#because when I see the way art students behave and then influence the media I consume I get really angry

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

i know it’s easy for conservatives to be Angery™ and to make a living just being Angery ™ and the anger is justified, but listen. c’mere. you gotta channel that anger into something more productive than protests and tweeting. you gotta take that anger and marry it with a clear, optimistic vision, and then you’ll have controlled, directed passion with the potential and momentum to create something good.

[oneweekoneband]

I’m slightly nauseous already with knowing I’m going to say this, but what does “self-awareness”  even mean? In modern parlance, as a descriptive phrase, as a comment on art? I’m asking in earnest, like, I’ve been Googling lately, which for me is basically on par with doctoral study in terms of academic rigor. The self is king, anyway, tyrant, so where is the line of distinction between material that intentionally is nodding at some truth about the artist’s life and what’s just, like, all the rest of the regular navel-gazing bullshit. I mean, I’m all self, I am guilty here. I can’t get it out of my poems or even make it more quiet. This is the tenth time I’ve invoked “I” in the space of six sentences. Processing art has always necessitated a certain amount of grappling with the creator, but the busywork of it lately grows more and more tedious. Joy drains out of my body parsing marks left behind not just in stylistic tendencies and themes, but in literal, intentional tags like graffiti on a water tower. This feels an age old and moth-holed complaint, dull, and I am no historian, or really a serious thinker of any kind. I’ve now complained at some length about self-referential art, but didn’t I love how Martin Scorsese nodded to the famous Goodfellas Copacabana tracking shot with the opening frames of last year’s The Irishman? Didn’t I find that terribly fun and sort of sweet? So there’s distinctions. I’m only saying I don’t know with certainty what they even are. I’m unreliable, and someone smarter than me has likely already solved my quandary about why self-knowledge often transforms into overly precious self-reflexivity in such a way that the knowledge is diminished and obscured, leaving only cutesy Easter eggs behind. Postmodernism has birthed a moralizing culture where art exists to be termed either “self-aware Good” or “self-aware Bad”.  Self-referentiality in media is so commonplace, so much the standard, that what was once credited as metatextual inventiveness often feels lazy now. In 1996, Scream was revitalizing a genre. Today, two thirds of all horror movies spend half their running time making sure that you know that they know they’re a horror movie, which is fine, I guess, except sometimes you just wanna watch someone get butchered with an axe in peace. 

This is all to say that in 2020 Taylor Swift looked long and hard upon her image in the reflecting pool of her heart and has written yet another song about Gone Girl.

“mirrorball” is a very good piece of Gone Girl —feels insane to tell anyone reading a post on a blog what Gone Girl is but, you know, the extremely popular 2012 novel about a woman who pretends to have been murdered and frames her husband for it, and subsequently the 2014 film adaption where you kinda see Ben Affleck’s dick for a second—fanfiction. It would be a fine song, a good song, really, even if it weren’t that, if it were just something normal and not unhinged written by a chill person who behaves in a regular way, but we need to acknowledge the facts for what they are. When Taylor Swift watched Rosamund Pike toss her freshly self-bobbed hair out of her face and hiss, “You think you’d be happy with some nice Midwestern girl? No way, baby. I’m it!” her brain lit up like a Christmas tree, and she’s never been the same. If you Google “taylor swift gone girl” there waiting for you will be a medium sized lake’s worth of articles speculating about how Gone Girl influenced and is referenced in past Swift singles “Blank Space” and “Look What You Made Me Do”. This is not new behavior, and if anything it’s getting a bit troubling to think that it’s been this long since Taylor’s read another book. Still, while the prior offerings were a fair attempt at this particular feat of depravity, “mirrorball” has brought Taylor’s Amy Elliott Dunne deification to stunning new heights. And most importantly, Taylor has done a service to every person alive with more than six brain cells and a Internet connection by putting an end to the “Cool Girl” discourse once and for all. By the power invested in “mirrorball”, it is hereby decreed that the Cool Girl speech from Gone Girl is neither feminist or antifeminist, not ironic nor aspirational. No. It’s something much better than all that. It’s a threat. I ! Can ! Change ! Everything ! About ! Me ! To ! Fit ! In !

