A major focus of the conference for me and my colleagues from UNC, Erin Branch and Stephanie Morgan, was the podcast workshop we ran on Thursday. We got lots of positive feedback from participants and will likely try to develop the Web site for the workshop into something more substantial. I think it is fair to say that parts of the computers and writing community are beginning to emphasize and study the uses of sound in composition. I wouldn’t say this was the buzz theme of the conference, but I did get a sense that the recent heavy focus on visual rhetoric was now being supplemented by aural concerns as well. I have to wonder about the perennial question about the purview of writing—what gets (de)emphasized when we move into writing programs film, images, sounds, etc?

Thursday evening’s @getinfo session was a lot of fun. I should observe that the number of people now using multimedia for their presentations in the community is growing. There were lots of short videos and I got the sense that our practitioners are more and more comfortable as new media composers—something we often hear called for in our students, but may not have time for in our own work. Let me also digress to say that as far as I can tell every one of these media versions in the session was done with iMovie or iDVD. I hate to think that the people really cranking out new media in their presentations are for the most part the Mac users, but that’s what I think. My teaser is online. I should also observe that the best teasers were not necessarily those that used media. Nothing was better than Will Hochman, Andrea Beaudin, Lois Lake Church, Chris Dean, and Andy Piscitelle strolling into the theater and doing their a cappella version of “Hit the Road Tech.” Sound, again, but no technology and highly engaging.

Friday morning I had to stay in the hotel and do homework beta testing a CD so I missed the town hall and early sessions. I enjoyed the lunch address by Locke Carter—liked the call for more variety in what counts as research—no doubt there were concerns about the ahistorical rendition of the frontier metaphor, but it did illustrate his points.

Friday afternoon I did my presentation on new media instructional materials. I just played my video and Cheryl, Dickie, and Tony talked about our survey. Cindy did a wrap up. My sense is that the information we have gathered is a helpful snapshot of what new media practitioners are doing, but that we need to be thinking more about those who are not doing new media and why?

I also went to the Kairos 10th Anniversary Celebration session. The best thing about this session was just the overwhelming sense of gratitude we need to have for the early Kairos leaders, Mick, Greg, Mike and others; for those who have carried the journal forward, Doug and James; and for those now picking up the baton. I also really thought it laudable that Jim Kalmbach had undertaken a reading of all of the articles from the last ten years in order to create a taxonomy of hypertexts. To me, the range of composing modes laid out by Jim is key to helping us not merely say we are moving from print to digital, but to explain how we are making that move.

Saturday morning I met with Ray and others as a follow up to our Future of the Book meeting last month in L.A. We talked about what would be involved in a community-created, next generation textbook. (I spoke with Cindy Selfe about this the night before, discussing the difficulty involved in investing the large amounts of time required.) From our Saturday morning conversation I took away the sense that such a project will hinge less on technology and more on motivating and mobilizing people.

The rest of Saturday was spent in sessions. I went to New Media + Rhetoric with Dene Grigar, John Barber, and many of their students. They did a nice job of contextualizing the definitions of new media over the last decade or so. It was also great to see so many newcomers to the field presenting their work. The lunch session with Kelli Cargile Cook did a great job of illustrating the need for grants resulting from the cuts in state funding—no new information here, but good to have it put up on the radar screen of the conference. After lunch, the session with Jody Shipka, Madeline Sorapure, and John Zuern did a nice job of detailing issues in new media composition. Jody and John talked about new media in the classroom and Madeline problematized the notion of interactivity by exploring several new media projects.

Next I went to see the demonstration of Sophie and hear from Vicki Callahan and Virginia Kuhn about their new media composing experiences. I’m enthused to use Sophie when it comes out but have to say that the buzz about the as yet unreleased product may be overshadowing its eventual impact. I think I heard the software mentioned at least a dozen times at the conference, usually in the context of solving our current dilemmas in technology-assisted writing. I don’t think it will be the silver bullet. Vicki’s presentation was eye-opening in that she comes from film studies and spoke about the sharp divide in the discipline between theory and practice. I had no idea that film studies students never actually got to make anything with video, but I can see it makes sense. We had a nice discussion of how literature and composition might be mapped over a similar theory/practice split. Virginia’s tale about her publication of the first non-print dissertation was informative as well—lots of issues related to academic culture and intellectual property.

