Saturday, August 31, 2019

Instructions for Accessing Audio/Visual Files on Network Servers



Follow these instructions to access the folder called 'SarramCourses' on the CINEMA network drive. You will need to log in to a campus computer (the PCs in one of the Computer Labs or the Macs in the Digital Media Lab and Mac Lab). Make sure you have a pen drive or an external hard disk with enough capacity as the files that you will find on the server are usually quite large. You will most probably need the VLC player in order to play the files on your computer.

Monday, June 17, 2019

Discrete Programming, Music Video Auteurs and the End of MTV





"Inside Total Request Live: MTV's Hottest Program for Teens" from PBS Frontline, 2001

Saul Austerlitz, "Visions of a Youth Culture" + "Spike and Michel" from Money For Nothing: A History of the Music Video from The Beatles to The White Stripes (Continuum, 2008)

Roger Beebe, "Paradoxes of Pastiche: Spike Jonze, Hype Williams, and the Race of the Postmodern Auteur" from Beebe & Middleton (eds), Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones (Duke, 2007)

You can find a treasure trove of AUTEUR based organized video playlists here.

Individual auteurs are linked below. The "Spike and Michel" of Saul Austerlitz's chapter above are Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry.

Spike Jonze
Michel Gondry
Chris Cunningham

Hype Williams 
Paul Hunter







Friday, June 7, 2019

Music Video Links and Playlist



Here are the links to the videos:

You can find the Youtube Playlist with a selection of the material we have been watching in class here.

Embedded below is the brief documentary we started watching that should help you clarify and contextualize the emergence of MTV and assist you with what we covered in lecture and the different readings assigned.

I will be distribute the study guide for the midterm quiz during class, on Monday, so that we can go over it and I can answer questions you might have in regards to format and the whatever else.
I did, however, decide that the midterm will be on Thursday, rather than Wednesday.

Monday, May 27, 2019

I Want My MTV: You'll Have To Wait For It



Sunil Manghani, "The Pleasures of (Music) Video"
from Arnold et al (eds), Music/Video: Histories, Aesthetics, Media (Bloomsbury, 2017)

Mathias Korsgaard, "Defining Music Video"
from Korsgaard, Music Video After MTV: Audiovisual Studies, New Media and Popular Music (Routledge, 2017)


Wednesday, May 1, 2019

SKAM + The Show About The Show + FINAL STUDY GUIDE QUESTIONS


Find the clips from Season 4 of SKAM here
(nb. Final episodes are at the top of the page so you should scroll down to find earlier ones)

Below you can find the Pilot, "Why Did We Greenlight This?", for Caveh Zahedi's The Show About The Show which 'aired' on the BricTV network on YouTube. Relate this to the concept of Complex TV.




FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE here. Enjoy.

Some career advice from Baskets College below.

Sunday, April 28, 2019

COM 470 Advanced Media Theory Final Study Guide




After the wise and profound words of Father Guido, words which are so perfectly comforting during exam crunch times, here is the much agonized for study guide:

COM 470 Study Guide

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Music Videos Trapped in the Network: A New Aesthetic and Function?

Complex TV and the Future of Narratives




Complex TV Basics

from Jason Mittell's Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling
--Chapter 1: Complexity in Context


SKAM

Article on the original SKAM that aired in Norway on public broadcaster and on social media NRK TV here.

Announcement of Skam/Shame US, set in Austin and released on Facebook Watch
SKAM Austin: Release Date, Trailer, and News

(Blocked Trailer here.)







Monday, April 15, 2019

Post-Rock, Subcultures and the End of Authenticity




Assuming that at this point you should be on your way to completing the Garofalo textbook, here are the reading assignments for the final three weeks:

On 'co-optation':
Thomas Frank's "Commodify Your Dissent" here.

On Jamaican Music:
from Dick Hebdige, Cut'n'Mix here.



On Gender:
Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie, "Rock and Sexuality"
Simon Frith, "Afterthoughts"
"Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco"
Find these articles here as a single PDF file.

Lindsay Zoladz, "Joni Mitchell: Fear of a Female Genius"


On 'sub-cultures':
Here are the Dick Hebdige chapters from Subculture: The Meaning of Style.
Refer back to the Punk: Attitude film screening.


The Ramones, "Rockaway Beach" Live in Rome, 1980




On sampling, mash-ups and the 'postmodern turn':
Andrew Goodwin, "Sample and Hold"
E Ann Kaplan, "A Postmodern Play of the Signifier?"

Also, to clarify (or further obscure) 'postmodernism' please help yourself --in case you have not encountered it in your other studies-- to Fredric Jameson's "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"

Fatal Strategies & Slackers: Withdrawing or Accelerating?


Matthias Leupold, Im Kino / In the Cinema, Part II Berlin GDR, 1983



The screening of ENJOY POVERTY will be on Wednesday April 17 @7.30pm in GG1 Guarini Campus. Please look for readings related to the screening in the post below.
This is mandatory viewing for ALL students in COM 470 Advanced Communication Theory


Baudrillard, "The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media"

Additional Recommended Baudrillard Readings:
Jean Baudrillard, Requiem for the Media
Jean Baudrillard, The Implosion of Meaning in the Media from Simulacra and Simulation

Please read the section 'Disciplines and Sciences of the Individual' in Part II, particularly the first four segments (from "The Body of the Condemned" to "Panopticism")

Foucault, "The Repressive Hypothesis" from The History of Sexuality, Vol. I

In the clip below the scene discussed in the first pages of Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism.
from Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaròn, US/UK, 2006)






Faster! Faster! Faster!


#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics (Srnicek & Williams)
Steven Shaviro, "What is Accelerationism?" from No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism

Bonus:
Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation (Laboria Cuboniks)

+

What About 'Today'?

Christian Fuchs, "Participatory Web 2.0 as Ideology" from Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies

McKenzie Wark, The Hacker Manifesto

"Every single commodity you produce is a piece of your own death"
"Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy."