Willinet PSA's

Wrap up & next week.

Hello Team Awesome, good work on the PSA yesterday.

In the next few weeks we are taking our studies of participation into the world of the internet (particularly web 2.0 and "social networking") and fine art. We'll see where those lines blur, and consider the differences and similarities of these acts of participation to the ones we have considered in the community media context.

Next week, we have a guest artist (Andrew Lynn) coming to discuss his participatory art practice. Additionally, I will provide a brief history of the internet, from its conception through today (it's a longer timeline than you might think!). Finally, Andrew and I will demonstrate some useful web 2.0 tools, in preparation for your next assignment.

NEXT WEEK'S QUESTION:

How does Youtube (or other online social networking/collaborative platforms) compare to public access TV or other community media projects we've looked at? Use the example of Youtube and at least two other examples from the links below to anchor your response to this question. Bonus question: Who benefits and who is in control?

IMPORTANT NOTES: The Umberto Eco ("The Poetics of the Open Work") listed on your syllabus will now assigned for next week. The Marysia Lewandowska piece is now optional.

Reading (required): Chapters 1+5 from Everything is Miscellaneous (David Weinberger)
... and in contrast to Weinberger's enthusiasm about web 2.0:

• "User Generated Censorship" (Annalee Newitz)
• "Metacrap!" (Cory Doctorow)
• "What the Myspace Generation Should Know About Working for Free" (Trebor Scholz)

Reading (optional):"From Enthusiasm to Creative Commons” (Marysia Lewandowska);
...and the Enthusiasts archive (check out some of the films!)

Artwork/projects to review: (note: just glancing at a webpage does not constitute viewing these works -- many of them demand a little time and consideration, and/or even seeking more information in order to understand and engage!)

Video sharing & related:

• Youtube - the "Community" section (look at a few examples)
• Youtube - the "Channels" section (look at a few examples)
• Vimeo
• blip.tv
• Crying, While Eating
• 50/50 (Oliver Laric)
• A Swarm of Angels (open source filmmaking?)
• Man With A Movie Camera re-make (more open source filmmaking?)

Conceptual art/projects based on "tagging":

• Flickr Sunsets (Penelope Umbrico)
• Google Image Tagger (a "fun" way to help google?)
• ...and possibly a more fun way to play?
• Google bombing
• ...and Google tries to stop Google bombing

Crowd-produced artworks:

• The Sheep Market
• ...and a review of The Sheep Market
• The World's First Collaborative Sentence (click on "Enter Project" after reading description)
• Peel (William Boling)
• Letters (Lunchtimers)
• Scratchpad (Lunchtimers)

Optional related things (maybe start to give you ideas for your NEXT PROJECT!):

• Youtube User Agreement
• Why Facebook is the Future
• Facebook Privacy Policy (a video interpretation)
• Internet Usage Worldwide
• Race and the Digital Divide
• JacksonPollack (AMAZING!!!)
  

Wrap up & next week.

Hi all,

A great batch of first projects! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the work of your peers in the comments section before Monday.

As I mentioned before, on Monday we are visiting Willinet. We will meet at the regular time and place and immediately walk over to their Spring Street studio. So it's extra important to be on time (not that any of you would ever be late to class)...

When we get there, we will be met by Debby Dane (try saying her name and then my name, six times fast) and have a little time to talk a bit about the history of cable access television and some of the uses that artists, activists and community organizers have put it to. You'll have watched the videotape Paper Tiger Reads Paper Tiger TV, which is a sort of "Best Of" reel for the legendary cable access group in NYC, and read the quasi-manifestos of Paper Tiger members Sherry Milner ("Bargain Media") & Joan Braderman ("TV/Video: Reclaiming the Utopian Moment"). Selections from Dee Dee Halleck's book Hand Held Visions will provide background for community media in general and some specifics on the access movement. Gregg Bordowitz, in another quasi-manifesto ("Operative Assumptions"), will elucidate some of his reasons for getting involved with public access TV as an art student.

Looking forward to coming back to Williams!

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Ariel's "Pass the Camera" Project.

1st Assignment for ARTS 105: Participatory Media Production. I, along with 3 other Williams College students filmed the following short sequences. Participants were required to follow these 3 rules-

Rule 1: No Dialogue

Rule 2: Each film must be some sort of interpretation of the quote by
Aitareya Upanishad: "We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe."

