Although we do not technically have to post on "Made In Secret," I wanted to express a few of my thoughts on the film since I will not be in class on Monday.
Upon finishing the film, I wasn't really sure what to think. Admittedly, the inability to classify the film into a traditional genre did bother me: Could it be considered a documentary (albeit a documentary made by the organization itself)? Or was it a mockumentary (in the same vein as "The Office")? Surely, the movie couldn't be considered a "real" documentary - there were too many staged events. (For example, everyone actually WANTED Geoffrey to be filming them; and there was no crisis concerning whether or not to attend a film festival.) Then again, the crew did actually create pornography. Furthermore, most actors only played exaggerated versions of themselves. Does this mean the group literally became The East Van Porn Collective?
I don't really think so. I think that, while the film isn't "mockumentary" in the satirical, comedic way that "The Office" is, it's still certainly fiction. Whenever actors take on a new role, they must prepare themselves for that role. This may include traveling to a foreign country, speaking in a different dialect, or educating themselves on a certain time period. To some extent, actors must always disengage from their routine life in order to practice living the life of their character. The reason why this appears to be different for the creators of "Made In Secret" is firstly, that they are not professional actors (and so do not habitually have to "practice" for such roles), and secondly, that they practiced as a group instead of individually (so it blurred the line between preparing for their roles as and actually becoming the East Van Porn Collective). The reason why the film caused so much uproar is precisely that it wasn't made in the traditional satiric, comedic mockumentary style. In my opinion, the only true pieces of documentary in the film are the special features of cast interviews.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Social Media Literacy
A pretty interesting article came out of the Barvard Business Review last week that I figured was rather pertinent to some of the work we've talked about recently.
It's time for social media literacy to enter mainstream education.
Learning to use online forums, be they social network services like MySpace and Facebook, blogs, or wikis is not a sexily contemporary add-on to the curriculum - it's an essential part of the literacy today's youth require for the world they inhabit.
How do you find out anything you want to know by entering the right question into a search engine? Equally important - how do you determine whether the answer returned by a search engine is true?
What kinds of privacy protection should a student keep in mind when setting up a Facebook profile?
How can blogs be used to advocate positions on political issues?
These are not strictly technological questions, nor are they confined to a narrow discipline. The way today's students will do science, politics, journalism, and business next year and a decade from now will be shaped by the skills they acquire in using social media, and by the knowledge they gain of the important issues of privacy, identity, community, and the role of citizen media in democracy.
I started teaching social media to Berkeley and Stanford students five years ago when I realized that the answer to the question I've been asked by readers, critics, and scholars about my own work over the last 20 years - "are personal computers and Internet-based communications good for us as individuals, communities, democracies?" - is "it depends on what people know about how to use these tools." Whether digital media will be beneficial or destructive in the long run doesn't depend on the technologies, but on the literacy of those who use them.
When I first faced students in a classroom, I was surprised to discover that the mythology I had believed about "digital natives" was not entirely accurate. Just because they're on Facebook and chat online during class and can send text messages with one hand does not mean that young people are acquainted with the rhetoric of blogging, understand the way wikis can be used collaboratively, or know the techniques necessary for vetting the validity of information discovered online. Just as learning the alphabet requires further education before a literate person can compose a coherent argument, learning the skills of effective social media use requires an education that today's institutions and teachers are ill-prepared to provide.
Last year, I was awarded a small grant by the MacArthur Foundation to develop an easy to use online tool that integrates forums, blogs, wikis, and other social media. The free and open source "Social Media Classroom," accompanied by curricular material for teachers who want to use social media to teach students about social media issues and literacies (and other subjects) is now available online , along with a community of practice where educators can teach and learn from each other. We don't have time for institutions to change, which is why I've worked to provide tools for those educators who are using social media to prepare students for the 21st century.
About the Author
Recipient of the 2008 MacArthur Knowledge-Networking Grant, Howard Rheingold has a proven record of accurate technology and social forecasting over two decades of syndicated columns, bestselling books, and pioneering online enterprises. Among his five books, Smart Mobs was named one of the "Big Ideas books of 2002" by The New York Times. Howard's frequent television and radio appearances range from Good Morning America, to CNN, to NPR, to MacNeil/Lehrer.
It's time for social media literacy to enter mainstream education.
Learning to use online forums, be they social network services like MySpace and Facebook, blogs, or wikis is not a sexily contemporary add-on to the curriculum - it's an essential part of the literacy today's youth require for the world they inhabit.
How do you find out anything you want to know by entering the right question into a search engine? Equally important - how do you determine whether the answer returned by a search engine is true?
What kinds of privacy protection should a student keep in mind when setting up a Facebook profile?
How can blogs be used to advocate positions on political issues?
These are not strictly technological questions, nor are they confined to a narrow discipline. The way today's students will do science, politics, journalism, and business next year and a decade from now will be shaped by the skills they acquire in using social media, and by the knowledge they gain of the important issues of privacy, identity, community, and the role of citizen media in democracy.
