FINAL TASK OF THE COURSE "MEDIA CHANNELS & PLATFORMS"

As the time goes by things grow, disappear and change. Every medium requires a specific format. Is it a book that requires pages with letters and us to see in order to get the message or a radio that requires sound and us to hear in order to use the medium. Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher, declares: “Medium is the message.” He explains that the message is not as important as the medium itself. Medium shapes us and with us the whole world as we know it.

With the rise of internet and technologies world has never been the same.

Lev Manovich in his book “The Language of the New Media” talks about the five principles that are crucial when questioning what is new media. First principle of the five is “Numerical Representation”, he explains: “Converting continuous data into a numerical representation is called digitization.” This process reminds me of live beings who need to adapt to the changes in environment in order to avoid the extinction.

I find very entertaining to see ancient things in the internet. My final work is about magic and how it is alive in the internet. The practical side to it is a satirical magick site of my own.

First things first, the meaning. When I was looking up stuff I came across two terms - “magic” and “magick”. Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), an English occultist, started using the term “magick” to differentiate what he was doing from stage magic. There’s some more reasons, but this is the most crucial one. As Urban Dictionary explains: “Magick is art of utilizing natural forces around us to bring about change. Magick is neutral, neither good, nor evil. The practitioner decides how they would like to focus this natural energy.” No matter the Crowley’s intentions still it’s possible to see people using the term “magic” more commonly.  

“Magic usually refers to:

• Magic (paranormal), the use of paranormal methods to manipulate natural forces
• Magic (illusion), the art of appearing to perform supernatural feats
• Magic in fiction, the genre of fiction that uses supernatural elements as a theme”

“Magic or sorcery is the use of rituals, symbols, actions, gestures, or language with the aim of utilizing supernatural forces. [..] The term magic has a variety of meanings, and there is no widely agreed upon definition of what it is.”

Magic sites

Every site is different, but they all share some things.

1. Semiotics is a big thing. In magic almost everything is based on the meaning of a thing, of what it represents, whether it's a sign, object or material. While trying to find things I stumbled upon a term “sigil”. A sigil is a symbol used in magic, especially in the context of chaos magic. What I found interesting was that Aphex Twin and Die Antwoord practices chaos magic according to this article.
   

   

2. There’s a fan base.
3. There’s an “about me” section.
4. Some are not that personal, but some are really personal. The person shares the journey of becoming involved in magic. So there’s some kind of a narrative.
5. Aesthetics. (Of course there are some very down to earth, minimalistic looking sites like this, but for me it’s more pleasing to look at the exotic ones since we are talking about the magic.)  
6. Spells.
7. Shop.

Here are some examples:

http://www.wicca-spirituality.com/

https://www.changeyourlifespells.com/

http://www.spellsandmagic.com/

http://sacredwicca.com/

Some other interesting things that I've found

Since my background is art I think that it is important to mention something that I've found.

“Problem Glyphs” is a project by Eliza Gauger in which sigils are drawn in response to problems you send in. You can read more about it here.

Molly Soda “8 Spells For The Internet Any Witch Can Do At Home”. I don't know why, but the page is not working properly, that's why you can just look here, it's easy to explore.

In Twitter there's usually a lot of bot accounts and there's also one about magic too. It's called Magic Realism Bot.

There's an app called “Sigilscribe” that helps you create sigils instantly.

One of the most entertaining things that I've found was called Meme Magic. This is a great article that explains why meme magic is the reason why Trump got ellected that it was not a coincidence and meme magic should be treated with respect.

Magic very often is associated with tricks. Technology is a very handy tool for making tricks seem more advanced & is widening the horizon. One example is AI, you can read about it in this article. Here's a great site with a lot of code based tricks.

Apparently you can cast spells using emojis.

Here's a guide for that. Vice has also covered it here.

Here's my final work presentation.

Here's my practical final work that I did not finish, but you can get the feel of it. 

There's really a lot of information about magick if you are willing to spend time to look for it. Books, videos, pdfs, articles so on. I actually got really tired when I started to write about it and put it all together afterwards. I didn't even go through a lot of youtube tutorials, videos, there was even one live stream for a ritual. If you are interested you can search for it by yourself.  

I hope that no one is going to cast a spell on me after this.

ESCAPE THE GENRE

The year is coming to an end. If not the dates in the calendar then there’s always something that reminds you that. Yesterday I Filled out Spotify's "2017 wrapped". It’s a fun visualization of your data on Spotify. You can find out how many minutes did you listened to Spotify, what are your top 5 artists this year, what was your top genre and more.

I found out that my top genre is escape room. Felt really confused, because it was the first time that I’ve heard the term being used anywhere else except when talking about games.

After googling I found this article that relieves what’s underneath the genre. As Glenn McDonald, Spotify's "data alchemist", explains: “This is one where the genre comes from collective listening patterns, but I made up the name myself, because I couldn’t figure out any existing one to apply. The vibe is kind of an underground-trap/PC-music/indietronic/activist-hip-hop kind of thing, and I thought of “escape room” both for the sense of escaping from trap, and for the ideas of excitement, puzzle-solving and indoorness implied by the actual physical escape-room phenomenon.”

Glenn McDonald is also the author of a site called everynoise.com. “This is an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 1538 genres by Spotify.” In short, you can explore genres, artists and discover more.

Plus, you can easily preview artists just by clicking on the name & a symbol will pop up, so you know what have you already listened to.

Another plus, the map gets updated.

I feel that I could get lost for a long time in that map just to discover more & more.

Anyways, interesting stuff.