Rule 3: Each sequence must be about a minute.

Jared's Pass The Camera

More Than A Feeling

The "Pass The Camera" project featuring The Armstrong Funky Bunch Redux on Rock Band performing Boston's "More Than A Feeling."

Ko's Pass the Camera

my video

Ace Deuce

'Pass the Camera,' Collaborative Production using In-Camera Edting

Our Project:

Wrap up & next week.

Hopefully this week you got some sense of some of the different threads of "participation" we'll be following this semester, from community media to collaborative art with all kinds of things in between.

For your notes, the videos we watched this week were:

Women's Liberation March NYC, Gay Pride March NYC, etc., (People's Video Theater 1970-1971)
Lanesville Overview I (Videofreex 1972)
Lee Banks, Mountain Farmer (Appalshop: Mimi Pickering & Shleby Adams 1973)
One Nation Under Tommy (Roger Beebe & many collaborators, 2004)

A recent article about Videofreex and People's Video Theater, along with other early video collectives, with some possible links to today's media landscape.

Very excited to see your video experiments next week!(!!!)!!!.

“Stranger with a Camera” presents the ethical and moral dilemmas of not only filmmakers but those who document the lives of others through any medium. While it is easy to say that a filmmaker, for instance, must be objective in the way in which he portrays whatever subject, persons or communities that are the focus of their work this task is easier said than accomplished. To fully portray any information completely objectively is a difficult task. There is always a story, a perspective or an opinion that is excluded of any particular work therefore not allowing it to be completely objective. With that being said the responsibility of a filmmaker is to fully circumspect whatever issue he is examining to the best of his ability and present it in a way in that is equitable to all perspectives. It’s obvious that this perspective on the responsibilities of filmmakers would only work in an ideal world where bias was completely non-existent and audiences have hours upon hours of time to sit and watch footage that presents the plethora of perspectives surrounding a single issue. This push for absolute objectivity within film would most likely hinder a filmmaker’s vision as well as subject an audience to arbitrary scenes in a documentary. Elizabeth Barrett’s style of documentary seems to adhere to the ideal of full circumspection. Despite this, there is little doubt that the events could have been interpreted dramatically different from the two perspectives that were most prominently featured in the film.

Stranger with a Camera: Too Close for Accuracy

On a basic, gut-level reaction to the film, I found Elizabeth Barrett’s self-disavowed defense of Hobart Ison unsettling at best, and at worst, appalling . Certainly, viewers should be encouraged to foster an appreciation for a different walk of life—in fact I believe we could all benefit from a fat slice of humble pie from time to time—but the cold hard fact that a crazed Hill-person shot and killed a man who merely wished to inspire social evolution did not sit well with me. Say what you will in defense of a simpler way of living, but in real life you can’t shoot and kill people who may or may not be trying to embarrass you. Hobart Ison received ten years in prison for premeditated murder, one of which served, all the while his community of Apalachia rallying around him as if he were some sort of martyr-prophet. Barrett comments on how she struggled with her, “Instinct to protect my community from those who would harm it,” and the objectivity of her film suffers as a consequence.

One detail of Elizabeth Barrett’s Stranger With a Camera stood out as particularly puzzling to me during the screening: For what purpose does Barrett insert her own dilemma as an artist into the documentary, seemingly without relevance to the story? Beneath the surface of a crazy Hillbilly who shoots a reporter, beyond the justification for an archaic act of brutality, the viewer observes as Barrett struggles with her own role as a filmmaker—taking example from Hugh O’Connor’s mistakes and attempting to remain detached and fully objective without hurting anyone's feelings. Unfortunately, Barrett’s final product comes across as much too compassionate towards a way of life which in many regards simply cannot be judged as acceptable by any standards. One surmises that Elizabeth Barrett, while a talented filmmaker with exceptional self-awareness, began this project too close to her subject material to have remained objective.

Often, the urge to protect one’s home is simply too great to ignore, even if only on a subliminal level. In modern media, especially in the case of the Iraq war, one must be wary of media monopoly. Even when pretexted under the best of intentions, objectivity can easily go awry. Take a look at similar stories written about the city of Mosul, Iraq only a few months apart—one published in the Guardian, the other from the New York Times. For example, one statement made by both parties indicates that many insurgents have escaped from Mosul. The Guardian reports,

“But most al-Qaida insurgents slipped away before it began - and they are now slipping back,”

while The New York Times comments,

“the Iraqi military appears to have allowed many insurgents to slip out of Mosul.”

