New Media Manifesto

The arrival of new media and its digital form introduced new possibilities to content creators. As computers evolved and became more and more affordable, people started to be on both ends as the consumer and the creator. From that point, the idea of authorship started to change. 

It was no longer required to create from scratch. Softwares allowed anyone to not only create content more easily but also to take someone else creation and build upon it. Additionally, softwares to make other softwares gained tremendous popularity, creating this loop of infinite creativity. The line between the author and the consumer started to be less and less distinguishable.

Later, the arrival of the Internet and Social Medias also altered this idea of authorship as people started to come together and collectively contribute to each other's creation. A participatory culture was born.

Computer Chronicles - The Internet (1995)

Software to edit and remix content

The particularity of New Media is that it seems like it was never intended to be consumed only. As softwares started to gain popularity in the mid-80's, they always had the option to both view and create content. The application "Notepad" for instance, since it became available in 1985, has always allowed users to not only view text files content but also to create new ones. Similarly, more advanced softwares such as Adobe Photoshop can open almost any digital picture but also provides powerful tools to create new content, often based on someone else creation.

Software to create more software

Steve Job's introduction of the Mobile App Store in 2009 pushed this idea that anyone can become a content creator. 

Apple introduced a series of tools under the name of "iPhone SDK" that would allow anyone to create mobile apps for iPhone. Although similar tools existed long before the iPhone era, Apple made it more accessible. They made it sound as if learning to code and creating content was easy and that anyone can do it.  

The Internet, Social Media, and Participatory Culture

The Internet and the raise of Social Media created an interesting culture where both the consumer and the author can collaborate and together be the creators.

Real Men Real Style's creator Antonio is one example as he started a YouTube Channel to help men to better dress and take care of their personal image. The channel originally offered content based on Antonio's ideas but soon shifted to topics requested by his audience. Soon enough, all of his videos were based on followers' ideas. 

2011 Video

 

2016 

A culture of anyone can by anything started to also gain popularity with business pushing this idea of DIY.

Community Curation Creation

https://jbrodriguezsite.wordpress.com


Since this project required the participation of a community, it was interesting to see its development thought the period it was publicly available. Although the idea of social medias is to make us believe that we can easily reach out to anyone and make connections, it is a different story to invite others to reach out. When I first posted my invitation on Facebook, it took a good hour before I got any response. This was surprising to me considering how quick people have engaged in some of my previous posts. Additionally, with over 1000 friends, I was expecting great participation. But this one was different since it was asking something specific rather than indirectly inviting anyone to share their opinion. It was posted at a prime time when there's usually a great amount of activity on Facebook but still failed to reach out people. At first, it seems that the invitation of sharing a weird dream was perhaps a little too intimidating. After a few hours, more people started to engage but participation was still low.  It is interesting that I had to manually extend invitation to some of my friends to get the conversation going. After some more inputs, more and more people engaged and finally I was able to reach a great level of participation.

I think it is fair to say that communities engaging in new media want it to be simple. People are also more willing to engage if it comes on their own. New Media seems to be a culture of "we only engage when its convenient." We read emails and texts whenever we want and reply also whenever we want. In the end, community still engage but those factors (and many others) definitely affect participation.

Poor Nutrition

https://www.tes.com/lessons/TuuiUGOyBznf5w/

While most social issues are controversial and popular, poor nutrition is one of those subtle ones that we often forget about. And I am not talking about poor nutrition in terms of not having food to eat but rather to not pay attention to our own diet. For this reason, I decided to create a pedagogical list that will first inform its users and then invite them to see by themselves how problematic the issue is. The first two modules addresses what exactly a poor nutrition is and what are the negative consequences of such diet. The decision to use a slideshow for the first module "What is a Healthy Diet" is to provide a medium where the user can learn at its own pace to fully understand the concepts explained.
Additionally, I use simple websites throughout the list and invite the user to ponder and answer some questions. Typically, the questions are open to incite the user to think and realize by himself/herself that caring about our own diet is important. In the third module, I invite the user to take a food disorder test. The goal is to give the user a better idea about how a diet can impact someone's life. After taking the test, the user may or may not find anything problematic with its own diet but the process will certainly make him or her realize that other people do. The fourth module gives an extended experience about the user's own diet. With the help of a mobile application, the user is invited to track his/her diet for a few days and compare the results with what is recommended. The following modules push the user to act and make some modification to its own diet to improve it. The user reports then on some of the changes they have observed throughout their experience.
The whole idea is really to get the user to understand and experience what it means to care about his/her diet. For some, it might feel like its too much trouble. For others, they might realize that it is easier than than thought. Ultimately, the purpose is awareness and let the user decide what he or she wants to do about it.

