What Does Facebook Mean to You?

With the new age of technology that we are surrounded by, many of our connections are made online.  Social networking sites like Facebook allow us to keep in touch with friends and family all over the world at anytime.  However, these social sites are used in many different ways.  There are those who use Facebook rarely, and there are those who are always engrossed in something, whether it is posting on someone's wall or uploading pictures. I personally just use my Facebook for things like DMA, keeping in touch with friends I've met at summer ballet intensives, or keeping up with my closest friends from back home.  Other than that, it simply serves as something to do when I want to waste time.

Now, most people know about “friending” people on Facebook, but as the network has grown, so have the numbers of friends.  I myself have over 700 friends, but do I know every single one of them?  No.  So yes, I agree with Robin Dunbar and his belief that a max of 150 friends is very reasonable; however, I don’t think it’s ideal. In everyday life, we may keep in touch with 10-20 close friends, and might personally know 150, but we also have innumerable acquaintances that we interact with. This being said, 150 is reasonable, but having more is acceptable too.  As a member of Facebook, I sometimes find myself feeling obligated to “friend” somebody simply because I met them once or because we have X-number of mutual friends.  In cases like these, it is possible to have more friends, but after a while you can have too many.

On the topic of relationships, things can get even more complicated. From personal experience, online relationships can be extremely different from offline ones.  Facebook serves as a safety net. It is much easier to talk on Facebook, or text, than it is in person at times, simply because Facebook allows time for second thoughts, or revisions to what we want to say.  With this said, being “proficient” in an online conversation does not mean you will be “proficient” in an offline one.  In my opinion, people spend so much time nowadays chatting or IM-ing people that it is affecting their real social skills.  So with that thought in mind, is Facebook really a good thing anymore?  Or is it simply there for the connections it gives us?

So for my project this week, I created a Prezi.  This website is one of the coolest I’ve ever worked with.  It’s a place that can create zooming power point presentations, and it is also a public site meaning that any work done on the site can be shared, borrowed, reused, etc...  (Definitely a place for cultivating creativity!)  I chose to depict the theme of connectivity through Facebook because of the many ways it can be used.  The presentation practically speaks for itself.  Overall, it turned out great (even though I ran into technical troubles and had to recreate it twice).  I hope you enjoy it!

Making Connections: The Magic of New-Media

When Boundaries Dissolve...

Donna Haraway wrote that “we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs.”  In these past few days I've realized how true this is, and I think it's kinda cool. If you think about how dependent we are on technology it can be somewhat overwhelming at first. Eyeglasses, pencils, cell phones, computers, radios, air conditioning, lights....the list goes on and on! Name one business man that is not attached to some type of electronic that tells him what's happening here and now. New media, whether we like it or not, is at the core of boundary-dissolution.  In fact, new media can also act as a catalyst in this dissolving process.

However, privacy and copyright laws have trouble staying up to speed with changes in new media.  Personal privacy has not completely become a thing of the past, but the lack of privacy on the internet in this day and age is appalling. People have the ability to post practically anything on websites. It’s almost becoming expected for privacy to be overlooked.  I do think there's still some hope though.  With social media sites such as Facebook or Google+, people can choose their privacy settings, therefore this privacy issue can be a decision. I think that most people simply overlook the settings because they want to go ahead and get to the fun stuff (uploading pics, chatting, etc). So in saying this, I think that privacy in this new media age is possible and really does matter, but it will be a conscious choice, rather than a common expectation.

Anyway you look at it, when boundaries disappear or shift, they are not gone forever.  New ones are bound to take their place (pardon the pun) simply because that is how order is kept.  If boundaries were to dissolve completely, what would we be left with besides a jumbled mess of misunderstandings?

