Hi there, I'm Oscar Lang; a student at Deakin University studying Criminology and Cybersecurity who occupies the time not spent at University playing Lacrosse, lifting weights and exploring music.
Wow, so my first ever video created by me and uploaded to the internet. I’ve made videos back in VCE but none that required me to upload them and reflect on who I was intending to portray. What made this even more difficult was the fact that I was supposed to portray myself. Even then, when I attempted to explain what I’m currently doing, what my interests are and my aspirations for the future I began to play a character – something that just kind of happened. I still managed to convey the busy nature of my life however, with those quick-as-a-whip pans between each shot and the multitude of routines I put myself through shown by my changing outfits and different props. I even managed to emphasize the mixture of physical activities and study that I am constantly balancing by wearing glasses in some shots and then a singlet in another, things I don’t even wear ever. Overall, I still wanted to convey that among the multiple directions my life seems to take, I still don’t have a clue about which path I’m going to end up choosing and that’s why I chose to conclude the video with the statement that I did.
On the more technical side of things I learnt that it is simply much better to record audio on your phone in a still environment with good acoustics to later put into a video rather than trying to record as you film. I also learnt that it is extremely helpful to make an all-in-one document that contains your script, shot list and other to-do’s so that when you’re tired and haven’t had time all week to film any of your project you can simply refer to this document and piece together your video like it’s an instruction manual. In regards to the length of my video, I decided keeping things brief and fast-moving would engage an audience better than resorting to sitting at my desk talking into the camera off a script in front of me. The video is long enough to include all the occupations that make up my identity and sum up what I plan to do with these random skills I’ve learnt, but at the same time does not drag on to include anything more than a simple introduction of myself.
The biggest problem I faced while filming this was the issue of time and balancing appeal with efficiency but I think ultimately I learnt that this challenge can be overcome by first and foremost ensuring that it is indeed the quality of your video and your choice of storytelling methods that will make a video worth watching. In conclusion, playing yourself without emphasizing the interesting parts of your life is hard and remember to put quality over quantity when it comes to video-making.
Recently, I had an interesting discussion with Jarryd Verdan from ALM201, Gamified Media, where we talked about our own experiences with gamification – the application of game-like rewards and perceivable progress to activities that would otherwise not traditionally incorporate elements of entertainment or competition. You can find the podcast right below!
While interviewing Jarryd I learnt about an experience he’d had with reading where his mother promised him five dollars for every book he read outside of the school curriculum, an effort from Jarryd’s mother that encouraged him to enjoy reading. Interestingly, what had caused Jarryd to avoid reading in the first place was the fact that school made it seem as if reading was just a chore. In a sense, Jarryd’s mother gamified his education more effectively than school could. Along with the well known benefits of reading that Jarryd received from this experience, Jarryd also encountered something else from the experience that was quite memorable: upon reading the first Harry Potter book he realized that the cliche ‘the book is always better than the movie’ was in fact true. While Jarryd’s mother’s monetary incentive seemed to work quite well I also got the sense that Jarryd eventually began to read for the enjoyment of it and in his words… reading “opened [him] to a new world”.
When it was Jarryd’s turn to interview me I spoke about my time spent in China at high school. By year 9 it was my second visit to China and we stayed for 6 weeks in total, quite a long time for a school trip. To me, the whole experience felt gamified and enriched with insights that would make me want to continue Chinese language as a subject in school and possibly in VCE. While the cultural insights I mentioned were countless, including restaurant dining, free time in foreign cities and opportunities to stay with Chinese families, I was surprised by the rewards we got for simply venturing into another country for 6 weeks and being the first participants in a government program aiming to improve Chinese cultural education and bilingualism in Australian kids. Upon return to Australia I remember receiving three different certificates from the Chinese schools we studied at along with an invitation to lunch with the Premier among other things such as conferences and a special lunch at school. For the first time in my education, me and my friends who went felt like we had done something prestigious and now had a huge advantage over every other student trying to learn Chinese.
In conclusion, Jarryd and I both have fond memories of learning something and being exposed to a new world in the process. While it is evident that we gained our educational benefits from these experiences due to different incentives, Jarryd’s incentive coming from the incorporation of ‘game mechanics’, a gift in this instance, and mine from ‘game dynamics’, awards and status, as categorized by Sarıtaş and Yıldız (2015), it can be deduced that we both gained satisfaction from our experiences and in the end adapted to the entire premise of games; to explore a new world.
