Yesterday my little brother sent me photos from a little book that I owned when I was little. One page of the book started with "Good webpages:". After seeing that photo I remembered that I used to make lists of webpages in real life. I thought that if I will save them in that way that they will stay forever. I guess I didn't trust computers, I thought that everything could just disappear and then what? I wonder if anyone did the same when started using internet?
Now there's almost all my life in the computer. I have grown into trusting it. I believe that new generation who has never experienced not having a computer will never do such a thing as writing something down like that. Nowadays there's cloud.
Remembered an episode ''San Junipero'' of a TV show Black Mirror where dying people can be uploaded to the cloud and live there forever.
Everything has changed so radically in such a short time. I wonder what the future will be like. Let's just buckle up and see. It seems a bit scary if you think about it that we treat devices humanly - trusting them or not trusting them.
I’ve been listening to hip-hop seriously for about five years now. It is a genre that is lead by the men mostly. That's why it is super exciting to follow how women grow in the hip-hop and to discover some new artists. In 2014 was the first time that I heard something of Princess Nokia. After two years of almost silence she released an EP ‘1992’, later she added 8 more tracks and released it as an album called ‘1992 Deluxe’. One of its greatest tracks is ‘Brujas’.
I chose this video for its strong values, appealing aesthetics and uniqueness plus I enjoy the song. If you follow Princess Nokia you can see that ancestors play a huge role in hers everyday life - she prays, do rituals and educate herself to become stronger and to improve the well-being. In the concerts and interviews she reaches out to young females and encourage them to do what they want, speak up, be in peace with themselves and achieve goals. For me as a young female, who listens to hip-hop, thinks that it is important to explore ancestors and celebrates uniqueness this video and the song itself speaks to me strongly. Below I will try to dig deep about the meaning of the video.
What you hear?
Yemoja
In the beginning you can hear a song from the Yoruba religion in honor Yemoja – African Goddess of the Ocean and the patron deity of pregnant women. “Yemoja is notably addressed as mother of all the gods in the Yoruba pantheon, in which over three hundred gods and goddesses abound.” “In her path of Okutti she is the queen of witches carrying within her deep and dark secrets.”
According to this“The Supreme Witch, known more colloquially as The Supreme, is a worldwide status recognized among the witches descended from the Salem Witch Trials. While most witches possess only a handful of inherent supernatural gifts, the Supreme is said to embody multiple, if not all.”
[Verse 1:]
We is them ghetto witches
Speaking in tongue bitches
She is referring to being a mysterious and magical women with her other women fellows from the ghetto.
Sage on the door is used for keeping the bad energy out and purify all who enter. “Fall on the floor” as I understand is meant that the person who just entered had a lot of bad energy that changed so radically so it caused the person to faint.
Princess Nokia here is saying that she with fellows are more powerful than “you”. After that she's describing the characteristics of girls from the ghetto. “North, East, West, South” is a reference to a ritual – Calling the Quarters.
An orisha is a spirit who reflects one of the manifestations of the supreme divinity in Yoruba religion. “Alter” is ”a pseudonym of an internet forum user's primary account. By saying “got coins on the counter” she could mean that she is ready for the next that's coming.
In this verse she is proudly stating her heritage. The roots are from Africa, but after Atlantic slave trade her ancestors was brought to America. She proudly declares hers Afro-Latina background and states that being a witch has been always in her blood.
She has people around her with similar view that are like relatives to her. Coven is a group or gathering of witches who meet regularly and Princess Nokia is in the lead of it. Witches usually have the power to shape-shift into different animals. By saying that “you don't know who you loving” she knows how to manipulate very well.
“Better light you a candle; I heard the nighttime was black” By this she could mean that you should look up to her, how she is doing it, she can lead you in the bad times. Also maybe it is a reference to the saying “better to light one candle than to curse the darkness” which means “In the face of bad times or hopelessness, it is more worthwhile to do some good, however small, in response than to complain about the situation.”
If “you” will not be careful about how to behave, Princess Nokia will be your trouble.
To cast a circle in white is a reference to “casting a circle of protection is a way for Wiccans to protect themselves during magick work. It creates a high-energy space where you can safely carry out your magick, without the interference of any negative or harmful entities that might otherwise be attracted to your metaphysical energies during rituals and spell casting.” Princess Nokia can defeat anyone's desire to hurt. Nothing can stand in a way of her, because she is really strong and powerful.
“The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of South America and of the Caribbean.” The lines again highlights that a lot of culture and rituals are taken from hers heritage from Africa and one should do more research. She demands that her's heritage needs to be respected.
