Do it For the VIne...

"Do it for the vine" was a trendy saying regarding a little girl in a dance outfit who didn't want to dance, but of course she did it for the Vine.  Vine or Vines are short-form videos of six-seconds that users have recorded and edited to continuously loop and for other users to share through other social media platforms.  According to techcrunch.com Vine became the most popular used video app.  This app spawns personalities, creativity and keeps us stimulated within every six seconds.  

Vine has grown in popularity so much that Dunkin Donuts was the first to use a Vine video for a commercial.  The art world has even seen the creative use of Vines when the first Vine video was sold at #SVAES (The Shortest Video Art Ever Sold) in NYC offering Vine videos to purchase for $200 vua thumb drive.  Tits On Tits On Ikea was the first to be sold.  

The creativity of Vines is amazing of what people can do within six seconds. Editing videos is timely, but Vine makes it fun and innovative while adding your own spin to how you view the world. Vine is a product of our remix culture by remixing videos with music that is totally opposite of the image clip to make a point or to be funny.

                      These Vines are very creative and amazing. How'd you do It?



Also Vines have the ability to change the way we see the world within a short time. Journalism has utilized Vine's short video capture when a bomb exploded in Turkey and the reporter recorded the most important facts of the incident. My favorite use of a Vine for Social Justice is when a young African-American teenager is constantly followed around a store by racist store clerks. This speaks to many young black males and others as well as a reminder that racism in America still exist on all levels.

                                #ShethinkImstealing -great hashtag.


So are vines the video version of twitter? And since everyone can tweet will everyone Vine regardless of technical skills. Twitter does not focus on grammar usage, but content. Vine seems to still have an impact regardless of shaky cameras and poor audio. Have we dumbed down our production for quality now that everyone can produce? I hope not...


And my all time favorite Vine accompanied by music from Atlanta Hip-Hop group Migos that was not playing when the video was recorded. Hash tagged as "when the school shooting goes as planned"

The Future of Beat Makers and Creators...

So I'm a fan of Hip-Hop.  That would be the music I identify with.  Growing up I listened to all music from Classical to R&B to Jazz.   As I became older I started breaking down Hip-Hop songs, I listened to and started asking questions about how they make these songs?

                                                 How producers construct a Hip-hop beat

While sifting through my mom's vinyl records I heard a familiar riff to a Hip-Hop song, but it was on this record from a group called Return to Forever.  The Hip-Hop song only used six seconds of the jazz-fusion song.  After having that Eureka! moment, I started playing all my mom's records.

                                             Hip-Hop takes Jazz and makes it very different

Now that hard-to-find records are available via Youtube and torrents the dust, dirty hands and heavy lifting of records is no more.  Crate diggers(searchers of vinyl records to sample or listen) are a slowly fading population.  Now you can find a very rare record online, sample it and create music.  It doesn't need to take a whole day of collecting records, sifting through what to sample and then creating a song, which was a staple of 1990s and early 2000s electronic music producers.

Afrika Bambaataa on his unique record collection in the Cornell Library and the fun of Digging in the Crates

Has this accessibility to music via the internet diminished the art form of digging for records?  Has technology given us easier routes of creating while at the same time making us content on how create?  Take a listen to some creative and some not so creative examples of sampling in current music.  

Keep Calm and Stay in the Present

The movie Children of Men takes place in the near future of the 2020s.  I feel hopeful for the future when watching this cause they kept that year similar to the year it was made.  Normal cars and no out of this world communication devices.  The only thing about this movies' future is that they cannot reproduce.

Films who attempt to tell a futuristic story sometimes get way ahead of themselves.  Back to the Future is set in 2015.  That's next year!  Even though the film was right about the technologies we'd have like the flat screen televisions and small cameras everywhere,  they were off by how we live our lives with the new technologies.

(Skype)

I am all for the new technology that opens our minds and pushes our boundaries.  I think it is critical to develop new ways to create and function in society, but it seems like these technologies can limit us from society.

