Augmented Reality

Hypertext as Presentation Technique

2012-02-12T11:31:00.000-08:00

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the underlying concept defining the structure of the World Wide Web.

“Techne resembles epistēmē in the implication of knowledge ofprinciples, although techne differs in that its intent is making or doing, asopposed to ‘disinterested understanding’” - Wikipedia

When we think in language, or even in images, we tend to think sequentially according to the laws of grammar or the linear progression of film montage. Montage is a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information. It is usually used to suggest the passage of time, rather than to create symbolic meaning as it does in Soviet montage theory.

"Cinematic montage is not uniform, however; it has its Modernism and PostModernism as well. Modernist practice is most often discussed in relation to Eisenstein's theory and practice. Lev Manovich takes the core of classic cinematic montage to be dissonance: "Montage aims to create visual stylistic, semantic, and emotion dissonance between different elements," and this he contrasts to compositing, which is the blending of elements into a single, seamless whole (144). It is obvious that Manovich's "montage" is the temporal equivalent of what we have been calling collage." Hypertext as Rhizome, Montage and Collage

With hypertext new techniques are possible for composition. Hypertext can be composted of tree, collage, rhizome, spiral, circular, or chain structures. However the flow of hypertext proceeds the human organism can only perceive information in a set number of ways. These are dependent upon the senses: sight (ophthalmoception), hearing (audioception), taste (gustaoception), smell (olfacoception or olfacception), and touch (tactioception), other senses include temperature (thermoception), kinesthetic sense (proprioception), pain (nociception), balance (equilibrioception) and acceleration (kinesthesioception), that we use to make sense of the world.

So let us consider the limitations of the human sense system in relation to hypertext.

Patterns
The pattern of focal points says that people will first look at the most dominant element (the element or area with the greatest visual weight) on the page.
From there the eye will follow paths from the dominant element to other focal points in the design. The order will depend on the relative weights of these focal points as well as any visual cues indicating where to look next.

Several layout patterns are often recommended to take advantage of how people scan or read through a design. Three of the more common are the Gutenberg diagram, the z-pattern layout, and the f-pattern layout.

"Consider the Gutenberg diagram is assist in layout and composition when the elements are evenly distributed and homogeneous, or the design contains heavy use of text. Otherwise, use the weight and composition of elements to lead the eye."
Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden and Jill Butler

Reading gravity pulls the curious users’ eyes from the top-left to the bottom-right of a layout. It is a natural human habit to scan something quickly before focusing all of our attention on it. We want to read the blurb of a book before delving into its contents. We tend to watch film trailers before paying to see them at the cinema. Demos for games and software, singles from music albums—the list goes on. It’s common practice to want a taste of something before giving it full attention—it’s why all great stories start and end with action or drama to draw us in and keep us entertained throughout the full experience. We can apply this psychology to graphics and interface design and the Gutenberg Rule is all about just that. We know that we have a certain amount of time, wording, graphics and pixel-space to grab our user (returning or otherwise) and convince them into further reading, so designing an interface to accommodate for this is a science within itself.

This website is an excellent example of the Gutenberg Rule in use.

On the other hand Västerbottens Kuriren does not seem to be aware of the Gutenberg Rule with the headline half way down the left hand side of the page, no anchor in the left top corner and nothing stopping the readers eye in the bottom right. Each column operates independently of the others.

The z-pattern layout follows the shape of the letter z. Readers will start in the top/left, move horizontally to the top/right and then diagonally to the bottom/right before finishing with another horizontal movement to the bottom/right.

The z-pattern is sometimes called a reverse-s-pattern, which might indicate more of a curved path as opposed to the hard angled path. Otherwise they’re basically the same thing.
The main difference with the Gutenberg diagram is that the z-pattern suggests viewers will pass through the two fallow areas. Otherwise they still start and end in the same places and still pass through the middle.

As with Gutenberg a designer would place the most important information along the pattern’s path.
The z-pattern is good for simple designs with a few key elements that need to be seen. Any storytelling aspect of the design would follow the path of the z.

We can extend this pattern a little by seeing it more as a series of z-movements instead of one big z-movement. Common sense would dictate this is more realistic as the reader will continue to move to the right and then a little down and back to the left before starting another horizontal movement to the right again. It’s how we naturally read large blocks of text. This series of z-movements is sometimes referred to as a zig-zag pattern. If we continue to add more zigs and zags to the pattern we ultimately end up with a series of near horizontal right and left movements as the diagonal portion of the z gets shallower and shallower.

The z-pattern also leads to what’s called a golden triangle pattern. If you take the first horizontal and first diagonal movement and then close the shape you end up with a right triangle whose right angle is the top/left corner. This triangular area at the top of the page will be the area most seen and the pattern suggests your most important information needs to placed inside of it.

The f-pattern gets mentioned on the web and as you would expect it follows the shape of the letter F.
I think Jacob Nielsen first suggested the pattern after eye-tracking studies his company performed. What often gets lost in the f-pattern is that these original studies were done on text heavy designs and search results.
As with the other patterns the eye starts in the top/left, moves horizontally to the top/right and then comes back to the left edge before making another horizontal sweep to the right. This second sweep won’t extend as far as the first sweep.
Additional sweeps move less and less to the right and for the most part after the second major sweep the eye sticks close to the left edge as it moves downs.
The f-pattern suggests that:

Important information should be placed across the top of the design where it will generally be read.
Lesser information should be placed along the left edge of the design often in bullet points where little horizontal eye movement is required to take everything in.
People don’t read online. They scan.

Unfortunately the pattern seems to get applied to everything online instead of only text-heavy content. When applying the f-pattern think scanners and place content these scanners would most likely be interested in along the F. Place important information at the top and information designed to pull someone further into the page down the side. However keep in mind that if someone scanning your page finds it interesting, they will read so you can place information in places outside the F for those people who will read.

Both z-pattern and Gutenberg end in the same place and move through the middle. The reason the f-pattern doesn’t reach the end can be explained by.

Having content that doesn’t fully interest and engage the reader. Sadly true of most online content.
Writing with an inverted pyramid style, which expects to lose readers as they move down the page.
People scanning to determine if they want to read more.

Odds are any visitor who finds your content absorbing will want to read more and break out of the f-pattern reaching the terminal area.
One last point is that as these patterns are discussed more it leads to more designs emphasizing the pattern. If you’re convinced your readers will follow one of these patterns, you’ll likely create designs that enhance that pattern. It leads to a chicken and egg scenario.

More on patterning, reading and design here.

Linking
The link goes far beyond simply being a mechanical element of hypertext. The link is part of design and provides meaning in digital hypertext just as montage can in film. “Hypertext is text with links, or pointers, showing relationships between parts of the information. Hypermedia extends this concept - information with links - to collections including text, audio, video, photographs, or any multi-sensory combination” (Alessi & Trollop, 2001:138). If a link opens a new section for reading and navigation, whoever opens that link will relate it is some way to the previous section in the hypertext.

Harrison (2002) explores the semantic and rhetorical principles underlying link development of web sites and proposes a systematic, comprehensive classification of link types that could be of use to researchers and Web production teams:

Authorizing: Describes an organization's legal, formal policies, contact information, etc. that authenticate the site and its content.
Commenting: Provides opinion about the site and/or its content.
Enhancing: Provides more factual information about site content by offering greater detail or painting the "bigger picture."
Exemplifying: Provides a specific example of content within a broader category.
Mode-Changing: Moves users from the reading mode to one that requires a different kind of activity.
Referencing/Citing: Provides information that "informs" or supplements the site's content.
Self-Selecting: Allows users to narrow a search by making choices based on their age, sex, geographical location, life situation, personal interests, and so on ([1], retrieved 18:47, 6 November 2006 (MET))

In the history of hypertext we can distinguish "minimal" technology such as HTML and systems that provide a richer set of link types. E.g. the XLink standard which did/does not have much success with industry defines a whole lot of linking attributes.

Simple links

One element on the screen/document (e.g. a word or a button) points to another screen or other element within the loaded screen/document. After clicking the link, current content is replaced by target content. These are links that one can find in HTML (web contents).

Complex links

There are many, e.g.:

Fat (multi-tailed) links: a fat link can open several windows simultaneously with one click of the mouse.
Multiple-choice links: the user can choose among several options from a menu.
Labelled links: A user can see what a link is good for (e.g. "example", "theory", "further reading", "reference", etc.)
Aggregations: (include various smaller documents into a single text)
Inclusions: A link that expands contents in place to include other contents.
Transclusion: A text that is composed as an aggregation of other text. E.g. in a wiki one can build pages out of other pages by using syntax
Bilinks: See AboutUs:BiLinks

Alessi & Trollop (2001:155) suggest to pay attention to a few factors when creating hyperlinks of various forms, which we shortly outline here:

Object types of links

Word links are easy to spot but decrease readability and influence on browsing behavior ()
Links in pictures and videos may be less easy to spot depending on how they are made

Purpose of links

Clearly, links should be used for a reason. Firstly, there should a general concept about the media type to be constructed (e.g. see the overview of genres below) and then there should a be a use case analysis (what it will be used for) in terms of one or several instructional design models.

Density of links

For reference works, it's in principle a good a idea to include many links (e.g. like in this blog)
However, in education one may limit links in texts that should be read in its entirety, or only show them after explicit request or some other control function (e.g. learner level). There is actually a lot of research on adaptive hypertext

Visibility of links

Links should be clearly visible, however there is a trade off with readability.
In general, one should not users require to move the mouse over an object that then will highlight in order to find available links. A compromise, might be a visibility of links turn on/off button. In a modern web browser this is very easy to implement.

Screen Location

In particular menu links should be placed in standard locations (e.g. on top or to the left)

Confirmation

The authors put several things into this category, e.g.
Confirmation of link selection (not activation): E.g. display a mouse-over effect. Then the links can for example offer a preview, or let the user display contents in different locations. (In web browsers, the latter functionality is the right-click menu, and the further can be implement with Javascript.

Finally, one also may ask confirmation from the user to open or navigate to different sites.

Marking

Recently selected links can be specially mark (e.g. by default, word links in web browsers change color from blue to violet)
One also can implement user trails, i.e. display somewhere a list or the path of visited links. Typically, this is implemented in shopping applications like Amazon (also in a wiki, if you use a login).

Semantic Cueing

A semantic cue identifies the relation to the link target or at least its kind (e.g. use a color code or little icons that characterize the links)
Other options are to use a menu or to display links relationships in a separate window with a concept graph.

Distance

This is partly same issue as above, partly the problem that in education it's a difficult decision whether you can rely on external links. For example if you teach about hypertext in education, would you trust a third party to keep a source online?
Typically in web design, one tries to make a distinction between internal and external links (e.g. this is being done in this wiki). However the question whether we trust other people to keep their links online is a very difficult one.

Modifiability

In earlier systems users were able to modify or at least to annotate a hypertext. Also they could add links.
In more recent hypermedia (including most web pages) this is not usually the case. A wiki is the exception.
There is a difference between hypermedia that can be changed, those that can be annotated and those where the changes are only seen by the user who made those changes (the latter version is the most difficult to implement). Annotation systems are successfully used in education, e.g. the Diplo Foundation uses annotation of online text as primary teaching medium.

More goodness on Hypertext here

Identity Online

2012-01-30T15:31:00.000-08:00

"Annoying Facebook Girl is an advice animal image macro series featuring a photo of a teenage girl rolling her eyes with her mouth agape accompanied by a blue and white color wheel background. The overlaid text typically associates the girl with vapid status updates, attention whoring and generally irritating Facebook activity." - Know Your Meme

"It'll only get worse. Here's what I am listening to on Spotify. This is the page of the book I am reading. I am currently watching the 43rd minute of a Will Ferrell movie. And I'm not telling you this stuff. The software is. I am a character in The Sims. Hover the cursor over my head and watch that stat feed scroll". - Charlie Brooker guardian.co.uk

"Dozens of revelers filmed pretty brunette Amy McCrow, 20, as she drunkenly frolicked in an inflatable paddling pool. The footage was posted on Twitter where thousands of people were soon passing round the ten-minute clip." - The Sun

The idea of having an identity online would have been nonsense to most people even a few decades ago. Now it is taken for granted that what we do on the Internet is part of, if not all, of who we are. People perform on the Internet and this creates an identity that is in turn attributed to that person. Even if the person is unaware they are performing, as seems to be the case with Annoying Facebook Girl and "pretty brunette Amy McCrow"* the identity of these people is something that is recognized and attributed, in the same sense as stereotypical portrayals of ethnic groups in Hollywood films do. Identity is not you name, or personal number in the case of performed identity, it is about the recognizable traits, types, images and behaviors one subscribes to or that are attributed to an individual. For a detailed analysis of indentity and meaning online see, Meaning and Identity in Cyberspace: The performance of gender, class and race online (PDF).

In this lecture I will first define what I mean by identity online. This identity is based on performance, as "there is no self that is prior to the convergence or who maintains 'integrity' prior to its entrance into this conflicted cultural field. There is only the taking up of the tools where they lie, where the very ’taking up’ is enabled by the tool lying there” (Judith Butler 1990 145). Identity as a performance needs recognition, an audience and feedback. It cannot be achieved alone. What is at the center of this performance is not the performer, but the tools. The raw processes of identity construction are grounded in the social; in norms of behavior, dress, action, language, rank, stereotypes, visual cues, perspectives and attitudes. Online these are mediated by the speed and breadth of digital media. What these social norms either appeal to do react against are modes of identity. These modes should not be thought of as separate. Rather they act in concordance and dialogue with each other on multiple levels. Once example is the relationships between gender and national identity (Swedish text) that have been found in a study of violent men who channel this behaviour into political (ir)rationality. Modes of identity performance online include

* Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity. Sexologist John Money introduced the terminological distinction between biological sex and gender as a role in 1955. Before his work, it was uncommon to use the word "gender" to refer to anything but grammatical categories. However, Money's meaning of the word did not become widespread until the 1970s, when feminist theory embraced the distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender. Today, the distinction is strictly followed in some contexts, like feminist literature.

Most modern societies have only two traditional distinct, broad classes of gender roles, masculine and feminine, that correspond with the biological sexes of male and female. However, some societies explicitly incorporate people who adopt the gender role opposite to their biological sex, for example the Two-Spirit people of some indigenous American peoples. Other societies include well-developed roles that are considered more or less distinct from archetypal female and male roles in those societies. In the language of the sociology of gender they comprise a third gender.

If the idea that gender is performed according to socially defined rules, codes and constraints, then it seems more than obvious that gender is not necessarily a polarized set of identities, i.e. masculine and feminine. Rather gender can be understood as a potential, and there are countless possible ways gender can be performed.While many people use the Internet to preform traditional binary gender roles, many people use it to perform gradients of gender, between the ultra-masculine to the ultra-feminine.

One example. of millions, of online gender performance is the Gender Queer Chat channel on YouTube.

* Sexuality
The performance of sexual identity is everywhere online . Just like gender performance, sexuality online relies on cues, stereotypes, symbols, behaviors, actions, images, language and attitudes. The heteronormative is the idea that "people fall into distinct and complementary genders (man and woman) with natural roles in life. It also holds that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation, and states that sexual and marital relations are most (or only) fitting between a man and a woman" (Wikipedia). The heteronormative is very common as a form of sexual identity online. However, there are very many variations on sexuality online. Some examples are
Polysexuality: the attraction to multiple genders and/or sexes.
Polyamory, the desire to be intimately involved with more than one person at once.
Pansexuality, which is attraction to all genders and sexes.

One example of the performance of sexual identity online is Qruiser: "the largest Nordic Community for homo, bisexual, transgender or queer people and our friends".

* Nationality
Nationality is membership of a nation or sovereign state, usually determined by their citizenship, but sometimes by ethnicity or place of residence, or based on their sense of national identity. Like gender and sexuality, nationality is performed online using cues, stereotypes, symbols, behaviors, actions, images, language and attitudes.

This German advertisement for IKEA portrays Swedish Midsummer using the symbols of the nation and national identity in a parody. There are of course much more serious performances of nationality online. The same stereotypes of Swedish nationality can be contrasted with Syster Sol feat. Hot This Year Band - Mad Mad Mad as a statement about nationality as identity.

National identity is the person's identity and sense of belonging to one state or to one nation, a feeling one shares with a group of people, regardless of one's citizenship status. National identity is not inborn trait; various studies have shown that a person's national identity is a direct result of the presence of elements from the "common points" in people's daily lives: national symbols, language, national colors, the nation's history, national consciousness, blood ties, culture, music, cuisine, radio, television, etc.

The iconic image of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was used by the Australian national ISP Bigpond in its promotions in Second Life.

* Class

"Is there a class divide online? Research suggests yes. A recent study by market research firm Nielsen Claritas found that people in more affluent demographics are 25 percent more likely to be found friending on Facebook, while the less affluent are 37 percent more likely to connect on MySpace.

More specifically, almost 23 percent of Facebook users earn more than $100,000 a year, compared to slightly more than 16 percent of MySpace users. On the other end of the spectrum, 37 percent of MySpace members earn less than $50,000 annually, compared with about 28 percent of Facebook users." - Does your social class determine your online social network? (CNN 2009)

Social class online is a bit more difficult to determine as the means of representing class, i.e. the Internet, has class status built into it. In order to be online you have already moved beyond at least 6 billion other people on the planet in terms of access to infrastructure and education. This suggests a class divide in itself. Within those that do have access there is the concept of the digital divide. The Digital Divide refers to any inequalities between groups, broadly construed, in terms of access to, use of, or knowledge of information and communication technologies. The global digital divide in 2010:

Once the shift has been made into the realm of global digital culture, then the performance of social class online as identity once again relies on cues, stereotypes, symbols, behaviors, actions, images, language and attitudes. Class can be signified by speech, dress, location, education, income, profession, and family background.

* Ethnicity

Cyberspace entices us with the promise of an online utopia--a web of fluid identities and infinite possibilities. When we look for signs of freedom online--anywhere from chat room conversations to cyberpunk fiction--we are almost inevitably urged toward "liberation" from our bodies and their "restrictive" attributes like race, gender, and age. But cyberculture critic Lisa Nakamura insists that the Internet is a place where race matters. Race itself may not be fixed or finite, but Nakamura argues that racial stereotypes-or "cybertypes"-are hardwired into our online interactions: Identity tourists masquerade in virtual roles like Asian_Geisha and Alatinolover. Web directories sharply narrow racial categories. Anonymous computer users are assumed to be white. In Cybertypes, Nakamura looks at what happened to race when it went online, and how our ideas about race continue to be shaped and reshaped every time we log on. Examining all facets of our everyday online experience fromInternet advertising to email jokes, Nakamura shows that the postmodern ideal of fluid selves made possible by network technology is not necessarily subversive, progressive, or liberating. The harder race is pushed off-line, the greater the consequences in real life for people of color. A lively and provocative discussion Cybertypes offers a valuable new way of thinking about race and identity in the information age.

The Tumblr site Asians Sleeping in the Library is one example of how race is performed, or portrayed on the Internet. The Asians Sleeping in the Library emerged at the same time as the video, Asians in the Library - UCLA Student's Racist Rant:

Ethnicity on the Internet is a major source of identity.I have chosen to focus on examples that take up Asian identity in an American context, but it could easily be within the Swedish context.

* Generation
Much like sexuality, gender, ethnicity and race, a generational identity distinguishes each of us. Imprinted by major experiences and events -- like Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, the Challenger explosion -- a generation's shared identity shapes the values, ethics, and attitudes about the world in which its members live and work. By appealing to particular events, memories, cultural products (fashion, music, books etc.) an identity based on a generational understanding can be portrayed. At the same time components of a generational identity can be called upon to create meaning, often with a sense of nostalgia involved. A recent example I came across is the excellent Swedish group First Aid Kit, who use retro elements in their music to appeal to a wide band of age demographics;

It could be 1979 all over again. While the girls in the band were born in the early 1990s they revive many of the folk sounds that were popular in the 1960s. Melanie Safka is one comparison that can be made to First Aid Kit, one that spans three generations, and will make First Aid Kit even more popular.

Melanie - Ruby Tuesday (1975)

Presenting online as a member of a particular generation is important for people to understand who you are in general terms. People may try to appear younger than they are, and in doing so will resort to referencing sources outside their own generational context. The recent phenomenon of the so-called 'cougar', or age disparity in sexual relationships is an example of generational identity in action in social contexts. These are often mediated online.

* Taste
Taste as an aesthetic, sociological, economic and anthropological concept refers to a cultural patterns of choice and preference. While taste is often understood as a biological concept, it can also be reasonably studied as a social or cultural phenomenon. Taste is about drawing distinctions between things such as styles, manners, consumer goods and works of art. Social inquiry of taste is about the human ability to judge what is beautiful, good and proper. Of course what is considered beautiful, good and proper is totally grounded in social praxis. The Internet is one arena where taste is developed and referenced to build identity.

Social and cultural phenomena concerning taste are closely associated to social relations and dynamics between people. The concept of social taste is therefore rarely separated from its accompanying sociological concepts. An understanding of taste as something that is expressed in actions between people helps to perceive many social phenomena that would otherwise be inconceivable.

Some judgments concerning taste may appear more legitimate than others, but most often there is not a single conception shared by all members of society. People with individual sensibilities are not unique either. For instance, aesthetic preferences and attendance to various cultural events are associated with education and social origin. Different socioeconomic groups are likely to have different tastes, and it has been suggested that social class is one of the prominent factors structuring taste.

As a performance of identity according to taste, this video (a remix or mashup), provides viewers with a set of ideas regarding taste and music that are attributable to the identity that hosts it on his/her YouTube account.

The Textual Internet

2012-01-25T15:07:00.000-08:00

The title of this lecture requires some explanation (as does 'Dream' by M. C. Escher - by here is not the place, its just an interesting image).

In a functional, mechanistic material sense the Internet is:

"A global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email" - Wikipedia

The Internet is all these things, however it is more. The Internet is made up of many millions of meanings. We who use the Internet interpret it, compose it, define it, agree and disagree, and even feel transported by it. In this lecture I will first define what I mean by textual in relation to the Internet. I will then provide some examples of how meaning in the textual construction of the Internet operates. Finally I will discuss some methods of analyzing specific examples of content on the Internet. From this analysis I will provide some suggestions for authoring with the Internet.

Some Key Terms

Materiality: "the interplay betweena text’s physicalcharacteristics and its signifying strategies. This deﬁnition opens the possibility ofconsidering texts as embodied entities while still maintaining a central focus oninterpretation. In this view of materiality, it is not merely an inert collectionof physical properties but a dynamic quality that emerges from the interplaybetween the text as a physical artifact, its conceptual content, and theinterpretive activities of readers and writers." Katherine Hayles, Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis, 72.

So what are some of the material characteristics of the Internet that result in signifying strategies?

procedural (composed of executable rules)
participatory (inviting human action and manipulation of the represented world)
encyclopedic (containing very high capacity of information in multiple media formats)
spatial (navigable as an information repository and/or a virtual place)

These four characteristics are common to all digital environments according to Janet H Murray (Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace 72-90). I think there is a lot of weight in the logic of the procedural, participatory, encyclopedic and spatial as defining the medium. I would also add the simultaneous, in that is shared at the same time as a non-rivalrous resource.

