Net Neutrality

Interesting article from Newsweek about an FCC hearing and Net Neutrality:



http://www.newsweek.com/id/117068

~julia

site for digital conversion

http://www.squared5.com/
if you download their software and put it in your application folder, you can convert DVDs to very good digital files for editing or making slide shows.

another useful site is Video Lan Controller http://www.videolan.org/
This is very good for converting PAL files (European standard video) into NTSC (US/Japanese standard). If I ever have a DVD I can't open, I find that opening with VLC always works.
DeeDee

Zillatube

So, like I was saying in class, at zillatube.com, there's a program that you can download to convert files downloaded from Youtube so that you can save them onto a hard drive or dvd. It only supports Windows, but as Brittany mentioned, you can do the same thing using some of the programs available at the media cloisters.

-Laura

Learning To Love You More

Asher's post about Things I Will Mail You reminded me of a project I stumbled upon a year or two ago called Learning To Love You More.

"Learning to Love You More is both a web site and series of non-web presentations comprised of work made by the general public in response to assignments given by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. Participants accept an assignment, complete it by following the simple but specific instructions, send in the required report (photograph, text, video, etc), and see their work posted on-line. Like a recipe, meditation practice, or familiar song, the prescriptive nature of these assignments is intended to guide people towards their own experience."

What drew me to the site/project was its interactive nature, that it went beyond people communicating online. Because of the site, people actually went out and did something and those somethings contribute to the further development of the site. Like Things I Will Mail You, easier ones (like draw a constellation from someone's freckles) have more completed assignments but all of the ones I've checked have some reports.

The most recent assignment involves Democracy Now:
Go to http://www.democracynow.org/streampage.pl and watch the current show. When the segment is over, choose someone from the news who made an impression on you. Imagine that you are them, and act out a moment of their day today. Choose an ordinary moment, one without dialogue, when they are alone - maybe the moment after they hang up the phone, or before they go to sleep. It doesn't matter what they are doing, only that you try to feel what it feels like to be them today, given what you know about their life right now. Take a picture of this moment, with the help of a self-timer or a friend. Don't bother dressing up like them, don't worry if you aren't the same race or gender as them. (And don't choose going to the bathroom, everyone else will do that.) Send the caption for the photo in an email - it should include the relevant news, for example: Monday, August 13, 2007: After Resigning as Presidential Advisor, Carl Rove Looks into The Refrigerator

Here's one of the reports:
Daniel Post
Los Angeles, California USA

Wednesday, January 9, 2008: After lending his support to candidate John Edwards on stage in New Hampshire, Desperate Housewives star James Denton reads the label of his new facial cleanser.

- Allison

Holla Back NYC

Some blog surfing led me to this website. The site is intended to be an outlet and outreach for women and LGBTQ individuals who are targets of sexual harassment in public places. The site encourages people to empower themselves and others in response to these encounters by posting photographs of their harassers or accounts of their experiences, calling out harassers and compiling a years-long archive of unwelcome approaches.

Acknowledging that confronting harassers straight on can be dangerous, this site allows for some measure of holding harassers accountable. And this is not eye-for-an-eye retribution. It is making visible a hidden, abusive power dynamic by ensuring that those who use this power cannot hide behind their assumed entitlement to other people’s bodies. Cell phones at the ready!



Polina

Life in the Nine

I'm not sure if anyone else has heard of this yet, but there is a new blog by Vassar Students entitled "Life in the Nine". The Nine corresponds to the nine dorms on campus. 20 students participate regularly, giving the site the tagline "9 houses, 20 voices, 1 blog". They talk about pretty much anything to do with the college or the dorms, and in this way the blog acts as a decent reservoir of information. Also, I am personally very interested in technology's ability to shrink physical space (for those of you who haven't read Schivelbusch's "The Railway Journey", I'd highly recommend it), and despite the close vicinity of the dorms, the attraction of the internet prevails. If you guys want to check out it out, here it is.

Also, I find this video somewhat relevant to our class.

-Eric

Tarleton Gillespie, and on a separate note, Net Neutrality Hearing

Some of the media studies students in last semester’s senior seminar may remember looking briefly in class at the blog by Tarleton Gillespie, whose book Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture we read in the latter half of the course. I thought I would share his blog, named “Scrutiny,” with the rest of the class as it’s a very good way to familiarize yourself with the different debates and facets of intellectual property rights and copyright law in the digital age. On the right you’ll see a bunch of links some other blogs, including one by Lawrence Lessig, another MS staple worth checking out, who’s leading the creative commons licensing movement and is currently launching a movement to alter the “economy of influence” in Washington (“Change Congress,” the most recent entry on Gillespie’s blog).

Net Neutrality PS: I know linking to three blogs in one entry is probably a bit too much, but I was just exploring some of the blogs Gillespie links to and I remembered having a brief discussion on net neutrality in class a few weeks ago, so I thought I’d just quickily share. Boing Boing posted a story about the public FCC hearing in Boston yesterday regarding recent allegations that telecommunications megacompanies have been filtering customers’ internet and text message traffic.
Apparently, Comcast paid many people, employees and nonemployees alike, to arrive very early to the hearing and take up seats so that opponents would be denied entry. Comcast has admitted it hired nonemployees to hold seats or places in line for their employees, but others allege that most of these guys took a seat, denying hundreds of punctual would-be-attendees and reporters entry.

Shadowhood: A hero’s journey

When we were talking about the Children’s Media Project last week I was reminded of this very nice video I watched of theirs. Shadowhood: A hero’s journey (http://www.childrensmediaproject.org/article.asp?showid=139) is a very nicely put together film about “at risk” youth and it tells the story of two youth in Poughkeepsie, one who has just been released from the criminal justice system and the other who is desperately trying to get his GED and a job in order not to end up incarcerated. I really liked that the movie was told from the point of view of students and youth in Poughkeepsie and it is very poignant in terms of the troubles youth face today. It not only talks about systemic issues in the educational and criminal justice system, but also addresses issues of peer pressure, life goals, opportunities, race and etc. It's really a good movie and could be a great resource for students and teachers.

Juliana

Things That I Will Mail You...

Apparently, this guy David Horovitz has a blog in which he posts things he will do for money. Things like:

If you give me $4,444 I will go to the Island of St Helena. I will take a photograph of the sky and mail it to you from there. Nothing else.

Its an interesting concept and some people have followed up on his cheaper proposals.

-Asher

"I approve of messages," or "Barack Obama cancelled 'My So-Called Life'"

A new Hillary Clinton ad on YouTube.


- freddy

reverend billy arrested for reciting first amendment

Here's the video DeeDee mentioned in class about Reverend Billy getting arrested for reciting the first amendment:

Quarterlife

I'm curious to know if you guys have all seen "Quarterlife" yet. It's the new show from the guys who created "My So Called Life"except there's a catch - the show doesn't air - rather it streams on Myspace and on Quarterlife's own website. Obviously I don't need to explain why I think this is interesting. This is the first network quality series that has no major television network backing it. The goal is to be viewed on the web. That's it.

Narratively, the show follows a quirky female lead who is constantly leaning how hard it is to be twenty-something in Los Angeles, and in her spare time she keeps a video blog or vlog on the show's version of quarterlife.com. The show is about public and private lives and the ways in which the internet complicates human relationships (EVERYONE on the show is in love with EVERYONE else).

But what is really interesting is that the show was recently purchased by GE and will air on NBC starting next Tuesday night. The online installments are new twice a week at 12 minutes a piece - the NBC version will be 1 hour long. This raises certain issues in entertainment that I think we could apply to news media as well.

Essentially, is our society so doomed that the material we produce as counter-culture will inevitably become pop culture? Or is this a pioneering example the decline in what we consider mainstream media as one of the most notorious companies in media is turning to vlog inspired webisodes to repair its shattered relationship with its public?

