documentary about copy right V.S. copy left

narrated in Engish and Japanese subtitle~
Youku is also a kind of open source software and was fined a lot for copyright. see how the documentary explains!
NHK纪录片 知识产权的保护到底是为了谁

another example of technologised body

LED Eyelash by Soomi Park

LED Eyelash is a clever product that speaks to many Asian women's desire for bigger eyes. It features an inclination sensor with mercury to turn on and/or off. The sensor can perceive the movements of the pupil in the eyes and eyelids. If someone wears it and moves her head, LED Eyelash will flicker following the movement.

 Soomi Park is a multimedia artist living and orking in Seoul. She received her BFA from Sookmyoung Women's University and MA in digital design from IDAS(international design school for advanced studies) Hong-lk University in Seoul, Korea.Most of her art works engage with her increasing fascination and banalization  of plastic surgery not only in Korea but also in many countries around the world.Her artwork has featured in many online/offline venues all over the world.

Her artwork has been acclaimed by international pundits for its ingenuity. Her LED Eyelash won her Honorary Mention under the section of Interactive Art at PRIX Ars Electronica 2008. The juries said, "Soomi Park's LED Eyelash is in a category of its own-glittering, yet profound,  yet extraordinarily beautiful and strange, and dealing with important issues of gender and identity with a disarming and charming sense of playfulness.".
Her artwork is a piece  of art as well as a design product that can be used in our daily life. Thus it’s a good example of the idea of human living with technology with joy and happiness. What’s more, she also make a good use of technology to reflect the environment and culture in a fresh way that catches peoples eye. 

thus, although technology has already changed our life in many aspects as well as brings the difficulty of identify the boundary of machine and bodies, it's also many positive example of how artists deal with machins.

LED Eyelash_ soomi park

Exoskeleton (Stelarc - 1999)

巴士阿叔 - Bus Uncle (雙語字幕 - Bilingual Substitle)

Digital games-But are they art?

Is it reasonable to consider computer games as art? 

•a) How does Adams define art? Do you agree with his definition?

         Art is not pedagogy-its purpose is not to teach.But still it is capable of making quiet complex statement.
         There are no-linguistic modes of expression.
         Art must have content. It should aethetic,it has rules for determining beauty and ugliness.
Art contain ideas, make you feel something.
Art is not formulaic.
         I agree with his definition.

•b) According to Adams, what is needed for videogames to be considered as art?

         computer games need an aesthetic.
game developers must experiment with the medium.They must take artistic risks and break new ground.
games must challenge the player as other art forms challenge their viewers. They must force the players to experience new ideas, to sea things in new ways.
games need not reviewers, but genuine critics.
prizes and awards must recognize aethetic merit and not merely technological prowess or craft.

 

The Ethics of Digital Games

a) According to the film, what are some pros and cons of playing video games for individuals and societies?
Video games is a new media that people can participate in which is different from TV shows. Thus, people playing video game not just join into a competition, but also enjoy the high quality of the images. With the narrative in the game progress, participants can influence the ending of the game so that they can try and play many times for different endings. The story telling feature is similar to TV shows or soap opera, but video game is more than that. Players can join in the game, to interactive.What's more, it's a way to release his or her pressure in daily life which may caouse him or her courage facing the trouble or may just devoted in the illution and ignore the trouble in real life. Different people must have different response to video games.
For society, the government benefit from, or rather utilize, video game to inluence young generation to reach their goals. Like the army tempt teenagers to join in through a free war game. They can get to know the latest weapon and be familiar how to use it. The quality of sound and image is very high that players can enjoy it. It seems like a new kind of advertisement. On the other hand, violent video game may cause real violence to danger the society. But if it's simply a relaxing soft video game, on the contrast, favoured the government that people are tend to ignore the ignore or avoid thinking about the problem of their living conditions.
b) According the film, is there any evidence that digital games can encourage aggressive values and anti-social actions in the real world? Do you agree?
Yes I think so.Through practice they know how to use weapon effectively and the many details of pictures make the world in game is closly similar to real life. Players may just releaseing their pent-up emotions at beginning but soon not enough for them.

