The document discusses how the media product represents various social groups through its characters and story. The thriller represents teenage relationships through two 18-19 year old characters in a relationship that ends tragically. It aims to represent average teenage boys and girls through characters of different ethnicities to appeal to wider audiences. However, the dark and sinister text may appeal more to teenage males than females or other groups. It also breaks thriller conventions by having the female character survive while the male character is mysteriously killed.
http://decay.io/intro/
In the biological world, Decay is a physical phenomenon where materials become a simpler form of material and energy.
But in the culture of making objects, decay is a multidimensional problem. The physical decay of an object fails to sync up to the behavioural, cultural, or digital decay of that thing.
Decay becomes the natural output of an ecosystem of use, disuse, and obsolescence not dictated by material, but by software and consumer expectation from software behaviour. This decay is taking the form of obsolescence and apathy: a world of forgotten things with short lifespans and nowhere to go afterwards.
The danger is that culture rot is claiming the utility of objects before material rot ever does, and the physical casings that held the once functional circuits and software can take an eternity to decay.
To combat this, decay must be reframed as inherent to the value of an object. This can be done by situating time as something that adds value (or detracts by its absence), and by challenging the emerging anonymity and replaceability of network connected objects.
We want to enable a graceful ecosystem of creation, decay, and rebirth in a software-infested and thing-saturated world.
A talk from Toronto's FITC Spotlight on Hardware talk. I spoke about using tools like Openframeworks, OpenCV, and the Kinect to create Interactive Installations, and paired it with an interactive lighting installation.
References, citations, and source code can be found here: http://www.andrewlb.com/2013/06/sls-notes/
SF Critical Design meetup: Designed Futures in a non-linear worldAndrew Lovett-Barron
Version 1 of a new talk I'm exploring around design and design practice. Keen on feedback as it starts to grow, and thank you for the help in advance!
I also mentioned another talk by Tobias Revell as an intro to Crit/Spec/etc design:
http://blog.tobiasrevell.com/2013/12/critical-design-design-fiction-lecture.html
1. How does your media product represent particular social groups? By Ryan Baldwin
2. The representations we tried to communicate within our thriller was the representation of a teenage relationship that ending in a catastrophe. This is portrayed due to the fact within our narrative the two characters that star within our thriller are teenage characters and are in a bed together. This should signify that they are in a relationship as they are asleep sharing a bed and the male has his shirt off. This then turns nasty with the mysterious and shock death of the male character. Our film should also represent late teenagers as the teenagers within our thriller are aimed to be around the ages of 18 to 19 years old. The representations we communicated!
3. We decided to represent our female character as an average teenage girl. This is because we chose to have her dressed simply and not to have a particular stereotype so that it can then appeal to many others and not just one. We also wanted to represent the female character as an older teenager as she is sharing a bed with a male who seems to be her boyfriend. We decided to represent to male character quite similarly. We decided that the character would not be much older than the female so that it would suggest that they are an obvious couple. We wanted to also represent the male as an average male. Not a male that was a thug, or believed he was superior. We also decided that the character would be ideal if he didn’t have to same ethnicity of the female, so that we can appeal to many other social groups and not sticking with one particular group. Female and Male characters!
4. Our text that we used may appeal mostly to teenage males rather than females and many other social groups. The text wouldn’t really appeal to other social groups as it is quite negative and dark. However we did chose to use large text in order to allow elderly viewers to read the text clearly. We decided to do this purely so we could have sinister text within our film, rather than average text which may have appealed to other social groups. However we decided that sinister text would allow the element of horror to be present within our thriller, therefore we thought it would be best to target the text towards males, rather than females. The text!
5. We decided that the use of teenagers would be more ideal as they are the stereotypes in which many horror films use. However, thrillers tend to use older characters, hence why we believed using younger actors would be more appealing to the audiences. The use of a male character with a different ethnicity to that of the female was also a decision we thought was ideal to star in our thriller. We settled on an Asian character so that we could appeal to many other social groups and also to appeal to a much wider audience. Some films however to have main character's with different ethnicities, Morgan Freeman is a huge star that shows this within films. Who should star in our thriller!
6. Our male character does however get killed within our thriller. This could be a thing that could possibly misconceived due to the ethnicity and also stereotypical use of a character like this that gets killed. However, the character does mysterious get killed within our thriller which leaves questions on how. This does show that the character was an innocent character and an average character as we show the character didn't have a struggle as there is no blood. The character is just found dead at the bottom of the stairs so this could suggest he either fell or may have been killed instantly. This death however shows a break in thriller theory, within our thriller. This is because certain thriller stereotypes are broken due to the female character presented as the survivor where the male dies instead. Usually this role is reversed and the female characters are seen as the more vulnerable character; instead of the male being this type of character within our thriller. The death in our thriller!
7. This character is Angel, played by Leanne Howlett. This character is our Hero of our film. Comparing her to other actresses such as Rachel McAdams from Red Eye, then they are present similar. She is represented as the Hero due to slight instances such as photos of her and the narrative begins with her. She is a character that appeals to all social groups as she is just an ordinary character. This is quite similar to Leanne's character, as Angel is introduced as the Hero as she is present throughout our opening. Comparison! Leanne Howlett Rachel McAdams
8. With these two characters they represent similar qualities within our film and films in which Morgan Freeman star in. Morgan freeman plays characters which have a sense that they are well respected and important. I wanted our character to have these qualities similar to Morgan Freeman as they represent many different social groups. AzeemSaleem Morgan Freeman