Gone Girl (2012) by Gillian Flynn

“mirrorball” (2020) by Taylor Swift

When the twinkly musical stylings of Jack Antonoff, a man I distinctly distrust, but for no one specific reason, whirl to life at the beginning of this song I feel instantly entranced, blurry-brained and pleasure-pickled like an infant beneath a light-up crib mobile or, I guess, myself in the old times, the outside times, three tequila sodas deep under the disco lights at The Short Stop. Under a mirrorball in my head. I know very little about music, as a craft, and I really don’t care to know more. I’m happy in a world of pure, dumb sensation. I’m not even sure what kind of instruments are making these jangly little sounds. I just like it. I am vibing. We may not ever be able to behave badly in a club again, but I can sway to my stupid Taylor Swift-and-the-brother-of-the-lady-who-makes-like-those-sweatshirts-with-little-sayings-or-like-vulvas-which-famous-white-women-wear-on-instagram-you-know-what-I-mean song, pressing up onto my tiptoes on the linoleum tile of our kitchen floor and can feel for a second or two something approaching bliss. “mirrorball” is a lush sound bath that I like a lot and then also it’s about being all things to all people, chameleoning at a second’s notice, doing Oscar worthy work on every Zoom call, performing the you who is good, performing the you who is funny, performing the you who draws a liter of your own blood and throws it around the kitchen then cleans it up badly all to get your husband sent to jail for sleeping with a college student... Too much talk about making and unmaking of the self is way too, like, 2012 Tumblr for me now, and I start hearing the word “praxis” ring threateningly in my head, but I’m not yet so evolved that I don’t feel a pull. Musings on the disorganized self—on how we are new all the time, and not just because of all the fresh skin coming up under the dead, personhood in the end so frighteningly flexible—are always going to compel me, I’m afraid, but that goes double for musings on the disorganized self which posit that Taylor Swift still thinks Amy Dunne made some points.

Because on “mirrorball” Taylor is for once not hamfistedly addressing some “hater”, in the quiet and the lack of embarrassing martyrdom it actually offers an interesting answer to the complaint that Taylor is insufficiently self-aware. This criticism emerges often in tandem with claiming to have discovered some crack in the chassis of Swift’s public self, revealing the sweetness to be insincere. My instinct is to dismiss this more or less out of hand as just a mutation of the school of thought that presumes all work by women must be autobiography. And, regardless, it is made altogether laughable by the fact that anyone actually paying attention has known since at least Speak Now, a delightful record populated by the most appalling, horrible characters imaginable, and all of them written by a twenty year old Taylor Swift, that this woman is a pure weirdo. To accuse Taylor Swift of lacking in self-awareness is a reductive misunderstanding, I think, of artifice. Being a fake bitch takes work. Which is to say, if we agree that her public self is a calculated performance—eliding the fact that all public selves are a performance to avoid getting too in the weeds yadda yadda— why, then, should it be presumed that performance is rooted in ignorance? Would it not make more sense that, in fact, someone able to contort themselves so ably into various shapes for public consumption would have a certain understanding of the basic materials they’re working with and concealing? Taylor Swift, in a decade and a half of fame, has presented herself from inside a number of distinct packages. The gangly teenager draped in long curls like climbing wisteria who wrote lyrics down her arms in glitter paint gave way to red lipstick, a Diet Coke campaign, and bad dancing at awards shows. There was the period where she was surrounded constantly by a gaggle of models, then suddenly wasn’t anymore, and that rough interlude with the bleached hair. The whole Polaroid thing. Last year she boldly revealed she’s a democrat. Now it’s the end of the world and she’s got frizzy bangs and flannels and muted little piano songs. Perhaps this endless shape-shifting contradicts or undermines, for some, the pose of tender authenticity which has remained static through each phase, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been doing it all on purpose the entire time. I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try...

In the Disney+ documentary—which, in order to watch, I had to grudgingly give the vile mouse seven dollars, because the login information that I’d begged off of my little sister didn’t work and I was too embarrassed to bring it up a second time—Taylor referred to “mirrorball” as the first time on the album where she explicitly addressed the pandemic, referring to the lyrics that start, “And they called off the circus, Burned the disco down,” and end with “I’m still on that tightrope, I’m still trying everything to get you laughing at me,” which actually did made me laugh, feeling sort of warmly foolish and a little fond, because it never would have occurred to me that she was trying to be literal there. I suppose we really do all contain multitudes. Hate that.

[rachelfaasfibers]

Reading as Resistance: Gendered Messages in Literature and Media

By: Laraine Wallowitz (2004)

 

“I wanted them to understand that reading a text from a feminist perspective changes their understanding of its meaning, that literature and media both reflect and create images of femininity and masculinity, and that readers project their own assumptions about gender onto a text.” (page 26)

Wallowitz is speaking on the topic of how teaching Women’s Studies to high school students give them ideas of how to view gender stereotypes and how to become aware of them through life. With having his students read in a “feminist” perspective, the students are able to become more aware of subtle and strong signs of gender stereotyping throughout a day to day basis. This could be from what they read in school, on the internet, social media, television and many other contributing factors. With this, they can determine perhaps what they have experienced in life. I find that when I was growing up, often times I would lean towards the color pink for example, was that my decision or was their underlying factors that caused me to gravitate toward that color specifically.

“Empowering students by teaching them how to read the “word and the world” (Freire and Macedo) necessitates a new way of thinking about English instruction.” (page 26)

This goes in line with reading in a feminist perspective. I find that just because I read something from class, does not necessarily mean that I have to have the same assumptions that that specific text has. With this in mind, one is able to refer to past learnings and experiences with reading the “words” of the text through their own lens of the world. With reading the world, this goes align with how Wallowitz strives to get his students to understand how the world has labeled genders. It is important that we not only learn about the past, with understanding where stereotypes stemmed from, but also how we have challenged those ideas, embracing that times are changing and women and men are starting to be seen more as equals rather.