Textual: The textual as we understand it today is the product of a rather long and complex series of conceptual associations that are produced by cultural, historical, social, political and even economic changes. The 20th century is largely responsible for what we have at the moment as the focus for representation and how meaning is attributed to the symbolic.

text (n.): late 14c., "wording of anything written," from O.Fr. texte, O.N.Fr. tixte (12c.), from M.L. textus "the Scriptures, text, treatise," in L.L. "written account, content, characters used in a document," from L. textus "style or texture of a work," lit. "thing woven," from pp. stem of texere "to weave," from PIE base *tek- "make" (see texture).
An ancient metaphor: thought is a thread, and the raconteur is a spinner of yarns -- but the true storyteller, the poet, is a weaver. The scribes made this old and audible abstraction into a new and visible fact. After long practice, their work took on such an even, flexible texture that they called the written page a textus, which means cloth. [Robert Bringhurst, "The Elements of Typographic Style"]

"This year", said Tristouse, "fashions are bizarre and common, simple and full of fantasy. Any material from nature's domain can now be introduced into the composition of women's clothing. I saw a charming dress made of corks. It was certainly equal to the charming wash cloth evening dresses which are the rage of premiers. A big designer is thinking about launching tailor made outfits made of old book bindings done in calf. It's charming. All the ladies of letters would want to wear them, and one could approach them and whisper in their ear under the pretext of reading the titles. Fish bones are being worn a lot on hats.

One often sees delicious young girls dressed like pilgrims of Saint James of Compostela; their outfits, as are fitting , are studded with coquilles Saint-Jacques. Steel, wool sandstone and the files have all made an abrupt entry into the vestmentary arts. These materials are used in belts, on hat pins, etc, and it so happened that I saw an adorable reticule composed entirely of glass eyes, the kind you see at an occultists. Feathers now decorate not only hats, but shoes, gloves, and next year they'll be on umbrellas.

They're doing shoes in Venetian glass and hats in Baccarat crystal. Not to mention oil painted dresses, brightly colored wools, or dresses curiously splashed with ink. For spring wear, they'll be many clothes made of bladders, pleasant shapes, light and distinctive. Our lady fliers will wear nothing else. For the races, there will be the child's balloon hat, made of around twenty balloons, a very luxurious effect and sometimes some diverting detonations. The mussel shell is work only on high top shoes.

Notice that they're beginning to dress in live animals. I encountered one lady whose hat had twenty birds, canaries, gold fiches, robins, held with a wore on claw, singing wildly and flapping their wings. The coiffure of an ambassador dress was, at the past party in Neuilly, composed of thirty snakes. "For whom are those serpents who hiss on your head?" said a little Romanian attache with the Dacian accent, who has the reputation of being successful with women.

I forgot to tell you that last Wednesday I saw on the boulevards an old dowager dressed in mirrors stuck to fabric. The effect was sumptuous in sunlight. You'd have thought it was a goldmine out for a walk. Later it started raining and the lady looked like a silver mine. Nut shells make pretty trimmings, especially if they're mixed with hazelnuts. Dresses embellished with coffee beans, cloves, cloves of garlic, onions, and bunches of raisins,these will be perfect for social calls. Fashion is becoming practical and it no longer looks down on anything. It ennobles everything. It does for materials what the Romantics did for words"- Guillaume Apollinaire, The Poet Assassinated 1923.

The sentence "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." was written by Gertrude Stein as part of the 1913 poem Sacred Emily, which appeared in the 1922 book Geography and Plays. In that poem, the first "Rose" is the name of a person. Stein later used variations on the sentence in other writings, and "A rose is a rose is a rose" is probably her most famous quotation, often interpreted as meaning "things are what they are," a statement of the law of identity, "A is A". In Stein's view, the sentence expresses the fact that simply using the name of a thing already invokes the imagery and emotions associated with it, an idea also intensively discussed in the problem of universals debate where Peter Abelard and others used the rose as an example concept. As the quotation diffused through her own writing, and the culture at large, Stein once remarked "Now listen! I’m no fool. I know that in daily life we don't go around saying 'is a ... is a ... is a ...' Yes, I’m no fool; but I think that in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years." (Four in America)

Stein herself said to an audience at Oxford University that the statement referred to the fact that when the Romantics used the word "rose" it had a direct relationship to an actual rose. For later periods in literature this would no longer be true. The eras following romanticism, notably the modern era, use the word rose to refer to the actual rose, yet they also imply, through the use of the word, the archetypical elements of the romantic era. It also follows the rhetoric law of thricefold repetition to emphasize a point, as can be seen in speeches dating back to the sophists.

William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963) is famously known for coining the term: “No ideas but in things.” This one line from the 1927 version of his poem, Paterson, became a mantra for poetry in the early 20th century. Its expression is still strongly influential today. It changed the look and feel of poetry, possibly more than any other single idea in the past hundred years. It was not original, however, as this essay hopes to show. His statement was a summary of the poetry trends at that time.

The historical context will show that Williams meant for poetry to focus on objects rather than mere concepts, on actual things rather than abstract characteristics of things. The mention of any object creates a visualized idea in our minds—we form an image of the thing. This does not happen at the mention of abstractions, like “truth”, or “memory”. Abstract words do not create images in the mind. Only “things” create visual images. Things can be tangible, such as a wheel barrow. Or things can be a behavior, such as a sidelong glance. The image of a thing creates an idea of what the thing means in the context it is used. Hence there are “no ideas but in things” according to Williams.

Close Reading:
Close reading describes, in literary criticism, the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text. Such a reading places great emphasis on the particular over the general, paying close attention to individual words, syntax, and the order in which sentences and ideas unfold as they are read. The technique as practiced today was pioneered (at least in English) by I.A. Richards and his student William Empson, later developed further by the New Critics of the mid-twentieth century. It is now a fundamental method of modern criticism. Close reading is sometimes called explication de texte, which is the name for the similar tradition of textual interpretation in French literary study, a technique whose chief proponent was Gustave Lanson.

In his book "Is There A Meaning in This Text?" (1998) Kevin Vanhoozer explains Jacques Derrida's dictum that "there is nothing outside the text" by saying that everything is part of a signifying system or classification system that is constituted by differences. He offers this illuminating illustration: "a Ford has its particular connotations because it is part of a signifying system that includes Yugos, Peugots, and Jaguars. The 'meaning' of a Ford Escort is constituted by its differences from other cars (including other fords). An Escort is a text in the context of other automobiles. There is no such thing as an 'absolute Ford,' whose meaning could be considered in a cultural vacuum. Rather, the particular value that we have come to associate with Fords depends as much on how cars are marketed as how cars are manufactured, and on how 'Ford' is placed in the signifying system that includes 'Jaguar,' 'Volkswagon,' 'Chevrolet,' and 'Toyota.'" The point is that there is NO grasp of "Ford" by stepping outside the system of classification, no "absolute Ford" that transcends the classification system, nor even an "absolute automobile" that is outside the "text" of different makes and models.

Performance:

The union of navigation,manipulation and interpretation for the Internet can be accomplished within areading that is performative. Such a reading is broader than that associatedonly with the alphabetical and goes beyond the concept of close reading due tothe variables and interoperability of the diverse media forms in the work.Performance in reading is related to what Fernández-Vara describes as theinteractive applications of the digital, which “may run but are not functionaluntil there is input from the interactor, since someone has to complete theprocess of making meaning. […] The interactor is thus an active performer alongwith the computer” (5). The interactor must firstly recognize the variouselements of the digital text mediated by the computer before inputs are ofconcern. Reading the digital works is “ to create meaning cognitively in theencounter with the text” (Dovey and Kennedy 102). Cognitive encounters with thetext include the tactile and visual ranges that digital works are capable ofmanifesting, as well as the technological capabilities, design and the legalframeworks that define them. The act of reading multimedia works demands humanmanipulation, which results in the performance of discourse by readers.

The nature of a performance text isas simple as it seems, it is finding an appropriate venue for the sharing ofthe text that is the challenge. Anything written and extant falls underthe umbrella of "performance text." Thanks in a great deal toDada and surrealist artists, many of the standards a text was held to in orderfor it to be considered a "performance text" have beenshattered. Today’s theater has no way of policing or authorizing whatqualifies as a performance text. The concept of formalizing someexpression as "Performance Text" would be useless because even apiece everyone may agree upon as a model is, by its nature as a performancepiece, an extremely protean entity. No performance of any piece will everbe repeated and every production will be necessarily unique. The wordswritten in a text cannot be interpreted the same way twice and once the playlives for an audience it cannot be compared to the carcass of a text it camefrom. There is a certain inherent anarchy to any performance, with no wayof calculating the final results accurately beforehand despite the exactness apiece may be written with. The script, or roadmap for maneuvering throughthe journey, must be as flexible and open a medium as possible in order toallow writers to explore and incorporate such extreme possibilities forexpression. --Sam Gromoll

Reading the Internet

The Internet is huge, so reading the Internet is not something a person can do. However it is possible to read parts of it. I would like to give as an example my analysis of Facebook from 2007:

"Facebook is a horizontally arranged network based on association rather than interest (unlike Myspace). One builds connections with others in the viral sense; email is used to bring contacts into the system. By allowing Facebook access to email account (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo and AOL) mass mail-outs can be one way of building up you friends list and of course bringing contributing to the Facebook database. The other way of finding contacts is through work, school and college. I myself went to a tiny high school in a small town in rural Australia (Oakey State High) so it is not on the list of schools (you can only choose, not type in). But the town I went to university in is well represented. Interestingly the private schools (as in non-government) seem to be much more represented in the lists of high schools. In Brisbane, the capital of my home state there are 13 High schools listed and only 3 of them are government schools that did not charge fees. I wonder if this reflects the overall demographic of Facebook or the use of digital social software in Queensland, Australia. There is also college and company searches but when you type in the title Facebook will not prompt the line for you as there are no prior entries in the database of the term.

Setting up a profile on Facebook is not too different from other social platforms. There is lots of plug-ins that can be loaded into a page; video, books I’ve read, photos, movies and the list is growing daily. There are issues of readability relevant in regards to a Facebook site. I myself believe minimalism works on the web, this is a design question but I try to keep my site fairly sharp and to the point. I decline lots of offers from friends for zombie clubs, vampire attacks and poking or biting my colleagues. I have decided it is an identity thing I have going on Facebook and not a game. I am also fully aware of what I disclose on Facebook as it is a public space, even if it does have something of a gated community feel to it. I don’t think the gated (restricted access, password protected etc.) is that substantial."

The in 2011 I did one last reading of Facebook before closing my account:

"When I signed on to Facebook in 2007 it was defined as "a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them." Now, with the implementation of Timeline, Facebook is defined by its founder as “[A]ll your stories, all your apps, a new way to express who you are.” Anyone familiar with the architecture of Facebook knows that it is far from simply 'expressing who you are' on the platform. Who I am on FB is formed by Facebook itself. If I contribute 'all my stories, all my apps and express myself' on FB, I see myself as losing those contributions to the vast database of the program. Plus with Timeline I am now part of an information flow in real time, the nature and perimeters of which I do not control. Suddenly friends-of-friends are within my feed and I am, I presume, within theirs. There is little time or space available for my own self-expression in FB now, because if I even just throw a pebble in the pool, it returns to me as a Tsunami of unknown origins. The entire equation of FB has changed. the analogy used by the Napperville Sun is today ancient history:
"To users, Facebook will no longer be a bench by the side of a river where they sit and watch an endless flow of ephemera float by and then disappear."
I prefer the village square or Agora analogy myself, where I once could go to share with a group of people whom I actually knew, and we could talk, share links and catch up. The circle I once had on Facebook seems to be possible today with Google+, or at least that is what I am hoping.

Added to the expanse of contacts and information I am exposed to on the 'new Facebook' is the somewhat sinister promise of the Timeline interface, which is described by one commentator as,
"Your Facebook presence is now intended to be durable. In 2029, when your firstborn son’s holographic avatar is going off to lunar robot fighting school, you can rewind your Timeline to 2011 and show him what you were up to in the week before he was born."
as well
"Facebook's updated Open Graph will make the social network far more "sticky." Zuckerberg said users will have the ability--thanks to Timeline and a new addition, Ticker--to see what a friend is doing, like watching a movie on Netflix or listening to a song on Spotify, and engage in that same activity from within the social network. The Facebook CEO said he believes the improvements will help create "a completely new class of social apps" that will let users share every single facet of their lives on the social network." - (Cnet) Facebook Changes Creeping Out Some Customers
To me this sounds like a total nightmare scenario.The week before my son was born was and are my memories, my images and mine to explain to him should I choose to do so. Facebook or any other web platform (that I do not control) has no place in the representation or explanation of that period in my life. Futuristic fantasies do not convince me otherwise. Added to this is the intrusion of Facebook cookies;

"Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions." - Logging out of Facebook is Not Enough"

In both of these readings the design and materials of the text are as meaningful as the words, pictures, and audio. It is precisely this balance between the materials, the design and the ways the text speaks to you, the reader, viewer or listener that creates meaning.

The reading of Facebook give you some idea of how an interactive digital machine operating in real time can be interpreted for meanings. However, there are many texts within the structure of the Internet that defy close reading. Consider Twitter, how can one read a vast network of 140 character entries running in real time from millions of people? One suggested method is distant reading:

"Distant reading: where distance, let me repeat it, is a condition of knowledge: it allows you to focus on units that are much smaller or much larger than the text: devices, themes, tropes—or genres and systems. And if, between the very small and the very large, the text itself disappears, well, it is one of those cases when one can justifiably say, Less is more. If we want to understand the system in its entirety, we must accept losing something. We always pay a price for theoretical knowledge: reality is infinitely rich; concepts are abstract, are poor. But it’s precisely this ‘poverty’ that makes it possible to handle them, and therefore to know. This is why less is actually more." - Franco Moretti - Conjectures on World Literature

Distant reading is a quantitative method where the relationships within a text and between texts are measured according to the symbolic. Distant reading pays attention to the materials of the text, along with its design and the ways it addresses an audience. It does however have problems capturing something of the performative as indicated in the text.

So you are thinking about writing for the web

1. Think about procedurality, encyclopedia, space and participation

2. Think about the simultaneity of the web, the sharing and the meetings

3. Think about the performance of the text in the hands of your audience

4. Think about the rules and how they make people do things
5. Think about the shortcuts, the ways it can be broken, the hacks and the glitches.

Mashup: Deformative Practice as Comment on Gender and Sexuality

2011-11-13T13:19:00.001-08:00

Let’s talk terms. ‘Remix’ and ‘Mashup’ . What is the difference. According to the great wiki:

A remix is an alternative version of a song, different from the original version. A remixer uses audio mixing to compose an alternate master of a song, adding or subtracting elements, or simply changing the equalization, dynamics, pitch, tempo, playing time, or almost any other aspect of the various musical components. Usually, a remix will involve substantial changes to the arrangement of a recorded work; lyrics may be added or removed, such alterations are not a necessity. A song may be remixed to give a song that wasn't popular a second chance at radio and club play, or to alter a song to suit a specific music genre or radio format.

While:

Mashup (or mash it up) is a Jamaican Creole term meaning to destroy. In the context of reggae or ska music, it can take on a positive connotation and mean an exceptional performance or event. The term has also been used in hip-hop, especially in cities such as New York that have a high Jamaican population.

Mashup, or bootleg, is a musical genre which, in its purest form, consists of the combination (usually by digital means) of the music from one song with the a cappella from another. Typically, the music and vocals belong to completely different genres. At their best, bastard pop songs strive for musical epiphanies that add up to considerably more than the sum of their parts.

Differences? Remix has cool white connotations of high tech interventions. Mashup is Creole (read black), with a hot edge of violence (to destroy) and also termed ‘bastard pop’. Remix is attributable to ‘a remixer’, whereby the artist as genius lives on within the new technology. Mashup is a process (as is Remix actually) that confuses boundaries while striving for a constellation that is only “considerably more than the sum of their parts” but never a new thing. But remix creates a song with “substantial changes” and “a second [coming??] chance”. Remix exists in the production of commodity culture while mashups subvert the values of that culture. Originality is supposed in the remix while it is erased in the mashup.

Consider the points raised in this seminar outline (PDF) in regards to mashup culture. Who owns words, and what is the value of fan production? Can you see value in mashups if we think about it in the following ways:

( from: Mashup Cultures by Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss - editor. p9)

Mashups are combinations of one or more existing works of media that rely on references back to the original/s in order for the newer combinations to be meaningful. In this way mashups differ from remixes as the latter creates a new work and can be made from a single already-existing work. As a critical device a mashup works from what literary theorist Jerome McGann calls derformance.

"Imaginative work has an elective affinity with performance: it is organized as rhetoric andpoiesis rather than as exposition and information-transmission. Because this is so, it always liesopen to deformative moves. Harold Bloom's trenchant theory of poetic influence spelled outsome of the imagination's performative "ratios," as he called them. Certain of these ratios areaggressively deformative, as when Blake famously overturns both Milton's Paradise Lost and itschief precursor, the Judaeo-Christian bible, or when Ronald Johnson selects from and revisesParadise Lost in RADI OS (1977)" (McGann and Samuels)

"Deformative scholarship is all but forbidden, thethought of it either irresponsible or damaging to critical seriousness. It exists nonetheless, and incertain cases it has gained justifiable distinction and importance. Forgery is the most importanttype of deformative scholarship, nor should its contribution to the advancement of learning beunderestimated, as Anthony Grafton has recently shown." - (McGann and Samuels)

Buffy versus Edward is a well know mashup that exposes many of the biases and stereotypical gender assumptions that underpin the Twilight series, along with foregrounding the strong female character in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. This mashup is an excellent critical reflection in the deformative sense that McGann refers to.

"Five months in the making, Buffy vs Edward is essentially an answer to the question “What Would Buffy Do?” My re-imagined story was specifically constructed as a response to Edward, and what his behavior represents in our larger social context for both men and women. More than just a showdown between The Slayer and the Sparkly Vampire, it’s also a humorous visualization of the metaphorical battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century" - What Would Buffy Do? Notes on Dusting Edward Cullen by Jonathan McIntosh (on WIMINs Voices).

One of the primary strengths of digital media as a meaning making system is how the collision of two elements can make a third. A video and a soundtrack can be joined in a webpage to create a new set of meanings when compared to the previous two or more works.

(Note: Some of these references are incorrect, but the general idea is present)

Materiality: “Dream America Movie” is constructed entirely by recombining semiotic content from Internet sources. The material consists of the following elements:

1. Moving visual imagery derived from YouTube, with one of two direct references to 131 course material, i.e., a clip from Michael Moore’s documentary, “Bowling for Columbine”;

2. Still photography from news sources and Microsoft clipart;

3. Spoken verbal commentary in the forms of voice over (inserted from YouTube) of the introduction to “God Bless America” by Irving Berlin, newscaster narration, clips from news conferences of former President Bush and current Vice President Biden, and, in one of two direct references to 131 course material, a clip from Morgan Spurlock’s TV documentary, “Minimum Wage”;

4. Written verbal content in the forms of title (her only self-created addition to the video text), news channel logos (ABC; Fox News; CNN), news captions and scrolling banners, signs in the hands of individuals in visuals or propped on objects in visual); a combination of complete sentences in the narration, voiceover, and signs; and one-line clauses and phrases in the news banners and captions;

5. Streaming music throughout (Carmina Burana’s “O Fortuna”) inserted from YouTube (http://vodpod.com/watch/3134307-carmina-burana-o-fortuna).

(Source: Mashup of Discourses: A Critical Analysis of the Videotext, "Dream America Movie" by Nancy Fox)

What unites all of these elements in the above video is the critical theme of 'What is America today as a contrast to the American Dream?'. The focus provided by a theme is an important thing to remember when making a mashup.

The creation of a mashup can critique an established code or order that represents gender or sexuality.

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

This video was created by Michelle Redman and Kyle Nimmo for MACS 221 at UFV. It is meant to highlight how gender stereotypes are present in commercials and advertisments.

Making the Mashup

a) Writing for a Mashup
Creating a mashup is a lot about improvisation, using the materials at hand and understanding how references work in popular culture. You may decide to make a mashup based on a video you have seen that you believe needs to be answered. The YouTube function of Video Response caters for this aspect of the mashup. You may have thought of a theme, say Barack Obama is a Player, and you construct a mashup around that idea, gathering material from videos, podcasts, news images and broadcasts and audiobooks. The time line and rhythm of the segments you use in the mashup are important. Adding music can often make the mashup more effective, or it can fail.

b) The Tools:
There are three approaches to gathering moving images for the construction of a mashup; 1. copying, 2. ripping, 3. making.

1. Copying - screen capture using Camtasia, Jing (Mac and PC), AviScreen Classic, Fraps, GameCam, and Capture Me (Mac compatible). Using these programs you can capture images and often sound (AviScreen is image only). These can be saved as an .avi file and edited in a video editing program. I will return to video editing in the third section, making.

2. Ripping is the taking of content from the Internet. the Fast Video Download (FVD) addon for Firefox is one way of taking videos from the Internet. DownloadThemAll allows for fast download of videos, audio and images from a webpage. It does not work with embedded content the way FVD does. KeepVid does work with embedded videos on the Internet.

When making mashups a Creative Commons License (CC) is your friend. The CC License allows you to copy and modify content for non-commercial use. There are many sites on the Internet that allow for free use (free as in open). These include the enormous archive.org, OurMedia, and Freesound.org. Soundcloud is a music sharing site that allows for free downloads, as does the Free Music Archive.

3. Making is the stage after both copying and ripping. You have the gathered the raw materials for your mashup and now you need to put them all together. This is the hardest part of the process in many ways. For video editing there are a number of options available. In HUMlab we offer FinalCut Pro. As a free online download, but much simpler solution for video editing I use VirtualDub. There is also Windows Movie Maker. Camtasia (Free 30-day trial version) has a fairly advanced editing function as well. To covert AVI to MOV files for Window Movie Maker, there is a free solution. To covert Flash to MOV try this one. For working with sound, I use Cubase LE4, but there are free solutions. Audacity is one of them. Sill images can be inserted into the editing time-line of Camtasia and FinalCut. You can import the ripped video (after conversion if necessary) into each of the video editing programs mentioned here, using the Import Media function. You may want to add your own content as well and this can be done with the video cameras in HUMlab, the audio software I have mentioned here or using your own images.

Once you have completed your mashup I recommend sharing it with the world, using:

TroopTube
Tudou (Chinese)
Vbox7 (Bulgarian)
Veer
Veoh
Viddler
Videojug
Vidoosh (Iranian)
Vimeo
Vuze
Vzaar
Wildscreen.tv
xtube
Yahoo! Video (no new uploads)
Youku (Chinese)
YouTube
Zoopy

GET TO IT PEOPLE!

Frankenstein’s Monster Comes Home: Digital Remix and the Ends of Origin

2011-10-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

Frankenstein’s Monster Comes Home:

Digital Remix and the Ends of Origin

Jim Barrett

Language Studies/HUMlab

Umeå University

Sweden

“The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind. ”

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.

“One text that shows the disaster of the divorce between science and poetry would be the one by Mary Shelley whose name is Frankenstein.”

