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“Uni is so complicated”
First MEDA101 Shooting
For my Media Arts this semester, one of my assessments is in photography, which we essentially have to photograph an uncanny object. For my object, I’m doing my MacBook pro, and i’m attempting to photograph it in a completely alien environment, considering it’s purpose. So it looks completely out of place. That’s the theory though, I don’t know how they’ll turn out, probably nothing how I imagine. So for one of my locations, I went to an abandoned hotel near Newtown. Don’t go to Newtown during peak hour. Just don’t
The place was filled with litter, graffiti, empty drinks and everything looked like it was infested with aids. If you can use common sense and avoid the syringes and broken glass, it was actually a pretty cool place to shoot at. We bumped into two Swedish tourists outside as we were trying to get in, who apparently were “maybe” trying to get inside. In terms of my assignment, I was trying to find a location inside with heavy graffiti, that made you think “Why is that person using their laptop in this place?”, and I think I found one.
I’m still undecided on which shot to use exactly, because I got quite a few good ones I think. And i’m such a perfectionist, so I might even go back there. I’m going to filter it in black and white for my assignment because I wanted to viewer to look straight at the laptop, and not at the colourful graffiti on the wall, because it’s very good at distracting your gaze. But all in, it was a great day, and a great location. Huge thanks to the Urbex-Profesional Holly for showing me where it is, and sitting in aids-infected carpet for me. She also has a Facebook page with some awesome photos on it that are worth a look at. I have some more posted over on my Tumblr if anyone wants to see some more.
Lucy Rose
Lucy Rose is an English singer/songwriter, and released her first album ‘Like I Used To’ in 2012. Her album peaked at 13 in the UK, which I think is amazing, seeing as it’s her first album. She toured with Bombay Bicycle club in early 2012, and I would have seen both of them live then if I had money at the time. I only just found her on Spotify a few weeks ago, but from then, i’ve listened to her almost every day. She’s amazing.
Her top song would be ‘Middle Of The Bed’ (above), is about a broken relationship, and whether or not she still has feelings for him. It’s a beautiful song with a lot of powerful emotion behind it if you really pay attention to the lyrics. They way she sings in this song, you can just imagine her eyes closed, picturing an emotional memory. Well I do anyway (I’m not crazy).
My friend had told me to listen to her for a while, but I kept forgetting about it until a few weeks ago when I recognised her name on Spotify. One of the most annoying things in the history of humanity is when you suggest something to someone, and a few months later they try and introduce that very thing to you, as if they just found it, so i’m sorry Nick! Lucy Rose is a groovy new artist, who hopefully this year will bring out a great album and become even more popular. Plus it helps when she’s super cute looking.
Foals
I can finally blog about music again! And this time, I want to introduce you to another one of my favourites. Foals. They’re an English indie rock band who published their first album back in 2008, and it was a great success. They started gaining popularity mid-2008 because of this, and they have spiralled their way across the indie-rock genre. I think one of the reasons behind their success is the change of style in some of their songs. They change in their 2010 album ‘Total Life Forever’, to a more acoustic and slow style, mainly through the song ‘Spanish Sahara’, which personally is one of my favourite songs. check it out below.
They got really popular in 2013 in Australia particularly, getting the spot of 29th on the widely popular Triple J Hottest 100. They won ‘Best Track’ at the NME awards in 2010 and 2013, and ‘Best Live Act’ at the Q Awards in 2013. If you havn’t heard of these guys already, I would suggest joining the bandwagon now, because these guys are going places. I had the opportunity to see these guys live back in September 2013, but none of my lame friends wanted to come. C’est la vie.
For those that are interested, i’m doing a 2hr mix at my friends party on the weekend, and I’m going to record it and publish the live mix album next week sometime. So for those that are after some great party music, keep tuned!
You Wouldn’t Download A Car.. Or Would You?
In today’s modernised world, copyright is all around us, and dictates what we can, and cannot do every day. It’s like a bad smell. No one wants it, but even with all it’s negative attributes, it plays an intricate role in life. Christopher Moore put it well, “Intellectual property has changed how we share material” (2014). The rights people have claimed on certain works have made people rich, and people poor. It’s changed the economic and artistic world, and affected the creativity of almost everyone on the Earth. The concept of copyright began to spread around with the first copyright law in 1709. It established the legal right to copy texts, creating an enforceable monopoly, but limited copyright duration to a maximum term of 28 years. Then as the years rolled on, copyright laws swayed in the favour of the creators, more than doubling the copyright duration, even CRIMINALISING the distribution of copyrighted works, which again limited the creative minds of millions.
