Week 4 - Is it cool to be cool? I'm confused?!

ok so today were thinking about the idea of being 'cool' and what the definition of cool means?

Even though exploring different variations of this word, i find that there is no exact meaning for it. Everything in life seems to have to have a meaning behind it. For example any action any piece of drama or anything that happens today must have a reasone behind why it exists and what the hidden messages are and what makes it 'cool' or 'un-cool' to its target audience.

For example looking at the continuing war in Iraq we can seperate ourselves intotwo different opinions, being that the war politically is incorrect and thousands of soldiers are dying, the native people of Iraq are suffering and its all a race to gain possession of the oil reserves out there! negatively this is 'un-cool' and most people would agree in saying that.

Would you agree to these videos-

Cool

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMcHHN5PWtQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocsysYBeFAU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV_16PdWnBo


However some people would look at it seeing the bloodshed and violence being used with explosions and tanks missiles and guns etc and this can be seen as 'cool'.

Within the video from south park we see that schools use the word 'cool' to segregate groups of people from others and can be used to describe people.

I cant really say any more about this word as there are so many different meanings for it depending on the person and context its used in.

Feel free to let me know what you think is cool either by the meaning of the word to you or to what in general do you classify as cool e.g- the wii, guns etc.

my first video blog

week 3 - old school techno

ok so this week we looked at older methods of virtuality and i would have to include the video that ian (my tutor) posted of the film Videodrome, which is really trippy and funny as its from the 70's or 80's i think and has the most obscure view on virtuality within televisions. Looking back at the older technologies it always fascinates me as i think in the last 20 years technology grows so fast that previous predictions of what the future will hold is useless and even now we could think we are stupid in the future because when i get older and have children etc I will look back and be amazed at how crap i pods and laptops were way back when ha ha!

week 2 - intermediality (theatre and virtuality)

This is really intersting as intermediality is cool in my books as i have seen a production by Forkbeard Fantasy - Invisible Bonfires and it was theatre but with the incorporation of media, well a heavily incorporated amount of media. The play was amazing and the usage of 3d projections and live band with great music to accompany the play made it so much more appealling and fresh in comparision to standard theatre

I found this site which helps explain intermediacy
http://www.bodiescapes.de/site/intermediality.htm

Also check out Forkbeard Fantasy's page!
http://www.forkbeardfantasy.co.uk/

week 1 - youtube, facebook, matrix

so for this first week starting to look at something very prominent and ever growing in society is facebook! This website causes a lot of controversy over its content and the idea behind it is simple. Its pretty much like a method of advertising who you are or making a stand to say this is me and this is what people think of me and who i know etc. its become pretty huge now and its almost second to emailing someone or the new method of dating. i myself have a facebook and find it fun and a cool way to look at friends or family past and present, but i know of some people who have become facebook 'stalkers' and are constantly surfing facebook to check other people rather than their own. Also you notice that some people are always adding pictures of what they are doing and everytime you log on it tells you what they have done on their page! in simple i would say i like it but has wierd and mysterious powers over some people!

Youtube talking about that i love youtube and is fun to actually view tonnes of random videos of interest.