YES

http://buttbros.net/

YES

 

VISIT THE SITE

 

 

IT IS MINE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Concept Development.

So I finished my web site for Concept Development (http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3285150/), so I thought that it is high time I wrote up a bit of a summary of the development process I went through to build the site, and talk about what gave me the idea for it in the first place.

Website Development:

When I first started the course at the beginning of the semester and I was told we had to make our own website, I new that I wanted to approach the project in a slightly off-beat kind of way, and hopefully produce something a little original, even if it might not be that useful to me after the class had finished.

The main inspirations for my site came from two places: a conversation with Eugene Brockmuller about his idea for a site, and from the TV show “Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job” which I had been watching a lot of at the time.

Tim and Eric

Eugene’s idea for his site was to make an artist page for his fictional alter-ego character “Eugey-E”, a parody of white middle class rappers. When he mentioned this after our class one afternoon, I joked that I should make an unofficial fan page for his character, and he seemed to be fairly enthusiastic about the idea, so I started to consider that maybe it could be something interesting for me to work on.

Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job is a fantastic comedy program that aired 5 seasons on the “Adult Swim” cable channel in America. The show is mostly a parody of American public access television, frequently shooting segments of the show in VHS quality, with terrible editing, awkward acting and low-budget style effects. I thought it would be a great idea to use that sort of low-budget style, combined with early 90’s amateur web design.

This was a fairly intuitive theme for me to work on and build because I have always found that style of humor and parody very appealing, so I already had a few sites I could look at for reference (http://peterserafinowicz.com/brian-butterfield/, http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/). Another benefit of that design style is that it makes designing the actual page very simple, which is very beneficial to the course.

Designing my site was an interesting process, mainly because I had to take all of the web design principles and rules that we had been studying in class, and that I had had drilled into me previously from media classes in high school, and just from my own experience in experimenting with web design, and do exactly the opposite of what I had been taught. Combining that with poor spelling and grammar, poorly written and error riddled html made it very counter-intuitive to develop my site.

For the description in the “about” page of my site I used an incoherent, poorly written, stream of consciousness style of writing that is similar to a lot of spam-bot blog comment and internet forum posts (similar to the one seen here).

Most of the pictures that I used on my site are animated .gifs that I made to in the style of images that were very popular in 90’s websites. On the main page I even included a couple of Windows 95/98 “virus alert” fake dialogue boxes that are still prominent on some more questionable websites today.

Timelapse/Soundscape Development:

For my timelapse/soundscape video, I worked together with Eugene in a way that reflected the relationship between our two websites. He made his video to fit in more with the tongue-in-cheek feel of his site, but I took similar footage to his, and some of the audio that we both recorded and twisted it even further. It is more like Tim and Eric’s darker sketches, but a bit more abstract, and kind of undermines the innocent “fan-boy” feel of the rest of my site, and almost pushes into “creepy/stalker” territory.

This aspect of the site was only something I really considered when I was working on an idea for the timelapse, as I thought it would be interesting to add a little bit more depth to my concept by including this whole tangent behind the rest of the site. Instead of imagining a bunch of friends who really like this rapper making a “trendy” fansite on their home computer, I started to think more along the lines of one obsessed fan sitting home alone uploading the video he filmed of his idol in secret that afternoon.

I have enjoyed making this website as this sort of project appeals to me. Web design is a subject I have a lot of interest in, and will definitely continue to explore in the future. I think my friends also enjoyed watching the progress of my website, and found a lot of it to be fairly amusing, and I certainly played up to their suggestions, which helped me to experiment with more interesting html features, some of which I kept, and some that I was unable to properly implement. I just hope that the parody elements of my site don’t go over people’s heads, and they just assume that I’m stupid or something.

As the Corinnians say again and again: "Salame"

Concept Development Essay

“Most often, when people are asked to describe the current media landscape, they respond by making an inventory of tools and technologies. Our focus should be not on emerging technologies but on emerging cultural practices. Rather than listing tools, we need to understand the underlying logic shaping our current moment of media in transition.”

