Lectures 7 and 8

Digital Culture and Distribution

-       1436 – Intro to mechanical reproduction

-       1990 – Mac classic

Efficiency:

-       Digital linear clock vs. cyclical

-       Mechanical aesthetic (beige clunky computer) vs. technological (Apple, clean and efficient)

-       Nostalgia (safe, human) vs. innovation (fear)

-       Mars McLuhan - took at human aspects of technological advancements took social theory and applied it to digital (imagined the www)

-       Everything is evolutionary

-       Transmedia

-       Aesthetically, culturally, socially embedded technology helps us push forward

-       Film focus shifted from digital paranoia to observing how technology can benefit us

-       Virtual reality

-       Technology and digital culture is blended into our living

-       Tim Berners-Lee: Created the www

-       Bill Gates – Internet explorer 1995

-       Short documents - We’re unlearning our own literacy

-       Emoticons are taking us back to the beginnings of communication

Consumerism:

1920s – Keep people docile and controlled

Adam Curtis – Century of Self

Naomi Klein – No Logo (Brands, Globalization, Resistance)

Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939)

-       Psychoanalysis

-       Hidden primitive sexual forces and animal instincts

-       Civilization and its discontent (1930)

-       Fulfilling these instincts makes us docile and controlled if only for a brief moment in time

Edward Bernays (1891 – 1995)

-       Nephew of Sigmund Freud

-       Press Agent/Propagandist

-       Founder of Public relations

-       Based on Freud’s principals

-       Propaganda (1928)

-       Had Debutants smoke for feminism at parade to rebrand the idea of smoking into something powerful and feminine

-       Product placement – celebrity

Fordism:

-       Henry Ford (1863 – 1947)

-       Crisis of overproduction (consumers will stop needing things)

-       Brand: give identity to an object

-       Selling of human needs

Walter Cuppman

-       Politicians are incapable of managing society

-       Pay public relation guys to advise

October 24^th, 1929

-       System implodes

-       The great depression

Roosevelt

-       The New Deal

-       Tax people to build society back up

The World’s Fair

-       Democracy

-       Celebration of consumerism

-       What does the future look like?

Lecture 5 - Research

Ideas: Our currency

-       Seeing things in different ways

-       Reassembling

Stimulated approach:

-       Search of information from external repertoire/media

Systematic approach:

-       Collection and modification

Intuitive approach:

-       Internalized perceptions/internal repertoire

-       Things you already know

What is research?

-       Process of finding facts

-       Is done by using what is already known

-       Collecting information

-       Variety of sources (books, journals, internet)

-       Experimenting, talking to people, asking questions; How? Why? What if?

 (primary research)

Types of Research:

Primary Research:

-       Collected for a specific problem

-       Generating information that already exists

-       Systematic

Secondary Research:

-       Collecting information that already exists

-       Stimulated

Quantitative Research:

-       Facts, figures, quantities

-       Measurements

-       Statistics, data

-       Statistical Analysis

Qualitative Research:

-       Observation

-       Experiences, attitudes

-       Documentary analysis, interviewing

-       How people act/respond

-       Without numerical data

What is information?

-       The result of processing

-       Manipulation and organization

-       Data that has been processed to add or create meaning

-       Useful, sufficient, competent, relevant

Methodologies:

Phase 1: Assimilation

-       Accumulation and ordering of general information

Phase 2: General Study

-       Investigation of the nature of the problem

Phase 3: Development

Phase 4: Communication

Analysis:

-       What is the problem/brief/question about?

-       What do I need to know more about?

-       What already exists?

-       What are the specifications, materials and functions?

Research:

-       How many ideas occur in response to your analysis?

-       “What happens if….?”

-       Lateral thinking/word association to spur originality

-       Find the extremes (simplest – bizarre)

Evaluation:

-       Which fulfills the brief?

-       Which looks the best?

Solution:

-       Usually a compromise between what you want to do, what can be afforded, what is feasible

-       Feedback from a range of different sources