--Evan

Watch the pilot:

Barack Obama came to see your play and HIllary Clinton drank from your glass

barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com

hillarlyclintonisyournewbicycle.com

These are hilarious pro-Obama and anti-Clinton links. What's really interesting about them is that there is no way to see who created the links or where they're from or any other information about them. They are just floating around out there on the web. 

These are just some of the Obama/Clinton alternative media I've been sent that is clearly made by and/or for college-aged kids. 

Here's another pretty great one:

"I got a crush...on Obama" by Obama Girl 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU

This is the "original" Obama Girl song. The first time I watched it, I couldn't help wondering what exactly Obama Girl could have been thinking. But! Almost 6.5 MILLION views already! Young people are taking campaign advertising into their own hands. Finally, young people have the space and resources to have a voice in the election- although what we are doing with this space is an interesting take on politics....

Here are the Obama Girl "rebuttals:"

"I've Got a Crush on Hillary (take that Obama Girl!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLSWudoqtWE

"I've got a crush on Ron Paul:"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uaqG0eWCcw&NR=1

-Marisa

OneDotZero

This week I thought I'd blog about probably the coolest multimedia exhibition you'll ever see. OneDotZero is an international traveling exhibition of incredible artistic talent and new media technology. It gives an international platform for video artists, graphic artists, plastic media artists from the underground and from well known studios. I was lucky enough to attend it in Buenos Aires while I was studying there my junior year. There was a room with independent short film using digital video in urban environments, an animation room featuring cutting edge demo reels from Japanese and European studios and artists, and a gallery of paintings and hand drawn concepts from various artists around the globe. One of my favorite rooms was the animation room, where 2 big inflated cartoon robots had a conversation while their changing emotions were projected onto their faces by overhead projectors. A really dynamic and whimsical exhibit.

Another incredible room was filled with viewscreens and what I can only describe as "holocubes". Each cube had a specific object or image built into it, and when you picked up the cube and brought it over a specific sensor, you could see yourself on a viewscreen holding a holographic representation of blossoming tree or a raging snowstorm. As you held the cube at different angles, the tree (or other object) on the screen would grow, bloom, and eventually wilt up, left, right, or totally upside down right in your hands. I spent a lot of time in this combination of actual and digital space, soaking in the image of the virtual cherry blossoms falling any way I directed them.
What's more, the whole process of discovery was being simulcast on the web at the official website, adding yet another level of mediation, perhaps even approaching hypermediation? (That was for the MedS peeps).


The whole exhibition is a tour de force of creative talent and relentless expansion of the boundaries of traditional media. Check out the website, and for jeebus' sake, if you're anywhere nearby when it comes to town, GO!

www.onedotzero.com



~Ben D

Periscope Radio

Back in his Carleton College days in Minnesota, my brother was involved with the school’s radio station, KRLX, more specifically, with their Periscope Radio program, running sort of short, low budg versions of the kind of topic-focused features done by NPR shows like This American Life or Talk of the Nation. I remembered I had a couple of mp3s on my computer so I thought I’d share them. The first is on the school’s yellow bike program, suspiciously similar to our own pink bike program. They do an interview with the student who got the program up and running then interview students around campus who have stories to share about the yellow bikes.
Though I’m not a regular listener, I know that while my brother was there, Periscope primarily created features smaller in scope, looking to college life or the local area and culture around the small rural town of Northfield. I remember one episode that focused on the area’s cattle and beef industry, for which my brother conducted some interviews at a nearby slaughterhouse.
Occasionally, though, Periscope aired shows that students had prepared during their travels. The second clip I dug up was from the show my brother prepared during a fellowship trip to Iceland to research the national culture of geothermal pools. I could only find the intro, but here it is. Generally, though, I think they stuck to the local, so that’s just for fun. A quick glance at their current blog suggests that they’ve focused more exclusively on internal college culture recently.
I’m not too familiar with WVKR, so I was wondering if anyone knew whether we had any similar shows at Vassar that focus on college or Hudson Valley social/cultural topics rather than music or politics. ????

Manufactured Landscapes/E-Waste

I recently saw this documentary, "Manufactured Landscapes," about a photographer named Edward Burtynsky, who takes photos of nature transformed through industry, such as oil fields and mines. The documentary highlights the paradox between developing new technologies and producing hazardous electronic waste (e-waste), but mainly focuses on the images of emerging industrial landscapes around the world and lets the viewer decide what it all means. While the new technologies seem to benefit Western nations, all of the waste of old technologies end up in countries such as China, where most of the devices were actually originally manufactured. There was a section of the documentary about e-waste, which we talked about a bit last class when discussing the new TVs coming out in 2009. Here are two of Burtynsky's photos of E-Waste in China:




Check out his website for more of his photographs. I feel like a lot of focus these days goes to developing more advanced technologies without thought of what happens to the old. I think in the near future, e-waste will become a pressing environmental and social issue for activists and the world.

-Brittany

MediaStorm

Over the weekend a photographer friend turned me onto Mediastorm.

MediaStorm is a Multimedia production studio that collects photojournalisms, audio and visual stories and reports on a variety of subjects. Some of the reports are from reporters by prestigious mainstream newspapers and magazines (NYT, Post etc.) But some are done by regular people. The end results are extremely powerful and the topics range from Iraq War, illegal immigrations, drug addicts, to the DRC. Its powerful, fascinating work and footage not seen in the mainstream press.

Also, for seniors (like myself) looking for things to do next year. This could be your answers. I know I already got a shot as America's best golddigger.

community arts network (rocks)

So I was recently reccomended the website communityarts.net and it is amazing. According to their website:

The Community Arts Network (CAN) supports the belief that the arts are an integral part of a healthy culture, providing both intellectual nourishment and social benefit, and that community-based arts provide significant value both to communities and artists.


I used the site when I decided to study abroad in Argentina, and found out about political theatre practice in Buenos Aires. While I'm primarily on this site for information on theatre, there is a whole section on "media arts." Every article on there is a pleasure to read and incredibly inspiring. I can procrastinate for hours deaming about ways to get involved in the multitudes of projects presented on the site, and the many more they inspire in my own mind. Check it out!

~Julia

Free Documentaries

I recently saw the documentary Born into Brothels about a photojournalist who begins a project to examine the lives of women working as prostitutes in the Red Light district of Calcutta, but begins to teach photography to their kids when they show an interest in her camera. The documentary is intended to hand authorship over to the kids as it records how they capture their world “as they see it.” I found a good review if anyone is interested in learning more about the film’s accomplishments and shortcomings with respect to that goal.

As I was looking for reviews, I also came across a website that I was really excited to find – freedocumentaries.org.

You can watch Born into Brothels free (and legally) on this website, along with over 100 other both known and more obscure documentaries. The website’s founders write, “At freedocumentaries.org we strongly believe that in order to have a true democracy, there has to be a free flow of easily accessible information.” This is their effort to assist that process.

“The more people that know what's going on in the world, the better off the world will be.” – freedocumentaries.org

my name is ---, i like to dance

for whatever reasons, i've been way into children's media lately (blame the internship). my current guilty pleasure is the show on nickelodeon, YO! GABBA GABBA, which is mostly about love, music and dancing. each episode features special guests such as biz markee and elijah wood, teaching strange/fun things like beat-boxing and puppet-man dancing.

it seems as though i'm not the only non-kid who's into the show, though. e! network's "the soup" has taken an interest in the kids' dance moves as well:

Stumbleupon.com

Kind of going off of the link that Eric posted (musicovery.com), I was thinking about the ways in which people might go about finding alternative media, and whether one particular way might be better than another. I came across musicovery.com about a month ago using stumbleupon.com. The site claims to allow you to " Channel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar to find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon learns what you like and makes better recommendations." I guess one benefit of using such a site is that it might be easier to find alternative sites since you don't have to put as much effort into looking for them on your own. On the other hand, one drawback may be that you come across so many different sites and end up not really paying much attention to any particular site. Just as an example, musicovery.com has been on my ever growing list of "sites that I like", but I still haven't gotten around to actually using it.

