Turning back time to Review Week One Lecture Content

First of all I would like to discuss the suggested readings which I found completely interesting.

I will start from the top and the work my way down to the bottom. These being:

• Cocaine Jesus- (youtube video) by Stefano Boscutti



• Building a Creative Innovation Environment



• Resource centre for Cyberculture Studies (RCCS)



• Babel- Glossary of computer abbreviations



• American Communication Journal

Cocaine Jesus

Cocaine Jesus is an insane mental video that becomes alomost impossible to keep up with. Its pace mimicks the pace of the textual narratives, and its soundtrack is one that not only gives the viewer a sense of placement but it also works on a subconscious level, as soon it simply becomes a humming in the background until you reach the end of the video and a loud "Bang" ends the music that you had tried to not consciously forgot about. It is an incredible piece, and one with unique qualities. There are artitsts out there that are also doing similar works that are based on text that exploit the video medium.

Building a Creative Innovation Evironment

As thrilling as the idea of sitting down on a Monday night and reading a 58 page file about a future government concept on creative innovation, well it just wasn't excitng so I read the summary. What I gained from the summary was that this was aimed at the people of Australia and New Zealand and it was about highlighting the importance of communication technologies and putting a systen in place that better educated people on the potential benefits of using these technologies and to also spear head a way that people can gain better access to these technologies. It is interesting but I imagine that this kind of thing would be at the bottom of the government agenda.

Resource Center for Cyber Culture Studies (RCCS)

This is an non for profit organizations that serves as a stepping stone to learning about cyberculture. Through this site you can have a look at book reviews, look at courses that you can complete in Cyberculture and you can also see upcoming conferences on the subject and have a look at some links that they have given. I believe that this is deffinately a stepping stone to knowledge and a site that I would be hapy to refer others to.

Babel- Glossary of Computer Abbreviations

The thing that interests me the most, is why are there so many abbreviations in the computer world? Is it because the computers can tun soo fast that big words would slow it down? Well anyway this site is a comprehensive dictionaty on all of these terms.

The American Communication Journal

This site is deffinately one that I will return top in concerns to new communication technologies and its effects on the arts and the world as we know it. I have a couple of other subjects that would also be useful to use this resource. Thanks for the link.

In the lecture, a thing called the Antikythera Mechanism came up, and since I was not in the lecture I was on a mission to find out what this thing was and what did it have to do with the lecture and this is what I found:

The worlds first computer was found of the island of Antikythera and thus was named the Antikythera Mechanism. Science shows that it has the ability to predict eclipses and track the paths of the sun and the moom through the zodiac. It is said that it probably even showed astronomers the movement of the planets.

Which brings me to the question that was posed to the students in the lecture: "How do we distinguish between old and new communication technologies?"

I think that the word technology is integral to answering this open-ended question. Technology is formed out of necessity and cultural want. The hammer and nail were not made for purely aesthetic reasons... they were made so they would form a function. I belive that the answer to this question is the level of technology. You can tell that a full HD tv colour is far superior in technology and is much newer than a small black and white tv made of a wood exterior.

This can be seen in a beautiful example in the lecture notes, in relation to communication and you can see how time has not only progressed technology but it has made it even more complicated as can be seen from this example:

"The speaker produces a message that is heard by the listener"- Aristotle

"The speaker produces an effect on the transmitter which sends a message (which is degraded by the noise of the transmission process) that is intercepted by the reciever which converts in into an effect that is heard by the listener". - Shannon and Weaver

I believe that this a perfect example of the above question....

I would also like to mention Stelarc who also came up in the lectures due to his idea of the extension of the body through technology. I had a look at his site and I found a beautiful quote from him in concerns to his work.

"Bodies are both zombies and cyborgs. We have never had a mind of our own and we often perform involuntarily conditioned and externally prompted. Ever since we evolved as hominds and developed bipedal locomotion, two limbs became manipulators and we constructed artifacts, instruments and machines. In other words we have always been posthetic bodies. We fear the involuntary and we are becoming increasingly automated and extended. But we fear what we have always been and what we have already become zombies and cyborgs".

Stelarc also cam up with the idea of the third hand which is a prosthetic addition to the body. The third hand is activated by EMG signals from the abdominal and leg muscles and it also has 290 degrees of rotation, both clock wise and anti clock wise.

His work is incredible and his use of technology is extremely inventful and his work seems to follow this same concept.

