Week 13: Review and Conclusions

Week 13: Review and Conclusions

Narratives can be published in various online ways: 

• Voicethreads
• Skype
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Social Bookmarks/Folksonomy
• Diigo
• Evernote
• Flickr
• Netvibes
• Twitter
• E-mail
• Google Pages
• Facebook

Anyone Can Publish

A timely example of how even the youngest learners can demonstrate transliteracy (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/3-little-pigs/id357980333?mt=8). Henry Dewey created his own illustrations to interpret “The Three Little Pigs” and then with the assistance of his father, created an iPhone app for people to read his version of the story, which includes Henry’s narration of the tale.

Henry Dewey is a typical 8-year-old. He loves to build with Legos and annoy his little sister, hoping to someday own a reptile to terrorize her with.

The first-grader at Trinity Episcopal School in Rollingwood is also doing some nontraditional things: Henry just released his first iPhone application, an e-book version of the folk tale “The Three Little Pigs.”

Using pen and ink, Henry spent the entire fall semester creating the illustrations for his book during an after-school art program at Trinity.

“I like being creative, making bobbleheads on paper,” Henry said.

Early in the process, he decided he wanted to transform his project into an iPhone application to provide more options on the gadget for children.

He told his father, Mark Dewey — himself an iPhone application developer — about his idea. When Henry finished the illustrations, the drawings were converted into a digital format. Then his dad helped turn the project into the application, rewriting the story and having Henry narrate it.

“At a young age to know you can be a creator, in the mainstream of American culture, that can be powerful,” said Mark Dewey, whose digital media company, Geoki, published the app. “We hope that carries on through his growing and his life.”

Week 4: Temporality and Cruising

What is narrative and how is it affected by new media developments. The focus will be on time-based narratives with a close reading of Cruising by Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar.

Basing our discussion on the week’s readings we’ll critique these main ideas:

• feminism
• nonlinearity
• temporality
• transiency
• rhizomatic
• time-based narrative
• multimodality

Discussion Questions:

Q1. How can we define nonsequentiality/multi-linearity, interactivity, narrative?
Q2. To what extent are these aspects determined by the text, the reader, the digital format?
Q3. What kinds of narratives are especially suited for a multi-linear/interactive format? Are there stories that can only be told in an online format?
Q4. Read Cruising. Analyse the structure of the narrative (is it non-linear, multi-linear?). How does it engage the reader? What are the textual mechanisms by which the text achieves engagement?

Required Readings:
Espen Aarseth, “Nonlinearity and Literary Theory,” Bill Marsh, "Reading Time: For a Poetics of Hypermedia Writing," Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar, Cruising, Jessica Laccetti, "Where to Begin? Multiple Narrative Paths in Web Fiction."

Recommended Readings:
Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar, “Author Description, Cruising.”

The Artist (and The Editor)!

The popularity of The Artist and Hugo in this year's crop of Oscar-nominated films struck me in a new way, thanks to the lens provided by Shillingsburg in From Gutenberg to Google. That book is slow going for me, but some of what he argues sticks. And, while he talks about books and print, I sense that much of his analysis can be transferred to cinema. 

"...I am declaring that new texts cannot be identical to old texts nor fully represent them and that an editor's responsibility is to be as self-aware as possible about the effects of editorial intervention and to be as explicit and articulate as possible about those effects..." (pp.19-20) 

These words, this sensibility echoed when I read  "Is Cinema Facing a Digital Dark Age?", an article from the star.com that found me this morning.

The argument, from Paola Cherchi Usai (learn more about him in this YT video ), is that the process of digitally preserving classic silent picture era films -- a seemingly noble aim that also escapes from the cost of traditional photomechanical methods -- actually betrays the original work of art. 

This is a good example, or, at least, one that I can understand, of the seen and unseen ways that technology may intrude on a text, altering it in the very act of preserving it. 

Transforming books

Books will continue to exist, but the possibilities for their transformation are astounding. Although many of us still enjoy the tactile experience of reading books and flipping pages, I think that we may attribute more nostalgia to the physical book than they deserve.

For example, can you not enjoy an inexpensive copy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as much as a leather-bound printing? Is a dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice less dramatic? I don’t think so.

If we compare books to other forms of communication such as photography, is a digital picture worth less than a printed one? Is an online video less valuable than a DVD? I would argue that we value them both equally. But by removing the notion that we must publish books on paper and bind them together, we open up a world of possibilities.

