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The Big Picture
DESIGN AND THE MEDIA
» Thursday 27 March 2008 | 4:30 pm
» BeanScene North, 1289 Ellis Street
An informal afternoon hour showcasing the people and ideas featured in Okanagan Arts. Join us as publisher and designer Robert MacDonald explores the evolving role of media in society, and how the results of that evolution will effect our personal, social and business lives.
» This is a free event. Refreshments will be available at a modest cost.
» Seating is limited, please reserve yours HERE
Sponsored by the Arts Council of the Central Okanagan, Wood Lake Books, UBCO-FCCS, and in support of Project Literacy Kelowna
Presentation Probes Media Evolution
Ask any class of 10-year-olds where they get their entertainment and hands shoot up like so many fireworks - MSN, Facebook, iPod, uTube, the internet. In less than a decade centuries old media forms have been turned on their head and the result has wide-spread implications both economically and culturally.
"One of the most exhausting things about new-media Moonies is their cultish conviction: either you "get it" or you don't," says Robert MacDonald, who will be speaking March 27 at 4;30 p.m. at the Bean Scene North in the second of the Okanagan Institute's four-part series on design - The Big Picture: Design and the Media.
"But they're right, up to a point. It's like when you're finding your way around a strange city: you have to see the whole thing in its full conceptual clarity before you can even begin to understand the particulars," MacDonald states.
In this presentation MacDonald will discuss his perceptions of the old-media and new-media worlds, re-visits the "convergence" issue, and postulates a number of scenarios for the near and far future.
The classic case study is how Steve Jobs shanghaied and basically destroyed the CD business. The major record labels, in giving Apple's iTunes the right to sell individual songs for 99 cents each, undermined their own business model-selling bundles of songs gathered together into something called an "album" for up to $20 a pop-because they didn't see that people were about to consume music in an entirely new way. The labels saw iTunes as free money; "ancillary," in the legal vernacular. Jobs took their cheap music and used it as a loss leader to sell his expensive iPods, and the traditional music business now lies in tatters.
Similar things are happening in other old-media sectors: books, textbooks, magazines, newspapers, and more recently radio, television and film. Each is learning how to survive in the on-demand, almost-free, low-margin new-media world, with varying degrees of success. And all being done with varying degrees of panic. Some will no doubt survive, and some even thrive, but what they'll look like after the dust settles is the topic of much debate, and speculation.
Robert MacDonald was the Director of the Publishing Workshops at the University of Toronto and the Banff Centre for fifteen years. He was a founder of the Canadian Periodical Publishers Association and the Graphic Arts in the Public Service Foundation. He is both the publisher and designer of Okanagan Arts and Okanagan Home magazines, and the Director of the Okanagan Institute.
The Big Picture: Design and the Media is a free event, and takes place at BeanScene North. It's presented by the Okanagan Institute in association with Wheat King Publishing.
Express is sponsored by the Arts Council of the Central Okanagan, Wood Lake Books, UBCO Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, and supports the work of Project Literacy Kelowna.
Okanagan Insitute at BeanScene North A hearty feast of lectures, presentations, workshops and showcases celebrating our culture and community. Produced by the Okanagan institute in association with Wheat King Publishing magazines: Okanagan Arts and Okanagan Home.
Expresss is a cultural tonic that refreshes the mind. Join us at BeanScene North after work on Thursdays for a free hour of stimulation that will get your synapses tingling with new ideas and fresh images. Designed for inquiring minds looking for, among other things, the wild blue yonder.
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