My assessment of the conference as a whole suggests that the field has a good deal of momentum in its engagement with new media. The visual is now being supplemented with the aural and many panelists now have a set of texts they refer to regularly—Manovich, Ascott, Bolter. Most of the discussions of new media, though, still seem somewhat focused on definitional arguments. People are still talking about what new media is and how it might fit into our field and that seemed a bit uninspiring at times. I think, though, this sense may just be a function of my having picked out the sessions on new media almost exclusively. I probably should have attended some blogging stuff as well for a bit more diversity.

Overall the conference affirmed my sense that this group of scholars is the most helpful I have met. There is no better environment for first time conference goers or people new to a field. Janice and Michael again oversaw the mentor program, but it is worth mentioning that the whole affair is one big mentoring tent. Rich said there were something like eighty first time attendees and each felt welcomed not only at the sessions but also into the field.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 10:16 AM
Taged as >> new media momentum for computers and writing | Permalink | Comments (1)

The feedback suggests that particularly helpful was the equipment demonstration. We worked through hardware with the aim of pointing people toward solutions with a range of costs--the free option, the $20 microphone, the $75 microphone, etc. I think it was also helpful for people to see that the time and complexity investments are also pretty easily manageable, so hopefully many of the participants will take the plunge and play around with podcasts when they get back to from the ranch.

Seeing the live podcast setup and production was also a big help for people thinking about doing in-class speech-based activities or regular broadcasts. These take a lot longer to figure out, so having one conducted and seeing how the cables, microphones, and mixing board fit together and then how one plays music or other snippets into the mix probably saved people some time if they want to try this as well.

It was also a joy to work with such great people; still the best group of academics I know of by far. If you want to hear one of the podcasts that came out of the partnered exercise, I'm going to recommend Smelly Cat--how could I not. If you're Jonesing for some conference thoughts or want to listen to what are probably some familiar voices, try Live from Lubbock on KPOD.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 07:48 AM
Taged as >> workshop report from computers and writing | Permalink

But that presentation matters to me because I tried to weave in something personal, something expansive in the prose and metaphor. And it really matters because John Slatin afterward told me to trust my ideas, to do more with the metaphors and language play. It was a powerful suggestion that I had forgotten, and remaking the piece has helped me savor it once again.

In the video for this year’s conference I repurpose the bus stop metaphor and use less prose, more sound, and some images. The video itself simply makes the point that instructional materials need to emphasize composing over consuming new media. (I’m not sure how much longer one can get away with that angle in these presentations, but still it resurfaces for me.)

The video also hopes to open some questions, including,

Why is there so little collaboration between programmers and content providers in most electronic text production models?

Does the power of autonomy and individual authorship undermine collaborative paradigms?

How much new media composing practice must authors of instructional materials have?

What should be the role of familiar pedagogical terms and structures in new media instructional materials?

What limits and benefits derive from the print biases of current electronic materials?

How can publishers facilitate projects that enable more new media composition for authors and students?

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 09:51 PM
Taged as >> looking back to find the next stop | Permalink | Comments (3)

We've set up a Web site to facilitate the workshop. We are collecting assignments and resources, and by the end of the week hope to have some of the projects from the workshop up. If you have ideas for podcasting or for a podcast workshop or if you know of great audio resources, feel free to sign on to the site and post materials.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 11:14 PM
Taged as >> spreading the audio wealth | Permalink

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 04:43 PM
Taged as >> new media instructional mission | Permalink | Comments (1)

In reflection, I can see that this is a very difficult assignment. Yes, there are issues related to using Audacity with multiple tracks--some crashing and visual overload. But more tough is figuring out how to observe copyright and integrate the snippets of songs into a larger narrative. We used (mostly) a 30 second rule in line with the amount of music legally offered in samples from online music stores. Limiting the song excerpts to 30 seconds makes using the music to tell the story challenging. On top of this, we have the option of reading lyrics into the listcast. Here the impulse is to sing the lyrics, but in retrospect it seems worth exploring other ways of reading. The lyrics work better, I think, when they are read anew, twisted to match the mood of the listcast. On top of this we had the option of weaving in the author's own voice. Here there are some technical hurdles that make getting good sound a challenge, but more than that it takes a good while to develop a microphone presence, to find a recorded voice one can feel comfortable with.

