teach

NOTE: This webpage provides resources for this course. It is NOT the course syllabus and DOES NOT provide information about course assignments, requirements, or expectations. Please consult the course syllabus for these types of questions.
This course explores language and text (aural, written, and visual), as prescribed pattern/symbol making systems for communication and preservation of human social, cultural, and historical legacies, that, when interwoven with digital technology, can introduce new systems and patterns that modify, change, and extend the various systems/technologies and their affordances. This overlay and interweaving of language, text, and technology in mediated digital contexts offers a number of profound cultural and creative implications, especially with regard to the way we think, create, and communicate. Students read and respond to major works and demonstrate their knowledge by conceiving and constructing various digital, multimedia information objects. This course is integral to the overall vision for The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program and so is aligned with the CMDC Program Goals and Objectives. The specific CMDC program goals this course is intended to meet, as well as the objectives for each, are detailed below.

• Program Goal #7
  Recognize various forms of language processing and their implications for media authoring
  • Objectives
    1. Using digital media terminology and concepts, such as medium, media, multimedia, mass media, remediation, repurposing, translation, text, textuality, language, and code, appropriately in presentations and projects
    2. Employing various types of texts, such as visual, auditory, kinetic, and kinesthetic texts, for appropriate mediums
    3. Illustrating the way artificial systems acquire language
    4. Demonstrating knowledge about the process by which is language is made via computers
• Program Goal #8
  Appreciate the history of technological development, from local to global perspectives, and its implications for a variety of mediums
  • Objectives
    1. Demonstrating understanding between digital and analog technologies
    2. Comparing and contrasting technological development from a historical perspective
    3. Explaining contributions of pioneers working in the US and beyond in the area of digital technology
    4. Discussing technologies of oral and written discourse, such as the importance of memory, the development of alphabets, invention of writing tools, and innovations for electronic devices
• Program Goal #10
  Be practiced and capable communicators in all medium
  • Objectives
    1. Creating a digital text in a variety of mediums
    2. Constructing and delivering an argument focusing on the way the medium affects the message, audience, and other rhetorical components
    3. Evaluating the effective use of language in a digital text

Download a copy of The Ten CMDC Program Goals and their objectives

The assignments and activities for this course reflect and assist students reaching these program goals. Stories of the Dreaming
Part of the Australian Museum website, this node provides the opportunity to hear some stories of the history and culture of Australia's indigenous peoples handed down, orally, since the beginning of time, since Dreamtime. Storytelling is an integral part of the lives of Indigenous Australians. These are the Dreaming Stories, or how to world was created through the use of language, specifically singing; how to find food, where to find water, how to behave and why.

Graphic Narrative Generators

• ImageTexT
  A web-based journal committed to advancing the academic study of comic books, comic strips, and animated cartoons (www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/)
• Comic Strip Creator
  Emphasis on structured dialog rather than free form image composition; two characters per panel maximum; Encourages blocking out dialog within constraints of context.
• Comic Strip Generator
  Library of character and object icons; Users arrange dialog with ease; Suggested uses: reproduction of movie scenes, illustrating song lyrics.

Archive & Innovate
Website for the 4th International Conference and Festival of the Electronic Literature Organization. The 3rd Conference was held here, on the WSUV campus, Spring 2008, chaired by Dene Grigar and John Barber. The conference program and associated arts program explores what texts might become as they move, more and more, to populate spaces engendered by digital technology.

At the core of emerging digital film culture
Despite changes in technology, the esssential ingredients of a good narrative, a beginning, a middle, and an end, should remain relevant. No doubt interest will remain in telling and listening to good stories
New media technology can be about enabling people to tell their stories much more easily and to a much broader audience
Could an archive be a place/method for people to tell their stories to broader audiences?

Storyline
It is perhaps best to consider "chunking" the information of a story into both large and small pieces, not only to facilitate easier access to that information by readers/users, but also to facilitate the ability of users to make their own experiences from the artifacts.

This helps create an environment that delivers more to visitors/users/readers each time they experience the collection.

"The Big Idea"
The one thing to take away from the experience with an exhibit/archive/collection; the overarching theme

Four Basic Steps In Developing A Storyline
1). Decide topic / what you want to say / "big idea" message: the one message you want visitors to take away from their experience with your story
2). Storyline development: what will you use from your collection of your artifacts? What do you want to say about them? What research do you need to learn enough about artifact to be able to tell story about it?
3). Design / Development: how will exhibit look in its space?
4). Production

Brett Oppegaard's Big List of Mobile Storytelling & Location-Awareness Technology Resources
Focusing on "storytelling technology that incorporates awareness of locative, spatial and contextual factors in mobile interactive environments (situations where people move around and interact with digital content as well as each other in a specific real-world space using mobile communication devices)"—or, mobile narrative on your cell phone—this website is not only interesting, but a gold mine of resources. This is where it's at. Where are you?

Zephyr
An iPhone app that allows users to paint messages and send them to anonymous receivers, who, in turn, can send them along to others. When you receive such messages, you can see the stops it has made along the way before deciding whether send it on a continued journey.

Beyond fun, and social networking, Zephyr speaks to what writing may have become as it adapts to new and different contexts engendered by digital media.

Viddler
Like YouTube, this service allows you to upload, manage, and share your videos. You can even upload directly from your webcam! In either case, you get nearly unlimited storage space for your videos, which you can share with others via RSS, Podcasts and iTunes, API (application interface, like on a mobile device), and a customizable video player. Free for personal use.

Tweetdeck
A personal browser for connecting with and managing your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, and more, all in one place. Available, FREE, for your desktop, iPhone, and iPad.

