Pictures for presentation

Rajesh’s room – interior

Rajesh’ house

 

New Media and the Revolutions we’ve all heard of

Among the twenty explanations BBC’s Paul Mason lists as ‘’reasons why it (political upheavals, revolutions and the like) is kicking off everywhere’’, there is one that can very well sum up his and the more general opinion on the rather buzzing matter that is the sudden rise and domino-like propagation of revolutions throughout all those places you’ve already heard of. He says:

“They all seem to know each other: not only is the network more powerful than the hierarchy – but the ad-hoc network has become easier to form. So if you “follow” somebody from the UCL occupation on Twitter, as I have done, you can easily run into a radical blogger from Egypt, or a lecturer in peaceful resistance in California who mainly does work on Burma so then there are the Burmese tweets to follow. During the early 20th century people would ride hanging on the undersides of train carriages across borders just to make links like these.” (Mason; BBC News, 2011)

‘Hanging on the undersides of train carriages’ seem quite suspiciously like an allegory for the ways in which aspired revolutionaries of yesteryears might have or had to have gone about their business. The progressive state of technology and its accessibility today seem to have stifled the cynics who, in the past, may have had reasons to believe that the unrelentingly backward-oriented mind sets of certain parties in certain places – with certain fingers in certain pies – would never be able to or even want to catch up with the standard of advancements that science and technology was at then only beginning to offer. ‘Technology’ and all of which that rather sophisticated word entails have not only provided new platforms and tracks for the revolutionary train to permeate geographical borders. It has worked to spread messages and awareness about dirty fingers, dirty pies and suspicious politics to such large sums of the public to a point where ideas of uprisings and upheavals need not lay hidden under the likes of train carriages any longer.

All this reminds me of my wonderful country Malaysia, which of course loves boasting its great food and great culture, but are always awfully shy when it comes to pointing out how distressed its people are with their government. I wrote a paper about two years ago now on authoritarianism or rather what scholars like to specify as ‘soft-authoritarianism’ in Malaysia. As some may already know, Malaysia is one of those countries who gather no shame in blatantly censoring and even repressing the much loved freedom of speech. (This is of course my own opinion derived from extensive research on the matter.) I will not go into that here simply because I wouldn’t know where to stop (or begin). But the reason for bringing this up here is because I think it is essential that we remember to not only look at Egypt and Tunisia and Libya in the event that we feel compelled to reappraise the impact of technology on our relationship with politics. It is rather sad that in many cases today, the retardation of socio-political development seem to persevere despite the fact that many of those countries pay so much time and effort to be on par with all the tremendous advancements our beloved digital age seem to churn out time and time again.

 

Postcard for A Better World

Digitale made for film class. Meant to be ’emotional’ – with still images and narration. I couldn decide if i should put music in the end. But the one i decided to submit was without music. Here it is.

 

 

with music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0f3Ym49oP4

 

How live telecasts framed an experience; Or how I learnt to love the experience that framed me

I suppose there is little need to speculate how much everyone hates the thought of being framed, especially when we don’t realize that we are. It was about 8pm on a Saturday night when I was thinking of an example to use here – a media event that works to frame our entire selves, mentally and physically, or at least our perceptions of the physicalities which we are associated with. It is perhaps fortunate that in some cases our experiences tend to frame the ways in which we think about time and space. As I said, it was about 8pm on a Saturday night. So naturally, images of the English Premier League and its crazy followers back home came up to fit themselves in my head.

In Malaysia, almost every Saturday or Sunday night would either be a night out somewhere or a night out to watch a soccer game. One could find at least four or five places (in any small town) screening the live telecast of the English Premier League (EPL), all of which will be packed with loyal supporters of those few biggest footballing clubs in the world (which of course function on various funding from multinational businesses and devoted international fan bases). This ‘ritual’ takes place on a regular basis, week in week out, despite the fact that almost every household in the country has satellite TV that broadcasts these matches. The consensus appears to be that there is much more pleasure and excitement in crowding around a big projected screen with fellow fans of the game cheering and jeering together than sitting alone in the confines of one’s own living room. As it turns out, it is not JUST about watching a live telecast, it is about recreating the entire atmosphere, thousands of miles away from where the event is really happening. The entire set up becomes a contributing factor to the process of reframing that affects not only the emotional state of its viewers but also their entire sense of space. The need to create the feel of ‘being there’ is not felt or deliberated. Instead there is an automatic and almost natural reframing of people, places and their meanings. They cheer and jeer, scream profanities and sing their favourite club’s theme songs as if they were not in front of an extra-large piece of white canvas but in the stadium itself. The amplified sounds of the realities around the pitch, resounding with those chants of its immersed viewership half-way across the world, do little to stifle the state of trance. Then there are the in-game commentary and weekly coverage of news surrounding the lives of the athletes that draw viewers even deeper into that space, which in reality is so far off from their own locales.

Now, writing this in Australia about six months since I watched my last EPL game in Malaysia, I get the feeling that my entire experience of watching football, even the memory of that experience is a framed vivid explosion of events, people and places. I usually despise the idea of being framed by the media. But this, I think I can do with.