YouTube Sculpting

          One of the first limitations that I noticed as I approached the "YouTube Sculpting" is that it was remarkably easy to not find what I was looking for. Even though I knew that the final product would be an assemblage of mostly random videos, I had pictured in my mind a lot of the sequences that I was hoping to find. I quickly realized that YouTube's Search engine has its own way of thinking. For instance, I would search "walking" in hope to find a person walking from "Point of View" but instead I would be find tons of Walking Dead clips. In most cases, I ended up finding completely random things but surprisingly many still applied to my theme of "Friendship". One instance is the videos of dancing. I originally had this idea of incorporating the different stages of a friendship but as I was digging upon the term Friendship I found out that activities with friends was a whole new subcategory to explore. From there, pillow fights, water gun fights, and many other videos came from. Although I was limited by what YouTube was offering up, I started to embrace that those random videos were simply giving me more ideas that I could think of and then take a couple of new directions. In the end, I concluded that the only limitation was my original idea. There is some creativity in embracing the virtual limits of YouTube results. 
  Another great thing about finding videos is that some videos would already be compilation of something that I was looking for. Finding smiling faces was particularly easy. For instance, some YouTuber decided to collected a bunch of videos from movies where actresses smile. I could then cut the video and select different of those as if I would have collected them all individually by myself. This not only added originality to my video but saved me a lot of time. One limitation to those findings on the other hand is that not every video was suitable for the final montage. Some of them had terrible quality. Others were so long (over an hour long) where it became complex to download the whole thing and edit it. It feels as if some videos were almost immediately disqualify because of their "digital" properties. Fortunately, YouTube filter options helped narrow my searches by selecting shorter videos. 

Twine Poetry

http://talentswat.com/Twine/Home.html

Originally, "A Message" by Coldplay talks about a man who loves a woman despite all the challenges she is going through in her life. The poem focuses more specifically on the fact that the woman has been struggling with personal experiences and the man wants her to know that she doesn't have to be alone, that he cares about her.
Based on such structure, I decided to create a game where the player would have to make a series of choices (where he or she would feel sort of alone) to finally be told that despite what the choices made, it is okay and he or she doesn't have to be alone in all of this.
To achieve such game, I first decided to alter some parts of the poem to enhance this sentiment of loneliness. The player is given the option then to change certain parts of the poem for something that he or she feels more comfortable with. All text options are either negative or neutral. This is once again to make an emphasis that the player is on its own. As the player gets to the end, the game takes a position of someone that cares for the player. The game rephrases some of the selections the player made and shows them on screen. The game tries to make the player understands that he (the game) understands what he or she player is going through. The games ends just like the original poem by telling the player that he or she just needs to come home so everything is okay.
The game is quite simple with only a few text options. To enhance the experience, I believe that the poem should be longer. The intention is really to have the game understand the player in his solitude, the same way the man cares about the woman.