I also did a second interview with Jarryd where we talked about some other gamified experiences we’d had. You can find the podcast he posted on his WordPress blog in the tweet below!
Sarıtaş & Yıldız 2015 as cited by Mert, Y & Samur, Y 2018, ‘Students’ Opinions Toward Game Elements Used in Gamification Application’, Turkish Online Journal of Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 70-101, doi: 10.17569/tojqi.364130
This blog post showcases my first ever podcast where I discuss the rise of ‘online crowdfunding’ and compare it to the past music industry.
The making of
In this blog post you’ll find the first podcast ever created by me, a challenge for my technical and creative abilities. Set over a smooth blues background complete with accentuated guitar chords straight from the soul, I discuss the fairly recent appearance of ‘online crowdfunding’, a fascinating method of self-promoting and fundraising for many independent inventors and innovators. The type of creators I focus on are musicians seeking assistance from online crowdfunding platforms to help them accomplish tasks such as successful album promotion, online store establishment and even for recording resources. I outline the benefits and harms of the internet’s incorporation into the music industry along with the way crowdfunding has fundamentally changed the strategies for success. This then segues into the second part of my podcast where I ask myself whether the challenge of crowdfunding a music project has now become more viable and necessary than the traditional method of convincing label representatives.
In the second part of my podcast I discuss the above mentioned question and then continue on to make a parallel between artists who have already established themselves and those just beginning their career. It is here that I demonstrate how the parallel of maintaining success and engaging in self-promotion exists between small and large artists due to the rise of an intertwined necessity for artists to use social media and crowdfunding tactics together if they wish to stand a chance in the present day. From this intriguing new dynamic, I then discern how valuable the lessons of crowdfunding actually are for artists beginning their career in music. To conclude and essentially provide an answer both to myself and the listener, I end my podcast by explaining how the only perceivable downside to crowdfunding; the monumental task of independently establishing yourself as a musician, can be seen as a vital lesson. The skills from this lesson are ones which were traditionally not acquired by artists when labels would give the opportunity for all promotion to be done for them. This finally results in my closing statement that successful crowdfunding is now the equivalent of success on the whole for every artist out there.
Throughout my podcast I make a few mentions of an article which uses MegaTotal as its example for discussing crowdfunding. While I wish I’d searched for MegaTotal first to find out about it’s now nonexistence, the article gave me valuable insight as to the way a site like MegaTotal aids artists. Only then from my understanding of the usage of a site like this did I essentially have a moment of realization that every artist out there employs crowdfunding strategies for themselves and crowdfunding is more than an initiative to raise funds. It is an initiative to learn how to be successful in today’s music industry.
The Music
Upon searching through SoundCloud for music of an upbeat techno/dubstep variety, like the kind some youtubers use, I decided that I hate that kind of music and needed to do something completely different. I then searched for blues and what came up was some tracks from a Norwegian man playing blues chord progressions over a simple beat. The perfect backing and transitioning for my podcast had been found!
The Challenges
Every challenge is a learning experience it seems (just like crowdfunding) and I had many learning experiences to deal with when creating a podcast. Some of the most valuable include learning how to record in a proper studio, how to prepare your voice and also how to put together a recording that doesn’t sound like it was done in a bathroom. Most importantly however, I learnt that the only way to spice up almost five minutes of your own voice talking is to add music that complements your vocals and speak as if you’re voicing a character.
In this blog post, I will be discussing an emerging technology with proposed benefits to the food industry, human health in relation to meat consumption and future sustainability. ‘Meatless Meats’, a possible alternative for the ‘$90B global meat market‘ (CB-Insights 2017, Heading) sourced from livestock, are now being researched and invested-in by large meat companies themselves.
But what exactly are ‘Meatless Meats’?
Let’s begin with Tofu and idea of meat alternatives, Tofu is originally from China and was invented during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) (DuBois et al. 2008, p. 102), tofu is a food made by processing and fermenting soybeans. From a very early time, the Chinese conceptualized Tofu as a ‘meat analogue‘ (‘Meat analogue’ 2018) and even today it is one of the most popular and accessible substitutes for meat.
But while this is a substitute for meat or a ‘meat analogue’ among many others like Tempeh and Falafel, these substitutes to meat are not comprised of any sort of animal products and are instead grown from plant cells. True ‘Meatless Meats’ are meats that have been grown in a lab environment from stem cells and are not really regarded as a vegan option.