“Without a broadened sense of the variety of texts that create and reflect notions of gender, students, like Laurie, make false assumptions both about the texts they interact with and about themselves.” (page 27)

This emphasizes how we cannot simply rely on traditional or academic text, but to the world around us in the media, advertisements, clothing, film, art and anything that is relevant and popular to this day and age. Much, if not all of what I have learned in studio art and art history classes, relates with what is going on in the world. Either this is from reading articles from a variety of art historians, to creating my own art in the studio. With being mindful of the world around me and connecting what I have learned in and out of school in terms of art has allowed me to focus more on own experiences and how I am an individual in the world.  Art work, just like scholarly articles, stands in place as a source that people can rely on in the future to understand the past. It is important for people to grasp the importance of not only traditional learnings of text, but as well as the media and the arts.

 

‘’One of my objectives for the unit was to teach them how our notions of femininity and masculinity are socially and culturally constructed by the music we listen to, the books we read, the television we watch, and the stories we heard growing up.” (page 27)

Growing up, I remember going into Target and seeing all the toys, naturally being gravitated to the “girls” aisle that was pink and purple. At that time, I played with dolls, wore the color pink often, and took ballet classes. I did not see this as a gender stereotyped way of life until understanding roots of gender and how women and men were seen in the past and how they are today. The boys aisle at Target had cars, things to build, and toys guns and weaponry. As a kid, the differences were no big deal to me, for some toys were for girls and some were for boys. I learned this growing up with advertisements on TV with young girls playing with dolls and boys playing with cars and building with Legos. Now, I understand that this was all caused by the construction of our culture and how people expected genders to act.  

“Students quickly learned that characters who do not fit stereotypic images of men and women are read as abnormal.” (page 27)

I think that the fact that the students recognized this, is a large step for they are understanding a point of view that does not align with how they feel perhaps. Times have changes immensely, even within the past twenty years of my life. People are starting to see these stereotypes for what they are and beginning to challenge it. It is okay if a person who is labeled as a girl wants to visit the blue Target aisle if that is what they prefer. Same goes for any person, and today that is not seen as terribly abnormal but still is an issue that people will face for years to come, for it is different than the normal that has been shown in the past.

“Personal narrative provides another opportunity for students to explore the connection between gender bias and environment.” (page 27)

Understanding the background of a person, specifically yourself, helps understand how the environment around you impacted your personal growth. With this, one can pick a part instances in their life could have been impacted by gender bias. Did I take interest in dance because it seemed “girly” and fitting to me? Was my favorite color pink because someone told me it was, or did I make that decision on my own? It is interesting to think about, for your childhood impacts your growth heavily, and these gender ideals surrounded us one hundred percent of the time.

‘’Once students have a better understanding of the ways in which environmental factors, such as childhood and family culture, influence concepts of gender, they are ready to recognize subtle (and not-so-subtle) messages in literature and media.’’ (page 28)

I find that now that I am more aware of gender stereotypes, I can interpret and understand certain movies from the past in a different way. As a kid, it was normal for the girl in the story, normally a princess, would need help from the prince in some form to fulfill their life. Most plots went along with this, and that did not seem bad. But now understanding how needy and gentle these women were, and how they were seen as characters girls looked up to, is extremely concerning. Today many people see that it is important to raise their children, no matter the gender, strong and independent. This staggers away from the traditional way a young girl should act or behave, but it is challenging the past ideas. This is why I believe this quote is important for it explains the importance that students understand the influences around them.

“Folktales serve several important functions in a society that include projecting values and expressing a culture’s taboos and anxieties.” (page 28)

I find this important for it speaks on the topic of girls, princesses, and fairytales and how they impact the values that children embrace at young ages. Wallowitz speaks about discussing Cinderella, and how she is seen as a house maid, staying indoors and does not have much say in her life. Yet, young girls are inspired by her, for in the end she is happy with her prince and that is all she needs. These stories have been passed down from generation to generation, so this is often seen as a normal way of life. Due to this, it is hard for people to escape the past and look into the future for a more understanding way of life. Recently, women have made more leaps in regard to education, accomplishments and success, leading us to making the genders more equal. There have been more movies and music artists for instance in recent times that highlight women in a powerful way, meaning that this is how many want to view women today and recognize them for.