Being required to work in sound this week was something of a challenge for me.  I’m not usually one to willingly mix and remix songs in my free time, and finding two that worked together was quite difficult.  I cannot count the number of songs I layered in attempt to find something that worked with pitch and tempo.  I even went as far as to try mixing the Imperial March from Star Wars with Come Together by the Beatles.  (And if you’re wondering, no, it didn’t work.  At all.)  I knew I wanted to try to mix songs that were polar opposites, so I started with numerous piano melodies by Michele McLaughlin only to find that none of the upbeat songs I had would match up.  After multiple fails, I finally decided to try layering Vivaldi’s The Storm with an upbeat song I had from a drill team camp.  To my surprise, it fit perfectly with only a few alterations to the beginning.  It was my ideal translation of a cyborg through music - the classical music representing us as humans and the upbeat music representing the technology that consumes us.

Overall, it turned out better than I expected, and I must say that I am proud of my newfound amateur DJ skills.  I might even decide to play around with music mixing more in the future.  

"Is Art Off Limits?"

No one can truly stifle art, but I do think that creativity is being hindered in today's world. In the past, creativity was greatly encouraged, but nowadays the arts struggle to gain support in some places in the world. However, where it is allowed to flourish, creativity is able to expand in ways beyond our wildest dreams and much of this is made possible through the free sharing of media.  I don’t see this form of sharing as stealing either.  It seems to me as though artists have merely complained about their work being “stolen” for the cash benefits they receive.  In RiP! A Remix Manifesto, Girl Talk made a very clear point when he said that it has become more about the money than the simple enjoyment of making music/art.  Wealth is no longer “in the products of the mind” but in the hands of the copyrighters.  These laws have been entirely manipulated for profit, and it is in turn hindering our ability to create and discover as artists.  

Now, I can understand groups such as the Balanchine Trust, which preserves and upholds the choreography put forth by George Balanchine in the twentieth century.  In order to perform and/or film Balanchine choreography, one must first gain permission from the Trust.  This, to me, seems reasonable, given the fact that his work is being preserved and not withheld.  Unlike the restrictions of copyright laws, the protection of Balanchine’s work still serves as an outlet for inspiration and creativity.  People can freely see and experience his works and create new movements based on his creations, but there will never be an exact replica.

With so many advances in technology, the amount of software sharing has skyrocketed.  Though some may see this as alarming, I see it as no surprise.  For ages, people have found ways of creating “labor saving devices.”  We are a progressive human race that is always striving for efficiency, and the sharing of media simply enhances that ability.  After reading through Jonathan Lethum’s article and watching RiP!, I have come to believe that rather than slowing down this growing process, we should embrace this new “copyleft” culture that has come up and charge full speed into the next era of artistic creativity.

For this week's project, I chose to “remediate” a dance on fluidity.  A girl had filmed this dance, and I chose to take her concept and translate it into a still photo.  Working with her original composition rather than something I had created on my own was different but still fun to do.  It gave me the opportunity to expound upon her original idea and recreate it into my own piece of art, while still portraying fluidity.

 

I wasn’t quite sure how to go about capturing a video in a single still shot at first.  I began to list things that could be considered “fluid.”  The list in my head started to grow from expected things such as water to more uncommon sights such as fabric.  While I thought about these options, I decided to take my camera and walk around campus.  It turns out the Franklin Institute wasn’t joking when they said that walking can “clear your head” and help you think better.  As I walked around, I found the images I needed to portray my version of fluidity.  The first was a giant leaf outside the commons.  The curves of the leaf mimicked the way a waterfall might flow over a ledge, and the veins within the leaf simply added to this similarity.  After snapping a few shots of the plant, I kept walking around to see if I found anything else that might parallel the girl’s dance.  I found a small shallow stream where I found a more “cliche” picture of fluidity.  This stream fit the girl’s concept almost more closely than the leaf.  She had talked about feeling as though she was underwater when she danced, and this snapshot was almost a perfect visual of how it might be to move underwater.  After finding the pictures I needed, I debated molding them into a collage, but after thorough contemplation, I decided they were powerful enough on their own.

Overall, I think this week's assignment was a success, and I learned a lot more than I expected to.  I hadn’t realized that the battle with copyright was such an intense one, but after reading through the conceptual material and learning other people’s viewpoints on the issue, I am ready to discover even more in the weeks to come.

What Inspires You?

