Introduction about constructing online identity

l   What is identify? What is a digital or online identify? Different from “in person” identity?

One definition from the Concise Oxford English Dictionary of identity: “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is, the characteristics determining this.” More simply, one might say your identity is the answer to the question “who are you?”

Digital or online identity is a portrayal of who you are in a digital or online format. Like any form of identity, this presents only a slice of who you are, and in some ways allows a person to mare carefully control what that presentation of identity is.

2   Questions of authenticity

With the ability to construct your online personas, questions are raised related to the intention behind how this representation or conveyed. Is an online identity a “true” identity or is it something inauthentic, simply constructed by the portrayer.

    “In sum, the selves that we have are composed of multiple identities and contradictory experiences. In late-modern society, it is almost impossible to have a fully unified, completed and coherent ‘self’; rather, we all tend to have fleeting, multiple and contradictory selves”

(Charles Cheung “Presentations of Self on Personal Homepages”, p45)

3  Identity convergence is when you have a crossover between different portrayals of your identity. As many people have multiple online identities this becomes a more relevant issue. Some risks that could come along with this would be if one identity is intended for a specific audience but the audience of a different one of a person’s identities encounters both identities they might question the person’s integrity and character through these contrasting portrayals.

4   Public vs. private sharing of personal info

 Online identities can blur the line between what we traditionally think of as public vs. private information. It also can challenge comfort zones regarding what we might consider personal spheres.

5  Ethics issues

By placing your identity in a digital format instead of a living format it places this information in a place that can potentially be used by others

People can hide behind a constructed identity to harm others in ways they might not as their “real life” identities

Adams on Art

In Adams writting, he demonstrated his opinion of what is art. According to him, art has different types. Ages ago, it was divided into literary art such as drame, fine art such as paintings, decorative art like wallpaper. But there were also grey area here, areas such as industrial design is not what we think of as pure art. As he said :"The boundaries between art and non-art is not hard and fast."1He thought that video games should be categorized into literary art. The definition has its root in the longlast philosophy about art. Far ago, people thought that "art was representational, that art existed to portray a person or scene or object."2 But when it came to modern time, we take art as an expression. It should express the artist, showing what he/she wanted to tell spectacles. And art should not be limited by time and space. By saying this, he meant that we should be able to appreciate Greek sculptures despite that we are so far away from them. I think this is his basic idea about art. And I partially agree with him. I especially agree that the boundaries is more blurred now. I mean art is becoming more and more interactive with other forms like culture, etc, and we have a looser view of what is art.

According to him, if video games want to become art, they have to go beyond fun and commercial. It need to have other entertainment means. He also atated that they need an aesthetic. We just have to judge more elements in games, like theirs scenes, and how figures are constructed, is the story good, etc. And he thinks that video games is very different, so the roles of their producers and developers are important. Developers have to break the ground, finding new blood to games. And they must challenge the views, because otherwise they would be boring. And the whole chain of video games should seek for a change.

Anyway, art is so different now, maybe video games can become a great art form containing very different experiences from traditional art.

1:Adams, Will computer games ever be a legitimate art?, P1
2:Adams, Will computer games ever be a legitimate art?, P2

Case Study:The Science of Deduction

In 2010, BBC released the new Tv series they’ve made. Based on a famous character from a famous novel——Sherlock Holmes.The producer successfully translated the story into a modern version. Sherlock is a consulting detective while Waltson just returned from a war.

In the series, there are a lot of modern techniques being used to carry out the plot. Such as blog, SMS and BBS. Thanks to those creative and rigorous staff of  BBC, those fictional websites were actually invented.

The Science of Deduction is one of them.

Staff of BBC worked out this website and release it in 2010, just as the show was screened.

The website is called: The Science of Deduction. 

There are 4 areas you can search in the website.

Home: Giving brief introduction of this site by “Sherlock”, showing some hidden messages that you can refer to, updating the latest Forum activity.

