Kenny J Smith

To spread the word about mpmash.co.nz, we created content on online social networks and content for the wellington public.

We have a screensaver running on Courtenay place and some still images on a billboard infront of James Smith corner. We also gave out political satire recipies to the public and gave them to the chef at backbencher restaurant.

While filming the documentation of our website and these marketing techniques, I wanted to interviewed members of the public to give our branding some physical presence specifically at parliament.

The documentation was edited together in a remix style with quick shots and different subjects spliced together.

We are starting to gain more visits to our website so the marketing must be working.

Most of the visitors come from facebook, some come from mediazone and some come from google.

Introducing double denim John Key, he is a polar opposite of the prime minister.

John Key is sometimes criticised for being New Zealand’s wealthiest prime minister and not being able to connect with ordinary New Zealanders.

Double Denim John Key enjoys listening to classic rock music, working on his v8 car and lives in a state house.

John Key fixing his car
John Key driving to work

When a comment is made about an mp on the mp mash site, it sends the comment via rss to yahoo pipes and is combined with other feeds about that particular politician. The combination of all these feeds is displayed on the mp’s page. This gives the page content a circular feedback loop.

The video remixer is a way for users to remix a politician’s speech, I think we would all like politicians to say what we want to hear e.g. “we are giving everyone some free money” and “the government is scraping the alcohol tax”. With the video remixer, you might not be able to make a politician say anything but with enough mini sound bites you can make them say some interesting statements.

This is roughly what I want the video player to like, there is a list of videos on the right displayed as the words in the sound bite.

On the left is the video screen and below is an area where a sentance / statement gets constructed.

The video player is made with flash and uses xml to load the video and dialog as text.

A rough version as available on this page: http://www.kennyjsmith.com/drupal/node/24

My groups idea for a website is a political satire site with user generated content.

So far I have instanlled drupal into my server and have begun to test out different ways of adding video content.

The general idea of our website is a facebook for new zealand politicians that takes the piss out of them. We need to have a main drawing point to our site and after looking into the audio remixing of cassetteboy we have come up with the idea of remixing politician’s speaches. We will also data mine from other websites to display what the general public have to say about a particular politician alongside news about that politician.

My redesigned mediazone can be found here -> http://kennyjsmith.com/mediazone/mediazone.html

The best way to demonstrate my ideas for the website were to experiment with the layout and saleability of the web page.
It ending up becoming a bit of an extreme example of no blank space and has ended up looking too busy and a bit tacky.

Perhaps the ideal website would be inbetween my busy dynamic tacky concept and the current dull empty yet usable mediazone.

To spice up the new website a bit, I steered away from the original design and developed a new layout based on the golden section.

The current mediazone website’s underlying systems work fine, so I focused on giving it a new visually dynamic look.

The main features of my design are

• no blank unused space
• a more interesting navigation system
• a rss feed for news

While research different avenues to consider in redesigning mediazone, I have been reviewing other websites.

Modest Mouse
http://www.modestmousemusic.com/ 

• Has a very dark colour palette.
• Uses elements of flash to give it some interactivity.
• Advertising in important focal areas.
• Content is html so it is searchable.
• To much information on one page.
• One long column no framed areas.

2Advanced studios
http://www.2advanced.com/

• Entirely flash.
• Intensely interactive.
• Different colour schemes on each page
• Style resembles a contemporary video game
• Content fits on the page with no need for scrolling
• Many frames with no clear hierarchy.
• Information overload, too many links and buttons.

Digital Media at AUT University (a competitor)
http://www.autdigitalmedia.ac.nz/

• A similar grid of squares to mediazone
• One tall skinny blogy column with wasted space on the sides.
• All the content on one page, stacked one on top of another.
• Simple site, focus is put upon the work.

University of Berlin
http://www.digital.udk-berlin.de/en/

• Has a login on the first page.
• Very empty and dull.
• it takes too many clicks to see anything

Kaliber 10000

http://www.k10k.net/

• A good colour palette.
• Well framed
• not too much scrolling.
• An up to date newsfeed.
• A running theme of pixelated patterns.
• Iconography simplifies the navigation.

Telematics is a new social form. Vlogs, Podcasting, txt msgng, rss, i-reporting are designed by the Use and by machine technologies that have found a need and an application: re-informing the experience of social events from the ground, the local horizontally.