Avital Ronell, Body/No Body (in conversation with Werner Herzog)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (published 1818) represents a historical and literary divergence between the poetic and the technical, and is a significant reaction against this split as part of English Romanticism. It is the contention of my presentation that in contemporary digital works of art and narrative we are witnessing a re-marriage of science and poetry. However, this union should be no automatic cause for romantic joy, as the present situation in the education sector of most Western democracies indicates. Today, the natural sciences are separated from and weighted favorably in relation to the production and analysis of culture. There is little to indicate that this is an effective strategy in light of present global ‘network culture’ initiatives. Today, the union of science and poetry in digital media is felt most acutely in reading, or the performative interpretation of imaginative works. Computer games, websites, digital works of literature, apps, virtual worlds, interactive art, and spatial media (GIS, Kinnect, GPS, Wii) are interpreted as they are performed and often require some knowledge of the medium by the user in order for the work to function. This situation represents a form of reading that has not been practiced widely in Western academic and literate circles for several centuries. We are not witnessing a return to what Walter J. Ong famously terms a “secondary orality” (10-11), but rather we are seeing a form of inscription rapidly emerge that is spatial, multi-temporal, performed, place-bound, visual, sonic, and navigated. Two central concepts are important for understanding how digital works are generally interpreted, and these are simulation and remix. Representation has become the domain of mediating objects, both virtual and physical, while reading is as much about arranging and appropriating as it is about reference, symbolism, iconography and interpretation. Based on a relatively small selection of digital works this presentation examines reception practices involving digital media, which suggest an expanded concept of reading where the material technology of a work determines meaning as much as its representative elements do. In this examination I demonstrate how performance, participation, co-authoring, and remix make the reading of the digital works. These works are

Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson (1995)

Last Meal Requested by Sachiko Hayashi (2004)

Façade By Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern (2006)

Second Life http://youtu.be/9g-kYvK3P-Q

CONSTRUCT by salevy_oh (2011)

The Celebration by Iris Piers (2011)

Patchwork Girl is a work of electronic literature by American author Shelley Jackson. It was written in Storyspace and published by Eastgate Systems in 1995. It is often discussed along with Michael Joyce's 'Afternoon, a story' as an important work of hypertext fiction."Shelley Jackson's brilliantly realized hypertext Patchwork Girl is an electronic fiction that manages to be at once highly original and intensely parasitic on its print predecessors."

The actions of the avatar, which is the identity of its operator in SL, conform to the traditions of Varjrayana Buddhism. The combination of the actions of the avatar and the audio is a two fold signifying structure, with the operator of the avatar at the center. In a simulative sense the operator of the avatar is enacting a practice that is firmly contextualized in religious and social contexts.

Last Meal Requested is an interactive net art work by Japanese/Swedish artist Sachiko Hayashi. It deals with themes of gender, state power, violence and the rhetoric of the image. The original work can be accessed at http://www.e-garde.net/lmr/lmr2.html

Selavy: What happens when you write in a diary? Of course, some people write down “got up at 7am, drank a coffee, had lunch with Jim, went to bed early”, but that’s not the type of diary I’m referring to. It is rather the idea of keeping a record of selected thoughts, feelings, moods, ideas, etc. The important part is, of course, that you do that regularly. And that is exactly what I did in CONSTRUCT: I added one room each day. Every one of the 75 days of the residency has its own room, often relating to the topic of the residency itself, a time capsule of ideas, artifacts, or reference to other work. If you read a diary, you may get an idea about the writer and her life. If you visit CONSTRUCT, you may get an idea about Selavy Oh and her residency.

The Celebration "combines a circular display of flatscreens, reminiscent of a giant zoetrope, containing amateur film footage from the 1910's-1940's with different soundscapes that can be manipulated by the audience" (Piers).How the audience manipulates the various audio and images, and how they combine to create an interactive and immersive space, makes The Celebration an engaging work of interactive digital art.The visitor enters a darkened space, where the only available light comes from the 10 screens showing the films of The Celebration. By moving around the space and judging their own distance, speed of movement, posture and height in relation to the (largely invisible) Arduino trackers, a dance begins with the audio and the cracked black and white images from almost a century ago.Each of the screens that make up The Celebration has an Arduino tracking sensor attached, which maps the movements of the body of a visitor, and implements pre-programmed changes in the presentation of images and sound.Unknown faces stare out from the screens, mostly laughing, talking (unheard) and often looking straight at the camera, and at the audience. As these faces watch, the visitor dodges and weaves, hops and slides, while the images and sounds change. At the same time the visitor is watching the faces, along with their bodies, their families and friends, competitors at sports events and classmates, neighbors and colleagues. It is according to this arrangement that a circuit of movement and gaze is achieved by the programming of The Celebration.

Façade is a prototype of interactive drama, a new genre of character and story-intensive interactive entertainment. Façade is freely downloadable at interactivestory.net. In Façade, you, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip’s marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip’s lives – motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.In this video Facade is used to promote an abstinence program.

Twitter as Social Media

2011-09-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Twitter is a log-in web 'micro-blogging' service where users can follow each other as they post 140 character entries in a scrolling feed of short messages, links, updates, bookmarks and referrals (re-tweets). It was founded in 2006 and currently has 11 million active accounts.

San Antonio-based market-research firm Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from the US and in English) over a two-week period in August 2009 from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM (CST) and separated them into six categories:

Pointless babble – 40%
Conversational – 38%
Pass-along value – 9%
Self-promotion – 6%
Spam – 4%
News – 4%

Social networking researcher Danah Boyd responded to the Pear Analytics survey by arguing that what the Pear researchers labelled "pointless babble" is better characterized as "social grooming" and/or "peripheral awareness" (which she explains as persons "want[ing] to know what the people around them are thinking and doing and feeling, even when co-presence isn’t viable").

An enormous number of universities are using Twitter to brand and profile themselves. I have been Tweeting since 2006. When it comes to my own Twitter use and what I get from it. I do not engage in conversation so much using Twitter, although it is becoming more of my twitter activity as more people join in. I have broken it down into these categories:

1. Bookmarks - I have a delicious site where I keep bookmarks. Twitter is more about sharing bookmarks than archiving and ordering them. I can also harvest bookmarks from the Twitter feeds I follow.

2. RSS Feed - Twitter has replaced my syndication services, although I keep it going I hardly ever use it. The people I follow using post about their blog entries

3. Profiling myself - this includes notifying on my own blog posts, publications, events, performances, teaching and travel.

4. Conference and event reporting - I can follow a conference or event either from the Twitter site dedicated to it, or from its assigned hash tag.

5. Note taking and record keeping - i have composed blog posts and journalism articles from my entries on Twitter. It is possible to archive your Twitter posts and as Twitter only keeps the previous 4000 tweets you may want to do this regularly.

6. Networking - Twitter tracks the location of Tweets and you can search of other Twitter users nearby. As well Twitter is an easy way to come into contact with the leaders or interesting people in your academic field.

7. As a Text and Research Object - Enormous amounts of information are generated by Twitter. In regard to some of the big national and international events of the past few years, Twitter has been a source of expression and information for millions of people. The Israeli invasion of Gaza, The student uprising in Iran, the revolutions in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and the massacre in Norway have all be well documented using Twitter. Collecting this information and collating it is an interesting challenge for academics.

8. Creative Writing and Literature - Fiction using twitter abounds by so-called TwittLitters. As well there is the retelling of the great novels using Twitter, with the book Twitterature selling well in many countries.

9. To converse and socialize - you can chat with friends, discuss a common interest, look for missing people at workshops, get information about food, accommodation, travel, books, music, websites and so on.

Place and Identity in the Digital Arena (Virtual World and Digital Literature)

2011-09-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

"Place is experienced space (Malpas, 1999; Tuan & Mercure, 2004). It is what happens when geographic space takes on meaning of any sort—as an object of memory, desire,or fear. Place can be produced through happenstance (the space of a first kiss), through narrative (the space of childhood that is persistently articulated with story), through familiarity (the space one lives each day),or through representation (the space of art or advertising). This identification with place is an important method of organizing personal experience and social actions." - Using Virtual Worlds to Foster Civic Engagement, Eric Gordon and Gene Koo p206

Place is more than just a name. Place gives identity and meaning to space. Places are marked out and organized according to class, gender, history, power, politics, knowledge, nationality, memory, desire, narrative, and conflict. It is relatively easy to think of a place that has special or specific meaning and then question why it is different from another, perhaps very similar place.

In digital media place takes on a new level of significance in narrative. Place often determines identity in digitally media narratives. Consider the most famous computer games, where location directs action.

World of Warcraft relies on places to order the flow of play. Raids are conducted over boundaries between places. Places take on specific characteristics to enhance play and contextualize characters and action.

It is different in Counter-Strike. Distances, heights and fields of view are that much more meaningful here. Meaningful largely through the functionality of my weapons, to be sure. Still, a variety of tactical behaviours is possible. The spatial structures can be appropriated in different ways. But again, the look of the buildings is largely irrelevant. I learn the valuable properties of places via multiple repeated attempts.

Façade

A "one act interactive drama" where "A couple, Grace and Trip, hosts the player in their apartment for cocktails and proceeds to have a relationship breakdown. Using full typed sentences the player can coach them through their troubles or drive them to be more distant from each other." Facade as a narrative work relies on the representation of place and identity (specifically gender and class) to present a story. In Façade place and gender are combined in the bar and the lounge areas of the three-dimensional apartment that makes up the work. The bar is associated with the male character Trip, and the lounge is given female characteristics though an alignment with Grace. Each character retreats or is drawn into their respective areas in the conflicts of the narrative, often calling for the guest/reader to join them. The objects that are located in the respective areas also function to prompt the reader in responding to the narrative according to associations between gender and place. A painting or a piece of furniture prompts dialogue from the characters to address the reader according to gendered themes in narrative. With the structures provided by the characters and their respective places in the narrative, the reader is restricted to a set number of responses according to gender. In this way the characters and the places they occupy establish the directions for narrative development in Façade.

The relationship between Trip and Grace is composed of stereotypical gender roles and the portrayal of their professional versus private lives. Trip and Grace’s marriage is defined in narrative according to Trip as the stronger and more powerful partner while Grace struggles against being submissive. This, in turn, translates into one character having greater agency where Trip dominates compared to Grace. Many of these conflicts are played out in the narrative in relation to the places depicted in the work. For example, during the evening, he chooses the wine and fixes the drinks. In negotiating the bar and serving the drinks, Grace asks the guest, “Jim, how about something simple, like a nice glass of chardonnay?” only to receive the reply from Trip, “Yeah, no, we need to open this wine! Our friend is here, we're going to enjoy ourselves, that's all there is to it! GRACE: (frustrated sigh)” (Façade). Grace, as representing a narrative direction, is denied agency, in that she is unable to choose her own drink, and once again fails to find her own voice in the dialogue with Trip. As a result the reader is left with the narrative direction initiated by Trip as the only way forward for the story.

The bar area is identified with Trip as part of the gendered structure of the places in Façade. Trip occupies and controls the bar, and he refers to it numerous times with statements that assert a sense of competitive and aggressive pride,

TRIP Oh, yeah, uh, I'm gonna fix us some drinks in a sec! TRIP Ah, you need to help me break in my expensive new set of cocktail making accessories. JIM: cocktails? I love cocktails TRIP: Yeah, hang on, ooh, I'm going to make you one of my fabulous drinks in just a minute, heh! (Façade)

The bar is a masculinized place in Façade by virtue of Trip’s dominance of it, as it is only there that he can display his power and status,

TRIP. Y -- yeah, uh, we need drinks!JIM: large drinksTRIP: This is great... -- (interrupted)TRIP: W -- well, uh, I'm going to open an exquisite Bordeaux!TRIP: Best of the best, you can't buy this in stores. Very, very special -GRACE: God Trip, you are such a wine snob. Just like my dad. (Façade)

The comparison between Trip and Grace’s wealthy father is part of the masculine and authoritative narrative qualities assigned to the bar. Readings are set up according to the power and status implied by the exclusive wine offered by Trip. The alcohol is presented in contrast to the tastes of Grace, who is parodied and humiliated in the contexts of the bar. This humiliation is demonstrated in exchanges such as, “TRIP: Why don't I make us one of my new drink inventions, TRIP: I call it Grace's Inner Soul. TRIP: It's a mixture of chardonnay, bitters and lots of ice” (Façade). Grace is contrasted to the social prestige associated with the bar in relation to Trip.

The bar area functions as support for Trip, which confines the reader to a single male perspective. A picture of the Italian countryside, from a holiday that Trip references as a “second honeymoon” (Façade) is beside the bar, and he draws attention,

TRIP: Oh, Jim, I thought you might like this photo I just put up from our recent trip to Italy.JIM: thanksGRACE: Uhh, it's a beautiful picture of the Italian countryside, of course he'll like it! (Grace sips her Grace's drink.)TRIP: Grace, I know you don't like it, but our friend might.GRACE: By the way, anybody, join me on the couch if you like.(Façade)

If the guest joins Grace on the couch the narrative themes connected to her and prompted by the objects, decorations and art that surround are moved into the centre of dialogue. A move to the lounge by the guest/reader shifts the progression of narrative away from the perspectives of Trip and towards those of Grace. If Trip is not at the bar and instead moves closer to the couch and Grace, the overall narrative moves to center more on the concerns of Grace and eventually on both characters. The two places in the apartment, the lounge and the bar are actually extensions of the characters Grace and Trip as far as narrative is concerned.

From these place-based narrative exchanges identity converges for each of the characters. The reader/guest establishes perspective regarding the characters and the 'best' ways to address them as identities considering the contexts of dialogue.

"There is no self that is prior to the convergence or who maintains 'integrity' prior to its entrance into this conflicted cultural field. There is only the taking up of the tools where they lie, where the very ’taking up’ is enabled by the tool lying there”. - Judith Butler (1990 145)

This is a still image of my avatar in Second Life. It has no biological sex, no genitals or DNA that identifies it according to a scientific standard as male. However, it is consistently referred to by myself and others as 'he' or 'him' and the things it owns as 'his'. Visually, this avatar presents as male and the above image illustrates this 'maleness' in a contemporary style. The business suit, hair style and physical features indicate to me a form of 'soft masculinity', with influence from some of the androgynous gender tropes from popular culture. Lack of facial hair, long eye lashes, large eyes, longish hair style, slight build that lacks developed muscle definition, and thin hips add to the androgyny of the avatar. The image of the avatar is not suffused with sexual imagery and the erotic zones of the body are not emphasized in gender specific ways. The lips are one area of the body that can carry erotic connotation in particular cultures (both male and female) and these are somewhat emphasized with the avatar. The soft masculinity of the avatar can be related to a larger masculine culture in East Asia, where male bodies are represented without excessive muscles or hair and attention is paid to cosmetics and appearance preparation. This video is an example of such a soft masculinity:

South Korean idol boy band, Dong Bang Shin Ki singing Under My Skin in 2008, (Notice the avatar-like flying of some of the characters) Further analysis of this video and "mu-kuk-jok 'soft masculinity'" is HERE

"Feminist geographers often consider the body as a place, a “location or site . . . of the individual”(McDowell,1999). Judith Butler (1990) developed the influential concept of“performativity,”regarding gender identities as a performance in the “stylized repetition ofacts.”To Butler,being a woman is not a natural fact but “a cultural performance [in which] ‘naturalness’ [is] constituted through discursively constrained performative acts that produce the body through and within the categories of sex”(cited in McDowell, 1999,p.54)." Bardzell and Odom The Slave's Body as a Place p252

Apart from the visual appearance of the avatar in regards to gender and sexuality there is also the concept of performing gender. My avatar performs as a predominantly heterosexual identity in Second Life. While stereotyping plays a large role in the performance of heterosexuality masculinity, the attributes of my own avatar that indicates a predominately hetero-orientation can be the same that indicate androgyny; lack of overt sexualized physical attributes, a gender-neutral physical stance and movements, and the absence of queer, bi or gay (HTB) symbols in reference to what is considered the so-called 'default sexuality' (i.e. heteronormativity).

I presented my avatar to some students recently as "fairly standard in regards to gender" and it was only while thinking about it further today that I understood what this can mean. The opening quote, "There is only the taking up of the tools where they lie, where the very ’taking up’ is enabled by the tool lying there” from Judith Butler is very much about the components of gender performance. When we work in virtual worlds we operate under the same rules to which Butler refers. What is available is what people can use to identify socially with gender and sexuality. Agency emerges from this range of possibilities according to what is tolerated, permitted and encouraged in the "conflicted cultural field"..

The avatar above references symbols of soft-masculine power in the suit, formal qualities (expensive clothes, neck tie) and attention to appearance. These factors ally power with economic wealth in the formation of identity. These qualities are surprisingly similar to many of the images from the video of the South Korean pop band. The role of my avatar in my job influences the references and values I represent within it. I have attempted to build connections between agency and power in my avatar by referencing formal qualities in male contexts. The technological aspects of my job can be related to the East Asian cultural reference where a stereotype of a technical mediated identity is common. I also think about Science Fiction novels, especially those by William Gibson, and the ways they portray East Asia as a digital society where gender-ambiguous figures move freely in information spaces.

Background Commentary

In performing the above reading I considered the following:

- Performativity: We have talked about gender being created performatively by our everyday practices. In this sense the practice of creating avatars is part of the process of creating gender. So how do the avatars (re)produce gender stereotypes? How do they exceed them?

- Representations of gender and sexuality: as both representing what is not present (the avatar representing 'me' in SL, the avatar's gender representing cultural notions/norms of gender such as the heteronormative), and as actually creating/being what is thus represented (and never just 'mirroring' the student, or cultural notions/norms). So, what do the avatars create when it comes to gender/sexuality? What do they think of the potential political power behind this kinds of representations? Do you think about the looks of the avatar's as being feminist in any sense? If so - how?

- The Butler quote: "There is only the taking up of the tools where they lie, where the very ’taking up’ is enabled by the tool lying there”. This is somewhat difficult to grasp, but virtual worlds are good examples in order to illustrate it, since "the tools" (for performed gender for example) are on the one hand per-determined by the architecture of the computer program, and on the other hand, as is the case with Second Life the tools for the manipulation of gender imagery and performance are many.

- Agency: The above also relates to agency, and having a choice (although always conditioned by the "convergence or who maintains 'integrity' prior to its entrance into this conflicted cultural field").

- Gender is said to be the prime thing in people's identifications and in identifications of others. So what choices are made in relation to identify and identification in the construction of the avatar? Initially it is necessary to decide whether the avatar is male or female (which is of course an interesting thing in itself). Why does one choose the avatar's gender as the same as my own? Why does one choose an oppositional gender? In relation to becoming a subject occurring in relation to subjecting oneself to different norms (for example gender norms). In a virtual environment simulations of gender performance can be experimented with. My avatar is not specifically incomprehensible and this is a result of reference to standard contemporary gender norms .

For further references to avatars, agency and the representation and performance of Self see HERE.

"Donna Leishman’s “Red Ridinghood” is an interactive story and a prime example of electronic literature. The viewer has to click on certain objects within the scene in order to make the story progress resulting in interaction. While at one point the viewer is offered two choices to click, both routes end up leading to the same ending. This type of story can be mistakenly labeled as a ‘game’ meaning that the viewer actually has the ability to change the outcome of the story line. Yet “Red Ridinghood” does not actually offer the reader to choose the ending of the story, it simply allows them to become an essential part of the story. Thus the literary aspect is kept in tact, the viewer is allowed a sense of control over the story, but is ultimately not able to change the plot in any way. This element of interactivity with the story is makes “Red Riding Hood” an example of how an interactive story can still be literature and not art or even an online game. The narrative cannot be completed without an outside force, in this case the reader clicking through the passages. The narrative itself is also something that can only be produced on an electronic level. It is made up of pictures and sounds rather then words. While Little Red Riding Hood is a common story, the illustrations put a new twist on it, making it a new urbanized fairy tale that doesn’t adhere exactly to the original plot line."

Place plays a significant role in the establishment of Red as a characte both in terms of the depicted body and the locations it occupies:

"Red and Wolf are two deeply intertwined characters acting out in this story. Red's perspective is one of compromised authenticity; so much of the background storyline is acted out through her dreams (or written in her diary) that it is hard to know how her evident inner turmoil has skewed the Wolf's character. Leishman excels in bringing to life the complex inner workings of a young woman, particularly through the view of Red's bedroom. Who is Red? What are her mental fabrications and what is fact? These are questions that the author begs us to raise with this scene." - A Peak into the Bedroom

Reading Gender and Sexuality in the Avatar

2011-09-13T04:06:00.001-07:00

I presented my avatar to students yesterday as "fairly standard in regards to gender" and it was only while thinking about it further today that I understood what this can mean. The opening quote, "There is only the taking up of the tools where they lie, where the very ’taking up’ is enabled by the tool lying there” from Judith Butler is very much about the components of gender performance. When we work in virtual worlds we operate under the same rules to which Butler refers. What is available is what people can use to identify socially with gender and sexuality. Agency emerges from this range of possibilities according to what is tolerated, permitted and encouraged in the "conflicted cultural field"..

Background Commentary

In performing the above reading I considered the following:

For further references to avatars, agency and the representation and performance of Self see HERE.

Gender and Sexuality in Virtual Worlds and Digital Literature

2011-09-12T04:02:00.000-07:00

Föreläsning/workshop om genus/sexualitet i olika digitala arenor (virtuella världar, digital litteratur) (2 timmar) Lärare: Jim Barrett

The Avatar, The Reader and The Self: Gender and Sexuality in Selected Digital ArenasTwo popular modes of digital mediation are virtual worlds and digital literature. This lecture will introduce both by first providing a brief history of their development and the basics of how they function and convey meaning. At the center of both virtual worlds and digital literature is the concept of interactivity. In this lecture I will provide explanations of how gender and sexuality are performed and represented in the interactive digital environments according to six works; three virtual worlds (Second Life, World of Warcraft, and The Sims) and three works of interactive digital literature (Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson, Facade by Mateas and Stern, and Little Red Riding Hood by Donna Leishman). In order to prepare for the workshop and student work on gender and sexuality in digital areas we will focus on:

- How agency is represented and embodied in the works
- The concept of reader versus user in relation to the works
- How narrative architecture functions in the works
- The use of perspective and stereotypes in the works
- The role of simulation and narrative in the works

Workshop om genus/sexualitet i olika digitala arenor (virtuella världar, digital litteratur) (2 timmar) Lärare: Jim BarrettIn this workshop you will be instructed in creating an avatar in Second Life according to a written abstract (50-150 words) based on gender and sexuality. You will first be asked to develop an avatar identity with a focus on gender and sexuality as a character in the written abstract (this could be an oppositional gender or a transgendered avatar). You will then create an account and choose a default avatar in Second Life and author it yourself according to your abstract (you will need an email for this). Next you will be asked to enter into a social situation with your avatar in Second Life. Finally you will be asked to write a short description of how the you experienced the social situation as your avatar. The performance of gender and how it was received and responded to by others in the social situation are important in this exercise. Consider the visual and gestural ques involved in the social exchange as the avatar. You will submit the short description of the social situation as the avatar and offer some reflections upon it based on the first lecture.

