Eschewing what would be a traditional jazz soundtrack straight out of the Roaring Twenties, Luhrmann has recruited artists like rapper Jay-Z, Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am and indie pop songstress Lana Del Rey among others for the soundtrack of the film, which is due for release in Australia on May 30. The soundtrack is due on May 7 in the United States; the score, by Craig Armstrong, is set to be released some time later.

The long-awaited adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel began filming in September 2011 before wrapping in early 2012. Leonardo DiCaprio appears at the titular character Jay Gatsby, while Tobey Maguire stars as next-door neighbour and confidante Nick Carraway.

The Great Gatsby looks set to continue Luhrmann’s string of striking yet divisive soundtracks to his films, which began with the modern and moody alternative rock/dance-pop of Romeo + Juliet (1996) and continued with the cover version-focus of the Paris-set Moulin Rouge! (2001).

The Great Gatsby is shaping up to be one of the most talked about movie events this year, and several of the songs from the soundtrack have been released in April; here’s the first single, Del Rey’s alternative rock-sounding “Young and Beautiful”. 

The track has received generally positive reviews, as have the other songs critics have heard from the album. It was called an “extraordinary melding of vintage and contemporary sounds” by Slant Magazine.

Other tracks recorded for the hip-hop-infused album include “Over the Love” by Florence and the Machine, “Kill and Run” by Australia’s own Sia, “Back to Black” by Beyoncé and André 3000 (of hip hop duo Outkast fame), and ”100$ Bill” by Jay-Z. The soundtrack will also feature numerous covers, like the 1991 U2 song “Love Is Blindness” by former White Stripes frontman Jack White, an interpretation of Beyoncé’s 2003 solo smash “Crazy in Love” by British soul star Emeli Sandé backed by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra, who also appear with their frontman on a jazz rendition of his former band Roxy Music’s rock classic ”Love Is the Drug”.

 Rounding out the collection is “Hearts a Mess” [no apostrophe] from Australian indie muso Gotye’s 2006 album Like Drawing Blood.

The process creating and contributing articles, the review process, and the editing process are all performed on a free and voluntary basis. These completely voluntary processes in combination with the ability to distribute and access the final content online for a significantly lower (if at all existent) cost, has produced the notion that research could be accessible for free (Neylon 2013).

Open access is based primarily on the assumption that research can be produced to the same quality that appears in journals through the elimination of costs produced by publishers. However, Worlock (2004) disputes that the move to open access is this simple, asserting that the costs involved in creating and distributing content is an expensive process, despite the ease of producing and accessing content online that ‘[creates] the view that it should be free’.

So where would this money come from? Under one proposed model for open access, funding for the production of openly accessible articles would be contributed be the authors themselves, as an ‘author processing charge’, another suggests that these costs would be subsidised by ‘research-intensive academic institutions’.

These two models raise questions of the effectiveness of open access, and pose limitations on accessibility of some research and articles. This means that research independent from main government or institutional bodies may be limited due to financial inaccessibility. 

References:

Neylon, T. 2013, ‘Life after Elsevier: Making open access to scientific knowledge a reality’, The Guradian, accessed via http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/apr/24/life-elsevier-open-access-scientific-knowledge

‘Open Access’, n.d. accessed via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access

Worlock, K. 2004, ‘The Pros and Cons of Open Access’, Nature, 13 September, accessed via http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/34.html

We also discuss the important concept of market failure, which arises when part of the costs (or benefits) of a market transaction are paid by people who do not directly participate in the transaction. We will illustrate market failure in the case of electricity generation that also causes environmental damage and discuss ways to resolve the market failure.