“Casey, who read “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, discovered how women are objectified in literature and noted the narrator’s unfair comparison of his wife to a flawless statue, an ideal impossible for her to achieve.” (page 29)

This quote shows that students understand how certain ideals that were pressed onto women, were impossible to do and how that was disturbing to them. No one wants to be told what to do, how to dress, who to like, and so on. Yet people are gravitated to the normal and often times do not see that. There have always been standards of women and how they are meant to look and act, but these change over time. This impacts many by social media (who is popular, where they shop, what they eat, and so on). People nowadays have the capability to alter their images of their bodies they post on social media for instance, because they want to be seen like the famous people who look a certain way. They feel their body is not good enough for the standards that are held for women today. Clearly this is an ongoing problem that does not seem to be going away anytime soon, we just need to learn how to understand and grow.

[pcurrytravels]

Las Vegas - A Love Hate Thang (Chapter II: The Ultimate Paradox)

Something I’ve noticed about my hometown: This place really thrives off of paradoxes and oxymorons. 

Our outlook? Perpetually stuck in the future (*points at the innumerable mothballed construction sites dotting our local landscape*). Our attitude? Perpetually stuck in the past (You know, it would have been a good idea to start diversifying our local economy after how hard we were hit by the recession, but instead we went right back to putting all of our eggs in the tourism, gaming, nightlife and real estate industries)

Our demographics (in just about every area imaginable) look like gumbo these days. But don’t hold your breath on that explosion of flavors you were expecting, because culture-wise? We still taste like chicken noodle soup. 

“Minors are not to be anywhere near the slots, alcohol, nightclubs or any of the other sinful stuff!” Is that right? Then explain why all of the movie theaters, bowling alleys, video arcades and even high school graduations are located within casinos please.

“We have so much love for our local community!” Yeah, you speak so highly of us when the “needs” of tourists, conventioneers, celebrities and, well, literally everyone except the city’s residents are fulfilled first, effectively rendering us as second-class citizens within our own city. 

None of these things sound like they make any sense, do they? Welcome to Las Vegas baby!

I could come up with numerous examples to be honest. I mean, I have lived here for nearly my whole life, so I think I can talk, but the paradox I personally find the most disturbing is this: We love to act like we’re this world class, progressive and forward-thinking metropolitan area on par with places like NYC and L.A. when the truth of that matter is, we’re essentially an overgrown Western hick town that just so happens to have a giant theme park for adults in the middle, a lot of traffic, some fancy houses and more diversity than usual. 

When I first went to San Francisco back in 2011, I was in awe. There were so many things that shocked and caught me off guard.....in a good way. I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say they were all things that I KNOW would never fly here in Vegas, and yet we’re supposed to be “Sin City.” (And, although I didn’t see much of it myself during my excursions to these places, some of the people in this thread from Quora are saying that even NYC and LA are more lenient about a lot of these “sinful” things than we are these days. Can’t say I’d doubt it)

Yes, we are Sin City in terms of gambling and sports betting, alcohol, tobacco and now marijuana consumption, sex-related entertainment and services (and even then it’s all so sanitized and PG-13 these days it barely even qualifies), quickie marriage/divorce and a history with organized crime. Beyond that, however? Let’s just say we have a lot more in common with Arizona and Mississippi than we do with Amsterdam. 

Remember how in the first chapter of this series I told you all that I felt it was best to keep my thoughts and feelings about Las Vegans in general to myself? Okay, let me give you a tiny little sample: When talking to the typical Las Vegan, you’re more likely to be treated to the stereotypical thought process of either a flyover country redneck, a resident of a southern small town or a suburban high school student than you are that of someone who resides in a city with a global presence. Odd as it may seem, especially when this place’s international influence is taken into account, believe me, tis’ true. 

Having to constantly deal with such a smug, judgmental, provincial, insular and occasionally, dare I say it, behind the times populace is already exasperating enough on its own, but this is only further complicated by the relentless insistence that we aren’t. Not at all to say such a mindset is ever okay (nor am I saying that EVERYONE in these types of locales thinks and/or behaves in this manner), but at least towns and cities in flyover country, the old west and the deep south are HONEST about being stuck in their narrow-minded and prejudicial ways. 

Vegas on the other hand takes part in a charade wherein an image of being a forward-thinking and cosmopolitan metropolis is played up only to turn around and gag at the thought of actually embracing those same progressive ideals and values when no one’s looking. (Meta-Tangent: Mind you, we actually do have most of the ingredients to be that type of city already. The things we’re missing come as a result of having a populace that’s insistent on talking the talk but not walking the walk) Although I certainly don’t agree with it, I can at least respect the former to a point, compared to the latter which is just annoying, frustrating, and doesn’t make any damn sense. In layman’s terms, we’re total latte liberals. 

.......okay, maybe it’s not THAT bad. (Hey, this is called a “Love Hate Thang,” remember?)

There are certain pockets that are slowly evolving into the sort of environment that reminds me of SF and LA where things are more laid back and “free” if you will. See: DTLV/East Fremont, 18b Arts District, The Naked City, Huntridge, Winchester, the “Central” East Side if that makes sense, Charleston Heights, West Sahara (for the Las Vegans reading this: sounds general AF, I know), the Fruit Loop/Harmon Corridor, the University District, Paradise Palms/Maryland Parkway Corridor and (to a lesser extent) Chinatown/Asiatown. 

