Lecture- We watched eXistenZ, made in 1999, for our lecture. It is about Allegra Geller, the best videogame designer in the world, who has created a new game called eXistenZ. However, as they are about to play, she is nearly assassinated by a man who holds an organic gun, a gun made of bone which shoots human teeth. The game is interrupted and taken with her and Ted Pikul, who is dragged into protected her even though he isn’t qualified as a bodyguard. Once they escape safely, Allegra wants to test the game in case there is something wrong with it due to the quick escape from assignation. She needs Ted to go with her, who cannot play until he has a bio-port installed. A bio-port is like an electric power point, except that it connected to the lower back of the human body. Once they get into the game, which is a very graphical virtual world that looks exactly like the real one, they experience terrible and interesting things. Questions are raised through this movie. Is it right to install something so permanent on your body so that you can play a game? And is something that reflects real life so much really a game? Is it a reality in itself? And once we try and leave the game, how do we know that we have truly entered real life again? Couldn’t we still be in a game? Also, is it ethical to play videogames that require you to kill a human being?
Tutorial- There is no tutorial this week, so I am using the extra time to explore my essay assignment, which will be about Runescape, a virtual game world, and how it affects its audience.
Readings- The reading is called “The Military-Entertainment complex: a new facet of Information Warfare.” It is written by my Lecturer, Professor Stephen Stockwell and one of the tutor’s, Adam Muir.
Especially on the war of Iraq, the military have used entertainment and media to help fight their war. They blocked Journalists from going to the front lines of the war, so that the American Military could explain to the world their own version of what was happening. When the Military realised that what they were saying wasn’t interesting enough or entertaining, Journalists were allowed to go to the front lines, as long as they were dependant on the military, so that what they said had to go through the military. Also, in America, when the war on Terror began, certain movies were edited or delayed if they seemed unpatriotic. For example, Spiderman was edited. This shows the control and uses that Military or government can put on Entertainment. It controls peoples/soldiers views on what they are doing or on what is happening. If the entire media spoke on how good the war was and stopped showing protests on the News, then it would seem that everybody else supports the war.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
Topic Six
Lecture- This week’s lecture was about the history of the computer and the Internet. The first basic form of a computer was the Abacus, used c 3000BC. It was simply used to manage large sums.
Charles Babbage attempted to build the difference machine which was designed to calculate and print mathematical tables. He only had time to make some early parts for it.
Ada Byron, inspired by the difference machine, thought of a machine that could compose and play music and be of everyday use.
Alan Turing helped make the first working computer to help break German codes in World War Two.
Computers were first commercially produced by IBM in 1950s. They were large and expensive for military, government and corporate use.
Moores first law was that the capacity of microchips doubled every two years. For forty years this was correct.
Xerox PARC developed ideas such as the mouse and pull down menus in the 70s.
The first PC was released in the mid 70s. The user couldn’t communicate with the computer because it didn’t have its own language. Bill Gates wrote a language for it.
World Wide Web is one particular use of the Internet. It is not the same thing. The Internet is a network of networks, and the World Wide Web is a feature of it.
Tutorial Task- The task for this week’s tutorial is to look at Wikipedia and to find two unrelated subjects that I know about on Wikipedia and to answer a few questions.
The first subject that I looked up is Runescape, an online Virtual World game.
It most likely is an accurate article, not only because it seems to be true to me, but there is a long list of References. Most are different websites including the company that designed Runescape, and a few are Newspaper articles.
Does it cover the basic facts? To be honest, I don’t think so. It is a long article, but it mostly speaks about the creation of Runescape, what it does and the very bare obvious facts. It doesn’t speak about the interesting things of the game, like all the monsters, the clothing or even the quests of the game.
The article would follow the Wikipedia guidelines. The facts are accurate and none of the content is abusive or offensive.
Although the article is accurate and fair, it is missing a very important perspective. The long term player. The article speaks of society’s reception to Runescape and how it might affect teenagers, but the article wouldn’t really interest any long term players of Runescape.
