Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Machinima.....what?
What is machinima? Well according to UrbanDictionary.com, the leading defining source of all that is slang, and everywhere else i looked machinima was defined as the practice of people making movies/short films using video games instead of professional animating software. Everywhere that I looked it all had the same definition, people making films in real-time using these preconstructed interactive environments as there tools. For the most part first-person shooters, or role-playing simulations are used to make these films, games like Halo, World of Warcraft, The Sims or Quake. And these films range from super-reality films of the extra ordinary characters in these games, to people having the characters act in natural human ways. I came across many different "series" of these short films, like Red vs. Blue (using Halo), Anna (using Quake III) and a large archive/posting website called www.sims99.com with a collection of short films made using The Sims. Now, the first thing that strikes me when i went to the Red vs. Blue website is all of the episodes and "seasons" that they had for this machinima made for the internet, and most of all the Season 5 DVD set for sale. This made me wonder how Halo obsessed the public is that not only is there a mad rush for it when the video game comes out, and people waste endless hours staring at the tip of a gun on there TV screen, but they go and watch this series online, and then even buy it for DVD to watch it on TV again, only this time they aren't even playing the game, just watching a show with these characters they love. People spend so much time with these Halo characters that they need them as much as possible I guess, and having a live-action movie doesn't cut the cake, people want movies/TV shows staring the actual characters from the game, in there video game graphic 3D glory. Another series was the Anna series which followed the life of a flower being grown in the Quake III world. Now, this one is alittle wierd to me because Quake is shooter game, and here is this series that is based around a flower, it's kind of ironic and funny in that sense. But, I still find the world insanely video game obsessed if people are watching things likes this, and people are making films like this instead of maybe doing something in the calibour of Pixar, something that is more asthetically pleasing, and isn't stemed from someones obsession with the video game world. Me talking about and researching this is probably a little biased being that I don't really enjoy video games or the idea of people wasting away infront of a television of computer screen, but these are my opinions on it. I feel that if people really dig video games, and really want to make short films using these characters, instead of making these movies in this virtual world in real-time and overdubbing, they can learn how to make these 3-D characters themselves, and maybe create something using them, something they created themselves. All of this makes me think about the reading of the virtual worlds, and how there needs to be access in and out of the virtual world, and this just seems to be blending the two in a way. Also, it reminds me of Rose's writing about sampling, because the people that make machinima are taking this other person work and remaking it into there own. It isn't music, but it's still a form of entertainment, so I'm not going to go on a rebelion againts machinima, but you probably wouldn't find me going out of my way looking for it in my every day life.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Black Popular Culture
For the most part this chapter of the book was discussing how rap music is made, where it came from/how those roots are still used, how it differs from Western music and where it is going, and relates this all to society and how the music shows the society. And that is interesting and all but the article just seemed very repetitive, over the entire chapter it just seemed to reinstate what was said in the beginning, taking a lot away from it, which I think is kind of ironic being that one of the point he talked about was how repetition is so important in this music. But, besides that there was a good amount of interesting thing to compare and discuss. Mostly the relation of what Tricia Rose is saying in this compared to what Dick Hebdige said in his book about subculture.
Obviously there are going to be similarities because rap itself is a subculture and Hebdige was discussing the whole idea of subcultures in general. Though, Hebdige talked about how the punk scene, along with other subcultures, are present because of their coexistence with the dominant accepted culture, how one needs to exist for the other to, I feel Rose was pointing out the differences between rap and the dominant music world more than comparing them. Constantly bring up the differences between African and Western music she was describing how the two were varied so much from each other. Of course saying these things means that the subculture only existed because of the stray from the dominant, but it feels like she was trying to make them more of a distant “Other” in the rap world, where as Hebdige thought of his subcultures as part of the community. Also how Hebdige discusses the commoditization of the Other, and the subcultures, Rose also bring up the points of selling the rap music to the mass-culture, and turning it into a commodity itself.
