Re/Revolution

This is a trailer for my research project in a Mediated Cultures class Anth522. I would like to thank Al Jazeera for the Creative Commons video. I would also like to thank Tryad for the music titled Alone.

I have been watching videos online about the revolution within Egypt. The video that I constructed is an attempt to create a conversation starter for how new media has Re/mediated Revolution. This video is a proposal and it contemplates the questions:

• What do we touch with mouse buttons?
  
• Within the interwebs, What ripples are created by a link?
• What actions are we endorsing/inhibiting through new social media?
• How invasive is social media today? And is that a good thing?

Thought Stream:
If we know all that we know... Does that give us the ability to take action? Or do we stand idly by? While feeling act-less emotions...

The world is in constant flux, and our new media awareness resolves the ripples. Yet every ripple we try to change... another begins

(On-Off)Line

Video Research: This video does well to depict the origin of the Tunisia revolution and the rise of the Egyptian movement. There is a lot of youtube video that will be useful for our project concept. During my group library meeting today, we discussed ideas for our movie trailers. Our technique consisted of attempting to confine a research idea/interest/area into a single word or set of words. We each created the subject of our individual study, and the major themes that we developed are:

• Origin of Revolution Movement
• Use of Anonymity within Revolution
• Interview of individuals on the ground for cultural perspective and comparison to mediated perspective (What is happening offline?)
• Twitter and Technology manipulation to establish useful tools for revolution movements (How does the social movement dictate the technology?)
• Changes in brutality due to the glass dots (Revolution can be seen globally and it can be difficult to isolate)
• Mouse clicks start a revolution

Book Research: I have found a book titled "Abstracting Reality: Art, Communication, and Cognition in the Digital Age" by Mark J. P. Wolf. It does an awesome job at targeting this concept: "First, the individual has a new role, as a participant rather than mere observer, and finds himself or herself dealing with others in a similar role" (pg 183). This is an exact description of what is seen for the revolution movements. Individuals are now participating! The participation that is evident online is also occurring offline, and it establishes a new form of mediation. This book also targets how "Community-structured media does not replace audience-structured media, it displaces it, competing for a person's time, and as a venue for news, entertainment, education, and so forth" (pg 183). The acts of revolution have completely changed because of the community-structure. I am excited about this book because it is the perfect description for abstracting reality with relation to (Art, Communication, and Cognition), but it will be great for a framework of depicting the revolution movement. How does a Revolution fit into abstracting reality?