The second subject is The Terminator, a franchise of movies starring Arnold Schwarzeneggar.
The problem is that The Terminator can mean a wide variety of subjects. It can be a meaning in electronics, but with the Terminator franchise there is a large amount of subject material that can contradict each other. There are books, comics, movies and video games of The Terminator, each with bits of information that contradict each other. If you only want to take the movies reality into view, ignoring the rest, then Wikipedia wouldn’t be accurate.
Does it cover the basic facts? Yes it does. The article is accurate and objective as well. It is perhaps a little too fair, and a little too broad in knowledge about everything to do with the Terminator, not just the movies.
Readings- The reading was “What’s new about ‘New Media.’ It basically examined the newest forms of technology, such as the internet, the Web, Wi-Fi, mobile phones etc. The reading basically has the attitude that since technological media is growing at such an accelerated rate, it is not correct to describe any technology as old or new. This is because what might be described as old and outdated to one thing might be newer compared to something else. New Technology media has three main relationships.
· Digitalisation and Convergence
· Interactivity
· Networks and Networking
However, a lot of technology is combining these relationships together.
Charles Babbage attempted to build the difference machine which was designed to calculate and print mathematical tables. He only had time to make some early parts for it.
Ada Byron, inspired by the difference machine, thought of a machine that could compose and play music and be of everyday use.
Alan Turing helped make the first working computer to help break German codes in World War Two.
Computers were first commercially produced by IBM in 1950s. They were large and expensive for military, government and corporate use.
Moores first law was that the capacity of microchips doubled every two years. For forty years this was correct.
Xerox PARC developed ideas such as the mouse and pull down menus in the 70s.
The first PC was released in the mid 70s. The user couldn’t communicate with the computer because it didn’t have its own language. Bill Gates wrote a language for it.
World Wide Web is one particular use of the Internet. It is not the same thing. The Internet is a network of networks, and the World Wide Web is a feature of it.
Tutorial Task- The task for this week’s tutorial is to look at Wikipedia and to find two unrelated subjects that I know about on Wikipedia and to answer a few questions.
The first subject that I looked up is Runescape, an online Virtual World game.
It most likely is an accurate article, not only because it seems to be true to me, but there is a long list of References. Most are different websites including the company that designed Runescape, and a few are Newspaper articles.
Does it cover the basic facts? To be honest, I don’t think so. It is a long article, but it mostly speaks about the creation of Runescape, what it does and the very bare obvious facts. It doesn’t speak about the interesting things of the game, like all the monsters, the clothing or even the quests of the game.
The article would follow the Wikipedia guidelines. The facts are accurate and none of the content is abusive or offensive.
Although the article is accurate and fair, it is missing a very important perspective. The long term player. The article speaks of society’s reception to Runescape and how it might affect teenagers, but the article wouldn’t really interest any long term players of Runescape.
The second subject is The Terminator, a franchise of movies starring Arnold Schwarzeneggar.
The problem is that The Terminator can mean a wide variety of subjects. It can be a meaning in electronics, but with the Terminator franchise there is a large amount of subject material that can contradict each other. There are books, comics, movies and video games of The Terminator, each with bits of information that contradict each other. If you only want to take the movies reality into view, ignoring the rest, then Wikipedia wouldn’t be accurate.
Does it cover the basic facts? Yes it does. The article is accurate and objective as well. It is perhaps a little too fair, and a little too broad in knowledge about everything to do with the Terminator, not just the movies.
Readings- The reading was “What’s new about ‘New Media.’ It basically examined the newest forms of technology, such as the internet, the Web, Wi-Fi, mobile phones etc. The reading basically has the attitude that since technological media is growing at such an accelerated rate, it is not correct to describe any technology as old or new. This is because what might be described as old and outdated to one thing might be newer compared to something else. New Technology media has three main relationships.
