The Creative Spark Project

The brief for our project was to create a creative media artefact which promotes the creative industries in Louth in general and the Dundalk IT and Creative Spark in particular. One of the sub themes of the brief was the Spark Plugs Social Club. Myself and my group had a look on the Creative Spark website to see what the social club was about. www.creativespark.ie  

After looking on the website we didn't find out much information about it apart from that if you rent an office in the Creative Spark building you get membership to the social club. So as a group we decided that we wanted to organize something around the social club. 

Our first idea was to set up an online forum for the social club so people would have somewhere they could talk to people outside of the meetings and then maybe the forum could be use to further discuss topics brought up at the meetings. So our group member Aoife created the online forum so we have it up and running for people to sign up to. 

We then decided that we wanted to hold the first meeting of the social club so the next step was to organize a meeting with the head of the Creative Spark Sarah Daly. Our group member Sarah emailed Sarah Daly and arranged a time we could meet with her. On the day we went down to the Creative Spark building and we told Sarah Daly our idea to hold the first social club meeting so she was very pleased with this idea. We wanted to get feed back from her of what she wanted from the social club. She wanted to get the tenants of the building involved and the Science Service Centre and then just general people working in the creative industries and students. She was interested in the idea of having a guest speaker on the night too so she was going to speak to the tenants to see if they were interested in speaking and we said that we would try and arrange a speaker too. She also agreed to give a brief introduction at the meeting about the Creative Spark. 

Other things she wanted from the meeting was feedback on certain things. She wanted to know how much people would be willing to pay to join the club and also what people would like to see from the social club. So we decided that we would do a questionnaire that people would fill out after the meeting. 

Another group in the class were arranging an open night and exhibition in the Creative Spark so Sarah said she would like to hold the meeting on the same night so it could all tie in together. We then spoke to the other group about this and they agreed that it was a good idea. 

In the following week or two then we kept in touch with Sarah through email and kept her updated on how the planning for the meeting was going and she informed us that a lady called Tracey Dunne would speak at the meeting. She owns a company called Element Design and was the first tenant in the building. At the same time we were trying to arrange a speaker too. We had a man from Boylesports that agreed to speak but then he pulled out. We then arranged for a girl called Julie Reilly to speak. She is a past student of our course and currently working as an online editor in Boylesports so we asked her to talk about her experiences. We also spent time over the two weeks emailing some people to try and get the word out about the night. 

We also decided then what we were going to do as the media artefact. We wanted to create something positive for the Creative Spark and create something that they could use. So we came up with the idea of making a video that they could put on their website. We decided to take photos on the night of the meeting and the exhibition and then do a vox pop on the night of people talking about how they think the Creative Spark will benefit them and then we were going to put tis altogether in a video. 

We were all set then to go for the meeting so we just had to hope it went well on the night. The open night was on the 22nd Oct from 5-8 so we had our social club meeting from 6.15-7. There wasn't a big turn out on the night and we were worried about this but it ended up being a good thing for us. We held the meeting in a small room of a bout 15 people. The guest speakers were really interesting and informative about working in the industry and everyone really enjoyed the talks. The small number of people meant that everyone could get out any questions they had and it kinda turned into a bit of a group discussion then and more people felt comfortable talking. We left questionnaires on the chairs and collected these after the meeting so we could give the feedback to Sarah. After the meeting we also got people to sign up to the online forum and we went around and did the vox pop. 

I think that the first social club meeting was a great success and as a group we were very happy with how our project went. All that was left to do then was to put the video together and let Sarah know our findings from the meeting. 

Some photos from the night:

The room set up

Guest speaker: Tracey

Guest speaker: Julie

People there on the night

Culture and Society - Online civil disobedience and political activists

After researching Anonymous and Lulzsec it's clear to see a difference between the two. Lulzsec hack into different websites and systems just for the fun. They want to show people that they can do it and that their site's are not as secure as they would like to think they are. There is no meaning behind what they are doing just purely the fact that they can do it. They are responsible for high profile hackings such as Sony, Nintendo and the CIA website. They claim to have 7 members with one as the leader. They don't hack for profit but just for fun. They even opened a telephone request line so fan could request potential targets. 