And now that we have that difference cleared up, let’s break down the actual process of producing ‘Meatless Meats’, or as they are sometimes called; ‘Lab-grown Meats’:
According to this article about In Vitro (meaning ‘in the glass/petri dish’) meat production by Science Focus,
‘The science behind growing meat without animals is fairly simple…
…The process starts with a few ‘satellite’ cells, which can be obtained from a small sample of muscle taken from a live animal. These are stem cells that can turn into the different cells found in muscle. Just one cell could, in theory, be used to grow an infinite amount of meat. When fed a nutrient-rich serum, the cells turn into muscle cells and proliferate, doubling in number roughly every few days.
After the cells have multiplied, they are encouraged to form strips, much like how muscle cells form fibres in living tissue. These fibres are attached to a sponge-like scaffold that floods the fibres with nutrients and mechanically stretches them, ‘exercising’ the muscle cells to increase their size and protein content. The resulting tissue can then be harvested, seasoned, cooked and consumed as boneless processed meat.’ (Science Focus 2017, Paras. 9-11).
How does this process support my claims of industry, health and sustainability benefit though?
Well, ‘Meatless Meats’ absolutely fit the bill for being a disruptive technology according to Paul Armstrong’s second argument (and apparently ‘key criterion’) for classifying a technology as disruptive (2017, p. 12); ‘transformative ability or how much of an old thing a new thing changes’ . In terms of industry, the development and eventual commercial emergence of ‘Meatless Meats’ will disrupt the practice of raising livestock for human consumption that has fed the world population for over 15,000 years. This could result in an enormous change in the global meat-market as meat companies either suffer at the hands of a somewhat greener alternative to meat consumption or become investors in lab-grown alternatives.
As for the health benefits, the process above explains how lab-grown meat is stretched and ‘exercised’ to produce larger cell size and higher protein content. This technique and the ability for ‘protein synthesis in cultured muscle cells [to] be enhanced by different combinations of ingredients in various conditions to improve the nutritional quality of cultured meat’ (Arshad, M 2017, Intro. Para. 2) would allow scientists to manipulate meat cultures into producing ideal meat in terms of appearance, taste, texture and nutrition. These are very important factors in replacing the demand for livestock, whereby people can no longer argue that alternatives to meat, such as vegetarian substitutes, are just ‘not the same’ as meat.
Overall however, it is the sustainability that ‘Meatless meats’ can promise which make them most attractive to the environmentally-conscious consumer. Currently, Livestock and livestock buildings are a major source of atmospheric pollutants that contribute to soil acidification and global warming (Gold 2004) and it is common knowledge that resources used by livestock such as water and territory have contributed to great environmental damage. And according to a report by the Sutardja center, ‘meat production will be unsustainable by 2050’ (Joshi, I et al. 2015). However, there is something we can do about this current problem and foreseeable dystopian reality:
According to Hampton Creek CEO Josh Tetrick, lab-grown meat and seafood can be produced (by his company) with over ’10x more efficiency than the world’s highest volume slaughter-house’ with a ‘fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions and water use’.
Sound promising?
References:
CBInsights 2017, Our Meatless Future: How the $90B Global Meat Market Gets Disrupted, CBInsights, retrieved 25 April 2018 <https://www.cbinsights.com/research/future-of-meat-industrial-farming/>.
Dubois, Christine, T & Chee-Beng, M 2008, The World of Soy, NUS Press.
‘Meat analogue’ 2018, Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia, 4 April, retrieved 25 April 2018, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_analogue>.
Science Focus 2017, The artificial meat factory – the science of your synthetic supper, Science Focus, retrieved 25 April 2018, <http://www.sciencefocus.com/article/future/artificial-meat-factory>.
Armstrong, P 2017, Disruptive Technologies: Understand, Evaluate, Respond, Kogan Page, retrieved 25 April 2018, <https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy-b.deakin.edu.au/lib/deakin/reader.action?docID=4850488&ppg=22>.
Arshad, M, Javed, M, Sohaib, M, Saeed, F, Imran, A, Amjad, Z & Yildiz, F 2017, Tissue engineering approaches to develop cultured meat from cells: A mini review,Cogent Food & Agriculture, vol. 3, no. 1, retrieved 25 April 2018, Taylor and Francis Online.