What you see?
In the beginning you can see the Yemoja – African Goddess of the Ocean and the patron deity of pregnant women standing in the water. It is not possible to see hers face, I believe it is that way to create more mysterious and magical effect that she is not human like, but something more.
Around the goddess are four women – four witches all dressed in white, because the colours of Yemoja are blue and white. Looks like they are praying to the goddess for their well-being.
The second place of the video is in the nature. You can see some scenes with women doing rituals like casting spells in the nature, using cards and other stuff.
The third place that is shown is in the ghetto where all of them have kinda like schoolgirl outfits – more regular.
After that we are back in the nature, but now we can see Oshun – “a Nigerian Yoruba deity of the river and freshwater, luxury and pleasure, sexuality and fertility, and beauty and love. She is connected to destiny and divination.”
Oshun
Women dressed all white are bringing yellow flowers to her to show her theirs appreciation. Yellow flowers are Oshun's favourite flowers.
Now women are dressed in traditional Taino clothing. “TaÃno people were among the indigenous people of the Caribbean. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of Cuba, Trinidad, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Puerto Rico.” Princess Nokia is a Puerto Rican.
Scenes of different women holding a snake and a little girl being around. I believe that it has something to do with snake symbolizing rebirth, but I'm not sure, because I couldn't find exact info about Taino tribe's meaning. “Snake Spirit has divergent symbolism in Native American tribes ranging from a huge monster that swallowed people in one gulp to the far more positive meaning of fertility (Pueblos) and rebirth (Ojibwa). One story from the Hopi tribe tells us of a winged Snake that communicates with the Earth Element. To honor this Spirit they have an annual dance that offers Snakes to the serpent, making prayers for the health and well-being of the tribe. Here and in several other North American tribes, Sneak is a rain-bringer.”
Then there's a scene where three women are braiding hair to the fourth one at the same time dressed all in white again. When they are in white they are representing Yoruba culture in which taking care of women hair takes a great role.
Since Yemoja is also a goddess of fertility the scene where all the women are soaking the dress in the water that could mean that they are praying for their own fertility and well being.
Then there’s a couple of scenes of Princess Nokia dancing and playing hand games with sisters.
Scene of magically appearing in different place in the ghetto. This is an example of one of the seven magical abilities that a witch can have known as "The Seven Wonders". One of them is Transmutation, it’s “the magical ability to move instantaneously from one place to another without physically occupying the space in between.”
It was quite tricky to wrap my head around the ending.
At the end of the video there can be seen two new women, one of them has horns. The meaning of horns could represent masculinity. In modern Pagan Witchcraft movement also known as Wiccathere is a Horned God which “is viewed as the masculine side of divinity, being both equal and opposite to the Goddess. (..) For Wiccans, the Horned God is "the personification of the life force energy in animals and the wild" and is associated with the wilderness, virility and the hunt. (..) In traditional Wicca, the Horned God and the Goddess are seen as equal and opposite in gender polarity. However, in some of the newer traditions of Wicca, and especially those influenced by feminist ideology, there is more emphasis on the Goddess, and consequently the symbolism of the Horned God is less developed than that of the Goddess.” Since the artist is all about female power it could mean that woman with the horns represent woman being powerful and having it all.
In the last scene you can see previous sisters now dressed all black with two new women disappearing in the foggy night. I believe that it could mean that they are going for a hunt for those who misbehaved.
Yesterday I heard a knock on my door. Thought that it was my friend since I am not from Tampere and nobody here knows where I live, except the friend who's also an exchange student from Latvia. Anyways, after opening the doors I saw two young ladies. They greeted me and asked if I have time. I said yes. The lady asked if I believe that there can be good news also besides all the bad news that are everywhere. I got confused and asked what did she mean. Then she pulled out her phone and said that she will show me just a one minute long video. See the video below.
After the watching it I explained to her my position towards the video and religion in general. Didn't wanted to waste my time much more on the conversation. Suggested to both of them to watch "HyperNormalisation" by Adam Curtis and wished a good day. She said to me that in case I have some questions that I can visit a site that she showed me on the back of the booklet. Both of them went to the next door.
I felt very amused about the video.
The visual side to it consists of classical royalty-free stock footage videos as well as the soundtrack. It is nothing too original, specific or artsy to please everyone. It's polite. For me personally it doesn't work. These kind of videos seem very basic and fake, they disaffect me in the first three seconds.
