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

Creating a link for Download

In order to complete the audio project, you are going to need to know how to post an mp3 to your blog. The process for doing this isn’t difficult. Follow these steps:

1. Go to your netfiles page at UIUC (everybody has one): https://netfiles.uiuc.edu
2. Click the upload button and find your mixed and finished file and upload it to your netfiles account.
3. Once you file is uploaded, you will need to indicate that the file can be shared by other people, this action will create a unique address that will allow you to post that file on your blog.
4. Click in the box next to your file so that a check mark appears, then click on the share button in the top menu.
a. You don’t need to worry about specific users, you want it to be shared with anyone, so click next through the first screen
b. Select the circle that says public/view, then click finish
c. Once you have changed the share status of your file, it should say “everyone” in the “shared to” category in the menu.
d. Select the file again and select manage/summary in the top menu.
e. The unique link address to your file is found next to “Full URL”
5. Once you have your unique link address, you will use this html tag to post a link to your file on your blog:

<a href="http://www.address.com">link</a>

(If I were you I would get very familiar with this line of code. It comes in VERY handy in lots of situations.)
6. Your link address replaces the http://www.address.com in the line of code (make sure to keep the quotation marks!) and where the word link is, you can write what word or phrase you would like the link on your page to appear as, likely the title of your audio project.
7. On your blog, and after you have written up your post, click on the “Edit HTML” tab. You will see the same text from your post. Take your competed line of code and insert it where you would like the download link to appear.
8. That’s it! You can always go in and change your post after your link is active. I like to click back over to the "compose" tab to do my editing, but you don’t have to.
9. You can follow this same procedure to link to any file in your netfiles—.doc, .pdf, .mp3—whatever!

Audio project assignment sheet: podcast/sound essay

For this project, you will create a short (4-5 minutes) audio essay in the style of radio programs like "This American Life." In the essay, you may make creative use of sound effects, music, silence, and any other audio tools at your disposal to communicate your ideas. You are free to choose the theme of your essay, and the information can be arranged however you like. These essays should be written to be spoken first, and I will try to demo in class how you can adjust a written piece into something more "talky".

If you have any questions about your ideas, feel free to contact me. Consider the information in the McKee and Shipka readings when thinking about how to construct your essay. Make sure to reference at least one of the ideas from these scholars explicitly. Also, make sure to use the workshop time provided in class to get feedback from me and from your classmates.

On Thursday, I will demo several aspects of Garageband, though you are welcomed to use any audio editor that you feel comfortable with.

I will also talk about how to upload your final audio-essay onto your blog. In addition to the audio file, I would also like to see the written essay that you work from as well as a 500 word "process" reflective essay like the one we did for the last unit.

Audio is Awesome

W(h)am?

When we listen to a piece of produced audio, several layers of discourse to occur simultaneously to form one "seamless" message. But like any rhetorical message (and I think sound is usually produced to create some kind of response--therefore qualifying as rhetoric), what is intended to be communicated and what actually gets taken up by an audience is necessarily not perfect.

Because sound does not rely on visual cues, there can be some play with how different sounds get represented.

See the War of the Worlds stuff on one of our classmate's illustrious blogs.


Fred Newman from Prairie Home Companion:



Also, since an audio production is usually the sum of it's parts, those pieces can be pulled apart and reassembled (and mashed together with other parts) to create something completely new.

Like the appropriation of the old Wham! tune above--

or...

Black Mirror- Arcade Fire

or...



How many different pieces of discourse are being used to create this Danger Mouse mash-up?

Knowing how to use audio when we compose in the variety of new media environments becomes an important part of participating in and creating modern discourse.

Podcasts are less about pulling apart and more about cohesive messages, but learning how to compose a podcast is going to give us the tools to play we need to start messing around with audio in the ways mentioned above.

