I am irresponsible and have low work ethic – A reflection by Riley Jones

I am garbage, and as a result, my planning and organization skills are also garbage. I do not use a diary, a planner or a calendar, despite years of parents, teachers and friends telling me to do so. I barely remember my university schedule, and by the time it has been drilled in, the semester has changed. Assignments and due dates often hit me like a truck, bowling me over and leaving me scrabbling at the last moments to put together comprehensive sentences on a page to prove that I did attend class and didn’t forget that my lecture started at 8:30, not 9:30, so I can skim by on bullshit. I look back and can see this started at an early age, when I was in primary school. 

I skated past on natural talent and an enjoyment of reading and learning, never putting in much more than what was the bare minimum effort for me. I would go on to become the dux of my primary school, and that cemented the idea that I could do no work for the rest of my life and I would be fine, because I had ‘natural talent’.

And even as I type this reflection on why that is a bad idea, I know that I will not learn. Who I am is cemented, and the effort to change is far too large. The time left for this assignment is in the minutes stage for me, double stacking onto working tonight. I write this waiting for a friend, so I can distract myself more, knowing it is the wrong thing, but really unable to help myself on my self-destructive path of academic conduct.

BCM courses have always brought this out of me. The responsibility of a weekly blog should be fine, nothing to someone who spends hours procrastinating, and is actually interested in the content. But the thoughts of working and making progress invariably end with me sitting, procrastinating through the multiple channels life happily presents. I have spent more hours playing Rocket League this semester than I have doing university work over my entire degree. Now for some engineering and medical science, that would be a reflection of my degree, but I see it more as a personal commitment to trying my hardest to not work. Because it isn’t like I don’t like my degree, in fact, I couldn’t be more happy studying anything else. It is just that I lack the drive, that the multiple facets of technology and life easily destroy my attention span by immediately rewarding me for low effort, just like when I was young.

BCM240 has taught me the use of media spaces, and my engagement with them. It has taught me that I didn’t realise how much of an influence media has on me. So many of my early memories are based around the television and video games, that when that was brought to life, I was surprised at the sheer volume of it. I can recall the cheat codes to Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4 faster than I can say what year I started school. (The code to unlock everything is watch_me_xplode, in case you were wondering.)

I learnt that all this has influenced me and my opinions, in way that I will argue with rooms of strangers and confess to embarrassing use of social media just to defend my use of it, even when I know what I am doing is wrong. This was done time and time again, gaining enemies and friends alike for 2 hours every week. I opened up in that class, about myself, my media use, and the way we had affected each other. This person to person interaction was a highlight of my week. But when it came to the online interaction with the same people, I couldn’t be more incapable. Writing comments and reading others work was boring. I felt I couldn’t critise and argue. That I had to pat everyone on the back, regardless of whether I agreed or not. Or even whether I cared. Which I often did not. And this seems rude, but it comes to the point of attention, once again. If something was more interesting, why waste my time and effort for less reward. 

This class probably taught me more about myself than it intended, and much more than I was willing to find out. I said some dumb things, confessed to dumber things and made both friends and enemies.

All’s fair in love and work

In my mind, everything is fair game or nothing is. This arises from a South Park episode with deals with the Islamic Prophet ‘Muhammad’ and how criticism of it is taboo. I agree with the writers of South Park during this episode, who make the point that everything should be able to be critised.

This comes from the idea of what should and should not be censored in entertainment multimedia, with Comedy Central fighting to suppress the image of Muhammad on broadcast television. South Park lost the battle and Muhammad was replaced with a large black rectangle with ‘censored’ written over the top. The episode itself poked fun at this, with Comedy Central itself being in the episode, shown not being able to show Muhammad on the air.

The larger idea of the episode was that nothing should be exempt from mockery and that if your ideas were strong enough, they could withstand criticism. I agree with this, and feel that censoring talking or joking about issues is the first step towards silencing discussion on a range of topics. That doesn’t mean that every joke about the topic will be in good taste or even funny, but it is essential to allow dialogue to be created, even it makes some uncomfortable or offended.

Many comedians have gotten into trouble over this, with some topics they discuss being considered too sensitive to be aired or mentioned. George Carlin was known for  making jokes about topics that were particularly sensitive, and he received a lot of controversy and trouble from these jokes. But around all of this, George Carlin survived because he was funny. Because he did what he did well and he was funny.

But what do we do with people who aren’t? What do you say to people who make bad jokes about sensitive topics? Do they have less of a right to talk about the topic? Or do we grin and bear it and allow them to say whatever they like?

