Merry Christmas from Little Boots

Little Boots records a special merry christmas song. I love how she made a Christmas video specially for the Internet. Awww

Edited: December 30th, 2009

Class 4: Simulated Realities

Watch: Sleep Dealer (Rivera, 2009)

Read: Everette, Anna. “digitextuality and click theory: theses on convergence media in the digital age.” New Media: Theories and practices of digitextuality. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.

While I personally feel that cyberpunk is a very interesting genre because of its depictions of humans interacting with virtual spaces, the only cyberpunk film that I included in my syllabus was the Spanish film Sleep Dealer (2009). This film deals with current issues such as illegal immigration and telecommuting by portraying Mexican workers who plug their consciousness into labour robots abroad, an advanced version of telecommuting. The reading that I paired this film with continues teaching intertextuality and develops a concept Everette refers to as “digitextuality.” This is a development of Julie Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality that basically understands that “every text builds itself as a mosaic of quotations, every text is absorption and transformation of another text.” Digitextuality is an amalgam of this concept, fused with the understanding that digital media is breaking off from traditional media, and new media is being constructed and used in different ways than traditional media was. I felt this related well with the film’s portrayal of telecommuting in the future and how technology might facilitate these disembodied jobs in the future.

Edited: December 28th, 2009

Class 3: Simulated People

By: Alex Massaad

Watch:

A.I. (Speilberg, 2001)

Read:

1) Clarke, Julie. “Simulated Talking Machines:Stelarc’s Prosthetic Head.” Critical Digital Studies: A Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Printing Press, 2008. Print.

2) Stelarc. “Prosthetic Head: Intelligence, Awareness and Agency.” Critical Digital Studies: A Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Printing Press, 2008. Print.

3) “David Hanson: Robots that show emotion.” TED Talks. Web. 5 Dec 2009. <http://www.ted.com/talks/david_hanson_robots_that_relate_to_you.html>.

**very cool 5 min clip**

Continuing with the theme of simulation by technology I decided to show Spielberg’s A.I. (2001). This film deals with a mechanical boy who has simulated emotions and feelings. Eight years ago the idea of a machine that can understand emotional states and empathize with us seemed far-fetched. Today research might soon enable robots that can completely detect and match any of our facial expressions on the fly. I felt that this film would tie in very well with a clip from TED Talks that looks at social robots that can mimic emotion. Finally the research that Stelarc has done on the Prosthetic Head adds some academic support to the interesting media about facial emulation in robots. While both readings appear in the same anthology, the Clarke reading does a good job of looking at the development of talking head machines, dating back as far as the 1830s. It also does a good job of grounding readers with the technical limitations of this sort of technology. The Prosthetic Head is ultimately more of an art project than a functional robot. While Stelarc’s project is CGI based exclusively, it shares many similarities with the real life creation featured in the TED Talks project by David Hanson.

Edited: December 21st, 2009

Best Mash-UP of 2009, Easily

This has got to be the most amazing mashup of video and music, and poetry; total art.

Remixed and Revived By: Phil RetroSpector – A Thousand Secrets

Download the mp3 of this song free!.

Edited: December 16th, 2009

Little Boots Laser Harp Part 2

Little Boots is building a special light based synth, it looks almost like percussion at this stage, pretty cool@

Edited: December 16th, 2009

Class 2: Avatars and Simulacrum 2

By: Alex Massaad

Watch: Moon (Jones, 2009)
Read: Jenkins, Henry. “Searching for the Origami Unicorn.” Convergence Culture: Searching for the Origami Unicorn. New York: NYU Press, 2006. Print.

My second week’s film is a recent sci-fi film that borrows many elements from classic science fiction films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). I felt it was a good example of a recent trans-media story that borrows from many different elements from science fiction movies. I also chose Moon (2009) because the film presents a simulated reality that only the film’s protagonist, Sam Bell, recognizes. Since Sam is the product of cloning it could be understood that this is a technology-created simulated reality. Without the cloning process there would be no need for an alternative, simulated reality. The reading that I assigned this week is mostly about the trend of films to extend across many non-cinema media. Henry Jenkins often writes about how films create worlds that can then be broken down and used by fans within fan culture or even borrowed by other filmmakers.

Edited: December 14th, 2009

Class 1: Avatars and Simulacrum 1

By: Alex Massaad

Watch:
Surrogates (Mostow, 2009)

Read:
1) Weisbuch, Max, Zorana Ivcevic, and Nalini Ambady. “On being liked on the web and in the ” real world”: Consistency in first impressions across personal webpages and spontaneous behavior.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45 (May 2009): 573-576.
2) Langlois, Ganaele. “Networked Publics: The Double Articulation of Code and Politics on Facebook.” Canadian Journal of Communications. 34. (2009): 415. Print.

My first week would be the first of two weeks about alternative realities and spaces that have been created through technology. The first week examines how technology can be used to emulate us in social situations such as social media websites (Facebook, MySpace, etc). The first connection that I saw for a film that portrays this sort social safe-haven was Surrogates (2009). The idea of insulating yourself from society via technology in the film is very similar to the reason I think people feel so comfortable using Facebook to interact. The first reading that I assigned (Weisbuch) takes a psychology-angled view at how social webpages are affecting the way society interacts. I felt that this might be an important study to read because it looks directly at the way technology is able to substitute for a first impressions via social media. As mentioned at the beginning of their study this is relevant since so many people are relying on personal webpages to judge friends, dates or even potential employees or students. The second article by Langlois would definitely be a “skim.” While the material in the article doesn’t teach anything directly related to media studies I think it shows how other disciplines are taking note of the importance of these imaginary “cyber-social-spaces.” The research was concerned with how people formed political associations during the 2007 Ontario election on Facebook and how this differed from associations “taking place in other media (Langlois 421).”

Edited: December 9th, 2009