· Digitalisation and Convergence
· Interactivity
· Networks and Networking
However, a lot of technology is combining these relationships together.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Topic five
LECTURE- This lecture was titled “Why I hate Wikipedia.” The Professor raised some very interesting questions. What is an authorative on the internet? And how do we know the truth?
The problem and the best thing about Wikipedia is that it can be changed and modified by anybody. False information and lies can be placed on Wikipedia and it may take several years for a false article to be corrected properly.
There are several theories about what Truth is.
Correspondence theory- Just the facts and what is observed.
Coherence theory- Does it fit together and make sense?
Performative theory- I do declare.
Social theory- what can we agree on.
TUTORIAL- The task is to answer this question; how do the ideas from Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” apply to contemporary digital media?”
His ideas suggest that there is little original artwork anymore, that there are now different challenges facing art because of the independence of artwork that isn’t original, that popular art is now considered excellent, rather than vice versa.
This applies to contemporary digital media because if Walter Benjamin is correct, than little of this digital media is actually original, that in some way it has been influenced by past works. Very little of contemporary digital media, and probably any other modern art, is authentic and completely original, taking popular ideas from other artwork and combining them.
READING- The reading is called “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, by Jorge Luis Borges. The writer found out about a region called Uqbar, a place that didn’t actually exist in reality, through an Encyclopaedia. By researching more about Uqbar, he found out about an imaginary planet called Orbis Tertius. Hidden works were written about it, showing the creation of animals, insects, new laws, psychology. People that read about this world discovered actual solid artefacts’ that could only come from this planet.
Idealism, if implanted in humankind so that it can not be distinguished between it and reality, will actually affect reality.
The problem and the best thing about Wikipedia is that it can be changed and modified by anybody. False information and lies can be placed on Wikipedia and it may take several years for a false article to be corrected properly.
There are several theories about what Truth is.
Correspondence theory- Just the facts and what is observed.
Coherence theory- Does it fit together and make sense?
Performative theory- I do declare.
Social theory- what can we agree on.
TUTORIAL- The task is to answer this question; how do the ideas from Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” apply to contemporary digital media?”
His ideas suggest that there is little original artwork anymore, that there are now different challenges facing art because of the independence of artwork that isn’t original, that popular art is now considered excellent, rather than vice versa.
This applies to contemporary digital media because if Walter Benjamin is correct, than little of this digital media is actually original, that in some way it has been influenced by past works. Very little of contemporary digital media, and probably any other modern art, is authentic and completely original, taking popular ideas from other artwork and combining them.
READING- The reading is called “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, by Jorge Luis Borges. The writer found out about a region called Uqbar, a place that didn’t actually exist in reality, through an Encyclopaedia. By researching more about Uqbar, he found out about an imaginary planet called Orbis Tertius. Hidden works were written about it, showing the creation of animals, insects, new laws, psychology. People that read about this world discovered actual solid artefacts’ that could only come from this planet.
Idealism, if implanted in humankind so that it can not be distinguished between it and reality, will actually affect reality.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Topic four
Lecture- This week’s lecture was called “Old communication Technologies.” The reason we are studying this is to see where the New Communication Tech, our topic, has come from. We looked at the history of Communication, such as tribal practises, print, the telegraph, the telephone, radio, cinema and Television.
Tribal practises included telling stories and singing which involved mythological and deep meanings.
We also looked at Semiotics, which is the study of sign processes and observes how meaning is understood. Body language might be a form of Semiotics.
Tutorial- Scavenger hunt questions:
1) Michael Buen was KNOWN for creating the Lovebug virus.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/817269.stm)
2) Johan Vaaler created one of many forms of the paperclip, although there were many other forms before that.
(www.a9.com)
3) The Ebola Virus was discovered in Zaire, near the Ebola river.
(www.geocities.com/mockturt/variations.html )
4) Chile is the country that has the biggest recorded earthquake. It was 9.5 on the Riktorscale. (http://earthquake.usqs.gov/eqcenter/top10.php )
5) A Terabyte is one billion kilobytes
(www.zyra.org.uk/kbytes.htm)
6) Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing email in 1972.
