Globalization and Online Shopping

Click, Click, checkout.

Online shopping is that simple. Who doesn’t love shopping online?! The trend of online shopping has been rapidly increasing. Two of the biggest online shopping websites – Ebay and Amazon have influenced the whole merchandize industry. Every retail stores are trying to catch the trend by creating its online store. According to CSCA study on e-commence, “online shopping will double as a percentage of overall retail sales to capture more than six per cent of sales by 2018”. The declines of shopping mall and the incline of online shopping will surely affect the economy. Many Canadian brand retailers have closed down due to the intense competition by the U.S brands retailers. In fact teenagers, future adults, will determine how the shopping industry goes. Around one-quarter of female teenagers prefer online shopping and male, surprisingly, are close to 50% rates of preference on shopping online. Unemployment rates will certainly rise up as retailers won’t hire people to work, which means that teenagers may not find a retail job in summer or during school time.

China and Middle East countries are also flooded by the trend of online shopping. According to China B2C Online Shopping Industry 2013-2016 Report, “In 2008-2012, Chinese online shopping market size ascended from RMB128.2 billion to RMB1,303.0 billion at the Compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 78.6%. In H1 2013, the market valued RMB789.21 billion, up 41.2% year on year.” Middle East countries also are catching up on the online shopping business, such as Pakistan. Ahmed Jahangir, managing director of kaymu.pk (online marketplace), says “Online shopping in Pakistan is being driven primarily by young, urban and male population. The online retail business is going to hold a substantial share of retail revenues in near future.”

Online shopping not only influences the way we live, but also the way economy is going to be. Will retail stores be completely absorbed by the online shopping?! It may not in the short term but it will definitely affect its values. This is just the beginning of online shopping. Who knows what will happen in the next ten years?

Below is a documentary about the story of how Amazon became one of the most successful online retails.

 

I Came Here For the Comments

Who doesn’t like to read comments on social media website. Facebook, Youtube, social forums, and newspaper online websites all have one thing in common, that is the comment section. It’s really interesting to comments on these websites, some of them are hilarious and some of them are ridiculous. We’re going to look at Youtube comments section, and talk about what’s good and bad about posting comments online.

Youtube Comments Section

It’s probably the biggest comments section in the social network, arguably. Anyone can post their thoughts about a video, the comments may not be about the video at all, it could be really random. One of the biggest term in the internet is TROLL, one who posts anger or random or funny comments about nothing. Who doesn’t love the trolls?! It’s hilarious sometimes seeing trolls on the comments section and posting random comments. One of the most popular comments on youtube is “first”, yup, it may sound silly but people love to be the first one commenting on youtube videos.

 

But why though? may be because we are all competitive and love winning. Who doesn’t want to be the first of anything, right? Sometimes the youtube somments section can be all about fans fighting each other, especially music fans such as One Direction fans, Justin Bieber fans, and Lady Gaga fans. All these popular musicians have a really strong fans base, and their fans don’t like people leave hate comments.  There’s really funny videos on Youtube that celebrities would read mean tweets about themselves in front of the camera, the video below was posted by a famous talk show called Jimmy Kimmel Live.

 

 

Not just the video is interesting and creative, but also there’s a comment posted by someone named treehuggerkyle, the one posted:

“You know that none of those Tweeters would be willing to say that to the celebrity’s face. They only do it because of the anonymity of the internet.
They’re all wusses and if I had a chance I’d beat them all up, all at the same time, because I’m a total badass and could beat up 100 people at once.
[Edit: I figured my comment was over-the-top enough that I was being sarcastic/ironic. I was saying “people only act tough because of the anonymity of the internet,” and then that’s exactly what I did, to a ridiculous extent. But based on some of the comments, not everybody got that.]”