A lot of the chapter also discusses technology in the rap world and the idea of ownership, and I think how different this article would have been if it was written more currently, in 2007 instead of 1994. I mean, she write “Today, rap is big business, With multimillion record sales by such rap artists as MC Hammer, Tone Loc, NWA, Public Enemy, and Vanilla Ice.” So, we know she isn’t talking about the modern technology and modern rap/music world, which makes it hard to think about her points, though they are logical it’s just so different today that it seem irrelevant. In modern day music is traded so fast and used so much that the copyrighting and use has been too hard to keep up with. Look at Girl Talk’s CD NightRipper, it has over 160 illegally used samples from any song to reach the Top 40 charts in the last 20-25 years, and he is selling it for $10 on his website. It’s a very different when the music world is so fluid now and the record companies can’t keep up with the copyright infringements. The book made solid points, but it’s hard to take them to heart when she wrote about something that has changed so drastically since the time she wrote it 13 years ago, to a point where the two times are almost unrecognizable as the same argument. When 50 Cent makes over $1 billion on a single record sale, and has his own videogame, and vitamin water one could realize that rap is very situated and accepted and is so much in the technology world that it’d be hard to separate the two.
Obviously there are going to be similarities because rap itself is a subculture and Hebdige was discussing the whole idea of subcultures in general. Though, Hebdige talked about how the punk scene, along with other subcultures, are present because of their coexistence with the dominant accepted culture, how one needs to exist for the other to, I feel Rose was pointing out the differences between rap and the dominant music world more than comparing them. Constantly bring up the differences between African and Western music she was describing how the two were varied so much from each other. Of course saying these things means that the subculture only existed because of the stray from the dominant, but it feels like she was trying to make them more of a distant “Other” in the rap world, where as Hebdige thought of his subcultures as part of the community. Also how Hebdige discusses the commoditization of the Other, and the subcultures, Rose also bring up the points of selling the rap music to the mass-culture, and turning it into a commodity itself.
A lot of the chapter also discusses technology in the rap world and the idea of ownership, and I think how different this article would have been if it was written more currently, in 2007 instead of 1994. I mean, she write “Today, rap is big business, With multimillion record sales by such rap artists as MC Hammer, Tone Loc, NWA, Public Enemy, and Vanilla Ice.” So, we know she isn’t talking about the modern technology and modern rap/music world, which makes it hard to think about her points, though they are logical it’s just so different today that it seem irrelevant. In modern day music is traded so fast and used so much that the copyrighting and use has been too hard to keep up with. Look at Girl Talk’s CD NightRipper, it has over 160 illegally used samples from any song to reach the Top 40 charts in the last 20-25 years, and he is selling it for $10 on his website. It’s a very different when the music world is so fluid now and the record companies can’t keep up with the copyright infringements. The book made solid points, but it’s hard to take them to heart when she wrote about something that has changed so drastically since the time she wrote it 13 years ago, to a point where the two times are almost unrecognizable as the same argument. When 50 Cent makes over $1 billion on a single record sale, and has his own videogame, and vitamin water one could realize that rap is very situated and accepted and is so much in the technology world that it’d be hard to separate the two.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
On Collecting Art and Culture
Alright, so ive never really been down with blogging and all, but it's for the class ya know, so im going to get to business in typing up my thoughts on this article, and who knows... maybe i'll love blogging so much ill do it more often..... so here i go.
This guy, James Clifford, is discussing collecting art, Art, artifacts, whatever it happens to be and people taking it for thier own by purchasing it and placing it in there home. He says it gives them a sense of power, for other people to admire or be jealous of, or whatever someone may do when viewing something that they might like or hate in someone elses possession. But basically what he's saying is people collecting things to show other people at some point and be like "wow, look at this really nice thing i have, isn't it so nice!" And how owning all these things molds someone it to their "selves", which with all these sociology courses i took here, ive been taught there is no self, and that we are all just giant tools in a big machine, so owning different artifacts, art, Art... those are all just cultures way of shaping us into something. But, thats basically what he is talking about. The different cultures of art that shape us, the collections we have that make us. If we collect Fine Art, folk-art, any of the different types of crafts or trincits that we pick up along the way, they make people the people that they are. They make you into yourself.
I keep everything myself, if you were to go into my room at my house there is a big shelf running around the top of the room with all of the stuffs i have saved from when i was alittle kid... toys... bottles... masks i made in 2nd grade art class, i have everything up there. It kind of is the definition of me, everything that i have been is running along that shelf, the time line of Michael Villata. And now that im not there, i keep all these new things i collect in boxes here. Basically im like a packrat, and i also very much like to keep things. I mean, i isnt really art, but is there such a gigantic difference in the different cultures that shape you than all of the sentimental things that you've gathered through your life that have probably shaped the person that you are more than those random cultures?