-Laura

fan sites

While doing research for my thesis this week, I started thinking about online fan communities for television shows.  I've been frustrated that one of the only fan sites for the show I'm looking at - Meerkat Manor - is run by Animal Planet, the channel on which the program airs.  You have to become a member of My Animal Planet to join, a program that is primarily affiliated with the Discovery Channel Store.  While the community is quite active - there are 838,552 registered members - I assume that those posts are being looked over (and perhaps deleted) by Animal Planet moderators.  (When I tried to see the personal profile of one, it told me I didn't have permission to see it.)  Of course, I have no idea if this is true.  Perhaps I'm being overly suspicious (and maybe I'm just annoyed because the site is really slow and it makes me log in every time I try to access a different section).

What I was really looking for was a fan-run site.  This turned out to be more difficult than I'd expected.  Most of the others are part of larger sites like TVGuide.com and FanPop.com.  One of the only fan-run sites I've found is The East Coast Meerkat Society - "an informal group who share a passionate interest in meerkats" and "work together to turn our passion into projects o better the lives of meerkats in zoos and those who research meerkats in the Kalahari desert."  I'm not totally sure whether or not the site was started in response to the show, but the date the site was launched seems to indicate that it was.  Unfortunately, the discussion forums on the site aren't very popular and they refer you back to the Animal Planet site.

Anyway, I started to wonder whether most shows' fan sites were now run by networks instead of by fans.  I was going to be pretty disappointed if that was true.  Fan sites can be great places for enthusiasts to chat, spoil, and critique (the show and the network).  If the sites are run by the networks, how much shifts from spoiling/critiquing to hyping the network?

Thankfully, I was wrong.  Fan-run television sites are alive and well.  There are popular (and easily navigable) ones for shows like The Office, Heroes, Ugly Betty, and CSI.  I wondered if there was some relationship between network shows and fan-run sites, but there are also sites for cable shows like The Sopranos, Dexter, and Project Runway.  Many of these sites are the first result on Google searches.  And of course, SurvivorSucks (a popular spoiling and discussion site the seniors may remember from reading Convergence Culture) is still active.

Also, YouTube has become a popular place for fans to come together.  See, for example, this video memorializing the meerkat matriarch, Flower.

- Allison

Abjeez, DemoKracy

Reading Ted Swedenburg's blog this afternoon -- he is an anthropology professor teaching in Arkansas, focused on the Middle East but specifically obsessed with music and the stylistic adoption of the kufiya (or keffiyeh) -- I came across this music video. It's by an Iranian sister-duo called Abjeez ("Abjee" is Farsi slang for sister). They are based in Sweden. "DemoKracy" is a riff on the rhetoric and picture of preemptive war, justified by democratization and propagated on cable news. Best part: the English subtitles rolling along the bottom of the screen, like news alerts.



-Freddy

Fidel (short thought)

I have posted already this week, but I was thinking about the media and it just seemed to relevant to our class to be ignored. I woke up this morning and the news told me that Fidel had renounced. On talking to my friend, who is very engaged and interested in Latin American politics, I learned a lot about Cuba, the elections it had in January and how Fidel has not actually renounced, but stated that he will not be accepting to have his name as one of the possible options of candidates to be elected. Though I want to read more and learn more, I found it very interesting that main-stream media has twisted the truth and made a huge fuss about Fidel doing something people who actually keep up with Cuban politics knew was going to happen last month… Why and how does information get manipulated in such a way? And what will be the repercussions of information being manipulated in this way?

Juliana

How We Met

In a Media Studies class that I took last semester someone brought in this video as an example of how the body can be used as a medium of expression.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBvDm_JLEcI

I wanted to share it with you all because I thought it was hilarious and a really unique way of expressing a story and sending a message.

~Liz

"My Vagina is Obscene"

i was reading feministing the other day and I came across this little link to an article about a recent scandal at a high school newspaper in which the student editor printed a front page article "Happy Vagina Day" that included a diagram of a vagina. It was an issue that focused on V-Week, a movement which we all know grew out of Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monolgues" and aims to raise awareness/end violence against women around Valentine's day. However, it seems the content was lost, as it sparked the outrage of the principal, administrators and teachers who refused to allow the issue to be handed out to students, grabbing it out of students' hands, and altogether patronizing the student body.

i was disgusted.
and then i realized it was MY high school.
and i was pissed off.

i never remember my school newspaper being notably alternative, but I couldn't be happier to hear that the current editor is taking a stand against the misogyny of this new awful principal. according to the article, he and a group of students organized on myspace and came to school the following day wearing shirts that read "My Vagina is Obscene" in response to the claim made by the principal that printing a picture of the vagina is "tasteless," "a disruption" and "should be handed out on hollywood boulevard." clever. the students were asked to take off the shirts and when the editor and several others refused, they were sent home. hurrah!

it was so exciting to read about a piece of alternative media having the power to stir things up and provoke some really awesome activism.

abra

Musicovery.com

Here's "musicovery.com", a website in a similar vein to the very successful Pandora.com. At musicovery, not only does one has the option to pick music from a plethora of genres, but there is also the option to pick what decade to play from. Furthermore, there is a "mood" panel, consisting of a "dark-positive" spectrum and a "calm-energetic" spectrum. A great way to find music that you may not have heard before, or to hear classics from decades past, websites like musicovery have remediated the jukebox and the radio show set list. With the internet permeating swiftly into the portable world, I can only wonder if radio itself will be completely obsolete in the near future.

Eric

The Hip Spot on Your Dial

http://theradiokitchen.net/the-hip-spot-on-your-dialThis is a blog with a story about Joseph Paul Ferraro, who will be visiting the class on March 6. He runs radio station WHVW AM (950). He started out as a pirate in Yonkers.
From the article:
While I haven’t done a scientific study of all the ingredients of Pirate Joe’s automated format, but I can tell you one thing– it’s compelling, and unlike any radio station I’ve ever heard. And it makes a lot of sense.

There is also a New York Times article which is referred to on the class syllabus.

Juvies (2004)

Polina and I are in a class together and last week we watched a movie called “Juvies” directed by Leslie Neale in 2004. The movie tells the story of 12 “juveniles” in a L.A. county juvenile hall who were tried as adults in adult courts and received sentences from 3-7 years in prison to life in prison. This documentary was eye opening in the fact that it discusses how severe the U.S. criminal justice system has become and how people as young at 14 are being labeled “gang members” and placed in setting where they will be forgotten, many times not even understanding what 50 years in prison means. The movie portrayed these adolescent’s dreams, thoughts, life stories, and coping mechanisms. Any project that gives a voice to incarcerated people is important to me, especially when we consider how this very large population of U.S. society is forgotten and stripped of any form of agency and voice. Another very interesting aspect of the movie is that it came out of a project that provided “juveniles” with cameras and, thus, many of the shots in the movie were actually taken by the adolescents in the documentary. I left the movie thinking about why such projects cannot be used as a tool for rehabilitation and reentry, rather then as a limited opportunity a small number of adolescents receive before they get sentenced to life in prison.

Juliana

Of Interest

The New York Times: Is PBS Still Necessary?

"The stunning (and stunningly expensive) BBC documentary “Planet Earth,” for example, which in the old days would have been a natural for PBS, was instead broadcast on the Discovery Channel, which could presumably better afford it. The Showtime series “The Tudors” is just the kind of thing — only better produced and with more nudity — that used to make “Masterpiece Theater” (now simply “Masterpiece”), once the flagship of PBS, so unmissable. Now it’s so strapped for cash that it has pretty much settled into an all-Jane Austen format.