Gold, M 2004, The Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat, retrieved 25 April 2018, <https://www.ciwf.org.uk/media/3817742/global-benefits-of-eating-less-meat.pdf>
Joshi, I, Param, S, Irene & Gadre, M 2015, Saving the Planet The Market for Sustainable Meat Alternatives, retrieved 25 April 2018, <http://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavingThePlanetSustainableMeatAlternatives.pdf>
Note: All images are public domain unless captioned otherwise.
My current group chat, what others would call ‘The Boys Chat’, represents the group I fit into. It is a group named something odd I will not be disclosing in this blog post and is a Facebook Messenger group conversation that has now been active for about 4 years. This chat consists of 8 members, all of whom are close friends of mine since I began high school before group chats were really a thing I knew about. – And to check if the use of group chats among teenagers just wasn’t really a thing before I began using them or whether I was just an ignorant 13-year-old, I tweeted this question to the unit hashtag:
While everyone is on Twitter, what year did you first join a group chat on messenger, snapchat etc. #ALM101
-To which I got a variety of responses including someone who used Yahoo messenger in 2008, someone who only ever used them for schoolwork and another person who had begun using a Messenger group chat in 2017 to stay connected to family.
These responses indicate that indeed group chats had been around before I began using them and for different purposes. However, my focus in this blog post is my own belief that the group chat, for me, is a place where conversation continues as if me and my friends were sitting at the pub. An online space where the barriers of self-consciousness and acceptable discussion is overcome. Going back on my survey about when people first began using group chats, I would also like to address the idea that teens have shifted to using ‘narrowcasting’ mediums instead of ‘broadcasting’ mediums.
The generic and the curious:
If you take a look at all the millions of threads created on various sites by young people seeking advice on all the bizarre experiences of growing up, it would seem the internet has provided one giant platform for a few generations now to share familiar troubles and joys about a time of developing identity. While anonymity on the now less popular discussion boards of the earlier 2000s allowed many questions to be answered without risking one’s image, I now suspect that the advent of better messaging platforms means many people have turned to in-depth conversations among close friends.
While it was once a common belief that the online world couldn’t foster ‘meaningful’ conversation, we now know that some people may even depend on honest and personal conversations with others online to maintain a relationship. In a journal article by Stephanie Tong et al. (Tong 2011, p. 109), Tong states that ‘because disclosure is so important in online relationships, content [of conversations] may reflect both positive and negative aspects of the relationship’. This idea translates into my own perception of the dynamics in a group chat, whereby my own group chat serves as a place for unreserved behaviours and ideas, but may also harbor conflict. The topics of conversation in the group chat have revealed very interesting truths about each of us and I believe this is what has indeed allowed us to remain close as a group despite our dispersal after school. The same bizarre experiences that people more commonly started threads for on discussion boards in the 2000s are the ones subject to discussion within a our group chat. But how is this different to the way in which we present our public self online? How are our public profiles structured differently?
It seems that we engage in a kind of sterilization of our online activity when it is public, something I think everyone unknowingly conforms to unless they are acting in a transgressive way. To me, Marshall’s ‘Transgressive Intimate Self’ (Marshall 2010, p. 45) only truly comes out on one’s ‘public’ profile during unusual circumstances, as I summarized in this tweet:
When it comes to the idea of a ‘true’ self in media, I think the only real authenticity comes from ‘Transgressive’ behaviour. The problems and nuances of people’s lives only come out on public profiles due to unusual circumstances like crisis or when drunk etc. #ALM101
Note that I said ‘problems and nuances’, primarily because it’s quite true to me that all the ‘problems and nuances’ of life -the things that we naturally base conversation on- are things I’m able to talk over in my group chat and wouldn’t usually feel were appropriate to vent at random on a public profile, although this is something people do when attempting to ‘reach-out’. That is unless I’m in an altered mindset and humility goes out the window.
But, is the same attitude true for everyone else my age?
According to this article by Felicity Duncan, Assistant Professor of Digital Communication and Social Media at Cabrini College, (The Conversation 2016): ‘kids are opting out of the online public square’ and now favour ‘ephemerality’. Meaning that young people are opting for social platforms that allow them to produce fleeting expressions that are sent to a more exclusive audience. (My own observation of this is my increased use of the ‘group chat’ of course but also the platform known as Snapchat.) Professor Duncan later states one of the causes of this; the chance to get a ‘break from the need to police [your own] online image’, a very valid explanation that supports my belief on how we ‘sterilize’ our public image.
In summary, I can say ‘yes’ to my final question, I think it is absolutely true nowadays that young people, myself included, have decided to approach the online world as a place to treat their public identity with duality. Kids know the risks and as a result keep the public profiles safe and let our personality reign free in the group chat.
