2.2 Don’t touch that! Copyright, ownership and institutional control

The key concepts for discussion topics are Political /economic contexts – copyright, privacy, ownership; ethics

To begin our week we did a critical reading Steve Collins, (2008). Recovering fair use, M/C Media Culture 11 (6).

This article about fair use and copyright and provides an excellent summary of the legal history of the term, and its applicability to digital media through specific cases. 

A cleverly edited video collection of ‘Disney’ movies to explain the concept of “Copy Rights” and “Fair Use”, which allows copyrights to be broken for the purposes of teaching, News reporting, parody and critical comment, based on the nature of the work, amount of the work borrowed and the commercial impact to the copyright holder.

Ted conferences presentation by Harvard professor Larry Lessig

http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

Where Lessig promotes the argument that the impact of technologies and regulation on creative experimentation and expression will mean for the youth of the future vocal cords (of creativity) will be eliminated by evolution.

John Philip Sousa said that  "These Talking Machines are going to ruin artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy, in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing the songs of the day, or the old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal chord left,".

2.1 Entertain Me! Who makes your entertainment? Institutions, audiences & participatory culture

The key concepts for discussion topics are Media institutions; fans & audiences; participation and remediation; culture jamming

To begin our week we did a critical reading Cucco, M. (2009). “The promise is great: the blockbuster and the Hollywood economy”. Media, Culture and Society, 31(2), 215-230

We then watched a series on fan vidding produced by the Organization for Transformative Works. http://transformativeworks.org/

The viding documentary series was very insightful, as it gave an understanding of the variety people and reasons/passions that drive fans to produce these music video clips.

The media that I identified for discussion was a viding construction of television footage from the hit 1970’s television series “The Bionic Woman” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kFa58BJWrA

The vid was uploaded by http://www.youtube.com/user/BenHallert onto youtube 30 December 2010 and edited to an electro pop song by Swedish musician ‘Robyn’. The song lyrics are self descriptive and refer to a gynoid (fembot) describing herself, as ‘fresh out the box’ and the ‘latest model’ with her system in ‘mint condition’. The accompanying imagery is from the 1970's hit show, in which the 'febot's' were a frightening evil nemesis to the 'Bionic Woman'.

The socially dated 1970's television series plot was that the strikingly beautiful robots (fembots), designed and operated by an evil male genius, were to replace strategically placed women in key administrative support roles and take over control of the American government. It was the role of the 'Bionic Woman to discover and foil the plot (as the eerily life like robots could only be detected by her bionic hearing).

The song lyrics referring to the fembots strength and perfection and also to her search for a perfect mate to ‘plug her in and flip some switches’ she also reveals a longing and vulnerability as the robot states she has feelings as well (the overall effect is to sexualise the characters as in the 2004 movie 'The Stepford Wives').
The songwriter Robyn wrote the song about herself turning 30 and contemplating children, and considers the song her playing around with the concept of being a woman, and what it means to physically be able to carry children.  

1.2 The Medium is the Message? When the media converge

The key topic themes for this module are: Participatory Culture, Moral Panics & Ethics

We are asked to do a critical reading of Lessig, L. (2006). Four puzzles from cyber space. In L. Lessig Code version 2.0 (pp 9-30). New York: Basic Books.

The article by Lessig explores the Internet as 'Cyberspace' as opposed to “Yellow-Pages-on-steroids” as a place to develop and illustrate  four themes and examples relating to 'regulability', 'regulation by code', 'latent ambiguity' and 'competing sovereigns'

Our next task was to watch a five-minute video by Niko Pereira featuring MIT professor and author of 'Convergence Culture - Where Old and New Media Collide' (2006) Henry Jenkins,  in the video Jenkins discusses Participatory Culture' and how the media landscape is changing http://cinematech.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-video-w-henry-jenkins-on.html

In this past paced video rich in contextual media examples Jenkins states that”People can tell their own stories in powerful new ways", he discusses how conventional spectatorial media is giving way to a participatory culture. I think the video was a provocative and optimistic look at American culture.

Fembots have feelings too

Fantasitc bit of fan remixing from 1970s Television Show ,The Bionic Woman, Fembots

Steve & Super

Remediation example of 1970's television show "Bionic Woman"

1.1 - INTRODUCTION: How does the media engage you?

Our first discussion topic asks that we watch the Youtube clip Did You Know 4.0 and reflect up how we engage with the media, by examining our four main uses of media:

1. Entertainment: Youtube (harry77), Ebay (power seller), Television, Radio, newspaper, Notebook magazine (sadly ended publication last year – not economically viable)
2. Play: Second Life, ifish Pond (App)
3. Information: ABC, The Age, diggo, Google Maps, Wikipedia, Google Reader, Pocket Weather,
4. Social: Facebook, Skype, Blogger, Twitter, Delicious, LinkedIn, SMS, Email

As I started compiling this list it occurred to me that a number of these media seem to serve cross purposes for me, the entertainment and social are intersecting, friendships lead to shared information and shared information leads to friendships.

I still retain a bit of my old media, I still get my weekend printed newspaper (The Age)  but have noticed a dramatic change in the size of the paper especially the Saturday edition and quality of content, seems to be a lot more advertising and less in-depth researched journalism. The paper in recent years has cut its pricing twice and now gives me the Thursday and Friday edition at no additional cost. (I don’t have the heart to break up with them; they are trying so hard to keep me!)

I have never been much of a game player, but we do have a PS2 and Wii (kids), I have never participated much in online game but had a brief fascination with the virtual world opportunities offered by gaming sites such as Second Life.

I have an iPhone with a number of applications that allow me to have media sources available in remote locations and I can see this is creating an information divide between my friends and family, depending on how computer/technology literate they are but also a financial divide, as not everyone can afford to have broadband and 3G networks (I totally take it for granted in my life now).