The Contribution of Shadow Puppet's Show through Engaging Social Communication in Modern Society

AbstractModern society experiences fewer opportunities concerning the arts and culture that benefits the community strength. The objective of this research is to promote and improve the quality of life in modern community through valuable storytelling by presenting the traditional shadow play in digital conversion of animation. The fundamental approaches for this research are to encourage sharing knowledge and stories about issues of life, which in reflective practice will strengthens togetherness and contribution on cultural environment among creative, and social outreach work practitioners. The outcome is a digital performance shadow puppet animation that narrates stories for a better understanding about life arises for the future's benefits

Media, Public Storytelling and Social Justice: An Introduction to FOMACS, Forum on Migration and Communications

This case study, commissioned by Atlantic Philanthropies, presents snapshots of projects demonstrating how The Forum on Migration and Communications (FOMACS) strengthens the voices of migrants and NGOs who work in the migrant sector by using collaboration, creative arts, digital media and storytelling as catalysts for social change, advocacy and educational transformation

Implied...or implode? The Simpsons' carnivalesque Treehouse of Horror

Since 1990, The Simpsons’ annual “Treehouse of Horror” episodes have constituted a production sub-context within the series, having their own conventions and historical trajectory. These specials incorporate horror plots and devices, as well as general references to science fiction, into the series’ base in situation comedy. The Halloween specials disrupt the series usual family-oriented sitcom structure, dissolving the ideological balances that stabilise that society. By depicting the Family and community in extreme circumstances, in seeing the horror of ‘how things could be’, the Treehouse episode leave us with hanging questions about the nature of social being that bleed into the regular sitcom-style episodes. By breaking from the comparatively realistic social-satire that characterizes the series as a whole, the Halloween specials cast a reflexive gaze back onto “The Simpsons” itself. As a result, the “Treehouse” episodes are valuable as a means of examining the strategies and implications of the series as a whole. Bakhtin’s model of the carnivalesque is utilised to underscore these disruptive traits that characterise the Treehouse episodes

Exploring narrativity in data visualization in journalism

Many news stories are based on data visualization, and storytelling with data has become a buzzword in journalism. But what exactly does storytelling with data mean? When does a data visualization tell a story? And what are narrative constituents in data visualization? This chapter first defines the key terms in this context: story, narrative, narrativity, showing and telling. Then, it sheds light on the various forms of narrativity in data visualization and, based on a corpus analysis of 73 data visualizations, describes the basic visual elements that constitute narrativity: the instance of a narrator, sequentiality, temporal dimension, and tellability. The paper concludes that understanding how data are transformed into visual stories is key to understanding how facts are shaped and communicated in society

The Cosmological Liveliness of Terril Calder\u27s The Lodge: Animating Our Relations and Unsettling Our Cinematic Spaces

I first saw Métis artist Terril Calder\u27s 2014 stop-frame feature, The Lodge, an independently made, relatively small- budget film, at its premiere at the ImagineNative Film + Media Arts festival, held annually in Toronto, Canada. The feature-length animation played to a full house at the Light-box Theater downtown. Many were there to attend the five-day festival, which is dedicated to Indigenous media made by and for Indigenous people. Others were there because as members of Toronto\u27s general public they wanted to catch a movie during a night out in the city. Since then The Lodge has shown at various other independent venues. It isn\u27t what you might think of as commercial fare. Its audiences are not huge. However, for those who do view The Lodge, the film presents a creative space to rethink our sense of boundaries in a number of ways: boundaries between human/nonhuman, white/Indigenous, male/female, spectator/film-object. In this essay, I argue that the film is thus an invitation to question the naturalness of hegemonic identity assumptions that demarcate such boundaries. I interviewed Calder (via Skype and subsequent email correspondence) soon after I saw the film, and I situate a close textual analysis of the film within the context of her intent and the burgeoning scholarly dialogue between Indigenous studies and ecocritical studies. The scholarly dialogue, as Joni Adamson and I write in the introduction to our recent anthology, Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies: Conversations from Earth to Cosmos (2016), argues for clear sighted understandings of multi-faceted human/more-than-human relationships that exist outside of binaries imposed by Western notions of progress . Similarly, Steven Loft, coeditor of Coded Territories: Tracing Indigenous Pathways in New Media Art, writes of an Indigenous media cosmology that is replete with life and spirit, inclusive of beings, thought, prophecy, and the underlying connectedness of all things and that is not predicated on Western foundations of thought (xvi). Calder extends such Indigenous worldviews of connectedness to cinema and animation in particular

Ant Tribe

Ant Tribe describes the post-80s generation university graduates who live together in poor conditions without Social security in communities around China\u27s major metropolises. They dream of a better life in big cities but struggle with low-paying jobs. These struggling elites have become the fourth weak Social group, after peasants, migrant workers and unemployed people. The reason why these college graduates are compared to ants is that they are like ants: clever, hardworking, politically weak and living in groups. The real world is always different from the ideal world of the Ant Tribe in China. They often lose their purposes in a complex society. It is more important for them to recognize the distance between the real and imaginary in order to rethink whether it is a right choice to stay in a big city and try to realize their dreams. The intention of the Ant Tribe installation is to explore the process and concept of changing between the real and fantasy. In the installation, I hope to portray the Ant Tribe phenomenon widely and deeply from an artist\u27s perspective. The most important thing for me is using my artistic practice to investigate the power of the media over the contemporary subject in order to activate the viewers to question some Social issues regarding humanity consciousness. My artwork should be thought - provoking for them. I would like to use my visual language to convey specific Social issues to inquire how far the viewers are from their dreams. I hope they think about themselves in their complex society physically and psychologically when they go through my work

ANIMATION VIDEO TO IMPROVE STUDENTS' VOCABULARY MASTERY

Abstract: This research aims to identify whether or not and to what extent animation video can improve students' vocabulary mastery. This is a Classroom Action Research conducted at the sixth grade students of MIN Nglungge, Polanharjo. There were 2 cycles and each cycle consists of five steps, namely; (1) planning the action, (2) implementing the action, (3) observing the action, (4) reflecting the result of the observation, (5) revising of the action. The result of the research shows that animation video can improve the students' vocabulary mastery. It could be seen from these indicators: (a) students could spell the vocabularies; (b) most students were able to pronounce words correctly; (c) students could grasp the meaning well; and (d) students could recognize vocabularies. In line with the result, the writer suggests that animation video is one of the effective techniques in presentations as to increase the students' enthusiasm and their achievement in learning vocabulary. This result hopefully will motivate teachers to use animation video in teaching vocabulary to young learners. Key words: animation video, teaching vocabulary, vocabulary master

Evaluating Engagement in Digital Narratives from Facial Data

Engagement researchers indicate that the engagement level of people in a narrative has an influence on people's subsequent story-related attitudes and beliefs, which helps psychologists understand people's social behaviours and personal experience. With the arrival of multimedia, the digital narrative combines multimedia features (e.g. varying images, music and voiceover) with traditional storytelling. Research on digital narratives has been widely used in helping students gain problem-solving and presentation skills as well as supporting child psychologists investigating children's social understanding such as family/peer relationships through completing their digital narratives. However, there is little study on the effect of multimedia features in digital narratives on the engagement level of people. This research focuses on measuring the levels of engagement of people in digital narratives and specifically on understanding the media effect of digital narratives on people's engagement levels. Measurement tools are developed and validated through analyses of facial data from different age groups (children and young adults) in watching stories with different media features of digital narratives. Data sources used in this research include a questionnaire with Smileyometer scale and the observation of each participant's facial behaviours