If we think of informational videos that every one of them shouldn't be abstract and artsy. Some videos are there just to simply deliver the message. Still you can do that without being banal and misinforming. It all depends on the auditory, goals, budget and what kind of self image authors of the video are trying to make.
What irritates me most about the video that it just yells without any facts. Okay, yes, some bad footage is used in the beginning, but what is happening there? From where is it taken? After switching to the Bible part, it seems that they are suggesting not to dig deeper in what is actually happening if it contains suffering and just open the Bible and get lost in it, to concentrate only on the "most important" stuff (what's the meaning of the life etc.). And I thought why it is like that? It's because this Bible video is not an informational video it is a commercial that's why it lacks facts. It is just a trap for the viewer. I think that this commercial is effective if we think of the certain auditory it is trying to reach. According to the video - people who would not prefer to think too much, everything is spoon-fed to them.
If we look at their webpage we can see that they are using all kinds of media - books, magazines, videos, music, brochures, photos, internet. From this I can conclude that their goal is simple - to reach as most people as possible. They are laying out for you to the maximum, that makes them seem not desirable to me. The game is weak. Maybe they should start getting into the theory of gamification and try to put it into practice, hahaha. "Download this AR app and go out to meet all the personas from the Bible to solve the big puzzle!" Ding ding ding!
"Bad news is everywhere." We have a solution!!! "Good news from God." This simple concept reminds me of silly TV commercials about household products – infomercials.
There's a lot of parodies about the format of infomercials. "Cinco Pasta Bear" by comedians Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim is one good example.
After the Jehovah's Witnesses went away I thought: "Since I am not going into the website that they gave me, I expect them to not watch the movie. It was all a waste of time for all of us." Ha! Turns out I opened the website after all to find the video for this post. But I didn't do that to find some "good" news, so I was right about myself. Maybe the same as me guided by different reason they will watch the movie eventually.
Tonight while resting and watching TED talks I stumbled upon a talk "How one tweet can ruin your life" by Jon Ronson. Talk is about one sarcastic joke in Twitter by a women and how it turned her life upside down. I suggest you to really watch it. If only over your dead body then at least read the quotes from the talk below.
"Twitter is basically a mutual approval machine. We surround ourselves with people who feel the same way we do, and we approve each-other, and that's a really good feeling. And if somebody gets in a way we screen them out. And do you know what that's the opposite of? It's the opposite of democracy."
"Maybe there's two types of people in the world: those people who favour humans over ideology, and those people who favour ideology over humans. I favour humans over ideology, but right now the ideologues are winning, and they're creating a stage for constant artificial high dramas where everybody's either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain, even though we know that's not true about our fellow humans. What's true is that we are clever and stupid; what's true is that we are grey areas. The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people, but now we are creating a surveillance society, where the smartest way to survive is to go back being voiceless. Let's not do that."
"My friend Adam Curtis says that maybe the internet is like a John Carpenter movie from the 1980s, when eventually everyone will start screaming at each other and shooting each other, and then eventually everybody would flee to somewhere safer, and I am starting to think of that as a really nice option."
So, if I have to choose one game and how it works as a story I'd like to highlight a game called "The Stanley Parable", because of it's uniqueness. If I think of a video game, the first thing that comes in my mind is being able to run, jump, shoot, interact with the environment in different ways. What I find very interesting about "The Stanley Parable" is that there's a world – an office, a main character – Stanley, you can walk around, open doors, press something, but everything makes sense only, because of the voice of the narrator.
The narrator is what creates a story as you go as Stanley in different places. It starts with the description of the main character and what is going on that point, what has just happened (introduction + problem), then you can start to move around and explore while hearing the voice of the narrator who sometimes tells what Stanley is thinking, what he should do or should not do. Start of the game is always the same, but ending is based on what choices did the player make.
Firstly, I find very interesting the choice making. Here's a good description about it: "The narrator continues the story, but when the player comes to an area where a choice is possible, the narrator will suggest which route Stanley will take. The player can opt to go against the narrator and perform the other action, forcing the narration to account for this new direction which may return the player back to the target path or create a new narration. For example, the first choice the player makes in the game is at a set of two open doors, with the narrator stating that Stanley chose the left door; the player can choose to follow this narration, which keeps the narrator's story on track, or may choose the right door, which makes the narrator annoyed and causes him to pressure the player to return to the 'proper' path. Because of this, much of the story is considered thought-provoking about the nature of choice and decisions." (From Wikipedia)
Structure of the game with all the possible paths
Secondly, I find breaking the fourth wall moments in the game very stirring. Sometimes the narrator reminds that this is only just a game and acknowledge that Stanley is being controlled by a player. Lastly, my favorite thing about this game is that only with the voice and minimal interactivity it is so hilarious, interesting and enjoyable. Here's one great example from the Demo version where you are asked to choose and press one button and after that narrator says to you "Did you know that 94% of all people who select that particular button are sexual predators?" I suggest you to try playing the Demo version of the game to get the taste. It will not take a lot of time plus it's free. If not then here's a video of the beginning of the game. !!!!!!! But, wait! There's more! Since I am talking about games. I feel the urge to mention the excellent, the genius, one and only - Pippin Bar and his most recent game "It is as if you were doing work". You can play it here.
