CRUNCH - All things crunched.

Barthes´ Codes Roland Barthes describes a text as "a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language..." ( S/Z - 1974 translation) What he is basically saying is that a text is like a tangled ball of threads which needs unravelling so we can separate out the colours. Once we start to unravel a text, we encounter an absolute plurality of potential meanings. We can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, bringing to bear one set of previous experience, and create one meaning for that text. You ca...

The term invention is a fascinating one. The archaic dictionary defines it as the act of finding while the sociologic meaning lays emphasis on the creation of new culture or patterns or traits.   One look down the barrel of inventions and it is easy to understand why the sociology meaning is the more relevant one to our everyday lives. From the wheel to electricity to the invention of the airplane or the telephone or even computing, on today’s arc of modern inventions there are no real discoveries but more of evolving the existing know-how into newer and portable forms.   Most of the older inventions dotted the historical timeline as significant and were considered to be life altering as they forced existing mindsets into a drastic change mode and chartered the course of further development.   Today, we do not bother about most of the old inventions, unless unavailable. Any of these are omnipresent and accessible to almost every section of soc...

Meet the Gypsetters by Marian in: Trends Originally posted on eurorscgpr.com . After I named ’70s-inspired looks to my “Hot/Not” list for 2011 (they’re going to be hot), a friend pointed me to a beautiful coffee table book called Gypset Style . I love a blended trend term probably more than most people (I’m still hoping my own “Chindia” will take off as much as my “globesity” did), so I was intrigued and started flipping through the photos of glamorous beauties in hippie-chic clothes on exotic beaches. According to author Julia Chaplin’s website for the book, which was shown some love on übercool blog Nowness , “Gypset (Gypsy+jet set) is about an emerging group of artists, musicians, fashion designers, surfers and bon vivants who lead semi-nomadic, unconventional lives.” Picture independently wealthy types, tired of the trappings of New York or London society, who like to visit unconventional places and wear clothing inspired more by Woodstock than Hollywood. Who are ...

Weiler's take on transmedia: It's not just about being on multiple screens, it's the idea that a story can have multiple timelines. It can have a linear structure in one sense, in one of the strands, but you can also go vertically down through those timelines and jump into another line. In some ways I feel that I'm a story architect. Or an experience designer. I want to create experiences that hopefully evoke some sense of feeling or response, and that's no different from when I'm writing or directing films, television, or games. I'm storytelling agnostic. I don't want to be tied to a potential format or a certain running time. I want to be able to tell the story in the way that I want to tell the story, that's most reflective of what I'm trying to say.  transmedia in a graph:

  Howl is a movie with several built-in challenges, one of which earns it a pass in my book: In what is now firmly established as the post-literate era, Howl is a movie about a poem. Nothing more, nothing less. Well, I take that back: It is about many more things than just a poem. But, if you boil it down to its essence, it's a movie about a poet and his creation -- about the writing and transmission of a work of poetry. And unlike last year's overrated Bright Star , this one is actually interesting. Written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Howl originally was meant to be a documentary. But the writer-directors (who also did The Times of Harvey Milk and The Celluloid Closet ) decided instead to create an impressionistic movie about a transcendent and transitional moment in popular culture: the writing and publication of Allen Ginsberg's landmark 1956 epic poem, Howl , which begins: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroy...

A pugilist director, a town full of epithets, a family in dire recession, an erstwhile legend current crackhead skank brother, a bottle-blonde mom, a bar-tending squeeze, an armada of big-haired low life sisters, an unforgiving sport, a brush with history and a shot at the WBC title. For a plot this thick the style chosen is a faux-docu style. The output is refreshing because it is  welcome departure from the ultra-mo cam shots used to dramatize the sport of boxing. Boxing is about strategy, knowing yourself and knowing your opponent, about the choices you make in split seconds, it is about the performance and the play and the delivery of the plan. Boxing as a sport is very well captured by films for many reasons - it is spectacle played out on a stage. It represents rage and instinct. It is primal (2 barechested men in shorts punching away mindlessly). A sport like boxing needs the heroes and the nutters. This film taps into the way the business of sport works. They are d...

Historically, software and most of the internet that we use today were created using languages. In the current scheme of affairs, technology is contributing with words that represent the zeitgeist.      The term, "App" beat out "nom" as the American Dialect Society selected its Word of the Year selection at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America on Friday. Runner-up "nom" (popular web slang taken from Sesame Street's Cookie Monster's "nom, nom, nom") was favored by supporting linguists for its cheeriness, reports AP, with the shortform version of "mobile app" winning for being the more "powerful" choice. Last year, the organization selected "tweet" as its word of the year for 2009 and "Google" as its word of the decade.

Sport like everything else entertaining, needs to be kept alive. It needs to be re-christened, re-invented be curated according to the current tastes. Sports marketing resembles the codes of the entertainment industry. Its production and distribution, its resources and the audience - have been similar. Its measure-ability  is in film like terms - thrilling, exciting, tense drama, action and so on.   The rise of T20 is the kind of high octane boost that a sport like cricket needs. There is a  lot of noise amongst those on twitter and blog-sphere about the player auction in IPL 2011. We know the smallness of public memory and its ability to forget the once sensational. As cricket and everyone else moves on, there is a lesson from the other end - its consumer.  Have been an ardent - fan,follower, preacher, writer for Indian cricket and have been deeply let down by what the sport gives back to the spectator. Take a look at this stadium and we can tell.  Hopef...

Visual rhythm is described as timed movement through space; an easy, connected pathway along which the eye glides through a regular arrangement of motifs. The presence of rhythm creates a fluid predictability and order in a composition. Visual rhythm may be best understood by relating it to rhythm in sound. Rhythm depends largely upon the elements of pattern and movement to achieve its effects. The parallels between rhythm in sound/ music are very exact to the idea of rhythm in a visual composition. The difference is that the timed "beat" is sensed by the eyes rather than the ears.  Visual rhythm can be created in a number of ways.   Linear rhythm refers to the characteristic flow of the individual line. Accomplished artists have a recognizable manner of putting down the lines of their drawings that is a direct result of the characteristic gesture used to make those lines, which, if observed, can be seen to have a rhythm of its own. Linear rhythm is not as dependent on p...