If you’re the sort of traditional PBS viewer who likes extended news broadcasts, say, or cooking shows, old movies and shows about animals gnawing each other on the veld, cable now offers channels devoted just to your interest. Cable is a little like the Internet in that respect: it siphons off the die-hards. Public television, meanwhile, more and more resembles everything else on TV. Since corporate sponsors were allowed to extend their “credit” announcements to 30 seconds, commercials in all but name have been a regular feature on public television, and that’s not to mention pledge programs, the fund-raising equivalent of water-boarding."

Click here for the full article.

-alana

PulpKing

So while at my internship, where I watch a lot of commercials, I came across this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s87NgING4k

This version of it is in Spanish, but it's for Blockbuster. The captions read "Pulp Fiction...or The Lion King. Take home both". Now, I have to admit that I loved this commercial. I thought the mash up was hilarious. However, it made me wonder about more independent media getting co-opted by commercial media. This commercial is reminiscent of the type of fan art that's made independently and showcased all over the web. Judging from the Youtube research I did after seeing this ad, video/audio splicing like this is something that tons of people do, even with just Pulp Fiction and The Lion King alone. I just wonder if there's something wrong with a corporation like an advertising agency taking that independent idea and making a profit off of it. Or is it just a really clever marketing tool? Not quite sure...

-Lindsay

Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle

The Economist blog "Democracy in America" describes this as "A suitably Gen-Y tribute to Gen-Y Obamamania." I think it's pretty funny, though they need to add more scenarios. Gets too repetitive. But maybe that's why it's so suitably Gen-Y, whatever that means.

http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com/

freddy

revised syllabus

389b. Alternative Media: Projects, Platforms and Networks Syllabus
This course explores films that are beyond the cineplex, radio broadcast by pirates in Yonkers, cell phone video operas, and other forms of communication in our wired and wireless world.

Course work will consist of weekly reports written in a class blog, a curatorial web video project, a mid term quiz on the readings and a final report due on Wednesday of Exam Week. There will be some external screenings and events required.

The required books are:
DeeDee Halleck, Hand-Held Visions, Fordham University Press
Geert Lovink, Zero Comments, Routledge Publishers

The recommended books are:
John Downing, Radical Media: Communication and Social Change, Sage
Clemencia Rodriquez, Fissures in the Mediascape, Hampton Press.

January 23 MEDIA RESISTANCE IN THE UNITED STATES
Screening: Paper Tiger Reads Paper Tiger
Reading Assignment: Hand-Held Visions First 4 sections (pp 3 - 186)
Radical Media: pp 299-324
Internet: www.papertiger.org, www.deepdishtv.org, www.deepdishwavesofchange.org

January 30 ALTERNATIVE MEDIA AROUND THE WORLD
Reading: Hand Held Visions next 2 sections (pp 186-283)
Screening:Herb Schiller Read the New York Times
Internet: www.fcc.gov, www.freepress.org, www.

February 6 PUBLIC ACCESS: MEDIA DEMOCRACY
Reading: Finish Hand-Held Visions (pp 286-430)
Guest via i-chat : Michael Eisenmenger
Internet: www.freepress.org, http://ourchannels.org
Reading: Autonomia

February 13 VIDEO HISTORY
Screening: Videofreex
Reading: First Proposal for initiating Democracy Now TV, Proposal for Indymedia

February 20 ALTERNATIVE NEWS
Screening: Democracy Now!, INDYMEDIA , The Real News, Alternet,
Jon Stewart, Laura Flanders and others.
Reading: Radical Media, John Downing Chapters 15
Reading: Geert Lovink Zero Comments, Chapter 4 pp 99-116
Internet: www.indymedia.org

February February 27 WHOSE BAND WIDTH? OUR BAND WIDTH!
Screening: Barn Raisings in Tennessee and Oregon
Reading: Prometheus Newsletter
Assignment: youTube/blip/blog curated projects Each student will curate 10 minutes of internet video and copy to a DVD-R disk or flash drive.

March 5 THE RADIO PIRATE OF YONKERS
Visitor: Joseph Paul Ferraro of WHVW (and former radio pirate)
Reading: Article about/by Ferraro
Internet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHVW
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9804E3D81F3CF931A2575BC0A9679C8B63&n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FSubjects%2FC%2FCorporations

March 12 , March 19 SPRING BREAK

March 26 MIDTERM Quiz/Discussion on Readings, Screenings of selected
youTube programs
LABOR AND MEDIA
Screening: The Lie Machine, film made by Coal Miners Union in the UK
Korean Labor News; youTube clips from Screen Writers Union Strike
Guest: Hye Jung Park, Director of Media Justice Fund, Funding Exchange
Reading: Geert Lovink Zero Comments, Chapters 6, 7, 8
Internet: www.itu.org, www.apc.org, www.amarc.org, www.crisinfo.org

April 2 INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS AND WSIS
Screening: Interviews from the World Summit on the Information Society
Reading: Zero Comments: Chapter 9, 10, 11
Guest: Elizabeth Press Screening: Still We Ride (about Critical Mass)
Internet: www.dictionaryofwar.org

April 9 PLATFORMS AND FORMATS
Screening: Dictionary of War, Sarai, Tetsuo Kogawa's Radio Homerun, Democracy Now! Gulf Crisis TV Project, Shocking and Awful
Reading: Micro Radio Article by Tetsuo Kogawa from Cultures in Contention.

April 16 DISTRIBUTED AESTHETICS
Screening: Mobi Opera: Shulea Cheang's cellphone extravaganzas
Adriene Jenik: Library Revolution
Internet: Game Industry Defense: http://gamepolitics.com/
Reading: Chapter from From Sun Tzu to X Box by Ed Halter

April 23 GAMES AND GAMERS
Reading: Ed Halter's blog http://warandvideogames.typepad.com/
Internet: Liberation Range-- http://dollyoko.thing.net//subtle/
Eddo Stern : http://www.eddostern.com/
Screening: Sheik Attack by Eddo Stern

April 30 MEDIA JUSTICE/MEDIA REFORM/MEDIA POWER
Screening: FCC hearings at Hyde Park, Excerpts from Media Reform Conference
Internet: freepress.org,Bill Moyers' speech: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1112-10.htm

May 7 (Last Class)

May 14 Final Reports/projects due

May 20 Class Party/Screening

The Ultimate Media Event: Media Burn

This is the url for the video of the Media Burn event. Please comment on it and what you think it says about television and US culture!
http://www.mediaburn.org/Video-Preview.128.0.html?uid=4574There is a site with a discussion of early video with several members of the Videofreex and Ant Farm. They even speak about the UFO in Lanesville. http://mediaburn.org/Video-Preview.128.0.html?&uid=5668

My Damn Channel

My Damn Channel
is a comedy website that puts out comedy shorts but screenwriters and others in the industry that haven't been working because of the writer's strike. This site and others like it have been gaining viewers as reality TV and reruns have taken over TV since the strike. I just thought this is interesting in thinking about the future of television and the ease for screenwriters and others in the industry without financial support to create a hilarious TV show.

-Asher

subversive advertising

one more thing—unlike my last post, some of you might actually find this interesting. A case of "billboard bombing" in LA with an interesting twist.

(click on the image for the article)


(Also, Takashi Murakami is a fabulous artist; he's also an interesting case in his mixture of art and commerce. His most famous example is probably his collaboration with Louis Vuitton, in which he designed a print for the company that he ended up using in his own work.)

alana

The "By and For" entry was posted by Polina. Sorry about that.