GIF Cinema

Although stories are usually easier to tell chronologically,  I found out that GIF can do the same without necessarily having to conform to a specific order. This is possible only because of the very core feature of any given GIF: the loop. They don't necessarily have a start or end which allows them to tell stories in the order they want.
          As I was thinking of my story to share, I decided to entirely focus on this principle of loops. First, the story would't necessarily have a particular order. Just like any perfectly looped GIF, it doesn't really matter when it starts because once it comes back it to where it started, it all makes sense. With that in mind, I decided that my story wouldn't require a particular order. Out of all the GIFs that makes the story, any of them could be either the first or last.
          Second, I made sure that each GIF would entirely loop and come back to its original point. The objective being to make the loop feel as if it was inexistent. This is important because it allows the short story within the GIF to be isolated from any other GIF. If the loop is broken with a clear ending, the GIF becomes just one of possibly many parts of a greater story.
         Using cinemagraphs required each GIF to be looped perfectly otherwise things would look odd. For each GIF, I decided to incorporate elements that naturally loop in real life. Those elements would be the ones moving while everything else would remain still.
          As I was putting together each GIF, I realized that cinemagraphs, if they are well done, have the power to transports us into a moment of reflexion. A moment where it feels almost like everything has stopped but not entirely. This was an interesting realization because it supported the point that stories doesn't always have to be told chronologically to be understood. The narrative through a GIF is unique because it is not bound to a particular order.

Here's my story now: Me interacting with technology on any particular given day. 

I Believe

What made me really appreciate this assignment is the fact that the process of finding something that I believe in invited me to rethink what I personally describe as a belief. When we think about it, we use the word believe for so many things and in different contexts. One can believe in God while at the same time believe that his or her favorite sport team will make it to the playoffs this year. While both are beliefs, they are most likely to affect a person in possibly two completely different ways.
          Such analysis lead me to think that a true belief is an idea/principle that has a direct impact on the way I live my life. It is personal and possibly something that I am passionated about. It is the type of thing that could get me involved in an argument, something that I have a strong opinion about.
          The way men dress in general is where my fireside chat idea originated from. I strongly believe that we, men, have a hard time not only dressing well but also not dressing terribly. I still can't decide if it's a sort of curse, if it's in our genes, or if it has something to do with our North American culture but one thing sure is that most men that struggle dressing well aren't even aware of it. My belief is that there is power behind dressing well as a man. I have seen it, I have experienced it, and it makes a lot of sense to me.
          From that point, I started to think next on how to transmit the way I feel about this topic without necessarily imposing it to others. Since a belief is personal, I felt that it was more appropriate to share rather than trying to convince. Following that line of thoughts, I ended up creating a double presentation. Both would be identical except for one of them I would be dressed poorly while the other one I would make sure to wear some of my best clothes. That way, I would let the audience decide and make their own opinion if dressing better really has an impact on how they perceive people. I will let them decide if the way a man dresses directly affects what no only they think of him but what they expect from him.
          As simple as it may sound, this reminded me of what art is really all about. Art never really tries to force you to believe in what it represents. It's simply a creative representation of someone's belief(s). Its purpose is to invite us to ponder and think on our own. It sort of reminds me of a good movie where the end isn't entirely clear. Inception (2010) for instance never really tells us how it ends. We have to make our own decision and decide what we believe in.

BYU Y Serve Scenic View Team

There is a line from the article, “Human Rights and Culture: from Datastan to Storyland” that resonated throughout the creation of our documentary. The text reads, “The antidote to a culture that equates security with conquest and punishment is a culture that prizes connection and creativity.” Though the living conditions in Provo, Utah are not as extreme as some mentioned by the article, this is still an important statement.

Connection and creativity and how those elements can positively affect society, was the focus of out film. There are many small groups of subcultures that most do not even know, or at least think about. One such group is the BYU Y Serve Scenic View Team, and especially the group they help. Becoming a young adult when one has been a child their entire life is a difficult transition for anyone, but for those with autism, this is even more true. This group of BYU volunteers helps these young people by helping them, participating in activities, and simply being their friend.

This group is one that meets frequently -- it is not a simple annual service project, but those involved are committed to creating a connection between themselves and those they are serving. Having spoken with one of the program directors, we were able to get a sense of how driven the program is to helping these people and how much care and love there actually was for their service. Revisiting the quote mentioned in the introduction, life can be cold. People with autism can be misunderstood by the public and even family, and are at times met with harsh consequences. The friendships made by this groups efforts are a small service that is a wonderful example for the rest of the world when it comes to treating neighbors. With examples of creativity and connection such as this, the fight against the harsh nature of many societies.