Handledning digitala arenor (2 timmar) Lärare: Jim Barrett

Artistic Expressions and Copyright: The theory and practice of remix culture

2011-04-05T03:49:00.000-07:00

Short Course
7 April kl. 13:00 - kl. 16:00 in HUMlab
Carl-Erik Engqvist, Jim Barrett

Background and Theoretical Perspectives

How have artists critically appropriated the concept of copyright in their works? In this course we will take a closer look at remix culture from the perspectives of text, image and music, and how different artists over considerable time have related to the idea of using already copyrighted materials. We will also investigate some of the different software programs that have, and are, important in the process of creating contemporary remix culture.

Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. Copyright does not protect ideas, only their expression. In most jurisdictions copyright arises upon fixation and does not need to be registered. Copyright owners have the exclusive statutory right to exercise control over copying and other exploitation of the works for a specific period of time, after which the work is said to enter the public domain. Uses covered under limitations and exceptions to copyright, such as fair use, do not require permission from the copyright owner. All other uses require permission. Copyright owners can license or permanently transfer or assign their exclusive rights to others.

Initially copyright law applied to only the copying of books. Over time other uses such as translations and derivative works were made subject to copyright. Copyright now covers a wide range of works, including maps, sheet music, dramatic works, paintings, photographs, architectural drawings, sound recordings, motion pictures and computer programs.

The British Statute of Anne 1709, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", was the first copyright statute. Today copyright laws are partially standardized through international and regional agreements such as the Berne Convention and the WIPO Copyright Treaty. Although there are consistencies among nations' copyright laws, each jurisdiction has separate and distinct laws and regulations covering copyright. National copyright laws on licensing, transfer and assignment of copyright still vary greatly between countries and copyrighted works are licensed on a territorial basis. Some jurisdictions also recognize moral rights of creators, such as the right to be credited for the work.

Remix deals with the discursive, the meanings of the remix exists in relation to a dialogic referent. When we see a video such as Star Trek; The Sexed Generation

This fan-create video can be interpreted both in relation to the original work (Star Trek: The Next Generation), and what is evoked by the remix. The changes between what the scene, word, sound or image 'meant' in the original context and in the remix can be partially explained by the Kuleshov effect;

Lev Kuleshov edited together a short film in which a shot of the expressionless face of Tsarist matinee idol Ivan Mozzhukhin was alternated with various other shots (a plate of soup, a girl, a little girl's coffin). The film was shown to an audience who believed that the expression on Mozzhukhin's face was different each time he appeared, depending on whether he was "looking at" the plate of soup, the girl, or the coffin, showing an expression of hunger, desire or grief respectively. Actually the footage of Mozzhukhin was the same shot repeated over and over again. Vsevolod Pudovkin (who later claimed to have been the co-creator of the experiment) described in 1929 how the audience "raved about the acting.... the heavy pensiveness of his mood over the forgotten soup, were touched and moved by the deep sorrow with which he looked on the dead child, and noted the lust with which he observed the woman. But we knew that in all three cases the face was exactly the same."

Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the usefulness and effectiveness of film editing. The implication is that viewers brought their own emotional reactions to this sequence of images, and then moreover attributed those reactions to the actor, investing his impassive face with their own feelings.

Remix is discursive, where signs, symbols, motifs, characters, settings, images, sounds, expressions, phrases, and so on are manipulated, removed from their 'original' contexts (if there is such a thing) and reconfigured according to the contexts of a remix. Other examples of remix and radically different contexts include the genre of remix film trailers, where The Shinning becomes a feel-good family comedy and Mary Poppins a suspense thriller.

Today, the material and aesthetic remix is an established form of cultural production. While legal action and artistic endeavour push remix to new heights of sublimity and farce, the massive growth of what Lawrence Lessig calls the “read/write” culture continues unabated as a source of music, visual and literary arts. Recent examples include the novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Paper Planes (2007), which uses the riff from The Clash’s song ‘Straight To Hell’. The works of the 2010 Art Remix exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts also contain many examples of remix in the visual arts. (2009) as a work of remix literature, and MIA’s

Remix is an important part of digital culture, as this video illustrates,

As a result of the extent to which remix has developed in relation to digital technologies, it has become a popular topic in theoretical and academic contexts as well. This interest has resulted in debates concerning how we should understand remix in a wide variety of practices and genres. For example, Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear explain,

“Remix means to take cultural artifacts and combine and manipulate them into new kinds of creative blends. In this sense, remix is as old as human cultures, and human cultures are themselves products of remixing.

Since the late 1980s, however—originating with highly contrived forms of music remix by dancehall DJs—remix practices have been greatly amplified in scope and sophistication by recent developments in digital technologies. These make it possible for home-based digital practitioners to produce polished remixes across a range of media and cultural forms. This has in turn strengthened remix culture, encouraging seemingly endless hybridizations in language, genre, content, technique, and the like, and raised questions of legal, educational, and cultural import.”

– Abstract from Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2008, September). Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(1), 22–33. doi: 10.1598/JAAL.52.1.3

Remix can be divided into the aesthetic and the formal; a remix through references or a remix of materials. Remix as both a theoretical field and practical concept is discussed on the excellent blog Remix Theory by Eduado Navas, as well as in the work of Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid), and in documentary films such as Good Copy Bad Copy (2007). As I have already mentioned, the work of Harvard University Law Professor Lawrence Lessig is well-known in relation to remix culture, and to Lessig’s name we should add Henry Jenkins as a source of valuable writing on the topic.

While quotation and pastiche are parts of the geneology of remix, I believe the practice has gone from existing outside the norms of cultural production to become the staple of it. As Lev Manovitch argued back in 2002:

"Think Internet. What was referred in post-modern times as quoting, appropriation, and pastiche no longer needs any special name. Now this is simply the basic logic of cultural production: download images, code, shapes, scripts, etc.; modify them, and then paste the new works online - send them into circulation. (Note: with Internet, the always-existing loop of cultural production runs much faster: a new trend or style may spread overnight like a plague.)"

The advent of new ways to legally frame and claim copyright, such as the Creative Commons (CC) Licence options, has given new scope to the practice of remix. Combining CC licensing with online archives, such as the Internet Archive or the Freesound Project, provide remix artists with the raw materials for their work. To say anything about the digital tools that are available for remixing here would not do justice to the topic. The number of digital tools available for remixing audio, image and text today is huge.

Finally, we should be wary of making assumptions about what is happening to culture as it operates under digital regimes of production. It is not enough to say that the avant garde no longer exists, that art is dead or that we are all authors now. I believe we should consider the words of Jörgen Schäffer and Peter Gendolla who wrote recently in Reading (in) the Net

If we approach computer-controlled processes in the context of industrial production from the producer’s point of view, we could argue that manual work has been replaced by industrial work and automation technologies. This can also be observed in the arts: Whereas the Cubists and Dadaists had to work with paper, scissors and paste, contemporary artists trust in fast word processing, communications, image editing, graphics, animation and motion tracking software. Tristan Tzara’s instruction how to make a Dadaist poem or Burroughs’ cut-up poetics—to name only two examples—have turned into cut-and-paste or “StorySprawl” tools, and Mail Art is being succeeded by web logs and wikis. From the point of view of a reader, spectator or listener, we could argue that these tools demand a much higher grade of activity than the coughing, snorting and hawking which John Cage activated in his famous composition 4’33”. As regards the work of art, it seems as if the individual piece with beginning, middle and end had actually vanished from the scene or—to put it more mildly—had been transformed into an open and recursive process between producers, programs, and readers/spectators/listeners.

Some Links

http://www.soulsphincter.com/search/label/Remix

http://www.soulvlog.com/search/label/Remix

http://remixtheory.net/

http://www.soulsphincter.com/2007/11/beyond-intellectual-property-from-file.html

http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/

Remix and Literature

The Cut Ups (1961) William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Anthony Blanch

The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique in which a text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. Most commonly, cut-ups are used to offer a non-linear alternative to traditional reading and writing.

The concept can be traced to at least the Dadaists of the 1920s, but was popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by writer William S. Burroughs, and has since been used in a wide variety of contexts.

It is important to remember that Surrealism began as a literary movement. During the First World War, André Breton, who had trained in medicine and psychiatry, served in a neurological hospital where he used Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic methods with soldiers suffering from shell-shock. Meeting the young writer Jacques Vaché, Breton felt that Vaché was the spiritual son of writer and pataphysics founder Alfred Jarry. He admired the young writer's anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition. Later Breton wrote, "In literature, I was successively taken with Rimbaud, with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with Nouveau, with Lautréamont, but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most."

During a Dadaist rally in the 1920s Tristan Tzara offered to create a poem on the spot by pulling words at random from a hat. Collage, which was popularized roughly contemporaneously with the Surrealist movement, sometimes incorporated texts such as newspapers or brochures. Prior to this event, the technique had been published in an issue of 391 with in the poem by Tzara, dada manifesto on feeble love and bitter love under the sub-title, TO MAKE A DADAIST POEM

Exquisite Corpse is a surrealist word game that can be described as proto-remix, as while it does not re-work exisiting examples of language, it does manipulate the gramatical forms of language. Exquisite Corpse is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. "The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun") or by being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed. Like the OULIPO, Exuisite Corpse introduces both chance and rules into the composition of language. There is now an Exquisite Corpse app for the iPhone.

Burroughs cited T. S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land (1922) and John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy, which incorporated newspaper clippings, as early examples of the cut ups he popularized.

Gil J. Wolman developed cut-up techniques as part of his lettrist practice in the early 1950s.

Also in the 1950s, painter and writer Brion Gysin more fully developed the cut-up method after accidentally re-discovering it. He had placed layers of newspapers as a mat to protect a tabletop from being scratched while he cut papers with a razor blade. Upon cutting through the newspapers, Gysin noticed that the sliced layers offered interesting juxtapositions of text and image. He began deliberately cutting newspaper articles into sections, which he randomly rearranged. The book Minutes to Go resulted from his initial cut-up experiment: unedited and unchanged cut-ups which emerged as coherent and meaningful prose. South African poet Sinclair Beiles also used this technique and co-authored Minutes To Go. A chapter on the cut-ups from Minutes to Go is available here as a PDF. Other works on the cut-up by Burroughs can be found here.

Gysin introduced Burroughs to the technique at the famous Beat Hotel. The pair later applied the technique to printed media and audio recordings in an effort to decode the material's implicit content, hypothesizing that such a technique could be used to discover the true meaning of a given text. Burroughs also suggested cut-ups may be effective as a form of divination saying, "When you cut into the present the future leaks out."[2] Burroughs also further developed the "fold-in" technique. In 1977, Burroughs and Gysin published The Third Mind, a collection of cut-up writings and essays on the form. Apart from this publication, at the time, another important outlet for, the then radical technique, was Jeff Nuttall's publications entitled "My Own Mag"

Argentine writer Julio Cortázar often used cut ups in his 1963 novel Hopscotch.

Since the 1990s, Jeff Noon uses a similar remixing technique in his writing based on practices prevalent in Dub music. He expanded upon this with his Cobralingus system, which breaks down a piece of writing, going as far as turning individual words into anagrams, then melding the results into a narrative.

The Internet and Literary Remix

The Grafik Dynamo is an example of language remix for the Internet. Random visual and written elements are combined in the familiar comic strip format, which blend them together in a three part narrative sequence that is often funny or ironic.

The Postmodern Generator: communications from elsewhere, is a website that scripts the composition of so-called postmodern texts. It is described on the site as "a parody of the postmodern school of academic writing written by Andrew C. Bulhak, using a system for generating random text". By refreshing the web page a net text is generated each time. The essays are produced from a formal grammar defined by a recursive transition network. It was mentioned by Biologist Richard Dawkins in his article Postmodernism Disrobed for the scientific journal Nature and in his book A Devil's Chaplain. This installation of the Generator has delivered 4933206 essays since 25/Feb/2000 18:43:09 PST, when it became operational.

Cutup machines are online programs that rearange texts according to the sequences they have been programmed with. This is a cut-up machine that works in similar ways to "those used by Burroughs in his own work. Basically it works along similar principles to photo-montage, create an new image of words out of whatever was put in."

A nifty little text cutter-upper for all those would-be Burroughs out there.

Fanzines
Fanzines are another form of literary remix with texts produced from cutting up other texts, rearranging them, often involving glue. A fanzine (blend of fan and magazine or -zine) is a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) for the pleasure of others who share their interest. The term was coined in an October 1940 science fiction fanzine by Russ Chauvenet and first popularized within science fiction fandom, from whom it was adopted by others.

Typically, publishers, editors and contributors of articles or illustrations to fanzines receive no financial compensation. Fanzines are traditionally circulated free of charge, or for a nominal cost to defray postage or production expenses. Copies are often offered in exchange for similar publications, or for contributions of art, articles, or letters of comment (LoCs), which are then published.

A few fanzines have evolved into professional publications (sometimes known as "prozines"), and many professional writers were first published in fanzines; some continue to contribute to them after establishing a professional reputation. The term fanzine is sometimes confused with "fan magazine", but the latter term most often refers to commercially-produced publications for (rather than by) fans.

Touch and Go, a classic of the fanzine format

Fan Fiction
Fan fiction (alternately referred to as fanfiction, fanfic, FF, or fic) is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters (or simply fictional characters) or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator. Works of fan fiction are rarely commissioned or authorized by the original work's owner, creator, or publisher; also, they are almost never professionally published. Fan fiction, therefore, is defined by being both related to its subject's canonical fictional universe and simultaneously existing outside the canon of that universe. Most fan fiction writers assume that their work is read primarily by other fans, and therefore tend to presume that their readers have knowledge of the canon universe (created by a professional writer) in which their works are based.

In relation to remix, fan fiction takes elements from one work and reworks them into new and sometimes very different contexts. Slash fiction is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on the depiction of romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex.

Fan fiction works are often character-centric, where a well known character is altered according to the genre or expanded ideas of the appropriating author. In this way fan fiction works with discourse, using established elements, such as character sexuality, to either counteract or comment on themes and images across a wider spectrum than may have been evoked by the original work.

Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed
In this remixed narrative Edward Cullen from the Twilight Series meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer at Sunnydale High. It’s an example of transformative storytelling serving as a pro-feminist visual critique of Edward’s character and generally creepy behavior. Seen through Buffy’s eyes, some of the more sexist gender roles and patriarchal Hollywood themes embedded in the Twilight saga are exposed in hilarious ways. Ultimately this remix is about more than a decisive showdown between the slayer and the sparkly vampire. It also doubles as a metaphor for the ongoing battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century.

Written examples of fan fiction can be found on MuggleNet (Harry Potter), FanFiction.net (General), Trekfanfiction (Star Trek), and Whispered Words (Slash Fiction).

The Tools

Gathering Tools
http://www.downthemall.net/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/fast-video-download-with-searc/
http://www.doom9.org/
http://www.download-finished.com/

Sources
This is a short list of sites on the Internet where you can find Creative Commons and other open copyleft materials that can be remixed:

Sound
http://www.opsound.org/
http://soundcloud.com/
http://www.archive.org/details/audio
http://www.ubu.com/sound/
http://freemusicarchive.org/
http://sounds.bl.uk/
http://library.open.ac.uk/find/images/

Film
http://www.archive.org/details/movies
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.ubu.com/film
http://library.open.ac.uk/find/images/
http://video.google.com/
http://www.ourmedia.org/
http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger

Print
http://www.ubu.com/papers/
http://www.archive.org/details/texts
http://www.scribd.com/

3D Models
http://www.turbosquid.com/
http://secondlife.com/

Samples
http://free-loops.com/
http://www.freesound.org/
http://bit.ly/fZsZOZ
http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365/2007/199.shtml
http://bit.ly/ea60e2

Images
http://www.picsearch.com/
http://www.cvma.ac.uk/index.html
http://images.google.com/hosted/life
http://www.flickr.com/
http://www.morguefile.com/
http://www.everystockphoto.com/

These are some of the tools you can use for remixing and manipulating sound.

Remixing Sound
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
http://ubuntustudio.org/
http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/cubase/cubase6_start.html
http://www.avid.com/us/products/family/pro-tools
http://www.adobe.com/se/products/soundbooth/?sdid=GPQKN&
http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/
http://ardour.org/

Sound Machines
http://www.hydrogen-music.org/hcms/
http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/terminatorx

Image Manipulation
http://www.gimp.org/
http://www.lunapic.com/editor/
http://www.picnik.com/

Word and Text manipulation work with few tools. Once you have written text you can record it, animate it or publish it.

Word and Text
http://www.openoffice.org/

Making Machinima Happen

2011-03-16T15:27:00.000-07:00

Biotic God Plays Facade

Machinima is the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production.

Welcome to a short course of how to make machinima. I would like to start by recommending

Machinima for Dummies comes with a CD-ROM containing the Moviestorm program for making machinima. The thing about buying a program to make machinima, such as Moviestorm or The Movies, is that you are confined to the program for the look, feel and audio of any movies you make. For this reason you should consider that the making of machinima is a process and each stage in the process is very important for what I describe as the texture of the film. I want to now go through the stages of producing a machinima film and explain what I think is important to know and what one should consider during the production process.

The film which Jenna showed, The French Democracy (2006) was made using Lionhead Studios The Movies. As a result you have backgrounds of jungle and log cabins as settings. It is important to remember that metaphor plays an important role in machinima.

Order of Production
Most machinima films that rely on narrative start with a spoken script. This is then recorded and the action is added later. It is also possible to add audio live using in-world voice software. Sound effects and incidental audio can be added later in post-production. The filming of machinima scenes can be very time consuming. Framing shots, getting avatars to do what you want, cutting out thought bubbles, and getting movements right can take many shots. You just have to go through it. Plan shots before hand taking into consideration the space, its features, if it is a high traffic area (you will have other avatars in shot) and so on.

Post-production is very similar to standard film production. You can do some editing in Camtasia but if you wish to make a more professional film, something like Final Cut or Premier.

Tools
Game Engine
The game engine is the virtual space in which you choose to set you film. There are thousands to choose from. Choose your engine based on criteria such as

- dimensions (cosmic, a city, a house, a planet)
- environment (urban, rural, gentrified, war etc)
- avatars (ethnicity, custom possibilities, costumes etc)
- actions (sex, violence, dancing, speaking, facial expressions etc)
- time period (contemporary, historical, futuristic)
- natural effects (rain, storm, ocean etc)

Image Capture
Virtual Camera

Camera Avatars
In most games the camera view is either attached to an avatar or moves in a third person (God-eye) perspective. One must think about the possibilities offered by the visual perspectives in the game engine.

Point of View
There are three main POVs in most game engines:

- First person (gamer view)
- Second Person (between users)
- Third Person (god-eye view, from above taking in characters, locations and worlds)

Second and Third person perspectives offer an independent camera view that is not attached to a single avatar. In the use of first person perspectives it is often worth using multiple camera avatars, who do not appear in the film but are used as virtual cameras in-world.

How to create a virtual camera in the Halo game engine.

Any sort of virtual camera could do
- Camtasia
- FRAPPS
- Jing
- The Movies
- Moviestorm
- WeGame
- PlayClaw

To use game platforms such as the Xbox 360 or Playstation you need to set up a video capture through another screen:

When you capture the video, there should be an options menu where you can adjust various aspects of the capture, such as quality, aspect ratio, etc

Audio
There are several ways of adding audio to your machinima film. You can use a free audio program such as Audacity. More advanced audio software such as Cubase and Protools are great but perhaps are too complicated and result in overkill for beginners. For these three programs the principle is the same; you lay audio tracks in layers, and can splice and edit them, adding effects in a visual time-line set up.

Characters
Avatars make up the graphic characters in a machinima film. Avatars are visual embodiments of users in virtual worlds. You can craft and customize avatars using skins and modeling. As well accessories can be added to avatars, such as hair, eyes, weapons, clothes.

Working on an avatar in pre-production can make all the difference in a machinima film. Skins can be purchased or made, using Photoshop.

Create and avatar skin based on the Na'vi characters from the film Avatar.

Technical Information

Three main kinds of software are needed to record machinima :

(i) sound recording software (used only for if for some reason sound needs to be recorded independently; most of the time sound recording is already included in video capture tools);

(ii) third-party video capture tools; and

(iii) video editing software. Software examples are listed below.

Flash drives or accessible storage for video files should be considered before embarking on machinima instruction on public computers or in computer labs.

Once recorded, videos can be uploaded to free public video hosting sites with online editing features for video and the original files can be deleted. Organize your files and recording using social networking sites with added features such as online editing or music mash-ups for video. Some of the new video sites have editing features for video and in some cases audio and “mash-ups” with images and video: eSocial, JumpCut, Grouper, Eyespot, Motionbox, Dabble, VideoEgg (“Online Video Editing”).

Sound Recording Tools

Audacityis a free software, cross-platform digital audio editor and recording application. It is available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and BSD. The latest release of Audacity is 1.3.12, a beta, released on 1 April 2010. As of 29 October 2010, it was the 10^thmost popular download from SourceForge.net, with 72 million downloads. Audacity won the SourceForge.net 2007 Community Choice Award for Best Project for Multimedia.

Video Capture Tools

If you are using video games to make machinima, some games have in-game video capture options. For example, 'The Sims 2' has a movie mode, and you just point the camera and click to record. Lionhead Studios 'The Movies' also creates movies as part of the game play, or as a sandpit option (filming separately from the game content). This is the easiest way to start with machinima - acquire one of these games and get going.

Alternatively, there are programs that enable you to capture any in-game or in-world footage. Just start recording inside your game or virtual world when you're ready.

Camtasia Studio and Camtasia for Mac are screen video capture software, published by TechSmith. The program allows files to be stored in its own proprietary format, which is only readable by Camtasia itself; this format allows for fairly small file sizes, even for longer presentations. Camtasia also allows the generated video stream to be exported to common video formats which can be read by most computers, even if the Camtasia software is not installed, such as MPEG-2 or MPEG-4. PC World described Camtasia Studio as "the premier screencasting tool", which, though "powerful," can be "a little overwhelming at the start".

AviScreen Classic, which you can download for free from bobyte.com. It's totally free but doesn't record sound. The really good thing about this program is that you can customise what part of the screen you want to capture. This means you can miss off the HUD etc, so you don't have to bother cropping it later.

Fraps, which you can download for free from fraps.com. It's free for the unregistered version, which lets you record up to 30 seconds at a time and puts a small url watermark along the top of the video. Fraps can also record the audio of the game, making life that bit easier. FRAPS for PCs is optimized for games and can capture video at up to 100 frames per second depending on limits in the game. It is the best PC option for creating Second Life machinima.

GameCam- the lite version is free and you can download it from planetgamecam.com. Game Cam Lite is still Game Cam, only simpler and without the extended features set. Game Cam Lite allows the recording of real-time in game movies with sound via hot keys or an easy to use in game interface and was designed to work with most DirectX 7, 8, 9 and OpenGL games. Game Cam Lite was created for individuals who simply want to record movies.

Leadtek Winfast PVR (TV card for PC). Record your PS2, X-box etc footage with this. Stereo sound as well. Includes a hardware MPEG 2 encoder for top quality video. Definitely the easiest way to capture video from games machines.

Leadtek Winfast PVR (TV card for PC). Pretty much the same as above. Cheaper, but will do everything you need.

For Macs

Snapz Pro X allows you to effortlessly record anything on your screen, saving it as a QuickTime® movie or screenshot that can be e-mailed, put up on the web, or passed around however you want. Snapz Pro X 2.x costs $69. Upgrades from Snapz Pro X 1.x w/ movie capture are $20.