By and For

Rather than going abroad my Junior year I enrolled in an urban education program in New York City. I was placed in a middle school Social Studies classroom three days a week in Jackson Heights, Queens and was given the opportunity, at the end of the semester, to plan and teach a unit for the school’s eighth graders. I chose to develop a unit around editorial cartoons in which students would first study their uses, then produce their own pieces, display them, and finally publish them in a book. We first generated some ideas about what subjects they might like to explore, but I also wanted to introduce them to themes that were not as safe or easy to talk about as those they came up with on their own. In my search for these topics, I found a website for a magazine written by high school teens for high school teens whose essays and reports ranged in content from drugs to consumerism to race, to questions surrounding adulthood, dating, immigration, money, etc. These essays were a great starting point for my students as they realized they could form opinions about issues they frequently encountered but did not deeply explore.

The magazine, New Youth Connections, is published by Youth Communication, an organization whose primary focus is to “[help] teenagers develop their reading and writing skills so they can acquire the information they need to make thoughtful choices about their lives.” The organization also publishes a magazine by and for teens in foster care and one by and for parents with children in foster care. The magazines are a way for populations with similar goals and struggles to share information and reach out to one another, which is particularly important when their struggles take place in what are often some of the most alienating bureaucratic systems. The magazines also empower youth and families in both the process of writing and reading to give advice and discuss themes which only authorities are otherwise expected to address (D.A.R.E., social workers, Heath Ed teachers, courts). The experiences shared in the magazines can then become collectively owned and confronted by individuals, school classes, youth and family programs, and non-profits as discussions circulate. For me at least, watching my students relate and speak out in response to some of the articles was pretty remarkable.

The stories are thoughtful, complicated, and powerful, whether you’re facing similar struggles or not. Definitely check them out.

The Lonely Island hits it big

I never really understood the notion of "selling out". Sure, media corporations often exact a noticeable amount of creative control and profit sharing over indie filmmakers, musicians, and artists who sign with them. However, I always thought that if the creative talent was good enough to enrich the lives of the public through their output, it should be celebrated when they are given any sort of mass exposure.

Indie filmmakers the Lonely Island were just a couple of guys from UCLA creating humor videos and great parodies and posting them on their site, TheLonelyIsland.com, until a few years back, all three auditioned for SNL. After some negotiating, all three members became featured writers and actor on the late night show. (Jorma and Akiva became writers, Andy Samberg the actor) However, the jump from more indie, alternative online video hosting to NBC prime time didn't really change the dudes-it just gave them a wider audience for their hilarious short form videos. From this leap to the big time came such massive hits as Lazy Sunday and Dick in a Box - both videos low on production work and effects and heavy on comedic brilliance (funny at least until they got played ad nauseam on Youtube and broadcast tv.)

So I'm not really sure what I'm trying to prove-just that the alternative nature of the dudes' site and the presentation was able to survive the trip to corporate media intact and free from visible manipulation. Check their old stuff out, especially "The Bu", a parody of the OC.

www.thelonelyisland.com

Peace
~Ben D

children's media project

hey dudes,

so i just scored myself an internship over at children's media project, a local non-profit dedicated to youth media, media literacy and community outreach. it's located at the old lady washington firehouse on academy st. (downtown p'kip), which is about a 5 minute ride from vassar (see: below).




the kind folks over at cmp (many of whom are vassar alum) are currently offering a free after-school zine-making workshop for youth, ages 13+. they're holding three afternoon sessions where students can get together and voice their concerns about school while also learning how to use adobe photoshop and indesign. and as if that weren't neat enough, the final zine will be sent to the school board of education.

<3
anh

ps: check out suzanne vega's groundbreaking second life performance:

the digital pallette and PMOG

http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/chess/index.html

while a webcomic or two has been mentioned or brought up in class, i thought i'd bring up one of the first guys to experiment with what someone coined "the digital pallette." Scott McCloud is a rather famous comic writer, partly for his forays into the digital pallette frontier, and partly for his use of the comic book page format to present critical essays on everything from the media, to game theory, to comics themselves.

http://www.gamelayers.com/pmog/

my second link is to a brief summary of Gamelayers.com new creation - the PMOG, or Passively Multiplayer Online Game. A spin off of the originally coined MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) of the late nineties and early ot's, the idea behind this game is that all the stereotypical actions that take place in a "role-playing game" are triggered as you surf the web, and are reported to you in a taskbar add-on to Firefox. neat-o I say, but it's damn difficult to figure out how everything works - though that's expected when dealing with an entirely new genre of anything. still, the idea is incredibly compelling - turning the entire internet into an enormous set of data which then translates to meaningful play. if everyone in the world had PMOG, would countries begin Mining the websites in order to cripple their web traffic? Would special interest groups hire out droves of Vigilante organizations in order to protect their bank websites, and the Wikipedia articles? Sure, it'll never happen, but it's a pretty sweet idea.

-jon

iamprovincetown

I'm from Provincetown, MA and while in high school I became aware of this site www.iamprovincetown.com. The description of the site is "I am Provincetown -- a website about Provincetown -- past, present & future -- with the most comprehensive Directory Listings of Provincetown businesses, accommodations, restaurants, shops, galleries and local organizations -- and the Provincetown Scrapbook: a collage of photographs, stories, poetry..." I found this site interesting because it combines community participation and creativity while providing helpful information to residents and visitors. I myself have never set up an account on the site but over the years check in now and then to see what some of my friends and neighbors are up to and producing. Provincetown has a large artist community and with the Fine Arts Work Center and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum people come from all over the world bringing a great wealth of artistic creativity that is fun and exciting to explore. This site provides a venue for the community to collectively address their artistic, social, and political interests and activities. Even though I have not actively participated in the site, I still use it as a resource and as a way to stay connected and somewhat involved with my home and community especially now being away at school.

Liz

e-zine-aphobia

In the book "Alternative Media" by Chris Atton (I picked it up from the library), he explains that an e-zine does not have the affect of a printed zine. He says that the experimentation of lay out and design are lacking in online zines (Atton 68). Atton adds, "[The e-zines'] ways of 'doing business' become less distinguishable from the dominant pratices in cyberspace" (69).

Do you believe this? Do you have any examples to counteract or support this argument?
What are the benefits and draw-backs of having a zine or any other type of publication online versus in front of your face?
Will this change over time?

Personally, I prefer the print version of everything, but it is cool how many different magazines you can access online for free. And, also, you save trees that way. But, really, if I were to make my own zine, I'd like it to be in print. That would seem so much more real to me.

Cool startled face, right?
Jason

Al Jazeera English

It's still not widely available in the US (as of last year, one of the few cable companies to offer it was city-owned Burlington Telecom, which serves 1,200 homes in Vermont) and its not exactly local access, non-corporate (funded by the petro-monarchy in Qatar), but Al Jazeera English does offer an alternative view for big TV news, particularly on the Middle East. Better yet, much of their content is posted for free on YouTube, from the standard news shows to odd talking heads and their entertainment show, which this week carried the entirety of last year's Oscar winner for best short film, "West Bank Story."

Also the Daily Show did a pretty funny spot on the channel a while back.

- freddy

Independent Media Center

The recent weather has gotten me thinking a lot about home (Wisconsin) and I started to wonder about local independent media there. Madison is a very progressive city (they have their own local currency!), so I began my search with the capital.

I stumbled upon the Madison Independent Media Center - an outlet for "an open collective of grassroots journalists dedicated to providing an open outlet for non-corporate news and analysis." They report some national issues, but they focus on local issues like the governor, how global warming is affecting the deer population, and county air pollution.

The Madison site also provides links to a bunch of other local media, including newspapers, magazines, radio stations, websites, comics, TV stations, and film production companies.

It turns out that the site is part of a larger organization - The Independent Media Center - "a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth. We work out of a love and inspiration for people who continue to work for a better world, despite corporate media's distortions and unwillingness to cover the efforts to free humanity." There are indymedia sites of varying sizes for most states/major cites. Milwaukee also has an indymedia site, but it's not nearly as extensive as Madison's.