Whereas with Anonymous they have political reasons for what they do. They are trying to protect users freedom online and free speech. Anonymous defended Wikileaks as a way of defending free speech but they also hacked into the accounts of Amazon, Paypal and Mastercard. To me, hacking into these accounts doesn't make sense in defending free speech so I think that in a way they also do it because they can but they want to be seen as doing good. I think that they do have good intentions and when they hack into these accounts they don't release any of the information but a lot of the time they aren't doing good for the general public. They contradict themselves by shutting down websites in the name of free speech.  They protest against things that they are passionate about and obtain private information of people who may not be passionate about the same cause as them. Although the other side of this is that by hacking into these large corporations they are showing a flaw in their security and therefore people loose trust in these companies resulting in them losing money and some control. Anonymous is not a specific group of people it is a mass of people all existing separately or some together. 

I understand the fun aspect of it coming from Lulzsec. If they can do it why not point out the flaws in national security systems. In the long run they are probably helping these systems iron out the bugs in their security. I don't agree with taking personal information of account holders though. With Anonymous they seem to have a good cause that I also agree with which is freedom online and I think that they are good at creating awareness. I also like the whole mystery aspect as who these people are. I think they both have good intentions but don't always end up doing good. You're never going to get everyone to believe in your cause anyway. 

I don't think that I could be convinced to become politically active through targeted social media. For me it's not about the means in which you are targeted but it's if you are targeted for something that you are actually interested in or passionate about. I have no interest what so ever in the politics of this country. I choose to ignore it and not watch the news and live in my on little bubble because it's just depressing otherwise. So if there was a social media political campaign I would swiftly ignore it and move on to doing something even more useless with my time. My own little world is a happier place this way.

Information

http://www.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/are_online_attacks_civil_disob.php

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13787229

Culture and Society - The Networked Public

Children today are growing up in a networked society. They are connected to everything through the internet. The internet is now widely available on mobile devices making it easier to be connected 24/7. People need to be careful what they put online though. I like to think I monitor my online profile carefully on sites such as Facebook. 

I have my page completely private so that potential employers (or stalkers) can't find me if they search for me in google or in the Facebook search bar. I also have my Facebook chat divided into groups of people I don't want to talk to that I keep offline all the time and then my friends who I talk to all the time and keep online. I also de-tag myself from photos I find to be unflattering or even ask my friends to take certain photos down. My profile photo will always be a photo I think represents me best whether its a photo I think is nice or a photo of something fun. I decide how I want to come across on Facebook by a way of micro managing my profile. 

The future of people growing up as digital natives means that they will not have the same childhoods as us. I can't say whether they are missing out on certain things growing up that we had because thats not for me to decide. They may think that they have a better upbringing because of all the advances in technology. But older generations will always think they lived in a simpler time. Children now will communicate through the internet or over the phone. Even phone conversations have decreased. Texts are widely used now to communicate. Long gone are the days of people talking on the phone for hours. Now people choose to text all day long instead. The implication of this is that your tone in a text message could be taken up wrong by the other person whereas this wouldn't generally happen over the phone. 

People no longer call to each others house unannounced. You will always call or text someone before arriving to their house to make sure they are there. When i was growing up if you had nothing to do you would just arrive at your friends doorstep to see if they anted to come out and play. The notion of the doorbell also seems to be dying out. Now people will not get out of their car to ring a doorbell they just text or ring the person to tell them they are outside eliminating the need for a doorbell. I can't decide whether it's laziness or convenience. I think it is a combination of both. Children will no longer hang out  down the road, outside in the cold. They will hang out online. 

I think people who engage in online deviance are people who feel bad about themselves and like to see other people suffer to make themselves feel better. They are clearly people who have nothing better to do with their lives only sit at home on a computer and make other people feel bad. Sometimes I read comments under certain blogs posts and a lot of the time they are comments from people abusing the person who wrote the blog. This is one thing i don't understand. If you don't like a blog or the person who writes it then why do these people continue to go on and read these blogs. If people just stopped going onto to these sites and giving people abuse for no reason they'd be a lot happier in themselves. 