Video Editors

You'll need a video editor to turn your clips into a film. Examples of video editors are:

Windows Movie Maker- Windows Movie Maker is free with Windows XP and XP Pro but only works on those platforms. There is an older version that shipped with earlier versions of Windows, but it's very limited. Windows Movie Maker is actually a really good program, very intuitive and with lots of options for effects. It's also easy to edit clips and add dialogue and music or sound effects. Adding titles at the beginning and end, as well as subtitles, is also very easy. A great option for getting started.

Adobe Premiere Pro 2 Windows- This is great for doing blue/green screen stuff for special effects and to mix videos together, including game and real life. Make every frame count with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 software, the essential tool for professional video editing. Capture and edit virtually any format, from DV to uncompressed HD, and output to tape, DVD, and the web. Unparalleled integration with other Adobe applications removes production bottlenecks, freeing time so you can focus on the highest production values to tell your story. Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 sets new standards for efficient digital filmmaking.

Premiere Elements 2- Presenting Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 with everything you need to create videos that thrill your friends and family. The perfect combination of superior control, ease of use, and reliability, Premiere Elements automates tedious tasks so you can be creative more quickly. Import video clips from all of your digital video devices, then experiment with hundreds of professional transitions and effects to grab your audience. Burn your videos to DVD, complete with custom menus for that personal touch, or transfer them to your portable video players to wow your audience anytime, anywhere.

Pinnacle Studio Plus 10- Introducing, from Pinnacle, the worldwide leader in home video editing, Pinnacle Studio Plus version 10, the most advanced and powerful home video editing solution available today. Studio Plus combines the legendary ease of use of Studio's intuitive three-step movie creation process with the power and quality of the Pinnacle Liquid Engine to quickly and reliably capture all of your media from popular consumer electronic devices including the newest top quality HDV cameras and even video phones. Studio Plus provides users with the ultimate control with the addition of 100's of breathtaking user-defined keyframeable real-time effects, like HD Pan & Zoom, picture and picture and Chroma Key. Effortlessly, add music and titles and you are quickly creating blockbuster home movies for sharing on DVD, the Web and beyond.

Ulead Video Studio

Over 1000 Customizable Effects, Filters, Transitions and Title Styles - Simply drag and drop to personalize your movie
16:9 Widescreen Support creates wide screen movies for a true home theatre experience
Chroma Key Editing - lets you place your subjects into different backgrounds
Pan and Zoom lets you scan over still images to create a motion effect
Share and preserve your home videos on DVD, CD, tape, the Web, or mobile

Adobe Encore 2 Windows- DVD authoring - Adobe Encore DVD software takes DVD authoring to a new level of creativity and efficiency. Through its flexible interface and unparalleled integration with Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop CS, and Adobe After Effects, Adobe Encore DVD gives professional videographers, DVD authors, and independent producers the power to create sophisticated multi-language DVDs with interactive menus and multiple audio and subtitle tracks. With Adobe Encore DVD, you can produce consistent, high-quality results, and output to all recordable DVD formats for a wide degree of playback compatibility.

Adobe After Effects 7 ProWindows- Expert effects - Wow your audience with visual and audio effects considered indispensable at leading studios, including grain effects, Glow, Advanced Lightning, and Optics Compensation. Flexible distortion effects Distort and morph footage using Mirror, Ripple, and other effects, and paint distortions directly onto imagery with Liquify. Timewarp - Slow down and speed up footage with smooth, crisp results and minimal artifacts. Timewarp analyzes pixel motion to create more accurate in-between frames.

Books and References

Berkeley, Leo. “Situating Machinima in the New Mediascape.” Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society. 4:2 (2004), 65-80.

Hancock, Hugh, Ingram, Johnnie. Machinima For Dummies. Aug. 2007.

Kelland, Matt, Dave Morris, and Dave Lloyd. Machinima. Boston, MA: Thomson/Course Technology. 2005.

Landay, Lori. “Virtual KinoEye: Kinetic Camera, Machinima, and Virtual Subjectivity in Second Life.” Journal of e-Media Studies. 2:1 (2009), 1-33.

Long, Geoffrey, “Interview with Paul Marino”, Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol. 2, 2009, 1-7.

Lowood, Henry. “High-Performance Play: the making of machinima”. Journal of Media Practice. 7:1 (2006), 25-42.

Lowood, Henry. “Real-time Performance: machinima and game studies”. The International Digital Media & Arts Association Journal. 3:1 (2005).

Lowood, Henry. “Found Technology: players as innovators in the making of machinima” in Tara McPherson (ed.), Digital Youth, Innovation and the Unexpected, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008.

Marino, Paul. 3D game-based filmmaking: the art of machinima. Scottsdale, Ariz: Paraglyph Press. 2004.

Nitsche, Michael, “Claiming Its Space: Machinima”, dichtung-digital, at www.dichtung-diigtal.org/2007/nitsche.htm, 2007.

Virtual worlds - can it really be anything for businesses? If developments and trends (2 hr lecture / workshop FSV 1, 2, 7)

2010-12-09T14:44:00.000-08:00

Virtual worlds are three-dimensional digital spaces that are distributed over the Internet, where large numbers of people can communicate, interact, create and consume both virtual and physical goods and services. Branding is a major presence in virtual worlds like Second Life, Entropia Universe, Planet Calypso, and Blue Mars. This lecture and workshop will focus on how some companies have used virtual worlds, including the mistakes they have made and how the media can be improved in terms of development of a customer base, profiling the business and creating a brand presence in virtual worlds. Case studies discussed include the Second House of Sweden and the business model employed by Planet Calypso.

Background Factors to Virtual Worlds and Business

Age is a particularly important factor in the virtual worlds. Most of the users of virtual worlds are today under 15 years of age.

It is estimated that there are over one billion registered accounts in virtual worlds today. An estimated 700 Million of them are under the age of 15.

What are Virtual Worlds?

The concept of a virtual worlds can be distinguished from the concept of game space by the absence of the characteristics of a “game.” Bell (2008) presents a number of previously proposed definitions of a virtual world and proposes a synthesized, more contemporary definition that attempts to take into account changes that have appeared in virtual worlds over the past several years (Chesebro, 1985; Bartle, 2003; Koster, 2004; Castronova, 2004). Bell states that a virtual world can be defined as “a synchronous, persistent network of people, represented as avatars, facilitated by networked computers” (2008, p. 1). Bell’s definition has three key components:

1. “synchronous” indicates that shared activities necessitate synchronous or real-time
communication

2. “persistent,” as explained previously, indicates that a “virtual world cannot be
paused” or does not shutdown when the user exits

3. the “avatar” is “any digital representation (graphical or textual), beyond a simple
label or name, that has agency (an ability to perform actions) and is controlled by a
human agent in real time” (2008, p. 1).

Schroeder emphasizes the experiential element of virtual worlds. Schroeder defines a
virtual environment or, equivalently, a virtual reality as “a computer-generated display that allows or compels the user (or users) to have a sense of being present in an environment other than the one they are actually in, and to interact with that environment” (Schroeder, 1996, p. 25). “Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds”

There are three main forms of business in relation to virtual worlds:

1. Virtual goods and services
Virtual goods are non-physical objects that are purchased with real money for use in online
communities, virtual worlds, or games and fulfill a functional or decorative purpose in an online
environment. Virtual goods are typically priced from $1 to $3, but can be sold for much higher prices depending on scarcity, functionality, and design. Virtual goods include weapons or tools that help players progress in a game, decorative items like avatar gear or profile themes that allow users to express their individuality, and virtual gifts that enhance communication between friends and family. Perhaps most importantly, virtual goods also act as social badges that, depending on the social context, can convey a level of status, achievement or acceptance similar to that associated with ownership of real status symbols.

The Entropia Universe entered the Guinness World Records Book in both 2004 and 2008 for the most expensive virtual world objects ever sold, and in 2009, a virtual space station, a popular destination, sold for $330,000. This was then eclipsed in November 2010 when a player sold a virtual resort on Planet Calypso for $635,000; this property was sold in chunks, with the largest sold for $335,000.

2. Branding
The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.

Therefore it makes sense to understand that branding is not about getting your target market to choose you over the competition, but it is about getting your prospects to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their problem.

The objectives that a good brand will achieve include:

* Delivers the message clearly
* Confirms your credibility
* Connects your target prospects emotionally
* Motivates the buyer
* Concretes User Loyalty

Branded Virtual Goods (BVGs) are virtual goods that – in addition to offering some functional or
decorative value – display an insignia, copyright protected mark, logo or derivative image of a known brand, and by virtue of being “branded”, command a higher social and monetary value among end users. This premium positioning is analogous to the difference between generic and branded products in the real world where branded items typically sell more units and fetch higher prices than their generic counterparts. A plain white t-shirt can be transformed from a cheap commodity to a sought-after product by incorporating the mark of a well-known company or celebrity. Brands have a similar impact on virtual goods. In this report, we define brands broadly, i.e. they include not only popular consumer brands, but also images of and associations with celebrities, famous athletes, sports teams, colleges, movies, musicians and televisions shows. In short, a brand creates a point of differentiation in the user’s mind, and this differentiation represents an opportunity for monetization that is not found in generic goods.
See Branded Virtual Goods Market Report : Opportunities and Strategies for Aligning Brands with Virtual Goods (August 2010)

Nation branding is a field of theory and practice which aims to measure, build and manage the reputation of countries (closely related to place branding). Some approaches applied, such as an increasing importance on the symbolic value of products, have led countries to emphasize their distinctive characteristics. The branding and image of a nation-state and the successful transference of this image to its exports - is just as important as what they actually produce and sell. The Second House of Sweden is a virtual world example of nation branding.

3. Provision of a virtual world and related media
Creating a virtual world from scratch and building a community to populate it is a long terms and specialized occupation. There are free development tools around, NeL gives you a skeleton, for free, but wants half a million Euros for a something you could actually use. Kaneva's game engine is more complete, but you can't use it for free-to-play worlds of any scale (ie. more than 30 players - and they want to host it on their own network). RealmForge is very good except for its network features, although it is rapidly improving in that area. RealmCrafter is only $55, so it's practically free, but its graphics engine is dated and it's still something of a work-in-progress. BYOND is 100% free, and is excellent - if you don't mind having a 2D world rather than a 3D one. Multiverse is a complete, end-to-end platform solution that is free for non-commercial use. The business model appears to be to build up an installed base of Multiverse browsers through free games, thereby making the platform attractive to commercial developers (who will have to pay to use it).

Links for Further Reading
Robin Teigland
Robin Teigland is an Associate Professor at the Center for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) as well as the caretaker of SSE’s island in Second Life. She is also the Program Coordinator for SSE's PhD program in Business Administration and a member of the faculty of the International Management PhD program at the University of Agder in Norway.

The work of the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurship Legal Studies at Harvard University, Yochai Benkler is influential in my approach to the role that virtual worlds can play in business. His book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (2006) should be considered as background to my lecture.

Revenue recognition on the sale of virtual goods

Hypergrid Business: THE MAGAZINE FOR ENTERPRISE USERS OF VIRTUAL WORLDS
By reading Hypergrid Business. We offer in-depth and up-to-date coverage of the OpenSim technology and community, which is currently the leading contender to be the hyperlinked 3D Web, with news, case studies, opinion, and feature stories. We also cover alternative open source platforms like Open Wonderland, and proprietary enterprise platforms like ProtoSphere and Teleplace.

Selected Bibliography

Alexander, T. (2003). Massively multiplayer game development. Hingham, MA: Charles River
Media.

Alexander, T. (2005). Massively multiplayer game development 2. Hingham, MA: Charles River
Media.

Bartle, R. (2004). Designing virtual worlds. Indianapolis, IN: New Riders Publishing.

Bell, M. (2008). Toward a definition of “virtual worlds”. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.
1(1). Retrieved on November 1, 2008, http://www.jvwresearch.org/v1n1_bell.html

Bittarello, M. B. (2008). Another time, another space: Virtual worlds, myths and imagination.
Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1(1). Retrieved on November1, 2008, from
http://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/282/236

Burdea, G. C., & Coiffet P. (2003.) Virtual reality technology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &
Sons.

Castronova, E. (2004). Synthetic worlds. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Damer, B. (2008). A brief history of virtual worlds as a medium for user-created events. Journal
of Virtual Worlds Research, 1(1). Retrieved on November 1, 2008, from
http://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/285/239

Hays, G. (2008, August 5). The social virtual world’s a stage. Retrieved on November 1, 2008,
from http://www.personalizemedia.com/2008-metaverse-tour-video-the-social-virtual-
worlds-a-stage/

Hypography. (2007). What is an acceptable definition of “game”? Retrieved on November 1,
2008, from http://hypography.com/forums/linguistics/9953-what-acceptable-definition-
game.html

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American Law and Popular Culture

2010-12-01T11:48:00.000-08:00

Al Pacino, "And Justice For All" (1979)

The legal system of the United States of America is an influential source of narrative for popular culture. In recent years we have seen on TV alone a large number of series, mini-series, films and so-called 'reality' shows that depict the processes of law, usually criminal law, in a dramatic and often oratory style. In this lecture I will discuss the legal system of the United States in terms of structure and substance and refer to examples from popular culture to illustrate elements from it.

The law of the United States consists of many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the most important is the United States Constitution, the foundation of the federal government of the United States. The Constitution sets out the boundaries of federal law, which consists of constitutional acts of Congress, constitutional treaties ratified by Congress, constitutional regulations promulgated by the executive branch, and case law originating from the federal judiciary.

The Constitution and federal law are the supreme law of the land, thus preempting conflicting state and territorial laws in the fifty U.S. states and in the territories. However, the scope of federal preemption is limited, because the scope of federal power is itself rather limited. In the unique dual-sovereign system of American federalism (actually tripartite when one includes Indian reservations), states are the plenary sovereigns, while the federal sovereign possesses only the limited supreme authority enumerated in the Constitution. Indeed, states may grant their citizens broader rights than the federal Constitution as long as they do not infringe on any federal constitutional rights. Thus, most U.S. law (especially the actual "living law" of contract, tort, criminal, and family law experienced by the majority of citizens on a day-to-day basis) consists primarily of state law, which can and does vary greatly from one state to the next.

At both the federal and state levels, the law of the United States was originally largely derived from the common law system of English law, which was in force at the time of the Revolutionary War. However, U.S. law has diverged greatly from its English ancestor both in terms of substance and procedure, and has incorporated a number of civil law innovations.

To begin at its foundations, you will notice the central role the judge takes in the courtroom scene from 'And Justice For All'. The Pacino character is addressing the jury, always made up of twelve people, who consider the evidence as it is presented by the prosecution and defense and make a finding to the court. The judge then passes sentence upon the accused according to the precedents of law. In law, a sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge-ruled process, and also the symbolic principal act connected to their function. The sentence can generally involve a decree of imprisonment, a fine and/or other punishments against a defendant convicted of a crime. This system is part of common law.

Common law, also known as case law or precedent, is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action. A "common law system" is a legal system that gives great precedential weight to common law, on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different occasions. The body of precedent is called "common law" and it binds future decisions. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, an idealized common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts. If a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision (this principle is known as stare decisis). If, however, the court finds that the current dispute is fundamentally distinct from all previous cases (called a "matter of first impression"), judges have the authority and duty to make law by creating precedent. Thereafter, the new decision becomes precedent, and will bind future courts.

In practice, common law systems are much more complicated than the idealized system described above. The decisions of a court are binding only in a particular jurisdiction, and even within a given jurisdiction, some courts have more power than others. For example, in most jurisdictions, decisions by higher courts are binding on lower courts in the same jurisdiction and on future decisions of the same appellate court, but decisions of lower courts are only non-binding persuasive authority. Interactions between common law, constitutional law, statutory law and regulatory law also give rise to considerable complexity. However stare decisis, the principle that similar cases should be decided according to consistent principled rules so that they will reach similar results, lies at the heart of all common law systems.

Stare decisis (Anglo-Latin pronunciation: /ˈstɛəri dɨˈsaɪsɨs]) is a legal principle by which judges are obliged to respect the precedents established by prior decisions. The words originate from the phrasing of the principle in the Latin maxim Stare decisis et non quieta movere: "to stand by decisions and not disturb the undisturbed." In a legal context, this is understood to mean that courts should generally abide by precedents and not disturb settled matters.

This doctrine essentially requires a Court to follow rules established by a superior court.

The doctrine that holdings have binding precedence value is not valid within most civil law jurisdictions as it is generally understood that this principle interferes with the right of judges to interpret law and the right of the legislature to make law. Most such systems, however, recognize the concept of jurisprudence constante, which argues that even though judges are independent, they should judge in a predictable and non-chaotic manner. Therefore, judges' right to interpret law does not preclude the adoption of a small number of selected binding case laws.

Common law legal systems are in widespread use, particularly in England where it originated in the Middle Ages, and in nations that trace their legal heritage to England as former colonies of the British Empire, including the United States, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, Ghana, Cameroon, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, Hong Kong and Australia.

The common law is more malleable than statutory law. First, common law courts are not absolutely bound by precedent, but can (when extraordinarily good reason is shown) reinterpret and revise the law, without legislative intervention, to adapt to new trends in political, legal and social philosophy. Second, the common law evolves through a series of gradual steps, that gradually works out all the details, so that over a decade or more, the law can change substantially but without a sharp break, thereby reducing disruptive effects. In contrast to common law incrementalism, the legislative process is very difficult to get started, as legislatures tend to delay action until a situation is totally intolerable. For these reasons, legislative changes tend to be large, jarring and disruptive (sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, and sometimes with unintended consequences). Sweden operates under a system of statutory law or continental law.

The presiding judge, that is the judge who sits "on the bench"in a court must make a decision at some stage of the proceedings regarding the degree of the crime/s committed. The judge does this by referencing prior cases and the decisions of higher courts.

Judge Milian gives a University of Miami law student a piece of her mind after he disrespects her.

Returning to the film And Justice For All, the great Al Pacino is addressing the jury introducing his arguments as the counsel for the defense. The judge is presiding over the court, at one stage calling inadmissible evidence, but it is the jury that is the addressee not the defense counsel.

A jury is a sworn body of people convened to render an impartial verdict (a finding of fact on a question) officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Modern juries tend to be found in courts to judge whether an accused person is not guilty or guilty of a crime. (There is no such verdict as 'innocent').

A person who is serving on a jury is a "juror".

The old institution of Grand Juries, which are now rare, still exist in some places, particularly the United States, to investigate whether enough evidence of a crime exists to bring someone to trial.

The jury arrangement has evolved out of the earliest juries, which were found in early medieval England. Members were supposed to inform themselves of crimes and then of the details of the crimes. Their function was therefore closer to that of a grand jury than that of a jury in a trial.

The Rockford Files, "So Help Me God" (1976)

The birth of the grand jury is believed to be in England. In the 13th and 14th century the function of the grand jury was to determine whether, from the prosecution's evidence, there were grounds for trial. Grand juries are today virtually unknown outside the United States.

A grand jury is meant to be part of the system of checks and balances, preventing a case from going to trial on a prosecutor's bare word. A prosecutor must convince the grand jury, as an impartial panel of ordinary citizens that there exists reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or a prima facie case that a crime has been committed.

The grand jury was provided for in the Fifth Amendment to the constitution of the United States to protect the citizen from unjust prosecution.

However, since the grand jury is an independent body answerable only to the court and operates in secrecy to protect the innocent, they can also be misused by unscrupulous people to free the guilty and indict the innocent.

Cato Institute (a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C.) writers argued that grand juries as conducted today are unjust as the defendant is not represented by counsel and/or does not have the right to call witnesses. Intended to serve as a check on prosecutors, the opportunity it presents them to compel testimony can in fact prove useful in building up the case they will present at the final trial.

Judge Sol Wachtler, (Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals from 1985 to 1993) the former Chief Judge of New York State, was quoted as saying that a prosecutor could persuade a grand jury to "indict a ham sandwich."

The Constitutionality of contemporary grand jury practices has been brought before the Supreme Court six times in history; however, the court has yet to allow a case to be heard. According to Mike Martin, former Texas State Representative in an interview with the Austin American Statesman in 1982, "A grand jury is nothing more than a perjury trap. They drag you in by court order, won't let you have an attorney present, tell you the Fifth [Amendment] doesn't apply because you are not accused of anything, then slap a felony charge on you at the end because you deny an accusation. It goes against everything our forefathers intended when they set up America's judicial system".

Adult citizens are called to jury duty. This video from the State Legislature of Indiana explains how it happens;

The law of Indiana is not the same as the law of Arizona. This is due to federalism. Federalism in the United States is the evolving relationship between U.S. state governments and the federal government of the United States.

Another movement calling itself "Federalism" appeared in the late 20th century and early 21st century . New Federalism, which is characterized by a gradual return of power to the states, was initiated by President Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) with his "devolution revolution" in the early 1980s and lasted until 2001. Previously, the federal government had granted money to the states categorically, limiting the states to use this funding for specific programs. Reagan's administration, however, introduced a practice of giving block grants, freeing state governments to spend the money at their own discretion. New Federalism is sometimes called "states' rights", although its proponents usually eschew the latter term because of its associations with Jim Crow and segregation. Unlike the states' rights movement of the mid-20th century which centered around the civil rights movement, the modern federalist movement is concerned far more with expansive interpretations of the Commerce Clause, as in the areas of medical marijuana (Gonzales v. Raich), partial birth abortion (Gonzales v. Carhart), gun possession (United States v. Lopez), federal police powers (United States v. Morrison, which struck down portions of the Violence Against Women Act), or agriculture (Wickard v. Filburn). President Bill Clinton (1993–2001) embraced this philosophy, and President George W. Bush (2001–2009) appeared to support it at the time of his inauguration.

Federalism under Obama

- Centralization (using combination of controls and selective flexibility to
advance central government’s views of appropriate policies and budgets).

- But centralization of a different kind: more money, targeted assistance,
executive control, federal entanglement in state policies and operations, and
interest in using states to identify and diffuse “effective” practices across
entire system.

Why?

- Strong interest in domestic policy change and program effectiveness.

- State fiscal weakness gives feds more opportunities to push states around.

- Growth in range of intergovernmental tools (including executive powers)

- Not much political support for greatly expanding federal bureaucracy.

- Limits of other direct forms of federal action (e.g., tax expenditures).

A great case study for the present condition of law between states and the federal government in the USA is the recent events in Arizona regarding immigration law.

The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (introduced as Arizona Senate Bill 1070 and thus often referred to simply as Arizona SB 1070) is a legislative act in the U.S. state of Arizona that is the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration measure in decades. It has received national and international attention and has spurred considerable controversy.

U.S. federal law requires certain aliens to register with the U.S. government, and to have registration documents in their possession at all times. The Arizona Act additionally makes it a state misdemeanor crime for an alien to be in Arizona without carrying the required documents, bars state or local officials or agencies from restricting enforcement of federal immigration laws, and cracks down on those sheltering, hiring and transporting illegal aliens. The paragraph on intent in the legislation says it embodies an "attrition through enforcement" doctrine.