The rest of the city and the suburbs on the other hand leave quite a bit to be desired in the department of open-mindedness in my not so humble opinion. So it should be no surprise that I spend nearly all of my time in the aforementioned neighborhoods these days. I feel much closer to my element in these places than I do even in my home neighborhood/suburb of Spring Valley, most of which I don’t even touch with a ten foot pole ever since moving away. 

Meta-Tangent: Having grown up in Spring Valley and the Western suburbs, I know from experience that most people out there are DEATHLY afraid of venturing into any of these areas. A lot of it has to do with the perceived danger of them, despite all the evidence to the contrary (I know, I know, pretty general article, but given that I live here, I can tell ya: these murders, robberies, violent and sexual assaults have been occurring EVERYWHERE. However, a large amount of residents as well as our local media would be insistent in having you believe it’s all taking place Downtown or in the long-maligned northern, eastern and central portions of the city/metro area).

On the other hand, there’s also a lot of people who condescendingly put these parts of the city down just because they’re old, even though those horrible old houses they’re talking about are actually of far better aesthetic quality and much more structurally sound. Meanwhile, these same snobs are living in cheaply-built, cookie-cutter homes that were probably slapped together in a week and will likely start falling apart in five years. 

As for my honest opinion? These are only half-truths. I know for a fact that a lot of them are just being low-key racist and high-key classist/elitist. I also have a pretty strong theory that the strong hatred, fear and/or disdain people in the western suburbs have for these areas is because they know it’s a different world from the provincial, suburban bubbles they choose to live in. Oh well, that’s fine by me. Let those of us who actually are forward-thinking and progressive have all the fun. /tangent over.

Truth be told, none of this should really come as a surprise if you take a deeper look into this city’s history. Although, eschewing the thousand year legacy of the Paiutes, the modern-day origins of Las Vegas can be traced to Spaniards; being along the Old Spanish Trail and even being named “The Meadows” in Spanish due to the abundance of grassy meadows, hot springs and rivers in the area back then (all of which have long disappeared thanks to urbanization), the first permanent settlement here was a fort built by Mormon missionaries. 

That’s right, “Sin City” owes it’s existence to the same people with a stance on women that’s perpetually stuck in the 19th century, have beliefs that not-so-subtly imply black people are afflicted by the curse of Cain and wear very prudish undergarments (although the whole polygamy thing is probably what we have to thank for our quickie marriage/divorce culture). On top of that, while hidden from the naked eye, Mormons still have an active influence on the politics and overall society of this city with some very vocal moral guardians, always letting themselves be heard when things get “too” sinful. 

Oh, another thing: In the early/mid-20th century there was a place that was known as the Mississippi of The West. Where do you think it was? Utah? Arizona? Nope! It was right here in Nevada. They really did go hard with the Jim Crow thing here back in the day. Why, Sammy Davis Jr. couldn’t even walk through or have a drink in the same casinos where he performed to rave audiences for goodness sake. Now, that level of injustice and segregation is unheard of nowadays, but there’s many lingering signs of this era that can still be felt. They’re subtle, but they’re there. (Psst! The mascot of our local university was originally a confederate soldier. Seriously. In more recent years he’s been made to look like a cowboy instead but still)

Lastly, we grew from a small town in the desert where people from California and the Midwest came to gamble and watch showgirls to a rapidly growing metro area which plays host to a world-renowned resort, nightlife and fine dining destination that attracts people from all over the world. Almost literally overnight. Just about any Vegas native born before the late nineties can tell you stories of playing in the desert as a kid, including yours truly. All of us can remember when that housing development, Walmart, school, park, or whatever was a vacant lot. In turn, despite the growth, this leads to a fairly large portion of natives who are very much stubbornly stuck in their small town ways, many of whom are insistent on teaching their ways to their offspring unfortunately. 

The ingredients and the potential. We already have it. In terms of demographics, we’re a total melting pot. We’re located in one of the nine states where recreational cannabis use is legal and the only one where prostitution is legal (even though it’s not allowed in our county for whatever strange, puritanical reason). We have all the makings of a sexually-liberated, alternative/counterculture/subculture/generally non-conformist paradise. There is a growing and active community of creatives. And yet, a lot of this growth in the realm of free-thinking is borderline stunted thanks to the Mormon influence, the Mississippi-esque history and the small town attitude.

Alas, even though Vegas may be living proof that a  physical city can grow and change overnight, culture and community are two things that can’t change overnight, no matter how you slice or dice it. I regularly find myself pining for the Vegas of my childhood during the nineties; when it was far larger than a town but barely a city. I’d also love to experience Vegas during the 60s, 70s and 80s (minus the racism part, obviously), but at the end of the day, these are just frivolous ideologies. A more substantial wish would be that the local attitude and mindset finally catches up with the rapid population growth, urban development and all of the related side effects. My fondness for the neighborhoods listed above is a direct result of this desire I have. They represent what I wish all of Vegas could be.

