Natalia Chang’s Periscope Weekend

Periscope Hearts

Lots of nice work from everyone on last week’s Periscope Activity!

We’ve talked in the past about where the value in New Media is. When Facebook buys Instagram and it’s 17 employees for US$1B or WhatsApp and it’s 30 employees for US$19B, are these Designers and Engineers really “worth” tens, or hundreds of millions of dollars each? Or is what Facebook is really buying… You!? Is Facebook actually buying millions and millions of “users” aka “unpaid employees”? Instagram might have a decent UI/UX (User Interface and User Experience) but that’s not worth a billion dollars! It’s the views that people like You or Guy Tang or the Kardashian Family bring in that make Instagram worth anything.

Machines can already do many things that humans used to do. Better. Machines can diagnose x-rays better than a Radiologist with an MD Degree and 10 years of experience. One by one machines will replace all human tasks. What’s left for us to do with ourselves? What’s left for us to do to earn a living? Creativity! Machines continue to suck at this. By “creativity” I don’t only mean “great art”. Yes I mean beautiful poetry and breathtaking architecture, but I also mean Keeping up with the Kardashians and silly YouTube videos. “High Art” or “Low Art” we humans just make lots and lots and lots! We probably enjoy this more than manual labor anyway, and lucky us, machines suck at it!

So, why not be paid for it!? If your “work” on Instagram makes it worth US$1B, you should be paid! That’s what Jaron Lanier argues in his book Who Owns The Future? One of Lanier’s solutions is micropayments, to give people tiny payments when others view or modify their creativity.

I’ve decided to put my “money” where my mouth is. Or at least what passes for “currency” here at the university, “points & grades.”

What I love about Periscope Hearts is that they translate directly to real creativity as consumed by the community. Katy Perry is #1 on Twitter with 76,133,157 followers. But in this case it’s not because she’s got a big presence on Twitter. Rather it’s because she’s so successful in other media: record sales and concert tickets. That’s great. It’s just that her Twitter ranking isn’t about Twitter performance. But with Periscope you can’t get millions of hearts like Bree Olson just for being popular. You have to generate content on the platform and have people appreciate it enough to keep tapping their screens.

Periscope Payout

So here’s what I’ve decided to pay you. For everyone who followed me on Periscope, and who got 1,000 or more Hearts by Sunday night, I’ve “paid” you 1/50th of an Art110 point for each Heart you received. 12 peeps from Art110 received 1,000 or more Hearts last week, and here’s what I’ve paid them:

Points so Far

All points through Week 6 are now up on BeachBoard. The total points possible so far is 280. Here’s what you should have to be on pace for each grade level:

280 points = “A+” pace – 68 peeps
252 points = “A” pace – 27 peeps, or 68+27=95 A’s
224 points = “B” pace – 9 peeps
196 points = “C” pace – 12 peeps
168 points = “D” pace – 3 peep
167 & below = “F” pace – 8 peeps

Mark Flores’ Periscope broadcasts: IRL & In-Game

Leaderboard

  1. Jennifer Palacios – 388
  2. Kirlous Tadros – 373
  3. Armando De La Mora – 355
  4. Toni Abad – 354
  5. Emily Snyder – 354
  6. Rosario Fino – 351
  7. Tyler Nakashima – 344
  8. Diana Nguyen – 341
  9. Alexandra Mendoza – 341
  10. Miguel Lopez – 340

Artist Conversation Points

Some of you have asked me why you got 15/30 on your Artist Conversation. Be sure to check the Syllabus > Rubrics for an explanation of all Points & Deductions! As you’ll see there, there are 2 mistakes that lead to -15 point deductions and hence a 15/30 score:

  • No Artist Tag: -15
  • Misspelled Artist Name: -15

All of the other criteria matter a lot too, but Spelling the Artist’s name correctly and Tagging your post, and Spelling the Tag correctly, these are basic and essential!

Proofread Your Work!

I’m still seeing Artist Conversations that are not being proofread. In some cases you’re writing nice reviews of the work but it winds up being embarrassing to the artist because of mistakes in grammar. Blogging is “informal writing”. You can write in 1st person. You can write casually. You can write in vernacular. But you still should pay a lot of attention to Spelling, Grammar, Clarity, and Analysis of Ideas.

Classmate Question OTW

Question OTW: If you could dye your hair a certain crazy color, which color would it be and why?

Activity: Snapchat

  • Read all about it on our Snapchat page!
  • Snap, Draw & Share on Thursday!!

Option: Up Periscope!

What about Blogging, or Vlogging, with Periscope or YouTube!? :D

Hey guys!

I was chatting with your awesome classmate Julia Hodgdon:

Yeah, that Julia! :)

Anyway, we were saying what powerful Vlogging tools Periscope and YouTube were, and Julia inspired me to offer you the “Up Periscope” option. For your blog posts on Activities and Conversations you now have the option of doing Periscope or YouTube in addition to, or instead of, writing text.

To use this option you’d upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo, and then embed (place) your video on your blog page. These days to “embed” all you probably have to do is place the YouTube or Vimeo URL on a blank line in your blog. If the URL you paste is https://blabla, sometimes it helps to take the “s” out of https, and make it just http://blabla. If you still have any trouble, try a laptop/desktop instead of mobile, and maybe try clicking in the upper-right, on the tab that says TEXT, then paste your URL, then you can click back to VISUAL. LMK if you need any help with this, but mostly it’s easy!

Vlogging an Activity or Classmate Conversation should be fairly easy. For an artist conversation it’d probably require 2 things:

  1. Get the artist’s permission
  2. Wait a while, maybe till 11:30 or so, when the crowd dies down and you can actually do a little video with the artist

You could either record to your phone and then upload to YouTube or Vimeo (with optional editing, or not). Or for Periscope you can just “save” your ‘Scope and then upload it to YouTube or Vimeo. On Periscope, if you go:

Profile > Settings > Autosave

Then you should have a copy in your Photos/Videos/Gallery.

screen cap of Periscope settings including the "autosave broadcast" button

Flip the “Autosave” button to automatically save your Periscopes to your phone

LMK if you have any questions!

Written by Glenn Zucman

BA, Psychology, University of Hawaii, MFA, Intermedia Art, Long Beach State. Host of American Public Media's "Border Patrol." Host of KBeach Radio's "Strange Angels." Interested in Identity Art that explores our Oracle-at-Delphi-like straddling of corporeal and virtual realms in our new media century. Civil rights in online space. 10 years...
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