Tuesday – 45 mins easy running

Thursday – 5 mins easy running, 6 mins tempo running; 3 mins easy running (4 reps), 5 mins easy running

Saturday – 90 mins easy running

I must admit that I was totally dreading the thought of the 90 min run, in fact I’d almost persuaded myself that I couldn’t do it, I’d struggled so much with the 75 minute run that I just couldn’t see how I could push myself to run for an extra 15 minutes!! That was until yesterday the 21st April, I watched the Virgin London Marathon and witnessing the mental and physical torture that people put themselves through to run those 26.2 miles was just a massive inspiration for me. My close friend Melanie Wilkins managed to run the marathon in 3:43 only weeks after running the Paris marathon, what a massive achievement?? I will honestly never forget the determination, mental and physical strength, and endurance that she encompassed on that day! it’s definitely given me the extra drive to really focus on my training and stop feeling sorry for myself…I mean I’m only doing a half marathon what the hell have I got to complain about???

I’m now going into week 7 with a positive mental attitude, and believe me when you’re running with just your music and your thoughts positivity can take you that extra mile (literally)! after all it’s just about putting one foot in front of the other, right?

I’ll keep you updated.

Question: Are we in favour for the idea of a commons-based society?

To start off, commons is traditionally known as a shared space or land in which people used to grow food or a space in which all can participate in political discussion or a common social life. In today’s contemporary landscape, a new kind of common has raised – the sharing of information, knowledge, media forms such as music, files…etc as well as published research and educational materials.

The concept of a world where information is published and shared seamlessly seems ideal at first but upon deeper analysis and inspection, it compels one to question the conflicts that may arise from such occurrence. In a democratic society, it’s natural to assume that publishing should be open access and people should possess the right to attain information yet at the same time, should there be a limit or regulation? Some of the common examples of conflicts include filesharing of music and films. Is it truly fair to the creative owners of the material to receive no acknowledgement or profit for that matter in return for their work? In the lecture, other issues were also underlined such as that of public speech,education, your personal DNA information and brain scans – what are the implications for sharing such personal information to the public or on social networking sites? It does raise the question of ownership of these “goods” and whether or not they belong to the commons.

Personally, I feel that there is no ultimate right or wrong answer to this, everything is essentially subject to interpretation and perspective. It’s important that artists or creative producers of music and films are entitled to their share of profit and that piracy should be regulated. On the other hand, I am also an advocate for open access publishing so that the general public can attain information that is of importance – e.g. new scientific research that may aid in diagnosing or treating a disease. For this example, there should be a balance between sharing the information as a common good whilst also attributing credit to its inventors. The complexity of the commons lies in the contradictory nature of perspectives that can present itself when considering the various dimensions within the concept.

Walljasper, Jay (2010) argues in his article ‘The Commons Moment is Now’, that the public has grown to become a group of active thinkers who are also concerned citizens, rallying support for the idea of a commons-based society. We all come from various backgrounds, social movements, community causes and have diverse ideologies and agendas. Us commoners seek to move towards a more cooperative direction for modern society. Personally I agree with this observation and stance. It’s significant for people today in the general public to question the status quo and be willing to explore new ideas that once would have seemed radical. We are fundamentally encouraged to raise questions, to challenge mainstream messages and to actively be involved in society and all its relevant issues. As Walljasper observes, although most of us are not aware of the word or concept of commons, we are subconsciously acting within it as we seek for changes in our lives to attain a greater sense of meaning. Examples of such include collaborating online, making shifts in personal lives such as buying organic foods, trying out alternative medicine…etc.

Moving on…the concept of “attention” was also explored this week in terms of its sophisticated system within the human mind – after all, out attention is so limited in comparison to say, machines who are structured to operate when given time and processing power. In the media industry, attention is a valuable commodity and often seen as a kind of currency and power – or reason for investment. For PR practitioners, we are all too familiar with the term “circulation” and “readership” because it’s one of the common forms of calculating campaign success and to measure the results against set objectives. The key is to grab your target audiences’ attention and to measure that, one often must calculate how many “eyes” has seen the magazine or newspaper or watched that TV segment…etc. What’s interesting to note though is the scarcity of attention. We live in a world where there is too much information and consequently, we seek to fight for attention. Guy Debord suggests that modern media distracts from what is “really going on” and thus accordingly a lot of media and comms research and work is based on the technologies and techniques of attention and distraction.