There's a movie calld Elephant(2003), directed by Gus Van Sant, adapted from a news in  April 20, 1999, The Columbine High School massacre. From the movie people can know how teenagers are inhospitality and inhumaned. compare to their calssmate, vedio game, espacially violent games, have  inevitable responsibility .

c) Should governments have the right to ban certain games? Why or why not?

I don't think so. It's abuse of law.There's  no direct evidence that  most of the players of a certain game have negative effect on them and the society.It's more close to moral problem. But government should guid to a positive use of it.

we did a small research about what game they play and how do they fell about it.

my interviewers are 4(female), two of them like playing Cooking Mama because they like cooking and in the video game they can practice their skills and try efferent materials freely. One also said that she is not good at cooking and playing the game helped her wish come true in another way and she is encouraged to cook in real life. What's more, the game is designed perfectly that players feel it's true and really entertained. The other two like playing The Sim 3 because they can learn how to be a leader and to control people, escape from the pressure in reality for a while. Also, the visual quality is very high and players feel relaxed and one of the interviewers said that through the game she feel have a different life and she can control her life. But she also claimed that once addicted in the game she feel hard to maintain the relationship in real life well.

Technologised bodies in art

Stelarc 's work most interested me.
pneumatically powered 6-legged walking machine actuated by arm gestures
Biography
EXOSKELETON
Exoskeleton is a six-legged, pneumatically powered walking machine that has been constructed for the body. The body actuates the walking machine by moving its arms. Different gestures make different motions; a translation of arm to leg motions and of human bipedal locomotion to insect-like machine locomotion exists. The body’s arms guide the choreography of the locomotor’s movements, thus composing the cacophony of pneumatic, mechanical and sensor modulated, midi generated sounds. The artist composes the sounds by choreographing the movements of the walking machine and the mechanical manipulator. He not only has to see the direction that he is heading but must also listen to the sounds that the machine is making. Therefore, the robot is not only a walking machine, but also a sound machine.

my online idebtity

How many online identities do you have? What are they?
I have 5 on line identities.

One is Facebook and renren(people people),it's extension of my real life, I input my my favorite pictures and video links to enhance my personalities and to make new friends who have same interests. It's also used to keep in touch with friends far away and haven't seen for a long time.

One is blog for visual studies, I plays a role of a student which is more official and serious.

One is qq and MSN, to communicate with parents, as a child. On the other hand, I also joined in some internet communities about language study and test, gender and homosexual issues and designers and so on. Different community gives me different identities and they are not intersect.

One is douban, I talk to strangers in similar interests or who can teach me.  Because we don't know one another so taht there's always kinds of performance when in this site. And people can rebuild their background and they can record what they have read, what movie they saw and share differnt comments. Many comments are really profational and worth to read. In the site they also can build different organization freely, including travelling, reading, sports, movie, food, volenteering and so on.

And the last one is an artist community.

I'm in the site as an illustrator and share my work with other illustrators. Some of them know others in real life, some don't. It's also connected to part-time jobs or full time job.

In what ways are they different to your "in person" identities?

"in person" identity is full of mix that sometimes hard to separate them clearly that leads to misunderstanding.  Identities on line is more clear than in real life.

What are some benefits of expressing one's identity online?

I can chose to express some of my ideas on site and people can just judge me only through these words and my preferance that I'm easier to build my "ideal" personalities. I can think twice when leaving message on net  and I'm easier to foresee peoples response which make relationships more easier.

What are some risks?

for identies on Douban, there might too many fake information that people don't rally trust each other and just simply killing time on it. Or people sometimes leave perfunctory, even rude comments which annoying others and caused fighting. Too many worthless information wasted my time and if joined too many organizations, I will also worry about which activity held by them I would join in.

few sentence about http://www.mouchette.org/.

She claims that she is a 13years old girl,"she" wrote some secrete,talked about parents and used flowers, erotic sounds, flies and meats to express herself. All information is fake and the author made a fictional identity. If people don't know about it and believed the information, the person who is made in the thin air will become real in someone's mind. It's reminds me about how we remember dead peoples. They are not exist anymore but we remember what they did and their characters, they are alive in our own mind. The fictional girl is also vivid in people's mind who believed it.Isn't it a kind of existence? I wonder...

YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSHziqJWYcM
1) How many viewers are estimated to have watched the youtube video?
There are over2,613,359 people had watched "Bus Uncle" on YouTube (by 6th October 2010,with over 2300 comments under the video, according to the Bus Uncle with Bilingual subtitle on Youtube website). According to Wikipedias’ description, the clip is YouTube's most viewed video in May 2006, receiving 1.7 million hits in the first 3 weeks of that month. And not including the people who were watched it together. And there also a large amount of people who watched it on other website like 56.com, v.youku.com, video.yahoo.hk, dingtv.com and so on.
Thus, it’s impossible to calculate the exact number of how many people had seen it, but no doubt that there must be A LOT.

2) How would you rate the video?
The Bus Uncle is a Cantonese YouTube viral video clip of a quarrel between two men aboard a bus in Hong Kong on 27 April 2006. While the older man, who came to be nicknamed the Bus Uncle, scolded the man seated behind him, a nearby passenger used his camera phone to record the entire incident. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bus_Uncle)

The Bus Uncle is shot with phone camera which almost everyone has. Talking about the quality of the video, the quality of picture is extremely low, the camera angles has not changed in the whole 6 minutes, it used nature light that audience are hard to distinguish the two main subjects and their conversation is also hard to heir except for the subtitles. In a word, it has no aesthetically elements at all.
Or, we can say it's a new form of movie which is more realistic because people will fell more relax in front lens and shows the most nature part of them. The first phone movie in the world made by Nokia N90, a documentary named New Love Meeting（93 minutes）, directed by Serge Herz.( http://news.sina.com.cn/w/2006-06-15/15569212996s.shtml). Though the movie was criticized that technical is limited, the camera is waving sometime and most importantly, the lack of detail, color and microphone reduced the value of the movie, the director claimed that they won’t handle with it, for it catches the most realistic screen of the interviewees.

There's even some competitions and festivals about phone taken movies. For example, Forum des images, the movie center in Paris, had held a pocket film exhibition that all the movies are shot with camera phone. Till June 2010, they already held six times.( http://www.festivalpocketfilms.fr/english/), even the famous Italian movie star Isabella Rossellini had joined in pocket Film Festival in 2010!
Also some competition held by cell phone companies which helped to bring up the pocket film.
See http://blog.lib.usc.edu.tw/blogs/40700/%E7%AC%AC%E4%B8%80%E5%B1%86%E7%98%8B%E6%BD%AE%E5%BD%B1%E5%B1%95%EF%BC%9A%E5%B0%8F%E5%BD%B1%E9%A0%98phone%E6%BD%AE%EF%BC%8C%E6%89%8B%E6%A9%9F%E5%B0%8E%E6%BC%94%E5%89%B5%E4%BD%9C%E8%B1%90
And bellow is the Japaness first pocket film festival in 2007.
http://www.tncomu.tn.edu.tw/blog/808/read.php?1601
This kind of movie is more like recording every issues in our daily lives and costless and user-friendly. Anyone who has a camera phone have a chance to be a great director! This is also an example of what we can do with the participatory culture and bottom-up culture.
That is, movie with camera phone also considered as a new form of art and raised a different point of aesthetics if the technique can be used in an artistic way.

On the other hand, it surly raised interesting socio-cultural issues. The video attracted viewers with its rhetorical outbursts and copious use of profanity by the older man, and became a cultural sensation in Hong Kong, inspiring vigorous debate and discussion on lifestyle, etiquette, civic awareness and media ethics within the city, eventually attracting the attention of the media around the world.
Many people may had come across this kind of issues and they echoed with the same　experience. The Bus Uncle soon become a popular topic and they focus on the follow-ups.
When I google “The Bus Uncle”, there’s 4,530,000 web contained the word and many of them are comments in blogs or research about HongKonger’s life and so on.
People also get to know the name of the subjects in the movie and the video maker so that their life in the real world were also affected. The uncle was interviewed by Youtube and other newspapers and was bitten once in his workplace.( http://www.joeygalaxy.com/showthread.php?2890-Bus-Uncle&p=68758&viewfull=1)
The problem goes to how we deal with information on the internet? Internet made the world into a village
that everyone is under watch that no one can do bad things without taking responsibility. Or, people tend to have no privacy at all, and others are become voyeuristic?

