WDL is a collaborative transdisciplinary blog about the impact of digital technologies upon writing and lived experience. We talk about writing and reading in the context of 'new and old' media, transliteracy, craft, art, process and practice, social networks, cooperation and collaboration, narrative and memory, human computer interaction, imagination, nature, mind, body, and spirit.
Applications are now being considered for the October 2006 entry to the new 1-year, full-time, PGDip in New Media Publishing at De Montfort University, Leicester.
Continue reading "PGDip in New Media Publishing, De Montfort University, Leicester" »
This from Mark Merino over at Writer Response Theory
I'd like to have an open debate about the place of new media (and more broadly computers) in the composition classroom. Of course, we are all "true believers," but, media-literacy aside, I would be interested in your thoughts about whether or not the technology helps students to write compelling sentences in engaging essays. Please join me
An interesting discussion - though we need to make clear the distinction between 'composition', which is an American term for which the UK equivalent is probably essay-writing, and creative writing. There is more of an overlap in the US system than in the UK one, I think.
The ever-interesting Nicholas Carr adds his $.02 to the increasing controversy over MySpace. He complains that:
When I look around MySpace I don't see much that's "strange and wonderful" - or "deeply disturbing," either. I wish I did. What I see is a dreary sameness, a vast assembly of interchangeable parts.
Of course this is not surprising - not everyone has the skills to express themselves in a creative and interesting fashion and if they don't, of course they will fall back on pre-digested tropes and the 'content' that requires the least effort for the largest potential effect - the display of their own bodies. But the interesting point I feel is that at least these people are being encouraged to try to express themselves and that this may at least encourage and enable a small minority of those that try to hone and refine their skills and become genuinely creative (or at least more self-aware).
English teachers have tried to encourage this sort of thing with diaries and self-reflective fiction for years but this arena (unlike the classroom) has peer pressure behind it and offers the producers the potential for peer reinforcement if they can produce something compelling.
Not to say that there aren't considerable dangers as well, of course!
I have been trying to outline the different ways in which people can interact online and wanted to put it on a sound theoretical footing. I've been trying to divide all communication into groups based on the message sender's relationship to the message recipient(s). I have broadcast/monologue (radio, web pages) and dialogue (f2f, email, phone) - both of them familiar from earlier media plus "multilogue/telelogue/polylogue" which has been used by different people to describe what they characterise as new media-enabled communication modes. Alas each of them seems to define this third category slightly differently and I haven't found a source for this division (or a similar one) that comes from a name I recognise as important in their field (though in truth I don't read much semiotics or linguistics so perhaps I am underestimating them). My sources so far are:
Ball-Rokeach, S. J. and K. Reardon (1988) "Monologue, Dialogue, and Telelog: Comparing an Emergent Form of Communication with Traditional Forms" in Advancing Communication Science : Merging Mass and Interpersonal Processes, (Pingree, S., R. P. Hawkins and J. M. Wiemann eds) Sage Publications, Newbury Park, Calif., pp. 135-161.
Shank, G. (1993) "Abductive Multiloguing: The Semiotic Dynamics of Navigating the Net", The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture, 1 (1). http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/communications/papers/ejvc/SHANK.V1N1
Voiskounsky, A. E. (1997) "Telelogue Conversations", Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2 (4). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue4/voiskounsky1.html
Can anyone suggest the "canonical source" for the division of communication by type in this manner?
As I was casting about for a topic for my PhD I found myself reading a fair amount about fan fiction and about the sociology of amateur writing and creativity. My research went in a different direction (or so I thought!) but as I had hoped nothing learned is ever entirely wasted as I am starting to get interested in the area again. But my reading in the area is rusty and doubtless incomplete and here I hope you can help.
From what I remember, academic framing of 'popular' creativity divides into three main strands:
What I don’t remember seeing is:
The latter in particular seems to me to be such an important issue I would be amazed if there isn’t a literature about it somewhere. So where should I be looking?
References:
Bourdieu, P. (1993) The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, (trans. Johnson, R.) Polity Press, Cambridge.
Bourdieu, P. (1996) The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Fiske, J. (1991) "The Cultural Economy of Fandom" in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, (Lewis, L. A. ed.) Routledge, London; New York, pp. pp. 30-50.
Hills, M. (2002) Fan Cultures, Routledge, London.
Jenkins, H. (1991) "'Strangers No More We Sing': Filking and the Social Construction of the Science Fiction Fan Community" in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, (Lewis, L. A. ed.) Routledge, London; New York.
Papert, S. (1990) Introduction: Constructionist Learning, MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA.
Piaget, J. (1954) The Construction of Reality in the Child, MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
My recent article, reproduced here by arrangement with the THES. Responses welcome.
To become transliterate, publishers need to start a dialogue with e-learners, Sue Thomas says
Transliteracy. It's another of those new usages for old concepts. It was originally applied to the mapping of one system of writing on to another, and the idea is now being extended to the digital realm. Today it refers to literacy across several media, which means, perhaps, that the more media you can use fluently, the more transliterate you are. How will that affect those of us who write, teach and publish? Can an understanding of transliteracy help dispel those rising levels of anxiety about the world of the web that, to paraphrase Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is "so new that some things still lack names"?
Continue reading "_Del.icio.us way to talk_ Times Higher Education Supplement, 28 October 2005" »
I posted this on my blog yesterday but thought I'd add it here as it seems to fit with the current blogussions:
Right. So what are we doing about this? Well for one UNESCO has launched a Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) while others are developing country/province specific initiatives. In other words the world has recognised the extreme importance of being able to read and write. Literacy is an indispensable prerequisite to gain access to information about health, environment, education and employment.
