6.1 Eat & Pee

CONSUMPTION & PRODUCTION

We consume & produce.
Are you confused?
We eat & we pee.
Lovely isn’t it?

Im thinking that this class wasn’t teaching us about our bladder functions so we’ll move along & we end up at… traditional & new media. (OMG – technology type ideas in a technology class – no way!)

Very Spiritually they’ve broken it into a few smaller, bite sized pieces:-

The ‘big’ screens of life.

Cinema (Shared publicly)
Who doesn’t like the movies?
Whether you’re going there to try and get lucky in the back row or to throw popcorn at annoying younger people it’s always a good day when the cinema is involved. Popcorn, frozen coke, malteasers, now at Robina they even have an ice-cream bar. It really is a joyous, stomach ache causing time. Speaking of Robina Cinemas if you haven’t been there lately you really need to check it out. Not only are the normal cinemas bigger and louder and soul consuming then before but they have “Gold Class” for the fancies and slap your face off with the sound and burn your eyes with the light, elephant sized VMAX. Oh and 3D when regular space invasion just isn’t good enough. But seriously it is good & if your already pissed at the astronomically high movie prices, then you’ll be pleased to know Robina is no better, however to go from regular cinema to VMAX which has more room is only $2 and Gold Class really isn’t that big of a leap up either.
Once upon a time cinemas weren’t so fancy-smanchy. They were for the average Joe, people went to get the news, (I know a world without Ange&Brad how did they live?) but even then it was a shared expierence for everyone to get together & throw popcorn at the idiot on their mobile (or horse)



TV (Shared privately)
back in the day television was a shared family experience. I remember my father rambling on about “when I was a kid” & saying that when his dad came home from work they would all sit down in front of the tube & after waiting ages for the god dam thing to turn on, they’d watch the news & eventually watch t.v shows. But prior to that all the kids would stand out the front of t.v stores watching it through the window before getting chased away by angry store owners with brooms, or flying monkeys. Now days t.v has become a lot less family orientated, majority of homes have at least one box set, many have two or three. For some reason I have eight in my house of five. Because there is such a range on t.v, especially if you have pay t.v people can go watch whatever they want on any telly and aren’t forced to sit through another replay of the 1984 grand final or watch zebras have sex.
It really is a wonderful thing.

This my friends is the first ever Australia t.v show to be shown in colour, Aunty Jack. It really is quite marvolous how they have done it. & you are lucky enough to be able to view it in colour, many of the t.v’s of the time were still in black & white so the whole colour thing was lost on them.




PC (Shared privately or personal use)
Watching movies, t.v shows, music videos, porn, on the computer has become a way of life for many. People download such things and watch them on the computer/laptop instead of having to burn them to proper DVD disks, then find a DVD player then watch the “movies, t.v shows, music videos, porn,” there. Some people don’t like watching there shows in such open environments (PORN) so prefer the privacy of the computer. Others, like me a just lazy. Or like the portability of laptops. Because they aren’t really that big & because computers really aren’t moved (computers not laptops, calm down) they can become a solo activity (Porn again).



The ‘small’ screens of life

Personal Media
Ipods are really taking over the world. There are many imitations out there but it really is the one & only. There accessibility to everything movies, t.v shows, music videos, porn, makes them a must have in the hands of all teeny-boppers and adults alike. There is a certain comfort in knowing that no matter where you are, what you’re doing or who you’re with you can always listen to Britney Spears and watch another J-Lo flop. =D

Mobile & Smart Phones
One day they will have arms & legs and scary little faces & rule the human race. But for now they are just the shiz. Bring together all of lifes good stuff, movies, t.v shows, music videos, porn and the internet as well as the abilty to actually talk to people (yes phones can actually do that still) they really are a must have. By using 3G networks people can get up to date news & information, access to social networking sites and any other web-related endeavour mobile phones can keep you in touch with more then just your contacts.

The great thing about phones is they also produce… cameras, which can produce stills or videos, bad, bad videos.
Conviently we’ve linked to our next section
Peeing, or


Producing

Fan films & Fad edits
Yes people do have this much time, but you gotta admire them, the fan-spin offs are often better then the original, or are that bad they are freaking hilarious.
If you’re still confused I’ll explain.
Fan films & edits are when fans (No way!) make their own versions of their favourite movies or t.v shows & their scripts. Take a look at fanfilms.net or The Trailer Mash, which as it sounds mashes up trailers (Uh-hu!)

Or here with 280 Days Later –




Mobile Production
Information
Seen a school-yard fight on the news lately?
Some drag racing?
Notice they look like they were shot in a snow storm by a woodpecker?
Its all coz of our buddies, News Junkies, they broadcast their finds on websites like ireport hoping they will get picked up by t.v news programs.
By producing this “stuff” they are generating their own little bit of consumption =D

Entertainment
Like I said, movie phone movies are… crap. But for some reason there is a demand for it, so people produce this… crap & others consumer.
A tasteless circle but a circle nevertheless.
Actually there have been festivals for “Cell-Phone-Movies” over the last five years, naturally they haven’t taken off in leaps and bounds, but imagine if they had, that dog you filmed taking a dump could win you an award....