It’s true indeed  that no one apparently would say mean things to the celebrity’s face because of social norms, that is we shouldn’t say mean stuffs to people. However, the internet world is full of anonymous, no one knows who is who. People hide their real identity and post something bad online. Sometimes, I have hard time to read mean comments posted by anonymous. The internet world is so powerful that it could be life-threatening, not all people are strong enough to read mean comments. People bully people are not a rare thing in the internet and people sometimes can be affected by hatred comments.There’s an article about how and why comments section is terrible idea. The article talks about whether social media websites should have rights to eliminate comments, so that the internet could be more “peaceful”. Should the organizer take actions on hatred comments like newspaper websites? One thing good/bad about comments section on majority of newspaper websites is that there are monitors trying to delete comments that are inappropriate. However, is this an act of censorship? Should the monitors delete the comments on the websites? Are people abusing freedom on the internet? It’s hard to eliminate all the hatred and inappropriate comments on Youtube and other social media websites, but it’s certainly a good way to try to against abuse of freedom.

 

 

 

Internet and Contemporary art

What is Art? Do you know anything about art? One may say “yeah, I love Van Gogh and Mona Lisa.”

Of course, Mona Lisa is a masterpiece but artists nowadays tend to make art that explore different media and push their limits. It’s been over 20 years since internet becomes one of the major social media. Internet not also changes how people living but also the art world.

Sit down, Relax, and Look at Art in Internet

Don’t you feel good when you don’t have to go out to Toronto and look at art exhibitions. Now, Internet has done us a favor,  we can just go on internet and google art that you like. millions of photos will pop up. Contemporary Art Daily is a non-profit website, founded by Forrest Nash, that posts photos of artworks that are currently exhibiting in some place in the world. Recently, the website features New York Frieze Art Fair, people who don’t live in New York have the opportunity to look at those artworks. Of course, it’s better to look at arts in person.

Loren Munk is a New York artist as well as an internet art blogger. He has two Youtube channels jameskalm and jameskalmroughcut ,which he uses James Kalm as his pseudonym. his channels are about visiting art exhibitions in New York and film them like an art journal. Viewers thus can experience New York art scene without spending money on traveling. Here’s a video of him visiting Frieze Art Fair New York 2014

Appropriation and Internet

Before Postmodernism, artists tend to just reproduce a work without changing anything. But since 1980s appropriation is about authorship and originality.

Richard Prince, One of the pioneers of Appropriation Art, takes appropriation and internet into next level. He is best known of appropriating advertisement photographs and making them his own property. One of his controversial pieces is called “Spiritual America” which shows 10 year old Brooke Shields posing nude. His recent ongoing work is posting photos on his Instagram account, richardprince4, that are print-outs of Instagram photos of celebrities. Head feels dizzy… A lot of the photos have sexual content, such as women posing nude. Not long ago, his instagram got banned after posting the Brooke Shields’ photograph. His account got restored recently by Instagram.

Jon Rafman, a Canadian artist, is best known for his Google Street View photos. An ongoing project, 9-Eyes, that he appropriated Google Street View photos as readymade. Using photographic readymade to address about reality, voyeurism, the theory of semiotics. In his thesis essay, The Nine Eyes of Google Street View, He states

“The world captured by Google appears to be more truthful and more transparent because of the weight accorded to external reality, the perception of a neutral, unbiased recording, and even the vastness of the project. At the same time, I acknowledge that this way of photographing creates a cultural text like any other, a structured and structuring space whose codes and meaning the artist and the curator of the images can assist in constructing or deciphering.”

 

YOUTUBE Videos as  medium

Jennifer Chan, a Canadian artist, uses fragmented clips of youtube videos and reassembles them into a video. A lot of her works deal with feminism, popular culture, and identity. LOVE FIGHTER, a work that explores the theme of gender and masculinity. In an interview by CanadianArt, she says she “thought about the pressure to be masculine, as well as idealized images of masculinity and how much it is tied predominantly to athleticism, and a kind of soldier figure.”

 

My Work

Let’s see how many motifs you can find in this work. =)

http://www.comeandgetafreewatch.com/