There’s the famous (and very old) advertisement on almost all produced movie DVD’s these days with a copyright ad and warning, which attempts to compare downloading a movie illegally through the analogies of “You wouldn’t steal a handbag” and “You wouldn’t download a car”. Ironically, and rather hilariously, this advertisement, itself uses copyrighted material illegally. I’m bringing this up to try and highlight the complexity and backwards nature of copyright at this point in time. It illustrates how copyright GIANTS break copyright law themselves without realising it. Also rather hilariously, you CAN download a car. The comedians down at Honda are making the concepts for several of their cars available for free while Hollywood is surely furiously looking for a new ad campaign. “The company is offering 3D printing data for five of its concept cars for free” (Luke Vandezande 2014).. ‘FOR FREE’. I’ll take three thanks.
Source: http://www.meh.ro/
In terms of The Pirate Bay, copyright is a HUGE issue. It would take someone years to to find out how many copyright infringements have been made because of TPB.
“All of us who run the TPB are against the copyright laws and want them to change, We see it as our duty to spread culture and media. Technology is just a means to doing that.” said a Pirate Bay operator.
The website can be seen as a symbol of rebellion against copyright law, an active defiance and protest showing that they don’t believe in the current state of copyright laws. The ‘Terms and Conditions’ of using The Pirate Bay is rather small compared to most organisations and websites. ‘Digital Trends‘ writes a nice ‘play by play’ of the whole document, and summarising what parts are important, and what everything means. Plus it’s a lot easier to read.
But to put it simply, they’re being the ‘safety’ police, allowing you to downloading anything for personal use, and protecting the users from virus’ by threatening dangerous file uploaders with a fine. They protect your privacy, and allow themselves to post personal emails involving copyright claims.
Fun Fact: You can download a back-up of The Pirate Bay that’s only 75mb.
References:
Moore Christopher , 2014, ‘The Stationers Company’, Lecture Week 3, UOW, 18/03/2014
Whitehouse Alex 2012, Piracy Advert Used Stolen Music, PC & Tech Authority, Viewed 30th March 2014, <http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/309432,piracy-advert-used-stolen-music.aspx >
Vandezande Luke 2014, Make Your Own Acura NSX With a 3d Printer, AutoGuide.com, Viewed 30th March 2014, <http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2014/01/honda-releases-concept-car-3d-printing-data.html >
Couts Andrew 2013, Terms & Conditions: The Pirate Bay’s fine print is still punk rock, Digital Trends, Viewed 29th March 2014, <http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/terms-and-conditions-the-pirate-bay/#!B2Up7 >
Ernesto 2013, Download A Fresh Copy Of The Pirate Bay, With Permission, Torrent Freaks, Viewed 30th March 2014, <http://torrentfreak.com/download-copy-of-the-pirate-bay-with-permission-130220/ >
Learning French
For those of you that don’t stalk me consistently, it will be news to you that i’m learning French at Uni as one of my subjects. French as a language has always interested me. It seems sophisticated. And i’ve always wanted to learn another language, because i’m immensely jealous of people that can speak to languages. Especially when you can have a private conversation with people that also speak the other language! I’ve always wanted to do that.
But learning another language is hard, or so i’ve been told. So far we’re just learning the grammar of the language, which is a lot more complicated than it sounds. Every object even has a gender! And you have to remember what it is. It’s all so much to take in at once, especially when you have a 3 hour tutorial.
The pronunciation however, I find easier than the actual spelling, thanks to my awesome technique. An easy way to pronounce words in french correctly (or at least almost), is to put on an extremely stereotypical offensive French accent. I know this sounds stupid, and possibly rude, but it really helps! Because you naturally roll your tongue on certain letters, which you’re supposed to do, but it just makes it seem so much easier!
I also find that when learning French, it will either feel like you’re fluent already and you’re a genius, or that you have to reinvent the wheel just to understand what’s happening. And why you don’t pronounce the bloody endings of words, and why ‘Y’ is pronounced as ‘E-Glrek’. You just can’t win with the French, unless you’re Germany (I’m going to hell for that)
I would recommend French as a language to most people, because it’s interesting, and fun to learn. You may have to put in a lot of hard work, and a fair amount of study (which i’ve terrible at), but in the end it will be worth it. Especially if I still want to do a semester in Paris next year!
William Fitzsimmons
For my second music post, I’ve decided to introduce you all to one of my favourite Artists, William Fitzsimmons. He’s an American singer/songwriter, and I think of him as another Modern-Day Smiths band, just like Keaton Henson. Yes I have a fetish for break up bands. His first two albums, Until When We Are Ghosts (2005) and Goodnight (2006), we’re completely produced and released by himself. And that’s impressive.
