Digital Media and Composition 2008 (not so) LIVE!

FINAL DRAFT OF FINAL PROJECT!

2008-06-16T11:23:00.002-04:00

Here is the final version, complete with fitting in the frame. Enjoy.

Some thoughts on the final project

2008-06-10T15:45:00.000-04:00

Well, DMAC is over and this is the part where I reflect I suppose. Right now I don’t think I am in a good place to talk about what I have learned. I wanted to write some quick notes about “An ‘A’ Word Production” since people already seem to be responding to it. I’m exhausted a) from being away from home for so long (3 weeks) and b) from Jack Keuroac-like multimodal composing in the last three days the DRAFT you see down there is not finished as I didn’t have time to compile it properly in iMovie, thus the edges of the screen being cut off. All total, I produced for that one script a five page single space texty-text, an excel storyboard/shooting script/organization document, over 90 sound clips that got cut down to one long one, then edited countless times, many of those had multiple “takes” on them so I would conservatively put the number of takes over 200, fiver different versions of the animations in keynote that end up with 58 images taken by me or on the internets on 135 slides worked on in five different programs, six if you count the flash debacle, all in the last three days (maybe four? I can’t remember when I started on the essay bit but I wrote most of it Friday night). Honestly, I was rather pissed at the lack of polish the piece had but it was very well received DMAC crowd and honestly that really surprised me.
I’ll write more about this later, but I was shooting for a sort of transparent starkness and simplicity with the visuals that would allow for overlaps and deviations with the audio track. I followed the design of a demi-popular game reviewer’s style which I have always found hysterical so fans of The Escapist’s Zero Production will see that workand form here but I the rhetorical work I was trying to do was much more focused by watching George Wolfe’s The Colored Museum the weekend before last. That production was able to tackle identity and racism with both gravitas and humor at the same time so that uncomfortableness, seriousness, and laughter happen at the same time in the piece and try and make that happen for the audience. I think the work might pull that off, for which I am very . . . still really surprised and pleasantly so.
I’ve really enjoyed OSU’s faculty, gradstudents, and staff and many of the people I met here at DMAC. Again, I’ll have some stuff on the whole two weeks but right now I’m going to log and do a shout out to folks that are being kind enough to respond here.

2008-06-10T10:58:00.001-04:00

Digital Media And Composition First Draft

2008-06-10T09:05:00.002-04:00

I had a terrible time trying to make this work. I gave up around one this morning. This morning at six I woke up a new desperate attempt to try and make it work. Here is that draft. About four more hours and I think I can make this a final. It cut off the sides so not everything makes it.

I forgot how had multimodal composing is . ..

2008-06-09T17:48:00.002-04:00

Or just never noticed. Every multimodal thing I have done has always been over the span of a few weeks. Here I really didn't have a project till Friday. I worked on it all weekend. I mean ALL weekend. I pried myself away from my computer and went to bed last night at 1:00am and got up this morning at 5:45 and started working on it.

I started story boarding and writing on Thursday. I finished drafting on Friday. I kept revising through Saturday but started recording the audio. It took me all day Saturday to get the audio in and read right (UGH, there is a reason I didn't go into radio. I can't believe I used to be an actor) then spent all of Sunday and half of today illustrating the whole thing. Around 3:00 I tried to compile the project into flash but I a) couldn't get the sound to look right and b) once with some help, I figured out what was going on I was already too tired and frustrated to proceed. It could get finished tonight but Adobe has suspended its trials till July 1st apparently in an effort to screw me. Right now, I have an audiotrack and some slides that I am going to try and make work in iMovie.
*sigh*
Doing all this in this short a time really points out how much work all of this is. I have written papers in less time.

Who knew

2008-06-07T11:24:00.004-04:00

the heat. Yesterday it cracked 93. I used to laugh at 93, but 93 and humid is different especially when you have been sleeping in huka smoked rooms. Just for documentation I switched it up to the Holiday Inn. One of my fellow DMACers was kind enough to let me borrow their room for the weekend while they go back home, though they got a hold of me after I had already payed for the room for one night. AC makes thinking possible in this mess. I think my allergies/asthma has been killing me in the BroDome as Phill likes to call it. Sleeping in a clean place sure makes the rest of DMAC do-able. I apologize if I have seemed grumpy to anyone but for those who know me know, no sleep plus heat makes me a little loco and a cranky monster.

race/ethnicity and technology/new media studies: personal perspective

2008-06-07T10:57:00.001-04:00

So yesterday we talked about race and technology and someone asked why we were focusing on that for a specific session and not any number of other issues. I like to consider these two issues as my proverbial “wheelhouse” as an academic so I thought I should probably speak up to this community about the issue. Here is a short list of reasons and part of a larger post I just can't seem to get published. Stupid series of tubes.