Forum:  Like an online chatting room of “Sherlock”. His client can communicate with him there. Containing posts of  “Sherlock” and clients.

Hidden messages: It is the most interesting part. “Sherlock ” gives out    puzzles receiving from his enemy, and post it on his little website, and we can  try to solve it. He’ll post the answer later.

Case File: This category contains all the cases he's solved in the show. You’ll find a link to Walston’s blog where you can find details of how Sherlock broke the case.

I found it interesting because this website is trying to make Sherlock a real person who lived in London now. He's a charming man, and now we have an opportunity to communicate with him.And just like the fictional one, the success making of Sherlock Holmes made many crazy fans took it really serious. This website makes the new Sherlock come alive from the screen. Another reason I pay attention to it is because it is related to commercial market. Besides, it shows the hard-work of BBC staff. They care about the detail, and it shows their brilliant way of promotion.

I can't think of negative issues it raises. This website is all about dedution, not so concerning or peeking into a real person's daily life. It seems to be a heaven for fans of Sherlock or fans of detective fictions. They can brain storm here, and the founder is kind of creating a sense that we are communicating with Sherlock, although it's all fake and we all know it.



How things expanding from me?

How fascinating, one day we were so resisting to machine combined with human bodies, like Edward below, the next day we regarded them as superheros, as wolverine.

          

We exploded several works that expressing this theme, and among them the most attractive work for me is those of Stelarc's.

 

In this work,'The artist's body's positionedat the centre of the structure on a turntable and activates the machine through an extended 'arm' with a manipulator'1, so actually the artist can do more things at the same time, as well as be manipulated by other people. Quite like a robert.

I found it interesting because this is an active behavior, I mean he wanted to do this, not because he had to. He tried to experience outer power and super power. Like Iron man, it seems that he has the ability to do greater things than normal people. Also I saw it as a revolutionary work combining science and art. It actually use technique in reality not on the Internet.


1:Christian Paul, "Stelarc, Ping Body", 1996, P 166

Why so serious?

When watching the film, I can't help thinking of 'Clockwork Orange', I don't know why, maybe they both concern about teenagers' psychiology and affect the teens' behavior. Especially when I saw those gamers so addicted to the game and just like the main character in ' Clocjwork Orange' drinking the evil milk and commiting all the terrible cirmes. It's very interesting to see the traces of changes in teens' interests.

I would like to start with the pros of playing videogames which also been talked about a lot in the film. First, for individuals, it can help children to fight against diseases. Let's not forget that videogames has plenty of forms, and not all of them are devils. Remember the game played by a young patient, it's supported by the hospital. The game let players to be a kind of medicine of human form, players choose patients, and then go into their bodies and kill the virus. It actually can help the patients to know their diseases better, and by giving positive implies, it can in fact help cure the diseases. Another example is the AA(American Army). The military force in U.S. paid to develop this game in order to attract young people serve for the army when they grow up. I found it very creative and brave to do so, and the effect is good. There are also cons. Just like the movie, some kids very addicted to the violence in the games and applied it to the reality, like robbory and classroom shootings.

In the film, the director tell stories about teens commiting crime in reality, probably affected by the violent games. It's anti-social, and also parents and adults seems to worry about their increasing aggressive. I can't agree with this. I mean nowadays there are plenty of ways through which teens can know about violence and other dangerous thoughts, we can't protect them in a total pure environment, so we just need to guide them and help them to tell digital world from reality.

I really don't think that gevernment should have the right to ban videogames. Because we people can't destroy anything we think inappropriate, that would be horrible. We certainly should avoid bad morals, but we need to have the choice, not meaning that we should do, but we have to choose on our own, not by obedience. Another reason is because actually these games have some positive effects. Such as it can help to release our stress and anger as well as other negative emotions, and it can use to bulid connections between teens and country, like AA.