Sound Essays:  In a recent CCCs article, Cynthia Selfe recommends the sound essay as an alternative/addition to the written essay.  See her cited example here: Sonya Borton's Legacy Music

McKee examples

Jonathan Carr: Breathing/Secret of Roe

Jason Nelson: Conversation

Mark O'Neil: Winter Lyric

New York City: After the Fall

Soundpoem one

Podcast analysis mini-assignment

On Thursday before class, I'd like you to post a short analysis of a podcast that you have listened to. See the side-bar for links to "This American Life" or "The Moth," but feel free to peruse other podcasts as well.

150-200 words. Tell us what you listened to and what elements you noticed that went into the composition.

Berger and McCloud

McCloud: Your thoughts.

Why is this relevant to what we are doing for the project?

Berger:

On the use of perspective in painting:
"The convention of perspective... centers everything on the ey of the beholder."
"The conventions call those appearances reality. Perspective makes the single eye the center of the visible world. Everything converges on to the eye as to the vanishing point of infinity." "The visible world is arranged for the spectator as the universe was once thought to be arranged for God." (p. 16)

How the camera shook things up. "I, the machine, show you a world the way only I see it":
"The camera isolated momentary appearances and in do doing destroyed the idea that images were timeless." (p. 17)
"[T]he camera showed that the notion of time passing was inseparable from the expereince of the visual (except in painting). What you say depended on where you were when. What you saw was relative to you position in time and space. It was no longer possible to imagine everything converging on the human eye as a vanishing point of infinity."
"The invention of the camera changed the way men (sic.) saw." (p. 18)

"Original paintings are silent and still in a sense that information never is." (p. 31)

Vermeer's Woman Pouring Milk

Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows








This is the last picture that Van Gogh painted before he killed himself.

Arguing with Images (assignment sheet)

WAM! (I don't think they use a fake cat in this--like, the whole time)

Great job on the stencil projects, all.

Arguing With Images

For this assignment you will draw from what we have studied about the persuasive power of imagery and create a series of images that exemplify the rhetorical principles explored in our readings. Your images will be self-created or appropriated and compiled from external sources, but each project will have a clear message to communicate. This insistence on clarity is meant to be tricky. You may find it difficult to "speak" explicitly let alone persuasively using only image as your communicative discourse. But, in the end, that is really the fun of this assignment.

You will be creating a photo essay as found in the Berger’s Ways of Seeing containing at least 20 images. This essay should, like Berger’s, have some sort of guiding principle or thread that holds the images together. Your images might tell a story, make a rhetorical argument, or create a more nebulous collage around a single theme or idea. Please use the online photo site of your choice to display these images and put a link to it on your blog.

For this project, consider the impact that text may have in changing the audience’s perception of your message. Use text very sparingly, if at all.

As before (but with a slight tweak), you will be required to write a reflection on the process of creating your piece (a bit different than a rational). Tell me about the difficulties and break-troughs you experienced as you went about the “writing” process. What was your original vision and how did that change as you went about creating your image series. Also please consider and include how our readings thus far have informed your work and how. Also, keep in mind the more "academic" tone of this reflection. I would like you to both post on your blog this response AND email me a Word document with your response in "essay" form. Again, due to a bit of syllabus confusion in this the quick-summer format, I am extending the due date of this project one day to Wednesday July 1st at 1pm when class begins.

This reflection should be approximately 500 words.

Please see me if you do not have easy access to a digital camera or if your phone does not have a camera on it.

Helvetica trailer

We don't have time to watch it in class, but it might make for a good extra-curricular movie night:

Sometime between now and Monday, watch these:

Usually I assign Berger's Ways of Seeing as a text for the class, but let's try something different.

These are clips from the program from which the book is based:

part 1



part 2



part 3



part 4



Over the weekend, investigate flickr or picassa, photobucket--start an account with one of them and upload some pictures... you will use one of these sites to upload your next project.

WAM: Wysocki

On the agenda:

1. Respond to reading questions
2. Wysocki talkie
3. Show & Tell: stencil graffiti artifacts

• "the seriousness of text and the non-seriousness of images"
• "All page-and screen-based texts are (therefore) visual and their visual elements and arrangements can be analyzed."
• typeface: size, font: serif, sans serif: are there "argumentative possibilities of mixing multiple typefaces in a paper other than one about typefaces?