- Allison

The Up Series

I wanted to post about something other than communication media (blogs, internet news sources, public radio and tv, etc.) because it’s easy for me to forget that media also includes what we tend to group up as distinctly “art” or fine art. So! There’s this incredible documentary series put together for the BBC called the “Up Series.” It was originally intended to be a one-time show about the youth of Britain and the class divide that is established basically upon birth and to what extent the class one is born into determines how your life - relationships, career, success, etc. - develops. In “7 Up” – the original program which aired in 1964, sits a group of 7 year olds from various socio-economic backgrounds in front of a camera and talks to them about their interests, their thoughts on racism, their friends, their career ambitions, their boyfriends and girlfriends. And so on. The kids are mesmerizing and adorable and hilarious. It was so popular that the director (currently Michael Apted) returned to the kids 7 years later and started a pattern which continues now: releasing a new Up series every 7 years with the same individuals, many of the same questions and so many, many more complexities. 49 Up was released in 2005.

What I love about the documentary and what makes it alternative media is not only the original intent to dissect the classicism that is still very present in contemporary societies, but for me, and what becomes clearer as the series has progressed, it is simply the fact that showing “boring old everyday folk” (what is so often unshown) IS quite honestly mesmerizing. There is no attempt to dramatize the lives of the men and women/boys and girls, because there is genuine drama that we just so rarely take seriously. When you can follow random, “unimportant” people’s lives in such an intimate way for such a long period, it’s impossible not to feel completely engrossed. I’m not even gonna hesitate to use a cliché and say that it’s just like no other documentary.

The Up Series is in our library!

abra

Alternative media at Vassar

I was speaking to a visiting professor the other day and he asked about the republicans and conservatives on campus, to which I had to answer that there are not “many of them” at Vassar and that their voice, after the incident with MICA, has been mostly silenced. This got me thinking about how “alternative media” on campus plays out. Where are students expressing their views, many of which are not shared by all students on campus? Yes, the Misc does allow for students to give their input on issues pertaining to campus life, and yes, there are many blogs (such as the Class of 2011 blog http://
madsvassar.blogspot.com/) around. However, who is actually reading these publications? What voices do they represent? I started looking through the number of publications I have managed to accumulate in my room, from the magazine recently published by Blegen house, to the Catalyst. I was pleased to find that, though limited, students and groups on campus are finding ways to make their views and opinions public. Is this enough though? How can students find ways of taking what they discuss in the classroom of with friends beyond the academic setting and into the public realm? And once they do, how are these voices received?

Juliana

"in dog we trust"

Alright. I've been trying to figure out some "alternative" site I frequent, but at the moment at least I'm hard-pressed to think of things I do on the web these days besides Scrabulous. Surely I must do something else because I'm still not very good at Scrabble, but anyway I do visit the following site every so often. It's sort of like youtube but for videos of dogs. Yes I watch dog videos. And I am going downstairs soon to watch Westminster. But for what's its worth, at least there is no evil corporate monolith behind World Wide Fido...yet.

Enjoy.

This is one of my favorite dogs on the site.

And if you look hard enough on the site, there are dogs in costume.

--alana

A Softer World

Internet comics like "Dinosaur Comics" and "Married to the Sea" have gained overwhelming generational success. Several of these comics also maintain a level of "absurdist" comedy, an approach that very much applies to newly blossoming shows akin to "Flight of the Concords". I found this new website yesterday that combines this approach with a little bit more artistry involved - it's two people, one who takes pictures and another who writes the captions, creating a three panel comic. It's got an interesting tinge to it because of the combination. Check it out at asofterworld.com

Eric

democracy now!

I try to listen to Democracy Now! every day. According to their website, Democracy Now! is "A daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, airing on over 650 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the U.S."

When I listen to the show, I am struck by how incredibly public it in fact is. On every podcast Amy Goodman comments: "democracynow.org the War and Peace Report. We're broadcasting on over 650 stations... on public access TV and PBS TV stations in both TV satelite networks, on Dish Network channel 9415, Free Speech TV... and we're video and audio podcasting at democracynow.org. Our headlines are also available in Spanish for any radio station to take... and also in transcript form." There is something very powerful in Amy Goodman's reiteration of this public-ness of the show in every podcast. As I listen, I am grateful for the reminder of how available this information is, and therefore eager to encourage others to listen.

On a related note, I think that Democracy Now! is considered a highly liberal news show, and this is due as much to its form (community-created public media) as its content (US and world politics, especially surrounding issues of war and peace). The name "the War and Peace Report" suggests the liberal bent towards aknowledging "peace" as a necessary element in the discussion of "war." According to Hand-Held Visions, "the airwaves (and sattelite orbits) are full of propaganda, and it doesn't come from the Left" (257). Because the "normal" or "traditional" news media is innately commercial and conservative, it seems that any alternative means for media (i.e. community media) gaines a liberal association.

I guess that's just an observation, but I think it's interesting. As I study activist community theatre in my independent study I am struck by this same fact being true. There is a sense that political media is conseravtive and commercial, while political theatre is liberal and alternative. What would conservative political theatre look like? or, because the form of political theatre is non-commercial, is a conservative political theatre impossible? What would a liberal media look like? I think some would say it would look like Democracy Now!, but I would argue that this is liberal in form, and only when held against a conservative media core as a basis for comparison.

~Julia

Artists Against the War

Today I got a message in my email:
"On Valentine’s Day, Thursday, February 14 from 5-8 PM, Artists Against the War will be assembling at the US military recruitment center in the middle of Times Square. Our hands will be dyed red and we will be carrying the attached poster to mourn five years of bloodshed in Iraq. Please join us and participate for awhile that evening!"
NYC Artists Against the War has been doing projects since the war started in 2003. (There is also a group in the UK.) You can go to the nyc website and see some of the projects they have done since the War has startedhttp://www.aawnyc.org/ One of the main organizers of the New York group has a son who is in Iraq.

the show with zefrank

This is more funny and entertaining than serious, but we all need a little silliness. I'm talking about "the show with zefrank". This is a great example of how much exposure and support you can get on the internet with limited means. This guy just decided to create a podcast and show for one year and gained immense popularity. Sometimes he discussed more serious issues, like politics, or he would just go on silly and random rants. The point is that this is just a regular guy who created a widely disseminated platform for himself through the internet. Even if "the show with zefrank" is largely ridiculous, it shows how far us regular folk can go with alternative media, whatever our cause.

check out his show at http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/

and be prepared for a lot of duckies


-Lindsay

Second Life PC only?

I was trying to go to posts from a conference on DIY video which was held last weekend at USC. The panels were supposed to be streamed on Second Life. They gave the url and when I tried to go there I got this message:

Safari can’t open the specified address.
Safari can’t open “secondlife://IML/60/128/52” because Mac OS X doesn’t recognize Internet addresses starting with “secondlife:”.

If you have a PC, I guess you can get there! The conference post itself (which I CAN go to) is http://www.video24-7.org/
The Second Life link is IML Island.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/IML/60/128/52

I hope someone can go there and give a report in class.
DeeDee

Nicholas Kristof WANTS your comments

I am, to begin with, in love with Nicholas Kristof and his daring, honest reporting on injustice around the world. Yet, this blog takes him to a whole new level in my opinion. At the end of each op-ed, he now "invites" his readers to comment on his editorials. The blog is called "Readers setting me straight." Kristof is not only not afraid of others' opinions, he invites them. Kristof wants his readers to be a part of the media he is creating.
-Marisa

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/your-comments-on-electability/

GoodSearch

Somewhat similar to freerice.com in terms of purpose, GoodSearch is a search engine that lets you help earn money for charities or schools. You go the website and enter the charity/school you want to support, and every time you use GoodSearch to search the internet, you earn money for the charity/school.