Take for example, the creative ways for distributing a book that evolved when rapper Jay-Z partnered with the Microsoft search engine, Bing, back in October 2010. In a project that was two parts marketing and one part social experiment, Jay-Z and Bing released every page of the rapper’s upcoming book, Decoded, by strategically placing them across the United States and the world. 

For one month prior to the book’s release, they would publish five to ten pages in odd formats and venues that were determined by the content on the page. For example, pages were printed on billboards, on hamburger wrappers and even printed inside limited edition Gucci jackets.

Watch a recap of the amazing marketing and strategic publishing event:

You can read more about it here:
http://bing.decodejay-z.com/home/map?fbid=RrGro4BTA_9&wom=true

By publishing his book in nontraditional ways, it added value to the book, instead of taking away from it. Readers were now everywhere and often snapped pictures of the book and became involved in the story as opposed to passively reading it. 

Guest Lecture Response: Neil Baldwin

Hi Everyone,
Here is something Neil has written in response to your comments regarding his initial post. Neil encourages you to share your thoughts here in the comments.

"it will be two years in april since the creative research center www.montclair.edu/creativeresearch went live, and you, as one of our earliest adapters, can see how much we have grown -- just look at our Web-bibliography and Links and Blog pages.
the Long Form is alive and well at the creative research center.
and i, as a writer and author, have commensurately migrated more and more to the Web in everything i do.
or, i should more pertinently say, everything i produce (in the content sense).
to be sure, as many in your class pointed out, and as milosz says in his wonderful poem at the end of my post -- i still turn to The Books when i want a particular kind of respite or solace.
as a matter of fact, right now i am halfway through the cairo trilogy by the nobel prize winner nahguib mahfouz.
it's a thousand pages, and i hope it goes on forever....
the preponderant part of my day - as an author and, in the past five years, as a university professor - is spent either in class or at my desk - and when i am at my desk i am on the computer.
sometimes i might get up and walk around and take a break, but the pull to come back is strong.
occasionally, i feel guilty (if that is the right term) for spending so much time in cyberspace.
but then another side of my mind issues the corrective that i need to go where the actionis, in the fullest sense.
along with the desire to put a narrative out there comes the reciprocal desire for response.
i was going to say "feedback" but that is too distorted.
as a writer, i have always had a hunger to communicate, and that is a given in my life and work. but in the past fifteen-plus years since the Web entered my life, there is no question that my urge for a reply - in the widest cultural sense down to the most immediate "did you get my email?" sense - has increased.
i have ambivalent feelings about this mirror-effect, i.e., the more going out, the more i want to see and experience coming in.
one could adapt the metaphor and say it is as natural as breathing...but i would be remiss if i did not tell you and your students that it has a darker tinge.
i can't quite define this new synaptic mode. i think it is primal, archetypal.
i'll stop now with this final thought: i do not see the e-book 'explosion' in a darwinian way anymore.
i do not see an electronic tsunami crashing down upon us and carrying away the flotsam and jetsam of print.
i agree with the general sentiment of your class that the media will coexist.
the gradual atomization of TV, the music business, movies in multiplexes, interactive displays in museums, smartphones, and so on - - there is no way this surge could not effect and disturb the dynamics of the act of reading.
however, as long as human beings seek out manifestations of creative self-expression, books will remain."

New Media: art for the digital age

For centuries, art has been used to inspire, challenge our current perspectives and to present an alternate reality. New media joins the art world with digital technology and opens up a new area of possibilities by asking the audience to join in.

Art and new media are illusive concepts. What makes a picture art? What makes a video on a website new media? Their definitions are subjective. But both concepts span multiple disciplines to create something new. Art draws upon history, politics, philosophy, and other areas for inspiration. New media spans across the same disciplines but adds modern-day skills to the mix, including photography, web design and filmmaking.

Innovative technology and software are being developed that will allow us to communicate with our viewers and listeners in a way that traditional art could have only dreamed of. New media will not replace art; it simply transforms it into its next form on the evolutionary scale.

Still developing

One of the most intriguing aspects of new media is the sense that this new medium is still developing. We can participate in this digital revolution. The boundaries are still being drawn and there is still time to sneak in.

As the entrance fee into the art world lowers, and the cost of production crashes, art once again belongs to the masses. The abundance of cheap, portable and easy-to-use technology and software has opened the doors to millions of people to allow them to become creators of new media and not just consumers.

Not everyone would agree. But just like art, the world of new media is subjective.