Interactive Media

hey guys--as my final post for WAM this semester, I thought I'd share with you the interactive website that I have spent the most time with.

I haven't played there in years, but Homestar Runner is the BEST.

Interactive Media assignment

Remember for the weekend--find a media object you enjoy "interacting" with. Post a link to it (or a representation of it via YouTube) and talk about why you think that object succeeds as interactive. Just a paragraph or two will do.

Final Project

For your final project in Writing Across Media, you will be creating a polished artifact utilizing the skills and techniques acquired over the course of the semester. While the requirements for this project are simple, the work that you do here should reflect your finest and most thoughtful work to date. First, you will read a small body of scholarship that focuses on a theory related to work we have done in WAM. Then, you will work to remediate that theory using one (or many!) of the tools and methods we have utilized this semester. In other words, I'd like for you to explore the theory thoroughly and then demonstrate your understanding of the theory in a way other than the typical alphabetic text representation. Simply put, do what you've been doing all semester!

The amount of work you do here should be the equivalent of a ten page research paper, but of course, there need not be any traditional "pages." I assume that most of you will choose to do a time-based project, if so, please limit it to 6-7 minutes. In your initial proposal, due on the 27th, you should tell me your plan for the project including all of the media/mediums you will use and how you plan on representing the theoretical ideas of your scholarship. The most important part of the proposal and the project will be a display of your ability to think deeply about both the theory you will be covering and the concepts that we have discussed this semester. Final written "artifacts" should be at least 1000 words.


I have been so pleased by the work you have done thus far in the class. I very much look forward to your final products!


Time line:

• Assign project and choose theory: Tuesday 21
  
• Project proposal due on Tuesday the 28th (500 words)
  
• Have reading nearly completed by the 27th
• Final project due August 4th, Presentations the 4th and 5th

Final Project Theory List

Genre Theroy:
Mikhail Bakhtin- "Speech Genres"
J. L. Austin- "How to Do Things with Words"

Theories of Place:
Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World- Ron Scollon and Suzie Wong Scollon

Chapter 1: Geosemiotics
Chapter 4: Visual Semiotics
Chapter 5: Interlude on Geosemiotics


(Video)Game theory:
(Select at least 3)

Articles from First Person
Janet Murray- "From Game-Story to Cyberdrama"
Markku Eskelinen- "Towards Computer Game Studies"
Espen Aarseth- "Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation"
Gonzalo Frasca- "Videogames of the Oppressed: Critical Thinking, Education, Tolerance, and
Other Trivial Issues"
Natalie Jeremijenko- "If Things Can Talk, What Do They Say? If We Can Talk to Things, What
Do We Say? Using Voice Chips and Speech Recognition Chips to Explore Structures of
Participation in Sociotechnical Scripts"

or, if you can get it:

James Paul Gee: Part 1 from What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

Comic Theory

Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics (the rest of the book)

New Media Theory I:
Marshall McCluhan- "Part I" from Understanding Media

New Media Theory II:
Lev Manovich: "1. What Is New Media?" from The Language of New Media
Lev Manovich- "6. What Is Cinema?" from The Language of New Media

Visual Rhetoric:
Roland Barthes: "Rhetoric of the Image"
Gunther Kress- "Multimodality, Multimedia, and Genre"


Visual Rhetoric II

5 additional chapters from Elkins' How To Use Your Eyes
Theories of Digital Democracy:
Robert Putnam: Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of the American Community

Digital Democracy II
From Virtual Culture
Nessim Watson- "Why We Argue about Virtual Community: A Case Study of the Phish.Net Fan
Community"
Harris Breslow- "Civil Society, Political Economy, and the Internet"

Video!

Finish up with Audio project presentations

Assign Video project

Discuss Hampe

Back to looking, watching, and observing.

20 things assignment: due Monday.

iMovie tutorials on iLife


You need to buy a mini-dv tape as soon as possible. They are cheap, and you only need one.

I'll do an iMovie demo on Monday--we will also choose partners for the video project then

music files for download

file 1

file 2

archive.org is also a resource to check out for free music.

Ira Glass on storytelling

There's some really great stuff here about how writing for an audio/video program is different (and the same) as the "regular" writing process.

Part #1



Part #2



Part #3



Part #4