“Serving doesn’t have to be a chore or a task. It doesn’t have to be one of those things your dad drags you to first thing in the morning to go rake someone’s leaves. It’s super fun.” This attitude from the group’s director is a great example of what sort of mindset can change the world. If entire societies were able to say, believe, and apply the ideas referred to in this quote, the world would be much more accepting. These service providers do not have to be there. They are not obligated to help at this service group, but they come anyway because they want to make a difference in the world.

10X

Start Game

(Download/Unzip/Launch)

          10X (pronounced “10 times”) is a video game inspired by the privacy protection found on Apple iPhones that automatically erases all of its data after 10 failed passcode attempts. The game’s purpose is to raise awareness about how crucial it is to protect and stand by encryption (digital privacy) that allows us to freely and privately store personal information on technological devices without comprising our security. 

          While the topic on encryption has never had any particular attention, things changed on February 16th 2016 when the FBI requested (ordered) Apple to write a piece of software that would allow them to hack the personal iPhone of one of the terrorists responsible of the Bernardino shooting back in December, 2015. Apple CEO Tim Cook opposed the order stating that writing such piece of software could threat the security of Apple’s customers and that its implications would be beyond the legal case. From that point, opinions started to diverge as a lack of information and misunderstanding started to get into the mix. In the verge of the elections later during the year, the Apple vs. FBI case even made its way into politics to further divide the nation. Republican Candidate Donald Trump even proposed a boycott on Apple products until they give the FBI access to the terrorist’s iPhone.

          As a programmer myself who had worked with encryption in the past, I have realized that supporting privacy while at the same be willing to do everything to avoid further terrorist attacks can be difficult. For that reason, I have created a game that simulate the experience of breaking into an iPhone. 10X gives us the option to break into a safe by attempting to open it by typing the right passcode. After 10 unsuccessful attempts, the safe auto-destructs itself and it is game over. The game focuses on giving the player a thinking experience. He or she must think and try everything to open the safe although the player is completely unaware of what really resides inside of it. Although the game’s purpose is to open a safe, the player is given the option to quit the game at any given time. After 5 unsuccessful attempt, the game proposes to help the player. The latter is offered a “hacking” feature that can modify the game by getting rid of the 10-try limitation. The player is specifically warned that such feature could potentially comprise all the other safes in the game. In the end, if the player chooses to unlock the “hacking” feature, the safe unlocks after a few try of any passcode. The player is shown then a picture of a Fawkes mask that represents the famous hacker group Anonymous. 

          At this point, the game makes its point that unlocking such powerful feature means that it is also available to anyone, even the people that you wouldn’t want to have access to it. The player is informed then that the safe has already been emptied. Anonymous wins and the player looses. The player can only win by walking away and resist to the desire of hacking the safe. 

          As pointed by Chimamanda Adiche, when telling a story it is important to reach as many people as possible. 10X tries to do so putting itself in the shoes of people that perhaps do not understand encryption. For the people that do, they will simply walk away and not try to break into the safe. For the others, the game invites them to think and let them find out by themselves that it wasn’t a good idea. This is important to avoid the danger of a “single story” that ultimately will fail to reach everyone. 

A World of Gravity

          What if we lived in a world where the gravitational force on Earth was variant from one day to another in the same way the weather fluctuates? After some discussion, we realized that such a world would have a lot of implications in comparison to the world we currently live in. Taking in consideration that some days the gravity would be strong enough to gives us a hard time to move around while some other days it would reach such low levels to allows us to float around as if we were on the moon, our buildings would have to be designed in a different way, we would dress differently to adapt to those weight shifts, and we would have perhaps new ways to exercise under such variant conditions. Most importantly, we would have to find ways to work whether those gravitational changes occur or not. 