A lot to ponder about this week…

Week 7 Lecture Word: Commons

I never realized how much just being pregnant could take out of a person.

I’m exhausted, my pants are getting too tight and my boobs hurt. My poor husband has to hear me moan and groan at about 3AM every night because my stomach hurts. I’m pretty sure it’s the prenatal vitamins that are doing me in, but I’m not going to stop taking them. I would rather suffer a tummy ache every night than inflict some sort of damage on my child.

The dreams also suck. People keep dying in really weird ways. Like D rated SciFi movie ways… Worms coming out of orifices and stuff. And I cant save them.

Morning sickness is basically all day. If I wait too long to eat, bam, puking. If I eat too much, bam. If I eat anything that I don’t like the texture, bam. And it doesn’t even matter if I loved it before I was pregnant… it’ll make me sick now.

I gave up caffeine. I feel like a slug. I’m tired all the time and I feel like my brain in moving in slow motion. For instance, I just opened a new tab on my browser, and by the time I went to the address bar, I completely forgot what it was I was doing. Are these things even supposed to be happening? It’s almost like I have a concussion. I forget what people are talking about before they can finish their sentence. I haven’t seen my car keys for three days. (Good thing I haven’t needed them.)

I’m an emotional train wreck. My husband has no clue how to handle me. Bless his heart, he does try. He holds me when I cry and tells me how beautiful I am and pushes the hair out of my face so that my quarter sized tears don’t soak it and give me a cold. He truly does love me, and that I am so thankful for. I couldn’t do all of this without him. Seriously though, those ASPCA commercials with the super sad puppy dog stares and Sara McLaughlin songs should be OUTLAWED!

Our first OB visit is on Wednesday. Hopefully I’ll have all kinds of great news for you guys on that day. And feel free to pester me if I forgot to update you guys for more than a day or two! This is for my benefit as much as it is for your entertainment!

Ian Burn “No object implies the existence of any other” (1967)

Does the fact that I see myself in the mirror imply my existence? Or, does the fact that I see the mirror imply its existence? I found this artwork with a provocative line on it curious as it raises a lot of questions and contradictions.

The text across the mirror is a part of the quote from the 18^th century Scottish philosopher David Hume: ‘No object implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves, and never look beyond the ideas which we form of them’ (Art Gallery NSW n.d.).

As I see it, Burn is trying to stop us from falling into Sartre’s ‘illusion of immanence’ (Lechte 2011) by not just perceiving the image, but also accessing it through reflective consciousness. On the other hand, the duality of this conceptual artwork is emphasized by the inability to do so due to the high level of cohesion of the image itself, the reflection of the surrounding environment and the viewer’s microperception based on our previous experience.

While it fulfils our illusion of immanence by depicting the reflection with the perfect accuracy (of course, it’s a mirror!), it has much more to do with significance, with evocation of ideas and concepts.

Burn adds the interactivity typical for digital images and, thus, changes the subject-object relation. It depicts and transforms immediate reality. In this sense, the Ian Burn’s work goes transcends the limits of a traditional image, despite being closely attached to reality.

Reference List:

Art Gallery NSW n.d., No Object Implies the Existence of Any Other, (1967), by Ian Burn, The Collection, viewed 11 April 2013, <http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/1317.1990/&#62;.

Lechte, J. 2011, ‘Some Fallacies and Truths Concerning the Image in Old and New Media’, Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 10(3), pp. 354-371.

http://www.themarlincompany.com/blog/article/should-you-start-a-mooc

Free Online classes: Unlocking the Ivory Tower – http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-01-02/news/free-online-education/

Should a tertiary education be freely available to anyone? As someone who is playing tens of thousands of dollars to earn my degree, I feel as though the service of tertiary education should be limited to institutions, such as universities and colleges. Kind of selfish, I know – however, the Australian Governments HECS-HELP system is making the transition into tertiary education easier.

