TECH2002 Studies in Digital Technology

Revision and Conclusion

Andrew Clay week 27

Exam Revision Support

Approaching Revision

• Approach each question as an essay topic• Do background reading and research• Look at case studies and significant examples • Prepare notes so that you can write an essay on

each study topic in one hour

• Write the one-hour essays with notes• Then practice writing the essays for one hour

without notes

• The exam is worth 50% of overall assessment

Create an Online Revision Portfolio / Study Pack

• You might find it helpful to do some of your study online

• Social bookmarking links, using a blog as a revision journal or notebook, building information in a wiki

• Coordinate from an exam study homepage in the Wernicke Wiki

• Collaborate with others doing the same topics

Being Online for Revision

• Being online for revision will make you actively engage with the study topic and produce revision material along the way

Being Digital• For many years we have

brought media technologies into our everyday lives, and for most people, media is an important part of living with technology. In recent times the transition to digital media has been underway, creating a state of being in which we bring digital media into our lives and make it significant.

Being Digital• We are starting to be ‘digital’.

This does not mean that there is a new conceptual way of living. It merely draws attention to the continuities and transformations of a new technological basis for media in culture. Digital technologies have effects on the way that we live our lives, and they offer possibilities and constraints that can be socially shaped by people, as all previous technologies have done.

Being Digital• What are the continuities and transformations

of digital media? • What is the ‘newness’ of being digital? • What is new for society about digital lifestyles

and ways of living? • How do we do things differently or do the same

things but in new ways with digital technology?

‘Being Digital’ Collaboration Task

• There is a ‘Being Digital’ Collaboration Task homepage in the Wernicke Wiki where you can upload your files that will contribute to the slidecast. Upload the slides as a .PPT file (not .PPTX) and any audio in MP3 format. I will assemble all the material to make one complete slidecast on Slideshare (and you can make your own mix too using the same uploaded files).

• You can produce audio and/or slides only. The slides can be text /graphics/photographs in whatever combinations (but not animations – they don’t work in Slideshare). Put your ideas /comments / quotations/facts in visual form and/or as audio – as conversation, vox pop, voiceover, soundbites, songs, or whatever. Be creative folks!

 • Upload your files to the wiki page indicating on

the page who has made the files and briefly what they are about.

Exam Question Topics – A Reminder – Attempt Two Questions1. Traditional media and participation culture

2. Digital cinema

3. CD and DVD in recorded music and cinema culture

4. New forms of online television

5. Radio, recorded music and internet technologies

6. The remediation of print online

Area of study 1 – Online participation culture and traditional media

What interplay and tension is there between corporate media producers, advertisers and promoters and online consumer participants?

Case studies of online participation and traditional or professional media

• Fan films and fan fiction• Viral marketing• Advertainment• ARGs• Machinima• Online music culture• Remix culture and mashups

Traditional media create audiences• Spectators,

viewers, listeners, readers followers, fans

• Groups of people of various sizes targeted or addressed by media content

New media create users?• Surfers, searchers,

players, texters, uploaders, downloaders, viewers, listeners, readers,creators, generators

• Individuals connected through networks of socialisation, community, friendship, collaboration

Questions• What relationships do we have

with traditional media?• Do we have different or new

relationships with traditional media using internet technologies?

• What forms of online participation culture involve traditional media industries and products?

Issues raised by new media convergence and participation culture

• The media industries want to secure or increase revenue with digital media

• Consumers feel empowered by choice, personalization and participation with digital media

• This can create harmonious, rewarding, creative experiences for producers and consumers

• Or this can create conflicts of interest such as over copyright

What happened when Amp_Live produced his own hip hop remix album of Radiohead remixes?

Area of study 2 – digital cinema topic

How does digital technology impact on the audio-visual experience of film?

