This building that provides a service and function to the outside world can also have an internal consciousness, but is essentially isolated in a landscape that is surrounded by water, which relates back to the objects of the everyday.

By attempting to provide an experience towards the spirit of loneliness, a breathing and conscious building, juxtaposed with conscious everyday objects, the idea is that they can be reinterpreted, as if seen for the first time. I don’t want to overly anthropomorphize the objects and the lighthouse, but allow the audience to interpret objective reality through the various images of refraction, foley sounds and music.

The following are some extras that I have been tinkering with to help further guide my ideas for my individual and group remix project…

I feel Motion and Photoshop will be employed over the next few weeks to help with various transitions and expand on the above direction of the project.

Thinking about architecture and instillation art, I reflect on a play I recently saw “Rock, Paper, Scissors” about three men isolated within a white surfaced, cylindrically smooth, old lighthouse. In regards to the Blesser reading, light and time has everything to do with this structure. Reverberation is also associated with the fog that encloses our senses; I argue that space and time are equally important for the lighthouse and for the people that are drawn to it.

With this in mind, I draw parallels with the echoes of memory, breaking away from reality, the ‘truth’, perception and reflection of dreams. Thinking about the emotional response to these visual and audial experiences, it is important to reflect on the knowledge that objects, in reality, exist nonetheless. Or do they? Structures in both reality and mind have reflections. With jargon memories altering subjective conceptions, how would it feel to be reborn through objects in objective reality? If one can even conceptualize an objective reality? What of our projected illusions?

I am left to ponder perception and daydreaming. The substance that lingers in our peripheral vision, interpreted in dreams, can be used as a backdrop of ideas. While referring to both the conscious and unconscious dwellings, I am left wondering – How does spatial awareness and time affect the degree of attention that is associated with individual internal needs, to communicate through the objective physical world of translation, which is consciously acted upon in the external world?

As simple as falling asleep in the bath, the last thing I see before I doze into fitful dreams is my reflection in the shower head. The idea of only existing in the reality of objects that reflect abstractly strikes me as an interesting pursuit for the Cluster Two Project.

If knowledge and perception comes only with experience, how would our intuitions react to sound, if we were to start with a clean slate? In regards to the experience of sound, it has the ability to be interpreted through feelings of anticipation and anxiety, for example, creeping up in the background, moving objects and people through a space. Music that is choreographed in this way is an expression of communication that can resonate with others.

The notion that silence, allowing us to appreciate the activity, distance and velocity between sounds, is a form of art that requires time. Does this make it site-specific? While the Cubitt reading reflects on silence and nihilistic textures of the world, a dialogue between sounds and objects has the potential to create new meaning.

In the spirit of creating new meanings, is modernity really dead? According to Crary, it is. Perhaps Cubitt’s interpretation of Hannah Arendt’s philosophy can reshape this perception. If action is becoming, a development of the new through previous ideas of modernity can take on some form. A combination of familiar objects, when combined, becomes something unfamiliar and new. In conjunction with the anticipation of sound, creating a new active perspective on the world will create a new truth. So, how does one pass through another to become truly itself?

I think the ideas that are emerging here relate to the experience of something new through existing objects. If we only know ourselves through the reflections of subjective reality, obscure objectivity will be a challenging task. I feel that simplicity will be one of the key factors in attempting an interpretive dance of creation, between realities. This leaves me with one important thought, just how much lycra will be involved?

I have so much respect for anyone involved in film. It’s time consuming and intensive – communicating a cohesive story is hard work.

This assignment was a challenging one. After planning, booking, co-ordinating schedules, interviewing, coffee, filming, editing, corrupt files, three heart failures, exporting, uploading… There is NEVER enough time to make it perfect. A combination of obsession and determination to master Final Cut Pro helps to show and tell a story though.

Three things I am upset about:

1. Some frames dropped in my video – the distinct dead air can be heard between 3.31-3.32.

2. I couldn’t seem to alter the echoing interview with Ingrid, unfortunately the sound is not of best quality.

3. The music interferes with the interview towards the end of the video, which really messes with Ingrid’s perfect closing of ….’you know’…

Other than that, I think it is an improvement from my Vox-Pop attempt at the beginning of this semester.

My chosen rebel Jim is a man who lives on the Southern Bondi cliff face (Lands End Ledge, as he refers to it). He doesn’t want to be interviewed/filmed, it seems that plenty of people have harassed him about being on tv regarding his lifestyle (ABC, SBS, Channel 7), but after we spoke for some time, I decided to do a piece on him, but indirectly.

Background: Jim came to Sydney during the 2000 Olympics to find work. He had a rough childhood, moving from orphanage to orphanage, and didn’t have the right papers to prove who he was for employment or government benefits. He writes poetry for people and relies on help from strangers and neighbours, who protested against the Waverly council trying to remove him and his semi-structured home around 2 years ago. He has had people in the past burn his possessions. Strangers gawk down at him from the footpath, that leads around his residence, and ask why he lives down there. He’s been living in this way for the past 10 years.

Jim is a rebel concept, as well as a rebel without much of a cause… My film assignment is based around the idea about being seen as a social rebel, in full public view, disobeying established social norms and institutions by living on a cliff face in one of the most expensive suburbs in Sydney.

So, I am approaching the brief in this way:

Opening shots of Bondi Beach, waves, people, underlying melancholic music, a reading of one of Jim’s poems called ‘Any Day’. Some still shots and interspersion of narration of his philosophy, a feel for who he is, over some shots of his dwelling and further narration about living outside societies constructed norms.

Enter the interview with Ingrid Strewe, who will introduce snippets of Jim from her political perspective. I will break this up with a local resident’s experience/perspective of Jim living in close proximity to him, over film images of a fast paced Bondi Environment.