Another similar issues is within music. Artists such as ‘Tyler, The Creator’ are banned from entering Australia due to  a classification placed on them that they are not suitable for Australian audiences, based on lyrical content. This choice by the government is claiming that Australian audiences cannot handle the content and are too sensitive to make choices of their own for their own safety. This kind of censorship, in my opinion, is the most restrictive and the most dangerous. The banning and/or silencing of an individual’s opinion can be the gateway to the silencing of many opinions.

Of course, this is from the perspective of a young, white straight male of no religion, so it hardly carries any weight, as it is near impossible to offend someone like me.

Attention Span (Or How I Stopped Paying Attention and Browsed The Internet)

If I am left alone for more than 30 seconds, I will, in areas with WiFi, pull out my phone and begin to browse. I am aware that this is a bad thing, but I really do not have the personal will or motivation to fix this. And why should I? If whatever is happening is not as interesting as I think my alternative will be, then what is holding me into doing that thing? I detest people who claim that phones have ruined teenagers, as people before were rude and stupid, but instead it is now made public.

I think that attention should always be competed for in everyday life at every facet. If a thing isn’t interesting enough for me to pay attention, than why should I? I don’t owe it anything, and for no reason should I have to look at it.

In class, this broke out into an argument when I said that I would use my phone during a theatre production. This was regarded as bad manners by many people, but I said that it is the same as using your phone during a TV show or movies, as just as much work, if not more went into the production of those, but many people did that and it wasn’t regarded as rude. Watching my parents watch television, my mother spends the entirety of the show flicking between the show and her iPad. She is either concentrating on both or neither, but she never seems to be able to dedicate all her attention to one of them. My father on the other hand, does one thing at a time. If he is reading the paper, he is not talking at the same time. If he is watching TV, he is not on the internet. It is a very one thing at a time system, and he devotes all attention to that thing.

I believe I have hit a weird middle, being able to super focus attention on things when they are urgent or if I am very interested, but also able to watch movies and use my phone. I think my biggest issue comes to talking and using my phone at the same time. I often find myself trying to do both, which may start innocently enough by trying to answer a question brought up, but it will often quickly spiral into another world of distraction and useless information.

Some insist on no phones whatsoever when talking with people, letting unanswered questions go and phones kept hidden away. This, for them, creates a smoother dialogue between two people, even if gaps of information go unfilled. Others find it fine to use phones and having minimal eye contact in a conversation, even if it leaves silences and pauses.

And who is to say what is a better way to go, as both sides of the argument can get what they want from a conversation doing it their way. For some, the connection to a single individual is the most important, and for others, it is the connection to the larger outside world.

Imaginary Public Places

I am sitting under the big tree near the duck pond lawn. In front of me is two families sharing lunch. On my right is a group assignment meeting, sorting what appears to be the final steps of a presentation on a laptop. Behind me a couple is holding hands, but she is on her phone. I can see people I know, but they can’t see me, or if they can, we are both avoiding eye contact.

This image is taken of what I see looking forward. It will be broken down into tiny parts of data, sent to the central WiFi router I am connected to, beamed into outer space, beamed to the WordPress headquarters, beamed back to outer space, beamed to you and reconstructed.

These places of where the information goes are both real and imaginary. The picture exists in a more imaginary sense of data bits, but the computers and servers are more real than that. But is that data for everyone? Is it private? Is it public? Is this photo for everyone, like the shade of the tree? Or do I own it now, because I arranged the bits of data? And do I really care what happens to these bits of data?

At any time, an image of me can be captured. In someone’s family photo, a holiday snap, a selfie, it doesn’t matter. The back of my head can appear, and I have been photographed, and I am powerless. And shouldn’t I be? I am in public, what gives me the right to say no to being photographed. This of course has lines and distinctions, but mostly, I think everything is fair game.

Excluding the obvious exceptions of exposing photos and acts that are against the law, I see few problems for this. If someone takes a photo, and I am in that photo by chance, then I can’t really blame them or reasonably expect them to remove it. I just have to suck it up and hope I wasn’t sneezing, which is usually how I feel about my photo being taken.

Video Home Cinema

In life, many people are searching for meaning and reason. They spend years working towards goals and ideals that they believe would bring them happiness and purpose. These ambitions and dreams strive in certain individuals, giving their life a purpose unto itself.

Missing that, I decided to delve into stupid hobbies and interests. The VHS was developed in the late 1970s, releasing into the USA in 1977. Compared to the later released DVD, it offers very few features. The video is low quality, they require rewinding, tracking errors occur, there is no subtitles option, they deteriorate over time and if damaged, they cannot be fixed. All of this lead to their very timely decline in the late 1990s.