In my own experience in playing CS, I found that we're actually not so concerned about the blood, because we know clearly it's a game. What we want to achieve is to have fun with friends. We always make jokes on each other in reality when we are shooting at each other in the game. And who did most headshots are respected, only because of one's skill.

So in general, Why so serious?

Mouchette

One of the extreme example of fake online identities is the website of Mouchette. This is a website of a 13 years old girl, who of course is a fake identity created by an artist.

This website contains pictures and links, and it's like the girl is exposing her real life to others but all those fake informations make us sick. 'She' wants to interact with us, and she left some  questions.You can leave your email address if you want.

What impressed me most was the set up of the homepage. no much words, and a sophisticated flower is used as a backgroud. It creat a sense of touch by adding some flies. 'She' is like destroying beauty. All the informations there seems to be real. I mean they are very detailed, for example, she shows us her bedroom. And posters along with other stuff are trying to confuse us.

It's very unique that she used sound effect on her website. And to accompany the pictures and the style, she makes those creepy sound when entering. It's meaningless and makes us uncomfortable. But the sound makes the website quite different from other works of art. It now contains fourv senses we have. So the feeling is stronger.

At last, Iwant to talk a little about the background of this websites. We know that this 13-year-old girl is fictional, but we admit that some part of the uncomfortable feelings we have are closly related to her age. We think it is disgusting and unappropriate for such a little girl to make such descriptions and pictures and sound. So if it would be diferent if this girl changed her identity to a more mature and sextual attractive woman?Is it because of her age that we think it is extreme? It's more like a moral discussion now.

Who are you and who am I?

With the development of internet,more and more different identities are applied nowadays, because all you have to do is to register and one fictional person come into birth.

After interviewing my classmates, I found one person particularly interesting. She has the most online identities among all the classmates I've interviewed, which is more than 10.She has facebook, twitter, MSN and many emails. Some of those identities are completely different from reality, such as age,gender,job. She thinks it's fun to use fake identities to communicate with people on line. And She feels unsafe to expose herself on the internet, the real her.

Comparing with mine,I'm quite simple. I have around 5 online identities, and they are some chatting tools, emails and blogs.They are more sensitive than the real me,because I think it dangerous to tell a person who really lives around you the real thoughts and feelings you have. I think that by using a fack online identity, you can express your real feelings and thoughts freely and escaping from the pressure you have from daily life. But there're some certain risks such as loss of your private information and causing trouble in reality.

Constructing Identity online

Key quotations(at least five)[After each quote remember to add the name of the author;the title of the book/article or website, the publication place and publisher's name/page number and the year of publication or the webddress and date accessed;the page number]

Key links.Add links to at least 5 good websites/ youtubes that give further information about the topic

Key Books and Articles. Make a list of at least 5 books or articles that contain interesting material on the topic.Write one phrase or one sentence comment on what you think of this book or article eg"looks easyto understand"."seems to focus mainly on one digital game."

What do we need to create?

    Thousands of  years ago, The first ape began to use bone as a tool is absolutely creative, just like those in 2001:the Space Odessey(picture 1).

   2

1





Duchamp is also considered creative.(see picture 2) But the latter one is more conceptual, because he didnot create the whole thing, he just played with readymades.(see picture 3)

3



This kind of change contributed to what we want to discuss here: what kind of role should video sharing sites like youtube play in creative culture. As I may say -refering to the readings, they would probably enhance the creative culture in an unexpected way.

     Just like the examples above show that creative culture is moving towards diversity. And all along the art history, it mostly coming down from the sanctuary, and ordinary people(with or without training) can involved in the business of creation.  

     On youtube, as long as you have the resource, you can play the role as creator, or say producer. All you have to do is to register on it. Just imagine that if Funtwo chose another way to do his video, refering to the fictional dialogue between him and a powerful controller, the video would never be presented to us. 1With youtube, instead, "he could just playm film,upload and share. He does not have to ask anyone's permission."2 So everyone could participate and enjoy the fun of creation, isn't it what our ancesters was trying to do?

