I enjoyed listening to timmmmyboy in We Are All Artists because it cleared a lot of thougths I had about ds106 and what it's all about. In the beginning of the interview a lot of thoughts are shared about what creativity really is and who is and who isn't, what does creativity derive from and what is a good creative piece of work?
Creativity is something we often talk about but rarely understand. Many believe that only certain people have the creative "gift", they find themselves to be unimaginative and boring. However, this is completely wrong in most cases I find. All people are creative, but most do not notice theircreativity and develop it to its full potential. To develop creativity is surprisingly easy I've come to realize in this class.
What is creativity anyway? I asked around and googled a lot and got that it's the ability to solve problems with new methods ar create new products in areas such as art or technology. Central to the concept of creativity is innovation, combining things in an unexpected way, or create completely new things with new uses. It frees itself from the old limits, sometimes by going around them, sometimes by changing the problem so that they no longer apply.
Creativity is notoriously complex to define, in part precisely because it is closely linked to what Douglas Hofstadter calls, "to jump out of the system", a creative solution to create something entirely new that did not exist or could be predicted before. It creates its own rules which also makes it difficult or impossible to set up rules for how creativity works.
I am one of those who don't think of myself as creative. I am a person that gets easily stressed if something isn't 100 percent clear, I am a perfectionist and picky with a lot of things, which I see as a good trait although it can be my downfall sometimes. This is why this Cyberspace class and ds106 has been good because it is teaching that the future is all about innovation and starting new ideas and projects and go outside the frames of what has already been done. There are no straight guidelines to be set. What calmed me down a lot when listening to timmmmyboy was when he started talking about how ds106 is a vague project. With vague, I believe he meant that no one can define it entirely or know where it's headed to or what it will end with.
Shit My Dad Says is a good example of how we create todays popular culture. It was funny that it was mentioned because it is one of the few twitter accounts I actually followed with excitement. It started off as a twitter account and the guy behind it is now famous with a book released and tv show coming up. The only bad thing with ds106 is the quality of the work put out there. Art might take a turn for the worse in terms of quality. There is less amazing art work out there because everyone is led to believe they can do something amazing which is not always true. Some good sites to start working with are Aviary, Photoshop and Brusheezy although I find Photoshop quite difficult yet, it is an amazing tool. Essentially, internet is great because it opens up to a lot of creativity although it can also be a base for a lot of rubbish.
At the end of the interview with Tim Owens, he questions what makes an assignment interesting? It might not be the big things or something amazing but it is the little things. Everyone can learn how to do these assignments but to make it stand out from the rest is the tricky part. Finally, he mentions that what is important is that ds106 offers a sense of training and habit which ultimately is one of the best things about it and I agree with that.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Four Icon Story
Maybe this is a clue:-)
For this assignment I used aviary/vector editor to bring the pictures together. It's a web based photo-editing app that is easy to use.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Audio
I will write a little bit about the topic I find very interesting and is very much linked to the future in audio. I find electronic music very facinating as it is by many considered to be not real music. Electronic music is interesting because it is new and goes hand in hand with technology and computers. Although it has existed for a long time, ever since Kraftwerk put it on the map, but has in the latest ten years exploaded. Nowadays everyone is a dj, or at least claim to be one, because with technology it has enabled us to do everything in a much easier way than before when special skills was needed to create music.
Three blogs or web pages who also mention music and audio in an interesting way are Residentadvisor, iflyer and native instruments. Resident advisor because it is the biggest electronic music magazine which is web based. All information on artists, tourdates, music events and clubs close to where you live can be found. It recently just launched in Japanese and are now also available in Japanese. Native instruments is very handy as you can find everything from what product or technology to use to various news or product support.
Image: AUDIO Tokyo Electronic Music Festival by localjapantimes through CC licensing.
The reason why I am saying all of this is because digital storytelling is a craft that uses the tools of digital technology to tell stories about our lives. Done properly, storytelling can be a powerful evocative and emotional way of communicating themes and stories, often touching us in deeper ways than one-dimensional videos that rarely probe beneath the surface of poeple's lives. What better way of communicating that than through electronic music.
Three blogs or web pages who also mention music and audio in an interesting way are Residentadvisor, iflyer and native instruments. Resident advisor because it is the biggest electronic music magazine which is web based. All information on artists, tourdates, music events and clubs close to where you live can be found. It recently just launched in Japanese and are now also available in Japanese. Native instruments is very handy as you can find everything from what product or technology to use to various news or product support.
Image: AUDIO Tokyo Electronic Music Festival by localjapantimes through CC licensing.
The reason why I am saying all of this is because digital storytelling is a craft that uses the tools of digital technology to tell stories about our lives. Done properly, storytelling can be a powerful evocative and emotional way of communicating themes and stories, often touching us in deeper ways than one-dimensional videos that rarely probe beneath the surface of poeple's lives. What better way of communicating that than through electronic music.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
How fans use social media
I will be talking about how fans use social media as a tool for making their favorite artist benefit from a rumor they've spread or creating a bad rumor about the artist having bad consequences on the artist itself. I also want to mention a few things about the topic in general.
Social media is today a major meeting place for people all over the world. Uses of social media has increased in recent years. From having been used almost exclusively for communication between friends and acquaintances are now companies, organizers and even music artists and fans starting to use social media as a marketing tool.
For a record label, a new talent is only a few mouse clicks away when a video on Youtube might include a potential future superstar. An unknown artist has thus the possibility of being detected by both new listeners and professionals, either through direct exposure or through a chain of people, through which the video or the song finally reaches an influential person in the music realm. Already established artists can also use social media, for example, maintain contact with their listeners. This can be done through daily Twitter posts or pictures and videos that are posted on Facebook or Youtube. Internet and fans using social network has brought a radical change for music artists.
Social media like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter have for some time been used by fans as well as artists to make themselves known in their own means or fans to market, bring their favorite artists or degrade those who are not popular for some reason. It has been shown that through Facebook a large number of artists have fallen or risen in popularity because of fans and regular users daily posting
An example of an artist who embraced Twitter as a way to market their music is Imogen Heap. She asked he hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers for help when she would write a biography to promote an upcoming album. She received more than two thousand submissions from her fans. As thanks for their help and additional marketing, she published small sound clips in her tweets from the upcoming album at the time.
When I got assigned to the group I'm in, it was already decided that our topic on fans and social medias was gonna be about AKB48 as there are a few example of fans shaping the popularity of the group. But because I wanted to mention other things in this blog post, ill only be presenting a few things related to this girl group. What I find more interesting is how groups in general or fans today can use social medias to get them to a certain status.
Finally, an example of a fan making profit for its idol in some way are this guy who bought a whole lot of cd’s increasing the sales for his favorite group, AKB48.
Akb48 has had a lot of success from social medias with fans literally choosing who out of the 48 girls they prefer to be the next leading singer of an up and coming single and to top it off, a digital version of all the 48 members faces has been created to meet the needs of the fans and give the group even more popularity.
It is safe to say that today it lies in the hands of the fans whether an artist can do a breakthrough or not, how fast it is going to take before the breakthrough will come or how long they are going to last on the market.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)