Struggle…

Here I am – back after months … Months of struggling with health condition and a knee surgery… Still walking with crutches but I am much more confident than the last months…

During the time beeing immobilized I was thinking a lot about my subject. I noticed that I was exhausted about my own media behaviour – I got a slave of my own digital media behaviour and had trouble to filter information and to de-energize… I felt that my project had a kind of negative influence for my life – but at least it was just my own behaviour. I was struggling with my project and thinking about changing the subject.

The last months I was more focused on living an analog life – escaping from the digital jungle. But soon I missed my digital life – I am a digital person… Living without digital enviroment isn’t possible anymore. There are so many people outside who feel the same like I do. We have to find a healthy balanced way between our own analog and digital life and behaviour.

I noticed from the last months of my studies that my focuse on my subject was primarily negative. I do see the developement of digital communication behaviour – especially about social media – critically… but I also feel that is has positive effects. I decided not to give up my subject and studies. My goal for the last year of my MA Studies is to have a balanced view about the digital behaviour. To use my own experience to develope artwork.

I started to improve my photoshop skills and learned new techniques for special effects.

I will restart my studies in September – till then I will use this blog to collect interesting information, videos and artwork.

Web 2.0…The Machine is us/ing us

Reflection…

The last few weeks and months, I didn’t have enough time to be focused on my project. A knee injury – give me the time now – to reflect some parts of my project and my project focuse. At the moment I feel like an information vacuum cleaner. Every single article about digital communication, social media, design and videoart gets inhaled. It is an exciting process. My brain is full of information – information, which has to be analyzed and filtered.

During the part of reading – the question came up if I should change a bit the project title and focus? Should I ‘d be more focused on social media or how digital technology change the society? Or aren’t at least both parts involved in the digital communication title?

CHANGE.. this is the word for me at the moment. The world and digital lifestyle is changing so fast – What is new and innovative today could be old tomorrow. How is the society dealing with this process? And how does this thesis involve my project?

Well, I will have some time to find it out. Get a knee surgery soon and enough time to get clearer about my project.

1W49.01_Tuesday evening…

… it is the first time after weeks, that I have  enough time and the mood to check up my classmates blogs. While I am reading the blogs, i feel that I do really miss our weekly chat, exchanging thoughts, ideas and see how everybody developes as an artist.

I am pretty busy at the moment with work – everything is very exciting. The good thing about my work is, that I still do some research for my project. Marketing and digital communication are so close, and so everyday I am researching social media developments, new marketing strategy, viral marketing etc.

Last week I bought the UK magazin wired. The Title is “You will buy me .  How persuaders are hacking your mind… to control your desires.” I still hadn’t have the time to read the full article. But it seems very creepy and on the other site very interesting. I always was interested how people get contolled by media and marketing. Maybe I will change my Project into that direction… I will see – I do have enough time during the next year to develope more the ideas…

1W18.03_New blog layout

I decided to change my blog layout and design. The last layout was to dark and not very usability friendly. I am not 100% satisfied with the new look and I hope to improve a bit the css the next weeks.

For the new look I used the chance to overwork my categories, tags and organised my blog entries. I noticed that I have to focuse more on the guide for reflective blogs from our wikispaces site. I think it will be essential for the Unit 1 Assessment.

This week I spent a lot of time to think about the next steps for my research. I am a bit tired of reading and so I set my focus on improving my software skills. I ended up in watching lots of video tutorials about 3D and Motion Effect software. The variety of creative possibilities have blown me away! Unfortunatly software programs are getting more and more complex, that it takes a while to learn it.

To get not stucked – I decided to improve first my skills in photoshop and illustrator. I have subscribed the Computer Arts magazine which is filled with creative tutorials.  I hope to learn more techniques and be able to create innovative artworks.

I also orderd the new adobe production suite with the newest after effects and flash versions. I have to be very structured and focused to learn one software program after the other – and not ending up in a chaos.

Title: Chaos // January 2009 // © nicole struppert

1W12.01_Digital World…

The last days just went by. I was pretty busy with work and christmas preparations. I really don’t know why it is always getting hectic at the end of the year .

But anyway, I really enjoyed our last chat session. It was very inspiring and afterwards I was surfing around the web to get more information about processing and open frameworks. It is amazing what possibilities you have with the software. The worst part is to learn programming – which is not my favoured task. But I would really like to learn it and will concentrate myself for next year. But before that I need to learn more about video editing – which is more importent for me at the moment. Yesterday I worked a bit with Final Cut Express – to get more comfortable with the technique, the effects etc. It was fun and I feel I get more and more into it.

For my research process I bought a new book called “grown up digital” – It is a book about the net generation and the future. It is amazing that we are surrounded by digital environment and use it so naturally. I can remember when we had our first TV in black and white – with just 4 tv channels, my first mobile phone – which looked huge like a bone and my first computer with  just a hard disk of 512 MB. And then a couple of years later came the Internet – which opened us a completely new world to explore. So our generation learned step by step to use the technologies and get into the new digital world. But what about the younger generation? They grow up with it so naturally. They don’t know how it was without mobile phones, text messages, emails,  internet and social networking. The social life of the younger generation is so different of my generation because the communication process has changed a lot. Everything is becoming more and more digital and less personal. It will be very exciting to read more about that subject in the book.

Ahh, before I forget – I found a very interesting website from audi, with interactive parts. I think it is an amazing work to explain and visualize technology of a car… just check it out – hope you like it as much as I do.

http://microsites.audi.com/vdt-onlinespecial/

1W4.01_Technology can be tricky…

Actually I wanted to write about the Mindmap I did today for the project proposal. Therefore I logged into my wordpress account to write the post and upload an image with my mindmap. While I uploaded the picture, wordpress always put the image into my gallery. I wasn’t able to put it into my post. I was wondering, then I noticed that my post was written in html. It tried to put on the visual code, but my computer did not what I wanted. Mmh,  I logged off and tried it again. The same problem, then I used the Safari Browser instead the Firefox – same thing.

Could it be, that I infected my computer with the cold I still have? Or does my computer wanted to tell me that he worked enough for me today??? Anyway, I turned the computer off and walked home.

The first thing I did at home was, that I turned on my Powerbook, logged me into wordpress and tried it again. And hehehe what can I say, it worked . So technology can be tricky from time to time. I still don’t know why this happend, but anyway at least it worked!