      Speaking of participation, the way we participate has changed a lot with these kind of websites. " Only a few years ago, the content providers and content consumers were still divided into two clearly separate groups."3 However, with the emergence of these websites, we can be both prodecers and consumers. Take 'Leave Britney Alone ' as an example, some viewers of the video-consumers- edited the video and put it online in another version, which made them also a producer.(see the link below)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FAuJod1XmY

       So what do we need to create? I guess are just some crazy ideas, a camera and a computer with internet accessibility.

Reference

1:Leadbeater, Charles, 'We think' , Prologue, Page XVI.

2:Leadbeater, Charles, 'We think' , Prologue, Page XVII.

3:Marek, Roman, "Creativity meers citculation:internet, amateurs and the process of evolution", Page 2.

Cry baby cry

    What can we get from youtube? Something beyond imagination. It seems that we can witness whatever happening anywhere around the world, as long as someone records it with a  cell phone or mini camera and upload it. And information goes crazy along with thw birth of twitter. Bus Uncle is an perfect example. We also tries to express our feelings or opinions on anything and share them with others. Whatever form may them be. Leave Britney Alone represents that. I prefer the latter one. And the video is available through the link below.
Leave Britney Alone



       One night before, he was just a nobody just like any other U.S. boy, and then he just became an internet celebrity. It's all because of his video on youtube:Leave Britney Alone. 'on youtube, there has been 34,190,488 viewers since 2007'1. It would win him a gold record if this is a music album.

        So is this really a fantastic video that worth watching? To some degree, yes. But I would not say that it's a very good video with high quality technically. Because during the 2 minutes, there is only this Crocker guy crying and shouting for Britney, and he wanted the world to leave Britney alone. He was hiding under a blanket, but he did consider the light effect. He applied bright light to make everyone see clearly what he looks like and what he is doing. There is nothing innovative or even special on camera angle, it basically likes chating with your friend through web camera.

         Although the video has no aesthetic value, it did raise interesting socio-cultural issues. Because this guy just like he was going crazy, and his behavior suggests that his feeling about Britney: a total stranger who doesn't even know him is sick. He just like a cry  baby without reason. Also his weird make-up made him a non-mainstream figure, probably indicate homosexual tendency. It's not a healthy and normal boy exposing himself to the public,which made people argue and argue the moral sense of this behavior.

         I think we should take it easy. He didn't use this video to harm anyone, in fact, he was protecting someone. Besides, one main feature of internet is its openness, whatever he is thinking doesn't matter to anyone else. We may enjoy the interest of watching it and get on with what we have to do in real life.

1:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc

Analog VS digital

 What we are experiencing today is something that only exsit in people's memories decades ago. We now familiar with photos which combine unconnected locations together in one photo:

We can look at a scene based on reality but also containing fantasy:

Or fing that reality can be deconstruct and reproduced:

  These are great fantasies created with digital techniques.

            There are some photographic effects which can achieved both by analog techniques and digital techniques. For example, color wash, light leaks and blur. But analog technique can achieve those naturally while digital techniques have to rely on software.

               But we have to admit that certain effects can only be done using digetal technology. Followings are some examples.

twisting the image of a real world to an impossible angle

change the color of the object



            Judging by the different works produced, there must be a great differences between analog photography and digital photography. First of all, "analog photographs were made by exposing light sensitive films and used chemical  to develop and stabilize the image. By contrast, digital photography can be displayed, printed, stored, manipulated, transmitted, and archived using digital and computer techniques, without chemical processing."1 Secondly, analog photography have to rely on the staging or capturing images of real world, but digital photography can produce any object existing or not and makes it into a photograph.

          There is so much more to discuss about analog and digital, and how they interact with each other. Besides study them, we can also enjoy them.

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTUxNjQxMjg4.html           music video.