-Laura

The Intersection of Community TV and the Internet

This map is interactive at http://www.mappingaccess.com
There is an interesting blog by Colin Rhinesmith (M.A. in Media Arts '08 at Emerson College) to investigate the intersection of community television and the Internet. http://cmediachange.net/blog/

Vintage Satire

Sorry for the late post-had this up earlier on the site under a different blogger name initially.

Anyway, I find a lot of new media, particularly internet-based content lacking in substance. It seems that a lot of times authors, directors, and artists get caught up in the tricks of photoshop and iMovie (or FinalCut if you're dedicated) or audio editing and overlook the step of actually imbuing their creations with an original, interesting idea. Nowhere is this more evident than on YouTube, an extremely popular repository for parody videos, "funny" home accident videos, along with other attempts at humor often cheapened by overuse of star wipes, glitter, and the addition of bad music to hype up the video. Anyone can take a music video or coverage of a campaign speech and do a "funny remix" on youtube, like the spate of digital video copycats that resulted from the SNL shorts "Dick in a Box" or "Lazy Sunday". When so many seem to be substituting computer effects and editing tricks for real humor, I often find the greatest laughs from a decidedly low tech option: Married to the Sea, otherwise known as the "champagne of comics".

This little gem of a webcomic has provided me with laughs on a regular basis since I came across it last year. Every strip is an absurd story told with random illustrations, including victorian scenes and 70's instruction manual scenarios, which the author warps to his own twisted ends through the addition of simple Times New Roman style captions. He does some photoshop manipulation of the images to fit them in frame, but there is no alteration whatsoever beyond simply arranging them to tell a story. It often looks like the author has just ripped his illustrations out of some old textbook or airline safety card, erased a portion of it with the end of a number 2 pencil, and finally run it through an old typewriter to add his ridiculous commentary.

The whole presentation reminds me a lot of the DIY charm of the Paper Tiger TV video we watched in Alternative Media. I'm not sure if this actually constitutes "Alternative" (I'm not sure what that actually means at the moment either-perhaps soon), but it is certainly a rougher, more old-school (hah) option for your daily humor fix. I think for that reason it escapes the glut of parody videos and flash animation that constitutes a large part of mainstream internet humor.

The link is:
www.marriedtothesea.com

~Ben D

amazing Russian music video

http://www.videology-tv.com/viewclip.php?id=73

My friend Jacquie showed me this yesterday. It's hard to down load as it is so complex-- but should work on a fast machine.

These are the lyrics:
eat gold bricks for lunch,
With diamond dessert and oil cream,

My name is Beelzebub,
the master of the stratosphere.

I am unbelievably cool,
And immensely respected.

Refrain:

In my left hand there's a Snickers
In my right hand there's a Mars
My PR manager is Karl Marx

In my left hand there's a Snickers
In my right hand there's a Mars
My PR manager is Karl Marx.

Capital! Capital! Capital! Capital!

I eat cities and drink seas,
My beard covers up the sky

Thunders and lightnings, fogs and rains
My boots are licked by ministers and chiefs

Refrain:

My face is Madonna,
inside are rotten pears

All kneel! Orchestra - flourish!

Capital! Capital! Capital! Capital!

Buh oocks?

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
What's a buh ook????

In the future, packages will be sent to distant lands through beams of light. Also, every work of the public domain... and a good deal of copyrighted material will be available in a completely digital format via google's book search feature. Critics of the program worry that google (who already has over a million volumes scanned) will hold a monopoly on intellectual property, access, etc.

Google's invasive search features so far seem to do their worst in the private sphere - saving personal information, zooming in on your backyard, etc. But now google is invading the public realm in a way we haven't ever experienced before.

Check out more in this fascinating little documentary




-Evan

t shirts... barak obama... conservative forms for alternative media

The all-women's dorm (Strong House - named for a person, not strength) has t-shirts that are pink with pink writing. The front reads "STRONG," and the back reads "...enough for a man, but made for a woman," playing off deodorant(?) television advertisements from a few years ago.

Today, in the spirit of Super Tuesday, a friend was wearing a shirt that said "Obama: new and fresh" in a "Tide Laundry Detergent" format.

I am struck by the apparent necessity to reference commercial content in alternative media (if you would call these t-shirts liberal or alternative). It is clear that conservative ideology has monopolized mainstream media. In the realm of theatre, avant-guard theatre is considered liberal in ideology, while mainstream theatre is, by default, neutral (AKA conservative).

My guess, then, is that the result of this separation of the liberal from the mainstream is the forced connections between the alternative media and mainstream commercial conservative media. I guess I've just been thinking about why we rely on already-created commercial media.

What made me think about this was seeing this video about Barak Obama. It is a beautiful video that is very slick and, admittedly, did make me really want to vote to him initially (it also made one of my professors cry). When I thought about it, though, I realized that there is no actual content to the video. It is selling the idea of being able to do what you want, but it doesn't adress the actual issues of the election. This is, in a sense, simultaneously radical - as it has a higher ideal than the issues - and oblivious - that is, to the important issues that maybe should be deciding the election. Using the popular commercial style of MTV, the video speaks it's own individual message. But people are probably only paying attention because the style is similar in form to the familliar commercial, conservative media we are fed up on tv.

Here's the video:


Anyways, that's my rant for tonight... Sorry if it didn't make much sense... I'd be happy to explain it better in person.

~Julia

The Primary Voter's Burden

I worked as a poll-watcher today for a class in the Political Science department, which literally meant that I sat in the back of the lobby at the Poughkeepsie YMCA and watched people sign in, enter the poll booth, and leave. It was fairly uneventful but quite illuminating. We had opportunities between votes to ask the election officials questions, so I asked if they are allowed to inform/remind people that some candidates still listed on the ballot had already dropped out of the race. An official replied that they were not allowed to do so, which in some cases could effectively result in a non-vote. To be guaranteed that one’s vote counts therefore means that a person must independently seek out information about candidates’ standing prior to arriving at the polls - and at this point in the game there are no protections against one’s effective disenfranchisement stemming from missing the latest news. The message here is that at some point the burden of having current information rests entirely with an individual.

This observation caused me to wonder about various alternative media producers' positions on how far they feel they must go to reach out to audiences in order to convey vital information– where in the process of making and using alternative media do creators and viewers meet? In learning about different examples of alternative media it seems that this is useful to pay attention to – specifically, how a group’s philosophy regarding their obligation to spread important information (and an audience’s obligation to seek it out) is manifest in their choice of media and their strategies for distribution.

Polina

The Shock Doctrine

Here’s a youtube video that made the rounds maybe four or five months ago, but hopefully it’ll be new to some. It’s the first high production “trailer” for a book that I’ve ever come across (though it’s long enough that you might consider it a short film). Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men) directed the video to promote Naomi Klein’s latest book, The Shock Doctrine, and from what I could see, it got a lot of circulation. Even for those who didn’t go out and buy the book, the film is long enough to give the viewer a clear, concise understanding of Klein’s argument. Without getting into Klein’s provocative theory, which links neoliberal free market reforms with national traumas (Pinochet’s 1973 coup, for example), I think the video is simply an interesting example of yet another hybrid media made possible by the popularity of new internet video forums. It can’t be reduced to film, book, research, or marketing ploy, but is all of the above, and it’s neither too didactic nor cursory.



Here's the official website for the book if you're interested.

-Aidan

UPDATE: So, after a brief google search, I think I made a mistake thanks to the unclear youtube description. The video is directed by Alfonso Cuarón, Naomi Klein, and also Cuarón's son, Jonás, who apparently went to Vassar...