Last week in digital media we were asked what inspires us - what is it that fuels our passion.  Being a dancer, it was difficult to place my finger on exactly what it is that inspires me.  So many things affect my dancing: friends, nature, family.  Even the weather might inspire me one day.  But what is the most prominent driving force behind it all?  It didn’t dawn on me until sometime last Wednesday or Thursday that much of my life is inspired by music.  However, music was merely a topic, and I needed a theme.  For the past couple weeks I’ve been extremely homesick, so every time I came into my room I would turn on Pandora and listen to piano music to calm me down.  It seemed to be one of the few things that could easily cheer me up.  At last the idea hit me: the power behind the music would be my theme.  What better way to create an image of something or bring up/subdue an emotion than with music?

So there I was with my theme at hand: the power of music.  What an awesome and wonderful inspiration to portray.  My mind started playing with the idea of comparing two songs and illustrating the emotions that they both evoked in contrasting ways.  However, I was then faced with the choice of modern versus classical music.  Through my DMA Facebook group, I was presented with some eye-opening insight to this dilemma.  I learned that “classical music was as modern as anything once and [that] there is nothing new about human emotion.”  How much truer can it get?  Thanks to my friend, I decided to go with something in between.  Knowing that I wanted to draw, the idea then grew into a plan to use an instrumental piano song I had created on garage band a few years ago as my “inspiration” for my artwork.  This song had power and beauty and made me feel joyful each time I listened to it.  From here, I went on to choose my subject: a horse, a symbol of power as well as beauty.  However, I was unsure of how to portray the joy of the song.  I even went as far as to ask my parents for their thoughts on the picture.  Luckily, my mother suggested conveying the emotion through the background or the landscape.  I absolutely loved this idea and took hold of it with both hands.

I finally began to create this artwork but not without first using my trusty friend Google to find a horse I could model my own drawing after.  Once I had found a picture I liked well enough to use, I set up my camera and opened my sketch book, ready to draw.  Now deciding how and where to start drawing was somewhat challenging.  I didn’t want the horse to seem too big or awkwardly proportioned, but after a few minutes of pondering, I started with the shoulders, and slowly but surely worked my way through the neck, head, body, legs, finishing it off with the mane and tail.  Proud of what I had done so far, I then moved on to the background of my drawing.  There were so many joyful landscapes I could experiment with: flowery fields, calming forests, and (my personal favorite) majestic mountains.  So, because of my love for the mountains, I chose to draw two with the sun shining between them, representing the joyous emotion that bursts forth from the song.  I filmed the page as I drew with the hope of creating a video I could show while the song played.  After finishing my last shading, I was ready to put my video together.

Now came the hard part.  Little did I know it would be the most frustrating aspect of the project as well.  After waiting for my videos to upload from my camera to my laptop, I began to meticulously crop them and piece them together in iMovie.  Once I was happy with their sequence, I began to look for directions on speeding up the tempo of the video clips.  I searched and searched through the iMovie help guide and even on the Apple website itself until I came across some disappointing information.  Apparently I needed iMovie ’09 and I was currently working with ’08.  So I began to look for ways to either download the newer version or even a way to upgrade what I had.  After an hour or more of reading and exploring the Apple site, I discovered that I would have to update my entire software system in order to have what I needed.  Devastated, as well as exhausted, I chose to get some rest and ask for help in the morning.  The next day I went straight to my DMA class where I was able to successfully reload my videos onto the iMacs and adjust the speed of my videos the way I had originally intended.  At last, I placed the song over my video and let out a giant sigh of relief knowing that my project had at last come together and that I had nothing more to stress over.  I then quickly created a Google account and uploaded my video to YouTube, excited to see how others would react to my artwork.

It has been really wonderful to see the work come together as a whole.  I really enjoyed being able to express myself through something other than dance.  The way the power and beauty of the song paralleled with the power and beauty of the picture really made this project enjoyable for me.  Even though I probably could have managed my time more effectively, I had fun.  To say the least, this week turned out to be a success, and I am looking forward to seeing what next week’s project brings.