:MediaEd

A little while ago I posted this, in relation to viral video and the Obama campaign. Turns out that Congress is on YouTube! You can subscribe to househub or senatehub channels, and not only do you get to see your favourite politicians looking wooden in front of the camera while trying to market themselves as people you can trust, but you also get to see their cats.

If the article on viral video and Obama is too long to use in a classroom, there is a similar article on marketingmag.com.au, which is a bit more generalist, looking at how Obama used social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

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A stack of links, for links to resources on representation:

MCS: Gender, Ethnicity: Representation – Links and articles
MediaLiteracy.com: Organisations addressing media representation and online resources
Media Literacy Clearinghouse: Gender and representation
Center for Media Literacy: Stereotyping and Representation, Articles and reports

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Upfront apologies for the loose, stream-of-consciousness style of this post.

At the ATOM Conference this year, Jo Flack talked about Wordle. Just recently, someone sent me a link to this video, of Jonathan Harris and the ‘We Feel Fine’ project. Both of these illustrate the power of the internet, technology and new media to create something visually beautiful, rich, and complex out of things that otherwise could become transient, ephemeral, random, unorganised and potentially lost.

This here is another form of visual representation on a similar note to We Feel Fine.

Other things that I am considering in the same vein are these:
Museum Box
Visual Search Lab allows searching for photos/images by colour or topic. Also could be useful for showing design principles.
Mark Amerika’s work, such as Filmtext and Phone:me
New technology called “Semantic image labelling”
ACMI’s MAP (Memory and Place) Project and the SCOOT event
The Phone Book project
and my long-time beloved A Softer World.

And while I haven’t read this book, it seems like the logical next step in my thinking process.

Of course in an age of Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, Flickr and phone cameras there are obvious issues of identity and the way we represent ourselves to the world. To me, this is nothing new, and while useful for teaching within the Media curriculum (particularly as there is so much out there and several people have been writing some good stuff for years – Sherry Turkle and Julian Dibbell come to mind) and for getting students to begin to understand the issues that they might go on to further explore within a university setting, there is now another new wave of media forms being produced that we as media educators need to be aware of – the growing changes in the way individuals view and produce media and content on the web, and how that content is represented via a wave of technology and software programs.

In the light of Web 2.0, it is useful to think about how we organise, categorise and represent information, particularly in the way we use metadata to make sense of information and represent it in its smallest parts – topics, themes, and tags that can be used for searching. Such as the ones I use for this blog.

Cory Doctorow likes talking about metadata and other new media related issues, and is a big believer in the Creative Commons movement. His latest book Content covers these issues (note: relevant for new media) and is available for free online as an audio download as well
(He also co-edits BoingBoint.net which is full of bizarre and amazing stuff).

And last but not least, I thought this was a really nice little summary of visual representation and its subsequent issues in the new media, internet-based landscape. It also links nicely with Jonathan Harris’s talks.

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Screen Australia: Creating an Australian Image

Video interview with Stuart Cunningham
Stuart Cunningham explains how innovations in technology have transformed television content.
Includes Curriculum Focus and suggested Classroom activities.

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There’s a great article dissecting Chris Lilley’s ‘We Can Be Heroes’ series, entitled “Disability, Heroism and Australian National Identity”. Covers the representation of disability and Australian identity, and the notion of ‘disability’ vs ‘ability’.

I have been considering the use of WCBH or Summer Heights High within the Year 11 curriculum, as it’s such a great parody, but there are also opportunities to look at the representation of youth, and in the case of SHH, the representation of schools, race, homosexuality, drugs and also class divisions (ie: Jai’me). But certainly within WCBH there’s a lot to be explored in the way of ‘Australian-ness’ – there are stereotypes and archetypes such as the ‘aussie battler’ and the potential ‘centrelink cheat’ claiming disability pensions, not to mention the idea of what makes a ‘hero’.

Plus I just like Chris Lilley, and being able to screen shows I like in class is always a bonus.

Today I watched the film ‘Blurred’, which is all about Schoolies Week.
Despite the fact that it’s a pretty average film, most of the actors are obviously older than 17 or 18, and the characters are such heavily caricatured stereotypes that they barely appear 2-dimensional, there are a couple good opening scenes that could be studied in the context of Australian identity and representation of youth.

It’s a little unclear if the youths in question are meant to appear horrid, or if the portrayal is meant to depict the ‘natural’/realistic way that teenagers going to schoolies would behave. Possibly the reading would depend on audience/reception context? Might be interesting to see how students read it. I guess compared to other ‘recent’ teen films out there (Mean Girls, Jawbreaker, Cruel Intentions, etc) it’s probably quite tame.

There’s also a very young Matty Newton in there, in a quite sleazy role, of which he seems to have a name for.

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Vancouver Sun

METRO VANCOUVER — The tinted window of the classic white car rolls down to reveal the stony face of Hells Angel Hal Bruce Porteous.

He beckons to an awestruck teen who leaves his bike behind and gets into the car.

This is the opening scene of a rap music video starring Porteous, a Vancouver member of the notorious motorcycle gang who sings under the name Hal Heffner.

A Vancouver Sun investigation has uncovered dozens of online photos and videos featuring Porteous, sometimes in Angels colours, posing with scantily clad women and partying with friends. Other images show him backstage with pop stars Fergie, Rihanna and Swollen Members.

He promotes himself as an “old school gangster” in music videos for such songs as Do Ur Time, Living Large and the self-titled OSG. He’s draped in gold chains and surrounded by flashy cars and women in bikinis.

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Thought this was an interesting article, albeit quite long. Could be useful for Year 11s (Representation, use of new media technologies). Goes into the use of viral videos on the internet to lead political campains and how they work.

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