Thursday, July 12, 2012
News from Around the World
I'm always looking for new avenues of acquiring news from around the world and am especially interested in finding and learning from different perspectives. I was very excited to learn from Cydney about Watching America. It's a site that translates articles from other languages into English so readers can form an understanding of how the rest of the world is seeing us. Cool right? I wish I knew more languages so I could simply reading them from source, but this is the next best thing. Even better, Cydney has recently began translating for the site! Check her out: http://watchingamerica.com/News/165592/follow-the-money-2/
Friday, July 6, 2012
"whimsical organisms"
A little fusion of poetry and science:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/06/mary-e-harrington-science-poetry/
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/06/mary-e-harrington-science-poetry/
Thursday, July 5, 2012
About the media's influence...
One of my favorite webcomics is PhD Comics, created by Jorge Cham, who spends half of his time as a researcher at Caltech and the other half traveling the world, promoting his comics (quite an interesting career; I believe he spoke at Michigan last year, but I unfortunately found out too late). The comics depict the ups and downs of grad student life in hilarious ways, and having been involved in research throughout undergrad, I find it to be frightfully accurate. Talking today about the media's influence made me recall this amusing piece.
Here's a link to his most popular comics, some of which I will never tire: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/most_popular.php
Here's a link to his most popular comics, some of which I will never tire: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/most_popular.php
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
A Map of a Literary Genre
Having somewhat narrowed my topic, I thought I'd share this amazing map not only because it's fascinating, but also to try and show you the exact moment in the history of speculative fiction on which I'll be focusing my thesis. The name of the artist who drew the map is Ward Shelley, and he drew it in 2009. I'd personally call it a History of Speculative Fiction, as it includes the incipient Fantasy and Horror genres in its focus on SF.
The History of Science Fiction
The main obstacle I've encountered so far in my research has been the fact that I'm interested in basically every genre, sub-genre, and title featured in this graphic, plus some. But having focused my project on early lunar travel narratives, I can orient myself on the map in the upper left corner near "Pre-Scientific Imagination" - some of the texts on my reading list appear there, such as Johannes Kepler's "Somnium," Francis Godwin's "The Man in the Moon," Cyrano de Bergerac's "Empires of the Moon," and Margaret Cavendish's "The Blazing World."
I find this map to be awesome not only because of the impressive graphic design (I wonder how many drafts it took the artist to produce the final image), but also because of the level of informational detail the graphic goes into. Some may find it overwhelming, and frankly, I'm among them, but I see this complexity as a positive thing, a testament to how organic a literary genre can be as it evolves over time and why genres as a phenomenon are worthy of study.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Randomness + Procrastination --> Korean Hip Hop Culture Facebook Phenomena
I currently have the book "The Rhetoric of Soft Power" sitting on my lap, since I was about to begin transcribing the notes I took in it with sticky notes last night to my Evernote files. However, I am unsurprisingly on Facebook and news about the release of a new album by one of my favorite Korean hip hop artists, Beenzino, has been flooding my news feed. I am definitely frustrated waiting for someone to illegally upload it so I can listen to it (since, as a non-citizen, I can't buy Korean mp3s online legally and I'd have to have a friend buy the physical CD for me from Korea which would take at least a month...so annoying). But rather than complain more, I'm just going to productively procrastinate and get some free-flow writing out there, by discussing a really interesting phenomenon in the online Korean hip hop scene.
Koreans (at least those who have been in Korea all their life, i.e. excluding international students) generally began adopting Facebook only last summer. Before, they had used a Korean SNS website called Cyworld. When Korean hip hop artists first began using Facebook, even though they are semi-famous, they added people to their personal accounts -- my suspicion is because they didn't know about the Fan Page feature. This resulted in many of them getting thousands of friends who are mainly just fans. (More recently, these artists have made traditional Fan Pages, but they still add/keep friends on their personal pages, too.) This has encouraged very close fan-artist relations in the Korean hip hop scene, and fans are very eager to support their favorite artists.
In particular, screen capture technology combined with tagging technology has resulted in a new fan phenomenon. Before an album comes out, fans will post the album cover as a picture on their page, and tag the artist in the photo, so the artist is aware that the fan is supporting them. Then, when the album has come out, fans will take screen captures of their smart phones, showing them in the middle of listening to the song. They then tag the artist in the screen capture. Here is what it ends up looking like on my News Feed:
It's also not just that a few fans do this.... a lot of fans do it. To show, I went to Beenzino's personal page, and looked at the photos of him tagged. This is what I found....
Yup. That's right. 45 tags of people supporting his new album. And I'm sure there are more to come. It's only been out for a few hours as of now.
The interesting point to all of this is that fans don't merely want to share their favorite artists to their friends, but they also want to prove their fandom and dedication by showing the artists exactly what they are doing to promote them. In addition to fans loyally spending money on going to concerts every weekend (which they do -- I saw it happen) and buying albums, they must now also VISIBLY show this support. Conspicuous consumption to be sure, but not only conspicuous consumption to prove their identity or status to their peers, but to the people creating the products to be consumed as well.