So it only seemed fitting that I delved into VHS, and bought a large box featuring mostly Jean Claude Van Damme films. But inside was the gem ‘Superman 2’, a film that itself was shrouded in controversy about the poor production. I gathered two friends and we sat down and planned to watch this VHS and enjoy some beer. Immediately starting, we enjoyed the nostalgia of the appearance of the ‘tracking’ bar at the base of the screen. Then, we watched previews for movies that had since been released for more than 15 years. We faked excitement for films that we knew were bad, in a way of mocking the previews and to set us in the right time. After the previews, laughing at ourselves and the FBI warning, the film begun. It went off without any hitches related to the VHS or VCR itself, but more to the quality of the plot and the film.

But after the film, and a few beers, the real strength of the VHS appeared, ‘The Home Movie’. Forcing my friends to watch a tape named “Riley 05/02 – 06/04′, I was rudely shocked that I did not feature very much in the video. My name was on the box, and yet my cousin and my brother managed to have more screentime than I did. Even at my naming ceremony, I hardly appear. Annoyed, I ejected the tape and put in ‘Shauna and Darren’s Wedding.’ Now, if I didn’t know what the 90s looked like before, this was it. My grandmother in a green suit, hair sprayed and large rimmed glasses. My grandfather in his traditional kilt and large suit jacket, as was the style. My uncle appeared like a white Fresh Prince, 20 years before his beer belly would set in. For me, it was a window into life before I was born for the people closest to me. For my friends, I imagine it was watching a wedding of people they don’t really know. But still, the creation of VHS brought something powerful along. The fact that these movies shared a shelf, due to the sheer size and inconvenient storage of them, professional movies and amateur home videos all lived together, meaning a back-to-back viewing of Superman 2 and your parents wedding video was easily accessible. This would be much harder in any other format, due to the limited DVD release of wedding videos and the tendencies to store them separately.

But I believe this put the VHS in a culturally significant spot for a whole new reason, tying home and professional movies all onto the same shelf.

 

Me, Myself and The Internet: A love-hate relationship

Dear Internet,

We have been going for 10 years now, and it has been a hell of a rollercoaster. You keep me up at night, in a warm glow, ruining me for the next day. You are my best friend, and my worst enemy. You show me parts of the world I would never see, and sometimes that would have been for the best.

I can’t imagine my life now without have seeing the horrors of meatspin.fr, lolhello.com or jarsquatter.com. Or without taking the virtual tours of the Sistene Chapel, wikipedia rabbit holes that have left me with tidbits of knowledge with no context and being able to access any song in the world on Limewire. You brought knowledge, not always good or wanted, but it is what you brought to me, every day.

For 10 years, we worked together. I relied heavily on you, and you were always there. From being slow and incapable to handle my excessive demands, to wireless and consuming my every whim without fault. I couldn’t see life without, and sometimes I wish it was.

From Moshi Monsters to Rocket League, I have grown dependant on you for my entertainment. For any lull in time, where I became bored, I would call upon you to save me from myself. I am unable to sit and appreciate the world, because of you. I can’t enjoy a moment of silence, because of you. I constantly must be entertained and amused, because of you. But with this, I learnt, honed skills, filled in my time and entertained myself. And who is to say that looking at the world is better than playing in a virtual one? What constitutes that the sun is better than the glowing bask of screen?

I used you, as you began to use me. Signing up to facebook at the age of 13, I begun a spiral of social media that I don’t particulary use to its fullest extent, but couldn’t do without in my day to day life. Using it to chat to friends quickly became part of my life without me even noticing, and has replaced texting almost entirely. Relying on free wifi and hotspots, I quickly adapted to using you as a means of communications to those that I talked to daily, ignoring most other forms of communication.

I remember in particular, that during Year 8 or so, I was nervous to ask a girl for her MSN username, and proceeded to only message her once after I had gotten it. Needless to say, this teen crush was not particularly successful. I can see what this says about me, but I am not sure if this speaks for the equivalence of MSN and phone numbers in the late 2000s. Was this username your new phone number? Especially if you could only be contacted after school hours and before you had to go to bed?

Not that I go to bed anymore. You are there too, waiting for the slightest feeling of boredom to offer yourself in many ways, shapes and forms. From reading, to watching, to playing, I spend hours each night with you, hopelessly losing myself in your grasp, without any control. During the day, I do it all again. And I know it is bad, but Internet, I won’t ever give you up.

You did all this. And I kept eating it up, time and time again. It made me sick, it changed me, lead me into the life I live now, relying on you in my every moment. This is Stockholm, but where can I go? I can’t hate you for it. I am at fault. I did this to myself and I really can’t be mad. And I am not. I wouldn’t want my life any other way.

I love you Internet, you ruined my life.