3)Do you think it deserved the attention that it received from the internet community?
I don’t think it does deserve so much attention. Internet become a window that we opened our minds as well as blind and confused. Except of whom concerning about the social problem or people's cahracter seriously, many people in the internet are just folowing the crowd and you can imagine how I hard to find a point rally make sence...

discussion about analog and digital photography

1）What are some photographic effects that can be achieved using digital or analog(darkroom film light etc)technology?
digital photography is a form of technology that uses an array of light sensitive sensors to capture the image focused by the lens, as opposed to an exposure on light sensitive film. The captured image is then stored as a digital file ready for digital processing (colour correction, sizing, cropping, etc.), viewing or printing.（from Wikipedia）

2）What are some photographic techniques that can only be done using digital technology?

Some creative effect like make the subject twisting or change into a different shape.

3）What is the difference between analog photography and digital photography?

The essential characteristic of digital information is that it can be manipulated easily and very rapidly by computer. (Walliam J.Mitchell)

Digital photography offers more possibilities to picture and changed the idea of “realism”. That is to say, digital photography turned photo into a kind of material for artist to invite new images, not only be a work of art.

For analog photography, it offers batter qualities than digital way because artist use darkroom to edit his work by hand which make the picture more sensitive and have more details. And as one of my teacher said, darkroom gave him a great joy that digital photography will never reach. I believe that may one of the reasons that there’s still a large amount of photographer choose analog photography.

What exactly is digital cinema?

According to Lev Manovich’s definition, digital cinema= live-action material + painting + image processing + compositing + 2D computer animation + 3D computer animation. Digital cinema is a particular case of animation that uses live-action footage as one of its many elements. (What Is Digital Cinema? By Lev Manovich, The Digital Dialectic,Boston,1999,180)


short films on the Internet quickly became a genre in itself. Apart from digital or digitized video, anoher form of production and presentation of the digital moving image has been provided by software such as Macromedia Director and Flash. which allow for the creation of "movies" by combining video, animation, and multimedia elements.
Usually, people are used to the ways that they are already familiar with and they use new media to reach the effects which  traditional technology can reach too. When a new technology came up, it's always a problems of how to use it. Mission to Earth gives us some example of it. They explored a new language with digital technology and gives an different view of the define of "cinema".
Lev Manovich <www.manovich.net> is the author of The Language of New Media (The MIT Press, 2001) which is hailed as "the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan." He is Professor of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego <visarts.ucsd.edu> and a researcher at California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.(http://www.softcinema.net/?reload#)
Mission to Earth, a science fiction allegory of the immigrant experience, adopts the variable choices and multi-frame layout of the Soft Cinema system to represent "variable identity." Absences is a lyrical black and white narrative that relies on algorithms normally deployed in military and civilian surveillance applications to determine the editing of video and audio. Texas, a "database narrative," assembles its visuals, sounds, narratives, and even the identities of its characters, from multiple databases. The DVD was designed so that every viewing of each film generates a different version.(http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10584)
The screen reminds me of Mondrians abstract works. He tried to explore "pure art" which means "art" will get rid of additional elements like the story in a picture or moral discussions or even any kinds of background about a painting. So his work gives a idea of how different structure with basic color can affects audience emotion.(maybe) For Mission to Earth, I can't deny that it makes me sleep (similar to Mondrians painting), but in the end, I felt like to watch it once more, for I think I got something from it. He is testing our mind! Maybe.

hand colouring a black&white image

iamgine

1. Wikipedia can make immediate changes and correction.

>The founder of the Wikipedia tells a fact that a team of elites is always behind the Wiki system in order to monitor the Wiki anytime and anyhere. So, everything on Wikipedia is always work in progress.

evidence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQR0gx0QBZ4&feature=related

>There is a great number of volunteers from all over the world who always ready to add evidence, links, proof and reference to issues.

evidence: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff

2. The accuracy of Wikipedia is high.

>Wikipedia is more neutral. Because everyone can post what they know or think on the website.