Films

Basics of digital cinema

Film theory and key words

‘emotion capture’

• For the first 52 minutes of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the main character is not played by Brad Pitt, but by a digital puppet head superimposed on the body of other actors

Area of study 3 – CD and DVD in recorded music and cinema

How have the CD and the DVD become significant new products in the recorded music and cinema industries respectively?

CD and Recorded Music Culture

• CD entered the consumer market in 1982• Philips – ‘perfect sound forever’• New playback features – skipping, sequencing via a remote control• Boost to back catalogue sales (albums more than 2 years old)• Multi-platform operability (hi-fi, computer, DVD player, car stereo) of digital

convergence

CD Album

• Extended LP album from 2 x 20 minutes to continuous 70 minutes

• More tracks, or bonus tracks, special editions, hidden tracks

• In the 1990s it became the leading format for recorded music albums and the record industries major source of revenue

• But also brought recorded music into the digital domain and extended the copy and share culture of production

DVD – ‘a new intertextual commodity’ (Marshall,

2004)

• A new way of connecting audiences to films

• Interactivity and engagement

• Elaborate collector-friendly versions

DVD• A continuation and intensification of the film

industry’s economy• A new intertextual commodity• Central to the ‘home cinema’ experience• Altered the nature of what a film is• Created a ‘DVD film’ experience in its own right• Home viewing targeted at particular kinds of

audiences• Brought knowledge and information about films to

the general audience• Convergence of entertainment, self-promotion

and interactive education

‘Special’ DVDs

• DVDs contain standard or minimum additional features to the film itself

• Typically:• Audio commentary• Deleted scenes• ‘making of’ documentary• Behind-the-scenes footage• Trailers• Stills and publicity material

Area of study 4 – online television

How is the computer screen being used to create forms of online television?

Online video and television context

• What happens when television becomes the content of the internet via the web?

established media look for secure ways of controlling their content and making it available to audiences in new, more personalized on-demand formats

new providers explore ways of using the new technology to democratize access and open up broadcasting to innovative or alternative forms of media

Online television context

• Computer screen connected to the internet network• Streaming media technology• Web 2.0 community, collaboration, contribution• Video clip culture ‘Entertainment Snacking’• On demand / ‘lean forward’ active user• ‘freedom of the medium’ – lack of regulation and

personalized experiences• Webisodes• Social network television

Online video drama – beyond traditional media advertising regulation

Kate Modern• Important step in the development of internet

television drama?• Bebo – funding, profits shared with LG15 (now EQAL)• Online video, live events, tie-ins to the LG15 universe

and real people, actively maintained character profile pages on Bebo for social media participation

• ‘innovative and unobtrusive product placement’ – television with a new form of sociability, a new basis of mediation?

Area of study 5 – radio, recorded music and internet technologies

How are radio and recorded music cultures developing through the taking up of internet technologies?

Celestial jukeboxcelestial jukebox

Personalised Online Radio (POR)

‘Music Like Water’ (Kusek and Leonhard, 2005)

• ‘Music fans are completely awash with music, and digital music has become the new radio for the Internet generation. Digital technologies have been totally and unobtrusively integrated into the lifestyle of new generations of teens and young adults’ (p.6)

Area of study 6 – The remediation of print, online publishing of newspapers, magazines, books and comics

How does the web remediate print media from the traditional publishing industries such as newspapers, books, magazines or comics?

Remediation• Marshall McLuhan (1964) Understanding Media– the content of any medium is always

another medium (writing-speech)

Remediation• Bolter and Grusin

(1999) Understanding New Media – remediation – the

representation of one medium in another, common to all media, but a defining characteristic of new digital media

• ‘we are in an unusual position to appreciate remediation, because of the rapid development of new digital media and the nearly as rapid response by traditional media. Older electronic and print media are seeking to reaffirm their status within our culture as digital media challenge their status’ (Bolter and Grusin, 1999, p.5).

Newspapers are becoming multimedia news and entertainment providers online:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yXT_1pvDv4