Critics of the legislation say it encourages racial profiling, while supporters say the law prohibits the use of race as the sole basis for investigating immigration status. The law was modified by Arizona House Bill 2162 within a week of its signing with the goal of addressing some of these concerns. There have been protests in opposition to the law in over 70 U.S. cities, including boycotts and calls for boycotts of Arizona. Polling has found the law to have majority support in Arizona and nationwide. Passage of the measure has prompted other states to consider adopting similar legislation.

The Act was signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, 2010. It was scheduled to go into effect on July 29, 2010, ninety days after the end of the legislative session. Legal challenges over its constitutionality and compliance with civil rights law were filed, including one by the United States Department of Justice, that also asked for an injunction against enforcement of the law. The day before the law was to take effect, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that blocked the law's most controversial provisions.

The separation of powers, which have already discussed is relevant in relation to law, as it deals with the separation of the legislature from the executive (only a partial separation in the United States political system) and from the judiciary. The police, at both state and federal levels enforce the law/s, while the judiciary maintains it. A police service is a public force empowered to enforce the law and to ensure public and social order through the legitimized use of force. Criminal justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, and sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts. The rights of the accused are rights that protect those accused of crime.

Popular Culture
Popular culture (or pop culture) can be deemed as what is popular within the social context - that of which is most strongly represented by what is perceived to be popularly accepted among society. Otherwise, popular culture is also suggested to be the widespread cultural elements in any given society that are perpetuated through that society's vernacular language or lingua franca. It comprises the daily interactions, needs and desires and cultural 'moments' that make up the everyday lives of the mainstream. It can include any number of practices, including those pertaining to cooking, clothing, consumption, mass media and the many facets of entertainment such as sports and literature. Popular culture often contrasts with a more exclusive, even elitist "high culture,", that is, the culture of ruling social groups.

Popular (1490), "public," from L. popularis "belonging to the people," from populus "people." Meaning "well-liked, admired by the people" is attested from 1608. Popularity "fact or condition of being beloved by the people" is first recorded 1601; popularity contest is from 1941. Popular Front "coalition of Communists, Socialists, and radicals" is from 1936. Popularize "to make a complex topic intelligible to the people" is from 1833 pop (adj., n.) "having popular appeal," 1926, of individual songs from many genres; 1954 as a genre of its own; abbreviation of popular (q.v.), earlier as a shortened form of popular concert (1862), often in the plural form pops. Pop art first recorded 1957, said to have been in use conversationally among an independent group of artists from late 1954.

Popular culture (commonly known as pop culture) is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century. Heavily influenced by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society.

Popular culture is often seen as being trivial and dumbed-down in order to find consensual acceptance throughout the mainstream. As a result, it comes under heavy criticism from various non-mainstream sources (most notably religious groups and counter-cultural groups) that deem it superficial, consumerist, sensationalist, and corrupted.

The term "popular culture" itself is of 19th century coinage, in original usage referring to the education and "culturedness" of the lower classes, as was delivered in an address at the Birmingham Town Hall, England. The term began to assume the meaning of a culture of the lower classes separate from and opposed to "true education" towards the end of the century, a usage that became established by the interbellum period. The current meaning of the term, culture for mass consumption, especially originating in the United States, is established by the end of World War II. The abbreviated form "pop culture" dates to the 1960s.

To take one aspect of American popular culture, I want to share some examples of the popular depiction of the law in television programs.

Think about the differences in characters in the following shows in regards to ethnicity, class, and gender. One of the more obvious points is that the law dramas features many more characters from upper middle class backgrounds, while police dramas have lower and middle class characters.

Law Shows

Ally McBeal is an American comedy-drama series which aired on the Fox network from 1997 to 2002. The series was created by David E. Kelley, who also served as the executive producer, along with Bill D'Elia. The series stars Calista Flockhart in the title role as a young lawyer working in the fictional Boston law firm Cage and Fish with other young lawyers whose lives and loves were eccentric, humorous and dramatic.

Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Dick Wolf and part of the Law & Order franchise. It aired on NBC and its related cable networks, and in syndication. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th season on May 24, 2010. At the time of its cancellation, Law & Order was the longest-running crime drama on American primetime television, and tied for longest running American drama series of all time with Gunsmoke; both are the second longest-running scripted series with ongoing characters after The Simpsons.

L.A. Law is a US television legal drama that ran on NBC from September 15, 1986 to May 19, 1994. L.A. Law reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot topic issues such as abortion, racism, gay rights, homophobia, sexual harassment, AIDS, and domestic violence. The series often also reflected social tensions between the wealthy senior lawyer protagonists and their less well-paid junior staff. Created by serially successful TV producer Steven Bochco, it contained many of Bochco's trademark features, including a large number of parallel storylines, social drama and off the wall humor.

The Practice is an American legal drama created by David E. Kelley centering on the partners and associates at a Boston law firm. Running for eight seasons from 1997 to 2004, the show won the Emmy in 1998 and 1999 for Best Drama Series, and spawned the successful and lighter spin-off series Boston Legal, which ran for five more seasons, from 2004 to 2008.
The Practice focused on the law firm of Robert Donnell and Associates. Plots typically featured the firm's involvement in various high-profile criminal and civil cases that often mirror current events. Conflict between legal ethics and personal morality was a recurring theme. Kelley claimed that he conceived the show as something of a rebuttal to L.A. Law (for which he wrote) and its romanticized treatment of the American legal system and legal proceedings.

Police Shows

Hill Street Blues is a US serial police drama that was first aired on NBC in 1981 and ran for 146 episodes on primetime into 1987. Chronicling the lives of the staff of a single police precinct in an unnamed American city, the show received high critical acclaim and its production innovations proved highly influential on serious dramatic television series produced in North America. Its debut season achieved eight Emmy awards, a debut season record surpassed only by The West Wing, and the show received a total of 98 Emmy Award nominations during its run.

COPS is an American documentary television series that follows police officers, constables, and sheriff's deputies during patrols and other police activities. It is one of the longest-running television programs in the United States and the second longest-running show on Fox and, along with America's Most Wanted, the first half of the longest unchanged nightly schedule (Fox's Saturday night) currently on American broadcast television. Created by John Langley and Malcolm Barbour, it premiered on March 11, 1989, and has aired 948 episodes as of September 29, 2010. It won the American Television Award in 1993 and has earned four Emmy nominations. COPS began its twenty-third season in September 2010. The series is currently one of only three remaining first-run primetime programs airing on Saturday nights on the four major U.S. broadcast television networks, along with America's Most Wanted, and CBS' 48 Hours Mystery.

The Wire is an American television drama series set and produced in Baltimore, Maryland. Created, produced, and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon, the series was broadcast by the premium cable network HBO in the United States. The Wire premiered on June 2, 2002 and ended on March 9, 2008. Sixty episodes comprise its five seasons.
Each season of The Wire focuses on a different facet of the city of Baltimore. They are, in order: the illegal drug trade, the port system, the city government and bureaucracy, the school system, and the print news media. The large cast consists mainly of character actors who are little known for their other roles. Simon has said that despite its presentation as a crime drama, the show is "really about the American city, and about how we live together. It's about how institutions have an effect on individuals. Whether one is a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge or a lawyer. All are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution they are committed to."
Despite never seeing a large commercial success or winning major television awards, The Wire has been described by many critics as the greatest television series ever made.The show is recognized for its realistic portrayal of urban life, its literary ambitions, and its uncommonly deep exploration of sociopolitical themes.

Machinima for HUMans

2010-11-18T01:39:00.000-08:00

Welcome to a short course of how to make machinima. This is the second part of the lecture that takes up from where my colleague Jenna left off in her introduction. I would like to start by recommending

Machinima for Dummies comes with a CD-ROM containing the Moviestorm program for making machinima. The thing about buying a program to make machinima, such as Moviestorm or The Movies, is that you are confined to the program for the look, feel and audio of any movies you make. For this reason you should consider that the making of machinima is a process and each stage in the process is very important for what I describe as the texture of the film. I want to now go through the stages of producing a machinima film and explain what I think is important to know and what one should consider during the production process.

The film which Jenna showed, The French Democracy (2006) was made using Lionhead Studios The Movies. As a result you have backgrounds of jungle and log cabins as settings. It is important to remember that metaphor plays an important role in machinima.

Order of Production
Most machinima films that rely on narrative start with a spoken script. This is then recorded and the action is added later. It is also possible to add audio live using in-world voice software. Sound effects and incidental audio can be added later in post-production. The filming of machinima scenes can be very time consuming. Framing shots, getting avatars to do what you want, cutting out thought bubbles, and getting movements right can take many shots. You just have to go through it. Plan shots before hand taking into consideration the space, its features, if it is a high traffic area (you will have other avatars in shot) and so on.

Post-production is very similar to standard film production. You can do some editing in Camtasia but if you wish to make a more professional film, something like Final Cut or Premier.

Tools
Game Engine
The game engine is the virtual space in which you choose to set you film. There are thousands to choose from. Choose your engine based on criteria such as

- dimensions (cosmic, a city, a house, a planet)
- environment (urban, rural, gentrified, war etc)
- avatars (ethnicity, custom possibilities, costumes etc)
- actions (sex, violence, dancing, speaking, facial expressions etc)
- time period (contemporary, historical, futuristic)
- natural effects (rain, storm, ocean etc)

Image Capture
Virtual Camera

Camera Avatars
In most games the camera view is either attached to an avatar or moves in a third person (God-eye) perspective. One must think about the possibilities offered by the visual perspectives in the game engine.

Point of View
There are three main POVs in most game engines:

- First person (gamer view)
- Second Person (between users)
- Third Person (god-eye view, from above taking in characters, locations and worlds)

Second and Third person perspectives offer an independent camera view that is not attached to a single avatar. In the use of first person perspectives it is often worth using multiple camera avatars, who do not appear in the film but are used as virtual cameras in-world.

How to create a virtual camera in the Halo game engine.

Any sort of virtual camera could do
- Camtasia
- FRAPPS
- Jing
- The Movies
- Moviestorm
- WeGame
- PlayClaw

To use game platforms such as the Xbox 360 or Playstation you need to set up a video capture through another screen:

When you capture the video, there should be an options menu where you can adjust various aspects of the capture, such as quality, aspect ratio, etc

Audio
There are several ways of adding audio to your machinima film. You can use a free audio program such as Audacity. More advanced audio software such as Cubase and Protools are great but perhaps are too complicated and result in overkill for beginners. For these three programs the principle is the same; you lay audio tracks in layers, and can splice and edit them, adding effects in a visual time-line set up.

Characters
Avatars make up the graphic characters in a machinima film. Avatars are visual embodiments of users in virtual worlds. You can craft and customize avatars using skins and modeling. As well accessories can be added to avatars, such as hair, eyes, weapons, clothes.

Working on an avatar in pre-production can make all the difference in a machinima film. Skins can be purchased or made, using Photoshop.

Create and avatar skin based on the Na'vi characters from the film Avatar.

Scenario for Film
Machinima Short Course
HUMlab
Scenerio

Scene: Public place in Second Life (shopping mall, bus station, night club)

Characters (Clothing is spy):
Agent 1: waiting in the public place.
Agent 2: Approaches Agent 1 and offers information in the form of an object
Agent 3: Interrupts the transfer of the object from Agent 2 to Agent 1.

Agent 2 flees the scene. Agent 1 confronts Agent 3.

Mass Media in the United States of America

2010-11-09T14:11:00.001-08:00

The Simpsons, Fox and the Liberal Media.

Issues for Media in the USA

- Historical background to mass media in the United States
- Censorship of media in the United States
- Ownership and controls
- Citizenship and Grassroots Journalism
- Children’s media in the United States

Mass media in the USA is an enormous network of television, film, radio, print and web broadcasters. The organization Reporters Without Borders compiles and publishes an annual ranking of countries based upon the organization's assessment of their press freedom records. In 2010 USA was ranked 20th of 178th countries, which was an improvement from the preceding year (Sweden is ranked number 1 along with Norway, Finland, Iceland, Switzerland and the Netherlands).

Historical Background to Mass Media in the USA

The First American Newspapers
Britain's American colonies, because of their sparse populations and strict governments, entered the world of the newspaper relatively late. Public Occurrences, Both FORREIGN and DOMESTICK was printed in Boston on September 25, 1690. The first story in this the first newspaper printed in America seems well chosen: "The Christianized Indians in some parts of Plimouth, have newly appointed a day of thanksgiving to God for his Mercy..."

However, if survival was its goal, other items in this paper were less well chosen. Publick Occurrences included an attack on some Indians who had fought with the English against the French and an allusion to a salacious rumor about the king of France. This sort of journalism was typical of the paper's publisher, Benjamin Harris, who had published sensational newspapers in England before he was thrown in jail and then forced to flee to America for printing a particularly incendiary account of a supposed Catholic plot against England. Massachusetts authorities quickly expressed their "high Resentment and Disallowance" of Public Occurrences. The first issue of America's first newspaper was also the last. It would be fourteen years before another newspaper was published in the colonies.

The Boston News-Letter, America's second printed newspaper, grew out of a handwritten newsletter that had been distributed by the town's postmaster, John Campbell. It was a much tamer affair than Harris's paper -- filled primarily with reports on English and European politics taken from London papers. The Boston News-Letter, which first appeared in print in 1704, survived for 72 years. Campbell lost the position of postmaster in 1719, but he refused to give up the newspaper. So, his replacement as postmaster, William Brooker, began printing his own newspaper, the Boston Gazette, on December 21, 1719. A day later, the third successful American newspaper, the American Weekly Mercury, appeared in Philadelphia.

These papers were careful, for the most part, not to offend colonial authorities. The first paper to attempt to give voice to political debate was Boston's third successful newspaper, the New England Courant, which was first printed in 1721 by James Franklin. The Courant was the most literary and readable of the early colonial newspapers, and in its first issue it began a political crusade. The issue was smallpox inoculations, which were first being used in Boston that year used to fight an epidemic. Cotton Mather, one of the most powerful men in Boston, supported inoculation. James Franklin did not. So the first American newspaper crusade was a crusade against smallpox inoculation. The next year, the Courant took on the colonial government, which it accused of failing to do enough to protect the area from pirates. This crusade landed James Franklin in jail.

Later a court decried that "James Franklin be strictly forbidden...to print or publish the New-England Courant...." To evade this order, James Franklin made his younger brother Benjamin, who was apprenticed to him, the paper's official publisher. Ben used the situation to escape from his apprenticeship. Benjamin Franklin took over control of the Pennsylvania Gazette in Philadelphia in 1729, made it into one of the finest papers in the colonies and embarked upon an extraordinary career as a writer, journalist, printer, businessman, postmaster, scientist and statesman.

The Colonial Press
The Maryland Gazette appeared in Annapolis in 1727, the Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg in 1736. By 1765, according to the American journalism historian Frank Luther Mott, all but two of the colonies, Delaware and New Jersey, had weekly newspapers. Boston had four; New York three; and Philadelphia had two newspapers printed in English, one printed in German. There were two newspapers in Connecticut, Rhode Island and each of the Carolinas. These early newspapers were usually no more than four pages long. They were filled primarily with short news items, documents and essays mostly taken from other newspapers, particularly British and European papers.

New York City's first newspaper was the New York Gazette, founded by William Bradford in 1725, but it was the city's second newspaper, John Peter Zenger's New York Weekly Journal, which began printing in 1733, that was to have a major effect on the history of journalism. The New York Gazette was a typical colonial newspaper: It stayed out of trouble by supporting the policies of the colony's governor. But New York's governor at the time, William Cosby, was a particularly controversial figure, who had alienated many of the most respected individuals in the colony. They wanted a newspaper that would express their point of view, and Zenger, a young German-born printer, agreed to start one. Zenger's Weekly Journal immediately began taking on the colony's administration. Governor Cosby had Zenger arrested on November 17, 1734, charged with seditious libel. (While he was in jail, the paper was printed by Zenger's wife, Anna.)

There was no doubt that Zenger had printed articles critical of the governor, and at the printer's trial in August 1775, the judge instructed the jury that, under the common law definition of seditious libel, criticism of the government was no less libelous if true. However, Zenger's lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, made an impassioned call to defend the "cause of liberty...the liberty both of exposing and opposing arbitrary power...by speaking and writing truth," and the jury ignored the judge's instructions and found Zenger innocent. This case represented a major step in the struggle for the freedom to print honest criticism of government, and it would have the practical effect of discouraging British authorities from prosecuting American journalists, even when their criticisms of the government grew intense in the years leading up to the American Revolution. After the Zenger trial, the British were afraid they would not be able to get an American jury to convict an American journalist.

Newspapers and the American Revolution. The major limitation on press freedom in England in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century was the stamp tax, which had the effect of raising the price of newspapers to the point where the poorer classes could not afford to buy them. The Stamp Act passed by the British Parliament passed in 1765 would have placed a similar tax on American newspapers. Americans were not represented in this Parliament, and American newspapers rebelled against the new tax. They printed letters and essays protesting the Act -- the "fatal Black-Act," one editor called it; they printed reports on the meetings and mobs that protested the tax. New York's lieutenant governor, Cadwallader Colden, complained that these newspapers employed "every falsehood that malice could invent to serve their purpose of exciting the People to disobedience of the Laws & to Sedition."

The Stamp Act was to take effect on November 1, 1765. As that dreaded day approached, newspapers like the Pennsylvania Journal dressed themselves as tombstones and announced that they were "EXPIRING: In Hopes of a Resurrrection to Life again." Then cautiously, as the date passed without a British crackdown, the newspapers began appearing again, without the stamp; the Maryland Gazette calling itself, "An Apparition of the late Maryland Gazette, which is not Dead but Sleepeth." The Stamp Act could not be enforced and was soon repealed.

Similar protests reverberated through the colonial newspapers when the British Parliament approved the Townshend Acts in 1767, which imposed taxes on American imports of glass, lead, paint, tea and, significantly, paper. "Nonimportation agreements," policed in large part through the press, led the colonies to another victory. In 1770 all the duties except that on tea were removed.

During these successive waves of protest against the British in America, newspapers appeared with woodcuts of divided snakes, to represent the weakness of the colonies if they remained divided, with woodcuts of coffins (designed by Paul Revere) to represent the victims of the Boston Massacre; they published list of those "Enemies to their Country" who continued to import boycotted British goods; they serialized radical essays by John Dickinson and, in 1776, Thomas Paine. They called British officials and their supporters "serpents," "guileful betrayers," diabolical Tools of Tyrants" or "Men totally abondoned to Wickedness." The Boston Tea Party -- a protest against Parliament's decision to allow the East India Company to market its tea directly in American, with a price advantage over local merchants -- was organized in the house of a newspaper editor, Benjamin Edes of the Boston Gazette in 1773. Among the other leading newspapers in this struggle against British policies were Isaiah Thomas's Massachusetts Spy and John Holt's New York Journal. One of these newspapers, the Providence Gazette, was published during some of these crucial years by two women: Sarah and Mary Katherine Goddard.

Not all the colonial newspapers were on the side of the anti-British Sons of Liberty. James Rivington's New York Gazetteer, one of the best edited, most attractive papers in the colonies, gave voice to the Tory, or pro-British, as well as the "Patriot" side in the ongoing conflict, in what he called his "Ever Open and Uninfluenced Press." Despite their professed allegiance to the principle of a free press, the Sons of Liberty were infuriated by Rivington's paper, and he responded by taking more openly Tory positions. A group of members of the Sons of Liberty wrecked Rivington's printing plant, and, after the Revolutionary War began, he was arrested and forced to sign a statement of loyalty to the Continental Congress.

Still, for the most part American newspapers in the years leading up to the American Revolution represented something the world had never before seen: a press committed to challenging, even overthrowing, governmental authorities. This remains an unusual and difficult position for newspapers to take. Unlike pamphlets or broadsides, newspapers must appear regularly. Their publishers cannot hide from authorities, and, as proprietors of an ongoing business, they usually have a stake in the stability of the community and therefore in preserving the power of authorities. This tends to make newspapers conservative forces, more likely to try to unify the members of a community than to try to incite them to anti-authoritarian violence. One explanation for the uncharacteristic role the papers played before the American Revolution is that they were in fact unifying and supporting a community -- a new community that was forming within the British Empire, of Americans. These newspapers were in a sense loyal to the authorities -- the new authorities who had appeared on the continent: the Sons of Liberty. Most historians agree that the American Revolution would not have happened when it did without the efforts of these colonial newspapers.

The Partisan Press
In the unsettled years after the Revolution, American newspapers remained filled with arguments and anger -- now directed not against the British but against their political opponents. Each of the two parties that formed, the Federalists and the Republicans, had their newspapers and these papers had little sympathy for representatives of the other side. For example, this is how The Aurora, a Republican paper published in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin Bache, greeted George Washington's retirement as president in 1796: "The man who is the source of all the misfortune of our country is this day reduced to a level with his fellow-citizens, and is no longer possessed of power to multiply evils upon the United States."

Although it had originally been left out of the Constitution in 1887, freedom of the press was guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Nevertheless, Federalist Party leaders, increasingly uncomfortable with the criticism they were taking from Republican editors and made nervous by the threat of war with France, soon attempted to silence their critics.

In 1798, Congress passed and President John Adams signed the Sedition Act -- probably the most significant threat to press freedom in the history of the United States. The Sedition Act made "any false, scandalous and malicious writing...against the the Government of the United States," the Congress or the president, "with intent to...bring them...into contempt or disrepute" punishable by a fine or imprisonment. Among others, the leading Republican editor in New York, New England and Philadelphia (Bache) were all indicting for violating the Sedition Act or the common-law prohibition against seditious libel, which had been the charge against Zenger. There were at least fifteen convictions.

Thomas Jefferson was elected president in 1800, partly because of resentment over the Sedition Act, and the Act was allowed to lapse. "I have lent myself willingly as the subject of a great experiment," Jefferson wrote in 1807, "...to demonstrate the falsehood of the pretext that freedom of the press is incompatible with orderly government." That was a compelling "pretext" when Jefferson assumed the presidency. Certainly, the United States has upon occasion flagged in its commitment to Jefferson's "great experiment," particularly, but not exclusively, during wartime. Nevertheless, the experiment with a free press has continued, with the press in the United States eventually demonstrating not only a compatibility with the maintenance of "orderly government," but a talent for it.

There were about 200 newspapers in the United States when Jefferson assumed the presidency in 1801. A printing press was pulled across the mountains to print the first newspaper west of the Alleghenies, the Pittsburgh Gazette in 1786. The first daily newspaper in America was the Pennsylvania Evening Post, published by Benjamin Towne, in 1783. It lasted only 17 months, but by 1801 there were about 20 daily newspapers in the country, including six in Philadelphia, five in New York and three in Baltimore. With daily publication, American newspapers were in a better position to cater to the need of merchants for up-to-date information on prices, markets and ship movements. By 1820, more than half of the newspapers in the largest cities had the words "advertiser," "commercial" or "mercantile" in their names. These "mercantile papers" were often published on large, or "blanket," sheets, and they were expensive -- about six cents a copy, more than most of the artisans or mechanics in the cities could afford.

The Penny Press
On the morning of September 3, 1833, a paper printed on four letter-size pages and filled with human-interest stories and short police reports appeared on the streets of New York. Its publisher was a young printer named Benjamin Day, and he sold his paper, the Sun, for one penny. The American newspaper with the highest circulation at that time was New York's Courier and Enquirer, a mercantile paper which sold 4,500 copies a day in a city of 218,000. In 1830, perhaps the most respected newspaper in the world at the time, the Times of London, which was founded in 1785 by John Walter, was selling 10,000 copies of day in a city with a population of two million. However, within two years, Day was selling 15,000 copies a day of his inexpensive, little Sun.