This game is genius, because it is enough easy to continue playing it, enough hard to find it interesting and the best part is that the name of the game fits perfectly how you look from other people's point of view when you are playing it.
To be super honest I have to tell that writing about my experience in Mindtrek is really hard, because I don’t remember everything as good as I wish I would. Started writing this by staring into my notes from talks and looking through the photos of presentations. Wanted to write it the way it usually should be written - chronologically with quotes and my reflection of them. Decided to do the opposite. Below I will write down whatever pops into my mind in whatever order it does when I am trying to remember those two days in Mindtrek.
My friend had a badge with her name and under it as her’s occupation was written “Puppy Master”. It was official for two days. After first day at the Mindtrek after-party there was also one of the organizers who said that he remembers the Puppy Master and had a great laugh about it.
Before the Conference Opening the technical guy was putting on the presentation and I got annoyed that he was not using projector’s screen as a second screen. I checked out in the booklet the name of the event where I was sitting and read “International Technology Conference”. Looked up again to the screen and followed every step in the screen as the technical guy was opening Powerpoint in the computer. I had two following thoughts: 1) The little things; 2) Focus on the big picture.
I missed with my friend the beginning of the second day, because we got too much free drink coupons last night at the after-party.
The first big speech by the Huawei guy in the first day was really uplifting and I felt satisfaction from finding out the new term XR which is used to describe VR, AR and MR in one term.
I really enjoyed having free food for two days. Cakes. Coffees. Lunch. Sandwiches.
The health issue that I have heard about recently from VR headsets in public spaces are eye herpes. I saw that no one was cleaning and disinfecting the headsets in Mindtrek.
It was clear that Mindtrek was about selling your stuff, idea and so on, because nobody there was talking about what is bad about all these new technologies. It would be interesting to hear minuses for a change. I was curious about that.
There was this one talk about picking trees in the wood with a truck???? Okay, I cheated and looked up the name of the talk so it makes more sense. It was “Immersive Tech Reforms Machine Operator’s Work”. The start of the talk was a bit ?clumsy?, because the speaker did not speak fluently english and seemed stressed. The moment he cut to the chase about using VR and AR in his company’s work it all clicked and seemed super interesting. When you think of any of XR technology usually the first thing that pops into the mind is games, secondly art, thirdly apps/practical stuff like placing furniture in the room. Worker who needs to put trees in the truck and uses for that VR headset in his cabin was something new.
Also interesting was talk about Moomin Museum project. You can’t touch and see everything when you look at the real house in the museum. The solution for this problem was that they created a 3D model of Moomin House through which you can walk around using a tablet. They also are working on VR version. Reasons why this kind of system is still not in the museum is that: 1) One person experience; 2) Equipment pricy and it takes too lot of attention to look after it; 3) It is clever to wait for a cheaper and accessible version of VR to come out. The idea that popped into my mind was that it would be really cool to walk through this house using VR in real time so that the user can look through the windows and see the people as they are standing tall or looking inside the windows.
A big thing in Mindtrek was not only the Emerging Technologies, but also they talked a lot about Smart Cities. From one talk I remember an interesting fact about Copenhagen. People from public sector and private sector are shifting quite often and results are really good. This kind of model gives an insight from both perspectives to the well being of the city, makes city more flexible and fosters cooperation. Made me think about my hometown Liepaja where there is the same people working in the same positions for 20 years. And we are talking about being a Smart City?! Whatever that guy was selling, I bought it.
Hmmnnn, what else?
The second day one talk was about... *cheating*... “The Experience Age: Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality”. Raven Zachary was predicting that most likely the AR will survive and will be used the most in a couple of years.
After second day I was really exhausted. But the adventure time did not end just there. We took one man’s badge from recycling box to give it to our friend so all three of us could sneak in the opening party where we did not registered. Fun times. In the evening we went home and the adventure of Mindtrek ends there.
