Blog Post 10: DiGiorno

The DiGiorno pizza is an example of failed digital-viral text because they didn’t understand the context of the WhyIStayed hashtag. Not knowing the context of a meme is similar to having someone explain a joke, the fun factor is lost. DiGiorno should have researched before they posted on social media. This is partly a reason how the meme went wrong in the first place. They most likely wanted to just make a practical joke while promoting their pizza. The words “Why I Stayed” by themselves serve no harm, but since it is referring to the video of Ray Rice beating his former fiancé, the context greatly changes. The video of the abuse spread and as a result, some may argue that DiGiorno’s lack of knowledge about the incident is a form of ignorance because they said something without knowing the full meaning. This accumulated a great amount of criticism from the public and DiGiorno had to release an apology.

One main thing that can be learned from this incident is to know the background knowledge of an event if you want to post online about it. While memes can spread and go viral “just because”, hashtags usually always have a meaning and trending ones arise from real situations. Something that people have to be careful about when posting on social media is that the internet remembers everything. If a mistake happens people will save it and can use it against the owner at any time in the future. Major companies should have a group of editors that review tweets to make sure that the messages that they send to the public are appropriate because they should be aware that they are representing themselves with each post.

Meme Creation

The genre of meme that I created was a short clip with text over it. I made a vlog for fun last year and I clipped that specific part afterwards because I thought the quick change in Shireen’s expression was funny. For this assignment, I brought up the clip and put it through an editor to add the text.

The subject matter of the text pertains to school finals. This is relevant because students in high school and above are reaching the point where they have to take their exams. A lot of memes appear as fads and if you want to get on a particular “meme train” you would have to create one while the topic is still significant, otherwise viewers will not appreciate it as much because it would be old and overused. The text matches the video well because it shows someone having a good time and then quickly displaying a face which shows seriousness/disgust. The fact that it wasn’t forced either makes the video feel natural and others can relate to it.

Since I don’t have many mainstream social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) my only option to share with others is Snapchat. This is relatively limited though because posting it on my story will only allow my friends to see it, not a larger population. In addition to this, my snapchat friends can only view it, not download it and share it with other people easily. Their only option is to message me in a separate chat and ask if I can send the video to them. There are other options that can let a wider audience see my meme through snapchat. If I post it on the campus story and it gets chosen, everyone at U of I will have a chance to see it. However, since the meme has Shireen and not me in it, I wouldn’t want to share it with people that she doesn’t know. The purpose of this meme is just for entertainment purposes. A meme gets viral if people like it and share it through their own effort. I feel that the joy of the meme diminishes a little bit if the creator openly tells viewers to share it.

Link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5wh5F81_WbWYzB1NDAtR0R1LUZpcUMwRDgyZllXYnNjVXpn/view?usp=sharing

Map In Class Writing

Maps can present the same information in different ways depending on the scale and format use (ex. Technological, physical). Maps can also be created to visually appeal to an audience. Technological maps can be made and edited far more efficiently than physical maps on the same scale because it is easier to fix mistakes or add more points.

Relationship between map and a space is that a map gives a label to a space. A specific location is empty because a lot of different events can occur in that area. With a map, the space can have an explicit meaning that can educate or enlighten the audience.

The different processes of gathering information and designing a map tells how the same information can be presented differently. Even if the same information is present, if the creator has a specific target audience, they can create their map in favor to that audience. For example, a creator who wants younger people to see their map might the map colorful and easy to read.

Map Proposal

For this project, we’ve decided to focus our map on the Gulf oil spill (2010) and its effects on biodiversity and surrounding coastal communities. This map will address the nearby states and cities affected and the distance/depth of the oil spill itself. We chose this topic because the Gulf spill is the most detrimental offshore oil disaster; there are still lingering effects, such as a declining local economy and wildlife endangerment. The short-term effects are important to think about as well. Eleven people were killed during the methane explosion that caused the pipelines to burst. There are many political implications as well with climate legislation, causing massive debates regarding offshore drilling across parties.

At this point, our main argument is that coastal communities and keystone species are suffering at the cost of an accidental incident. We can include the coral reefs, fish, and birds that are widely affected today. There are many insect species as well that have been in decline because of the oil spill.What this says about space, is that because of the location of the oil spill, it’s important to study how each sector has been affected as we do not know the long-term consequences for biodiversity and toxins that are affecting local communities just yet.

