Theory Classes Semester B

23/01/23 

In today's lesson, we covered An Autobiography of Artificial Intelligence. We began the lesson by looking at the definition of intelligence, and through this covered the key points about how to be truly intelligent, something has to be able to learn and figure out what it needs to do for itself, rather than just follow instructions. We then began looking at Artificial Intelligence (AI), and how machinery is becoming able to learn and figure things out for itself in some cases. We covered the history of AI, and how people like Alan Turing and his contributions to technology, have allowed the rise in AI that we have seen be created around us, such as self-driving cars, and BigDogs, created by Boston Dynamics. We looked at a couple of films, including "2001: A Space Odyssey", and "Blade Runner", which  is based on the novel "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?", by Philip K. Dick.

After this, we then looked at the concept of The Chinese Room, the Turing Test, and some AI chatbots that are available for general usage, to see how far they have been developed since they were first brought out to the general public, in forms such as Siri on Apple products, which made many mistakes when trying to understand voice recognition. We looked at a few different examples, and experimented using Kuki Metabots, an AI chatbot that allowed us to have full conversations with a robot, that could understand what we were asking it, and could therefore respond in an appropriate way. We also very quickly covered the Moral Machine, and Captcha's, to see how our data is being used to enhance the accuracy of this technology. 

To finish off the lesson, we covered how there can be a negative side to this technology, as Deepfake videos, can be quite easily made, to make it look like people of great importance, such as Barack Obama, which is the example that we looked at, are saying anything that people could want it to look like they are saying, which could be used to try and convince people that the people that they look up to are saying very detrimental things about the world, when in actuality, it was just a fake video that was spread around the internet to try and trick the general public.

30/01/23 

In today's lesson, we learnt about The functions of Science Fiction. We began the lesson, by looking at what science fiction is, and the stages of it's history according to Isaac Asimov, which included when the topic was Adventure Dominant (1926-1938), Science Dominant (1938-1950), Sociology Dominant (1950-1965), and Style Dominant (1965-Now). We covered how according to Edward de Bono, Science Fiction has to somewhat relate to current affairs, otherwise it is just all make-belief.

We then looked at how Science Fiction can be used a platform for politics, such as in pulp magazines, and how it can be used to change how we understand things. We also covered how Science Fiction is the medium between the sciences and the humanities. We looked into this concept idea, by watching "I wanna deliver a dolphin" by Ai Hasegawa, which was about a woman giving birth  to a dolphin, which although maybe ethically wrong, would probably not take much biologically to actually happen. Finally, we looked at Speculative Fiction including Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurisms, and how Science Fiction as we know it is a very Westernized concept, that can vary when in a culture that does not see things in exactly the same way as us.

06/02/23 

In today's lesson, we learnt about The Economy of the Authentic. Within this, we covered the idea that authenticity can only exist, if people know about the background of the supposedly authentic object. We also looked at Jean Jacques Rousseau's views, about how people should conform to normal social conventions, as long as doing this doesn't make them go against everything they believe in an/or stand for, as this would cause "Alienation of the self".

Later on in the lesson, we looked at authenticity within the digital world, and how algorithms have caused what we believe to be our free choices and research on the internet, to actually be altered by others, making them not as authentic as we believe them to be. We also looked at Selfies having to be taken now, rather than just a photo of a landscape, to make it look more authentic that you actually visited somewhere, as getting an image off of the internet is so much easier to do now, in comparison to only a few years ago. Finally, we also covered how people's online personalities can greatly differ from their in-person personalities, which leads to the question of which is the more authentic version of the person's personality.

13/02/23 

In today's lesson, we learnt about Telling Tales: new media and traditions of narrative. To begin this, we covered the topic of Interfaces, their definitions according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and how books are interfaces that can carry information. From this, we looked at how when children interact with books, they make use of all factors of the interface, reading hypertextually, by looking at pictures, feeling different textures, and even sometimes attempting to consume to books, rather than just reading the words, as they cannot quite intake the meanings behind the words alone just yet, with their level of learning development. We then also looked at the work of Thomas Chatterton, the forged documents that he created, and his death. After this, we looked at some images, and had to try and decide what we believed their narratives to be, and it was interesting to hear different people's opinions and thoughts on what we were all seeing.

We then looked more into narratives, and what components needed to create a narrative. We looked into how a narrative needs a story and a plot, as well as a narrator and naratees. We also looked at how there are both Traditional narratives, which follow a more linear structure, including more well-rounded characters. and more Experimental narratives, which have more open endings and a less linear path that it follows. Freytag's Triangle, is an example of a Traditional narrative, however looking at it in more modern times, it is maybe not the best example of a good narrative, with the climax being exactly in the middle, which could make the second part of the narrative much less interesting than the first part. Finally, we looked at some examples of books with different narratives, including "A Humument" by Tom Phillips, "The Unfortunates" by B.S. Johnson, and "Clarissa" by Samuel Richardson. All of these books include multiple images or interactive parts, giving them all a very different narrative from one another.