Many of the facts are the same: dates, names, areas, statistics; yet the overall tone of the two articles vary immensely. It is the job of the viewer/reader/listener of media presentations to draw inferences from what is said, but equally (sometimes more) importantly, what is not said.

Never Enough

Filmmaker, Elizabeth Barret gives substance to the controversial topics of representation and an artist's moral responsibility, and I really, really appreciate it. The topics are so often talked about in theoretical terms; yet, it is rarely dealt with the level of respect and self-evaluation as Barret does. The most honest observation made by Barret, though it is only mentioned briefly, is that although an artist my approach the subjects with the ultimate goal of bringing social change, it is likely that Hugh O’Connor approached Mason Eldridge because of a photographic interest and, in another word, exoticism, with his face still covered in coal and playing with his little daughter. Is it possible that in the face of a photogenic subject, O’Connor put aside the moral effort to bring realistic, complete representation of the Appalachia? The controversy brings Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother to my mind. Does the photograph really brings awareness to the issue of depression and arouse social change or is it another exotic depiction of the other who has a beautifully windblown face that is filled with a rare mix of melancholy and dignity as a mother?
“Can filmmakers show poverty without shaming the people portrayed?” Barret asks. This is an essential question, but also one that does not have a absolute answer. And, it only brings more questions to my mind. Could the attention brought by filmmakers in fact makes the people now see their tattered clothes as something to be ashamed of instead of an accepted fact of life. I often think about art with a social mission as one that has the same responsibility as a charity. I know of a teacher who went to Nepal and found that there is inadequate medical care so that little kids’ wounds are rarely healed. He then gathered up his students and carefully applied Neosporin and Band-Aids on the little knees and the little faces. But then, the kids began seeing the wounds that they have never really seen before, and kids with more wounds became the subject of mockery.
The moral weight on the shoulder of any community artists is extremely heavy.

Film-makers make films...

I found Stranger With a Camera to be an emotionally evocative and intellectually stimulating insight into the political, moral, and cultural considerations with which all individuals involved in media production are forced to acknowledge. In it we see a multi-layered collection of stories unfold in various ways, from the tragic tale of the Canadian film-maker, to the exploitative reality of a mining community, to a personal journey of a film-maker attempting to reconcile her identity as artist and community member. There were a number things that I took away from this film, but a few lines stuck out in my mind as challenging and provocative.

Near the middle of the film, Barret said (I don't know if this is verbatim, but it is the general sense) "This town's images were mined just like its coal." A clever and punchy line, but it provokes a larger question for me: in reproducing the troubling and problematic images that had come to define her community, was Barret just participating in the recycling of her community's exploitative history? In fact, Barret herself is in some ways an outsider, as we see when she draws the sharp distinction between the part of the community in which she grew up, "the county seat," and the working class community her film surrounds. I suppose the main distinction between Barret and her media-producing predecessors is that she is more connected to the community she is representing.

Another moment that particularly stood out to me was the very last line of the film where Barret more or less said, if I remember correctly, "It is my job as a film-maker to represent the lives that I portray as fairly as possible." However, I wonder if 'as fairly as possible' is very fair at all. Even Barret's representation, which I assume is supposed to be less problematic or exploitative than the images produced 30 years prior, reconstruct the story of Hugh O' Connor's death by emphasizing the lives of the community he attempted to film, especially the life of Hobart Isom. Of course, there are several practical reasons for this emphasis, Hobart was the murderer, Barret wanted to focus on the town in which he lived, etc. However, I think there are ways in which we can consider this emphasis as a narrative of excuse. It almost seemed that Barret was trying to say that Hobart was provoked into this murder by the inundation of media attention his community was forced to endure. Yet, at some point, again if I remember correctly, it came out that Hobart was very worried about taking pictures of his property due to its very poor condition and his fear of it being seized. In other words, there were economic considerations that fueled his ire, in addition to the community's history of exploitation.

Yet, for all of my criticism of her bias, the way in which she positioned herself in the narrative as a film-maker was very refreshing for me. Often times in media production, the personal interest and role of the media-producer is ignored or rendered invisible in some effort to construct the illusion of objectivity. However, Barret positioned herself right in the middle of her narrative and revealed her role as its architect. To this end, I thought the way she had one of the authors of the New Yorker articles about O' Connor's murder actually in her film, reading his own representation of the story to be quite refreshing as well.

