My motivation behind this app is due to the fact that most musicians are limited with playing with people they already know or that that they live in close proximity to. This method does not necessarily lead to the most cohesive and successful work relationships. This app intends to change that. It will analyze each users music profile and suggest musicians that have the same musical taste or that could possibly work together well as a duo or in a band format. I would call my site MusicMatch.com. I am drawing the majority of my inspiration from websites like Soundcloud.com, Match.com and traditional social media websites like Facebook.
Throughout the course of this semester, I will be constructing a website that will showcase my work as a sound effect artist. This craft is known as Foley, named after Jack Foley a revolutionary sound effect artist from the 1930’s. In today’s age, as a Foley artist it is essential to have some sort of portfolio to display your abilities to future employers. Most people however, lack a personal website to do so. I intend to take full advantage of this opportunity by placing my Foley work online for the world to see.
Additionally, my website will also serve as a place where people can send me their work that they need to be matched with Foley. Ideally, a user could request for one particular sound, or send me their an entire project. In doing so. I hope to land a few job opportunities that I would not have had otherwise.
As Foley artist, I know that there is an almost infinite spectrum of sounds that are needed for movies, television shows and video games. Because of this, I will create eight separate categories for specific sounds and expand upon each category as the website evolves. The categories I plan on including are; weaponry, footsteps, mechanical sounds, human noises, weather, conceptual, comical, body damage.
As far as the layout and design of my website goes, I intend to make my website as simplistic and pleasing to the eyes as possible. I picture my website being primarily based off of just one page. I will have a banner at the top filled with a mission statement and my contact info. Below that I will include eight large boxes filled with a distinct color, image and title displaying each of my sound categories. By placing all of my sounds inside these categories within separate pages, I hope to create a clutter free homepage and website that utilizes as much white space as possible.
I want my website to have a very professional feel to it. However, I would like visitors to get the sense that I am a creative soul who does not always stick to formalities. With this in mind, my font choice is very important. I think it is best if I try to find a font style that utilizes curves and has few hard edges or lines. Yet, I want to completely avoid a cartoonish type feeling.
In the past few weeks I have come across a few website have undoubtedly influenced my plans for the design of my website. For example, the site audionetwork.com is an existing sound library that is extremely minimalistic. The use of whitespace is apparent and there are only two colors throughout the whole website. Additionally, this site chose to separate their sound into 15 separate sound categories. Another influential website to the design of my own is pixelumbrella.com. This site is a portfolio for a web designer and is exactly how intend to make my portfolio. The Third site I would like to mention is, Typographica.org. They’re banner is something that I’d like to emulate. It grabs the eyes right away.
http://www.audionetwork.com/sound-effects
http://www.pixelumbrella.com/
http://typographica.org/
For the most part, media users are blind to the fact that media companies exploit them. This statement holds true even when users are proactively using media to accomplish something that would have been thought impossible otherwise.
When a team of scientists attempts to collaborate with researchers on the other side of the globe, chances are that they are communicating through a well-established media company such as Skype. From an inside perspective, Skype is seen as a nothing more than a tool used to accomplish the task at hand. However, from an outside perspective these scientists are succumbing to Skype simply because it’s owner, Microsoft has enough money to make it the most readily available resource. In reality there are plenty of alternative options when it comes to selecting video conferencing software; Companies such as, ooVoo, Tinychat and Voxox come to mind. Skype is effectively exploiting it’s users because it has a stranglehold on the rest of the competition.
Unfortunately, the exploitation goes even further in the form of data mining. Thanks to Google and other analytic tools, almost everything that is searched, typed or clicked into search engines like Google or social media sites such as Facebook is stored in a database and sold to advertising companies. The result of this is ‘personalized’ ads on your Facebook account as well as coupons being sent to your email account and front door. Consequently, media users may feel like they are using the Internet and media applications free of charge. However, in reality I believe we’ve been paying all along using our personal information as currency.
The same rationale can be applied across all forms of media. A great example would be YouTube. As one of the most frequently visited sites in the world, YouTube has undoubtedly proven to be the most effective way to spread videos online to as many people as possible. Even for those who do not upload videos or subscribe to different channels on YouTube, surfing through endless amounts of videos can elicit the feeling of being an active member in a community and cultural phenomenon
On one hand, this can be seen a great thing. By effectively pigeonholing the market, media users are almost forced to rely on the site as a resource to be heard and to listen in. In turn, this encourages a continuously growing community to use the site to spread a message to millions of people that it may not have reached otherwise.
On the other hand, I believe that beneath it all, data mining is running the operation, attempting to exploit it’s users to the fullest extent. In it’s early days, YouTube was seen as a free-haven for user-generated content, absent of any overbearing corporation. When Google bought out YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars in 2006, this all changed. Now everything you click on and watch is stored in a database, resulting in ads before videos and ‘recommended videos’ for one to watch afterward.
In short, users who take advantage of media technologies are indeed being active. However, many media users unknowingly give up their personal information or provide free advertising, even when actively using the software to it’s fullest extent. Make no mistake, media corporations are aiming to exploit its users at every turn in the road.
In terms of the spectrum of convergence culture players, I would consider myself primarily a user. Jenkins (2006) argues on his personal site that media technologies give the audience the necessary tools to “achieve, annotate, appropriate and recirculate content.” This change has effectively given the audience the ability to become the user as well. Primarily, I spend the majority of my time using the Internet and mobile technology admiring the work of others. For instance, I am much more inclined to read someone’s blog than I am to post a blog of my own. The same can be said about videos and memes as well. The only media technology that I would consider myself an active producer of content would be Instagram. Yet, the bulk of my time spent on this application is spent genuinely admiring talent works of others (rather than fallow the daily squabbles of my old high school friends.)
Generally speaking, I do not interact with fan communities over the Internet. The only exception being when I was in middle school and the TV series, “Lost” was at it’s peak. This was a time when everyone had his or her own theory on what was actually happening on this fictional island. With the help of the Internet, I naturally gravitated toward a “Lost” fan site where you could post theories and comment of others. Even though I never participated in an online fan clubs afterwards, I would say confidentially that being a somewhat active member of the fansite, I felt a level of involvement that I have not gotten from a television series since.
Once my degree certifies me as a full-fledged media practitioner, I intent to always be mindful of the influential power that tech-savvy users have on a product a the message behind it. However, Shefrin, (2004) states, “consumers may believe that they are operating with free choice when, in fact, they are generally unable to change any of the cultural products being offered.” This statement held much more truth before the days of the Internet. Nowadays, the producer may still be in control of what content is offered to the audience, but they are in no control whatsoever of how that message transforms once it is passed along the Internet by tech-savvy users. Additionally, Andrejevic (2011) points out that the tech-savvy users have the resources and ability to “influence media producers” by building communities around the brand. Products must be tailored to encourage Internet interaction among the tech-savvy users in the audience. Keeping this in mind will be vital for my career once it develops.
Work Cited
Andrejevic, M. (2011, September). The Work that Affective Economics Does. Cultural Studies, Vol. 25.
Jenkins, H. (2006, June 19). Welcome to Convergence Culture.
Shefrin, E. (2004, September). Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Participatory Fandom: Mapping New Congruencies between the Internet and Media Entertainment Culture. Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol, 21.
RSS Feed