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