Jenkins, Henry 2006, Eight Traits of the New Media Landscape, Confessions of an ACA Fan, viewed Feb 2010,

<http://henryjenkins.org/2006/11/eight_traits_of_the_new_media.html&gt;.

Discuss this quote in relation to current practices of music consumption and production in the contemporary online media environment. Your essay should draw on issues, concepts and theories discussed in class during the semester, as well as on your own research. Consideration should be given to arguments concerning copyright, law, economics and social practices. Your essay should be written in a formal academic style, making use of quotes and references to support your arguments.

To analyse, describe and dissect the current media landscape, it is essential to take stock the current state of technology and the tools available to cultural/sub-cultural groups and individuals within our society, and this is something that is becoming more and more important as our level of technology increases at a seemingly  exponential rate.  The way that music consumption and production has been approached has changed radically in the last century with the advent of a multitude of new technologies, and this is especially true for the last 20 years, primarily aided by the introduction and widespread global use of the internet.

Arguably the biggest shift in music production in the last decade or so, has been the shift away from bands promoting their music so that they can get a record deal. This was, for at least 50 years, seen as the way to “make it big” as a musician. This has all changed with recording hardware and software becoming much easier to learn and use and also becoming much cheaper over the last 10-15 years.  This whole “bedroom music” phenomenon has affected the cultural perception of record labels being the be all and end all of music, and transferred a lot of that power to independently recording musicians to promote their own music and make themselves known around the world.

The internet has definitely fuelled this cultural shift towards consumer and artist control, and limiting the power and influence of major distributers. This is especially apparent in the controversy that has consistently surrounded the pirating of media over the internet over the last decade. Distributors of media have been struggling to cling to the same copyright laws that have been in effect for the past century, that are becoming less and less effective and relevant as technology changes the way we distribute and obtain digital media. As we enter the information age, mayor distributors and owners of intellectual property are trying to think up more and more ways to restrict people’s access and enjoyment of all kinds of digital media. In desperate attempts to keep their old business models going, some major record labels have pursued several ridiculous law suits against ‘scapegoat’ consumers in attempts to use fear tactics to stop people from illegally downloading music. The first P2P (peer to peer) case that was trailed in the US was the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) vs. Jammie Thomas. Thomas was ordered to pay $62, 500 USD for each of the 24 songs at issue, a total of $1.5 million. If you were to steal a CD from a record shop in America, the maximum penalty is $2500, and would likely be a lot less for first time offenders. When comparing that to “the four file-sharing jury awards issued in the US to date:

• $222,000 against Thomas-Rasset in 2007 ($9,250 per song)
• $1.92 million against Thomas-Rasset in her 2009 retrial ($80,000 per song)
• $1.5 million today ($62,500 per song)
• $675,000 in the similar Joel Tenenbaum case in Massachusetts ($22,500 per song)

On a per-song basis, none of these are all that close to each other; are juries doing anything more than plucking amounts from the air here?” (Nate Anderson, http://arstechnica.com/)

Groups like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) along with the RIAA have been trying to “strange and aggressive” ideas in order to try and stop people from pirating their content:

• Anti-infringement spyware to be installed on users systems
• Filtering technology on internet service provider’s networks to prevent the spread of copyrighted material
• ‘Inform’ and ‘educate’ (i.e. harass) entrants to the US about the ‘dangers of pirated material’
• Intimidate countries that do not agree with these policies, using US economic clout to threaten them
• Use federal resources to employ agents to crack down on copyright thieves

(Navneet Alang, http://www.techi.com).

If these distributers had their way, they would install malicious spyware onto consumers’ personal systems to monitor what they view in their own homes, essentially brainwash us with anti-piracy messages, and federal agents breaking down offenders doors. Aside from breaching basic privacy rights, this way of thinking is an atrocious display of human greed, ruining people’s lives and limiting their freedoms and liberties to make money.