As a new age and generation comes into play, perhaps this wish will be reality one day soon. Until next time. 

[oscar-writing-of-new-media-blog]

Final Project: An Argument on HKBU Secret

Our work (Screenshot and translation)

#BU10339 Damn! We’ve done group projects together from 3 years ago. I still can’t expect that you would be the free rider in the group. You said that you didn’t want to do anything. I thought you were just kidding me. But you did nothing in fact. You always say you are very very very busy. Everyone is studying here but is anyone as busy as you? Due to your “contribution”, I need to finish your part of work in a hurry and overnight. You want to have a worse grade, it is ok. But now you are encumbering me to get a higher GPA! BIG SHIT! I don't want to see you in next semester! (Reported. You just need to wait for retaking the course.) [posted on 27/11/2017,104 reactions, 42 comments]

Related Comment

Aiko Tim Lee @Foss Chan We have been in same dormitory from a year ago.I still can’t expect that you would be the free rider in the group. You said that you didn’t want to do anything. I thought you were just kidding me. But you did nothing in fact. You always say you are very very very busy. Everyone is studying here but is anyone as busy as you? Lo

Judy Chan hihi (foul language in HK internet) why you freeride me

Louis Leung you know who is freeriding 😉

Judy Chan 😉

Hong Yung Chan Leung, give me a chance to be free rider in the next semester.

Louis Leung @Hong Yung Chan reg my major electives😂😂

Adrian Law @Gogo Chan i’m sorry

Gogo Chan @Adrian Law I'm sorry

Link: https://www.facebook.com/HkbuSecrets/posts/1576814599028451

#BU10352

"Re #BU10339

Are you joking?

I confess that I am a freerider. However,don’t you think that you should be responsible for this problem? As you know, my part should develop from your part. You should finish your part three days before the presentation if you on schedule. Unlucky, you just finished your part at the day before the presentation! I am not on call for this presentation! I still have other assignments! I am sure that you can finish your part if you spend your school time on study instead of joining the society committee! By the way, I don’t want to be a deadline fighter as you. I am busic!

Beside this, I don’t want to hand in a piece of rubbish even I need to retake this course.

[posted on 28/11/2017, 30 reactions, no comment]

Link: https://www.facebook.com/HkbuSecrets/posts/1578044518905459

#BU10366 Re #BU10352 Frankly speaking, we’ve been friend from 3 years ago. If you need help, just ask for my help. However, you do nothing without any notification. What do you mean?  You do not care about having a low GPA, it is OK. But I care. Having a low GPA, I’ll be harder to get in the job interview. Don’t tell me you can help me! Don’t tell me the theory which learnt in class can help me! You always say that start working on the report after going through all of the related readings. Roland Barthes? Hyperreal? What is the use? If you get a worse grade finally, will the HR ask you about the reason of low GPA? Wake up plz! Plz don’t sleep in your academic world anymore! [posted on 29/11/2017, 6 reactions, no comment]

Link: https://www.facebook.com/HkbuSecrets/posts/1578997725476805

#BU10405 RE #BU10352, #BU10366 Keep secret if you want to quarrel each other. No one wants to know that what do you arguing. By the way, it is really hard to like studying. Although you study hard, you may not get the high marks. [posted on 2/12/2017, 2 reactions, no comment]

Link: https://www.facebook.com/HkbuSecrets/posts/1582134505163127

#BU10414

Birds of different feathers do not flock together. You may choose to find a new partner. You are an university student and no one can force you to do anything you don’t want.

I just don’t understand that you may choose to play hard or work hard in this four year in university. However, it seems that it is the hardest choice when you choose to study hard.

If we follow the study plan, we should take five to six course for every semester. Otherwise, we may need to defer. Under my calculation, we need to spend around two hours on reading the materials or doing revision for each course. It takes around ten to twelve hours a week. It is fine at the beginning  of the semester.

On the other hand, our schedule maybe affected by the deadlines of assignments and presentations, which may affect our GPA, during the semester. It is difficult to finish reading all materials if we do our assignments just for aiming a good grade. I think the most meaningful part is the reading materials when we are doing presentation, especially for the humanities students as me. So, I hope we can start doing our presentation after we finish all the reading and gain from the process.

We better be prepared that we may not having a high income job as we are studying Humanities. Why don’t you study business if you want a high income job in the future? I don’t understand that why you are so concern on the GPA instead of gaining knowledge from the university life. Your academic levels should not be valued by the GPA! GPA just represents the grading from the universities or even the society but you should not be valued by grading! If we are not friends, I will not spend so much time typing those words for you!.

It seems that studying in Hong Kong universities is a anti-intellectual matter. They propose that you should be familiar with the topic which taught for three to four months. In fact, we need to clear our mind for the new semester when we just finish the courses last semester. I am sure that we are not as  familiar with our major as expected when we graduate.