Tong, S & Walther, J 2011, ‘Relational Maintenance and CMC’, Computer-mediated Communication in Personal Relationships, chapter 6, pp. 98-118
Marshall, PD 2010, ‘The promotion and presentation of the self: celebrity as marker of presentational media’, Celebrity Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 35-48.
Duncan, F 2016, ‘So long social media: the kids are opting out of the online public square’, The Conversation, retrieved 17 April 2018, <https://theconversation.com/so-long-social-media-the-kids-are-opting-out-of-the-online-public-square-53274>
First off, this is not my recipe. As you may have concluded from the title, this is Meyhem Lauren’s recipe, Meyhem Lauren being a member of the Smart Crew, a crew of graffiti artists from New York. In Collaboration with rapper Action Bronson (real name Ariyan Arslani), Meyhem allowed Bronson to publish this recipe where I found it; in Bronson’s cookbook titled ‘F*ck that’s delicious’ (Bronson, 2017). I have made this recipe numerous times and it is my favourite recipe from the book so far. Below you can see Action Bronson in the foreground and Meyhem Lauren directly behind, both are people that inspire me.
First you’ll need most of the following ingredients and I say ‘most’ because you may want to skip out on chillies and jalapenos or maybe onion if one of those isn’t your thing:
About 800grams of boneless chicken thighs
6 cloves of garlic (smashed)
Curry powder
Vegeta
Paprika
Olive oil
4 small carrots, peeled and diced
3 ribs of celery diced
1 diced red onion
2 8-ounce boxes cremini mushrooms (stemmed and quartered)
2 long red chillies (sliced)
2 cans of light coconut milk
1 can of pickled jalapenos
3 tablespoons of lemon zest
1 thumb-sized knob of ginger (smashed)
1 small bunch of basil, tough stems removed
3 small potatoes, any kind should do (diced)
2 ripe tomatoes
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
4 large sheets of puff pastry or piecrusts
a 50 gram slice of butter
Flaky Sea Salt
1 egg (beaten)
Now here’s the simple method for making this wondrous pie (this recipe makes two):
Preheat the oven to 220 Celsius (non fan-forced).
Combine the chicken and garlic in a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle the chicken on all sides with curry powder, Vegeta, paprika and a little olive oil. Mix it around and then let it sit for about 15 to 20 minutes to marinate slightly. Now brown it on all sides ideally in a dutch oven, I just used a pan and fried it up nicely.
Place the chicken on a plate and then cook your vegetables (carrots, celery, mushroom, onions and chillie) in the same pot to ensure they’re getting some of the same coating from the chicken. Even go so far as to scrape any brown bits from the pan in with the vegetables for maximum flavour.
Add the chicken back to the pot when the vegetables have softened, pour in the coconut milk and the pickled jalapenos, then bring everything to a simmer.
Add the lemon zest, ginger, basil, potatoes and don’t forget to crush the tomatoes with your bare hands straight into the pot. Stir in the sugar and then taste the mixture to see if it needs more sugar, salt etc.
Simmer for roughly 20 minutes until the potatoes are cooked through and are smasheable. Shred the chicken lightly with a wooden spoon also. Let it all cool down for about 10 minutes after simmering.
While the mixture is simmering and then cooling, Use butter to grease two cake pans then sprinkle some sea salt on the pans. Press in a single slice of pastry into each then let rest in the fridge for 5 minutes.
Now that the mixture in the pan has cooled, place the vegetables and chicken onto the pastry in the cake pans with a slotted so spoon so that not too much liquid is placed in the pies.
Lay the other sheets of pastry on top and crimp the edges with a fork like the
Apple pie by Scott Feldstein (CC BY 2.0)
example on the right, also making sure to jab some holes with a knife on the top of the pie.
Bake until the filling is bubbling through the tops of the pies before basting the tops of the pies with butter and the beaten egg. Allow the pies to bake until golden brown and crispy on the edges before serving immediately with hot sauce… if you like hot sauce.
This is a fantastic meal for the family because it contains serves of vegetables for the kids and is also overwhelmingly delicious. It’s also great if you’re big on eating like myself so that you can devote one pie to yourself and
Photograph by Oscar Lang, Jan 17 2018
one to the family.
Reference:
Bronson and Wharton, A and R 2017, F*ck that’s delicious – An annotated guide to eating well, ABRAMS, NY.