• Color and Culture
  
• composition and photography: immediacy, reality, and how that contrasts with the ease of their manipulation
• Data visualizations: IKEA instructions
• Variations of Video and Sound: how can they be rhetorical?

Analysis:
1. Name the visual elements in a text.
2. Name the designed relationships among those elements.
3. Consider how the elements and relations connect with different audi-
ences, contexts, and arguments

• One of the keys to composition? Learn to observe well p159

Link to House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Monday WAMing and Stencil Assignment Sheet

Welcome back--(no wammy no wammy!) Oh--stop. We have to come back sometime.

Today's agenda:

1. Readings questions/answers
2. Class discussion: Drucker/Elkins
3. Stencil assignment
4. Stencil tutorial

NYC Drips from klingatron on Vimeo.
See also, my other links to the right.

Materials needed:

• Exacto knife
• Thin cardboard
• Something to put your image on to
• paint/chalk (we'll talk about this)
  

Each stencil should be a response to some "problem" that you see existing in the world. This problem can be real or imagined.

Each stencil should be created for a certain, specified space, be it actual graffiti, a t-shirt aimed at a certain demographic, or national ad-campaign (and these are just a few examples of the many situated spaces you could choose from). Tell me about where or what kind of environment your design would have the most persuasive or effective/affective impact.

Each stencil can serve whatever purpose you choose, be it commercial, protest oriented, aesthetic, or whatever (I mean, maybe you're just designing the t-shirt for a local band--that would be ok too). But it has to have SOME purpose.

Each stencil should be a combination of a pictorial and textual element (it can be an actual hybrid combination of both if you choose to create a logo of some sort). You will be required to explain your choices, so choose wisely. (consider the readings from this week as a guide to these choices).

In connection with your assignment, please type a 500-word rational for your choices above. You will also need to post a picture of your completed design in a mock-up (or real--though of course, I can't condone vandalism) local. I would expect, at the least, a side-walk chalk, fabric paint on t-shirt, or a spray-paint-on-poster board rendering. Both the rational and picture of completed project are due--posted to your blog--by Wednesday at 1pm.

Shepard Fairey doing his thing

Shepard Fairey from Arkitip on Vimeo.

Are you understanding now why I think this stencil "graffiti" business is an artform?

Graffiti Analysis

This weekend, in addition to your regular reading assignment, I'd like you to do one other simple thing: look for graffiti.

There's a bunch of it on or near campus, both on Green Street and also in Urbana by the Canopy Club/Expresso Royal. There is also a bunch of interesting street art in both downtowns in these, our Twin Cities.

Robot TV series:



If possible (and try your best to make it possible) take a picture of the graffiti and write a short (50-100) word analysis of what you found, where it was, what you think it means and why you think it appears in the context that it does. Post both the picture and the analysis on your blog before you come to class on Monday.

Thanks!

the rhetorics and composition of media objects

It's a WAM! kind of Thursday, wouldn't you say?

Agenda:

• tie loose ends on Remediation chapters
• talk about composing media objects
• talk about why (or why not) place matters

From Tuesday: Great example that fits nicely with the Bolter and Grusin: Google Chrome: Invisibility

Composing the media object

Rhetorical conventions:
(Ethos, Pathos, Logos)

persuasion: what are my rhetorical goals/compositional vision?
audience: who is this for? What kind of discourse is this? What are the genre conventions that need be adhered to (or consciously broken)?
response: how do I hope that they respond to my object?

authorship: who/what are my influences? Who will manage the pieces of this object's composition?

I thought this was an interesting example of how tricky questions of authorship can become:

The short story Benjamin Button is by F. Scott Fitzgerald and was written in 1921. Forrest Gump was written by Winston Groom in 1986. Since the movie Forrest Gump came out before Benjamin Button, we might say that the writers of the Pitt movie copied some of the thematic and story elements of Hanks movie--but that is kind of weird, seeing as the story Benjamin Button is over 6o years older. Is it possible that Groom borrowed from Fitzgerald when he created Gump? Is it a cooincidence? Is the BB short story even that similar to the movie?