It seems that the universities in Hong Kong want to torture with the tight study plan. I think I should aim for knowledge instead of grading or even a piece of diploma in this four years. Otherwise, why do I need to study in university?

Sorry for confusing" [posted on 2/12/2017, 60 reactions, 1 comment]

Comment

學生 hksecret This is university (SO SAD

Link: https://www.facebook.com/HkbuSecrets/posts/1582136228496288

#BU10452 We are three CPW students. In light of the assignment of WRIT 3007 Writing for New Media, we chose to start a writing project on HKBU Secret. We posted #BU10339, #BU10352, #BU10405, #BU10366 and #BU10414 on the platform. It is about two guys argue because of someone absent in the group project, and complain the system of the university. We hope to achieve these influences: 1, Discuss the problem of free-riders in group project. Moreover, we hope that we can stimulate people to reflect about the system of the university; 2, After people seeing this statement, we hope that they can review the anonymity of Secret and the effects due to this anonymity. Sorry for any inconvenience which was caused by this project. We are welcome to receive comments on this post if there is any question. [posted on 8/12/2017]

Link: https://www.facebook.com/HkbuSecrets/posts/1587233544653223

Technical efforts

In Facebook, there is a lot of “Secret Page” that provide a platform to different people submit their secret to share to others that make them find resonation with somebody. Most of the secret page managed by someone called “Admin” belong to the community that the page declare to. These “Admin” only have the power to decide post the secret or not. In general, most of the secret would be posted only in the case that the secret attack some people with opening their real name, including pornography and violence, and not related to the community. Moreover, apart from the contributor, others comment, share and like the post must through their real account that means they need to express their opinion with their real identity.

Our group find these kinds of secret page have two features. First, anonymity. People cannot be aware of the identity of the contributor. Second, interaction. In these secret pages, other user in Facebook can through “Like” and “Comment” to response the post. For instance, people in real can give “sad” to the post to express they are feeling lost. The features of Facebook help our group grain the response quickly and make our script seems real enough.

Therefore, we submit the secret to “HKBU Secret”, a secret page served students studying in HKBU, create a story about two friends arguing for the problem of assignment. We submit it day by day, after the former secret have posted, we write down the secret was responses to the former one and submit it. After five post, we create a story, which is challenging the purpose of doing assignment and authenticity on Facebook.

Aesthetic influences

The art piece is influenced from “Excellence & Perfection” created by Amalia Ulman on instagram. From April 20 to September 19 in 2014, Ulman performed a brand new artwork within photo and social media, entitled “Excellence & Perfection”. She uploaded an images were made up of “Part I”, in black lettering on white background, and writed down the caption that read “Excellence & Perfection”. After that, the photographs were posted to Ulman’s Instagram account over a period of six months giving followers of the account a heavily engineered insight into her supposed life. In the project, Ulman take on the characters of ‘cute girl’, ‘sugar baby’ and ‘life goddess’, simulating behaving a female on social media.

In the first place, Ulman play the role of an artsy, provincial girl who has moved to Los Angeles, a big city, for the first time. The girl who want to be a model posted the photographs decipt clichés of aspirational living, such as healthy breakfast, yoga, encouraging quotes, visits to the spa, and shopping sprees on instagram. Using middlebrow props looks feminine, hashtags that girl commonly uses, and filters full of pink and white, the Instagram feed became ubiquitous documentation of someone striving for a perfect life. Ulman successfully played the part of a normal, pure and cute girl on the internet. Our group are inspired by this, it bring us a new idea on doing art on internet, make a good use of social media. Therefore, we refer to her idea, make the “secret art piece”.

Conceptual ideas

We have two main idea in doing this art piece, assignment system and authenticity.

Firstly, our upper levels motives is discussing the purpose on doing assignment in university. Usually, all of university students need to doing group project with others, whether they want to or not. And that system derive different problems. The most commend one is “free-rider”, person who put very few effort on the group project. Free-rider not even create an unfair situation to other students who is willing to attain perfection, lose the original purpose on doing group project, complement and inspired each other. The other is "learning pursuit”. Someone want to pursuit the knowledge on doing assignment, but a majority of people are focusing on grading. One of the purpose of doing group project is enhancing the co-operating skill, however, that should not be the main purpose on doing assignment. We think that co-operating oriented assignment limited the developed of students on their learning area. For example, in our story, there is two type of people, one is mainly focus on understanding the theory and the other one is mainly focus on getting a good grade. The group project create the conflict between them, and that cannot help them improve themselves. That is putting the cart before the horse, people cannot learning deeply in their area but need to learn cooperate with others.