Finally, there is the story. This is in many ways comforting, because we return to the perennial quest to find something to say and then find a way to express that something--nothing new under the sun. My own listcast drifted until I went outside with paper and pen and wrote poetry with a good snow melt flowing down the stream of consciousness. The audio work can easily become random stitching, but instead needs to contribute to a more specific weave. The assignment, then, is one of narration and insight delivery, and that makes it tough. I list below my sample listcast and a few others that I have culled from the class.

A playlist considering the missing days in the Easter story, Three Days Dead (Daniel Anderson)

A playlist exploring archetypes of martyrdom , The Hanged Man (Jenny Bridgers)

A playlist based on the Dicken's novel Great Expectations, Kip's Aching Heart (Kara Spencer)

A playlist exploring how songs themselves have beginings, middles, and endings, Short Stories, Various Endings (Lauren Frohne)

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 11:03 AM
Taged as >> new media composing is still idea generation | Permalink

We also did a lot with images in this literature class, so I took inspiration from that to craft some of the remarks I gave this weekend to our graduating seniors. I paste a version of them below.

I’d like to ask your indulgence for brief experiment in visualization. I’d like you to think about the way our minds move between looking at the details in life and taking in the bigger picture. On the computer if you are working with images, there is a function that helps you switch between looking at the details and seeing the bigger picture, the magnifying glass or zoom tool. Think about a well-known image like Monet’s painting of lilies and clouds. Zoom in on Monet’s lilies, and you see some leaves and yellow flowers; zoom in more and you see merely the paint blobs, built up into hard-to-recognize shapes. Recall this painting or some other favorite image and zoom in, then zoom out. See a small detail and feel the zooming effect.

They say that verbal learners, like language-focused English majors, tend to hone in on the details—this passage, this sentence, this word. It’s what makes us great readers. So now we’re into the most minute of details, the last semester, the last month, the last hours. So before you leave English, we’re going to complement all that verbal and language learning with one last lesson, a lesson in visual learning—we still have six minutes to teach you something and we don’t want you to go away without getting your money’s worth. So start with this afternoon, or this weekend—the splotch of paint. Then zoom out to the semester—the yellow flower. And then zoom out to see the image of the lilies on the water—your career here as an English major.

Now the real tricky part. Imagine zooming out fifty years from now and walking up to a larger picture framed and hanging on some museum wall. Now imagine what the image would be like if it were missing the lilies, or even the yellow flower. If, instead, there were merely a dull pond or an empty space. What seems like a small detail, a brief moment in zoom mode contributes to the entire image when we zoom back out. And so, I ask that you don’t doubt that what is happening today and what has just happened in your years with us will continue to color and shape you as you pencil in the bridges on your horizons and figures in your lives. And I ask that you remember your zoom tool works both ways. As you move forward, take some time now and then to zoom back in and remember these teachers, these moments, and these friends. We’re honored to be among the important details of your lives. Now go out and continue filling in your canvas. Congratulations.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 07:28 AM
Taged as >> details build into the larger vision | Permalink

I really liked playing with the words of Charles Bukowski, the way my friend Jeremy read it, and the images I could place over the top of it all. It was a good exploration into the juxtaposition of these elements, their overall effectiveness, and using some overlogic/nonsense to put it all together.

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 07:59 AM
Taged as >> juxtaposition images rock poetry | Permalink

Posted by Daniel Anderson at 10:52 AM
Taged as >> colbert meets yomomma | Permalink