I think the whole online music scene relates to this too. The feeling that owning something is sort of powerful, and gives the owner of it something. People download things weeks before they come out, i know i do, and are like "oh man, i have the new Kanye West CD 2 week early, its soooo good" and other people beg for it. Or you search high and low through google and forums to find rare b-sides and demos that no one knew about from your favorite band, so everyone can come to you looking for them. You have that seat of power, you have collected your big 80 GB music library on iTunes, you scrobble it all out on Last.FM, so people are aware that you are listening to the music they dont have, and you wait for all of your friends to be like "wow, i want it too!" Now this isnt the art he's talking about exactly, but i feel that its something we can more relate to here rather than people owning alittle piece of culture from New Guinea in our dorms and apartments. Not everyone has artifacts and foriegn culture all about, but it'd be a pretty safe bet to assume everyone has an iTunes music library.
I kind of went off from the main idea of the article, but this is just the direction that the article got me thinking in after reading it. How it could relate to me, how i personally could connect more with what James Clifford was talking about. I dont own anything extravagant from other cultures, but i do collect things, music.... random stuff, so this is how i related it to my life, and there are probably things that other people could think of in their lifes to make the big ideas of James Clifford more relavent (unless you are an art collector). The article really talked about how culture is shapped by how people take in parts of other cultures, how slowly the world is becoming one community through the collection and viewing of different arts from around the world. i may have shrunk down the scope a bit, but thats how i think. It was a very good article to get me to think about culture, about how its shared, and about the world wide sharing community of culture helps people become more unified in ways.
This guy, James Clifford, is discussing collecting art, Art, artifacts, whatever it happens to be and people taking it for thier own by purchasing it and placing it in there home. He says it gives them a sense of power, for other people to admire or be jealous of, or whatever someone may do when viewing something that they might like or hate in someone elses possession. But basically what he's saying is people collecting things to show other people at some point and be like "wow, look at this really nice thing i have, isn't it so nice!" And how owning all these things molds someone it to their "selves", which with all these sociology courses i took here, ive been taught there is no self, and that we are all just giant tools in a big machine, so owning different artifacts, art, Art... those are all just cultures way of shaping us into something. But, thats basically what he is talking about. The different cultures of art that shape us, the collections we have that make us. If we collect Fine Art, folk-art, any of the different types of crafts or trincits that we pick up along the way, they make people the people that they are. They make you into yourself.
I keep everything myself, if you were to go into my room at my house there is a big shelf running around the top of the room with all of the stuffs i have saved from when i was alittle kid... toys... bottles... masks i made in 2nd grade art class, i have everything up there. It kind of is the definition of me, everything that i have been is running along that shelf, the time line of Michael Villata. And now that im not there, i keep all these new things i collect in boxes here. Basically im like a packrat, and i also very much like to keep things. I mean, i isnt really art, but is there such a gigantic difference in the different cultures that shape you than all of the sentimental things that you've gathered through your life that have probably shaped the person that you are more than those random cultures?
I think the whole online music scene relates to this too. The feeling that owning something is sort of powerful, and gives the owner of it something. People download things weeks before they come out, i know i do, and are like "oh man, i have the new Kanye West CD 2 week early, its soooo good" and other people beg for it. Or you search high and low through google and forums to find rare b-sides and demos that no one knew about from your favorite band, so everyone can come to you looking for them. You have that seat of power, you have collected your big 80 GB music library on iTunes, you scrobble it all out on Last.FM, so people are aware that you are listening to the music they dont have, and you wait for all of your friends to be like "wow, i want it too!" Now this isnt the art he's talking about exactly, but i feel that its something we can more relate to here rather than people owning alittle piece of culture from New Guinea in our dorms and apartments. Not everyone has artifacts and foriegn culture all about, but it'd be a pretty safe bet to assume everyone has an iTunes music library.
I kind of went off from the main idea of the article, but this is just the direction that the article got me thinking in after reading it. How it could relate to me, how i personally could connect more with what James Clifford was talking about. I dont own anything extravagant from other cultures, but i do collect things, music.... random stuff, so this is how i related it to my life, and there are probably things that other people could think of in their lifes to make the big ideas of James Clifford more relavent (unless you are an art collector). The article really talked about how culture is shapped by how people take in parts of other cultures, how slowly the world is becoming one community through the collection and viewing of different arts from around the world. i may have shrunk down the scope a bit, but thats how i think. It was a very good article to get me to think about culture, about how its shared, and about the world wide sharing community of culture helps people become more unified in ways.
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