Generative Content Creation Task 1

Review:

In his article The Language of New Media Len Manovich looks how to separate new media from the old one and goes through the history how it all become. He rises questions such if the use of something new like a computer in an old art from such is photography makes it new and can same images distributed in different forms called new and old media at the same time. For example if a photo is but on a CD-ROM and demands a computer for viewing it – it is new media, but if the same photo is printed to a book – it is old media, because printing on paper and photography are both old mediums. Also he draws very strong lines between media and computer development as he refers many times that computerization is basis for new media – that means all new media is created on computers.

In the second part of his article he points out five principles that make old media new.

• Numerical Representation
  That means that new media is digitalized and therefor it has numerical representation as it is recorded and presented with digital media. Most of it is automatically created on computers – that means all the zeros and ones that stores information about certain objects that can simply define through a mathematical code and could be manipulated with another mathematical code. For example a photograph in a computer is saved as a certain formula and that can be manipulated with another formula to adjust contrast or sharpness. We can not access photo psychically as all the process happens within computer's data base that is purely mathematical.
• Modularity
  every object inserted remains independent in the project and evert project can be used in larger one without objects used to create the project loosing its independence. For example writing essays on computer. One can insert images, URL addresses, shapes or sounds, but they all can edited independently within the project.
• Automation
  ... is divided to low-level and high-level automation. An example of low level automation would be when a computer program like Photoshop is correcting scanned image automatically according to program's standards. High-level automation is when it is demanded more from the program. Good example would be different bots and AI (artificial intelligence). They are programed in a way that humans can communicate with computers as they are communicating with other people. Therefore program needs to process information more and reply according to that.
• Variability
  This principle is explained as widely as the word “variability” sounds. It seems to be that every objects varies from other objects, but at the same time to be honest I did not really understand the difference it creates between old and new media.
• Transcoding
  This is the principle that expalains and defines the use of computers' influence on media that is created on them. Due the new possibilities and technology development it offers us more oppertunities to create what we want. For example CGI (Computer Generated Image) in films – computer helps us to build our own story world according to out imagination that it is almost impossible to create physically with the use of old media.

My thoughts while reading this article was mainly focused on the difference between old and new media. The same question can be adopted to filmmaking. People started to make films in 19^th century, but now almost the whole industry edits on computers and knowledge of editing on a flatbed is often not even required anymore to become a film editor. And because almost everyone in western world owns a computer and all the operation systems like Windows and MAC OS consist primary editing software then everyone can learn how to do it and everyone can make their own films if they want to. Also public and free, but yet popular, distribution channels like Youtube is, make it possible for everyone to make their art public. For example Youtube's Fact Sheet states out under statistics that people are watching 2 billion videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. That means that every average Joe can call himself an independent filmmaker. In my head it rises many questions one of them is the value of quality. It is obvious that large quantity decreases quality, but for example people have started to appreciate less and less video art, because their minds have been so overwhelmed as the internet is full of it. There should be clearer line between someone's published holiday videos and someone's work that was only possible to execute via those limited tools – video camera, editing software and Youtube.

Task 7

My understanding of interactivity

After reading articles by Jensen and Kiousis who both observe and try to identify what interactivity actually is, it is still confusing to me – I could compare it with for example when a child asks you “what is life?” and probably he/she would get different answers from every adult. In my opinion to define interactivity as term in nowadays is hard, because every generation has a different background that differs from each other innormasly – if you would ask it from a 55 year old man and 15 year old boy then their understanding of interaction is based on what they think traditional medium for them is. One is used to television and radio media and other has grown up using computer most of his life.

Kiousis in his article introduced many theories on interactivity to give various background information and tried to give a definition to it himself. In my opinion he introduced good characteristics that interactivity consists – technology, communication context, user perception.

Technology is needed because typically interactivity is examined as a communication context between human cv machines or human to human via a machine (Rice, 1984; Kiousis). I would agree to that - the same factors could be applied to a normal face-to-face communication as for example in human to human via computer communication, but it is still hard to take them as same, because the environment where this interaction is taking place is completely different. For example communicating through computers users' can change the environment and have complete control over it as in normal everyday life the world is not changing according to our perception and interaction in it.

In my mind interactive environment is something where communication runs in both directions and the same communication has an impact to the environment that is controlled by the users. This way content in it, is created by the users who also can get immediate feedback to created content from other users – every user has a change to select, control and produce whatever kind of content they would like to see in a specific environment. In my opinion this can only work that purely in few mediums (for example internet), because it rises many questions if same characteristics are applied to some traditional mediums like television and radio, where nowadays viewer has more control over the content that they choose to consume, but at the same time the environment stays mainly the same.

Also one of the key characteristics in an interactive environment is the possibility to exchange feedback. A very good example would be Youtube that is an environment where users create its content (uploading videos) while others can comment on everyone's content to give immediate feedback. Also the users have a some control over what is posted. For example if they feel that some videos are too abbseen to be public, they can report and the video will be deleted. Youtube could not exist without it's users.

In conclusion as Jensen and Kiousis both did not succeeded to define “interactivity,” then for me it is also unclear mainly because the definition keeps changing with technology development. It can not be defined by the same rules that we had in 1950 or even in the beginning of this century, because the speed of technology development is increasing constantly – therefore the definition of interactivity keeps changing with it.  

Task 5

Summary

Jensen in his article explores the concept of interactivity in various fields and tries to find a proper definition to it. He looks to the history how it has changed in a relation to innovations in media. For example one can not compare the definition “interactive media” in 1950s with contemporary one.

In his article he introduces several communication theories that could help us to define interactivity. In my opinion one of the best ones to create a good basis for understanding communication was Bordewijk and Kaam's Matrix for the Four Communication Patterns.