The Curious Case of Forrest Gump - Watch more Funny Videos

process: what steps do I need to take to get me there? Prewriting, writing, revision still apply, but perhaps have a bit of a different feel when we compose media objects. It may require a different kind of planning process.
context/situatedness: where is this media object going to be presented? How does that influence your composition of the object? What other influence does social/cultural/historical context have on the meaning of the object?

Examples: Chancellor's email from last semester

Dear Students,

Many of you may be aware of an event known as Rush. It is my objective to warn you of the potential downsides of Greek organizations. I advise you to not succumb to the aggressive recruitment tactics used by these organizations. It has been my concern over the years, that the Greek culture of alcoholism and lack of respect for the community degrades campus life. These organizations present themselves as prestigious, yet are discriminatory, serve to perpetuate social inequality, especially with respect to the opposite gender, and promote a lack of diversity. Many students have expressed concerns with regards to safety on campus, particularly due to Greek culture and behavior. It is my hope that a student's experience on campus strengthens one's individuality, but the Greek system emphasizes the group above all, without cause or reason. This is detrimental to the purpose of universities.

I hope that you will consider wisely.

GDI Chancellor Richard Herman

this official email was sent out soon after

Dear members of the campus community:

You may have received an email titled: Regarding Greek life on campus. This message was a hoax and was NOT sent by Chancellor Richard Herman and was NOT authorized by the campus administration.

Robin Kaler
Associate Chancellor for Public Affairs

This mailing approved by:
The Office of the Chancellor

What conventions had to be considered when authoring this document?
Who was fooled?
What were the give-aways?
What of it's location?

Location, location, location

We're used to clever advertising, so we know what to think when we see something like this on the street.

And so it's funny when we see this.

So what happens when we start to see an image we can't identify in a place that we are used to seeing a certain kind of image? What might be assumed of that unidentifiable image?



The OBEY sticker campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology. Heidegger describes Phenomenology as "the process of letting things manifest themselves." Phenomenology attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by abstract observation.
The FIRST AIM OF PHENOMENOLOGY is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one's environment. The OBEY sticker attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the sticker and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the product or motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with the sticker provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer's perception and attention to detail. The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker. Because OBEY has no actual meaning, the various reactions and interpretations of those who view it reflect their personality and the nature of their sensibilities.

Banksy

Other examples of situated media?

Are web-based new media objects situated? How?
T-shirts?
Logos?

WAM Day 3!

We're back... so soon? :(

I mean... We're back!

Today we dive into the scholarship, but not before we make sure everyone is on the same page with blogs and stuff.

Here's the agenda:

1. Blog

2. Discussion questions

3. Remediation discussion

I am trying this new software called Flowgram for today's lecture. We'll see how it goes. Here is the link to it.

Day 2

Howdy. Hopefully you're feeling very WAMtastic today. I know I am.

Today's agenda:

1. When you come in, make sure your computer is logged in as a MAC.  If you're still a bit unclear as to how that works, let me know. 

2. Web surfage: Spend 5-10 minutes surfing--keep tabs up of the different sites/blogs you frequent.

3. Write a little introduction about yourself.

4. Blogging--we're gonna set one up.

Welcome to the WAM!

Greetings summer WAMers!

If you are looking at this page, it means you have found our class (INFO 303) blog, which, for all intents and purposes, will also be our class homepage.

Here you will find the following:

• Links to important class documents including the syllabus and the university E-reserve where most of the readings for our class will be.
• Links to each of your personal WAM blogs.
• Course information, including announcements, project assignments, etc.
• Media that I come across and deem relevant (read: cool) to our class and the ideas we will be discussing here.
• Changes, if there be any, to the syllabus, schedule, or reading assignments in class.
  

Please bookmark this site and use it frequently.

It's going to be an amazing--quick!--summer session. I can hardly wait to see what you all compose, create, and remediate!

Jon