Cultural Talk

During the study break,my classmates and I attended a cultural talk led by Shao Hong SER. Surprisingly the talk was not as boring as i expected, it turns out quite entertaining. He started to define what is culture, culture is the way of life for an entire society. For instance, if someone or even celebrities started to have a tribal tattoo on their neck, others will start to follow the person and eventually turn into a culture.
Besides that, he also mentioned that there are 3 cultural levels which were:
-Physical [Material culture]
-Social [Behaviour culture]
-Spiritual [Ideal culture]

Moreover, there are 4 steps before designing a product
1) investigation (setting a scenario, research)
2) interaction (telling a story)
3) development (writing a script, sketches)
4) implementation (designing)

These steps will help us a lot for designing a product, allow us to create a much meaningful and worthy product. If we do not follow one of these steps, things might go wrong. For example, Shao Hong has mentioned that was a controversy involved in the design of the limited edition Nike Air Force 1 in Thailand.

Besides having the the flag of Thailand and the royal patterns on the shoes which were consider to be disrespectful for the Thais. The main issue of the design of the shoes was the symbol of the holy spirit(only for the King of Thailand) on the back of the shoes, which was very offensive and disrespectful to the King of Thailand. As a result the shoes were ban in the country
When the designer of the shoe was asked why did he design in such way, he/she then replied that he thought the symbol looked cool and interesting when he/she first saw that symbol in a temple in Thailand. The designer who designed the shoes simply put the things he/she liked without doing any research about the meaning of the symbol and the culture of Thailand, which will eventually create a backlash from the society.
The lesson of the day was always do research on the subject before taking any action.

Ouya

While I was doing research for my essay topic which is about video games. I found this interesting website about a new $99 Android-based video game console called Ouya ("ooh-yuh") that will challenge the way Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have been bringing games to us on our television for years. Ouya is a a new game console for television which is powered by Android. It is a fully hackable console,  a system that is being pitched as a platform for both indies and big companies. 
Ouya is a console that is fully open to develop for and on which every game will be free either initially as a demo or as a free-to-play game. This console will only be made through crowd funding, their goal is to raise $950,00. They promise that Ouya will be released in March, 2013 is they hit their goal.

Although the name of the brand sounds weird but it does look promising enough, it's going to bring the game industry to a whole new level. People are able to hack the console without violating any rules. It will be great for those indie game developer to release and sell their games. Everyone are able to afford this console which only cost $99, a gaming system with a modest amount of horsepower behind it. 

Source:
 - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console
- http://kotaku.com/5924657/an-all+star-plan-to-build-a-new-99-hackable-video-game-console-requires-950000-of-your-money



         

Intertextuality

Based on my understanding, intertextuality is a complex interrelationship between a text and other texts taken as basic to the creation or interpretation of the text. Intertextuality tends to be distinguished from mere plagiarism through its sense of creative 'ownership', which kind of means nothing is original. People tends to get inspiration from each other. There are two types of intertextuality which are unconscious and (self-)conscious.

Nowadays more and more books are being adapted into live action movie like Harry Potter, Twilight,etc.. especially superhero comic books. One of the movie that can be related to intertextuality is the amazing spider-man that I've watched with my family recently. This movie is the reboot of the original spider-man movie franchise directed by Sam Raimi.I can't believe its already been 10 years since the first spider-man movie released in 2002. Although the movie has the same concept but it has improved the plot of the movie which is based more on the original comic itself compared to the first spider-man movie.

Both of the poster design are quite similar, but the design of the costume has changed to avoid confusion

Since this movie is pretty much based the comic, web shooters and the lizard are reinterpret from the comic into the movie with more realistic and scientific explaination.  

Spider-man is not the only movie that has remake, films like james bond, batman,etc. Although the film is remake of the original series which is kind of unnecessary and yet people are still going to watch the movie and make millions dollars out of it. Maybe the reason people keep coming back to watch these movies is to see the improvements with new cast, adventure and CGI effects,as long as the content of the film is fresh. While the movie focus much more on the peter parker's life, the entire film is just an interpretation from the comic book. The comic book and the original series act as an inspiration source for the remake of spider-man. In a nutshell, nothing is original.


source(image):

http://fs6boys.weebly.com/the-amazing-spider-man.html

http://tu-cine.com/spider-man-spiderman.html

http://listas.20minutos.es/lista/spiderman-personajes-321464/

http://marvel-movies.wikia.com/wiki/Curtis_Connors

http://comicscreen.blogspot.com/2011/01/spider-man-aura-des-lance-toiles.html

http://cine-maravillas.blogspot.com/2012/06/proximamente.html