236.com

So I was introduced to this site a few days ago. It's called 23/6: Some of the news, most of the time. A comedic news website in the same vein as the Daily Show or the Colbert Report, 23/6 uses humor and satire to attract its audiences. This strategy, combined with its residence on the internet, seems to be quite the testament to our generation's ideals.

236.com also has a "spin-off" website - dickipedia.org (slightly vulgar, though not pornographic, I promise). Not only is the idea of a spin-off website interesting in terms of the evolution of the internet as a medium, but this particular site happens to be a parody of, you guessed it, wikipedia. Everything, down to the template is nearly exactly the same - I find it intriguing that Wikipedia has become so recognizable in such a short period of time that parodies have ensued.

Happy Blogging,
Eric

Facebook Conversation Cont.

So to continue the conversation we were having in class last week about facebook...I was friended this weekend by my mom. My immediate reaction along with everyone that I told was "Wow. That's really weird." My thoughts led me to think about the fact that I couldn't not accept my mom's friendship. That was not an option. And while I'm not embarrassed about the image that I present of myself online to my friends there are many things that I would not want my mom to see. I also didn't want to grant her limited access to my profile because I thought she might question why some parts of a normal profile were not visible on my profile. I spent that morning reworking my page, mostly having to do with facebook albums and tagged pictures. I find it very interesting how facebook which is intended to be this public space is really a limited and private experience meant for certain people and not others.

I spoke to my mom later that day and she told me that when she was signing on and creating a profile she accidentally sent a request to EVERYONE in her address book to either accept her friendship or join facebook and create a profile. It was unclear if she even meant to friend me at all. She also questioned why I was listed as married on my profile. I have been married to my Freshman year roommate since Freshman year and my mom couldn't understand why that was and also why I would be listed as married but still interested in dating and meeting people. I'm still uncomfortable with the idea that my mom can see my profile at any time and am proceeding with caution now.

~Liz

THIS IS NOT ABOUT CHRIS CROCKER

for those of you unfamiliar with new media vocabulary, chris crocker's "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!" youtube is a prime example of a viral video. this version of the video, featured on the official "itschriscrocker" channel, has received over 16 million hits -- not to mention a lot of airtime on major news networks and a slew of parodies. crocker's emotional video even landed "him" his own reality television series and a pretty legitimate wikipedia entry.

that said, a friend of mine recently linked me to this article on marketing strategies for viral videos. this dude dan ackerman-greenberg goes on (...and on...) about various techniques that he and his viral video marketing company employ to get a bigger number of hits on their clients' vids. as with most of the people who commented, i was a little shocked (and kinda disgusted) with most of the article, but the poor greenberg guy released a follow-up ("flip-flopper") article a few days later. you can check it out here. greenberg's tone changes quite a bit between the two, but he maintains that his initial post was merely intended to pull back the curtain on what's up with youtube. nevertheless, it does change the way i think about internet superstars such as crocker, as well as raise questions about ethics and, perhaps, our (blind) faith in new media.

-anh

The Drudge Retort: Red Meat for Yellow Dogs

www.drudge.com

The Drudge Retort provides space for commenting/criticizing news from mainstream media. It posts top articles of the day from their original sources. Then, below summaries of each article, people post comments.
Marisa

Amitava Kumar

I think some of you already know about this, but Vassar English professor Amitava Kumar has a blog that he updates regularly. I've been a frequent visitor since Sophomore year. He posts (about) a wide variety of things - excerpts of articles, book reviews, news about/from India, events coming up at Vassar, things that have happened in his classes, cricket, and his family. I think it's the diversity of the post topics that keeps me coming back.

The other day when I was looking at the blog, I noticed for the first time the long list of links on the right side of the page. Many of them are other blogs or news sources that he posts articles from. They range from very mainstream (The New York Times) to alternative (The Hoot - a media watch group based in New Delhi). I haven't been able to check them all out yet, but here are two of my favorites so far.

Allison

The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos) exposition

After last class’s conversation, I was thinking about projects that use alternative media in Latin America as a response to either repressive regimes, or need for revolutions. I was reminded to this exposition I went to at the el Museo del Barrio (http://www.elmuseo.org/) called The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos) (http://www.ndmoa.com/PastEx/Disappeared/index.html). This exposition showed “art” made by people in Latin America as a response to repressive right-wing military dictatorships during the late-1950s to the 1980s.

One of the “artists” I really liked was a Brazilian named Cildo Meireles who would write messages such as “Yankee go home” on money and then put it back into circulation. He would also silk-screen similar messages on to glass Coca-Cola bottles he would then return to the company to be refilled. What was later labeled art was used at the time to promote alternative, leftist ideas he would not be able to promote otherwise during the dictatorship in Brazil during the 1970s.

Another artists I really liked, Fernando Traverso, used the image of bicycles to protest the regime. During this period it was common for members of the resistance to use a bicycle as a form of transportation. Abandoned bicycles soon became symbolic of people who had been kidnapped and, thus, “disappeared”. In order to protest against the regime, Traverso painted the same number of bicycles throughout the city of Rosario as the number of people deemed to have disappeared in the city during the dictatorship. These permanent shadows of bicycles were a way for Traverso to pay homage to his disappeared colleagues.

Though this exhibition was clearly labeling these attempts of resistance as art, at the time of the dictatorships I think these were very creative forms of alternative media.

Juliana

Media in Egypt opening up and getting clamped down

A question about alternative media in Cairo would probably prompt someone, say a university educated but underemployed 20-something in a cafe (too many fit the profile), to talk at length about blogging. About the blogs of students, journalists and activists who might identify as part of the Muslim Brotherhood (their official website, Ikwan Web, is very popular.) About the imprisonment of a former religious university student sent to jail for 4 years because of what he wrote about Islam and President Mubarak on his blog this time last year. Or about the English language blogs of a collection of high-profile bloggers, most independent reporters, among them the Arabist.net and 3arabawy, where one can always read up on struggling Egyptian workers' strikes (sometimes reported on via text message from another blogger on the scene) and, in the last few weeks, the impromptu market and mayhem along Egypt's temporarily-open border with Gaza.

Perhaps the most publicized blog from Egypt in the international press is MisrDigital (some of it's in English), where photojournalist Wael Abbas has been posting leaked vidoes of police brutality and torture (many shot on cellphones) for well over a year. YouTube tried to pull his account late last year (Google strikes again, possibly bowing to calls to limit political dissent in countries like Egypt and Turkey) only to re-neg and allow him his own channel! Recently Abbas, like many other Egyptian journalist/activists, traveled from Cairo to Gaza to report firsthand the scene along with breached border (photo above). He's won a series of reporting awards, been interviewed on Al Jazeera and CNN, but just hopes he won't be arrested by his draconian government.

That's the biggest question with all of the opening up of what reporter Hossam el-Hamalawy, who runs the blog 3arabawy, described to me last year as this new kind of "citizen journalism." Blogging in Egypt as a political act took off with major protests after another round of rigged referendums and presidential elections in 2005, when a more coherent and collective opposition movement, ("Kifaya," Arabic for "Enough!") began making its name heard, most often through the channels of blogging and the independent print media. Where it ends has as much to do with repressive state politics in Egypt, and the increasing worry that companies like Google, which control sites like YouTube, will let online access get entangled in politics and international diplomacy.

The US gives Egypt a greenlight for mass arrest and torture of men believed to be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood; Egypt's doing the dirty work against Islamism, so they say, even if the Brotherhood rejected violence decades ago and is a (tacitly) tolerated political party in Egypt now. Who are some of the casualties? For one, a law-school graduate and blogger named Abd al-Menim Mahmoud, representing the more progressive side of the Muslim Brotherhood (“what I reject is not liberalism as a political ideology, but Western foreign policy") whose already gone to jail numerous times for what he writes online.

- freddy