THE LAST POST

So I've just realized that I am one blog short.... hmmmm... well what better to discuss and talk about than the hyper textual essay I just submitted!!
OMG... I am so glad that assignment is over with!!! Biggest head ache of my life TO DATE. Some of the things that really annoyed me with this assignment were the following:
Tweening... woooahhhhhhhh. So I had my whole hypertextual essay finished, and I was adding a motion tween of a jelly been jar moving onto the screen and shaking around. When I was putting it into my flash document, SOMEHOW, my whole flash document wiped itself, and all I was left with was the stupid shaking jelly bean jar..... I had saved my work previously, but I had only saved the document half way through working on it... so i had lost like 5 pages of work.... Because I was at uni and it was the day of submission, I also couldn't go home to pick up my USB stick which had my whole essay saved to it!!! I nearly cried.... so from the references I had I had to re-write most of the essay as well!!!
Some of the things I feel I did well:
Over all I think I am really happy with the aesthetic of my flash document. I think that my buttons are the greatest part of the assignment... (not that that's saying something.) I think for my skill level with flash, though my assignment is of a quite basic concept, it is still appealing and interesting to look at.

Week 15

And so the end is here....

Ahhh so it is that the Uni semester is coming to an end and I am completing my last ever blog entry for this subject!!!!! In a way I am a little relieved... To be honest I don't think I could go through one more flash assignment!! I never knew that an application could cause a person such trauma and stress. As hard as it was for me, I am proud of the fact that I made it through the semester and that I completed all of the assessment to what I think is the best of my ability.

Flash has been difficult for many reasons. One of them being is that it has been such a time consuming thing to do. One assignment that was worth 10 percent or even 20 percent took hours and hours. With a full time load of study, as well as full time hours of work, I was really struggling to function and my tolerance for flash burnt out pretty quick! However with the majors I have chosen for my degree and the career that I am looking to pursue. I think that this subject and the skills and knowledge I have gained will really help me in my search for a real job! I will most definitely be putting FLASH as one of my skills on my professional resume!

Week 13

Hyper Textual Essay Plan: How I got to thinking....

This week I have done hours of research for my hyper textual essay so that in the next couple of weeks when it is due, I won't be stressing to get it done on time! Because I am a little slower than others at using flash, it's important for me to start these things as early as possible so I have plenty of time to sit and make the same mistake over and over again, and have time to fix everything!! So so far I've got the jist of what I will be creating.... Intro goes a little something like this....

An important characteristic of most digital communication that occurs, in particular use of social networking, is that users are disembodied… Users can upload any representation that may or may not represent themselves (Kaveri Subrahmanyam and David Šmahel, 2011). This disembodiment creates an enigma behind the surface of social networking. As an open source tool of communication, as we sit in the privacy of our own home, we often forget that our own Facebook, Blogger or Twitter sites are open to the world. It is our somewhat naïve sense of false security that has lead to many instances where users, youths in particular, have endangered themselves or in fact los their lives. Social Networking sites and their avid users are blinded to the insecure realm of the World Wide Web and its integral form of product within today’s Popular Culture. Users are also unaware of the subconscious media logical influences that go hand in hand with Social Networking.

Researching for this assignment has been particularly interesting as I have done courses previous to this one that their main focus was the sociology behind things like social networking and the role that it plays in Pop Culture. At the beginning of the semester I stumbled across an article posted on ABC News.com. This article in a sense is what inspired my chosen discussion topis. The article was about a girl who had been a victim of crime via Facebook. She was murdered after she befriended a male who was posing as two men who worked for an animal welfare corporation. She met up with "them" and went missing and her body was found days later. It turned my interest to the nievtey of youth and their willingness to trust social networking sites so openly. I wanted to look at why this is occurring.

I think I have mentioned the article in my week 6 post somewhere.....

Week 11

Flash Portfolio: Discussion

Over the course of the semester, honestly I have to say that using flash has been a struggle. Now that I am putting together my portfolio, I am a little more confident with the navigating of flash, but it seems like it's too little too late! I am very confident in using buttons and functioning them to skip to different frames and I've tried to use buttons to the best of my ability seeing as they seem to be the thing that I am most competent at. I am struggling with an overall theme for my portfolio because I am not really that gifted in using animation tools on flash.
I sat for hours trying to figure out how to create a mask in and fade out image gallery for my portfolio but seems as though I just couldn't get it! So I decided to use my skills that I had with buttons and create an image gallery that just skipped frames and went back to the home page after it had finished sliding its images.
After finishing my portfolio I feel more confident now going into my hyper textual essay as I feel like I have the formatting down for a functioning flash web site. I' hoping to try and incorporate more visual aesthetic to my next creative project!!

Week 9

In the reading by Geoffrey Batchen, he states: “photographs are pictorial transformations of a three-dimensional world, pictures that depend for their legibility on a historically specific set of visual conventions” (2009: 210).

What do you think of this statement? What are the “historically specific set of visual conventions” which you employ or utilize when viewing a ‘photograph’, as apposed to ‘digital imagery’?

The historical set of visual conventions are our reflection or understanding of the signs and signifiers that attach themselves to images. What we know from our history of previous and current popular culture trends, gives us an understanding or a visual conception of a photograph intended meaning. There for pictures depend on their legibility on historically specific things or sets of conventions.