          That being said, in this world, people would be more sedentary than nomadic. On heavy days, people would stay home and work from there. Telecommuting would be extremely popular, thus, increasing the amount of people doing business online. This would force the government to put more security in the cybernetic world than real life. Law enforcements wouldn’t be as popular on the streets since most crimes would occur online. Hackers would be as common as we hear robberies in our current world. If required, the government would have access to people’s information in order to track maleficent users. Meanwhile, hackers would constantly find new ways to bypass and avoid government's security patrols. This would create a world where people got used to being surveilled, while at the same time, not being too concerned because they would believe that they are being protected. On the other hand, some regular people wouldn’t agree to the idea of having limited privacy; therefore, some people would create softwares to browse the web anonymously.

          In Bleeker’s “Design Fiction,” he not only talks about how design fictions should create functional, interesting materials, but that the design fiction process should derive from a good story. So rather than just creating a world where the gravitational pulls shifted like the weather, we imagined what life would be like for the people who lived in this unexpected and inconsistent world. What would they live in? What kind of sports or games would they play? What was their history like and what stories would they see on the news? What would they wear? 

In the same way people tend to stay at home more often during cold winters, heavy gravitational periods would require homes built specifically for those conditions. In most homes, they will have a magnetic floor (responsive to magnetic shoes) to adjust to the gravitational strength of the day, keeping the occupants to a comfortable weight. As for the rooms, they are similar to what we know today. The main difference is that people wouldn't leave things laying around or on counters because of the danger of having those items flying all over the place. Homes are simple and small.

People would also create new activities to enjoy the perks of light gravitational days.

Since a lot of time would be spent at home, people would be mainly informed/entertained through the media (newspapers).

Seeing the Good in the Gravity Shift of ‘86

By Zach Connell March 14, 2016

As we look back over years, many disastrous Gravity Shifts have interrupted our peaceful lives and for some people has ended their lives. Today marking the 30th anniversary of the great Gravity Shift of ’86, now is the time to remember and honor the lives lost during that tragic event. Though on a more positive note, not everyone was negatively affected by the gravity shift. One couple recalls the ‘adventure’ they had that presented them the opportunity to meet and fall in love. After meeting with them, the Redfords, I have come to realize how deeply they honor and respect that day.

The morning of, Mr. Redford got in his car and drove to work. Since he works as a nurse for the hospital, he was greatly needed to help with all the injured people that were coming in. Noticing that his wheels were not getting much traction on the ground, he decided to grab the sand bags in his garage and place them in the trunk of his Toyota. After twelve 50lb bags he was finally able to get his car to rest on the ground the way it should. “I remember seeing animals, trash, and even people stuck on lamp posts and signs. They must have accidently jumped too high, or taken too big of a step that just launched them off the ground. It was really dangerous, and looking back I don’t get why I didn’t realize that I needed to be more safe” Mr. Redford remarks about his trip to work. It’s truly devastating knowing that the people who disappear on those days died as a result of floating up into the abyss.

Mrs. Redford looked out her window on the same morning and thought to herself that she would stay safely inside for the day after hearing about how light the gravity was. However, she was swayed when she saw her cat Sprinkles stuck in a tree, feet dangling above with its claws jabbed into the bark holding on for dear life. “I ran outside to desperately help my poor Sprinkles. The unfortunate thing was that I myself started to rise into the air with each step I took. I was risking my life to save my cat, probably not the smartest decision, but I would hate to see Sprinkles succumb to the weightlessness and float up to heaven. Why Sprinkles was outside in the first place I have no idea” Mrs. Redford remarked.

All of this happened as Mr. Redford was driving by. “I saw a pretty looking girl struggling to get to a tree with an almost floating cat, so naturally I had to stop.” Serendipitously for the both of them, he did stop and helped out his future love. Both individuals remarked in our interview about how fate can be a funny, and slightly ironic thing. They each saw an opportunity to make a frightening situation into a positive memory.

After listening to the story of this lovely couple, I realized how maybe everything does happen for a reason. The grass is green, Christmas comes once every year, indisputable these facts are as the gravity shifts we experience every day. The only way to get through it is to keep a happy face and move along.

Lastly, the creative designers of this world would come up with clothing that not only would allow us to adapt to the gravitational shifts but also make us worthy of a catwalk.

