The man knighted by the Queen and recognised as the inventor of the World Wide Web visited Sydney Town Hall this evening to speak and debate issues relating to how the web has revolutionised the everyday life of citizens today.

Tim BL only had 20 jam packed minutes to go over his invention, which he did so with amusing anecdotes. After coming up with the concept, he was told to write a memo about it, which he did later on and received the feedback that his idea was “vague, but exciting”.

The panel with Tim BL, led by Adam Spencer, discussed a wide range of topics including open source programming (the praise and encouragement for female programmers was widely felt), Government data, connectivity and censorship.

After researching Internet Collaborations and Organisations over the summer, my key takeaways included the use of the web to share and collaborate knowledge in order to harness innovation and creativity – not only in the I.T sector, but for all sectors that thrive off transparency. We are beginning to see more and more social and tech entrepreneurs joining communities and merging, and doing so willingly. Technological determinism was addressed indirectly – is it the devices that make us social, or is it the social that creates these devices?

Moving on, it was acknowledged that we are in a consumer economy that does not require the permission to create and produce. Our culture has changed and the way we think and do has become more flexible.

We need to be control of our own data, and not let it be owned and controlled by the Government with excuses about tracking for cyber terrorism. Cyber terrorists know how to bypass internet security so that they aren’t in fact traced. The only people traced will be the normal citizen, researching the web looking for information – some of which may be sensitive – researching an intimate disease, researching their sexuality, researching intimate issues in their own private time. That research then turns into a data profile that can be used for fraud or blackmail. The question passed to the audience was, do you really want someone to be in charge of controlling your data? Do you trust your government? Who’s to say that the data will be kept safe? And with the infrastructure in general, do we really want to be giving the master switch of the Internet over to our Governments?

Data and what we do with data was the topic du jour. Everything action we commit to on the web is data – from the friendships we create, the tags we attach and the things that we like. There’s a load of data being published everyday – is it boring? Not always to everyone, because the data is always relevant to somebody. To you perhaps.

Convergence came up a few times, but is a topic most will be familiar with by now.

Ending the night was a series of 1 minute Q&A. When asked by an eight year old on what will supersede the web, TimBL humbly replied, that is up to you.

And it is.

Definitely want to shoot more coloured dye photography in the future. Was fun and not as messy as I originally though it would be.

Fun fact: Ultimo was so named because of a clerical error on estate owner Dr. John Harris’ legal case. His offence was listed as ‘Ultimo’, meaning having occurred in the previous month rather than ‘Instant’.

Enjoy the pics!

Fig Street Tunnel (Border of Pyrmont/Ultimo)
Camera: Pentax Asahi
Film: Fujifilm Provia 400X E-6 35mm Slide
PP: Resize + Sharpen

Factory of Ultimo
Camera: Pentax Asahi
Film: Fujifilm Provia 400X E-6 35mm Slide
PP: Resize + Sharpen

M4 Western Distributor Freeway (Border of Pyrmont/Ultimo)
Camera: Pentax Asahi
Film: Fujifilm Provia 400X E-6 35mm Slide
PP: Resize + Sharpen

Kiss Stencil, Ultimo
Camera: Pentax Asahi
Film: Fujifilm Provia 400X E-6 35mm Slide
PP: Resize + Sharpen

Animals in the zoo have wide open spaces to roam. Lots of animal interaction as well – animal feedings, eagle stroking, crocodile catching. Hope to return again one day. It’s a tourist haunt, but still there is enough space to shoot without humans appearing on the film (if you exclude human elements like fencing and pavement..).

Camera: Pentax Asahi
Film: Fujifilm Provia 400X E-6 35mm Slide
PP: Resize + Sharpen

Camera: Pentax Asahi
Film: Fujifilm Provia 400X E-6 35mm Slide
PP: Resize + Sharpen

Probably didn’t do the slide film justice this day.

Adding to Bucket List: Go on an African safari.

Do keep in mind that by joining i-am-cc.org, your images will be in the system for a minimum of 3 months, even if you change your mind. Sharing your images must be something that you want to be doing. So maybe rethink if you’re the instacanv.as or wanting to monetise your images in any way.

All creative commons options are available, I’ve personally chosen to license my stream (username: mixy) as Creative Commons – Non-Commercial.

Here are some of the images shared freely by Instagram users:

Image by Instagram user: @juliepsamuels. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license.

Image by Instagram user: @nanpalmero. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license.

Image by Instagram user: @shannonmlin. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license.

For more information about Creative Commons, visit the official website: http://creativecommons.org/

The fun things you can do with a $3 cable release! Seriously, you should get one.

Have a great weekend Sydney!

One question that appealed to me in the week of studying digital games is the view of games being a social activity. Here’s something to ask yourself (courtesy of my Uni tutor, Eleanor):

What do you think makes a game ‘social’ – is it the type of game, who you play it with, or something else? (Is there a line between playing and being social, or are they part of the same sort of experience? Do you think that playing some games actually promotes more developed social links with others, for example when a game involves collaborating and trusting others to complete joint tasks?)

Many games involve an aspect of collaboration, and those that do – require tasks to be completed with the aid of others. This builds the social want and need for humans to ‘play’. To ‘play’ with each other I think is the most crucial aspect to what makes a game social. There are games that require collaboration that aren’t very social at all. Here, I point to games such as Farmville or Cafeworld where accruing points in a game involves tending to the ‘farms’ and ‘restaurants’ of your social network friends. They don’t require you to be online at the same time as them  – the collaboration is entirely asynchronous. Friends add each other not primarily to keep connected socially, but to build up gaming levels. Social games that are typical of companies like Zynga, are not as all social as they make themselves out to be.