ENTER TECHNOLOGY. With almost everything existing online (banks, clothing, food, shelter - buying and letting, friends, family,etc...) one must be technologically literate. Without this new literacy there is no access to this world. In Professor Sue Thomas's talk (yesterday at DMU) she discussed the (alarming for some) speed at which web technology is progressing. Unfortunately, although technologies are converging at breakneck pace, research about them has not followed suit. Universities and some (can we say most?) academics seem to "fear" the progress of the internet. Perhaps they are worried that what is available is not academic...but that of course is the case for print as well. Good researchers recognise academic sources whether they exist online or offline. Perhaps the problem with the web (at least the new web, web 2.0) are the myriad of connections which abound. So universities retreat into what Thomas calls "gated communities;" communities where academics might feel protected from the wilderness but isn't collaboration and aren't connections central to any strong research? The question becomes how to "manage" the information (overload) which exists in the ether. There are all sorts of platforms and tagging devices but I think it comes down to each person being aware of what they want (subjective view, social view, academic view) and looking for sources which provide that.
If universities don't get involved now we'll have what Epic depicts - an internet where there is no "truth" to be found as newspapers have gone "offline" in protest and blogs become the news and, on top of it, each "news" story is tailored to each individual reader so the question of what really happened becomes impossible to answer. With universities not afraid to add to the "stone soup" of power and potential that is inherent in such a connective tissue the key words for information management will become "filtering," "ordering," and "delivering." In one word: we all need to be transliterate.
An interesting piece on CTheory by Nicholas Rombes entitled The Rebirth of the Author which puts forward the idea that Blogging is very much living proof that the Author is far from dead. Not so long back some new media theory was championing hypertext as working proof of the truths of post-structuralism (Landow et al) and now it seems it can disprove it too!
http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=480
He also has some interesting things to say about academic writing and the nature of authorship and digital technology.
Kate Pullinger and I are devising a new online MA, due to start at De Montfort University in Autumn 2006, (subject to validation).
About 80% of the course takes place online, making it very suitable for those wishing to obtain an MA in Creative Writing by distance learning.
It is designed for writers interested in exploring the potential of new
technologies in their writing via a combination of online study with a
short compulsory Summer School in the UK. There is also an optional residential weekend in Semester 1.
More information.
CONVERGENCE: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES
CALL FOR PAPERS
Vol 12. no 4.Winter 2006
An End to the New? Re-assessing the claims for New Media Writing(s)
Guest-edited by Simon Mills, Gavin Stewart & Sue Thomas
The focus of the special issue
This special edition of Convergence marks the tenth anniversary of the trAce Online Writing Centre, UK. To commemorate this landmark event, the guest editors are seeking to evaluate the state-of-the-art of new media writing(s).
This special edition will seek to re-assess the claims made for these forms over the last decade, to challenge the dominant ideologies and terminologies of this maturing field, and to provide a critical re-evaluation of new media writing(s) in all its forms.
We encourage discussion of the following:
Copy deadline for refereed research articles: 30 January 2006
All proposals, inquiries and submissions for this special issue to:
Gavin Stewart, Artistic Project Manager
Address: trAce Online Writing Centre
Nottingham Trent University
Clifton Lane
Nottingham
NG11 8NS
United Kingdom
e-mail: gavin.stewart@ntu.ac.uk
phone: ++44 (0)115 848 3569
If it is true that the devil's in the details, then most of what has
been written in new media studies is truly angelic.
- Matt Kirschenbaum
In “Bandwidth as an Accessibility Issue,” Millie highlights current problematics involved with the production and creation of digital art. Just as Brenda Laurel, twelve years ago, encouraged us to see the computer interface not as simply a “transfer link” ( Computers as Theatre, 35) but as a stage for performance, Millie tackles the current state of digital invention and directly questions the poetics of “web art.”
If aesthetics signifies the artistic idea and poetics indicates the way the artist gives shape/form to her (or his) creation, then is Millie drawing our attention to a double-bind? (To create with one’s audience firmly in mind but simultaneously aware of the extreme diversity that implies). It seems that in order to make web art available to users/viewers/readers (?) one must create with audience accessibility in mind; i.e. conscious of narrow bandwidth etc... Does this awareness then suggest that the artistic creation is no longer simply “inspired” and then articulated, but now after inspiration and before creation, the artist must devise solutions which enable widespread interaction? As Millie says, this stance involves greater time and education as artists must learn to programme and I wonder if this step also creates a more expansive gap between the artistic idea and its production and if so, does it pose a problem?
Web artists, then, seem to consider the relationship between the art and the audience not one of passive consumption or dynamic interaction, but one of complex communication between interactor and interface. Can we say that digital art is not so much “an” artwork but a network of potentialities? Do web artists create a myriad of potentials and readers/users/viewers interact or activate individualised versions?
I think the questions raised here on “Writing and the Digital Life” are evidence of the changing aesthetics and poetics of art. Within a certain tradition of art, one might say that art stands alone and in front of the viewer (painting on canvas, prose on paper, images on video). With the arrival and development of web-based art, the way the art work is presented or shown becomes of tantamount importance and interest. In Millie’s case it is an awareness of bandwidth but I think one can extend this attention to the interface as a reconfiguration of the role of the audience. Digital artists, then, do not seem solely concerned with making art available, but with making the art accessible.
Any thoughts?