Having the weather constantly fluctuating has made us, as a species, learn how to adapt our clothing to fit the weather presented. In a world where gravity fluctuates, clothing would also need to reflect that change. The artifact I have created is a lightweight aluminum exoskeleton designed to help brace the spine of the individual wearing it. It was created for periods of increased gravity to help wearers avoid collapsing spines. The top connectors support the shoulders, while the lower help support the muscles in the upper legs. The waistband is there to help distribute extra weight across the hips. This artifact could be compared to long underwear. When the weather outside is frightful and cold, we put on warm layers to survive. It only makes sense that we would also have to adapt to the crushing forces of gravity. To maintain a sense of fashion this artifact would be worn under the clothing, thus not interfering with outside appearance.  On the other side of the spectrum, fashion would also have to reflect when gravity is lighter. In the shoes, the people can instal weights and/or magnets that keep them grounded when the gravity is threatening to carry them away. These items would all be fashionable and attractive to wear.

Webspinna Battle

In our preparation for our Webspinna battle, we found in our reading the following segment that broadened our understanding of this assignment:

“Finding one’s voice isn’t just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.”

Overall, what Jonathan Lethem means is that our artistic process is merely a remix of what has been created before, but in a way that reflects our own individual interpretation. Given this knowledge, we realized that we needed to glean from the collective chaos of the internet those clips that reflected some ideals that not only embody our existence, but also our observations regarding current circumstances. Additionally, we wanted our battle to not only reflect a certain element of our identity, but also open up social criticism as well. As such, we began with identifying certain aspects of our personal backgrounds that could be stereotyped into creating a sense of conflict. Inspired by the bombastic nature of the recent political primaries, we decided to leverage both of our national identities (Jake being American and Juan being Canadian/Latino) to poke fun at American patriotism and its effect on foreign relations. We found inspiration from personal experience with stereotypes, but also looked towards the art form of the political cartoon to get a better impression of what stereotypes came up most frequently. We boiled down these stereotypes regarding other nations into two categories: pride due to excess wealth and proficiency in war. (Cartoons below stand as an example)

Although we recognize (and do not totally agree with) these stereotypes, we wanted to display how fruitless such notions of American supremacy are in the context of other nations. Thus, we came up with ideas on how Juan (representing foreign countries) could reverse my over-the-top American strategies to put Canada/Latinos/the World into “their place.”

First, it was important for us to come up with an easy concept to understand. With that in mind, we concluded that a round-based battle would be best. Second, we decided to have America start each round because of its past history on striving to be the first at everything.

In order to have a sort of exposition for our respective characters, the Webspinna duel starts with a clash of our respective national anthems, which also quickly sets the rivalry tone of our presentation. Next, we decided to touch on America's pride by having her defend herself with something that she is proud of. With that in mind, we opted for the "Pursuit of the Happiness" song and a "Make Money, Money" audio clip to highlight how America prides itself as the land of opportunity (and you could say wealth as well).  Meanwhile, Canada replies with a song by Drake, a famous Canadian artist in the United States, to point out that America's opportunities also extend to other nations. Feeling mocked, America takes the next round to the next level by bringing its powerful and incontestable military arsenal into the mix. The exchange of bullets and nuclear bomb audio clips is an attempt by America to wipe Canada only to realize that the whole operation was unsuccessful (which also hints at some of the weaknesses of a military-based foreign policy). Facing such failure, America switches gears and pulls out his ultimate weapon; finding a bombastic voice that can attack on a more personal level. We recognize that kind of attitude has manifested itself in the recent political debates. As such, we included an audio clip from republican candidate Donald J. Trump (a very strong voice many Americans are backing) attacking Juan's hispanic nationality. Shocked by Trump's intentions to build a wall, Juan rallies a group of friends, chases the Trump, and claims victory as a final declaration that such verbal attacks only harm America’s standing.

However, our presentation ends then on a more hopeful note. While Juan is celebrating his victory, he invites Jake to join him. This is our attempt to show that we believe in a future where nations can still come together despite their differences and/or previous conflicts. On an even more personal note, although Juan and Jake have different backgrounds, we can still look beyond those backgrounds to find similar ground in building up the inherent good that the United States offers to all here at BYU.