Thankfully, there are many people out there taking advantage of these technological and cultural changes to improve the way we share information, media and knowledge in a way that promotes user-privacy, safety and security. There is a new movement making some waves around the internet known as “plug computing”, which is the use of tiny server, that are often only about 10x5x5cm in size, don’t have a video card, and have very small power usage and heat output. They are mostly used as a media server, file sharing server or remote access server. These plug computers are designed to run Freedom Box software, which is specifically designed to “keep your communications free and private whether chatting with friends or protesting in the street.” (http://www.kickstarter.com)

Freedom Box has a huge potential to grant users a much higher level of privacy by keeping any personal details stored on their own private servers, instead of filed away in the archives of sites like Facebook, to be sold off to advertising agencies, or open  to inspection by government agencies. Freedom Box also has a lot of potential to give artists a place to host and share their own content in a cheap and effective way. This sort of technology is helping to gradually usher in a cultural shift in the way we share our information and access our networks, something that has always been very important to the music industry.

Plug computing is something that would benefit hugely from what’s known as the Open Wireless Movement. This movement is a paradigm shift that is gradually growing out of niche sub-cultures that encourages people to unlock and unsecure their private networks. At first this seems like a radical idea, that goes against every instinct you may have when accessing the internet, but is a very important thing to accept when looking at the freedom of information and increased knowledge base for all of humanity, but also for closer-to-home everyday reasons. Having an open network to connect to off your phone or laptop while you’re out and about is an increasingly rare thing, and would be useful in a huge variety of situations, from having to send an important email, being lost in an unfamiliar city or just trying to contact a friend.

“When people turn on WEP or WPA encryption for their networks deliberately, there are two common reasons: a desire to prevent their neighbours from “free riding” on their connections; and a fear that unencrypted WiFi is a security or privacy risk. Both of those reasons have a degree of legitimacy, but neither of them changes the fact that we would be better off if there were more open networks. Also, both of these problems could be solved without password locking our networks. What we need, instead, is to develop and deploy better WiFi protocols.” (Peter Eckersley, https://www.eff.org/)

To encourage people to open their networks, routers that support dual networks, one layer encrypted and one layer open, where bandwidth allocation can easily be regulated by the network owner. These solutions are fairly easy to implement and need to be made the default setup for new networks. Having these dual networks would easily negate both people’s fears for loss of bandwidth and loss of privacy, but still have the open networks that benefit everybody.

If this initiative catches on it will have added benefits, including pressuring ISPs into lowering their charges and providing increased data rates to compete with the available free networks. It would also open up the internet as a tool for those who currently cannot afford what should be (and in some countries is) a human right.

Open wireless networks would shift musical sub-cultures in the way that people record, create and perform their music. Having access to internet from anywhere in the world would allow people to upload their music as they create it, from venues or just on the streets. It would also allow people to incorporate online resources into live shows with far greater ease, allowing people to really take advantage of the internet as a multimedia tool. This would further fuel the cultural shift towards open media and the rise of the “bedroom” artist, and perhaps even change the way society perceives street artists.

Technology has completely changed the face of musical culture in the 20th-21st centuries, spawning completely new technology-related genres and sub-cultures. A huge amount of fantastic electronic artists wouldn’t even exist today if it wasn’t for the technology influencing them and allowing them to produce their art with ease, or in fact, at all. Today’s musicians are centred around technology more and more with every passing year, as it opens up new sonic avenues, and makes recording and distributing music something that anyone can do, even on incredibly modest budgets. Without taking into consideration the tools and technologies that have and continue to influence us, it is very difficult to gauge the current media landscape, especially in today’s music industry.

By William Eyers, s3285150

Bibliography:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/the-first-p2p-case-to.ars

http://www.techi.com/2010/04/the-riaa-and-mpaa-have-failed-to-understand-a-cultural-shift/

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/721744279/push-the-freedombox-foundation-from-0-to-60-in-30

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/04/open-wireless-movement

WordPress is the worst.