MEDA101 Assignment 3

For MEDA101, my final project was a combination of still images and sound and exploring the narratives that go untold in everyday life. I tried to dive into the topic of the way humans leave parts of their stories behind, from the discarding of rubbish to the wearing down of everyday objects, stories and narratives leave a trail of clues behind.

In an unconventional sense of the topic, I tried to look at stories that could be related to the sound piece of Shaqeel Azhar, who had a slightly disjointed piece through Zone 13. By capturing the small fragments of stories, through related stills, I tried to recreate the snappy pace and disjointedness of Shaqeels’ piece. Fitting with this was not one cohesive narrative, a single idea or story, but a series of stories and places where stories take place, where people have inhabited and left a mark on the world.

I hope you enjoy, and take something from this piece.

Yuta Nakamura – Atlas of Japanese Ostracon

Atlas of Japanese Ostracon is an art installation exploring the use of pottery and ceramics in Japanese culture through time and place.

It maps out areas in Japan by showing the pottery they use and having a postcard placed inside small display boxes, representing areas of Japan.

This is accompanied by sound and still images in another room, of photos from areas and oriental sounding gongs as the images changed.

The physical objects of pottery and ceramics were representative of the area of Japan by showing the styles and type of pottery that arose from that area, and compared to the others, patterns and techniques could be seen in how it was made.

The postcard images were of a time gone, and were used to make a link to the past and the  times of when the pottery was made, or circa that time. This with the images displayed on the televisions, gave the art piece a sense of time and the importance of pottery, in not only times gone, but even in today’s world.

The gong sound, that stuck when the digital images changed, or perhaps vice versa, was probably for me, the most confusing element. I assumed it to represent and draw attention to the images and to a sound that may take place in both societies, that of the postcard and the modern day.

To me, the artwork is an interesting mapping system, based not on place, but on a technological movement. It was really engaging and quite a unique idea, and this was influenced by mainly the ceramic portions and the postcards, tying the idea of technology, time and place succinctly.

MEDA101 – Assignment 2

I tried to capture the weird feel and aesthetic of the soundscape, which was from a bush/scrub area described in the post, linked here. The sounds were incredibly ambiguous, and I listen to the sounds as I traveled through the area trying to identify parts of the piece that I thought were represented in the piece, or represented the piece in a visual sense. I aimed to oppose the twisted and distorted sounds with images of familiarity, hoping to engage the audience to try and relate objects to sounds that may or may not be related.

BCM210 Research Proposal – What Simpsons Season is regarded as the best?

For my research project, I aim to discover what season of “The Simpsons” students of the University of Wollongong find best, and also to discover what percentage of students haven’t watched the show. I think this research and information obtained is relevant, as “The Simpsons” is known as one of the most successful and consistently watched TV shows in the history of television. But finding research onto this area was difficult, and the best that can be gathered is the Average Viewers and Total Viewers on the Simpsons Wikipedia page.

I believe the difficulty of finding research into this topic is what makes this something important for me to research and delve into, because if “The Simpsons” is believed to be as successful as is told, then research into the area should not be so difficult. The show is heralded as “defining a generation“, which is the same generation that makes up most of The University Of Wollongong students.

Unfortunately, all this research applies to America and not Australia, and finding distinctly Australian statistics is near impossible, and I have yet to come across any in my search.

This has led to my research in finding out whether that viewership was replicated here in Australia, and if so, what do UoW students think is the best part of the show.

I plan to do this research, by finding out the key demographics  at the University of Wollongong, as to try and get an even and equal representation of The University. I will then survey a representative quantity of this demographic at the University, asking for age, gender and perhaps if they are an international student, depending on relevancy to demographic statistics. Gathering this information with be vital to determining where they are placed inside the demographic, and getting fair and equal representation of students.

The second lot of questions will be asking:

• Have you ever seen the Simpsons?
• What season(s) of the Simpsons do you think is the best?
• What made this/these season(s) so great?
  • The Writing?
  • The Jokes?
  • The Nostalgia?
• What season(s) of the Simpsons do you think is the worst?
• What made this/these season(s) so bad?
  • The Writing?
  • The Jokes?
  • Change in attitudes?

As I develop more questions and ideas, this list will evolve and change, to suite the needs of this task.

Once all this information has been collected and correlated, I will sort it into easy to digest charts and graphs, and write a report on what is shown. This will then be published onto this wordpress for people to access.

My hypothesis is that almost 90% of Students will have viewed “The Simpsons”, but fewer will be able to determine their favourite season, instead opting to write down several seasons. I believe the seasons that will be written down the most will be between seasons 1 to 12, with a core being between 4 to 7. This is based on personal experience on talking to people about “The Simpsons” and viewing “The Simpsons” myself for several years.