Finally, we hope to discuss the authenticity in secret page in Facebook. In this secret page, people can submit any post that is not convenient to talk with their own identity. It seems similar to the forum which also provide the authenticity to users. Originally, the purpose of secret page is building up the sense of belonging to the community members, but that would be mislead when the page would not opened the identity of contributors. Users in this kind of page can easily create the public opinion and lead them with a fake story. In our project, the first post until 7/12/2017 have 104 like and 16 comments on it, it is a quite big number on a page only have 24,976 like and not buy advertising on facebook. That bring us a question about authenticity on social media. Anonymity let the users does not need to take the responsibility on posting any words. That is a danger for the people cannot find out the reality on the community. On surface, it seems bring more real to the community, the members are more willing to share their own secret about the community to the public, but in fact, fake news and slander are more liable spreaded out.

Bio notes

This is an assignment for the course, WRIT 3007: Writing for New Media, in Hong Kong Baptist University. This project was created by Tony, Oscar and Henry. All of us are the students of the Creative and Professional Writing. We tried to use a more creative way through new media to write and discuss some important issue.

[olibiostasis-blog]

Final Reflection

Now that we’re all finished, I’m genuinely surprised at how much we managed to get done. For all the other semesters I found myself sticking with what I already knew I was strong at and maybe dipped my feet into something new so I decided it’d be a good idea to have a go at taking up roles that I haven’t done in previous projects, I haven’t ever been a lead role in designing the UI or ever had a go at coding for the project. At the start of this semester I was petrified at the thought of having to do coding as I have never explored it more than what we had done in James’ workshops, having the help and support from James was invaluable. A difficult thing whilst running into problems with the code was that because the main “game” mechanics of our game aren’t a very common thing to do there were no tutorials or documentation on YouTube or forums so when I ran into a problem I found myself feeling extremely lost until I spoke to James next. James helped me understand code a lot faster than I thought I would and guided us on more practical ways of designing the code, to the point that we created a neural network to influence the design choices/ relationships between the variables when changes were made.

I think me and Cameron, overall, worked well, we had our ups and downs with motivation but that was sorted once we listed what we needed to do, seeing Adam when we had our one to one’s helped a lot. When it came to giving feedback to each other we didn’t have any troubles, which could be seen as a negative, I can only count one occasion where I wanted Cameron to change something within one of his designs and it was to add some more triangles into a wolf’s shading to make it look more like Low-poly art.

I took an approach differently to how I came up with designs in previous semesters, in the sense that I think I iterated a lot more than what I normally do, this semester I kept an open mind with changes to how things look whereas normally I’d find myself liking the first design I sketch up or bring into photoshop then try to come up with other iterations even though I knew that I’d just end up picking the first idea. In this semester, art wise, I think that I’ve come up with my strongest pieces of work since starting the course, it’s had the most thought and variations out of all of my other projects and think I’ve taken into account what I’d researched not only this semester but last semester also. 

We didn’t use the sprint and scrum methods for getting things done, personally I don’t think that that’s a bad thing because we didn’t have a time where we felt too stressed to get things done. We trusted each other to get work done and we did. There was only one time I can think of where there was a little bit of tension, and it was my fault when I was on tour in Europe for a couple of days I had little access to internet so I wasn’t able to update Cameron on my progress as much as I should have, it was at the same time as the reflective journal also so that was a hectic time. I think that the workload was spread out fairly and challenged us to do better than all the other semesters, Cameron really excelled at the social media promotional aspect of the branding, gaining us over 6000 followers online through posting his art work that he’d made this semester.

What we pictured for our app was quite different to how it ended up turning out. When we first started out we wanted there to be sliders to control the variables but talking when talking to Adam he wanted something us the app to be more engaging so we added the flicking aspect. We wanted there to be 2 info boxes, one info box to be summarising what’s happening in general in the overall scene and then a dynamic info box summarising what’s happening more specific to the variable you’re hovering over. We did get rid of the dynamic info box but all the info that would’ve been in there would now be in the main info box and the population counter. When researching into the Key Stage 3 material we thought of a way to make our game more engaging to the user which was to bring in a food web activity which tests what the user has learnt from playing with the variables and reading the info box. I think adding this aspect really changed our project from an infographic to an engaging app.

Moving forward it’d be great to see what this project could become if we were able to recruit more people to every aspect of this project. Getting an extra coder who’s more competent than I am would open up many more possibilities to what we could make and how we could make the app behave. Having more artists would make us be able to fully find our own style for the game and make our brand more distinguishable, because our art style is based on low poly art experimenting with a 3d modeller could be a good idea. With the code we already have we can model it onto different ecosystems, this would be beneficial because we’d be able to bring in more aspects of the Key Stage 3 curriculum, the main one teaching students about Toxic materials within a food chain, like pollution and Mercury. We used to use mercury in insecticides but when it gets into a food chain it can damage the nervous system and reproductive system of mammals, this aspect can be mapped to an ocean based ecosystem or even just an ecosystem involving crops. Cameron’s original reason for wanting to make this app was because he wanted to educate children to be aware of their actions that could contribute to destroying certain ecosystems.