iGeneration 08

Project Exegesis

This video is aimed at talking about participatory culture, community and communication through featuring the Water Cube, which is used as a venue for the Beijing Olympics 2008. Participatory culture can be seen in three ways: through the planning phase, construction phase and lastly, during the Olympics itself. Participatory culture can be seen from paper work, manual labour, to competitions amongst athletes. This shows that the Water Cube has had large amount of participatory culture since its birth and perhaps, will continue to do so even after the Beijing Olympics is over. The Water Cube also exemplifies elements of communities since its birth. Various communities from Australia and China participated in its success. In terms of the Beijing Olympics itself, the athletes and supporters from all over the world, such as Japan, contribute to various communities in the Water Cube. This video would not have been a success if technology did not exist, as resources would not have been found. Blip TV has also help bring about the new form of participatory culture. Lastly, the video is also able to show us how the Water Cube communicates with its users. All these will be discussed in the following paragraphs.

The water cube explores the notion of participatory culture from its planning phase to delivery phase and finally, its usage during the Beijing Olympics 2008. In Henry Jenkins’ ‘Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century’ (2006), five key characteristics of participatory culture are identified. All of these are relevant to my remix project and will be discussed.  Firstly, participatory culture is one “with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement”. The “relatively low barriers to artistic expression” can be seen through the modern design which resembles the geometry of soap bubbles instead of the traditional brick and mortar boxlike structure. Civic engagement is evident as the construction of the Water Cube project involves mainly the four large corporations (Arup, PTW Architects, CCDI and CSCEC); while the government provides only funding. These four large corporations provide each other with “strong support for creating and sharing one’s creation with others” through the office meetings (which is shown in the video), when ideas are expressed to one another. Through this strong support, the large corporations are confident of taking upon a project which is never done before. Although it is not explicitly shown in the video, the water cube design is a type of “informal mentorship”, where the idea is actually derived from studying the work of Irish physicists. The four large corporations can be considered “novices” as the knowledge passed on by the Irish physicists is used to make something that is tangible. By believing that their contributions matter and feeling some degree of social connection with another, it generates enthusiastic discussions, which leads to the success of the Water Cube. Moreover, the Water Cube was designed with the intent of being more than a container and with the “hope to capture the “spirit” of water” (Gonchar, 2008). The social connection is also brought to another degree as the large corporations have to care about what other people will think about the Water Cube they have created; especially when it is used as a venue for a major event, that is, the Olympics. Thus, participatory culture in planning phase of the Water Cube can be explained through Henry Jenkins’ five characteristics of participatory culture.

However, these five key characteristics of participatory culture are not confined to just the planning phase as they are also relevant in the construction stage. Civic engagement is evident as the construction of the Water Cube involves the hands on involvement of local community workforce, as shown in the video. However, “low barriers to artistic expression” is absent as workers are merely building as they are told. As seen from the pictures in the video, constructing the Water Cube requires intense manual labour, workers would need strong support from one another during such creation. Again, “some type of informal mentorship” is seen during the construction phase as experienced workers pass along their knowledge to novice workers to ensure the job is done properly. As seen in the video, the local community workforce consists of mainly Chinese. To the Chinese, the Water Cube is a symbol of China’s pride and success. Thus, each worker believes that their contributions matter and subsequently, form a social connection with each other to ensure that the Water Cube brings out the China’s pride and success.

Last but not least, participatory culture is evident yet again when the Water Cube is host to the Beijing Olympics 2008. As seen from the video, participatory culture involves both the athletics and supporters. However, only some of key characteristics apply for this form of participatory culture. In terms of the athletics, artistic expression can be displayed through certain moves such as diving or water group formation, as seen in the video. Athletics would definitely believe that their contributions matter as it would lead to their desired outcome – that is, getting a gold medal. Team members would feel a degree of social connection, to ensure, for example, that their moves are synchronised (again, as shown in the water group formation in the video). In terms of the supporters, they would feel some degree of social connection with each other when they are cheering on the athletics, especially those from their home country. The social connection is built upon a common desire, which is, hoping the athletics win a gold medal which brings pride to their country. Civic engagement is evident in both the athletics and supporters as they are citizens from various countries.