1) The stakes are higher for people of color dealing with technology in front of other people.
2) New media, like literacy, can be used as a form of violence.
3) Scholars can learn from semiotic systems other than print based that are closer to the rhetoric structure of new media.
4) Identity is information and behaves like information in digital systems.
5) New Media doesn’t do us any good if it just replicates unjust power structures and is continued to be used to dehumanize folks.

Thursday

2008-06-05T13:09:00.003-04:00

I'll get to it, but I wanted to post this little gem. Lots of folks here have been talking about remediation and new media. I would like to humbly offer this example as a way of literally, changing the semiotic ecology of a given space with good old fashioned print. Its from flickr.

Wednesday Wrap up

2008-06-04T21:39:00.004-04:00

I am bad at live blogging. Sue me.

Today my phone doesn't work, which has sent me into a dimension of confused isolation I can barely relate in text. I think it might have been the electrical storm last night. Ohio has sought out to make my existence a fit of bizarre oddity of weather including tornado watches, flood warnings and soon, 95 degree weather.

I have become exhausted. I tried to learn flash today. It was very frustrating but I am committed to it. I love animating in keynote and flash seems like the natural extension. I spent 4 hours trying to make it work today. It was going fine, but then nothing started to make sense and I ended up just trying to get something that resembled a finished product. I'll see about posting it tomorrow.

Morning Session

2008-06-03T22:09:00.003-04:00

OK, I have been slacking here but I am a) tired, seriously and b) it has been HOT. It cooled down some today but now I'm all geared up to go out and make a new media piece. This morning, lots of stuff was about assessment. I think cheryl does a much better job of describing that discussion than I could. I am not so gracious, such things are mind numbingly postmodernly simple: Grades = Values structure of group. Group = class. Value/writing/media are socially constructed therefore grades = what the group thinks is good. Build a tool to measure what value looks/sounds/feels like to you AND your students. Make sure it works and do it with them. There is no stable idea of good work. Ever. About anything. Act like it. Grade like it.

Instructors think they are the lone arbiter of taste is how oppression and exclusion happen.

"Break president" - Victor Villanueva

Afternoon Tuesday

2008-06-03T14:10:00.002-04:00

So I'll place some more stuff about this morning but right now I want to talk about the panel with some students who had taken some digital media classes in the English department here. Actually talked about how much fun it is to work with people but that you can't force folks to learn.
. . .
This kid, at 21, gets it better than some colleagues I have had.

Drugstore chain CVS to launch first-ever disposable video camera

2008-06-02T16:25:00.004-04:00

I forgot to mention this, I saw some of these yesterday and I thought it might be a good idea for some "guerrilla" multimodal student work. Anyway, here is the CNN link on disposable video cameras.

Monday Morning and Afternoon

2008-06-02T14:15:00.002-04:00

Spent the morning talking about theory and new media in some classrooms. Debra Journet talked about the article she did with some of her grad students and showed Truman's piece from that. Interesting stuff. Especially seeing similarities in medial environments. Then we worked with Sophie, which is an interactive book work. Later, I'll place some links up. We saw some beautiful stuff with it but I will be damned if I can do anything with it. Really, I think as a compiling environment for a project, it might be awesome but right now, as a composing environment it is a nightmare. Which, of course, makes me think of students who try and compose/think/draft in a language that is unfamiliar to them never getting the idea down because the language itself is getting in the way. Me, I'd rather draft in keynote and Pages then move to Sophie.

Sunday Evening

2008-06-01T22:05:00.004-04:00

Well, I went to see Ohio State's Black Student Theatre Network performance of The Colored Museum. Lousy space for theatre but, man, that cast pulled it together. I've caught a little too much sun walking around and I think I am beginning to feel it. Ran into some folks from DMAC just bumbing around. Came home and started finishing up my one minute video. Took about four hours to finish because I had to redo all the audio tracks to get rid of the crew (us) laughing. *sigh*
"Quiet on the set" isn't just irony. Anyway, here it is. There is an explanation for the piece that I am going to post as a comment so you can have some time to think to yourself just what the mop is doing.