The film Lawnmower Man is a prime example of a techie who got so involved with his virtual world that he started drinking more, became depressed and lost his wife.  Just think if he had Facebook?  He gets so isolated in his virtual world he invites a new friend to join which turns out to be the worst decision ever made.

What I want to say is that with all this technology we need to find a balance and make it intentional when we use these media tools.  Stories are powerful.  Sci-fi films like Soylent Green  and Planet of the Apes have the ability to foresee what can happen in the future.  I enjoy films like these but lets try to stay in present to address the issues of now so that the technologies made today do not get misused.

The World We Choose To Or Not To Live In

Technology now lets us explore realms of the globe we never saw and see different images of people from there.  We interact with them through social media and gain new perspectives, yet most of the accessible media presented either enforces positive messages or negative ones.

Since the beginning of electronic media, we have seen distorted views of different people that relates to gender, sexual orientation, religious views, ethnicity or any other form of cultural that represents a group of people.  It has been a constant struggle to reverse the negative images of people in the world now that everyone can promote their opinion.  This issue can get people stuck in thinking that that person is the exact representation of what they saw in media. 

Like the previous post, I want to explore how worlds are constructed to what we want to see and become.  Has mainstream media limited us into seeing prescriptive package on people's identities or do we design our own?  Has it created a world of media that is already chosen and laid out on a platter for us?  Does this platter cause damage to those who are represented and those who view the media?  

Joel Pares takes photos that help reverse this idea of media racism/stereotyping by using his talents of attending to detail to depict bi-polar representations of people from different ethnicities, struggles faced and socio-economic status. Take a look at his series Judging America and see if you are impressed by his skills and think about if the media presented keeps us seeing one view of the world.

"Seconds" and starting a new life...

A few months ago my girlfriend rented a film from the Oakland Library(highly suggested).  Her choice of movies are out-there, rare and deep.

Seconds is what she chose.  This film shows an average guy who hates his life and wants a change. He is offered a chance to have a second life, similar to a witness protection program.   He undergoes the changes, enjoys his new life, then he remembers his old life and everything he missed.

This film is filled with up-close, fisheye, and obscure angles to distort the reality of the main character.

Continuing my theme of new worlds and/or lives, the movie Seconds shows how we in American society have the choice of choosing a new life.  In the old movies people would get a lot of money and move to a secluded part of the world to start a new life or avoid the old.  Many people have done this from James Baldwin to Josephine Baker.  And they had a legitimate reason due to the racism in America and their art.

Today it is more difficult to physically leave due to limitations, but the internet has changed that.  With online virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com or Onverse.com, people can recreate a different world from their homes.  I admit this is a definite advancement of technology.  It could benefit online learners, connect people to new ideas and so forth.  One thing that happened in Seconds and The Congress the main characters were not satisfied with their choice after seeing all that was sacrificed.

Now that it only takes 10 seconds to be apart of these online worlds, are the sacrifices not that large?  The information and trust we give to new online communities has become not that big of a deal.
If that is so, why are we not trusting each other in real-life?

"The Congress" and sharing our Information...

Now that I'm learning more about digital media and how it functions in our society, I wonder when we will slowly become victims of our own discoveries?

It is becoming more of an accepted idea to frequently to submit our information for others to log and use every time we visit a site or give our email to be apart of a new app.  The reality was there once watching a new film called The Congress.  The film is about an actress who's career is over, but has one chance to revitalize it forever.  The way to revitalize it would be to scan herself.  Everything that makes her her would be in a computer file to use for future movies.  Just think if we scanned all the influential actors and actresses before they passed to keep them in roles for today?  Could you see a conflict within yourself when doing this?

In a sense this movie represents how we are living today regarding our connection with social media and information sharing.  If we decide to give up or scan our information to certain sites or show too much information of ourselves on social networking, are we basically doing the same thing in the film?
Check out the trailer and the website for The Congress and hopefully you can see the detailed animation on the big screen.

In The Beginning...

                                     The First Blog...

This first entry is the beginning of a series that explores and ask question how media can construct new worlds or tear down existing worlds.  All entries are media, society, and technology related.  Topics range from virtual realities, music, the future, film, and social media.  Enjoy