Discussion on Mission to Earth

1. digital cinema is very different from traditional filmmaking in a tramendous way. Take

Mission to Earth(2005) as an example. It's a work of soft cinema which, explained by Lev

Manovich,  is "a 'cinema' in which human subjectivity and the variable choices made by custom

software combine to create films that can run infinitely without ever exactly repeating the same

image sequences, screen layouts and narratives"1. So that the film directly shows the influence

of online film clips by putting different clips simultaneously,which was impossible in the

traditional filmmaking history not only because of inmature techniques but also because that

without  online video watching webside such as youtube, audience can hardly follow the screen

 which contains 3 or 4 video windows at a same time. Besides, the allegory meaning of the

story makes it much more meaningful than traditional films which only wanted to create

fantasies.


2. Although digetal cinema is a new kind of art, it has its root in different art forms which exist

before. Like in Mission to Earth,  the way it is presenting remind us of collage, only those

different still pictures have been replaced by videos. This kind of way actually correspond to

today's websites we used a lot. Those website such as BBC news website have different 

information or small vidoe windows just like the film.

3. The construction of the film is also very unique and has a great difference with traditional

ones. It is not continuity film like traditional ones. Its narrative is cut into fragments by the stops,

and there is no one story but only some details of daily life. In the case of its isolation theme, it

achieve it quite well. It makes the male narrator like a voice diary of the woman.


Anyway, I don't feel like the film. But it did a good work at experimental film.



1:Lev Manovich, soft cinema, http://softcinema.net/?reload, 2005

PS Fish

The original one

My PS work

Group VB's arguements

Our group goes with the Britannica. And we choose Britannica for basically two reasons: accuracy and user-friendly. We have our arguments as follows.
Firstly, if only one encyclopedia can be left for human beings, it has the responsibility of the continuity of knowledge. Our offspring will have to depend on it to study, to explore, so the accuracy is very important, because we don’t want to mislead them. And Britannica is more accurate than Wikipedia. Quoted from Hioberg (senior vice president and editor in chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. ) ‘Britannica has published more than a hundred Nobel Prize winners and thousands of other well-known experts and scholars. Contrary to Wikipedia, Britannica's contributor base is transparent and not anonymous.’ This is the main reason for our choices.
Secondly, we found that Britannica is more user-friendly than Wikipedia. Here are the homepages of these two encyclopedia.
1. Britannica

2. Wikipedia

We can judge from the pictures above that although Wikipedia has a lot of information, but it is too messy, because the page is not so well-organized. As for Britannica, we have clear categories, we have dictionary and news, we also list some articles like news for today. It’s easier for us to find useful information from this well-organized page. And we searched for ‘Plato’ as a test. The result just as follows.
3. wikipedia

http://www.britannica.com/bps/search?query=Plato Britannica

Wikipedia simply pumped out a page talking about who Plato is and his theories and life and so on. It did give out great lists of footnotes, references and extensional readings. But Britannica did even better. It listed all the result on the page, and when you put your mouse on each of them there would be a brief introduction of the resources so that you can choose what to read more specifically and easily. And you can choose to read Ebook or magazine or dictionary.
As we discussed above, Britannica has obvious advantage over Wikipedia in accuracy and user-friendly. So we absolutely support Britannica to be the only encyclopedia in the world.

May Britannica be with you——survivor from an Alien Attack

To our offspring:
      
      As you may now know that a terrible Alien attack happened, and I had no idea why these freaks chose

me to make this decision, it's not like I had any connection with them (I swear!). Anyway, for whatever

freaks' reasons, they asked me to choose one encyclopodia for you guys, I did some research, really. In

order to convince you, I leave this explaination. And may Britannica be with you.

       
     
     First that came to my mind is the inheritance of knowledge. It is very important to make you know our

knowledge, and accuracy is vital. Ohterwise the consequences are very fearful. Just like all the debases

between open source and propritary, I think that it can be a bad idea to let any one edit those knowledges

freely. At our times, open source like wikipedia can't be used in acadamic writing, which means that the

majority of us still don't trust it. It is both positive and negative effects of am opem source, but when there is

nothing else to refer to, we'd better trust authorities.