The medium we plan on using is pencil and paper because it is the most user-friendly option for us. By drawing out the map, we can pinpoint the regions that are mainly affected by biodiversity loss; it is also easily manipulable since we can fix any mistakes we make along the way. An affordance is different writing/drawing utensils, such as colorful pens or a Sharpie to trace our map with.

I imagine our intended audience to be citizens in affected areas and policymakers. Our audience will benefit from this map by gaining insight into the multitude of ways their communities have been impacted by the oil spill and how they will continue to be affected unless some progress is done on a larger, political scale.  It is reasonable to demand a call for political action; almost a decade has passed and politicians are still going in circles with offshore drilling policies.

This map will require research on current species being affected by the oil spill. Additionally, we want to avoid our map from having a wide array of topics because that might be overwhelming for our audience. We can get around this by narrowing down our map to a specific coastal city that is continuously being affected by the Gulf oil spill. We have doubt in our drawing abilities, so we will use a mapped out image of a coastal city and the water nearby, and then write on top of that.

Audio Project Reflection

Some affordances of sound is that it can bring a lot of different audio pieces together to create a new message. It can be cheaper to produce an audio clip rather than a video because you don’t have to worry about getting expensive equipment all the time. Even if you want to get a mic, a good quality one is relatively cheaper than the same quality camera for video recording. What it does that other modes can’t is bring out voice better. Writing is mainly text so the tone of the piece is deleted. Some people have trouble recording videos of themselves either because they can’t act well or are just nervous in front of a camera. With audio that barrier is gone.

Audio is related to space depending on where the audio is presented. At a museum, a historical audio piece maybe interpreted differently than somewhere else. We make sense of things depending on where the sounds come from. If they sound like things we’ve heard before or stuff we are unfamiliar with.

Changing audio gives me a potentially easier way to evoke a message to an audience. With audio, I can bring in different voices and music that can better convey an emotional response. Instead of saying quotes myself, I can clip in parts where the actual person is saying their quote to show the original context to the listeners. These processes show that there are many ways to get an audience to listen to what you have to say or present.

Audacity was very hard to work with. The format and layout of the program is dull to me and makes the editing process uninteresting.  iMovie and Garage band are more visually appealing and user friendly in my opinion. The writing reflection was confusing to create.

WAM and Accessibility

An example of multimodal inhospitality in class is the general discussions we have. For people that are socially awkward or have anxiety in speaking towards the whole class, it is hard for them to explain their thoughts verbally. Even though name calling is used to make sure that everyone has a fair chance to speak up, the answer won’t be as insightful as it could be because the people with these problems are forced to talk when they are not comfortable. This causes them to say something quick that, even though is somewhat relative to the topic, is not thoughtful.

A redesign that would be helpful to the class is to use a website that takes questions anonymously. At the beginning of class, everyone opens a tab to a website that uses this function and when a question is asked in a discussion, the people who are comfortable speaking up can give their input verbally. The ones who are not comfortable speaking, have the option to type their response and post it. This gives them time to bring their thoughts together and ask a question that the teacher can read aloud after there aren’t any more verbal responses. The class can then give their input on these new questions either verbally or digitally.

The reason that this design isn’t a retrofit is because it is not dated. This class is one where technology itself and the many things that it can produce are discussed and used every day. An anonymous poll website would be very fitting for a technological based class as it provides a solution without barriers to students with these disabilities. It doesn’t serve to just accommodate users because it also allows students who wish to post anonymously to take their time to develop an intuitive response. These programs allow for users to post their names if they wish on their questions but don’t have to. This isn’t just a partial solution, but a complete design that can help all students in the classroom.

10/17 Freewrite

We talked about different things related to audio to see how the process of a final clip can be altered. Basically, disruption, formatting, and glitch all play a role in making a piece that is original to the composer. Glitches, which at first glance may seem like a problem, often result in serendipities to the artist as they bring an unexpected surprise that gives a stylistic touch to the author’s work. This shows how different writing across media can be made to entertain a target audience.

Audio as a medium is something that can be listened to in a less physical way than other forms of media. Since our eyes and hands aren’t involved, we can listen to audio while doing other tasks.