	Information controlled by a central provider	Information controlled by the consumer
Distribution controlled by a central provider	1) Transmission	2) Registration
Distribution controlled by the consumer	3) Consultation	4) Conversation

He goes through many famous mass media theories (like concepts provided by McQuail, Lazarsfeld, Horton and Wohl, etc.) to help us understand what has meant by interactive media throughout the history – reading from that it becomes clear that what was thought earlier, when television and radio was considered to be as new interactive media, could not be compared with what is happening nowadays when the use of internet has changed many media standards. For example television channels are now providing an opportunity for the viewer to choose what kind of shows to watch, only to offer still competition to internet where people are already used to choosing their own content what to consume.

Later on in his article, Jensen tries to find different tools that could help us closer to the understanding interactivity. He eliminates interactivity as prototype and interactivity as criterium as they create more false conclusions than helping us simplifying meaning behind this word. More suitable for him is to define it trough interactivity's continuum & dimensions where he divides is to 1-dimension, 2 – dimension, 3 – dimension, n – dimension.

As he states in the end of his article that even though “interactivity” as such is widely used concept, it is still very difficult to define. In his conclusion he makes a statement that it is something very complex and differs from field to field, so it is impossible to give it one level definition.

Task 3

Analyzing other participants' Task 2.

For this analysis I selected randomly five blogs from the participants' list:

• http://maarjapajusalu.wordpress.com/category/nie2010/
• http://kerstitoming.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/self-observation-and-analysis-of-creating-a-study-plan/
• http://reimoverse.wordpress.com/2010/10/11/task-2-activity-plan-fall-2010/
• http://argoimke.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/task-2-self-observation-and-analysis-of-creating-a-study-plan/
• http://marupada.blogspot.com/

What elements, components, etc. have been used by others to describe their activity?

In my opinion I found three group of students and their strategy for selecting courses for this semester.

The first one would be students with work and family life. The most important factor was there the ability to fit the course into their time schedule. For example Argo could only attend evening ones or online courses.

The second group would be perhaps younger students with more free schedule, who only focus to fill the curriculum and take as much courses as possible - including free electives with subjects that interest them.

The third group is mainly last year students who are staying abroad (like myself) and only are taking those few courses that is needed for graduation.

So in general the most important components for everyone would be time and relevance to curriculum. Also in fewer cases the form of the course - online versus class lectures. 

What level of detail?

Most people described there decision making quite efficiently. In my opinion it is a bit hard to judge, because the process itself is mainly quite automatic. Ofcourse most of the students are IMKE students and as I have different background then I don't really know how many courses are offered there in the beginning of the year. For example in Baltic Film and Media School the amount of courses offered is basically the same what you have to take, so the part where you can make a selection is rather limited.

What structural aspects are showing up in their descriptions/visualisations?

In my opinion all visualization and description have the same structure. It all start with the person taking into account time, relevance to curriculum, form, amount of credit points, etc. Also the schemes of visualization have the same structure - mapping their thoughts according to their needs.

What is missing?Pros and cons of different approaches?

As for me the reading of other people blogs was basically the same. They all described same "mind-mapping" with same tools, including my own. Maybe for me it was missing a little bit more background information about the courses from what they could actually make a selection (as i pointed out before - my background seems to be completely different, so it would be nice to know how the system works in a different school). 

And maybe the reading of blogs would not be so repetitive, if people would have been using more original approach to differ from others. Therefore as the ones I was reading, did not differ so much from each other then it is also hard to list pros and cons. The good side of everyone's description was that all of them managed to explain themselves more or less clearly and it gave a good overview how the student minds are working. The main problem for me was that they were too similar, so when reading them it felt very repetitive. 

(I do not want to harm anyone's feelings and I make my selection based on pure randomness so I could have both female and male versions of study plans. And I did not read all of them. Also my own was rather poor and boring.)

Task 2

Task 2 was to map your decisions for scheduling this semester's study plan. As I am a student of Baltic Film and Media School on the edge of my graduation then this was unordinary for me (I am staying in Prague till my thesis defenses).
The main points what I considered were:

• location - to making it possible for me to graduate while staying abroad
• form of the lecture - as I had to take two more courses from TLU then they had to be online courses
• relevance to my profession or curricula - this point I had to take two courses that would fill introduction module in my department's curricula
• time - is the course time consuming or not, because as I am working and dealing with my thesis film then I needed to take something that does not occupy so much of my time.

This year my main academic goal is to graduate and move on to my master studies. (and please do forgive me the horrible image that i managed to create. i don't have proper programs for that at the moment due the lack of disk space and i had to use open office - with its flaws and irrational way of behaving)

Task 1

Web publishing

My previous experience with web publishing is rather limited. I have mainly used it for my school work or just for personal interest. Also in my opinion understanding the term "web publishing" is a bit difficult in nowadays society, because it should consist some informative content that could be interesting to some group of people, but as social networking portals like Facebook and Twitter make it so easy and accessible then it is hard to imagine a person without any previous knowledge about it.

As I young social person I do own a Facebook account and use it quite often, but mainly to stay in contact with my international friends, with who I am not able to communicate from face to face. And of course I am posting "what's on your mind" statuses and sometimes links - music videos, news pieces, etc. But I as it has been only my personal information and for my friends, I can not really call it web publishing. Although I have noticed that since I started to use it I have used less and less online news  portals, because it does provide very fast information flow and as it mainly comes from your friends (with who you share same interests) then it just helps you to find news pieces that interest you faster.

For my school work and research I mainly use Wikipedia and blogs as there are so many of them with specific content. I do appreciate that some people have taken this time and energy to share their knowledge with everyone else. Unfortunately I have to say that I have not been one of them and this is my first time to have my own blog. 

I also use semi regularly  Estonian music portal Rada7. Although I don't post there too often and it is hardly ever something important :)