The networked public also seems to have giving rise to a new form of bullying. Online bullying is very common now. I don't think that it has made more bully's but I think that it has made the bully's that are already out there more powerful. Now if someone gets bullied in school it doesn't stop when they go home. They continue to get bullied once they are home whether it's online or over text. This tragically results in school children taking their own lives because they never get a break from the bullies. For the person being bullied the want to kill themselves can then further be fueled by pro-suicide websites where people can talk on forums and make suicide pacts and even get tips on how to kill yourself. 

There is a never ending world online and nearly anything you want or need can be found online in some way, shape or form. It is clear that there are both good and bad sides to this. The sad reality is that whether you want to seek help for being bullied or whether you want to get tips on how to kill yourself, there's something out there for everyone. 

Culture and Society - Relationships online

There are many advantages to forming relationships online. It is very easy to find people online that have the same interests as you. If you go to an online form you can get chatting to people about something you have in common. You don't have to waste any time getting to know someone to then realise you have nothing in common, here you know straight away that you have shared interests. It's becoming increasingly popular for people to use online dating websites and on these everyone generally has the same intensions. They want to form a relationship online with the intension of meeting up and possibly having an offline or sexual relationship. 

Having never used a dating website I can only make assumptions about what happens on them. But what I think is that people would be very open with each other and it would be easy to find someone in a similar situation to you, e.g. two people going through a divorce. There isn't the same messing around as there would be if you went to try and meet someone at a bar. Not everyone in bars are looking to meet someone, a lot of people there would already be in a relationship or be married. This makes it harder to approach people when you don't know their situation. With online dating you know that everyone is there to try and meet someone. You can also hide behind your computer, this may feel like security for some people. If you were to meet someone in public you'd have to really put yourself out there. Also chatting online avoids any awkward silences. You have a few minutes to think about what you want to say next and this is also a way of avoiding saying something you may regret. 

Having an online relationship is also very convenient. You can sit at home by the fire with the TV on, in your pj's and chat to someone. All you'd have to do maybe is to upload a photo of yourself from one time that you may have been dressed up with makeup on. If you were to go out to a pub to try and meet someone you would constantly have to get dressed up, perfect hair, perfect makeup to try to look attractive to the opposite sex. With online dating you can also form a relationship without it being based on what you look like. You can get to know someone based on their personality and when your ready send them a photo of yourself. Then you can arrange to meet up with the other person once you've really got to know who they are and feel comfortable around them. I think that people also spend hours online chatting to someone they have just met for the first time. This would help the relationship excel very quickly. Whereas if you were meeting someone for a first date you would spend maybe two to three hours together at a time and it would take a few dates before you really get to know them. Online you can get to know everything about a person in the one evening over a space of a few hours and then you can decide if you want to continue this relationship with them or move on.

There is also some disadvantages to forming a relationship online. It is a lot easier to deceive someone online then it is in person. I don't think it's a lot more natural for it to happen now online but it certainly gives people that extra platform to deceive. People have been deceiving each other for years before the internet arrived. Many people have been found to live double lives before the internet. I think that now that you can form relationships online it is easier to deceive but it's also easier to be found out. An example of this I will take from the film Catfish. The relationship in this documentary was mostly online so when the girl sent the man a song she said she recorded of herself singing he was able to find the exact same recording on youtube and subsequently finding out that the whole relationship was a scam. 

People can easily get sucked into the lies and scams of who they meet online, who they think they can really trust and develop genuine feelings for. But I would just say to have your wits about you and be weary of people. It's ok to question things and if they are genuine they shouldn't have a problem with this and they should understand your need to question. Sometimes if someone is too good to be true they generally are so you just need to be careful. I have had one extended family member to meet someone online and three years later they are still together and very happy. They were both there for each other when they needed someone and helped each other through a very difficult time and came out the other side very happy. The problem is you only ever hear of the bad stories and the scams reported in the media, you don't hear about the 'happily ever afters'. I believe that there is more good then bad in online relationships.

