Exit Through the Gift Shop

            The documentary or, “mocumentary” Exit through the Gift Shop was, I feel, created to spread the message that if someone is given an outlet to show the world how they express themselves, it shouldn’t matter if the movie is legitimate or not. If you look at it another way, Banksy is expressing his views and ideas as a director, and not necessarily the street artists’ views. On the other hand, it is an interesting examination into the world of a graffiti artist.

            The film, I feel, put graffiti artists in a good light, when to some people they are viewed as mysterious individuals who vandalize others’ property. The main point that they always drive is that this activity is illegal. I think that the fact that it is illegal adds a certain quality to this type of art that cannot be found in stereotypical art. It shows that the artists is willing to go out at risk being arrested just to express himself to the world. The artists use this to their advantage to gain a sort of “popularity” to their name, or image for that matter.

            The documentary stated that Terry Guetta started filming every aspect of his life once he lost his mother. He did this because he said he “didn’t want to miss anything” and he wanted to remember all aspects of his life exactly as they happened. Before this film was created, he really did not have a name as an artist. He was relatively “under the radar.” It looks as if he didn’t pursue any sort of career as a film maker; all of his tapes were poorly shot and shaky. Once he moved into the graffiti “scene” his career then took off. He had one huge art show where he sold his paintings for incredible amounts of money and attracted a lot of media attention.

            Honestly, I think Brian Walsh is a scam. Everything he has done is exactly like Banksey or Ferry. Because of this, I would discredit him as an artist. Taking a look at his resume, he has no background in any form of art, he never attempted to further his understanding of art, such as studying how other artists work or becoming an apprentice to a respected artist, and he used to sell crap European clothes in America as designer simply because they were not what the people around him were accustomed to. This was intentionally put in the movie, I think, because Banksy wanted to show everyone that he was kind of shifty and was simply in it for the profit. 

Vector Image

Keen Responses

1.       1. In regards to democratized media, Keen believes that it “undermines the truth” and creates a sort of unreliable news media. In other words, it has lead our society into an age of misinformation and non-creditable sources. He also says that democratized media has taken away from the value of professionally created media.

2.       2. Even though Keen makes the claim that social media is solely a way for people to broaden false information and to create a hub of non-credible sources, Rushkoff sees democratized media as a way for people all over the world to be connected. He also makes the claim that this is the fastest way for people to spread information over long distance. Even though the information received isn’t put out by professionals, people are given the opportunity to receive, if anything, just the headline and to do research on their own through professionals. I agree with both sides of this argument; having everyone in the world connected and sharing information is an extremely valuable asset to our society, however people must take the initiative to look up subjects of interest through credible, valid sources.

Folksonomy and the Folks

                As defined by Wikipedia, Folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. If you have ever been to websites such as YouTube, Hulu, or any site that contains a lot of subject matter, you have undoubtedly come across a “folksonomic” identification tag. These are in place to help people find media that is related to what they are watching or reading. Some say that this system of tagging may lead to the rise of the amateur and the unnecessary devaluation of professionally created media. This is simply untrue.

                I don’t want to be misinterpreted throughout this essay as a person who is against amateurs creating what they see to be valuable. I think recreational artists, if you will, deserve a lot of credit for what they do. It is extraordinarily difficult to obtain a result that one wants without a great deal of technological help. Granted some of the user-generated content that is on the web today is arguably valuable to society. A lot of what one can find on websites such as YouTube, where the user is allowed to post any video with any subject matter (as long as it is cleared by YouTube’s censors), is not what anyone would call creative. They are simply a bunch of idiots running around with a cheap camera or camera phone doing stupid things. People who think that the rise of user-generated content is leading to the devaluation of professionally produced media look to movies such as the Jackass series to prove their point. When a person like me who believes that user-generated content is actually increasing the value of media created by professionals view a movie series like Jackass, we see a group of people who have evaluated today’s society and studied what people like to watch. They then take their data and come up with an idea that is so overboard and so insane that it can only be done “by professionals or under the supervision of professionals.”

I think collective online activities do promote a new form of participatory democracy and the development of new and accurate folksonomies. The creation of folksonomic tags has aided the internet user in finding more information on a subject than if there were no tags. When people are allowed to contribute to other people’s research through folksonomic tags, they have taken part in a self-created participatory democracy. 

Discussion Questions 2/17

1.      Honestly, I think that neither of these will occur. What is happening is that people are still getting used to a massive technological boost from the past five to ten years. We are all still really excited about our new technology, and are trying to implement it in every way we possibly can. I think the “tech boom” will slow down and we will see a plateau of user generated content and the quality of professionally generated content will continue to improve.

2.      I use Facebook all of the time. It my best distraction from my homework. Along with my cell phone, it is my main line of communication with my friends and colleagues. I think Facebook is more successful that MySpace because it took the concept of MySpace and made it much more convenient. It started off as a social page for college students and progressed into a massive online meeting place for millions of people. MySpace offers essentially the same product, but its format is different, causing people to use the more user-friendly Facebook.

3.      Transparency is such an important concept in the Social Media World because there is an interpersonal relationship between the “blogger” and the “bloggee,” if you will. When a reader does research on a topic and they search trough blogs that they are familiar with, they expect the person writing the blog to have an honest, unbiased opinion. On the other hand, bloggers need the responses from researchers, or the “bloggees”, in order to keep their blogs going. The input from the people who visit the blog is what advances the blog and keeps it up-to-date.

Photoshop Assignment

Three Mediums

Cell Phones:


Cell phones have launched our generation into a new era of communication. In particular, Smart Phones have become increasingly popular over the past few years. Applications for these phones range from GPS tracking to keeping your social networking webpage updated at all times.

YouTube:

YouTube allows anyone to post their videos from all over the world. Millions of videos are posted to this website and it gives people an outlet to express their creative nature, be it informational, comedy, action, etc.

Skype:


Skype is a program that allows people to video chat with each other from any location that has wireless internet. Through this tool, it can be stated that the world has become more accessible to anyone. Business meetings can take place in Hong Kong and New York City at the same time, with only a few seconds delay.

Zeitgeist Movement

If anyone has a minute check out the Zeitgeist Movement videos. Very, Very informative. Link is in the "Links List" on the side.