The first cylinder press, invented by a German, Frederick Koenig and improved by Napier in England, was first used in the United States in 1825. An improved version of this press, using two cylinders, was developed by Richard Hoe in New York in 1832. Steam engines had first been used to drive presses at the Times in London in 1814. By 1835 Day was using a steam press to print his rapidly growing New York Sun. These new presses made it possible to push circulations much higher. The old Gutenberg-type printing press could print perhaps 125 newspapers an hour; by 1851 the Sun's presses were printing 18,000 copies an hour.

James Gordon Bennett, one of the most creative forces in the history of journalism, began his own penny paper, the Herald in 1835. Within in two years it was selling 20,000 copies a day, despite a price increase to two cents. A number of penny newspapers had failed in Boston, a couple even before Day started his Sun. That city's first successful penny paper was the Daily Times in 1836. Philadelphia had the Daily Transcript, begun in 1835, and the Public Ledger, in 1836; Baltimore's Sun was first published in 1837 -- all selling for a penny.
(See The History of Newspapers)

Radio in the USA
In 1900, Reginald Fessenden made a weak transmission of voice over the airwaves. Around 1900, Tesla opened the Wardenclyffe Tower facility and advertised services. In 1901, Marconi conducted the first successful transatlantic experimental radio communications. In 1903, Wardenclyffe Tower neared completion. Various theories exist on how Tesla intended to achieve the goals of this wireless system (reportedly, a 200 kW system). Tesla claimed that Wardenclyffe, as part of a World System of transmitters, would have allowed secure multichannel transceiving of information, universal navigation, time synchronization, and a global location system.

In 1904, The U.S. Patent Office reversed its decision, awarding Marconi a patent for the invention of radio, possibly influenced by Marconi's financial backers in the States, who included Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie. This also allowed the U.S. government (among others) to avoid having to pay the royalties that were being claimed by Tesla for use of his patents. For more information see Marconi's radio work. In 1907, Marconi established the first commercial transatlantic radio communications service, between Clifden, Ireland and Glace Bay, Newfoundland.

The question of the 'first' publicly-targeted licensed radio station in the U.S. has more than one answer and depends on semantics. Settlement of this 'first' question may hang largely upon what constitutes 'regular' programming.

* It is commonly attributed to KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which in October 1920 received its license and went on the air as the first US licensed commercial broadcasting station. (Their engineer Frank Conrad had been broadcasting from his own station since 1916.) Technically, KDKA was the first of several already-extant stations to receive a 'limited commercial' license.
* On February 17, 1919, station 9XM at the University of Wisconsin in Madison broadcast human speech to the public at large. 9XM was first experimentally licensed in 1914, began regular Morse code transmissions in 1916, and its first music broadcast in 1917. Regularly scheduled broadcasts of voice and music began in January 1921. That station is still on the air today as WHA.
* On August 20, 1920, at least two months before KDKA, E.W. Scripps's WBL (now WWJ) in Detroit started broadcasting. It has carried a regular schedule of programming to the present.
* There is the history noted above of Charles David Herrold's radio services (eventually KCBS) going back to 1909.

Broadcasting was not yet supported by advertising or listener sponsorship. The stations owned by manufacturers and department stores were established to sell radios and those owned by newspapers to sell newspapers and express the opinions of the owners. In the 1920s, radio was first used to transmit pictures visible as television. During the early 1930s, single sideband (SSB) and frequency modulation (FM) were invented by amateur radio operators. By 1940, they were established commercial modes.

Westinghouse was brought into the patent allies group, General Electric, American Telephone and Telegraph, and Radio Corporation of America, and became a part owner of RCA. All radios made by GE and Westinghouse were sold under the RCA label 60% GE and 40% Westinghouse. ATT's Western Electric would build radio transmitters. The patent allies attempted to set up a monopoly, but they failed due to successful competition. Much to the dismay of the patent allies, several of the contracts for inventor's patents held clauses protecting "amateurs" and allowing them to use the patents. Whether the competing manufacturers were really amateurs was ignored by these competitors.

These features arose:

* Commercial (United States) or governmental (Europe) station networks
* Federal Radio Commission
* Federal Communications Commission
* CCIR
* Birth of the soap opera
* Race towards shorter waves and FM

The beginning of regular commercially licensed sound broadcasting in the United States in 1920 ended the print monopoly over the media and opened the doors to the more immediate and pervasive electronic media. By 1928, the United States had three national radio networks – two owned by NBC (the National Broadcasting Company), and one by CBS (the Columbia Broadcasting System). Until 1943, there were four major national radio networks: two owned by NBC, one owned by CBS, and one owned by Mutual Broadcasting System. The NBC's second network became ABC, the American Broadcasting Company.

Though mostly listened to for entertainment, radio's instant, on-the-spot reports of dramatic events drew huge audiences throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the potential of radio to reach the American public, and during his four terms (1933–45), his radio "fireside chats" informed the nation on the progress of policies to counter the Depression and on developments during World War II.

After World War II, television's visual images replaced the audio-only limitation of radio as the predominant entertainment and news vehicle. Radio adapted to the new situation by replacing entertainment programs with schedules of music interspersed with news and features, a freeform format adopted by NBC when it launched its popular weekend-long Monitor in 1955. During the 1950s, automobile manufacturers began offering car radios as standard accessories, and radio received a big boost as Americans tuned in their car radios as they drove to and from work.

Television
The first regularly scheduled television service in the United States began on July 2, 1928. The Federal Radio Commission authorized C.F. Jenkins to broadcast from experimental station W3XK in Wheaton, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. For at least the first eighteen months, 48-line silhouette images from motion picture film were broadcast, although beginning in the summer of 1929 he occasionally broadcast in halftones.

Hugo Gernsback's New York City radio station began a regular, if limited, schedule of live television broadcasts on August 14, 1928, using 48-line images. Working with only one transmitter, the station alternated radio broadcasts with silent television images of the station's call sign, faces in motion, and wind-up toys in motion. Speaking later that month, Gernsback downplayed the broadcasts, intended for amateur experimenters. "In six months we may have television for the public, but so far we have not got it." Gernsback also published Television, the world's first magazine about the medium.

General Electric's experimental station in Schenectady, New York, on the air sporadically since January 13, 1928, was able to broadcast reflected-light, 48-line images via shortwave as far as Los Angeles, and by September was making four television broadcasts weekly. It is considered to be the direct predecessor of current television station WRGB. The Queen's Messenger, a one-act play broadcast on September 11, 1928, was the world's first live drama on television.

Radio giant RCA began daily experimental television broadcasts in New York City in March 1929 over station W2XBS. The 60-line transmissions consisted of pictures, signs, and views of persons and objects.[80] Experimental broadcasts continued to 1931.

General Broadcasting System's WGBS radio and W2XCR television aired their regular broadcasting debut in New York City on April 26, 1931, with a special demonstration set up in Aeolian Hall at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street. Thousands waited to catch a glimpse of the Broadway stars who appeared on the six-inch (15 cm) square image, in an evening event to publicize a weekday programming schedule offering films and live entertainers during the four-hour daily broadcasts. Appearing were boxer Primo Carnera, actors Gertrude Lawrence, Louis Calhern, Frances Upton and Lionel Atwill, WHN announcer Nils Granlund, the Forman Sisters, and a host of others.

CBS's New York City station W2XAB began broadcasting their first regular seven days a week television schedule on July 21, 1931, with a 60-line electromechanical system. The first broadcast included Mayor Jimmy Walker, the Boswell Sisters, Kate Smith, and George Gershwin. The service ended in February 1933. Don Lee Broadcasting's station W6XAO in Los Angeles went on the air in December 1931. Using the UHF spectrum, it broadcast a regular schedule of filmed images every day except Sundays and holidays for several years.

By 1935, low-definition electromechanical television broadcasting had ceased in the United States except for a handful of stations run by public universities that continued to 1939. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) saw television in the continual flux of development with no consistent technical standards, hence all such stations in the U.S. were granted only experimental and not commercial licenses, hampering television's economic development. Just as importantly, Philo Farnsworth's August 1934 demonstration of an all-electronic system at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia pointed out the direction of television's future.

On June 15, 1936, Don Lee Broadcasting began a one month-long demonstration of high definition (240+ line) television in Los Angeles on W6XAO (later KTSL) with a 300-line image from motion picture film. By October, W6XAO was making daily television broadcasts of films. RCA and its subsidiary NBC demonstrated in New York City a 343-line electronic television broadcast, with live and film segments, to its licensees on July 7, 1936, and made its first public demonstration to the press on November 6. Irregularly scheduled broadcasts continued through 1937 and 1938.[85] Regularly scheduled electronic broadcasts began in April 1938 in New York (to the second week of June, and resuming in August) and Los Angeles. NBC officially began regularly scheduled television broadcasts in New York on April 30, 1939 with a broadcast of the opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair. By June 1939, regularly scheduled 441-line electronic television broadcasts were available in New York City and Los Angeles, and by November on General Electric's station in Schenectady. From May through December 1939, the New York City NBC station (W2XBS) of General Electric broadcast twenty to fifty-eight hours of programming per month, Wednesday through Sunday of each week. The programming was 33% news, 29% drama, and 17% educational programming, with an estimated 2,000 receiving sets by the end of the year, and an estimated audience of five to eight thousand. A remote truck could cover outdoor events from up to 10 miles (16 km) away from the transmitter, which was located atop the Empire State Building. Coaxial cable was used to cover events at Madison Square Garden. The coverage area for reliable reception was a radius of 40 to 50 miles (80 km) from the Empire State Building, an area populated by more than 10,000,000 people (Lohr, 1940).

The FCC adopted NTSC television engineering standards on May 2, 1941, calling for 525 lines of vertical resolution, 30 frames per second with interlaced scanning, 60 fields per second, and sound carried by frequency modulation. Sets sold since 1939 which were built for slightly lower resolution could still be adjusted to receive the new standard. (Dunlap, p31). The FCC saw television ready for commercial licensing, and the first such licenses were issued to NBC and CBS owned stations in New York on July 1, 1941, followed by Philco's station WPTZ in Philadelphia. After the U.S. entry into World War II, the FCC reduced the required minimum air time for commercial television stations from 15 hours per week to 4 hours. Most TV stations suspended broadcasting. On the few that remained, programs included entertainment such as boxing and plays, events at Madison Square Garden, and illustrated war news as well as training for air raid wardens and first aid providers. In 1942, there were 5,000 sets in operation, but production of new TVs, radios, and other broadcasting equipment for civilian purposes was suspended from April 1942 to August 1945 (Dunlap).

Regular network television broadcasts began on the DuMont Television Network in 1946, on NBC in 1947, and on CBS and ABC in 1948. By 1949, the networks stretched from New York to the Mississippi River, and by 1951 to the West Coast. Commercial color television broadcasts began on CBS in 1951 with a field-sequential color system that was suspended four months later for technical and economic reasons. The television industry's National Television System Committee developed a color television system that was compatible with existing black and white receivers, and commercial color broadcasts reappeared in 1953.
(The History of Television in the United States)

Ownership and Controls of Media in the United States

The Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute (see 47 U.S.C. § 151 and 47 U.S.C. § 154), and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the media, public safety and homeland security, and modernizing the FCC.

As specified in section one of the Communications Act as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (amendment to 47 U.S.C. §151) it is the FCC's mission to "make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges."[sic] The Act furthermore provides that the FCC was created "for the purpose of the national defense" and "for the purpose of promoting safety of life and property through the use of wire and radio communications." Consistent with the objectives of the Act as well as the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), the FCC has identified six goals in its 2006-2011 Strategic Plan. These are:

* Broadband: "All Americans should have affordable access to robust and reliable broadband products and services. Regulatory policies must promote technological neutrality, competition, investment, and innovation to ensure that broadband service providers have sufficient incentives to develop and offer such products and services."
* Competition: "Competition in the provision of communication services, both domestically and overseas, supports the Nation's economy. The competitive framework for communications services should foster innovation and offer consumers reliable, meaningful choice in affordable services."
* Spectrum: "Efficient and effective use of non-federal spectrum domestically and internationally promotes the growth and rapid development of innovative and efficient communication technologies and services."
* Media: "The Nation's media regulations must promote competition and diversity and facilitate the transition to digital modes of delivery."
* Public Safety and Homeland Security: "Communications during emergencies and crisis must be available for public safety, health, defence, and emergency personnel, as well as all consumers in need. The Nation's critical communications infrastructure must be reliable, interoperable, redundant, and rapidly restorable."
* Modernize the FCC: "The Commission shall strive to be highly productive, adaptive, and innovative organization that maximises the benefits to stakeholders, staff, and management from effective systems, processes, resources, and organizational culture."

The FCC is directed by five Commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for 5-year terms, except when filling an unexpired term. The President designates one of the Commissioners to serve as Chairperson. Only three Commissioners may be members of the same political party. None of them can have a financial interest in any Commission-related business.

Censorship and Freedom of Speech in the United States
In general, freedom of speech is considered an integral American value, as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This freedom has caused controversy at times. For instance, it is legal to express certain forms of hate speech so long as one does not engage in the acts being described or urge others to commit illegal acts. However, more severe and hurtful forms of hate speech have led to people or groups, such as the Westboro Baptist Church, being successfully sued.

The Sedition Act of 1917, passed in connection with the United States joining the Allied Powers in the First World War, was a controversial law that led to imprisonment of many prominent individuals for opposing the war or the draft. State laws prohibiting "sedition" were also passed and used to prosecute and persecute alleged "seditionists" during this period, including many people guilty only of being members of the Wobblies. However, the Sedition Act expired shortly after the end of the First World War; the state sedition acts, if in place, are undoubtedly unconstitutional under the Brandenburg doctrine of imminent lawless action as well as the former doctrine of clear and present danger.

McCarthyism is the term describing a period of intense anti-Communist suspicion in the United States that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s.

The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 made it a criminal offense for anyone to "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the […] desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association". Hundreds of Communists were prosecuted under this law between 1941 and 1957. Eleven leaders of the Communist Party were charged and convicted under the Smith Act in 1949. Ten defendants were given sentences of five years and the eleventh was sentenced to three years. All of the defense attorneys were cited for contempt of court and were also given prison sentences. In 1951, twenty-three other leaders of the party were indicted including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union, who was removed from the board of the ACLU in 1940 for membership in a totalitarian political party. By 1957 over 140 leaders and members of the Communist Party had been charged under the law.

In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality, or McCarran-Walter, Act was passed. This law allowed the government to deport immigrants or naturalized citizens engaged in subversive activities and also to bar suspected subversives from entering the country.

The Communist Control Act of 1954 was passed with overwhelming support in both houses of Congress after very little debate. Jointly drafted by Republican John Marshall Butler and Democrat Hubert Humphrey, the law was an extension of the Internal Security Act of 1950, and sought to outlaw the Communist Party by declaring that the party, as well as "Communist-Infiltrated Organizations" were "not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies."

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates "indecent" free-to-air broadcasting (both television and radio). Satellite, cable television, and Internet outlets are not subject to content-based FCC regulation. It can issue fines if, for example, the broadcaster employs certain profane words. The Supreme Court in 1978 in F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation upheld the commission’s determination that George Carlin’s classic “seven dirty words” monologue, with its deliberate, repetitive and creative use of vulgarities, was indecent. But the court at that time left open the question of whether the use of “an occasional expletive” could be punished. Radio personality Howard Stern has been a frequent target of fines. This led to his leaving broadcast radio and signing on with Sirius Satellite Radio in 2006. The Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy increased the political pressure on the FCC to vigorously police the airwaves. In addition, Congress increased the maximum fine the FCC may levy from US $268,500 to US $375,000 per incident.

(See Censorship in the USA)

The MPAA
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), is a United States non-profit business and trade association designed to advance the business interests of movie studios. The MPAA administers the voluntary but dominant MPAA film rating system.

MPAA ratings carry no force of local, state, or federal law anywhere in the United States. They only serve as a consumer suggestion by a group of corporate analysts. After screening films, their personal opinions are used to arrive at one of five ratings. Theater owners agree to enforce corporate film ratings as determined by the MPAA, which in turn facilitates their access to new film releases.

The primary MPAA ratings are G (general), PG (parental guidance suggested), PG-13 (parental guidance suggested under the age of 13), R (not suitable for children under 17/restricted), and NC-17 (children 17 and under are not admitted).

As part of its campaign to curb copyright infringement, the MPAA fights against sharing copyrighted works via peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. The MPAA's anti-piracy campaign has gained much publicity and criticism.

Citizenship Journalism
Citizen journalism (also known as "public", "participatory", "democratic", "guerrilla" or "street journalism") is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information. Authors Bowman and Willis say: "The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires."

Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, which are practiced by professional journalists, or collaborative journalism, which is practiced by professional and non-professional journalists working together. Citizen journalism is a specific form of citizen media as well as user generated content.

Mark Glaser, a freelance journalist who frequently writes on new media issues, said in 2006:

The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others. For example, you might write about a city council meeting on your blog or in an online forum. Or you could fact-check a newspaper article from the mainstream media and point out factual errors or bias on your blog. Or you might snap a digital photo of a newsworthy event happening in your town and post it online. Or you might videotape a similar event and post it on a site such as YouTube.

In What is Participatory Journalism?, J. D. Lasica classifies media for citizen journalism into the following types:

1. Audience participation (such as user comments attached to news stories, personal blogs, photos or video footage captured from personal mobile cameras, or local news written by residents of a community)
2. Independent news and information Websites (Consumer Reports, the Drudge Report)
3. Full-fledged participatory news sites (NowPublic, Third Report, OhmyNews, DigitalJournal.com, GroundReport)
4. Collaborative and contributory media sites (Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Newsvine)
5. Other kinds of "thin media." (mailing lists, email newsletters)
6. Personal broadcasting sites (video broadcast sites such as KenRadio).

New media theorist Terry Flew states that there are 3 elements "critical to the rise of citizen journalism and citizen media": open publishing, collaborative editing and distributed content. From this perspective, Wikipedia itself is the largest and most successful citizen journalism project, with news often breaking through Wikipedia editors, and stories being maintained as new facts emerge.

In 1999, activists in Seattle created a response to the WTO meeting being held there. These activists understood the only way they could get into the corporate media was by blocking the streets. And then, the scant 60 seconds of coverage would show them being carted off by the police, but without any context to explain why they were protesting. They knew they had to create an alternative media model. Since then, the Indymedia movement has experienced exponential growth, and IMCs have been created in over 200 cities all over the world.

This is What Democracy Looks Like (2000)
A filmed account of the street protests against the World Trade Organization Summit in Seattle, Washington, USA in 1999.

Simultaneously, journalism that was "by the people" began to flourish, enabled in part by emerging internet and networking technologies, such as weblogs, chat rooms, message boards, wikis and mobile computing. A relatively new development is the use of convergent polls, allowing editorials and opinions to be submitted and voted on. Overtime, the poll converges on the most broadly accepted editorials and opinions. In South Korea, OhmyNews became popular and commercially successful with the motto, "Every Citizen is a Reporter." Founded by Oh Yeon-ho on February 22, 2000, it has a staff of some 40-plus traditional reporters and editors who write about 20% of its content, with the rest coming from other freelance contributors who are mostly ordinary citizens. OhmyNews now has an estimated 50,000 contributors, and has been credited with transforming South Korea's conservative political environment.

In 2001, ThemeParkInsider.com became the first online publication to win a major journalism award for a feature that was reported and written entirely by readers, earning an Online Journalism Award from the Online News Association and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism for its "Accident Watch" section, where readers tracked injury accidents at theme parks and shared accident prevention tips.

Children's Media in the United States
A lot of attention is paid to the consumption of media by young children in the USA. PBS has a website that presents research and discussions on the topic. Much of the research is quantitative:

The average American child, aged 2-17, watches 25 hours of TV per week, plays 1 hr per day of video or computer games, and spends an additional 36 min per day on the internet. 19% of children watch more than 35 hrs per week of TV. This in the face of research that shows TV watching beyond 10 hours per week decreases scholastic performance. Comstock and Scharrer, Media and the American Child

How old is too young for children to own mobile phones?

Internet use is another area of debate in the United States. What should be considered is that 41% of children under the age of 18 do not have access at all to the Internet.

Scale: 21% - 57%


United States	41%
Alabama	51%
Alaska	29%
Arizona	50%
Arkansas	56%
California	45%
Colorado	35%
Connecticut	30%
Delaware	35%
Florida	39%
Georgia	48%
Hawaii	37%
Idaho	41%
Illinois	44%
Indiana	40%
Iowa	37%
Kansas	33%
Kentucky	40%
Louisiana	53%
Maine	32%
Maryland	33%
Massachusetts	32%
Michigan	38%
Minnesota	31%
Mississippi	57%
Missouri	38%
Montana	45%
Nebraska	39%
Nevada	44%
New Hampshire	21%
New Jersey	30%
New Mexico	56%
New York	40%
North Carolina	44%
North Dakota	35%
Ohio	38%
Oklahoma	43%
Oregon	36%
Pennsylvania	33%
Rhode Island	32%
South Carolina	49%
South Dakota	40%
Tennessee	45%
Texas	50%
Utah	34%
Vermont	32%
Virginia	35%
Washington	33%
West Virginia	42%
Wisconsin	37%
Wyoming	36%
District of Columbia	59%
Puerto Rico	N.A.
Virgin Islands	N.A.

Definitions: The share of children under age 18 who live in households where there was no Internet access available at the time of the survey. This measure indicates how many children have access to the Internet at home-as opposed to a measure indicating how many children have regular access to the Internet. According to the U.S. Census Bureau report, "Home Computer and Internet Use in the United States: August 2000," school was the most common place for children to access the Internet.

Data Source: The Urban Studies Institute at the University of Louisville and the Population Reference Bureau, analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey (October 1997, December 1998, August 2000, September 2001 and October 2003 supplements). The value for 1997-1998 is an average of data from October 1997 and December 1998. The value for 2000 is a three year average of data from December 1998, August 2000, and September 2001. The value is labeled as a 2000 estimate because 2000 is the midpoint of the 3-year period. The value for 2001 is a three year average of data from August 2000, September 2001 and October 2003. The value is labeled as a 2001 estimate because 2001 is the midpoint of the 3-year period. More...

Footnotes: Updated December 2006.

Note: The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are not included in maps and rankings because they are not states and therefore comparisons on many indicators of child well being are not meaningful.

Sixty-two million U.S. households, or 55 percent of American homes, had a Web-connected computer in 2003, according to 2006 U.S. Census data. That’s up from 50 percent in 2001, and more than triple 1997′s 18 percent figure.

Home Web use continues to skew toward more affluent, younger and educated demographics. Both computer ownership and Web use are lower in households comprised of seniors, among blacks and Hispanics and among households comprised of people with less than a high school education.

Conversely, nearly all households earning over $100,000 — 95 percent — own at least one computer, and 92 percent are online. In homes earning under $40,000, the online figure plummets to 41 percent.