Culture and Society - offline/online communities

This week I have considered my engagement with different communities. When I was younger I definitely felt more like part of the community I live in then I do now. When you're young and in school it's very easy to be part of the community you live in. You go to school everyday, you go to the local shop everyday after school, you go to youth club, you go to football/camogie training. All of this involves being part of the local community and engaging with all the people in the community. I live in a very small village so in primary school everyone hangs round with each other and everyone knew each other other. All of the school and after school activities involved the same people. But since going to secondary school I got further and further away from the community I live in. Instead of hanging out in the village every day I was at school in town and hanging round town after school and making new friends. I never really felt like part of a community during this time. Maybe it was a community in itself but it was nothing like the sense of community that I was used to.

Now, even though I've lived in the same place my whole life I don't feel like part of the community I live in. There has been so many new houses built in my area in the last few years that I don't know a lot of people that live there now that I maybe would know if I was only growing up now. I also never see a lot of the people that I used to see everyday because we hang out in completely different circles now. I still hang around with two friends that live beside me but most of my friends are in town.

When I say 'hang around' even that meaning is different then it used to be years ago. Now I hang around with my friends in each other houses every evening. Years ago we were hanging around sitting on a wall, freezing, down the road. I used to tell my mam 'I'm going down the road.' She would never really know where I was but now its more specific when I say I'm going to a certain friends house. But before we would pick a specific point, ie. the wall, and a specific time to meet and everyone would be there at the exact time and place. Now when I'm meeting someone its like 'I'll ring you when I'm leaving to see where you are.'

In terms of hanging around online I think teenagers see this as very important. They are afraid to be offline incase they miss something. I think the idea of missing out is a big thing for teenagers. I know when I was younger I always wanted to do the things and go places everyone else was going incase I missed something but as you get older you definitely grow out of this and realise that maybe other things are more important. But for teenagers I think that hanging around online is the equivalent of this nowadays. In a way it does make more sense to hang around online waiting for your friends to come so you can talk or play games with them rather then hanging round on the street hoping that one of your friends might come along. There's also definitely a benefit to engaging online in a warm house on a comfy seat rather then outside on a freezing cold wall. It also means to don't have to get dressed or put on makeup, you can look a mess while talking to people without having to care.

Culture and Society - Fan culture and remix

Fandom has really become huge since the development of the internet and social networking sites. Here you can find people who are fans of absolutely anything. If you're into something that none of your friends like you can easily find hundreds or thousands of people online that have the same interests as you.
Before online fan communities if someone was interested in something it generally would have died out after awhile if you were the only person interested in it, but now with online fandom you can keep it going for a very long time because there will always be other people online who are into the same things as you.

For me it was David Beckham that I was a huge fan of when I was younger. I had everything that was ever release with him on it. In my bedroom I had what I called my David Beckham wall of fame that was just covered in photos and posters of him. I cut out every single picture of him in every paper and bought every magazine he was in. I even have a David Beckham mug that I still use to this day. My friends would buy me posters of him for my birthday and I had a Man utd jersey with his name and number on the back. I truly was obsessed with him, but after a while my obsession died down. I still love him but not to the extent that I used to. I was the only one of my friends who liked him so much so after a while I really had nothing to keep me going with my fandom. This was all before I knew about the internet and online fan communities and I think if they had of been around then I would have kept it up a lot longer. If I could have gone online and shared all the stuff I had collected on him I think I would have kept doing it. Maybe this picture will help you understand my obsession a bit more..

I think fan culture has definitely contributed to remix culture. That's one of the ways in which fans engage with the objects of their affection. They take music or videos of people they love and put it all together in their own creative way. I wouldn't call it distorting the original, I think these people are very creative and I admire they're ability to do remixes and I think it's great that they are so passionate about something they love. So part of the fan culture is making these remixes and putting them online for people to see and comment on and then to also share what they have done. A great way for people to engage with fandom is twitter. On twitter people can actually engage with celebrities and tweet them in hope of getting a tweet back and a lot of the time they do so this reinforces the fandom. People even name themselves on twitter after the people they admire or use the same surname as them. Facebook pages are also great for famous people to keep their fans up to date by posting photos and events. This way fans can go see them at an event or signing they might be at. One good example of fandom is when the boy band One Direction were filming their latest music video they posted it on twitter that they were going out in London and loads of fan showed up and ended up getting in their music video. I think these outlets on the internet also allow celebrities let their fans know that they really appreciate them so this also reinforces fan culture.