Even though I did not go to the lecture I found the lecture notes very interesting and I learnt alot. See you soon... more from my time travel.

I have a little confession

For those of you that are reading this, you are probably thinking who is this person?... Are they even in my class? what is going on? Well I am here to explain it all.

The beginning of this semmester has been a terrible one. The beginning of week one was excting, a little like getting new school shoes really, you can't wait to wear them but soon they give you blisters and by the end of the year you hate what they represent. Well it all started well and then a very good friend of mine very suddenly died of cancer, which was not only something that I was not prepared for but something that is still taking me a while to get a handle over.

The Following week... uni week 2 I took some time off to go to his funeral.... so I missed out on alot of work and was not in any state to deal with uni work.

Week 3 I went back to classes and with my luck got soo sick that I could not walk down a flight of stairs without having to reach for the asthma puffer because I simply could not breathe. so going to uni was an effort. The walk from parklands took a lot longer than it should have.

As of week 4 I was still having trouble to breathe but that did not stop the assignments from rolling in and for me to not only get confused because of all the missed lectures but also extremely frustrated.

Now I am doing ok... not fantastic but I think that I am well enough to try and get back on track. So I am appologizing in advance if all of these tutorial tasks are out of order, it is simply due to very annoying and coincidental circumstance.

So I am going to do all that I can... keeping in mind that I am doing 6 subjects.....
lol what was I thinking.

Wish me luck!!!

Tutotial Task week 4

Here are the answers for the scavanger hunt for week 4.

1. The worlds largest pumpkin is 1689 pounds, and is from Rhode Island. He began growing it since 2003 and it was judged in 2007.

2. The best way to contact Lilly Allen is to subscribe to Twitter. She is a twitfreak and is always posting information on what she is doing. You can find her under the name lilyroseallen. She averages about a message a day.
3. The length of a giraffes tongue is about two meters in length. You can check out a giraffes tongue on this youtube clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oafHw60zds

4. Glycomics in my own words means the study of Glycomes which is sugars and the study of this area is said to be the most difficult in Biology as it releates to DNA and proteins.

4a. Seagull Manager is a term that dates back to Michael Madison used t describe the style in which employees deal with problems, deducing that they make hasty decisions about things that they do not know much about therefore leaving others to deal with the mess that they leave behind. It was used in a 1988 Marketing article.

5. David Cronenbergs first film was Transfer which he directed and wroye in 1966 starring Rafe Macpherson Stefan Nosko and Mort Ritts and it only had a running time of 7 minutes.

6. The original Hacker's Manifesto was written on the 8th of January 1986 and it was written when one a Hacker was caught. There is a great quote in it actually= "I am a hacker and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual but you can not stop us all... after all, we are all alike." - lol beautiful.

7. Phone numbers in hollywood start with 555 because it was impossible for films to use phone numbers that sounded real and did not actually belong to anyone. They also found that people were calling the phone numbers that they were hearing on the tv. Sadky they were getting real people who soon hounded the production houses for a change, therefore resulting in th use of 555 which is not used in the American phone numbering system.

8. From Virgin Blue you can get cheap travel from the Gold Coast to Sydney from $45 each way. I know cheap right. But this is a special going on at the moment.

9. The 20th of August saw the number one pop song was Girl Happy by Elvis Presley.

10. The name of Stephen Stockwells band was The Black Assassins.

Well that is me for this class. Now lets go and get some lunch. lol

What I lost

Nobody can prepare you for the loss of a friend, especially one that is your age. Three weeks ago I was at is wedding and now I am mourning his death. On wednesday I, along with many of my closest friends will be formerly saying goodbye to a dear friend.
I remember Thursday night so well, I heard the news and I could not breathe. No one tells you how you are going to feel or what kind of physical reaction you will get. I couldn't breathe, I found myself wandering the house searching for something that I would never find... a way to bring him back. I wish there were a manual. I could have prepared for it. So I knew all the right things to say that I knew why I would suddenly start crying while ordering Crispy Creams or why the simple of mention of his name would reduce me to tears. I have not cried today, but that does not mean that I have forgotten what I have to do on Wednesday. I never thought that this day would come, but I am now constantly reminded to cherish everything and take nothing for granted. I lost alot on thursday night, but I also gained a new appreciation for life.
Take care of each other and live every day like it is your last.