Children have benefited enormously from the growth of home computing. In 1993, only 32 percent of children had access to a computer at home. In 2003, 76 percent of school aged children had access to a home computer, and 83 percent of America’s 57 million schoolchildren used a PC at school. Again, these figures skew when ethnic and economic criteria are applied.

In 1997, only 7 percent of adults said they used the Web to get news, weather and spots. That figure spiked to 40 percent in 2003. Those seeking government or health information grew to 33 percent from 12 percent in 1997, and over half (55 percent) used the Web for e-mail and instant messaging, up from 12 percent 10 years earlier. Eighteen percent banked online; 12 percent looked for a job; nearly half sought product and/or service information and 32 percent purchased online, a radical jump over 2.1 percent in 1993.

Of the 45 percent of households without Web access in 2003, the most common reasons given were: “don’t need it/not interested (39 percent); and costs too much” or “no computer/computer inadequate” (each 23 percent). Two percent cited Web access elsewhere. Issues of privacy, child safety and security concerns were rarely cited, each accounting for only one percent of the reasons.

Homes in the West are the most wired at 67 percent, closely followed by the Northeast and Midwest. Southern households had the lowest percentage of online computers at 52 percent. (US Census on Internet Access and Computing)

Discussion on Mass Media in the United States

Shift Happens

Swedish media has a long tradition going back to the 1776 law enacting freedom of the press. In recent years this freedom has been marred by accusation of systematic media bias when reporting issues of political interest.

The press is subsidized by the government and is owned by many actors, the dominant owner being Bonnier AB. Swedish TV and Radio was until the mid 1980s a government monopoly, which slowly has been eroded despite resistance, e.g. a call for prohibition of private ownership of satellite dish receivers.

Public service media is financed by a special fee (tax) levied on all who own a TV or Radio receiver. Reporting ownership is voluntary, but TV sellers are obliged to report purchase to the government, and the government also has a special service of agents, with equipment capable of detecting tell-tale emissions from TV-receivers, who patrols residential areas in order to catch those who have not reported ownership of a receiver.

Swedish media has mechanisms for self regulation, such as the Swedish Press Council.
(See Media in Sweden)

Media, Political Power and Public Opinion in the USA
In a representative democracy, citizens' preferences are supposed to guide policymakers. Yet the American people are amazingly diverse, which means that there are many groups with many opinions rather than a single public opinion. And most citizens know very little about politics. This chapter focuses on the nature of these "public opinions," how citizens learn about politics, and the extent to which these opinions are conveyed to government officials through various types of political participation.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

One way of looking at the American public is through demography: the science of human populations. The most valuable tool for understanding demographic changes in America is the census.

With its long history of immigration, the United States has often been called a melting pot; but policymakers now speak of a new minority majority because it is estimated that all the minority groups combined should pass the fifty percent mark by the year 2060. The largest component of the minority majority currently is the African American population. A legacy of racism and discrimination has left the African American population economically and politically disadvantaged, but African Americans have recently been exercising a good deal of political power. If current immigration and birth rates continue, the Hispanic population will outnumber the black population early in the twenty-first century. Hispanics are rapidly gaining power in the Southwest. The problem of what to do about illegal immigration is of particular concern to the Hispanic community. The recent influx of Asians has been headed by a new class of professional workers. Asian Americans are the most highly skilled immigrant group in American history, and they are the best off of America's minority groups. Native Americans are by far the worst off of America's minority groups. Statistics show that they are the least healthy, the poorest, and the least educated group. Most remain economically and politically disadvantaged.

Americans live in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual society. Yet, regardless of ethnic background most Americans share a common political culture - an overall set of values widely shared within a society. Over the last sixty years, much of America's population growth has been centered in the West and South, particularly with movement to the states of Florida, California, and Texas from states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. This demographic change is associated with political change, as the process of reapportionment brings with it gains or losses of congressional representation as the states' population balance changes. The fastest growing age group in America is composed of citizens over age 65. The new political interests of the elderly have been mobilized under the umbrella of "gray power."

HOW AMERICANS LEARN ABOUT POLITICS: POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION

Richard Dawson notes that political socialization is "the process through which an individual acquires his or her own political orientations." Agents of socialization are numerous, including the family, the media, and schools. Only a small portion of Americans' political learning is formal; informal learning is much more important.

Politics is a lifelong activity, and political behavior is to some degree learned behavior. The family's role is central because of its monopoly on time and emotional commitment in the early years. Although most students like to think of themselves as independent thinkers, one can accurately predict how the majority of young people will vote simply by knowing the political leanings of their parents.

The mass media has been referred to as "the new parent." Television now displaces parents as the chief source of information as children get older. Governments throughout the world use the schools in their attempt to instill a commitment to the basic values of the system. Both democratic and authoritarian governments want students to learn positive features about their political system because it helps ensure that youth will grow up to be supportive citizens. Governments largely aim their socialization efforts at the young because one's political orientations grow firmer as one becomes more socialized with age.

(See Government in America, Twelfth Edition)

The media is an intricate part of American government, intertwined with the practice of democracy, but to what extent does the media influence public opinion? To answer that several aspects of media coverage have to be explored. The media is America’s basic resource for all the news concerning American politics. Also, the opinion expressed by the press influences the opinion adopted by the public. Lastly the issues the media deem important help set the national agenda and to affect the publics opinion of voting. The most basic way the media influences public opinion is by offering knowledge about government decisions and access to government information.
Media Affecting Public Opinion

C-Span
C-SPAN is a private, non-profit company, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a public service. Our mission is to provide public access to the United States' political process. C-SPAN receives no government funding; operations are funded by fees paid by cable and satellite affiliates who carry C-SPAN programming.

Two examples of American public opinion

VIEWS ON EVOLUTION/CREATIONISM
(This poll was conducted November 18-21, 2004.)
God created humans in present form
All Americans
55%
Kerry voters
47%
Bush voters
67%

Humans evolved, God guided the process
All Americans
27%
Kerry voters
28%
Bush voters
22%

Humans evolved, God did not guide process
All Americans
13%
Kerry voters
21%
Bush voters
6%

Overall, about two-thirds of Americans want creationism taught along with evolution. Only 37 percent want evolutionism replaced outright. (CBS News Poll)

As well recent polls are showing that Arizona's police-state immigration law is broadly popular with the public.

The May 2010 results:

Implications for Education of Media Consumption in the United States

Stupid in America (abc TV)

Education in the United States of America

2010-11-03T07:36:00.000-07:00

History of Mass Education in the United States
American public education differs from that of many other nations in that it is primarily the responsibility of the states and individual school districts. The national system of formal education in the United States developed in the 19th century. Jefferson was the first American leader to suggest creating a public school system. His ideas formed the basis of education systems developed in the 19th century.

The first American schools in the thirteen original colonies opened in the 17th century. Boston Latin School was founded in 1635 and is both the first public school and oldest existing school in the United States. The nation's first institution of higher learning, Harvard University opened in 1638. As the colonies began to develop, all the New England colonies began to institute mandatory education schemes. In 1642 the Massachusetts Bay Colony made "proper" education compulsory; other New England colonies followed. Similar statutes were adopted in other colonies in the 1640s and 1650s. The schools were all male, with few facilities for girls. In the 18th century, "common schools," usually ungraded appeared. Although they were publicly supplied, they were not free, and instead were supported by tuition or "rate bills."

After the Declaration of Independence, 14 states had their own constitutions by 1791, and out of the 14, 7 states had specific provisions for education. Jefferson believed that education should be under the control of the government, free from religious biases, and available to all people irrespective of their status in society. Others who vouched for public education around the same time were Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster, Robert Coram and George Washington. It was still very difficult to translate the concept to practice because of the political upheavals, vast immigration, and economic transformations. Thus, even for many more decades, there were many private schools, and charitable and religious institutions dominating the scene.

Teaching young students was not perceived as an end goal for educated people. Adults became teachers without any particular skill except sometimes in the topic they were teaching. The checking of credentials was left to the local school board, who were mainly interested in the efficient use of limited taxes. This started to change with the introduction of two-year normal schools starting in 1823. By the end of the century, most teachers of elementary schools were trained in this fashion.

Until the 1840s the education system was highly localized and available only to wealthy people. Reformers who wanted all children to gain the benefits of education opposed this. Prominent among them were Horace Mann in Massachusetts and Henry Barnard in Connecticut. Mann started the publication of the Common School Journal, which took the educational issues to the public. The common-school reformers argued for the case on the belief that common schooling could create good citizens, unite society and prevent crime and poverty. As a result of their efforts, free public education at the elementary level was available for all American children by the end of the 19th century. Massachusetts passed the first compulsory school attendance laws in 1852, followed by New York in 1853. By 1918 all states had passed laws requiring children to attend at least elementary school. The Catholics were, however, opposed to common schooling and created their own private schools. Their decision was supported by the 1925 Supreme Court rule in Pierce v. Society of Sisters that states could not compel children to attend public schools, and that children could attend private schools instead.

Little House on the Prairie, 'Back to School'
This mythical and fictional account (for example the real Ingalls family did not resemble the TV series) of schooling on the American so-called 'frontier' in the 1860-70s presents a number of popular images from the culture. This period represents the beginning of education for girls.

By 1900, 31 states required children to attend school from the ages of 8- to 14-years-old. As a result, by 1910 72 percent of American children attended school. Half the nation's children attended one-room schools. In 1918, every state required students to complete elementary school.

The States and Education
Individual states—rather than the federal government—have primary authority over public education in the United States. Eventually, every state developed a department of education and enacted laws regulating finance, the hiring of school personnel, student attendance, and curriculum. In general, however, local districts oversee the administration of schools, with the exception of licensing requirements and general rules concerning health and safety. Public schools have also relied heavily on local property taxes to meet the vast majority of school expenses. American schools have thus tended to reflect the educational values and financial capabilities of the communities in which they are located.

By the middle of the 20th century, most states took a more active regulatory role than in the past. States consolidated school districts into larger units with common procedures. In 1940 there were over 117,000 school districts in the United States, but by 1990 the number had decreased to just over 15,000. The states also became much more responsible for financing education. In 1940 local property taxes financed 68 percent of public school expenses, while the states contributed 30 percent. In 1990 local districts and states each contributed 47 percent to public school revenues. The federal government provided most of the remaining funds.

During the 1980s and 1990s, virtually all states have given unprecedented attention to their role in raising education standards. A federal report published in 1983 indicated very low academic achievement in public schools. This resulted in states taking up more responsibility and involvement. This report, A Nation at Risk, suggested that American students were outperformed on international academic tests by students from other industrial societies. Statistics also suggested that American test scores were declining over time. As a result, most states have implemented reform strategies that emphasize more frequent testing conducted by states, more effective state testing, and more state-mandated curriculum requirements.

Racial Equality

The first Africans arrived as slaves in the American colonies in 1619. By the middle of the nineteenth century there were 4.5 million Africans in this country. The earliest education given to them was by the missionaries to convert them to Christianity. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts established many schools. The southern states opposed the education of Africans because these states were still favoring slavery. In spite of individual efforts, the education of Afro-Americans remained very low until Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. The literacy rate that was around 5% in the 1860s rose to 40% in 1890 and by 1910 it was at 70%.

During the 1950s segregation by race in public and private schools was still common in the United States. The South had separate schools for African Americans and whites and this system had been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In the North no such laws existed, but racial segregation was still common in schools. Segregation usually resulted in inferior education for blacks. Average public expenditures for white schools exceeded expenditures for black schools. Teachers in white schools generally received higher pay than did teachers in black schools, and facilities in most white schools were far superior to facilities in most black schools.

In 1954 the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

Despite vigorous resistance for many years by many southern states, by 1980 the federal courts had largely succeeded in eliminating the system of legalized segregation in southern schools.

Even after the court rulings, it was difficult to eliminate discrimination in practice. Many whites and middle class blacks had moved out of central cities by the 1970s, leaving poor blacks and rising populations of Hispanic Americans to attend urban schools. Native Americans, who had already lost all their lands to whites, also face the additional burden of poverty, which keeps them away from schools.

Most federally mandated desegregation efforts have been aimed at increasing educational achievement among African American students. However, many educators cite continued inequality in educational opportunities for Hispanic American students.

A musical summary of the history of racial segregation in schools.

See:
A History of Public Education in the United States
Wikipedia on the history of education in the United States

The Contemporary Education System in the USA: Structure and Culture
In the United States of America school attendance is compulsory for students through age 16 in most states. Children generally begin elementary school with kindergarten (K) at age five and continue through secondary school (grade 12) to age 18. Typically, the elementary school years include kindergarten through grades five or six, and at some schools through grade eight. Secondary schools – known as high schools in the United States – generally include grades nine through 12. (Structure of U.S. Education)

The contemporary American high school has long loomed large in the public culture. The popular musical Grease, the television series Happy Days, and movies like Blackboard Jungle and Rebel Without a Cause depicted the light and dark sides of schools in the 1950s. Recent popular entertainments with high school settings range from films like Mean Girls, Juno, Election, and High School Musical to such hit TV shows as Beverly Hills 90210 and Saved by the Bell. To this I would add The Breakfast Club, The OC, and Elephant.

The most illiterate cities in the United States. 23 million American adults are functionally illiterate and 13% of all American 17-years-olds are functionally illiterate.

Illiterate Digest Index

1. Miami FL: 63%
2. East LA CA: 57%
3. East St. Louis IL: 56%
4. Compton CA: 55%
5. Newark NJ: 52%
6. Brownsville TX: 50%
7. Union City NJ: 50%
8. San Fernando CA: 49%
9. Camden NJ: 49%
10. Detroit MI: 47%
11. Laredo TX: 47%
12. East Orange NJ: 46% 13. Gary IN: 46%
14. East Palo Alto CA: 45% 15. Orange NJ: 45% 16. Passaic City NJ: 45% 17. Paterson NJ: 45%
18. Augusta GA: 43%
19. Elizabeth NJ: 42% 20. Atlantic City NJ: 42%
21. Miami Beach FL: 41% 22. Hartford CT: 41% 23. East Chicago IN: 41%
24. South Miami Heights FL: 40%

Source: The National Institute for Literacy
The NALS found a total of 21-23 percent - or 40-44 million - of the 191 million American adults (defined as age 16 or older) at Level 1, the lowest literacy level. Although many Level 1 adults could perform many tasks involving simple texts and documents, all adults scoring at Level 1

Racial Segregation in American Schools Today
In 1990 over 40 percent of black students in the South attended majority-white schools. Now less than 30 percent of students do. (Racial Segregation Today)

Planning expert Myron Orfield discusses the history and current state of school segregation in Minnesota.

Education in The USA and Sweden; Some Comparisons

**Educational System Comparison**
Typical Age	Sweden			United States
Typical Age	School	Designation		School	Designation
18	Gymnasieskola Upper secondary school Ages 16–19	3:an	Årskurs 3	University / College	Freshman	1st year
17		2:an	Årskurs 2	High School Ages 14–18 (Compulsory)	Grade 12	Senior
16		1:an	Årskurs 1		Grade 11	Junior
15	Grundskola Compulsory school Ages 7–16 (Compulsory)	9:an	Årskurs 9		Grade 10	Sophomore
14		8:an	Årskurs 8		Grade 9	Freshman
13		7:an	Årskurs 7	Middle School Ages 11–14 (Compulsory)	Grade 8
12		6:an	Årskurs 6		Grade 7
11		5:an	Årskurs 5		Grade 6
10		4:an	Årskurs 4	Elementary School Ages 6–11 (Compulsory)	Grade 5
9		3:an	Årskurs 3		Grade 4
8		2:an	Årskurs 2		Grade 3
7		1:an	Årskurs 1		Grade 2
6	Förskoleklass Pre-school class Age 6	Årskurs F Sometimes called 0:an			Grade 1
5	Förskola Pre-school Ages 1–5			Kindergarten Ages 5–6	K
≤ 4	Förskola Pre-school Ages 1–5			Pre-Kindergarten Ages <>	Pre-K

Please Discuss the accuracy of this passage.

"In 1842, the Swedish parliament introduced a four-year primary school for all children in Sweden, "Folkskola". In 1858 grade 1 and 2 became "Småskola" and the children started school at the age of seven. In 1878 two grades of "folkskola" were added. Some schools also had grade 7 and grade 8 of "folkskola", called "Fortsättningsskola". Schooling in Sweden became mandatory for 7 years in the 1930s and for 8 years in the 1950s. Today, Swedish children have 9 mandatory years in school - from August the year the child turns 7 to June the year the child turns 16."

Compare this to the description of the history of schooling in the United States above.

The history of adult education in Sweden is interesting when one considers its implications for democracy (informed and critical opinion), employment and class.

The role of free schools in both the USA and Sweden is an area for comparisons and contrasts.
See The Swedish Model: Making Money Out of Education

Education and Media in the United States
The Public Broadcast Service offers a wide variety of educational programs for free. WGBH in Boston is one of the largest producers of educational programming, including American Experience, Masterpiece Theater, Nova, Antiques Roadshow and Frontline.
Starting November 1, 1999, the PBS underwriting guidelines required all announcements to say "This program was funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a cooperative agreement from the United States Department of Education a Ready to Learn system and by contributions to your PBS station from Viewers Like You. Thank You!" (Wikipedia)

Sesame Street is perhaps the most successful children's program in the world in terms of distribution, longevity and audience numbers.

Long-term Implications of the Education System in the U.S

"Of course, no matter how innovative our schools or how effective our teachers, America cannot succeed unless our students take responsibility for their own education. That means showing up for school on time, paying attention in class, seeking out extra tutoring if it’s needed, and staying out of trouble. And to any student who’s watching, I say this: don’t even think about dropping out of school. As I said a couple of weeks ago, dropping out is quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country, and it is not an option – not anymore. Not when our high school dropout rate has tripled in the past thirty years. Not when high school dropouts earn about half as much as college graduates. And not when Latino students are dropping out faster than just about anyone else. It is time for all of us, no matter what our backgrounds, to come together and solve this epidemic."
President Barack Obama, Talking on Education March 2010.

The national results in international comparisons have often been far below the average of developed countries. In OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment 2003, 15 year olds ranked 24th of 38 in mathematics, 19th of 38 in science, 12th of 38 in reading, and 26th of 38 in problem solving. In the 2006 assessment, the U.S. ranked 35th out of 57 in mathematics and 29th out of 57 in science. Reading scores could not be reported due to printing errors in the instructions of the U.S. test booklets. U.S. scores were far behind those of most other developed nations. While US teens perform poorly on these Programme for International Student Assessment tests, which emphasizes problem solving, US fourth and eighth graders tested above average on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study tests, which emphasizes traditional learning. (Wikipedia)

For a humorous account of comparisons between Sweden and the United States see Jon Stewart

Popular Culture, Youth and Education

2010-10-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

- Popular culture and children in the globalized societies of the English speaking countries discussed

- Comparisons between popular culture in Sweden and nations of the Commonwealth

- The Internet and popular culture

- Using popular culture in the classroom

Popular Culture and Youth

Surfing

Blue Water High

"The advent of Professional Surfing in the 1970's saw a string of new Australian surf heros that were international stars such as Michael Peterson, "The Bronzed Aussies", Mark Richards and others (Brown 1997). This changed the nature of surf culture is causing a rift between the soul surfers and the new clean cut money oriented surfers promoted by business interests to sell more clothing and equipment especially in urban areas. This has produced surfing mega stars such as American Kelly Slater who has been mobbed in Australian Shopping centres by fans (Brown 1997). "Back in the 1960's they say, the surfing ideal was a fluid and graceful attempt to match the flow of the wave. But today professional surfers use shorter and quicker boards in an aggressive, thrashing, teeth gritting display of advanced technique. . The jargon is telling: they "slash" and "rip" the wave or get "hammered" trying." (The economist 1995)"

Popular Culture - Surfing

Puberty Blues is a 1981 Australian film directed by Bruce Beresford. The film is based on the 1979 novel Puberty Blues, by Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette, which is a proto-feminist teen novel about two 13 year-old girls from the Sutherland Shire in Sydney, Australia. The girls attempt to create a popular social status by integrating themselves with the "Greenhill gang" of surfers.

Bra Boys: Blood is Thicker than Water
The Bra Boys are an Australian gang founded and based in Maroubra, an eastern suburb of Sydney, New South Wales. Dating back to the 1990s, the gang has gained notoriety through violent clashes with members of the public and police. The Bra Boys achieved national and international attention in 2007 with the release of a feature-length documentary Bra Boys: Blood is Thicker than Water that was written and directed by members of the gang.

Watch more Jeffrey's Bay videos at tripfilms.com

Internet

Australian Youth parliament

Mobile Phones
Today's mobile phone is a pervasive tool. It has become such an important aspect of a user's daily life that it has moved from being a mere 'technological object' to a key 'social object'. This paper explores the societal and human implications of advances in mobile technology, and notably the increasingly personalized nature of the mobile device. It argues that human and identity and social interaction have not been untouched by the mobile phenomenon. India, Australia, South Africa and Sweden each have a vibrant youth culture centered on mobile phones.

ABSTRACT
After 60 years of freedom, while India races towards super power status; its children are trapped in a maze of imbalance that deprives, excludes and exploits.

We are all proud of India's unprecedented economic growth. More Indians than ever before own mobile phones, computers, cars, household and personal durables, travel within India and overseas. Most cities today have more flyovers, more malls, more coffee shops. Middle class consumers have more brands to choose from than ever before. IT, financial services, bio-tech and retail employ many more young Indians at ever-increasing salaries. Indian corporates are making more overseas acquisitions and alliances.

What is often not known is that 60 years after independence, in the worlds largest democracy, millions of Indian children continue to have their very survival threatened on a daily basis -- malnutrition, illiteracy, child labor, preventable diseases, abuse and exploitation. India is home to 400 million children. 46% of Indian children are underweight. We have 17 million child laborers. 88,000 schools (nearly 8%) still do not have a blackboard in their classes.

These figures are shocking. But can this situation change?

CRY -- Child Rights and You America Inc has proven that it can...

community.america.cry.org/bayarea

Mission:
To enable people to take responsibility for the situation of underprivileged children, especially Indian, and so motivate them to confront the situation through collective action thereby giving the child and themselves an opportunity to realize their full potential.
VISION:
To enable people to take responsibility for the situation of the deprived child especially Indian and so motivate them to confront the situation through collective action thereby giving the child and themselves an opportunity to realise their full potential.

Salaam Bombay

Slumdog Millionaire

The child actors’ parents have accused the hit film’s producers of exploiting and underpaying the eight-year-olds, disclosing that both face uncertain futures in one of Mumbai’s most squalid slums. Slumdog

Rubina Ali, Slumdog star, evicted by Mumbai police
A second actor in the film "Slumdog Millionaire" has lost her home in a slum clearance drive by the Mumbai authorities.

Rural Youth

The Year My Voice Broke

District 9

a Sf film, but also an analogy for discrimination, media, otherness, and immigration.

Empowering The Girl Child in South Africa

HmMTV Pilot: Empowering The Girl Child from Sarah Van Borek on Vimeo.

Eastern Cape Province on School and Education

Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa reports from Matjiesfontein, where only those whose parents can afford the bus fare will get to high school.

This fast-paced documentary series follows a remarkable year in two contrasting schools in Pune, one of the world's fastest growing cities.
Cyber Genius is the 3rd episode in this series.