This connection is what ultimately gives certain artists success with their work. If people can't connect to or have any cultural understanding of their work, it is not likely that their work will pick up. Ultimately is the world around us that influences artists to photograph.

Week 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?

Andy Warhol
Sixteen Jackies
1964
acrylic, enamel on canvas
unframed 80.375 x 64.375 x inches
Art Center Acquisition Fund, 1968
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / ARS, New York

More Information

“The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away and the better and emptier you feel.”--Andy Warhol, 1975

"For Warhol and fellow Pop artists, reproducing images from popular culture was the visual means for expressing detachment from emotions, an attitude they regarded as characteristic of the 1960s. Like droning newscasts, repetition dissipates meaning and with it the capacity of images to move or disturb. Warhol created 16 Jackies in response to the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an event whose mass-media coverage reached an unparalleled number of people."

http://schools.walkerart.org/arttoday/artwork.wac?id=2363&wid=422&num=0

This particular art work is an appropriated visual. I don't think that this work in particular is a form of plagiarism, rather it is an appropriated version of a still photograph. Warhol uses many famous photos of celebrities and puts his own twist to the photo. The photos that were used in his artwork are open sourced photos that are available to everyone due to their high distribution. To me his work is more commemorative, so he gets away with using other photographers work. Because of his well known name, I'm sure photographers would be more than flattered for him to ue his work as a basis of his own.

Warhols work is deffinitley on the lower scale of appropriation compared to other artists such as the directors of the commercials shown in class today. I think his form of appropriated art is much different to the ones shown in class. Warhol takes something old, puts a spin on a it and makes something new, creatively and doesn't try to hide the fact he is using another artists work. Where as some of the adds on television today that are well and truly appropriated from other works don't do this. Hence the large law suits!

Week 6

Unforutuantley this week I was absent due to illness of the hung over sort! So I thought instead of writing about class, I would explore in a little more detail the epeidemic of social networking because I really find the topic interesting. I was reading the ABC website not so long ago and came across the following article :

Teen's murder sparks Facebook privacy plea

By Gemma Breen and staff

Updated Mon May 17, 2010 2:35pm AEST

Nona Belomesoff, 18, allegedly went to meet two men she befriended on Facebook (NSW Police)

• Map: Sydney 2000
• Related Story: Keneally urges online caution after Facebook murder

Police are urging teenagers to remove their profile pictures and personal details from Facebook after a man was charged with the murder of a young Sydney woman last week.

It is alleged that Nona Belomesoff, 18, believed she was going to work with an animal welfare organisation when she left her home last Wednesday to meet two men she befriended on Facebook.

Her body was found in a creek bed in Sydney's south-west on Friday and police have charged a 20-year-old man with her murder.

Police say the second man Ms Belomesoff believed she was meeting did not exist.

The man charged with murder allegedly set up a false Facebook profile masquerading as someone who worked with animals.

The case has ignited debate on the issue of cyber safety and security, particularly when it comes to younger people.

This article made me realize that social media tools such as Facebook, like anything that becomes popular, attract people with the cruel intentions. Our community that we interact with on Facebook (our friends who we choose to accept) are actually vulnerable to predators on the web. A lot of us have a lot of trust in something that is so open sourced and available to any one person that owns a computer or has access to the internet. I think a lot of the time we forget about this. It's not as if we are sitting with a group of people writing and updating our profile. We are sitting in the privacy of our own home, feeling secure. When really nothing on the internet is safe.

Week 5

How creative do you think you are when engaging with online user-created content websites? Give some examples of websites or communities you visit/contribute to regularly, making reference to Burgess & Bank’s reading this week.

Generally I don't really find myself all that creative when engaging with online user-created content sites. Really, the only site that I visit on a regular basis where I am uploading my own content is Facebook! I mainly use it to upload photos, post some pieces of writing that I find interesting and to talk to friends. It is more convenient now for me to regularly visit Facebook as it is available as an App on my iphone and is literally sitting in my bag all the time. Because largely people around the world use Iphones and other Android or Smart phones, this has become the case for many people, and now more than ever people are engaging in this online community. It has really formed and marginalized its own culture. Instead of calling or texting someone, you can facebook chat or message them, and they receive an alert to your message instantly, the same way they would a text message.

Week 4

Does the dissemination of ,mechinisms of the internet and web, by opening publication to everyone, result in a flood of worthless drivel??

By open internet sourced platforming being available to everyone, it does put a sense of worthlessness to content being distributed. Because the net is so widely available, anyone, anywhere can be blogging or uploading any type of content they wish. With so much being processed all around the world, it causes clutter and muddles the internet with 'worthless drivel.' If you log onto Blogger, all you need to do is pass through all of the blogs that are published on the site to find this statement true. Whilst I was exploring the site myself reading numerous blogs, I found blogs about different sorts of toe nails, to Persian cats. This to me however is what makes the internet so unique. What could be marked as worthless drivel by one person, could be marked as something worth writing about to another. The diversity on the net also has some good attributes. It as spurred on various forthcoming culture trends. Often things that were deemed worthless drivel for long periods of time, get picked up over the years and turned into something interesting. It is worthless drivel that often turns viral on the net.