PDFs:
The Videogame: The Newest Narrative, a short research paper by John Pray
Skype Crickets
13 AprThere’s a lull in the conversation…
Chirpchirpchirp
What’s that sound?
chirpchirpchirpCHIRRHIRRHIRR
Ah, it’s the Skype Crickets
Here to remind us
That just because we can
see each other
any time
Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make good use
of that time.
CHIRRHIRRHIRR–“Hi!” …
“Hi.”
: )
SenSem research paper draft for peer review
12 Apr(Please read the cover letter. Thanks, all!): JohnPray_SenSem_RoughDraft_wCoverSheet
Video Games in Academia
6 AprBeing not only a lifelong video game enthusiast but also someone who’s currently making a video game for his English major capstone, I was naturally very interested in hearing a lecture by Jennifer de Winter of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, who specializes in video games research.
Thanks to my own research, I had the privilege of being present at dinner with Dr. de Winter before her talk. Her enthusiasm about her field was very evident, and she pointed out something: video game researchers are in very high demand. It may seem obvious, given how new the medium is (going on only three-ish decades), but it’s still worth considering. This new medium, just like movies before it (and music before that, and literature before that, and so on back to the beginning of human civilization) has yet to be accepted as a serious form of art by the culture at large–and partly due to its youth and partly due that attitude, hasn’t nearly reached its potential for helping us explore the human experience (as art does, depending on your definition).
But it will someday, and many people see that day and would like to hasten it along–or at least I would. I look to the holodecks of Star Trek when I think of the future of games: worlds where we have fully immersive experiences that we could not ever have in our “real” lives. In the meantime, controllers will do–and the experiences we have with them are no less worth analyzing. So next time you think about video game research, don’t think, “What’s the point of analyzing a stupid game?” Think instead of how much more a game could be, if we only gave it a chance.
DigLit peer reviews
14 MarDigLit Research Proposal: “YouTube and Music: How the Participatory Internet Has Changed the Industry and the Art”
17 Feb(The following is very much a work in progress.)
Introduction
For as long back as many generations can remember, being a successful musician for any audience besides your family and close friends was a very exclusive occupation. The domination of corporate recording labels kept music-making from being more than a spare-time hobby for virtually anyone but the select few that those corporations had decided would make them large mountains of money and thus were worth having their music recorded and distributed. Despite the obvious problems with this from the perspectives of both musicians and audiences, it was sustained because the price of recording and distributing was prohibitively high for anyone but those large companies. But in the last couple of decades, with the rise of personal computers, affordable recording tools, and the participatory Internet, the ability to record and distribute music is available to anyone with access to those much-more-affordable technologies.
How have YouTube and the technologies that make it possible changed the world of music? Now that independent musicians can easily record, share, and even sell their music with the whole world, what does that mean for them? Are independent musicians gaining equal cultural status with “popular”, big-label musicians, or are they separate entities that don’t really compete?
From glancing over the articles below, it’s clear the the music industry has not taken kindly to the effects that computers and the Internet have had on their ways of doing business. The ease with which piracy occurs is of particular concern, though most writers and scholars agree that they way they’ve been going on dealing with it–by suing the file sharers, people who are also usually some of the biggest fans of those studios’ musicians–is a flawed plan and will only exacerbate the problem. People don’t feel guilty stealing from these record companies because they see them as evil, and behavior like those lawsuits only confirm those feelings.
And that reputation is well-deserved, at least from the perspective of both musicians (besides the very few who get “picked up” and become huge commerical hits) and the music-loving public who want as much choice and quality as possible. Especially in a world where recording, producing, and distributing any kind of media, including music, is so cheap and easy to do, people feel that they should be able to find music that meets their wants, however niche they may be. The music industry was built to make big hits and to market them to as wide a variety of people as possible, and for the most part they still operate in this way. This frustrates musicians who want to get their music to an audience, and it frustrates potential audiences who want different and/or better music than what the record companies have decided should be popular.
