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ANOTHER GOOD IKEA FROM 303 PERTH – Campaign Brief

Because i’ll want to look back and remember this one.

St. Regis, Singapore

The new St. Regis featured in Alkemie.

Test

Testing Scribefire.
Haven’t been around here much. But i’ll start putting things here soonest. Just installed firefox 3, put in Zotero and Yoono, and now Scribefire. Great stuff for academics!

To Each His Own Cinema – 60th Festival de Cannes

Zhang Yimou, for the 60th Festival de Cannes.

Moving On

This week I’m trying to give my research a bit more focus. As I was writing my literature review, I found myself with too much information on journalism and new media and very little for a case study on newspapers (in this case it’s “The Age” I wanted to focus on). So I’m quite back to square one and now trying to see how I can narrow my area of study and try not to kill myself.

My old research on the London bombings and the citizen media movement come to mind. I’m trying now to find links in how the citizenry use technology (e.g. camera phones) during times of disaster or conflict. The London bombings in July 05 was a pivotal case of study in the area of citizen media. With photojournalists being unable to get to the scene of disaster in time, not to mention they were denied access to the cordoned areas, there was only the people at the scene of conflict to rely on.

Other disaster / conflict events I’m also reading up on (but will eventually have to narrow to 1 or 2):

2001
– World Trade Centre Attack (September 11)

2002
– Bali Bombings

2003
– H5N1 strain of bird flu (till present)

2005
– London Bombings (7 July)

2006
– Thailand Tsunami

2008
– Earthquake in Sichuan, China (May 12)
– Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (May 2008)
BTW citizen journalism isn’t a very new thing. Abraham Zapruder was filming the procession of the John F Kennedy motorcade when he captured the moment of Kennedy’s assassination. This was 1963!

Questions

I’ve had little confidence in my own research and possibly still do. But I am guessing its only because I tend to like to know that everything is in control. With my research, it feels like there are loopholes, and there are parts that I don’t grasp quite well. Makes it difficult to know if I’m treading on the right path. Nonetheless, with the deadline for the literature review looming, I’ve finally decided to sit and formulate some questions I’d like to answer with my research. It IS long over due, but I assure you it’s only because I’ve had to shave off 60 other questions that I already have floating around my head. I love over doing things, as always.

• How has the role of a photojournalist evolved with the rise of new media technologies?
• Who is a photojournalist and what is photojournalism?
• Who is a citizen journalist and what is citizen journalism?
• What is the role of a photojournalist in the age of new media ubiquity where everyone/anyone can brand themselves a journalists?

streetpoetry:melbourne

I’m done with my Transient Website. It’s called streetpoetry:melbourne.

I think the experience was a rather fulfilling one. I spent this entire week on htmls and the website design, I must say I feel quite accomplished. Thought I have some experience with websites etc, I feel it’s something I don’t enjoy doing. I very much prefer conceptualizing and producing. Working on this site has affirmed my likes and dislikes… somehow.

Now, some would ask where is the community in this project. I think the community lies in the simple common locality of each of these individuals photographed. They were all spotted in the CBD, all with different purposes and little stories to offer.

I think many projects about community, or about street photography seek to give answers and are rather mono-dimensional, what I hope to do with my project is to let people ask questions, seek their own answers, i think that makes for a more fulfilling experience – I hope.

(byron attard-wise and his poem)

(christine curwen and husband)

Why TV is quite dead (for me, at least)

While we all know at the back of our minds that media don’t die just because new ones surface, I think TV is quite dead for me. My machine sits pathetically in the corner of my living room waiting for a kind soul to give it a good dust, much less hit the switch for a good startup. And it’s died because I’m hours on end at the laptop, and I do everything around it. I wake up for breakfast and my computer is on, I have lunch in front of the computer while I type this, I watch DVDs on my laptop, and then there’s YouTube, which flirts with you just about 23 hours of your day. Today I thought about all the news that I know of from online sources – and I think “I never knew that much before there was The Age online, or The New York Times, or YouTube! So what happened?

I think it’s got to do with online news is able to be an effective pull medium. I find myself completely turned off by the fact that 1/8th of the news I watch on TV is irrelevant to me, and those I think are useful are quite hyped up and sensationalized. I also need some niche news that I can’t get on television. For example, I’m a design junkie, and i don’t see much news on design or designers on TV. So I turn to the blogs, and on my RSS I get the exact type of news I want, if irrelevant, i simply don’t need to read it. there are tonnes of hyperlinks that lead me to exterior information by other bloggers, or YouTube links.

Here’s an example:

I read on Apartment Therapy about the most expensive residence in the world. Following that trend of thought, I coninued to click on other links within the article, and found myself on a forbes feature of Mukesh Ambani, whom at 50 years old is one of Asia’s richest man. After googling his name I find more about him on Wiki and also a YouTube news feature on him and his decadent home.

Now that’s what I think makes news: when you are able to connectively find resources through hyperlinking.

The Story of the Weeping Camel

I watched The Story of The Weeping Camel on SBS this week. It’s a story about the nomadic Mongolian life, told through their cattle trade, especially the camels. For the nomadic Mongolians, the cattle are very integral to their lives – other than being very hardy animals for moving around, I think it actually defines some form of repute. I love the part when the two younger boys of the tribe took a long camel journey into the city. For the younger kid he was introduced to the television for the very first time and watched cartoons with the other city children, he was immediately captivated by that contraption that connection him to the world.

This doco comes with a great website (click link above), I like how it complements the linear format – I found out about the doco through the website and then watched it on FTA, now I come back to the site again and find myself completely drawn to the Mongolian culture and history.

TV and Gender

I can perhaps, finally start producing some words for the 2nd Comm Revs essay, if I actually even understand the question:

What sorts of cultural form/media have broadcast and/or digital communication technologies made possible, for what sorts of social applications have these involved, for what sorts of local, national and ‘global’ social groups? What sorts of rhetorical claims are made through the publicity, marketing, advertising, promotional and critical discussion of these technologies?

I’ve spent some time last week researching and have narrowed my area of discussion: I’d like to focus on the introduction of television (1950s) into the nuclear household and it’s phenomenal claim of merging public and private spaces. I also want to talk about how the TV set (furniture) established the domestic architecture of home – the female as homemaker and daytime dweller, a feminine figure, weak and susceptible to daytime low brow entertainment. This opposed to men, whose masculinity was imagined by the nuts and bolts of the complex ‘radio with pictures’, and other high fidelity equipment.

That seems to answer the first part of the question, then I read the 2nd part of it and got completely thrown off. What ‘social applications…..?” I don’t understand social applications beyond online social apps like flickr, facebook, myspace. Darn I wish I paid more attention to Peter. Help.