Class Input

In this space feel free to write about or provide a link to something that you feel relates to the class but is not touched on or explored in depth through lectures or readings. This could include some facet of new media that we have not yet discussed or a work of new media art that you want to share, be it your own or somebody else's.

Viral Celebrity
The Viral Video phenomenon that started a number of years ago has now become one of the largest sources of entertainment in America thanks to websites like youtube.com and funnyordie.com. This is an extremely important piece of how new and digital media have developed and gained popularity. This new market in the entertainment industry was pionered by Saturday Night Live's digital shorts like "Lazy Sunday" and "Dick In A Box". Another example of groundbreaking professionally made viral video is Okgo's "Here It Goes Again",which catapulted the group into mainstream fame.

The art of viral video has done this for what is becoming a larger and larger number of people. New internet celebrities seem to arise every week now, but a few early examples are the Star Wars Kid, The numa numa guy, and Chocolate Rain. This phenomenon has now inspired even standard television shows like Tosh.0 and Secret Girlfriend, the purposes of which are to capitalize upon this vast new entertainment market.

Music Industry
In this class we discussed Girl Talk, a remix artist who mashes up various songs and genres in order to create new music. What we addressed was the issue of copyright and the question of whether or not what he is doing is legal and also if it can be considered art. Digital media has brought a great deal of change to the music industry for a number of reasons. Firstly, the easy access to free music editing software like Audacity and Reaper make it incredibly easy for anyone to record, produce, and remix whatever music they like. And secondly, new media has introduced a new distribution option for established music artists, such as Radiohead's release of their album In Rainbows as a digital download using a pay-what-you-want model, idependent of any record label or distributor. In order to distribute the album efficiently, Radiohead utilised the services of PacketExchange to bypass public Internet servers, instead using a less-trafficked private network to deliver the digital download.The download, packaged as a ZIP file, included the ten album tracks encoded in 160 kbit/s DRM-free MP3 format. When the album was eventually released in the retail market it hit number one on the charts in both the United States and the UK, showing that this new online distribution method was extremely effective.

Nine Inch Nails did something similar with the releases of their albums Ghosts I-VI and The Slip. Ghosts was made available in forms ranging from free digital download to collectors box-set and is liscensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. Later the same year The Slip was released on the Nine Inch Nails website with no advertisement or promotion for free download. It is protected under the same liscence as Ghosts and it has now been downloaded over 1.4 million times, showing once again that this is a system that works.

Newsgames
I created a wikipedia page for newsgames, which I feel are a good demonstration of tactical media. They are quick games created rapidly in response to current events. Some of them kind of suck, like ones based on Mel Gibson's drunk driving, but others have lasting power, like Dying in Darfur. Mike Treanor and Michael Mateas wrote a good DiGRA paper on them here.

Sleep is Death
Sleep is Death is a two-player interactive storytelling game created by indie game developer Jason Roher. One player acts as the controller and the other player acts as the player character. Each player is given 30 seconds to respond to the other's actions. The best way to understand how this all works is to see it in action. More information is available here.

Network Neutrality
In the class we have discussed a fair amount about open source, free software, public space, etc. However, one important topic we have not touched on is net neutrality. Net neutrality is the belief that there should be no restrictions by Internet Service Providers on content, sites, etc. It is believed that if net neutrality was not enforced, ISPs would be able to create packages that would entail paying a ISP a certain amount to access certain sites. It is also believed that ISPs would use a lack of net neutrality to a competitive advantage by not allowing access to their competitors websites. Know that the FCC is currently fighting to enforce net neutrality, but the fight has not been won yet. It is important that people realize the dangers that this poses, and begin to spread the word that net neutrality is an important right that we should not take for granted.