The Internet, and particularly platforms like YouTube, have presented these frustrated musicians and audiences with the perfect opportunity to get around the record companies’ artificial barriers. YouTube, and in a slightly different way services like CDBaby, iTunes, and Amazon MP3, allow music of any kind to be distributed to anyone who wants to listen to it, whether it’s popular or “big” or not. There is virtually no filter in place to what kind of content can go up on sites like YouTube (beyond the usual bans on nudity and excessive profanity), which is in stark contrast to the tight-fisted, conservative policies of record companies.
And so YouTube has become a treasure trove of independent musicians, some with only a few fans, and some with millions, but all without needing any kind of help from the record companies. This puts those formerly all-powerful masters of music in an awkward position. How do they respond? Do they fight as hard as they can to quash this new model of music distribution? Or do they accept it, embrace it, and help build it up?
This paper will explore how the music industry has responded to the trend that YouTube’s independent musicians represent. It will also examine some of those independent musicians, and look specifically for examples of those who would have been considered niche and/or unmarketable by record companies but have nonetheless become successful on their own with the new tools available to them.
Literature Review
http://www.nactmus.org.au/PDF/Knowles.pdf – “A survey of Web 2.0 music trends and some implications for tertiary music communities”
http://blog.dearbornschools.org/elliott/files/2009/03/youtubevwarner.pdf – “As rights clash on YouTube, some music vanishes”
http://www.camrdale.org/Resume/youtube.pdf – “Understanding the Characteristics of Internet Short Video Sharing: YouTube as a Case Study”
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25123654 – “Ethical Issues in the Music Industry Response to Innovation and Piracy”
http://www.jstor.org/stable/622973 – “The place of music”
http://www.ic.arizona.edu/ic/indv10258/readings/LeyshonOntheReproduction.pdf – “On the reproduction of the musical economy after the Internet”
Methods
- Mainly scholarly research.
- Examination of favorite YouTube / independent musicians; comparison with “traditional” big label musicians.
- Examine the transition of a YouTube band to a big-label band (like Mumford and Sons?) and how that’s changed their audience and their music.
Response Post: Rich Media, Poor Democracy (documentary version)
15 FebAfter starting to read Robert McChesney’s Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times, I figured I might as well watch the DVD documentary of the same name (both of which Lavery Library happened to have in its stacks).
McChesney, who’s one of the most public figures speaking out against our deplorable corporate-controlled media system, speaks throughout most of the half-hour documentary. The program gives an excellent summary of the state of things, illustrating (1) how a relaxing of regulations has led almost all media outlets the country (and world) over to be owned by the same six or seven megacorporations and (2) how control of media by such megacorporations leads exclusively to a pursuit of profit for the corporations at the great expense of democracy itself, which relies upon a good, competent press to even work.
Read that screenshot from the documentary if you haven’t already. Those are the purposes the media are supposed to serve in our society. The press used to serve those purposes, and we were a better country for it. But since the government has let rules fall slack and the megacorporations have taken full control over what we see and hear for only their benefit, none of those three rules are fulfilled anymore.
American-owned media corporations only serve to profit from a world controlled by the United States, so they have no desire to question our leaders when, for example, they want to flex their military muscles overseas. So they don’t, and the people have almost no role in the decision-making process, and a war happens that no one wants or would want if they knew the facts that the media hid from them.
And it’s no secret the media isn’t diverse. I don’t mean just culturally or ethnically. I mean at all. Why waste money coming up with original things when you can make plenty of money reusing or copying what already exists?
As for fact-checking, it goes right along with the first two points. Why bother looking into to what your government officials are saying when it’s in your bottom line’s best interest to just repeat their propaganda unquestioned? Why spend money sending reporters to investigate anything when you can just do easy stories that pretty much hand themselves to you, like celebrity antics and stock market statistics?
Our media today is a farce, and that is not okay.
John Pray [Spring 2011] 