I am in the process of interviewing one of the the volunteers at Norman Andrews House, who help out with homelessness in the Eastern Suburbs. I hope to find out more about their interactions with Jim and how they work with people who – according to Ingrid Strewe – choose not to live within the system that try to help them find homes, where they can pay rent and live like ‘the rest of us’.

This is where I am currently at, I will update as I proceed in this direction….

PS If you’re ever stuck for a tripod, an art easel works fine. Ingrid didn’t even notice.

Another form of online media, that I consume almost everyday, is music. I have recently become a subscriber to Last.fm, who has been my new best friend for the past few months. Essentially, I have access to music from all over the world, mainstream or experimental, ambient and classical to avant-garde metal and country rock. I am part of a growing community that have similar tastes. I can search for new genres that I may not have otherwise ventured and be introduced to new musicians. Choosing my own musical adventure, this is the affordance of Last.fm – the otherwise unknown tapped into musical resource which separates it from broadcast radio. At the moment I am listening to Russian ambient radio. What radio station in Australia is going to broadcast that for me?

Back to other online consumption… I purchase music from iTunes occasionally and watch various recommended or general interest YouTube videos, which I am not very consistent with. Again, depending on how much patience I have downloading YouTube videos at home, ‘Bah! Still waiting for it to buffer?!?’ can be a pain in the proverbial.

Colour meanings according to web design:
Purple – mystery, self assurance, intuition
Brown – outdoors, earth, work
Orange- energy, balance, enthusiasm
In a sense, I think these colours reflect the character of the various rebels we will be focusing on.

I am working towards achieving a dream like, nonsensical, surreal pop art feel, which in itself might be a rebellious approach to web-design. Especially when considering the background… I started out using very simple smudgy purple, but it just looks so boring.

My banner is in reference to little rebels running into the (sliding door exercise) tv, but I know I need to expand on this. I am currently working on tv head images (again with reference to people/tv/internet/surrealism – might be going overboard here), along with photos I have taken of a purple-pink branchy sky. Mainly because the sky is the limit when taking into consideration any rebel and I love colourful deep sunsets (and walks along the beach, so call me now…).
Anyway, more design focus!!!

For some reason, this makes me think of my recent study on Rousseau and the social contract… Individuals are binded by the protocols of YouTube (the social contract), but collaborate and work together in harmony for the common good… Go PHIL2006! Anyway, with regards to these types of opportunities that are available to us all as media students, I think some serious thought, dedication and collaboration can really help us all approach new media affordances that we can make a career out of. I think I will start by making media viruses for UNSWTV with Jeza.

Below is my MDCM2000 speech that I presented last week, an introduction to my major assignment on attention for MDCM2000. I am broad in my approach, as this was mainly for the purposes of entertaining the idea about where my focus for the major written assignment is heading. I will be focusing more on the theory aspect of social networking, as my interest for the affordances of social network platforms – using Twitter as a case study – will help me search out more network theorists and develop my essay…

For my research project, I am focusing on Twitter as my media object, a social network system that works dynamically. I will discuss its strategies for attention by addressing the broader concepts that surround it relating to sociology, network theory and philosophy.

When I recently started using Twitter, I questioned the social and professional relationships that occur online and offline. Do they differ? Improve? Stimulate more discussion? What I find interesting is the way my attention is filtered, through my selected online community, linking me (and vice versa) to various sites, from helping me better understand CSS, to new music genres, to learning initiatives, to psychology… I could go on, but I won’t because…
Here is an example of my community.

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My student peers, talking about our research topics, an eLearning Research Officer at UNSW where I link from Twitter to his interesting blog, I am now a subscriber to Last.fm because I was introduced to it by Matt and his Twitter links.

So, from what began, for me, as a means of having quick and efficient access to my lecturers for help online for this course, Twitter has evolved into a plethora of assistance and engaging linkages. My experience of knowledge, creativity and learning independently is broadened by the social net-workings of Twitter, in under140 characters.

So I guess I am approaching my research under the umbrella of social network as learning.

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For Holmes, the internet offers almost unlimited democratic freedom to track down information and I can relate this to Twitter as a technical structure of interactivity that allows new platforms of communities to develop around interests that tangent across the mediascape.

Now Twitter is a platform of rhetoric participation, it doesn’t work if people don’t communicate. Protocol such as rss, url links and tags are all part of Galloways protocol concept that helps Twitter become more of a useful technological tool. Again, the more I use Twitter, the more I understand the tools that develop and help me navigate my attention.

The equation looks like this. Holding hands is optional.

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TWITTER + MY COMMUNITY = LINKING ATTENTION OF FAMILIARITY

My research will develop from Twitter as a case study of online attention as a means of changing our attention to the way we do things offline. Steinfield, Pentland and Ackerman reflect on this relationship between information and communication technology where distributed power can transform society.

SLIDE

So I am fixated on the ‘Affordances’ of the Twitter platform and the attention it brings to being a political tool. By political I mean Twitter enables us to share, link and participate publicly.

This virtual public space of twittering is an example of action and attention in which we can all experience a new type of learning. It’s almost like a socialist system that has the potential to seep into our everyday capitalist lives. .By communicating with one another online we share and contribute to the experience of learning rather than competing for profit.

From what began, for me, as a means of having quick and efficient access to my lecturers for help online, Twitter has evolved into a plethora of assistance, advice and engaging linkages. My experience of knowledge, ideas, creativity and learning is broadened by the social net-workings of Twitter, in under 140 characters. Drawing from academic network theorists, I will have another post up by next week, fleshing out my ideas in regards to the economy of attention, power and stickiness in relation to a system of social networking. Please feel free to direct me to sources that may be useful to develop my critical thinking about this topic.

Twittering – over and out.