One of his most well known songs, Passion Play (Below), is one of my favourite songs by him. It’s a beautiful song about how he considers himself a Christian, but struggles with his faith. Something im sure alot of people can understand and empathise about.
Some more of his songs that I love include, “Please Don’t Go”, and “So This Is Goodbye”. He is such a beautiful artist, and his music really makes you feel some strong emotions, which is what he tries to achieve. I love this beautiful nature in his lyrics, and to me, it really makes him stand out.
One of the reasons I fell in love with him so much, was his amazing beard! I mean, check it out! I’ve joined the Facebook group “William Fitzsimmons to Tour Australia“, it may only have 111 likes, but there are alot of people over in Australia that would love to see him live. Personally, I would travel to the other side of Australia to see this man. He is amazing.
“But GTA Made Me Do It”
It’s human nature to find someone, or something to blame. Always. A simple “Because” doesn’t suffice in our society, especially when talking to your parents. And whenever there’s a violent crime or event, the media will always try to give the public what they want. Something to blame. And that’s usually Video Games.
There have been numerous events where a seemingly innocent and harmless kid has shocked everyone into committing such violent acts. There are usually a whole lot of reasons involved that the media tends to ignore, such as bullying, depression and poor family situations. One example is a “Polite, well-respected graduate student” named Steven Kazmierczak. He killed 5 of his fellow University students in the United States before committing suicide with the same gun.
Now, the first thing I think of after hearing this is, ‘HOW did he get a gun?’. The fact that a UNIVERSITY STUDENT managed to obtain a gun highlights how lenient the US are with gun laws, and also how oblivious his parents must have been to the potential dangers. The video below is a skit by The Daily Show, and highlights just how stupid gun control is over in the US compared to Australia.
The link between this crime and video games was made by a man names Jack Thompson. He said to a reporter, “We find from brain scan studies out of Harvard that if you get started playing, for example, violent video games you are more likely to copycat the behaviours in the games.” During the same news interview, Mr Thompson continued onto a self-promotional parade about his books. Now, this makes me think that he only said what he did about Video Games, to get the attention he wanted. Because whenever you hear on the news that “Video games cause kid to murder”, the news makes it out to seem factual, and everyone panics.
Now, i’m supposed to base this post around what the media being blamed for today and is it justified. And it’s quite simple. The news is being blamed for representing false accusations as the truth. And this is true, to an extent, and there are the obvious exceptions of course. It might surprise most of you, but Fox New’s is not actually technically news. It’s entertainment. They won a court case in 2003 which gave them a legal precedent to no longer show the news. Everyone just ASSUMES that it’s news because it’s called “Fox News”, and it covers current events. Some people even confuse “The Onion” as a news source at times, and I find that personally hilarious.
So in conclusion, the media are accused of providing false facts as true, especially in the case of Video Games, and this impression from those educated enough to question the media, is totally justified.
References:
Benedetti Winda 2008, Playing The Blame Game, NBC News, Viewed 17th March 2014, <http://www.nbcnews.com/id/23204875/#.U0u9u-aSz-s >
Unknown Author 2009, Fox-Can-Lie Lawsuit, FoxNewsBOYCOTT, Viewed 17th March 2014, <http://foxnewsboycott.com/resources/fox-can-lie-lawsuit/ >
Bruises Are Just Hickeys From The Universe
So the soccer season is upon us! We have quite a few new faces in our team this year, and our coach had a brilliant idea of having a team building/bonding day. Now, we all occasionally go up to our local pub and grab a drink together, but just getting a few drinks and socialising doesn’t give us the opportunity for team building. That’s when our brilliant team coach came up with the idea of paintball.
Now, I had never been paintballing before, so I didn’t know what to expect in terms of pain or what where we would be playing would be like. Turns out it was an indoor arena, with your basic wooden barricades and walls. We only had 6 people that could come, so it was the perfect size.
Now let me tell you this, paintballs hurt. A lot. But the thing is, when you’re actually playing and you get hit, you don’t notice it straight away. It takes about a second to kick in. Maybe it’s just me, but I just felt ‘in the zone’. But the aftermath of paintball is always a good competition. Who got the worst bruise? I’m telling you now, no matter what, you WILL leave with a bruise.
It was a great team building exercise, working together to pelt the life out of the other team, covering each other and winning as a team. It’s a good idea to build communication skills and teamwork, and it’s great fun. 10/10 would recommend. But try not to get shot in the back of your head like I did.
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