Culture and Society - The rave scene in Britain

In its heyday rave attracted tens of thousands of people and the venue often remained a secret until a few hours before the event. Rave crowds are mostly young and from all different areas of society.

People in Britain got involved in the rave scene to escape from reality. They worked long stressful weeks and and went to raves at the weekends. It was their way to escape and deal with issues of identity for a few hours each night at the weekends. They release all their stress built up from the working week by dancing non stop for about three hours. Rave isn't about going out and getting so drunk that you cant't stand, it's even about drinking at all. It's more about the dance and getting lost in it. People may use cocaine and e tablets for a bit of a high and to try and stay in control, they want the feel good factor. Ravers generally stay away from alcohol but not everyones opts for drugs either. A lot of people stay away from everything and they just go for the music and to dance,they get high on the atmosphere.

Both men and women wear very little when raving, this may be due to the heat generated while dancing but they also like to show off their bodies. The activity involved at raves can be described as child like, the whistle blowing and dummy sucking. Clothes are considered symbols or badges of acceptance. People involved need to appear as in control. These are the norms of the group.

Raves take place in empty warehouse's rather than in nightclubs or anywhere you can fit a lot of people and a sound system. It's not the club that is being promoted but the organiser of the rave. This made the scene fresh, exciting and liberating. Organisers strived to achieve exclusivity. Newspapers reported on how hard these raves were to get into but this was good publicity for them as more and more people now hoped to get in. These were then referred to as superclubs.

Rave happened in Britain during a period of major consumerism and individualism. Margret Thatcher was telling everyone to look after number 1. This together with English Dj's coming back from the rave scene in Ibiza, having experienced drugs and rave culture first hand, had an effect on the people of Britain. Instead of money and power, rave called for empathy, intimacy, spirituality and the joy of losing yourself in the crowd.


But, by the early 90's the government had enough of the rave culture. Police were giving the power to order people to move if they were believed to be preparing a rave, waiting for a rave to start or attending a rave. All offences were liable to imprisonment or a fine if ignored. This killed off free parties and events not licensed through local government.

*Information came from these two websites
http://www.thesite.org/drinkanddrugs/drugculture/drugstrade/thehistoryofrave

http://www.bath.ac.uk/criac/publications/pdf/10_Shankar_CMC.pdf

Culture and Society - Moral Panic

What is moral panic?

Moral panic is generally something that the media tries to create. It is a fear in older people about what younger people are doing. The media try to inform parents what their children are doing but what they end up doing is informing other young people how to get involved in something they would otherwise know nothing about. Moral panic happens when something looks like it is going to threaten social order. So this is one of the impacts of publishing people's behavior. The media make things look like all teenagers are involved in something when really it is only a few hundred or thousand involved, but now it becomes a conscious activity for them to get involved in the particular behavior.

The media builds up events and put in place the conditions for this behavior to happen and then people are outraged when teenagers do behave like this. The world panic can be associated with lack of control so when parents find out what their teenagers are taking part in on the streets they panic because it's something that they cannot control. It happens when there is a disagreement between groups or a lack of understanding and certain people become a threat and threaten the conventions of society and how it operates. The media have hidden agendas and normally what they report on is over staged and sensationalised. This results in minority groups getting all the backlash.

A modern day moral panic would be binge drinking.

It is on the news a lot lately about how they are trying to make it illegal for an off license and supermarkets to sell cheap drinks or have special offers on alcohol. They are trying to stop teenagers having access to alcohol by making it more expensive to buy. The way the media are reporting it is as if all teenagers are going out every weekend and getting really drunk and hanging round street corners when in reality this is not the case. But because of this media coverage thats what parents think all teenagers are doing. Binge drinking is seen as a major threat to society when really it's only a small group of people who do it. The majority of people drink moderately and can control their drinking habits but the media only report on the people who fall out of nightclubs.

