New Media Cultures

This was such a strange topic.

9-11 was such a strange day for me and to watch it back was like the most freakiest thing ever. It always will be. At the time I personally didnt work for British Airways, but my dad did and I remember him calling and saying that the office was in total shock and emergency procedures were put in to place. He didnt get home till 10pm for a few days after that.

We thought it was going to be the start of the world war 3 and to this day the images send shivers down my back. I cant stand it!

The thought of terrorism scares the living daylights out of me and the fact of all the new technologies that are available to people is just something that shouldnt even be considered. Yet 3 times a week I walk in to one of the most at risk places in the north east to make a living purely because they seem to think its great to target the airlines. Why? Because its what we do. We look at war and never see it to be as dangerous as it really is.

Music has always been judged by the listeners own personal taste ad can regularly create seperate social groups in the younger generations. An example of this would be the people that are interested in rock music sterio typically dress all in back and have alot of peicerings. People would categorise this group as Goths and would generally say that they worship the devil and hate life. Not always true but it happens, thats what sterio types give you.
Music always seems to have its own certain time and place and particular type of listener. This regularly allows the listener to be comfortable and relaxed in a ertain atmosphere and should always have a particular context in which they should be consumed.
The medium is the message in the case of music. Music has now become part of our everyday lives and is no longer a ornament to it.
digital advances in music habe done more than change music but changes in culture surrounding it too. some key elelemts of music have only really changed because of technology.
Sometimes now music is no longer composed or written for a particular mood but for a particular place i.e. a airport.
Samplng - any sound can be used. any part f the human everyday life can be made in to a sample. making music to be something else with "samples" of other things does have to be approached in particular ways. a digitally encoded musical body creating something that it totally different. You can take parts of one song and put with parts of another to create a totally new product.

(slight delay typing this up, just found a load of stuff I wrote as net and been down)
- photography has been changed in different ways mostly due to the advances in modern technology. this already give us the question of what is real and what has been digially altered? its ironic because photography is seen to be the form of perfection even the size element is wrong. it will always be a product of a memory i.e. a holiday.
- digital technology now provides a wide range of changes and a easier way to make changes than manual photography.
- theres no longer such things as a random photograph, not that there ever really was. people always pose for a photo no matter what they are doing. even when you are drunk on a night out you will always find yourself posing for a picture.
- digital photography is really 20 years old but its only now that people have started to do something with it and make something of it in the ways that it was or possibly was intended for.
- this always goes back to the human perfection side of things and people always wanting to have to ideal face and the ideal body. but even the people on TV and in magazines that we model ourselves on are changed digitally. you can now alter your image to be like them and be how you ideally want to be.
- the cost of the digial photo can be changed and is something like the DNA of a human body which may mean that one day we will be able just to change our DNA to look different and how we really want to be without the pain of plastic surgery.

(slight delay typing this up, just found a load of stuff I wrote as net and been down)
This really was one of the most freakiest films I have ever watched in my entire life. But what can we really say when things get a bit too real for us? Alot of technology is coming to be part of our every day life and something that we have all become to depend on. Like in videodrome technology is also what we do for a living and how we make our day to day money. This feel looks at what can happen to people when they tamper directly with technology, the underlying product, it wasnt a good idea to get involoved.
Its kinda like matrix to me. Because just like neo in the matrix both main characters cant really tell the difference between what is reality and what isnt.
I also find that the film protrayed that media can influence peoples violent acts. Somepeople say that video games have even become the source of many teenagers anger and reasoning to the mass suicides. Like when kids in america go in to their schools and have those mass shootings. Then loads of theorists said that they just wanted to act like the "cool" characters in their video games. Weather thats the actual case or not is a totally different matter.

Even at work your under a constant state of surveillance your superiors are always watching over you to make sure your producing the correct specification to your job role. Although some people don’t believe it your boss will be constantly watching you even if their not in the same room. For example even while I am writing this post my boss can see I am on this site because of the constant surveillance of the internet usage. Quite annoying really because they have this very odd rile about internet usage and if it gets out of control you could be fired. Such an odd form of power considering I am a call centre monkey and sometimes it gets boring and quiet, what else am I meant to do?! Even our system of leisure and work eventually gets rules over by your boss. Although you have the money to spend you don’t have the leisure time to spend it in. employers are constantly striving to have a society that would always want to work without any real social time. Even the people that we see out side of the office are controlled by the position that you hold in the office. The people that you sit or work with could some day become a out-of-office friend.

Technology is mainly to blame for the advances in surveillance as new technologies give us new ways to look at things. Although its become part of our everyday life and many people cant remember how they ever lived without it. There are 4.2 million CCTV cameras in total around the UK. Which makes any self respected person act in the correct way because you don’t want to take that risk if your being watched.

I understand this view on people using surveillance as a security perspective, even for me when I am walking through a shopping mall, with people there or not, I feel safe knowing there is someone of authority watching over me. But are they really watching over me?!
You often here about all of these attacks in shopping malls and car parks that are so terrible and then you later get pleas from the police with pictures of the attack off CCTV cameras. But why wasnt someone watching these cameras at the time of the attack and did something to prevent it happening?? Obviously someone wasnt watching those cameras at these times.

Part two to follow tomorrow.....

where will people stop depending to have the new technology and just accept what they already have to be prefectly suitable. no wonder we have so much polution and its not because of the cars, its because of the new production of phones and destroying older phones that no one wants. I just wish people would think before they blame polution on someone else when its really just them selfs and their constant need to be up to date with the latest crap! Some bloke at work even bought one and it was the most annoying thing ever. All he does is go around the office flashing it about and saying how great it is and how everone should have one. The only thing I consider about the iPhone is the noise it makes when people use them and the fact that they look like a brik that someone would use with building blocks.

i find this bloke somewhat strange and yet interesting. i cant seem to understand his logic behind he "art" but i cant stop myself from wanting to see more.

Performer has a third ear grown
NEWCASTLE A philosopher and performance artist announced that he has acquired an ear on his arm.

It took Stelarc, 61, ten years to find a surgeon willing to perform the controversial operation. The ear was grown from cells in a laboratory and implanted on his left forearm in 2006. The Australian-based artist, who was born Stelios Arcadiou, said that, once the ear has developed, he hoped to get a microphone implanted. “The last operation was in September 2006 and its only now that I’m about ready for the next step,” he said. When the surgery is complete and the body has produced the necessary tissue, Stelarc hopes to have a recognisable ear on his arm. “Then I hope to have a tiny microphone implanted that will connect with a bluetooth transmitter. That way you can listen to what my ear is hearing.”

Stelarc was talking to an audience at Newcastle’s Centre For Life, where he introduced his latest project, a “walking head” robot, which will be on show there for a month. The six-legged robot will be one of the highlights of the Dott 07 Festival, which runs from October 16 to 28 and examines how design can help to build a sustainable future.

Article taken from BBC news Webiste (www.bbc.co.uk)

But its not just stelearc thats totallyhung up on being this made up body. People do it everyday with trying to look good and have the perfect body with make up, creams and even going to the point of having plastic surgery. Even though one day people will end up looking slightly odd if they keep doing it to themselves but they still find it suitable at the time to get fake boobs or something done to their face. But who wants to see a 60 year old with pert boobs? its just not nice!
So, what really is THE perfect body? Some people would say its just what they want to be, BUT is it really? I think its something that media is telling them to be, with all the "perfect" size zero models and "perfect" celebrities always on our TVs or in the magazines that we read.
Its all just fake, why cant people just be happy with how they look in the first place and how god made them to be?!