user is simultaneously a contributor. This development of social media has meant that people now interact with media differently and in turn this affects the way we interact in society. For example, when was the last time you caught a train and less than half of the passengers in your carriage were not occupied on their smart phone? 
These shifts in media and publishing can be discussed further through the concepts of assemblage and actor network theory.
The concept of the Actor Network Theory (ANT), developed as an approach to social theory by Michel Callon, John Law and Bruno Latour, attempts to explain and evaluate the relationship between materials (things) and semiotics (concepts) to ultimately make up a heterogenous network (Wikipedia). 
This broadly relates to the concept of "assemblage" which in fact refers to “a relational network of elements or actants in a flat ontology.” Latour states that an assemblage is comprised of both human and non-human "actants". These in turn form relations in which they are all relatively equal, which leads to the concept of a "flat ontology".
In order to humanise this rather strange theory I quite enjoyed looking at the example of a school. While the material objects are there which make the physical attributes of a school for example the desks, the buildings, the pencils.... there are also the semiotic components which consists of the teachers, the thoughts of the teachers, the students, their collective academic ideas all of which collaboratively interact to form this heterogenous network, where each component plays an equal role in forming the network.


Bibliography:

‘Actor Network Theory’, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor-network_theory, Date Accessed March 19 2012. Last Page Update: Unknown.

‘Actor Network Rochambeau’, any-space-whatever blog, http://www.anyspacewhatever.com/actor-network-rochambeau/ 
, November 14, 2010. Date Accessed March 19th 2012

Did I mention....

...that I am ridiculously in love with hippos? 

Techy Complexities

Publishing ain't hard...however with all of the different ways to link, post and subscribe being promoted on every website it can be a world that becomes increasingly overwhelming. I have just spent half an hour of precious time (I should otherwise be dedicating to reading) on researching the different ways in which I can attach a Twitter widget to a blog...and may I tell you it was NOT a successful mission. I currently publish my thoughts and innermost feelings (not really) on three different platforms on the internet all of which are widely accessible to me. I have multiple advanced publishing networks through 3G network on my iPhone, my home wireless connection on my Macbook Air and through the temperamental Uniwide access at Uni. I can constantly be updating and publishing and for me this is becoming so second nature I forget at the end of the day where the distinction lies between the dissemination of my information publicly and privately.
Given the advancement of technology, publishing has embarked on an interesting journey over the years from the early days, printing press to the bulk production of daily newspapers. Yet today, the news industry is faced with another challenge. How do they compete with the growing online world of alternative and often international news sources?
A major response from newspapers around the world is to offer an alternative method of accessing their newspapers, in a digital format. Yet in order to encourage growth as a business, consumers can only access the e-news through a pay-wall. 

A pay wall essentially works through restricting some or all sections of a website until the customer contributes a payment to the paper.

There are multiple opinions on pay walls and many papers who originally were against them are continuously turning to implementing them in light of plummeting numbers of their readership. Felix Salmon (2011)  shed light on one of the most notable papers in the world, “The New York Times is taking a more open-door approach, on the theory that the pleasure of reading its content will be enough to persuade a large number of people to pay.”  Dan Gilmore further explains, “The Times’s paywall…doesn’t put up a firm blockade the way, say, the Times of London has done. Non-subscribers can read up to a certain number of articles before being asked to pay, and there are numerous ways to get around what is already not an onerous system.” Dan Gilmore (2011).

Given the multiple news scouring sites and blogs at our disposal over the internet, I find it difficult to understand specifically how paywalls are resulting in a gain in profit for businesses. Personally, I would be deterred from a website asking for me to pay, not because I am unethical, only because I know that through a platform such as Twitter I can receive links to alternate news sources. As Steve Busfield (2010) states “If you erect a universal pay wall around your content then it follows you, (you) are turning away from a world of openly shared content". 

One major advancement Australia is making in the next few years in regards to technology is the development of the National Broadband Network which the government is rolling out billions of dollars for. In the long run, the government claim that the benefits will make the extortionate initial spend worthwhile, however at the rate that technology is developing, my guess is that the need for a NBN will end up being redundant as there will probably be some sort of satellite internet connection available worldwide which will inevitably solve all of our problems ("tech-y" language is clearly not my strongest suit). Regardless, given that the government is going ahead with this project, the NBN will provide people who could not originally access the internet so easily with chances and opportunities to keep up to date with the online world and have access to the latest technologies to help them in daily life. The online world of publishing will yet again continue its changing course as new users inundate the forums and begin to access their online 'voices'. The NBN is aiming to be a non-exclusive device to give everyone no matter where they are situated access to the online world.