Knowledge is mediated through universities, to filter the quality of information. In contrast, the amount of information that is available online is infinite, creating a surplus. Therefore, online tertiary education has the potential to alter the integrity of the tertiary degree. Think about it, if we make tertiary education open to anyone and everyone, won’t the value of being educated diminish because it won’t be filtered? Do you agree?

http://www.e-learning.com.au/

I’m not advocating though, that we shouldn’t be able to access information online for free. As a student, there is nothing more annoying than finding an article online, reading the abstract and realising it’s got everything you need, only to be refused access and asked to pay money to gain access.

I believe it is the role of the education institution, which students pay considerable amounts of money, to ensure that we have access to as much information possible. Databases such as Summon should provide students with unfettered access free articles, particularly those which are particularly useful, but usually require subscription.

References;

Mallon, M. 2013, ‘MOOCs’, Public Services Quality, vol 9, no 1, pp46-53

The impact of information technology will be even more radical than the harnessing of steam and electricity in the 19th century. Rather it will be more akin to the discovery of fire by early ancestors, since it will prepare the way for a revolutionary leap into a new age that will profoundly transform human culture.” – Jacques Attali, Millennium

Modern digital technologies such as computers, telecommunications, and networks are reshaping both our society and our social institutions. These technologies have increased vastly our capacity to know and to do things and to communicate and collaborate with others. They allow us to transmit information quickly and widely, linking distant places and diverse areas of endeavor in productive new ways. They allow us to form and sustain communities for work, play, and learning in ways unimaginable just a decade ago (Duderstadt, J 2001). Of course, technology has brought up massive changes within almost every aspect of society. According to Richard E. Miller, the notion of the traditional university as an educational institution is practically doomed and we are heading for a new way of digital education where lecturers and tutors are replaced by computers and pre recorded videos. Personally, I cannot imagine submitting an essay by recording myself speaking aloud – it sounds ridiculous! However, 10 years ago people would have said half the affects that a smart phone offers now were ridiculous and impossible, yet here we are (I am writing this post via my iPhone through the Word Press application – need I say more?) Therefore, its needless to say that technology has the capacity to create huge changes and advances within society and basically anything is possible. So, perhaps university in the digital age will be moved from the classroom to YouTube videos however, the learning experience will be significantly altered. As discussed in this weeks tutorial most people agreed that the unversity experience is a whole lot more than completing assignments and furthering your education – it’s also about the social life and making new experiences. What experience will those in the future have when they’re watching lectures and participating in tutorials online, in their pyjamas, still in bed? Therefore, universities’ place in the future will inevitably change with the constant advancing of technology however, the discussion of a place for traditional universities as we know will continue.

As Wolf states, “personal data are ideally suited to a social life of sharing,” as is seen with social media sites such as Facebook. Sharing data on Facebook can be updating your status, checking in at a location, sharing music, videos, pictures, and the list goes on. As we live in a data-driven world, we are dependent on receiving it daily, and so if you have no connection with social media sites, such as Facebook, or disconnect from it, it affects the way you live as you are not keeping up to date with your friends. For example, invites for birthdays are now sent out via Facebook, and so if you don’t have it you could risk not being invited or forgotten. Data surrounds us everywhere, and so it is important to stay connected and to also not forget the ability data has to distort reality, and in turn affecting the way we live. 

 References:

-Quilty-Harper, Conrad (2010) ’10 ways data is changing how we live’, The Telegraph, August 25, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7963311/10-ways- data-is-changing-how-we-live.html>

-Wolf, Gary (2010) ‘The Data-Driven Life’, The New York Times, <http:// www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02self-measurement-t.html>

The coverage of the Boston Bombings earlier this week is a prime example of transversality. Now that practically everyone has access to smart phones, the Internet and holds some form of social media awareness, we can now take the news into our own hands. Hong Qu in his article on the world Neimanlab, examines the way twitter posts from eyewitnesses at the event broke the story to the rest of the world. What has drastically changed now, is not that the role of a trained journalist is now irrelevant but rather the sheer array of sources that journalists have at their fingertips.  One tweet that particularly stood out to me was the from an NBC reporter in Los Angeles getting in touch with an eyewitness in Boston to do a live phone interview.

