Mix It Up

In Kevin Kelly's article Becoming Screen Literate he mentions the massive amounts of uploads on the photo sharing site Flickr. He says there are 3 billion photos on the site of which 200,000 alone are of the Golden Gate Bridge. With this incredibly large number of photos Kelly points out "there is really no reason to take a new picture of this bridge. It's been done." This is his key point. Why not use the resources we have and add to them to create something new? Millions of people have already been asked this question and answered via mash-ups on the web. Mixing and re-inventing anything and everything that is out there and posting their creations on Youtube.

One such sensation was the recent Pants on the Ground epidemic from American Idol Season 9's Larry Platt. This 62 year old man's audition song was a catchy but ridiculous chant that quickly spread across the internet reaching millions in lightning speed. Those living on the West coast saw "Pants on the Ground" before American Idol had even aired because of those on the East coast who saw it first and catapulted it to the web. Soon everyone was familiar with the song and began replicating it like Jimmy Fallon and Brett Favre.

Now you might be thinking "What's the point of pants on the ground?". Well their isn't one with the song itself but as soon as the song was aired, multiplied, and replicated it changed from pointless to powerful. This explosion of exposure used pants on the ground to connect our society. People who had never met before could now start a conversation with the words pants on the ground and have complete understanding of what the other was talking about(unless they somehow missed this epic sensation- very unlikely). Anyway, mash-ups and remixes help create unity among people while using resources we already have. Kelly points out:

"After all, this is how authors work. We dip into a finite
set of established words, called a dictionary, and reassemble
these found words into articles, novels, and poems that no
one has ever seen before. ...What we do now with words, we'll
soon do with images."

This phenomenon has already begun and taken off. The results are endless as we can see on the constantly growing video warehouse YouTube. People can now create something by using other's material and putting a new spin on it. Through these mash ups we can see several different points of view on one topic. I think mixes are a fun way to get something new out of something old.

Blurring The Line Of Reality

Virtual reality. We've all been exposed to it right? You put the helmet or glasses on and instantly you have been transported to an entirely different setting altogether, possibly even have traveled back in time or sped ahead to the future. While this experience is highly entertaining it makes me wonder why we are so caught up in fake realities. Are the lines between what is real and what is not blurring?

In Remediation by J. David Bolter and Richard Grusin they discuss how media is devoured by the consumer through three forms: immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation. Immediacy is the state of feeling as if the medium in which you are getting media has been erased and you are really there in the media not just watching it. Hypermediacy, on the other hand, reminds you of the medium and allows you to get a better sense of reality. You gain this better sense because it allows you to look at media through several different views and thus gain a more sensitive understanding of the media.


An example of immediacy are 3D movies. Directors want so badly for you to forget you are watching a movie and feel like you are living it that they make objects pop out at you and seem more real. This "realness" makes it easier for us to become part of the story and more invested in the movie.

emac 2322 Free sells. end of story.

Chris Anderson, in his article "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business", voices that "The Web has become the land of the free." Once an item hits the internet it is a ticking time bomb until its value becomes zero aka free. How does this happen? Well, musicians for example have used this fact to earn money by giving away a sample of their music for free. It's only a matter of time before their music is distributed on the internet for free anyway so why not embrace it and make the best of it. With this attitude in mind they can give away music free online to build up a fan base to better sell out their concerts and sell merchandise therefore earning a profit. He also talks about the distinctions between cheap and free and how these words can make a world of difference to the consumer. People are far more accepting to something free even if the product offered is sold for only 1 cent. Anderson also quotes Stewart Brand saying "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive.." The fact that consumers want information to be free and producers obviously don't want it to be free is a constant battle especially with how technology has transformed the ability for information to be free.

Now that Anderson has voiced how information wants to be free and therefore it has become a free resource, Malcolm Gladwell, states that information cannot want anything. Information cannot think but people or in his example Amazon can and they are the ones who fight to make information free. Although these two authors differ slightly about what "information" wants, both agree about the incredible amount of power the word free holds. I think that if Anderson discussed his six forms of "free" to Gladwell and Gladwell expressed his thoughts on how free can actually cost you a fortune then they could have a well rounded and healthy argument. They both have valid points and could benefit from embracing the other's perspective.

Both writers, though one negatively and one positively, address the effects of free information/merchandise in our technology driven society. Together they are addressing the same topic but seeing the outcomes differently but still agreeing the the word free itself is powerful. Whether is has good effects such as the Gillette reference or bad in the YouTube one about losing billions of dollars. I think we should be questioning how our world is changing with the ability to mass distribute more for free such as music. Music can be shared incredibly easily now and though it's not right it's happening and musicians should recognize that and learn from it using it to their advantage. Build a large fan base and then you are set to sell out more concerts and sell more merchandise to people who might not have given your music a chance if they had not had the ability to sample it for free.

emac 2322 What's in a name?