(www.hotbot.com)
7) The Storm Worm purports to provide info on dangerous storms in Europe. Users who fell for it were directed to a website containing malicious code.
(www.yahoo.com )
8) The best way, that I could find, to contact the Prime Minister is writing a letter via this address:
The Hon Kevin Rudd MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
9) Professor Stockwell was known to be in the band “Black Assassins.”
(http://christina01.uniblogs.org/2007/11/22/scavenger-hunt-qs)
10) Web 2.0 allows users to upload information and to communicate with users of the Internet.
(http://christina01.uniblogs.org/2007/11/22/scavenger-hunt-qs)
I suppose that search Engines rank the stuff that they find on the internet by the most recent and updated pages.
By correctly spelling and punctuating your phrases on the search engine, you should find the most valuable information at the top of the page.
My favourite source of information on the net is Wikipedia, although it might not be considered a search engine. My second favourite is Google, and I use them above all others because they have a wide range of subjects. Usually I don’t place in keywords for the information I need and come up with nothing.
Reading-
This week’s reading was “The work of art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
What I got out of this essay was the descriptions of different arts and how they have been changing. Photography replaced lithography, which allowed graphic art to represent life.
The use of photography, when sped up, was able to keep up at the same speed of speech for the first time. Only recently has there been a visual representation to go with sound. On that basis was Television different from Radio.
The early forms of portraits were there for sentimental value, to look at family members or friends that were absent or dead. That has now changed, with photography being there for exhibition value.
Tribal practises included telling stories and singing which involved mythological and deep meanings.
We also looked at Semiotics, which is the study of sign processes and observes how meaning is understood. Body language might be a form of Semiotics.
Tutorial- Scavenger hunt questions:
1) Michael Buen was KNOWN for creating the Lovebug virus.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/817269.stm)
2) Johan Vaaler created one of many forms of the paperclip, although there were many other forms before that.
(www.a9.com)
3) The Ebola Virus was discovered in Zaire, near the Ebola river.
(www.geocities.com/mockturt/variations.html )
4) Chile is the country that has the biggest recorded earthquake. It was 9.5 on the Riktorscale. (http://earthquake.usqs.gov/eqcenter/top10.php )
5) A Terabyte is one billion kilobytes
(www.zyra.org.uk/kbytes.htm)
6) Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing email in 1972.
(www.hotbot.com)
7) The Storm Worm purports to provide info on dangerous storms in Europe. Users who fell for it were directed to a website containing malicious code.
(www.yahoo.com )
8) The best way, that I could find, to contact the Prime Minister is writing a letter via this address:
The Hon Kevin Rudd MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
9) Professor Stockwell was known to be in the band “Black Assassins.”
(http://christina01.uniblogs.org/2007/11/22/scavenger-hunt-qs)
10) Web 2.0 allows users to upload information and to communicate with users of the Internet.
(http://christina01.uniblogs.org/2007/11/22/scavenger-hunt-qs)
I suppose that search Engines rank the stuff that they find on the internet by the most recent and updated pages.
By correctly spelling and punctuating your phrases on the search engine, you should find the most valuable information at the top of the page.
My favourite source of information on the net is Wikipedia, although it might not be considered a search engine. My second favourite is Google, and I use them above all others because they have a wide range of subjects. Usually I don’t place in keywords for the information I need and come up with nothing.
Reading-
This week’s reading was “The work of art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
What I got out of this essay was the descriptions of different arts and how they have been changing. Photography replaced lithography, which allowed graphic art to represent life.
The use of photography, when sped up, was able to keep up at the same speed of speech for the first time. Only recently has there been a visual representation to go with sound. On that basis was Television different from Radio.
The early forms of portraits were there for sentimental value, to look at family members or friends that were absent or dead. That has now changed, with photography being there for exhibition value.
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