In short, this documentary was not just about the story of Hugh O' Connor. I think it was the story of all documentary film-makers who are interested representing communities in which they do not live. Barret acknowledged her role as film-maker, outsider, architect and the possibly disastrous or wonderful consequences inherent in that position of power. In that way this story is both didactic and admonitory, refreshing and troubling, problematic and valuable.

It Is Multi-directional, and Don't You Forget It

"Stranger With A Camera," while intellectually stimulating, came off as very bothersome to me. This is due to two main points: the necessity of Barrett to implicate herself as a filmmaker into an issue and story that would have been perfectly fine without her, and the onerous that was put on filmmakers to be aware of their environments with little to no responsibility put on those who are the sibjects.

I believe that either Barrett could have told of her problems portraying the local environment where she grew up (eastern Kentucky), or she could have talked about the story of Hugh O'Connor and his team's interaction with Hobart Ison as a reflection of the greater clash of civilizations that occurs. By injecting herself into the latter, it came off as a ploy for personal attention. Individually, they prove useful; mixed together in the way they were in "Stranger ith A Camera," it took away from the overarching theme of the documentary.

The prompt for this video, which is referenced by Barrett, is the reason for my second point.

What are the responsibilities of any of us who take the images of other people and put them to our own uses?

I will admit that as filmmakers, it is essential to understand the context in which you are doing your job. This is true for any occupation, but for one that can manipulate the perceptions of others in such a definite way, it can be crucial. At the same time, however, by being a subject in a film or production, you must take responsibility for this perception as well. As a viewer of film, you must understand that the story is only one view, just as if you were personally in the area witnessing the action firsthand.

As evidence, I would like to point to the jury trial of Mr. Ison. The filmmakers present felt antagonized, and the ones that wanted to come were discouraged. Yet, there was not a backlash towards Hobart Ison or his supportive cohorts. The responsibility, and thus the blame, was placed on the filmmakers. Was Ison not the one who shot O'Connor? Because the community lived in the same situation that Ison did, there was no countervailing argument. The filmmakers were disheartened and affected, but it was only their misunderstanding of the community on trial, and not the eastern Kentucky public's misunderstanding of the job and intent of filmmakers on trial. Even Barrett, being a member of this community, fell right into the trap. Throughout the documentary, the problem was the filmmakers and how the community felt. There was relatively little emphasis put on what the filmmakers were doing with the footage, just merely that they were there. Barrett's sympathetic approach to the community does little to further the point of the responsibilities of filmmakers, but rather further emphasizes the lack of sensitivity by the subject, the viewer, or the participant.

"Stranger With A Camera" makes one wonder what the responsibilities of filmmakers are, which is a valid question. Really, the only responsibility I see reflected in this documentary is to essentially "call if like you see it" as a filmmaker, taking the information you can and putting it on display. The subjects, then, have the responsibility to portray accurately the scenario they are asked to partake in. If you are a child eating dirt, it does not matter if you think you are well fed due to welfare, you will be seen as a child eating dirt. It's a fishbowl, and all media is just an outside looking in perspective on that. It just so happens that Barrett was an outsider looking in on the role of a filmmaker, and not, as O'Connor was, a filmmaker looking in on life in rural Kentucky.

Stranger With a Camera: Responsibility and Reality in Documentary Film

“What are the responsibilities of any of us who take the images of other people and put them to our own uses?”

I do think one has a moral responsibility when they are a filmmaker- especially when making documentary film. Documentary filmmakers, like journalists, are in an undeclared social contract with their audience. It is their duty to depict reality as best they can. Many of the documentary filmmakers that went to the Appalachian mountains during the war on poverty, did a terrible job at depicting the true situation of the people there. I was particularly disgusted with how one filmmaker decided to film children eating dirt-- making it seem like they were starving, when they were simply playing. Such appropriations of images are insulting and exploitive.

I can understand how the people of Kentucky would be frustrated by the dozens of crews that floundered in throughout the 1960s/70s 'war on poverty', media frenzy. These crews only focused on the negative and never even attempted to depict the originality of traditional Appalachian culture. A lot of ethnographic filmmakers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_anthropology) run into the same sorts of issues- they expect to present the reality of a situation by living in it for just a few weeks.