>Encyclopaedia Brittanica may contains some biased information because Brittanica didn't display its rough draft and everything must be checked by a copy editor.

>Also, there are some unaccepttable and minor errors in Brittanica.
evidence: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/jan/26/schools.uk2

Aliens Coming!!!!!!Wikipedia or Encyclopaedia Brittanica?

It's hard to make a choice but I probably choose wikipedia.

In fact, I don't use it very often because I thought it's a really complex and boring and endless job for me to check every information I got from it is respectable or reliable.But I do believe that everyone who is willing to contribute the society should have the chance to join in editing encyclopaedia. This, I think, can be called democracy. Though democracy is not always perfect in many ways, this kind of program still helped to enlarge our knowledge and avoid prejudise in some point.

In the article: Will Wikipedia Mean the End Of Traditional Encyclopaedias? Dale Hoiberg,senior vice president and editor in chief of Encyclopeadia Brittanica,quoted Lewis Mumford's opinion "information could bring about a state of intellectual enervation and depletionhardly to be distinguished from massive ignorance",reminded us that the large amount of information can't all be useful and can never prove how we smart. Thus,he suggested taht the troditional encyclopaedia which based on scholars and experts.And here is the question: how to be professor in one field? Yes,they should at least got master degress to prove taht one had studied for a long time. And how about one that do dedicated a lot without any degree? Can't he/she help to perfect encyclopaedia? A media is an unnoticeable guidance of the way we see and treat the world.Encyclopaedia Brittanica stands for the old printing world and Wikipedia seems presants for the digital age and it is developing obviously.Let's see and waite for its "golen age"~

P.S. I'm not saying that troditional encyclopaedia is meaningless anymore and should go to grave forever. Like the relationship between Inernet and newspapers,or television, I don't think they are confrontation but complementary, or, just different choices.

P.P.S.As for the media of paper and television, I strongly recommend "Amusing Oureselves to Death",by Neil Postman.

Modern Time

Since the industry revolution, technologies are becoming more and more important in our daily life. But I'd rather say it's SEEMS important. We often look back of the life in mid-age and feel pity for them because we simply belive that technology help us to be happy.
My question is, is technology really make people happier than before? Isn't it just made life more convenient and comfortable and becoming much greedy and demanding too much??

In the story of Modern times, there is no particular conflict like drama or movies usually have. It’s more of a plain unadorned account. Many little issues made the movie, with funny jokes while audience felt sad when the movie finished. Modern Times shows workers position or situation were largely changed by machines. I think the reason why director think of technology so negative is he produced it right after The Great Depression and there were large amount of unemployment. Workers at that time suffered a lot (many workers nowadays especially in undeveloped countries are also in a terrible circumstance ) and they believe it’s due to the invitation of machine, in other word, the development of technology.

Now people talk more about the benefits of technologies and sincerely appreciate it. I do too because it became a very important part in our life in many aspect and made life more convenient and comfortable. But the developing of technology is not always good which make people lazy and caused a lot of waste. It may another reason for Modern Times that the director chose silent film even though sound film was invented. Simple but depend more on actors performance rather than words.

For now, I think there’s too much technology that is useless or just too much for one’s life. Tradition is not always bad thing that has to be destroyed, they often shows the wisdom of our ancestor’s harmony life style. We should rethink of technology to avoid enslaved by it.

so.... this is introduction

Hello everyone.
My name is Ma hui~exchange student from mainland China, year 3.
My major in home school is Glass Craft. Never heard about it? That's fine cause I myself don't clearly understand what I'm talking about.... Well, simply saying...we do sculpture or some products with the material, glass. U may heard about Liuli(琉璃),yeah,that's what prety similar to the material.

and.......The reason I exchanged to HongKong is just because I wanna live somewhere else far away from my hometown for sometime and feel the culture differences.

Million thanks for U can read it till now and this is the end.