*SPOILER WARNING IN THE COMMENTS SECTION*

Sunday Morning

2008-06-01T09:34:00.004-04:00

No coffee. No CBS Sunday Morning. No neverending prescription medication commercials during Sunday Morning. No potato-ie/arándano pancakes/huevos with bacon. No Sunday afternoon Lord of the Rings Online. No calling the folks. No Doctor Who.
And worst of all, no Leslie.
I am a little homesick right now.

I'm all for Access but I would like to see it a little more distributed . . .

2008-05-31T17:53:00.005-04:00

Hey, someone tried to steal our stuff! Here are some exciting photos from the DMAC crime scene. As you can see, the criminals were unsuccessful due to many locks and safety glass, though clearly, they could not read. Ha ha. On a serious note, Scott brought up that if you have technology around in your department, finding secure places for it is a must. I guess to get to stuff around OSU you got to get through three levels of door/lock/moat. Glad that is in place.
Lock your stuff up!

Workshop Saturday

2008-05-31T17:32:00.002-04:00

Finished or came close to finishing our video products in iMovie. In the morning we had a discussion about Lost and Found Sound: Manicurists and sound composition. The story is pretty well done and has a lot of emotional impact and folks got that. I am, perhaps, a little more critical of such things being the child of an immigrant myself. It was my second time through the piece and all I hear are the silences about American colonialism and constructed Others For example, Communist Vietnam banning songs is horrible, and it is, but California banning non-English instruction in schools, which is horrible, isn't mentioned or the folksy way we are to assume that immigrants all just pick up professions when they come here. Audio, it seems, works well in connecting people emotionally but also plays well when it relies on cultural narratives, or at least has to work with them, irony aside.

Oh sure, I'm trashing it a little. Ok a lot. And it is really well done, but being critical of these things is kind of my job and I like my job.

For the record, my mom is an english-only education advocate despite the public ridicule and the crippling difficulties she has with reading in english and speaking in spanish (which she only does when she is mad or praying, guess which one I heard more) as a result of those policies. We argue about it all the time.

Software to embed audio and video into peer and student text

2008-05-31T10:28:00.001-04:00

Ever wanted to respond to audio and video work in audio and video? Check out these resources:
CamStudio for PC
VoiceThread for webapplications
SnapzProX for OSX

Wierd Morning

2008-05-31T09:33:00.005-04:00

So, not really about DMAC but I had the weirdness of morning. First off, lots of storms last night. Tornado warnings and such. Didn't go to bed till late. Woke up and got ready like an hour and a half before I had to be there so I thought I would get something to eat. No dice. All the restaurants are close. I even got waved off from McDonald's which for some reason didn't open till 9:30. Then, while I was walking to class this piece of bread just fell out of the sky or this tree. I mean, it LANDED right in front of me like it came out of the tree. Then when I got there, I realized I had forgotten my power cord. So I had to walk back to the apartment to get it, then back.

Then we talked about copyright. Not my favorite topic.

Afternoon workshop Friday

2008-05-30T17:46:00.000-04:00

So we shot some video. Got some ideas about how to do that but I am too lazy to post here, but they are good. I'll drop you a little tease about the video I made with some folks here. Here is a still from it. Our star. Moppie. I am sure you can see just how awesome it will be. Gettin' back to work later tomorrow.

Found Text

2008-05-30T14:18:00.000-04:00

I think I might go with this as a theme here. Found text. You might have heard me say "Do Better". This one is good too.

Worked on audio this morning

2008-05-30T11:29:00.000-04:00

Talk about genre. Guess what? I want to make everything sound like NPR.guy!

2008-05-30T09:53:00.000-04:00

Spent a lot of time talking about the readings this morning. I’ll let you find those readings over on the own DMAC website. Lot’s of discussion about modalities, grammars, and affordances. Especially questioning whether the vernacular always “wins” as Elizabeth Daley works. Some stuff about grading and assessment. I didn't get a chance to talk about Distributed User Centered Design and the ability to discern the value structures of groups of people for what they want to do. In my opinion, rubrics will never work for new media pieces unless they are built with the class. That value will not be the same in another context.

Best Quote of the morning buisness meeting . . .

2008-05-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

"I think it might be a good idea to put a Zoloft saltlick in the center of the room."
HA! Sometimes using technology freaks people out. Remember that when you are teaching it.

Some shots from where I am staying . . . .

2008-05-30T08:51:00.000-04:00

I got invited to play Beer Pong by the folks I'm staying with. I am so scared of becoming Frank the Tank . . .