12seconds
Like Twitter, only with video. Update friends and family with 12 second video messages. Show them where you are, tell them what you are doing, share your thoughts. Typically, users capture video with their mobile phones and then text message it to others. The Golden Age of Video
Some argue that the world has not been the same since 12:01 AM 1 August 1981, when the music video "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles, launched the MTV (music television) network, and when that played out, "reality television." In between there were a number of video movies and television programs that defined an entire generation. Ricardo Autobahn's homage is quite compelling. Check the version with lyrics and titles in the sidebar of related videos. Check his other videos as well.

Fort Vancouver Mobile Project
A project led by Brett Oppegaard that invites your participation.

Marc Garrett (marc.garrett@furtherfield.org) argues that we should be actively engaged in taking control of our own culture through changing its interface. "The cultural interface," he says," is our palette and everything fits into that, whether it be eco-politics, social freedoms, opensource, art and much more." He provided the following notes to the Humanist email discussion list on 4 August 2008:

If we do not build between us shared and approachable frameworks that offer (possible, scale-free) models of working together, which move beyond the isolationist functions of limiting, stultifying modernist agendas. Then we probably deserve what happens next.

How we engage in curating, writing, creation of New Media Art and related cultures, depends on our relationship with it. In a climate where social contexts, issues around ecology and our interaction with technology frames, much of what and how we perceive information and culture to be. It becomes clear that culture is a fluid, complex and diverse, ever changing, dynamic interface. How we as practitioners become more active agents within this multifarious interface, is the key. If we, as active agents have become more closely connected, involved in this cultural interface; to change social contexts through our creative practices, then we are changing our culture, its interface.

We are now dealing with a proliferating set of possibilities in New Media Art and connected endeavors. Especially from those who have come from alternative situations, perspectives and grass roots cultures. In implementing ideas that reflect an art aesthetic, whilst at the same time taking more control and responsibility of our social contexts, which involves curating, the making of artwork as well as the appropriation of technology, We have hacked into the mainframe. We've got this...

We potentially, possess a shared investment with those who have traditionally held the keys in controlling our cultures. Now that we are here, what are the next steps in expanding and distributing our practices into a world that still views traditional frameworks of 'fine art' as the main focus around art engagement? How do we integrate and share this possibility of scale-free power? How does New Media Art maintain its critical voice, independence and cultural diversity whilst becoming part of a larger context?

This idea of using New Media art for dissent is intriguing. How might one proceed with such an endeavor?

The Electronic Literature Organization was established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature. The term "electronic literature" refers to works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer. Within the broad category of electronic literature are several forms and threads of practice, some of which are:

• Hypertext fiction and poetry, on and off the Web
• Kinetic poetry presented in Flash and using other platforms
• Computer art installations which ask viewers to read them or otherwise have literary aspects
• Conversational characters, also known as chatterbots
• Interactive fiction
• Novels that take the form of emails, SMS messages, or blogs
• Poems and stories that are generated by computers, either interactively or based on parameters given at the beginning
• Collaborative writing projects that allow readers to contribute to the text of a work
• Literary performances online that develop new ways of writing

Read N. Catherine Hayles "Electronic Literature: What Is It?" HERE

This online article is a companion to Hayles' book, About Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. Learn more HERE

The idea, and practice, of archiving and curating New Media works is also intriguing. What problems might one encounter? What models are already in place for such an archive? What potential models are available to guide future thinking? How might one proceed to build and maintain an archive for some form, or many forms, of New Media?

Some resources . . . to start you thinking
Journals
Leonardo
There are numerous journals in this family: the print based Leonardo, the music journal, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, and Leonardo Digital Reviews. The focus for the journal in general is the intersection of art, science, and technology. Roger Malina, a scientist, is the editor in chief of the entire family of journals. Nisar Keshvani (artist, Singapore) is the editor of LEA. Michael Punt (artist-theorist, University of Plymouth, UK) is the editor of LDR. Rigorous and read by all.

Organizations
Leonardo

Besides being a family of journals, Leonardo is also a community that hosts many conferences, symposia, and professional meetings. It receives funding from UNESCO and Langlois, among others.

Digital Art and Culture (DAC)
An international organization, and one of the first academic events to gather researchers, practitioners and artists working within the field of digital arts, cultures, aesthetics and design. In recent years it has leaned heavily toward games. One of the founders is Espen Aarseth, author of Cybertexts.

Inter Society of Electronic Artists (ISEA)
5000 artists from around the world support this organization. Like DAC, it meets once every two years somewhere in the world. It is quite a scene in that these folks converge on a town and generally take it over for a week or so.

Electronic Literature Organization (ELO)
Born out of hypertext fiction and poetry in the late 1980s, this group has expanded into video poetry, interactive fiction, 3D performance literature, etc. It has a faithful and ongoing following.

Planetary Collegium
Not really an organization but a research group, it is run by noted digital media pioneer Roy Ascott out of University of Plymouth (UK). Michael Punt from LDR works with him. It specializes in consciousness, art, science, and technology and is well integrated with Leonardo. Roy hosts his own conferences called Consciousness Reframed. A visionary group that it is about a decade ahead of the curve in any idea relating to the digital avant garde.

The Society of Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA)
A well respected scholarly community that dates back at least two decades, it recently expanded to include digital media (hence the "arts" in the title). A terrific conference and journal are associated with it.

Webpages for John F. Barber, Ph.D.  |  Deconstructed version::Condensing substance from pixels of nuance.  |  Please feel free to browse.