The frustration that many Appalachian people must have felt for their felt misrepresentation, however, is no excuse for what happened to Hugh O'Connor. Violence is deconstructive. The answer is to instead take director Elizabeth Barrett's approach. Use the camera as a defense against misrepresentation. Filmmaking helped her work out her frustration in a positive, productive way.

Fun Somewhat Related Story: The tools of media are powerful and possibly very dangerous. As an example, I was recently shown the following YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU. Apparently this young kid had filmed himself doing this, and some friends got hold of the video and uploaded it to the Internet. As a result, this kid's life has been turned into a total embarrassment. I think his “friends” are morally at fault for having uploaded it without his permission and making something so private into something so public.

Cameras and Strangers

Arguably, the overarching theme in the film “Stranger with a Camera” motions us to consider how people view their own communities and how foreign media groups decide to depict them. Despite dire circumstances in any one particular region, the narrator supports that there may still linger ties that bind communities as a whole, and those ties are not necessarily positive, especially when originating from the rich as apposed to the poor. In retrospect I agree that Hugh and his team behaved obliviously that September day by not identifying the immediate details and dangers at hand, namely they were trespassing private property and failed to recognize that some Kentucky townspeople might find it offending or oven threatening that the group was harvesting only images of poverty.

The documentary noted that not everyone was extremely poor in that community, nevertheless the majority of people were. This undeniable fact attracted many media crews like Hugh’s to the area to try to reveal to the outside world sharp contrasts in what constituted the American dream at the time. The issue of shame was prevalent all throughout the film, in particular shame experienced by some poor folks in being portrayed in their dire conditions before their own community, and the shame the not-so-poor felt when they objected to being considered poor or blamed for others’ misery owing to the fact they lived in the same community. While some appreciated truths being unveiled to the outside world, others condemned them.

This is all too reminiscent of common media stories of African countries where articles in western papers depict mainly AIDS and poverty in Africa, or something related to misery in Africa. Success stories are lucky if they get published, yet success is a tricky word to use when referring to the other side of say nutritional, economic, and opportunity poverty.

Some in Kentucky may have considered themselves successful because they were not poor, but how do we reconcile the noted fact that someone’s fiscal richness directly related to another’s lack of adequate nutrition, for example? The problem was there; Hugh and his team simply did not go out of their way to truly understand how everyone felt so as to gain their trust whereby he meant only to reveal injustices. From what was observed, he was not able to portray to all the inhabitants, rich and poor, that he meant not to ridicule or shame, but to help them and others outside perceive the gravity of their situation; often outsiders can offer another, maybe even beneficial point of view that insiders fail to grasp. Having said that, outsiders should not bypass some members in order to get to the raw footage, and certainly not distort or misrepresent images to try to allocate them into perfectly constructed hypotheses of what they hoped to see.

Stranger With a Camera

Barret's "Stranger With a Camera" reflects on the story of the inhabitants of a poverty-stricken rural town and their reaction to the media's ardent desire to expose that poverty. After near constant contact with filmmakers and other media members, many townspeople felt ridiculed or looked down upon, while others believed that the documentaries gave an inaccurate representation of their home.

This inaccurate - or at least partial - representation  of Appalachia was due to filmmakers' explicit expectations about what they would find and what they wanted to include in their documentaries.  Having seen other films or images about the area, the filmmakers had a mental image of Appalachia before ever setting foot in Kentucky.  This expectation is reflected in their selection of interview questions - "What do you have for breakfast?" "How will you make ends meet this year?" - which are framed to expose the interviewee's poverty. Thus, the filmmakers limited the scope of Appalachia that could be shown in their respective projects.

On the other hand, if the filmmakers had let go of their expectations and entered Appalachia as if they were learning about it for the first time, they may have been able to construct a documentary more satisfactory to the local population. In letting go of their expectations, they could have asked a greater variety of questions - "How do you perceive your quality of life" "Do you like your job?" "What would you like that you do not have?" - rather than those framed to confirm the filmmaker's preconceived notions.

Thus, while it is not the main task of the filmmaker to please his or her subjects, the filmmaker does have a responsibility to approach a new subject with an open frame of mind (even after having completed research and mapped out the project), for it is the filmmaker's - or, at least, documentary maker's - main goal to show a situation objectively, illuminating all facets his or her subject, rather than simply focusing on a single slant.