Traditionally, conspicuous consumption of name brands, for example, is to show status mainly to peers. "I wear Chanel and thus I am more sophisticated and wealthy to you." Of course, this is a big world, and the people at Chanel have no way of knowing that You wore their products. All they see is revenue.
However, the relative smallness of the Korean hip hop community and the adoption of Facebook has allowed for conspicuous consumption which serves to solidify social relations between artist and fan. It is no longer merely enough to enjoy the music. To be a TRUE fan, you must wear your support on your sleeve, both for your peers and the artists themselves.
_____
So yeah. This is a really interesting topic to me, because it personally relates to my life. I, too, have certainly taken advantage of the opportunity to tag my favorite artists in my posts. For me, it is mainly because I want them to know that I appreciate the music they make. But it may be different for Koreans who have more peers who like Korean hip hop, and more strict Confucian mores guiding them. I'm also interested in learning what the artists think of this, and if it even makes a difference in their opinion of their fans? Also, does the nature of hip hop encourage a greater or particular intensity of fandom?
Gosh..... I kind of want to make this into my thesis topic now since it's not so overwhelming compared to my other one. Hmmm.... we will see. ^^
Good studying to everyone..... and wish me luck that the album will come out on Youtube soon!!! hehehe I will post it for you to enjoy!
Lyndsey~~
 |
| The album cover which has been staring at me teasingly for the past week from my Facebook News Feed. |
If I read one more comment/status saying "Are you guys listening to 2 4 : 2 6 right now??" I'm gonna punch someone.
Anyways....... ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ (<-- 'hehehe' in Korean)
The main story:
Koreans (at least those who have been in Korea all their life, i.e. excluding international students) generally began adopting Facebook only last summer. Before, they had used a Korean SNS website called Cyworld. When Korean hip hop artists first began using Facebook, even though they are semi-famous, they added people to their personal accounts -- my suspicion is because they didn't know about the Fan Page feature. This resulted in many of them getting thousands of friends who are mainly just fans. (More recently, these artists have made traditional Fan Pages, but they still add/keep friends on their personal pages, too.) This has encouraged very close fan-artist relations in the Korean hip hop scene, and fans are very eager to support their favorite artists.
In particular, screen capture technology combined with tagging technology has resulted in a new fan phenomenon. Before an album comes out, fans will post the album cover as a picture on their page, and tag the artist in the photo, so the artist is aware that the fan is supporting them. Then, when the album has come out, fans will take screen captures of their smart phones, showing them in the middle of listening to the song. They then tag the artist in the screen capture. Here is what it ends up looking like on my News Feed:
 |
| Comments like this don't make me any less excited and anxious to listen to it!!!! But is it exaggeration to impress the artist? Who knows.... It's Beenzino though, bound to be dope! |
It's also not just that a few fans do this.... a lot of fans do it. To show, I went to Beenzino's personal page, and looked at the photos of him tagged. This is what I found....
Yup. That's right. 45 tags of people supporting his new album. And I'm sure there are more to come. It's only been out for a few hours as of now.
The interesting point to all of this is that fans don't merely want to share their favorite artists to their friends, but they also want to prove their fandom and dedication by showing the artists exactly what they are doing to promote them. In addition to fans loyally spending money on going to concerts every weekend (which they do -- I saw it happen) and buying albums, they must now also VISIBLY show this support. Conspicuous consumption to be sure, but not only conspicuous consumption to prove their identity or status to their peers, but to the people creating the products to be consumed as well.
Traditionally, conspicuous consumption of name brands, for example, is to show status mainly to peers. "I wear Chanel and thus I am more sophisticated and wealthy to you." Of course, this is a big world, and the people at Chanel have no way of knowing that You wore their products. All they see is revenue.
However, the relative smallness of the Korean hip hop community and the adoption of Facebook has allowed for conspicuous consumption which serves to solidify social relations between artist and fan. It is no longer merely enough to enjoy the music. To be a TRUE fan, you must wear your support on your sleeve, both for your peers and the artists themselves.
_____
So yeah. This is a really interesting topic to me, because it personally relates to my life. I, too, have certainly taken advantage of the opportunity to tag my favorite artists in my posts. For me, it is mainly because I want them to know that I appreciate the music they make. But it may be different for Koreans who have more peers who like Korean hip hop, and more strict Confucian mores guiding them. I'm also interested in learning what the artists think of this, and if it even makes a difference in their opinion of their fans? Also, does the nature of hip hop encourage a greater or particular intensity of fandom?
Gosh..... I kind of want to make this into my thesis topic now since it's not so overwhelming compared to my other one. Hmmm.... we will see. ^^
Good studying to everyone..... and wish me luck that the album will come out on Youtube soon!!! hehehe I will post it for you to enjoy!
Lyndsey~~
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