Is this the profile of a gamer? Image still from South Park

On the other hand, you have games such as World of Warcraft that many non-gamers may pigeon-hole users to be men that don’t get out that much and live in their mothers cob-webbed basement. And maybe some do. But hey, for the most part – this is not the anti-social case that everyone points out to be. There is a thriving and large community of users who work together to achieve common goals and continue to work together on quests, forming friendships as they go.  Games work as the common interest for their friendship, but here, games come in as a secondary need – with friendship becoming a strong contender in many Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG’s).

In both cases, it is not the type of game that fulfills needs. While it may be partly who you play the games with, gaming deep down fulfills the need to play with other people in both in and out of our personal social networks. Gaming fulfills the need to play, socialise and obtain a feeling of significance all at once.

Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Part 2 of the Series above, this video touches on remixes in film:

Everything is a Remix Part 2 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

An extended extrapolation of the Kill Bill references from Everything is a Remix Pt 2:

Axis of Awesome’s 4 Chord Song, showing how most of the popular songs in music history all use the same four chords:

A Video Podcast by Blog and Half looking at songs that use the same riffs:

Makes you wonder, is anything original these days? And if not – is it actually a problem? Drop your thoughts in the comments!

What is great for a lot of talented artists is the level of exposure and promotion by fans who enjoy the music. It’s also a benefit for the traditional gatekeepers who no longer have to travel city to city to hunt for new artists. They don;t even need to pour over and listen to hundreds of tapes that get sent to their office. No. Now they only need to login to MySpace or YouTube, see how many likes and dislikes an artist have, assess their talent and potential to be a commercially viable ‘product’. Digitisation serves up the artists on a plate and their music as a meal for everyone to aurally devour.

It was also a great week to look at the tension between the music industry, it’s fans and the challenges/benefits faced by the music industry. Here is a video for the Lulz, a parody on new technology and the reactions of the music industry:

… annnnnd my very rough responses to this weeks readings and lecture on music:

What do you think are the biggest challenges and benefits to the music industries that come from digital communication and distribution?

Challenges

- Competition. With lowered costs, easy to use production tools and increased points of entry, music industries need to create more audience focused content to attract the limited time an audience has to listen to their music/content.

- Copyright/Intellectual Property challenges. Digitisation of content means that it is easier to sample, re-use, mash up (whatever it can be called) produced works to create new material. For some commercial artists, this is seen as theft.

- Illegal Downloads, decrease from the sale of physical audio sales.

Benefits
- Lowered costs, easy to use production tools and increased points of entry.

- Interlinked with social networks, content has the ability to go ‘viral’ in a short amount of time

- Greater chance of discovery by your audiences through social sharing, legal downloads, illegal downloads, podcasts and streaming platforms.

- Greater multimedia experience for the fans of music

In thinking about this it might be useful to consider how would you characterise your own use of digital music files.  Do you use them as previews, listening and then choosing what you would like to buy?  Does listening to downloads encourage you to see musicians in concert?  Do you buy other merchandise if you like the music?  Are you a pirate, or does your money still reach the musicians you admire?

Personally, I have both legal and illegal downloads. Legal downloads are from artists that I am already a fan of and enjoy their music enough to buy their albums and attend their live events. Illegal downloads are predominantly from artists that I don’t know much about – have only heard one track and download their entire album to see if I like the rest of their catalogue.

However, nowadays I subscribe to services like Spotify to discover music because the streaming is fast, the collection and access to music is enormous and I am also able to see recommendations made by my friends who are also using the service.I still attend the concerts of the artists I may have downloaded music from – many of whom I would not have discovered without the digitisation of their music, as I very rarely listen to the radio.

More to come on music!

From Desktop Productions: Digital Distribution and Public Film Cultures (Chuck Tryon, 2009):

“Somebody else’s straw is in our milkshake, and they’re drinking it up. That straw is movie theft”

- John Fithian on Piracy.

“Hollywood [is an] old guard hopelessly stuck in the past, aware perhaps that the game has changed bu unprepared to do anything – other than making draconian but ultimately ineffective legal and technological effort — to adjust.”

- J.D. Lasica

“When we no longer need to go to the cinema because the cinema comes to us, then cinema loses whatever ‘aura’ it may have had”

- Barry Keith Grant

From Click to View Trailer (Kristen Thompson, 2008)

When you buy a commercial on television, you lease the consumer for 30 seconds. But if you can get a consumer engaged online, you can own that viewer for 30 minutes

- Jim Moloshok, Yahoo!

There’s just an amazing timing issue, that the ‘net came into general, everyday use for most people in the western world at the same time as this film was announced.

- Erica Challis, TheOneRing.net (on Lord of the Rings)

The best way to advertise your product is to have your best friend advertise it by sending it to you. That way the message doesn’t come from New Line, it comes form someone you trust

- Gordon Paddison on viral marketing.

This week also looked at low budget and ease of entry into filmmaking created by the advantages bestowed by digital technologies. The following 5 minute movie was home made and opened up the door for its filmmaker Fede Alvarez into the big league:

Coming up, digitisation and convergence in music!