Can't you just SMELL the ethnography?

This makes me SO excited! I've often wanted a kind of scratch-and-sniff ethnography. If we can use film/photos/sound recordings in ethnographic representation, then why not use smell as well? My new goal in life: write the first web-based monograph that uses smell along with video and audio-- though I might have to wait a decade...


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From the BBC website:
Wednesday, 28 February 2007, 11:57 GMT

'Fragrant future beckons for web'

Many South Koreans are serious video game players
Within a decade the net will be able to deliver smells as fast as it does data, predicts a report.

The forecast came in a wide-ranging survey produced by the South Korean government to find out what consumers will want from future technologies.

[...]

The long-range predictions in the survey came from interviews carried out with about 3,500 technology experts in South Korea.

The country has long been known for its dedication to hi-tech.

Net-using citizens enjoy some of the highest speed broadband connections in the world, widespread high-speed mobile networks and the country's education system makes extensive use of the net to teach and track pupils' progress.

The hi-tech panel behind the report believed that, by 2015, the net will be used to deliver data about smells to a fragrance cartridge sitting next to a computer or other device accessing the net. [...]


for the full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6404067.stm

Public service announcement

This could be you in June...


OK so probably you'll be somewhere exotic working on the final project but if you're in the UK you could be getting touch with nature alongside 1,000s of others at the archetypal British festival - Glastonbury. But only if you register by this wed (this isn't buying a ticket, its just registering your interest) www.glastonburyregistration.co.uk

...yesterday's visit to the Cafe Insomnia

...in all these months that the i've been drinking cafe-au-lait at the Cafe Muse, I've never visited the little place nearby...I've always been put off by the clientele and decor but also the name...The Cafe Insomnia. It doesn't bode well. Perhaps on occasion I've been tempted to drop in while passing the Cafe Insomnia...but I never ventured past the yellow door and I've always been frightened by the sounds of radical bonhomie that spills out into the streets.

That all changed yesterday when I saw an old friend in there...Ivor...who invited me in. For the past five years Ivor has been living in his current place, a small flat on th 3rd floor of a house in S**** Ma[d]chester. Four different people have ended up living in the room below. Sometimes in the middle of the night he presses his head to the floorboards to hear them s-s-snore. Sometimes early in the morning, before the trains and traffic interrupt his silent reverie, he also presses his head to the pillow just to hear the blood pound in his head. It reminds him of the many things that are part of him, that are found just under the veneer of his skin but has never seen. In some odd, disengaged and degraded way it also reminds Ivor that he's alive.

Ivor introduced me to Zotovitch...a regular habitue at the Cafe Insomnia...who it transpires is Le Rabelais supermarket's vice-president. He talks hard about the need for softening up Arabs for the market and advocates a permanent state of war. When asked about peace the answer cannot be found in his flabby words and rhetoric...nor in his overbearing but perhaps once handsome face. He desperately needs some exercise...for here is a man carved out of the worst type of lard (the sort that lies exactly halfway between piety and a bistro lifestyle) and yet he urges leaner and fitter men into war. Zotovitch's appetite for war would change the minute he was made to run round the training field, thus breaking him many weeks before any actual combat. Ultimately he requires a regime change from pate de fois gras to salad and climbing stairs. That or a change of menu is in order down at the Cafe Insomnia...

American Fair Use law

Hey. The Americans among us should find this interesting. The documentary filmmakers' statement of best practices in fair use can be found here or by following the links in the first article.

Cute with Chris

This man has a web-based show. It is a short-form series, updated twice a week, that relies on pictures of cute animals, silly letters from teenage girls, and strong sense of irony. Which is to say it is highly entertaining and outside of the view of the "mainstream" "audience." The above episode holds some relevance to what we've been learning about working in TV in ED2, and it shows what sorts of things are possible outside of that model. These are very very different from the types of films we make, but I think there is potential in short-form series that don't cost a lot of money to make and are consumed more like web-comics than traditional film or television. Admittedly, I have no idea where this man gets his money and he isn't travelling anywhere, so the types of documentary work in this medium would be limited in that sense. Still, I think this is an interesting prospect for people staying close to home.

Weird america is an example of a podcast that is more documentary based, has more visible advertising and is slightly more mobile in its perview. Again, it is pertty limited in terms of what we are doing, but RSS subscriptions and itunes allows these episodes to be directly delivered to your computer or email. It is still pretty light, but the limitations inherent in this form of distribution are very different from those in television.

Computer Drawing

I want to to play.

Sunday Funday

Matt & Phred's 8pm...see you there!