Henry Jenkins (2002) goes on to identify the new participatory culture in his article ‘Interactive Audiences?: The ‘Collective Intelligence’ of Media Fans’ , in which he identifies three key characteristics. While the third is less relevant, the first and second are fundamentals to this video. By uploading the video to Blip TV, it requires the internet, both of which are considered “news tools and technologies”. As such, the media content (the video); can be archived, annotated, appropriated and recirculated. Moreover, since the video is under the share-alike Creative Commons licence, the recirculation of the media is brought to a higher level as other consumers are allowed to use the video contents for non-commercial purposes. During the production of this video, “a range of subcultures” such as Google, Blip TV and Yahoo, are used to find resources. However, these resources are restricted to those under Creative Commons licence. Nonetheless, these resources from the various subcultures help promote a “Do-It-Yourself” media production, which results in a video of the Water Cube.

The video itself is a form of digital communication. Firstly, it relies on the internet and web to be uploaded. Secondly, it communicates how the Water Cube is being constructed and who constructs it. It also communicates the “dematerialisation of the building”, by changing colours from blue to red, which help change moods (Gonchar, 2008, p. 150). It also communicates to “changes in the environment” around it by the input of the word “Welcome” when people are around and viewing it (Gonchar, 2008, p. 150). This video also communicates the uniqueness of the Water Cube design, its magnificence and grandeur for being able to be a host to the Olympics. The globe communicates to the viewers that being a host for the Olympics, the Water Cube fosters togetherness of diversities from all around the world.

From the construction to the usage of the Water Cube during the Beijing Olympics, various communities are shown. For example, the designing of the Water Cube consists of the Australian (Arup and PTW Architects) and Chinese (CCDI) community. Likewise, the construction of the Water Cube consists of the Chinese community (CSCEC). The supporters and athletics hail from different communities such as Japanese, Chinese, English and French – the list goes on.

I chose to edit my video using Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 as the functions are somewhat similar to Final Cut Express which I used during Year 3. Thus, I did not have to familiarise myself with another system. Additionally, I was able to edit from home, which enables the video to be accessed easily. If I had done it with Macintosh’s iMovie, I would not have been able to access and edit the video on my personal computer. The challenges I faced are the somewhat restricted amount of video resources available for download. Most of the videos fall under National Geographic (which did a documentary on the Water Cube). Obviously, it is unlikely that they are legitimately Creative Commons materials. The pictures used for my video are also somewhat unrelated, which raised some challenges during editing when trying to link them together into a coherent piece. Therefore, captions have to be used in order to facilitate understanding of the video. Also, pictures are somewhat inadequate as the Water Cube is relatively new, or the pictures are irrelevant to what I had in mind. Another challenge which I face is to edit a video of adequate length in order to demonstrate the ideas of participatory culture, community and communication, due to the lack of resources.  My initial plan of solely showing the construction of the Water Cube from scratch did not work out due to the lack of resources. Moreover, it would not feature the ideas of participatory culture, community and communication. Overall, it was a great editing experience as there are no qualms in using the editing software and I could view the video as and when I like.

Although the Water Cube is only a building, it has shown that it is capable of expressing the ideas of participatory culture, community and communication. These ideas are expressed through the external features, such as changing lights and its unique design; and internal features, from the designing stage till the day it is used during the Beijing Olympics 2008. Although these ideas have not been explicitly shown by the Water Cube, the video has helped exemplify them. With the help of technology (through Blip TV) and resources, these ideas are then brought forward and communicated to the world. However, as resources are limited, there is only so much that can be done. Perhaps as time goes by, resources for the Water Cube would increase. This would give a chance for the making of another video, which would be able to better exemplify the ideas of participatory culture, community and communication.

The Video [1:27]

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