WordPress is the worst because I can’t even modify the CSS of the theme I’m using to add my own background without paying to upgrade my account, and this is a terrible thing, why is wordpress being all closed and annoying like Apple. We should be using tumblr instead of wordpress, because even though tumblr’s userbase is generally terrible, and tumblr’s content is 90% “funny pictures” and 9% “something funnny/interesting/nobodycares happened to me today”, at least it’s actually a good, easily customisable platform that is simpler to use than wordpress, looks and functions better but instead we are stuck using wordpress which is the worst and it makes me very grumpy at times.

 

 

usbari again

I have made a blog post about Daniel Bryan’s usbari project a week or so ago (https://thepatientau.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/usbaris/), but I thought I might revisit it, because after the blog post on the rmitmusis09 blog about interesting web projects, I thought it might be a good idea to try and bring a little more attention to this project, and maybe get some BA Music people involved.

Daniel has recently updated his website, adding some more content to the info page, and a nice faq to the homepage:

http://usbari.net/

At the moment I have two of the usbari disks at my house, so if people want to get involved email me at waeyers@gmail.com

Week 2 Readings Analyses:

The Networked Information Economy

This article is a discussion and brief summary of the way that emergent communication technologies have affected and changed the way that information is shared throughout society over the last 150 years, how these new technologies have changed perceptions of the way individuals are able to access, create and control this information and how this has influenced the way that our global society interacts and learns.

This article talks a lot about the term “information economy” to describe the historically recent means of long distance distribution of information becoming a highly commercially viable prospect, specifically with technologies focusing on reaching a broad like the printing press, radio and television. Intellectual property is a huge part of the international economy, as ideas and information have a huge capacity to inform and entertain a global audience. “The term [“information economy”] has been used widely to signify the dramatic increase in the importance of usable information as a means of controlling production and the flow of inputs, outputs, and services.”

I hope that with the rise of digital distribution and the increased availability of audience made content, that the market will have to rapidly adjust its business plans, to adapt to a new era of digital distribution.

 

usbaris

A friend of mine is developing a really interesting new media/art experiment, that I think is a really great idea.

http://usbari.net/info/

 

“usbari.net is the website for an experimental interactive project which, at its core, is based around the exchange of unique usb flash drives, known as “usbaris”. The intent is for people to copy a piece of creative work that belongs to them (see “What kind of content is appropriate?” for more detail) on the usbari drive, before sending it onwards to another person – the further-flung the better. As this process repeats itself the usbari drive accumulates more content, creating a shared history emerging from the collaboration of an usbari’s many owners across space and time. Each time a usbari drive is passed on, the receiver has the opportunity to access this shared history, and contribute to it on their own terms.”

 

Hopefully this project gets decent participation, cause it could yield some really interesting results. Maybe some people in BA Music could contribute to it?

~~2nd year~~

First day of 2nd year in my BA in Music Industry at RMIT.

 

Time to restart this blog for my Concept Development course.

Back to weekly updates and there’ll probably be a lot more content this semester.

 

~yeah~

Check it.

Found this video by a friend of mine from Apollo Bay, of another friend on his mountain bike. I was really impressed by the video, great editing and composition.

http://vimeo.com/15094954

 

Check out his other videos too, some pretty cool stuff there.

 

 

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He’s not gay, but he’s on his way.

A friend of mine told me about this up and coming artist “Tonetta”.
It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard, so lo-fi, but still sounds fantastic. Brilliant stripped-back riffs and rhythms, and lyrical content that borders on insane. Stuff like this just has no place in the current music industry, it’s almost like when punk first came along, it’s just completely outside of the system.

http://www.myspace.com/tonetta777

 

Just search for Tonetta on youtube, there’s a ridiculous amount of songs that he’s been recording over the last ~25 years and then uploaded all at once.