In countries like Spain and France they have a more relaxed attitude towards alcohol. Alcohol is widely available in shops, bars and cafe for a cheap price. It is also seen as ok for people younger then 18 in these countries to have a glass of wine with dinner. I think that this approach to alcohol is much better as children are gradually introduced to it and don't feel the need to go out drinking on the streets to hide from their parents. They can have a drink at dinner with their parents in a safe place. I think if Ireland as a country didn't make such a big deal over alcohol it wouldn't be such a big deal. They need to adopt a more relaxed approach. The media and news reporters need to stop going on about it and people wouldn't get into such a panic over it.

Culture and Society - Subcultures

My understanding of a subculture is a group of people coming together through common interests. It can also be a group of people who want to be different from everyone else or anything mainstream. After studying subcultures in a bit more detail then before I think I was part of the teeny bopper subculture. At the time I just thought it was what every young girl did - had posters on their wall, listened to all the mainstream pop music and boy bands and had friends over for sleepovers where you do each others hair and nails. Now that I'm older and in a position to look into this further I can now see that I was part of a subculture. I feel like I know a good bit about this subculture so I want to leave this for now and examine other types of subculture.

Two subcultures that have aroused my interest straight away upon looking this up are:
1. Bodybuilding - this subculture is something that I have never understood and I can't see why people put themselves through the rigorous diet and exercise regimes to get these bodies. I actually know some people from the gym who do this and enter competitions so I would like to understand it a bit more.

2. Nazi punk - I have heard of the punk subculture before but I have never heard of the term nazi punk so this caught my attention straight away and is an area I would like to look into further to see what it's all about.

Bodybuilding

So before I do any research into this, what I think of when I think of bodybuilders is huge muscles, tight or very little clothes, fake tan, eating raw eggs and steroids. So lets see what it's really all about. 


Professional body builders display their physiques with a variety of poses for a panel of judges. Oils and tan combined with the right lighting make the muscles come across as more defined and they are then given points on their appearance. So that explains why they wear fake tan. They are not judged on their physical strength but on condition, size and symmetry.

Bodybuilders use three main strategies- strength training, specialised nutrition and rest between workouts.

There are 8 main muscle building foods that bodybuilders should be consuming - egg whites, chicken/turkey, fish, beans, lean red meat, slow burning carbs, water and whey protein. Food can make or break bodybuilders muscle growth. 

I have come across the website http://www.bodybuilding.com/ and the first thing you see is it's offering supplements such as protein and creatine. These are very important in creating muscle and loosing fat. It is even offering you ways to stay in control over valentines day. It seems like when you go down the path of body building you make a promise to yourself and maybe your trainer to stick to the regime no matter what. It doesn't seem like something you can decide to do one week and then get bored of the next. This is a lifestyle change and theres no room for people who are not serious about it. People who do this are expected to completely transform their bodies permanently and in return gain confidence, improve their appearance, attitude and quality of life. 


There is a stereotype around bodybuilding and the use of steroids. As I said at the beginning steroids are something I would associate with bodybuilders. But on researching further I have found out that there are regular drug tests carried out for this and if anyone is caught having taken these they are banned from any future bodybuilding competitions. So not all bodybuilders take steroids and they achieve their muscular physiques through hard work and dedication. The stereotype probably comes from the media because they only report on it if someone is caught using them, they don't report on the achievements of people who have got to where they are without the help of steroids. 


It is certainly still an area of interest to me and now I understand it a bit more. A lot of what I would have associated with bodybuilders at the start has now been explained and the reasons for doing so are clear to me. It's not an area I would want to get involved in as I would not have the discipline but I admire the people who do and can dedicate their lives to bodybuilding! 


Nazi Punk

Before researching this I would think it is similar to the punk culture but maybe for people who share another interest also, which is racism.

Nazi punk music is similar to punk rock but has lyrics of hatred towards jews, homosexuals and people who are not white. The punk movement can be traced back to 1977 with the racialist punk movement following in 1978 known at the "Punk Front". These people were sick of always having to be politically correct so decided to rebel against it with nazi punk. In the 1980's it became a youth based underground movement as the amount of openly racist punks started to decline.

They believe that certain races are intellectually and physically superior to other races and look up to people such as hitler and mussolini and incorporated imagery of swastikas. I came across this website, http://www.nazipunk.8k.com/index.html where they express their beliefs and encourage people to buy their type of music and join their revoltion. They are hoping for a reemergence and revival of the racialist punk movement.