After reading "What Is An Author?" by Michel Foucault I saw his main point to be about what connects an author to their work. He discusses when a person is considered to be an author and then questions whether or not all writing produced by this person is a piece of work. How do you differentiate all of the words written by an author, or someone not labeled as such, from their work versus a personal journal? Both are written by the same person yet they do not merit the same value. Both do have something in common though, they are essentially stripping the author of their uniqueness. Foucault says "Using all the contrivances that he sets up between himself and what he writes, the writing subject cancels out the signs of his particular individuality. As a result...he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing." The role of the author is changing with our culture and moving from the worry of who said what to asking real questions about the actual work itself.

This idea that the author is disappearing is a little confusing for me to understand. Foucault says that the point of writing is to create a place where "the writing subject constantly disappears." What does this mean? Does this tie into the idea of the role of the author changing/disappearing? I like the question he brings up "What is a work?" A simple question yet there is no simple answer. How does someone decide what is or isn't a piece of work or better yet who is an author and who is not?

An example of this could be any work put out my an anonymous author. Without knowing who the author is you don't have to worry about distinguishing the writer from the writing and can focus on the content. Now that I've written this example I'm not sure if it really fits with what Foucault was saying. This reading definitely took a lot of focus to read through but posed some interesting thoughts and questions that I liked.

3 Steps to develop your own film: Part Three

Major Step 3: Printing in the darkroom

A. Print a contact sheet using an enlarging machine to display your
negatives onto light sensitive paper.

B: From the contact sheet you can determine which negatives you want to
print and the proper aperture and length of light exposure will work
for a final print.

C. Once light sensitive paper has been expose to light you then take your
print to soak in another series of chemicals listed below.

*Developer (here you watch your image appear)
*Stop (place image in the stop bath to stop the developing)
*Fixer
*Rinse (just a continuously flowing water rinse)

D. Finally you can go and set your photo on a drying rack and leave
to dry for at least 24 hours. Once it is dry you can use a pressing
machine to flatten the photo and then it is yours!

So many steps right?? Yes but I found myself wanting to start the whole process over again after the first time because I had fun and had something to show after all that work. If you ever get the chance to develop and print your own photos I recommend the experience 100%.

3 Steps to develop your own film: Part One & Two

I'm taking a black and white photography class at UTD this semester. We are learning to develop and print our own film in the school's darkroom. It's a long process from beginning to end but also fun and rewarding. It's a good feeling to see the end product after all the steps and procedures you went through to make it. Here's how the photo travels from the camera to the print on your wall in 3 major steps.

Major Step 1: Shoot some film!

A. Load film correctly (Make sure to not expose the film to much light or
it will be ruined)

B. Set the proper aperture and shutter speed settings based on the amount
of light you have and what you are trying to capture.

C. Shoot all frames on the roll and let the film rewind back into the
canister before you take it out of the camera.

Major Step 2: Develop Film

A. Roll film onto a developing tank roll in complete darkness. This
requires using scissors and a can opener in darkness.

B. Once your film is securely inside the sealed tank then you take it
through a series of chemicals pouring each one separately into the
for varied amounts of time depending on the chemical.

C. After you have gone through the series of chemicals you can then take
film to the drying vent and once it has dried cut the negatives into
strips to store.

emac 2322 Facebook ≠ Reality

Did you know Facebook is worth 15 billion dollars and has over 400 million users? Chances are if you are reading this then you have an account unless of course you are my EMAC professor. He has chosen not to give into the Facebook craze, and for good reasons, and therefore assigned the class to cut ties with the service for an entire week. Aside from the obvious no logging in we weren't to ask friends to report Facebook findings to us either. My first thought was that it would be challenging and annoying to not know what's going on.

I've discovered just the opposite. I didn't care to check Facebook and realized that the annoying part IS knowing what everyone is up to. It's convenient in moderation to stay in the loop but becomes just ridiculous when we become obsessed.

So why do we have this obsession with keeping up with Facebook feeling like we have to see every post, picture, and comment that people spit out? I think we sometimes mistake Facebook and other social sites for reality. We get so caught up in what everyone is saying they are doing that we live in this sphere of knowing what's going on but never doing anything ourselves. Why? It's easy. Easy to keep a Facebook friendship but what about our real friendships? These should be the most important but more and more people are not hanging out with each other in person but rather across the internet. This is sad but true. So snap back to reality! Go have lunch with a friend or watch a movie rather than send them a bumper sticker.