       Secondly, I think Britannica is more user-friendly. To compare, I put the picture of both of them here.

We can see clearly that  the homepage of Britannica is better organized than that of Wikipedia. We can find

different catagories clearly listed on the left hand side and plenty of tools on the right while wiki shows only

some news. Blog, dictionary and other related sources are well listed on Britannica which makes us easier to

get whatever we need.

                                                                         

    

Britannica

  

wikipedia

 Thirdly, I tested their function as encyclopeidas. I searched  Plato from both of them. And here's the results.

http://www.britannica.com/bps/search?query=Plato

 

Wikipedia

Wikipedia simply pumped out a page talking about who Plato is and his theories and life and so

on. It did give out great lists of footnotes, references and extensional readings. But Britannica did even better.

It listed all the result on the page, and when you put your mouse on each of them there would be a brief

introduction of the resources so that you can choose what to read more specifically and easily. And you can

choose to read Ebook or magazine or dictionary.

     

        To sum up, Britannica (properities) is more valuable than Wikipedia (open source) both user-friendly

and functionally. I hope you can create something much better than Britannica and Wikipedia with the great

legacy I've left you. And …you're welcome. 

sincerely

your ancester

Fast fast …what?----Feedback on Mordern Times

    I've heard a lot bout Modern Times, and I've watched the part of it. After viewing the whole thing, I found out why people speak so high about it. It a great representative of quick development productive system stressing citizens. The concept and its forms has been applied to different medias. So I started to think that is modernism really that good as I knew before? Does the word simply represent speed, development and elit?What new technology actually mean to our daily life?

     New technologies can make things more easier. In order to produce a sophisticated product, with the aid of machine, one group focus only one little part of it, and other groups and the machine will take care of the others. Boss can control the factory without move an inch, just telling his workers what to do by using a camera and a speaker. It makes administration more convenient as well as making the factory more standar. It can increase the speed of production, saving a lot of time and labour. All these benefits shows in the profit, and the big boss and consumers gained through thess new technologies.

    The main character is a typical figure of workers at that time. These new technologies have huge effect on his life. First of all, we can see that he can't stop even for one second to get rid of the fly. And he has little time to rest.As soon as he entered the men's room, his boss saw him in the camera and asked him to get back to work. Sencondly, he has such a long working time that his body can't relax even after work. He just can's help tighting screws. But physical damage was not the most terrible. All these creativeless work and long hour repressing made him crazy. He broke the rules of the factory by working arround and disturbing others, most important, he damaged the machine. So he was accused of mentally break down and was sent to the hospital. It shows the distortion and depression of machine to him.
     
    Computers are similar to the machines in the film. We use it everyday, sometimes we stick to them all day without a break. It requires finger movements a lot, and a few of us may end up typing air. Computer is our working tool, we can use it to do our homework, write novels, read books, watch movies, and doing almost whatever you like. It can make us happy by connecting us to others, provide entertainments as well as enhance our knowledge. It harms our eyes, and prevent us from outdoors and families. It also harms muscles. But we can't leave them.
      
    The pros and cons of new technologies has been discussed a lot. Many science fiction films talks a lot about it. And it remains to be discussed.

Introduction

It's my 3rd year at Ling Nan University, and all these years had been dedicated to visual studies,well, countless travels,shopping, parties also included. Although I'm busy, I still did an outstanding job with my studies. essays, short films,readings, blah blah blah. Maybe I'll put some of them on this blog, if they are related to the topics we'll discuss here later.

Enough for the official introduction, and more about me personly.

I'm 20-year-old, and I'm a female. It's my dream to become a  movie director or something like art dealer, basically those who work in museums, art galleries and auctions. I embrace modern art, but I respect and appreciate classics too.

Looking forward to share with you my knowledge and experience in digital media.

XOXO

M