The New/Original Idea

My new proposal is designed to encourage the rapproachment of cultures by rhythmic means. The world comprises many cultures. All of them different. All of them contain music. More specifically, many of these cultures contain unique rhythms. My aim is to promote cultural awareness by exposing the user to different rhythms and allowing them to mix and match these rhythms to create new polyrhythms. This cross cultural style is already showing it's face even in the mainstream music scene. M.I.A. is a good example - http://bit.ly/avrNp.

I'll be meeting with Phil and Gearoid hopefully on Monday to tease it out more. In the mean time I have a lot of research to do!

I've started to sift through a lot of websites (most of them pre-2000) that are related to this topic. The interactivity of these sites is awful at best so I'm trying to find some better, more modern examples.

Back to the Original

After presenting my idea to Phil and the class yesterday I realised that my proposal wasn't what I thought it would be. Even though I had gotten good feedback from my peers, the idea still lacked depth. In essence I proposed to produce content for a european based culture awareness campaign for secondary schools. The idea was to inform secondary students about how their european counterpoints lived - favourite music, what their school is like, what they hope to do when they finish school etc. This is all well and good however I failed to ask the basic question - what makes it interesting? why would secondary school students care? and how is it interactive?

After coming to grips with these questions I realised that my proposal wasn't really going to work - which is frustrating seeing as we're a fair bit into the module already and I'll have to catch up with the research work. I have decided to change tack - QUICK! I have returned to one of my initial ideas that I had as I started to brainstorm which I'll outline in the next post.

My Choice of Theme

After doing some research and thinking about which theme I'd prefer to do, I've chosen to work with Theme #2: the International Year of the Rapproachment of Cultures. I chose this culture because I find it more interesting and because I have more original ideas for it than for the other theme. I'm going over my ideas at the moment in preparation for my draft presentation. I'm happy with my original idea. Details will be posted tomorrow!

Theme #2

Here is the the Second theme's equivalent blurb:

"The year 2010 is celebrated as the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures. The goal of the International Year consists in making the rapprochement of cultures the hallmark of all policy-making at local, national, regional and international levels, involving the greatest number of relevant stakeholders."

(By the way Rapprochement is an establishment or resumption of harmonious relations. ex - there were signs of a growing rapprochement between the two countries. In other words it means 'getting along with each other')

Below are two books I referenced to gain a better understanding of Culture and what it means. It helped me understand better what culture is. The word culture is notoriously hard to define so having a few helps like these is beneficial.

Theme #1

Here's the first theme (of two) we got to research. I've just snipped a little blurb about it from the website which sums it up concisely:

"International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures as designated by the United Nations and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

In the action plan for 2010 UNESCO states - "The main goal of the International Year will be to demonstrate the benefits of cultural diversity by acknowledging the importance of the transfers and exchanges between cultures and the ties forged between them since the dawn of humanity."

Media Project 5

Hi guys, here's where I'll be posting all my progress in my Media Project 5. This is my first time using Wordpress for a blog and so far, I'm impressed. Last semester I used Blogger.com and to be honest - it wasn't nice. But that's a little off the point...!

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!