Spring Roll Making with the Montagnards!

The spring rolls were quite delicious. Here's a video.

This video focuses more on the Kwol's experience growing up in the jungle. Unfortunately, I don't have any footage of spring roll consumption, but I will find some videos made by other students and include those to be seen.

Digital Art(ists)

The digital world has not affected art so much as the way it has affected the way art is distributed and presented.

This artist called Issa distributed her music entirely on the net, without the help of record labels. I mean, I don't think she's very good, but what she did is cool.

Another band, called Atomic Tom, performed using iPhone instrument apps after their instruments were stolen. This technology allowed them to still perform their same music, with a similar sort of sound, but without their instruments:

Not only art has been affected. Any newsflash or social concern can be shared now thanks to the digital world, and in any way possible. A good example is this video.

Digital technology allows anyone to take art that already exists, and change it to make it their own. As we know, these are called remixes.

Remixes are both hindered and aided by the fair use policy. Most remixes are probably made without permission or knowledge of the original owner, and they are usually fine. The confusion between fair use and copyright infringement has inspired a comic book. ------------------------------------->

This comic book puts a particular focus on documentary film making, and how fair use and copyright infringement are a constant concern for any documentarian.

Things get really complicated when something like an SNL skit gets seen online on a site like Youtube. Then the whole issue of copyright and fair use really gets fuzzy, because it's being seen through a medium that is very difficult to control and moderate (for more about this, click here!)

I personally think that the difference between copyright infringement and fair use should be decided on the quality of the item in question. If it's good and well made, fair use. If it's crap, infringement. Here's a really clever one, which I thus dub "fair use." It's good because Glenn Beck is an asshole.

The Very Evil Digital Media (?)

Social-Political Worries

With the advent of the internet, information has become easier to get, and harder to control. Now, classified information is as easy to access as the weather forecast. Is this a bad thing? In my opinion... yes. Some information is classified for a reason. Some people say that we, as citizens of the U.S. or of the world have a right to know, but I disagree. Certain information should be kept secret for a reason, perhaps for our safety.

Social-Interpersonal Worries

This is something I always complain about, but am extremely guilty of. I hate how centered our culture has become on technology, particularly using it as a social medium, but I never do anything to fix it, and I access Facebook and text using a [freakin'] iPhone, so I'm a hypocrite. Oh, well. I still don't like it. So, ya. But I don't like hide from people. I can talk to faces. I do know some people that rely solely on tools like Facebook for communicating. That's just dumb.  Stop it.

Psychological-Emotional Worries

The internet is addicting. And with Stumble Upon, it's getting worse. I get on my computer and will go between my email and my Facebook for 30 minutes doing absolutely nothing, talking to no one. Maybe it's not quite an addiction so much as it is a habit.

It's also interesting to think about how this internet addiction finds its way into other aspects of our lives, from music to movies to research to anything else.

Psychological-Cognitive Worries

This legitimately scares me. We are losing to technology.We are losing the capacity to compute mathematical equations, memorize facts, learn information for the long term, and even the abilaty to spel.

Behavioral-Practical Worries

Maybe technology keeps us inside too much, but I don't feel like it keeps me inside. I feel like I would be inside just as much doing what needs to be done inside, technology or no technology. I mean, Amish people go inside. I went on a bike ride last week, you guys! That's outside.

 

REEEEEEMIX!

Well, this is more like a collage than a remix. I made it using the music video for Bizness by Tuneyards and scenes from "Baraka."

The goal of this remix was to combine the "traditional" with the "contemporary." I decided to use this music video because it had a sort of traditional, tribal feel, obviously over stylized. It seemed to work well with the clips of traditional rituals.

This is the first time I've edited something like this, so there's a lot of things that could be better, especially the timing, but I'm fairly proud of it as a first attempt.

Creativity and the Digital Age

By definition, analog is continuous, but digital is broken up into teeny tiny pieces. Therefore, a digital file is made up of many tiny pieces to give the illusion of a single piece.

 This definition of "digital" reflects our world today, which is so influenced by so many sources and different things that it's impossible to see all the individual pieces, and you only see the big picture.

Sometimes we don't even realize all the little parts we use to put together "one single piece." Jonathan Lethem does a good job of explaining this in his article The Ecstasy of Influence for Harper's Magazine. He explains that even the great works of literature borrow heavily, even directly, from previous works of literature, often works that were by no means "great."

According to Lev Manovich, in What is New Media?, two things, computing and media technologies, have come together. And this convergence occurred as far back as the 1830s with Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. 

Finally, to really exemplify this modern "digital" concept of bringing lots of little things together to make one, Greg Gillis' one-man-band Girl talk has released three albums consisting of bits and pieces of songs by other artists. He simply reconstructs them, fitting them anyway he wants into music.

Combining little things to create one thing, a collage if you will, has been around for ages. But the digital age, by definition, has completely changed how and why it is done.

Social Networking

By creating a social network with the Montagnard Dega people through my digital media class, we have exchanged information about our cultures and learned from each other.

 I'm interested in both the music and the food of the Montagnard-Dega culture, so I would like to do something involving one of those things. Mainly because this would involve me listening to music and/or eating food.

To study this, I would watch some Montagnard Dega musicians perform, especially for various events, such as celebrations, religious ceremonies, etc.

For food, I would just eat their food.

What I wouldn't give for a large sock with horse manure in it.

Marshall McLuhan is a cool guy. Aside from having a hilarious cameo in one of my favorite movies, he seems like a pretty smart guy.

One principle of his that I find particularly interesting is his principle of auto-amputation.  According to McLuhan, each time we, us humans, create technology we offload to the technology something that we would otherwise do entirely on our own.

During the industrial revolution, the mechanical loom offloaded the work of weaving from ourselves to a machine. Now, with the internet, we offload the mental labor and memory to a machine.

Basically, "humans auto-amputate or offload work -- physical and/or mental work -- to machines."

I want to ask this question: First we offloaded physical labor, now we're offloading mental/intellectual labor. What next? The labor of free will? The labor of pleasure and happiness?

According to Bruce Mazlish, electronic media is the "fourth outrage or insult to humanity's view of itself by making it impossible for us to deny our inherent dependence on technology." Mazlish also suggests that humans co-evolve with our tools. Considering how wild and untamed the tool of the internet is, that's kind of a scary thought.

Mazlish says we must reframe our minds to understand our tools and how we use them. These changes will help us make better sense of "matters that are within the frame."