Dan Gillmor (2011) ‘The New York Times paywall: the faint smell of success’, The Guardian, August 3, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/aug/03/new-york-times-paywall>

Salmon, Felix (2011) ‘How The New York Times Paywall is Working’, Wired, August 14, <http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/08/new-york-times-paywall/>

Busfield, Steve (2010) ‘Guardian editor hits back at paywalls’, The Guardian, January 25, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/25/guardian-editor-paywalls> (The Editor of The Guardian, against paywalls).

Old-school is Cool.

For most people, publishing seems like a very straight forward term, yet when one delves into an explanation, it proves seemingly not as simple as anticipated. The concept of 'publishing' can perhaps best be described as, "the process of production and dissemination of literature or information — the activity of making information available to the general public.” (Wikipedia)
The advancement of technology has allowed for some huge changes to the ways in which information is published and accessible. One of these changes can be particularly seen through the development of the e-reader. Judging from the movement from one year having a hard-copy 200 page plus paper reader to the next year where we are asked to read 20 readings online and abolish any form of tangible textbook or reader, one can already see both the effects of technology on the life of a student and as a result the prominence of technology in particular the e-reader. 
Currently there are approximately 100 varieties of e-readers available on the market and considering their novelty only a year ago it seems that in the short space of 12 months they have quickly become an acceptable household item. 
The reception of the idea of an e-reader has not been so widely embraced as I feel most people like to keep the notion of a book something tangible and able to be flicked through at leisure and not left to the pressing of buttons to simulate a new page of words on a screen. 
The rate at which the world is changing and adapting to new technologies never ceases to amaze me, however one thing I know I am pretty adamant about keeping in tact is the beauty and tradition of owning and reading a book with one part ink and the other part paper sourced from trees beautifully bound at the spine. 
Some of the problems associated with transformation of books into a digital format can be seen through the issues faced by Kindle users who raised the question of ownership given that, at the end of the day they may have purchased the e-book however Kindle still have the power to erase the book in the face of copyright breaches. John Naughton (2009) highlights some of the issues facing the e-transformation of information. "Technology enables content owners to assert a level of control over the reader that would be deemed unconscionable - and unacceptable - in the world of print." Although e-readers can allow the user to travel with the possession of over 100 books, they cannot allow the user to have tangible rights to the literature and in turn the user is unable to lend, read and hold the text as they would if it were in its traditional form. This lack of possession thus potentially leads towards an "arteriosclerotic narrowing of freedoms" (Naughton 2009).
I feel that although it is inevitable with the decline in book sales and closure of book stores such as Borders that the e-reader will saturate the market, it will always be important for people to have something that will remind them of past experiences they shared with a tangible book. In saying this I am directly referring to book sensations that have occurred over the past few decades the biggest being Harry Potter. The experience in itself of awaiting eagerly the release date and then rushing to the book store to collect your pre-paid hard copy of Rowling's most recent release was phenomenal and one I don't think exists through the relationship of a reader and their e-reader device. 
Rowling herself mentioned that the e-reader is perhaps a generational thing, however I would have to disagree with her there, being in a younger generation and after speaking to a wide group of friends, one of which has just finished a 600 page paper-back thriller, they all said the same thing. That no matter what, they will always buy and borrow paper books ahead of any technological device. And what can I say? I wholeheartedly agree. 



‘Publishing’, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishing>


Naughton, John (2009) ‘The original Big Brother is watching you on Amazon Kindle’ The Guardian, July 26, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/26/amazon-kindle-book-deletions>


Lacy, Sarah (2012) ‘Confessions of a Publisher: “We’re in Amazon’s Sights and They’re Going to Kill Us”’, pandodaily, January 26, <http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/17/confessions-of-a-publisher-were-in-amazons-sights-and-theyre-going-to-kill-us/>

When thoughts are troubling you.

ALWAYS think of Ryan Gosling.

Treat yo'self.