Audio Proposal

For this project, we would like to repurpose Kanye’s interviews. We are going to change the interview questions and make the artist’s answers conform to our questions by splicing in words or complete phrases in the wrong context. Some examples of questions would be, “Why did you go insane after releasing your fashion line?” and “How did you fall in love with Kim?”

We don’t really need reappropriation because our goal isn’t to educate our audience on something that is culturally misused. We are planning on using mashup by clipping different audio sources and merging them into one piece. This will make our piece have a different meaning with the purpose of entertaining our audience, since the new audio will have the artist speak without all of the context. By incorporating different cuts in our mashup, we aim to show a style that reflects a bit of our personalities in our audio.

Audio will be a great text to take advantage of because without context, like videos would give, it can easily be manipulated into our interview. For example, the phrase “I hate babies, they should all die!” If a video was taken of a person saying that in front of charity rally for an orphanage, people could see that this person was either sarcastic or saying something a monster would say. However, if it was just the audio, the media could manipulate that into saying “this person is a monster,” or “here is a guy that is just mimicking someone.”

Our intended audience would be our INFO 303 class and people who enjoy channels like comedy central. Since we are completing this project for entertainment purposes, we would like to make it a little goofy while still maintaining a legit interview structure. An example of what we aim to do is similar to the show “Between Two Ferns” hosted by Zack Galifianakis. The viewers of those shows can tolerate controversial topics or dark humor, I think our project would resonate with this audience.

Finding the different interviews and watching each one to find our necessary phrases is going to be very difficult. Also, if this person somehow never says a word or phrase we are looking for, it could alter the structure of our planned interview. To get around these problems, we will make a general script of our interview. This will make it easier for us to know what to look for and we won’t constricted into only finding that specific word/phrase. Another constraint is that our project will require a lot of clips that will take a long time to edit. The only way around this is to start early so we don’t end up rushing the editing process.

Remixing Compositions

The two articles talk about how different groups use Djing to bring about social changes. In the Giacona piece, the music group “A Tribe Called Red” (ATCR) remixes songs with a Native American style to re-appropriate their culture from the harsh stereotypes that were fixed on them throughout history. They mainly achieve this by using the sound of the Electric Powwow, which is an important instrument because of its significance in Native American culture: “After World War I, intertribal powwow gatherings served as a place to celebrate newfound unity among Native Nations returning home from the war” (Giacona). The original instrument was used as a sound symbol of triumph and ATCR uses the electric iteration of the instrument to create the same moments of unity in the present. A remix that they worked on was the anthem of the baseball team the Atlanta Braves. Given the stereotypes of brutality and savagery, the anthem sounded like a Native American war chant until ATCR remixed it to re-appropriate to a more accurate portrayal of what Native American music is (Giacona). ATCR uses elements of hip-hop, dubstep, and other genres to modernize their music, while keeping the Native American roots intact.

The Sinnreich piece deviates from the theme of re-appropriation and goes more into how each Dj has different mash-up styles that are unique to them. The author compares the art of mash-up with a similar style called cut-up, saying how it was like a literary collage that was popular in the postmodernism era (Sinnreich). They continue by saying, “the role of the mashup is to restore some semblance of order to this maelstrom, by stitching together the disparate symbols with a genealogical thread” (Sinnreich). To break this down, mash-up is used as an argument against postmodernism because it brings together different pieces throughout history turns it into a combined product. This is different than re-appropriation because although mash-up brings about social change in the regard that it uses the Dj’s unique style to connect society, there isn’t a culture behind it that is used in a derogatory way. ATCR had to use their sound to fix the negative stereotypes that the media gave to Native American culture. A Dj uses mash-up to convey a social message with their audience, but there isn’t a negative history that they aim to fix.

Graffiti Reflection

Graffiti as a medium works better than text for certain contexts. People usually zone out when people preach with their voice or hand out fliers about controversial topics. Graffiti as an art is more impactful because it leads the audience in a more creative world. With the visual piece displayed for everyone to see, the audience can think what that piece means to them. However, graffiti doesn’t have the portability to get its message across like how voice and writing does. Voice can be carried from person to person everywhere and text can be printed out or shown digitally. With graffiti, the art needs a specific space to be in and can only be best viewed at the location it was made because sometimes digital copies lose the fine attention to detail the creators put into the work.