A few years ago people were panicking that the role of the journalist, with the advent of new media, would soon be dormant. But now from examples like this it has become clear that the role of the journalist is still alive and as strong as ever. And as Qu puts it, journalists will always have 3 powerful tools at their fingertips; Broadcast power, credibility and storytelling ability- none of which can be learnt through the use of Twitter. It is now the role of the journalist to sift through all the noise on the Internet and to aggregate the information into an easily digestible format. This is where data journalism and data visualisation is useful.

Working at a radio station, I get bombarded every day with emails from record labels and management companies urging me to acquire a musician’s or band’s new EP or album as a ‘Name Your Price’ download from their Bandcamp page. Take the beautiful Wintercoats for example. This has been an interesting innovation in the way the music industry is coping with radical changes brought about by the advent of digital media technologies. Physically having to write $0 is a strange feeling that works the base human emotion of guilt. I myself have done it fairly often but it then makes me look for new ways to support their music- buying tickets to concerts, buying their merchandise, giving money to a Pozible campaign to get their new album up and running.  As Brian Eno discussed in conversation with the BBC, when people realise they can’t make money in one area anymore they turn to another, for example the sheer number of live music events/gigs has risen dramatically in the last few years. The idea of releasing an album as an app is truly innovative and one that I hope more musicians like Philip Glass and Brian Eno will take up. The idea of the album as an app allows listener new and exciting ways to engage with the music, which is something the music industry has needed to do for a long time. (LINK)

A friend of mine recently started a new record label called Plastic World  with the idea of boosting Australian talent into an international market by focusing the creation of the music away from simply what a radio DJ would want to play. All too often, especially in the recent past, musicians have created music based on what they think will get them airplay. But now there are so many new avenues for musicians to get their music heard that they could almost by-pass radio or rather make the music they want and if the radio announcer likes it, it’s a bonus.

It’s an exciting time to be a music fan- as the music industry changes and adapts to an era of digital abundance we too, need to change the way we listen and engage with music.

The above video by One3 Productions outlines the differences between Transmedia and Multimedia in a straight forward way.

Whilst transmedia and multimedia aren’t the easiest things to pin down and seperate, they are both story telling devices. Basically, multimedia is telling a single story over multiple mediums, whilst transmedia is telling multiple stories over multiple mediums which should all culminate into one story. 

One of the greatest examples of transmedia that I could think of, and it was even touched upon in the lecture, is the Star Wars franchise. Through creating many different points of entry to the Star Wars world, the companies behind the franchise are able to reach far more people then the movies alone. There’s the six films, the books, the comics and graphic novels, the fan fiction generated online, the spin-off tv shows, the plethora of games available, etc etc. If you’ve got an interest in something, there’s generally a Star Wars themed product available.

The ultimate goal behind all this is to generate money for the companies. The more money they make, the more money they can put into the next Star Wars project and into their own pockets. Their aim is to sell the franchise to you, and in the case of Star Wars, this is definitely the case.

All of these mediums also aim to create a loyalty to the franchise, a sense of wanting to know each part of the story and own the paraphernalia that is associated with the brand. It gives the fan a sense of participating in the story, having the ability to see all the back stories of the characters and gain insight into the characters and the story lines. A personal example of this is my 11 year old brother who is a massive Star Wars fan. He was first introduced to the films, which then lead him to the books, and then the games and action figures, and now the tv series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. This shows that, despite the first film being released 36 years ago, 25 years before my brother was born, the franchise is still going strong and is still making money.

Star Wars is a globally recognized brand, with a massively loyal fan base, which has capitalised on the notion of transmedia.