I learned alot once again The double A duo are great singers, el devon wasn’t there and I didn’t get the desperate step training I wanted(insert sarcasm here). Well it was funny to me, anyway xavi has introduced me to a couple of websites, one website caught my attention, it was set up like a social network , where people could tell there stories on how they’ve lived. Zane showed the Could factory, i finally now what the name means now. The film was great, I never knew there was a cold factory plant in Chicago period. Prisca showed us her blog and the whole outline was beautiful, she most definitely on the right track, helping people.

Yesterday, I spoke a little about oral tradition throughout history and the importance of verbal communication in the development of society. Ancient tales like the Iliad and the Odyssey were passed on by orators who kept the entire story in their heads. In Roman societies the tribune was the person who stood up in the middle of the city and told everyone the news. Here in North America, indigenous people kept a deep oral history of their people and the words themselves were sacred. With the invention of the Gutenberg printing press stories were no longer kept sacred because they were now more readily available for widespread distribution. Communities and tribes were broken up by the absence of this tradition. This decline in civic dialogue has continued well into the modern era where there is little or no communication even between families. If parents think their kids aren’t happy in life they’re quick to give in to the anti-depressant drug complex and bypass the more personal act of actually talking to their children. I believe this pattern is a design of a group of people who are trying to deconstruct the family base.

Sorry if I went on too long. What I’m trying to say is that yesterday was very inspiring for me because we all got a chance to speak to each other face-to-face without a computer screen dividing us. It was a great act of sharing and important because this doesn’t happen enough in society.

(insert special effects here) I learned a lot from everyone on collective intelligence day, like ….

cupcakes + free write = pretty cool poetry, spoken word + singing –> sunshine! for your mind

more about radio broadcasts/podcasts and people like me who are interested and working with it

the incredible tech savviness of some certain students, shown by their videos

I enjoyed myself because being able to see what everyone has to share is something that groups led by some kind of teacher don’t always get to do. In short, one big furi-ous brain is pretty cool and not as scary as I (and probably some others) had anticipated.

My idea has changed, once again like the shifting sky, to be about how music (in general) is disrespectful, sometimes to say the least, to women. I think that to focus too  narrowly on one aspect of music would make a more dramatic statement but at the same time you lose the point: women in the media are often seen as easily manipulatable, thoughtless, and careless caricatures. Even focusing in on this part of sexism, someone can easily forget that some women do play an active part and even find something to gain in acting the stereotyped part.

In the manner of a certain vocal goddess, lets call her Amy JuiceHouse, I did away with all my ethical standards and relinquished my soul to the process of true creation. Begin with a concrete image, burn it, and let the smoldering ashes guide you like tea leaves at the bottom of a porcelain cup. What I’m saying is that I started off with a clear picture and now have a plethora of possibilities going off into different tangents floating into outer space. Right now I’m in the process of letting gravity pull me back down.

In my post about my “Poison” remix idea I’m sure I was convincing when I wrote how great it would turn out. Don’t get me wrong, that remix would have been powerful but it just felt like I wouldn’t be utilizing all the tools that I have available to me. So after putting the mirror up to myself I knew that I wasn’t going to be satisfied with the final product. I had to cast the line into my ocean of thoughts and try to reel in something that spoke about what I wanted out of this remix.

For some time now I have been on a crusade to reclaim the human mind and body from multinational corporations. I want to rip the blindfold off peoples’ eyes and tear the chains from their feet. I talked to people about this before but some are stuck in their ways. I feel like I’m flying down this tunnel…being torn from this world of false claims, blind trust, subliminal messages, and overpowering images and I’m trying to grab as many people as I can so that they can see the light at the end.

My focus will be on the world diet and how it has changed since the introduction of fast food corporations who control the media and influence their “customers” in ways that shouldn’t be allowed. One of the first videos will definitely be about the truth behind High Fructose Corn Syrup and how it is in (almost) everything that we eat. If you’re reading this please make an effort to decrease your HFCS intake. I will post something that explains why this is something that you need to do if your serious about taking control of your health. I’ll keep you posted (as they say).

Salud y Paz (Health and Peace)

So Ameenah and I have decided to change our film focus to police brutality insted of youth culture. We really wanted to use a song that would make the visuals pop more. Our choice of song is ” Beat it” by Micheal Jackson. We will be using this song because the lyrics portray images of fighting but people probably don’t connect beat it with olice brutality. The mood would be serious but ironic at the same time because the music is on the upbeat side of things. We believe this film would be more critical of the abuses people face and would spark more thought than our previous idea would have.

Just like some parents I know, you might wonder, “So, what did you do at _______ today?” Well, …..

Began learning how to use TubeTV and what that means for someone who is trying to change a video.

Started the process of how to take an idea for a remix, and actually turn it into something real (!!).

Missing a  day of class is generally a bad idea, but here you really miss a lot (for whatever reason.) Maybe the most important thing I learned.

And, one thing I am really struggling with is, is where do you frame and focus the remix? I don’t want to miss anything, but we can only spend so much time and energy on this remix.

Peace!

My idea of my remix video is to come up with a theme of showing how people in africa are suffering over diamonds. My video that I picked was Diamonds on my chain by Fabulous. The song that I picked was Diamonds are forever by Kanye West. My remix is coming along well so far. I started kind of late because I was absent but I have I feeling that everything is going to turn out great.

Yesterday evening the class was thrust into the, otherwise unknown, “other” layer of the internet world through the eyes of a ciber-activist, hacker, media-savvy rebel. I speak about the “ciber underworld” that, most people think, exists only for computer geeks or kids who are into anime, or the people us mortals ask for help when our tech problems reach apocalyptic levels. Most of us are used to taking things from the internet for free and/or finding ways around doing things the “legal” way. But I don’t think any of us were prepared for what we seen when the veil was lifted and we were exposed to the raw, unpolished, under workings of the web. As Johnny Mac (Jonathon) was guiding us all down this road that he has probably taken countless times all I could think of was the FBI or suits with warrants rushing in and shutting us down. They would shove the PATRIOT act down our throats and crucify us in the name of national security. As terrifying as my predictions were I still felt compelled to let myself fall backwards blind folded and hope fate catches me. It felt so illegal…but sooooo right (or left).

He introduced us to programs like Audio Hijack which allows you to capture ANY audio (yes those are capital letters) that is playing on ANY source from your computer, so whatever output there is. That means you can record audio playing off of the internet, or from any software that you have offline. Pretty snappy!

There was also Zamzar which allows you to take any video or audio from the web and convert it to, virtually, any type of file that is convenient for you to work with. For example, if I wanted to remix something from Go Army I would just insert the URL and choose which type of file I would convert it to. Amazing.

But I think the most inspiring tool jmac showed us was the wikicommons which is a place where people around the world can upload there own media to the web and share it with other people who interested in maybe using that media for another purpose. But I should also mention that there are several different types of Creative Common licenses that are used and it would be best to learn about them before using that media.

So, there’s no turning back…we’re all jedi knights now. May the force be with you!

Salud y Paz

Yesterday we learned a lot  about taking stuff from off the web and converting it in other forms.. I think that the media conversion tools are awesome. These tools could basically help anyone looking to convert any form of audio or video. wikipedia/creative commons our great to because they don’t just give you a picture, they also give you information on how/ or what why you should use the picture. this creates no confusion between one another.