- Katie

PS. Another interesting about filmmaker's "expectations": This summer, I watched a documentary called "American Teen," which followed around a select number of high school students over the course of their senior year. I was surprised to find that the documentary fell in line with the stereotypical high school experience: jocks, nerds, social tension, prom, etc. Having attended a not-so-stereotypical high school, I wondered if the director had chosen to follow these particular seniors on purpose (in line with her expectations of the traditional high school experience), or if these kids were actually a random sample. When I looked up the film online later, I found that there had been arguments over how much of the documentary had been set up (although these arguments mainly brought up the authenticity of various reaction scenes). Even now, I still haven't decided how reliable this documentary was, and how much of it was merely confirming the aspects of high school life that the director wanted to show. If anyone else has seen this documentary, I would love to hear your thoughts!

Here is a link to an article about the documentary/various criticisms of it.

Stranger With a Camera: 'A Better Way'

Taking on the question of the responsibility of artists to their subject and to their audience, Stranger With a Camera looks pragmatically at a historical situation in which this issue was a critical one. Elizabeth Barret documented the opinions of others, as well as the history of the incident (and in addition to adding her own commentary), in the film. However, both she and many of the authors of the articles in our reading for the semester seem to have found a bit of a ‘better way.’

One realization one might have toward the end of the film, if not earlier, is that although individuals on the two sides of the issue do share some common ground, they will not be brought to agreement in any fundamental way. Another realization is that the ‘two sides’ are less clearly defined than one might think. One of the opening quotes, from Mason Bridge, “Had to be killed…had to be” is later somewhat ameliorated by the full story from Bridge during his more extended interview segments toward the end of the film (recursive misrepresentation? meta-misrepresentation?). He reveals a somewhat more finely articulated view of the situation, a view that includes social dignity, but is also about straight up property rights, and Ison’s (eccentric, unrelated?) touchiness about his land.

On the other side of the issue, the members of O’Connor’s crew that are interviewed never refer to their responsibility to their audience; any responsibility they feel or felt pretty much seems limited to their decision to actually make the film for their audience. One member, who was interviewed quite a bit, mostly talked about how they were just ordinary people doing their work and how shooting a person is not a very constructive response to perceived insult.

Anyway, back to the ‘better way’: Greg Bordowitz and DeeDee Hallek, among others, expound a theory on, and encourage the practicing of, merging the artist with subject in artistic production. This practice, which is expressed implicitly and explicitly in Barret’s Stranger, leaves no room (or very little room as in the case of the re-broadcasting of Not Channel Zero’s material, for instance) for exploitation, or unfair and/or unrealistic representation.

This third avenue is both presented and somewhat subtly passes a sort of null pragmatic scrutiny with the film; that is, Strangers is a success, and Elizabeth Barret finishes the production unscathed.

Wrap up & next week.

Thanks for your presentations today. I was impressed at the breadth of skills, interests and experiences you all bring to this class.

I'll leave about 15 minutes at the end of next class for a refresher course on using the video cameras. I think the consensus was that the Panasonic GS150's (from the ELC) were annoying to operate but nice and small, the Sony PD100 (housed at Spencer with Rick) was a breeze to operate and looked great, and the Panasonic DVX100 (also at Spencer) was complicated but looked great as well. Now, we only have 4 DVX100's and 2 PD150's, and there are 2 other video courses this fall (all of those students are using the same gear as you are), so be prepared to use those GS150's as backup if all the other cameras are out!

For next week, you are going to watch Stranger With A Camera, a video on reserve at the library & write a brief (but well-considered!) response on the blog.

General blog guidelines:
1) refer directly to the text(s) at hand, including videos;
2) do additional research on something that interests you (support your arguments);
3) aim for about 250-300 words;
4) you are encouraged to embed photos, links, videos;
5) you are encouraged to comment on the posts of your classmates.

You are free to write on whatever comes to mind after watching the film, but I offer this question to you (one of the last lines in the film) for your consideration:

What are the responsibilities of any of us who take the images of other people and put them to our own uses?

Hello & welcome.

This blog is our knowledge production playground. Unless otherwise directed, check here each week for an introduction to next week's materials, a salient question or two, and/or additional reading/research links for your consideration.