20/02/23

In today's lesson, we learnt about 'Wide and deep and high’: world building and transmedia storytelling from Tolkien to Star Wars and beyond. We began this, by looking at where the term 'Fan' originated from, as it is derived from the word fanatic, and how there have been known cases of fans since the 18-1900's, in the cases of Lord Byron and Franz Liszt. We then looked at some cases of fans who have ended up actually working on the franchises that they were fans of in their later lives, such as Steven Moffat, who works to help create the Dr. Who series, which he was a big fan of in his childhood, as well as some other shows that he works on as an adult. We then looked at how fans create performances, in forms of costumes and other creations, for their fandoms, making them very powerful groups of people, and this sense of community can also be seen more recently in the way people have grouped together in memorials for those who have been lost in tragic circumstances, to stand up for justice.

After this, we looked at Transmedia storytelling, and how J.R.R. Tolkien came up with the term 'Sub-Creation', to describe the expansions of fictional worlds, which is now more commonly known as 'World Building'. We looked at the Tulse Luper Suitcases, and how to interact with these worlds in their everyday lives, people may play with action figures or dress up in cosplay of their favourite characters. We then looked at different items that have been created to expand audiences, such as romance within action stories, to appeal more to all genders, as well as toys and other fun merchandise items being created to appeal to younger audiences as well as more adult audiences. From here, we looked into Anarchy and autership, and how for most big franchises, there is a sole creator, however this is not the case for all franchises. We also looked at hyperdiegesis, and how spin off shows can include certain characters that extend from the original show, whilst at the same time not stating anything particular within the particular program, it is just known that it is a continuation of something else. We also then looked at how fantasy worlds are integrated into our lives from an early age, from childrens shows, and ages with us into more sophisticated forms including games such as Minecraft, which allows the users to build and create their own worlds.

To finish off the lesson, we had to research into some different fandoms that we were personally interested in, looking into how they use transmedia storytelling, and includes participation amongst its fanbases. We then had to share our findings with the rest of the class on a Padlet Website, so it was quite interesting to find out about the different fandoms that people are a part of, and how their fandoms work and interact with one another.

27/02/23

In today's lesson, we learnt about (Visual) discourse, and the Art of Propaganda. We began the lesson, by looking at the definitions of discourse, and what it actually means. We then went on to look at Michel Foucault, and his views on discourse. We then looked at what visual discourse is, and how it differs from general discourse, about how we can gather information from what is happening within an image, without being told anything. 

We then looked at montage, and the effect that different videos can have on our perception, when only one small change is made between them, such as in Lev Kuleshov's experiment. We also covered manufacturing consent and fake news on the internet, including how even when not technically fake, information can be portrayed in a way to portray one result, when in actual fact the true outcome is something much different.

After this, we had to look into some different websites, looking at their visual discourses, trying to find things that either follow a common visual discourse, or if they don't follow this structure, and portray something else.

06/03/23

In today's lesson, we learnt about What is decoloniality? We started the lesson, looking at areas of the world that have been colonized, and by who, over the past centuries, so that we could see how this had changed over time. We then looked at the power of the IMF and the World Bank, and how they ruled over the GDP of other countries, and how biased this can look in lower income countries, as they are made to look worse from the better-off countries. We then looked at some maps, one of which was a European created map, and the other an Asian created map, both of which centralized different areas of the world, which shows how the different areas of the world view the world in different ways, centralizing and making more important different places.

We then looked at the words of Edward Said, about his post-colonial studies, and the stereotypes that are placed on Oriental people, and how they are seen as others, as they do not fit the European standardized views, that the West tend to have. He also covered how this is not always realized that it is happening, such as in the case of unconscious bias, where the bias is so engrained in our cultures, that even when trying not to be biased to others, the views are still effecting our views. After this, we looked at some views of Frantz Fanon, and watched a video based on his book 'Black Skin, White Masks', which looks at the effects of racism and colonialism. We also looked at Gayatri Spivak, and her book 'Can the Subaltern Speak?', which looks at the violence put upon those being oppressed through the silencing of their knowledge and speech.

13/03/23

In today's lesson, we had a Skills Workshop, based on the question of What is an Essay? We began the lesson, by looking at the brief of our next assignment, which was to write a 1700 word essay, with 300 word's worth of images and/or other media sources. From this brief, we each had to decide on which of the six available topic questions, we wanted to focus on for our own essay works. After we had all decided on our topics, we moved on to look at a PowerPoint document focused on Essay Skills, and what we would need to think about when writing our own essays. This included things such as the difference between descriptions and analysis, and what types of sources we should be looking into, as different types of sources have varying levels of credibility, such as books and journal articles, being more reliable sources than blogs and magazines. We would need to use a mix of Primary and Secondary sources in our works, so we needed to make sure that we definitely knew the differences between these two options.

We then spent some time researching into some different sources based on the topics that we had chosen to write about for our essays, using the reading lists from our previous lessons, as well as making the most of the Online Library, to help us with gathering some of this information, and making notes of some key-words that we liked the sounds of, to try and incorporate into our own works, or just help us find particular sections of text to focus on when researching. To finish off the lesson, we looked at the help we had provided to us to help with our writing skills, and also looked into the different forms of plagiarism, to help us avoid it at all costs within our own writing.