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This is an interesting lecture by Robert Henke where he talks about a problem in music production that there’s no limits and how it affects the workflow. I can see how that can be applied to other art fields as well. He also speaks about genres today, that it doesn’t matter anymore how the music was made so much. Before people tended to use this term “computer music” as a genre. Those days are gone. I believe that, because of the unlimited options, it is so hard to draw strict boundaries when it comes to choosing the genre. As a result, I think, we will see even more different methods when it comes to defining a genre, not only the “escape room” way.

SHOW ME YOUR MEMES AND I WILL TELL YOU WHO YOU ARE

One of the tasks of the course Media Channels and Platforms was to find a Trump meme and to say something about it.

This is the one that I chose:

To understand the joke watch this video. It’s from the movie called The Help.

On a personal note, doing this task was hurtful to me in a way. My naive side of me don’t want to believe that I live in a world where there’s something like that as a president. On the other hand, bad things can motivate people to step back and overthink what is wrong and how to do things differently.

In my opinion, laughing at problems and sharing memes is an act of saying that something about the joke is true, in a way agreeing with a part of the joke. The thing that scares me the most about it is - what if the most of the people who laughs about Trump memes don’t actually care and if they would be asked to take a stand they wouldn’t?

Something else that I found on the way:

This is an account that posts gifs similar to this. I believe that it's a creative way of protesting. Trump actions and the way he speaks is really immature. Gif reminds me of a 4 year old kid who is bragging to his parents. I really wish that Trump had as much power and fame as a random little kid who can't influence anyone.

Again joke about Trump being immature. Can it help us if we don't take him seriously? In terms of social media I think it can.

There's a saying in Latvian: "Never argue with an idiot – at first he will bring you down on his level and in the end he will beat you with his experience." Oh, and another one "The more you move shit, the more they begin to stink."

Worth a thought.

"THE MORE MONEY YOU SPEND ON FIREWORKS THE COOLER YOU ARE" (≖_≖ )

Tomorrow, 6th of December, Finland will celebrate its 100th anniversary. Latvia will celebrate it next year, in 18th of November. Since I live in Latvia for a couple of years I've seen everywhere the phrase ”Latvijai 100” either I have heard it in TV, seen it on posters in the street or someone using it as a hashtag in social media. Although I'm a patriot, it has always just been there, floating around in front of me, I haven't paid a lot of attention to it, till this moment when I noticed a similar phrase in Finland “Suomi 100” and I automatically, straightforwardly thought to myself “If Latvia is only a year younger country than Finland, why are they so different? What is wrong with Latvia?” “The history.”

After Nazi Germany and Soviet Union signed non-aggression pact Finland became a territory of interest to Soviets. Зи́мняя война́ or as we all can understand Winter war started in 1939 when Soviets invaded Finland as they wanted to get it under their wing. Red army had way, way, way, way more soldiers, tanks and weapons, but Finns had amazing snipers, good for them weather conditions (it dropped to −43 °C in January, 1940), soldiers used their skiing capabilities and most importantly they had a strategy so they managed to hold their positions for as long as they had to - till 13th of March 1940 - when Finland managed to negotiate the peace terms with Soviet Union. “When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, Finland entered the war as a co belligerent with Germany.” After the war Finland stayed free.

It's hard to express how impressive (Finnish persistence) and heartbreaking (the massive propaganda, how soviets have treated their own people and still do) at the same time this historical event is to me.

After the non-aggression pact Latvia also became a territory of interest to Soviet Union. 1939 October 5 Latvia was forced to sign a Support agreement with Soviets that allowed them to create military bases in Latvia. That was the start of occupation. All the people who were someone or who had something was sent to Siberia, some got executed instantly, depending on the profession. Only in 1991 December Latvia became Latvia again. Technically from all the 100 years Latvia has only been a free country for 49 years.

This got me thinking about the power that a single phrase can have on a human subconsciously. In this case, personally I was born in a free country and everything happened before me that's why I kind of automatically assumed that my country should be capable of being in a similar condition than the rest of the EU countries. It's scary to think about other automatically made assumptions based on non intentionally consumed information.

I can see & feel all the depression, hurt and poverty from people when I'm home. Most of the people are not satisfied with the current state of my homeland. One fourth of population has moved away to work in Germany, Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Ireland and so on. The Soviet regime can still be felt in the government, in the mentality of people.

I get that it will be 100th years since Latvia has existed. In my opinion, the outcome would be much better if the 49 years would be highlighted more, so everyone would not waste energy to rant about how much better it is elsewhere. Latvia is a new country and people need to be patient and act smartly for better results.  

Fun fact: Latvia will spend 59 millions euro for celebration whilst Finland only 19 millions.  

Anyways, wishing well to Finland, happy birthday! May the best of your past be the worst of your future! Thankful to be here.

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If you are interested in real stories of how it was to be occupied in Latvia, I highly suggest this virtual museum (real facts, real memories). It will take about an hour to go through it, so don't just rush in and quickly skip through it whilst checking your phone. It's worth the attention.

If you are interested in the dark and hard war times in Finland, I highly suggest this book by Katja Kettu. I remember that couple of years ago in the summer I was sitting on a bench surrounded by soviet type block houses that are almost in the center of my hometown and reading this book when an old man who seemed wealthy (had a gold watch and was dressed acceptable) came to me and asked in Russian “Do you know even what you are reading? Do you even understand? That book is bullshit.” He tried to communicate more. All I said was that I'm sorry, I don't understand Russian. It was a really weird experience. It was a really warm and sunny day.