I started teaching social media to Berkeley and Stanford students five years ago when I realized that the answer to the question I've been asked by readers, critics, and scholars about my own work over the last 20 years - "are personal computers and Internet-based communications good for us as individuals, communities, democracies?" - is "it depends on what people know about how to use these tools." Whether digital media will be beneficial or destructive in the long run doesn't depend on the technologies, but on the literacy of those who use them.
When I first faced students in a classroom, I was surprised to discover that the mythology I had believed about "digital natives" was not entirely accurate. Just because they're on Facebook and chat online during class and can send text messages with one hand does not mean that young people are acquainted with the rhetoric of blogging, understand the way wikis can be used collaboratively, or know the techniques necessary for vetting the validity of information discovered online. Just as learning the alphabet requires further education before a literate person can compose a coherent argument, learning the skills of effective social media use requires an education that today's institutions and teachers are ill-prepared to provide.
Last year, I was awarded a small grant by the MacArthur Foundation to develop an easy to use online tool that integrates forums, blogs, wikis, and other social media. The free and open source "Social Media Classroom," accompanied by curricular material for teachers who want to use social media to teach students about social media issues and literacies (and other subjects) is now available online , along with a community of practice where educators can teach and learn from each other. We don't have time for institutions to change, which is why I've worked to provide tools for those educators who are using social media to prepare students for the 21st century.
About the Author
Recipient of the 2008 MacArthur Knowledge-Networking Grant, Howard Rheingold has a proven record of accurate technology and social forecasting over two decades of syndicated columns, bestselling books, and pioneering online enterprises. Among his five books, Smart Mobs was named one of the "Big Ideas books of 2002" by The New York Times. Howard's frequent television and radio appearances range from Good Morning America, to CNN, to NPR, to MacNeil/Lehrer.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Wrap up and next week(s)
Hi all,
I had a great time hearing about your projects today. Great work, all. Some great material that could definitely be explored further.
For next week:
- The Barthes reading is optional. Interesting, but optional.
- Please watch MADE IN SECRET (on library reserve) including the "Making Of" DVD extra(s). We will talk about it in class next week, but you DO NOT need to blog about it (focus on writing really kickass proposals for your final projects).
- Bring hard copies of your proposals to hand in, and also be prepared to share your ideas with the rest of the class. Write about 500 words on (i.e.,) your project goals, work schedule, how you will involve others (and what's in it for them!), technical or aesthetic goals, things you need to learn / get better at to achieve it, questions you are hoping to answer, etc.
See you then.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
The Collaborative Practices of "Learning to Love You More"
According to the website, "Learning to Love You More is both a web site and series of non-web presentations comprised of work made by the general public in response to assignments given by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher". The work is not only a collaboration between two artists (July and Fletcher), but encompasses work made by the public at large.Internet collaborations like "Learning to Love You More", "offer themselves not as finite works which prescribe specific repetition along given structural coordinates but as 'open' works, which are brought to their conclusion by the performer at the same time as he experiences them on an aesthetic plane". (Eco, P.21) Because Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher's project is so infinitely collaborative, it is constantly changing shape. Other 'open works", like "Man With the Movie Camera Re-Make" and "The World's First Collaborative Sentence", can never be complete works of art. Because of this, the experience of art is derived from both the progression of forms these websites take on and from the individual experience of the work.
Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher's web project is also indicative of Brian Holmes' "oppositional device". Because July and Fletcher rely on public participation for "Learning to Love You More", they reverse the "coercive structures" of traditional art practices of how art 'ought to be'. By giving people a platform to creatively express themselves, they challenge the idea of a single "artistic identity", thereby 'stimulating anxiety' within, what Holmes calls, the "extensive institutional programmes" of the art circuit. (Lind, P.16) "Learning to Love You More" is an "oppositional device" in that is cuts through "the wave-pattern" and opens up "the possibility for moments of public speech". (Holmes, P.41) The power of publicly viewed creative expression is returned to the public themselves.
(The above picture taken by Susy of Hamburg, Germany for July/Fletcher Assignment #39: Take a Picture of Your Parents Kissing.)
Monday, October 20, 2008
Control This
Let's look at examples of artists using the internet as a platform for "working with others." What kinds of problems/issues/exciting developments come up when artists bring ideas of collaboration into their work?
The most pressing issue I see coming up in the idea of collaboration in artwork comes in the idea of control.
Eco claims that works are open ane "quite literally 'unfinished.'" The fundamental issue must then become who controls what creates the "finished" product. Holmes says
Control, in hyper-individualist societies, is a function of the way your attention is modulated bt the content you freely select; but it's also a function of the direction into which your behaviour is guided by the larger devices in which you participate.
This description of social control has very real consequences, and instead of governments or czars, artists have the power to do as they please with the work. If the artist is in control of the device, the artist is in control. A look at "Suns From Flickr" shows this interaction. Umbrico decided to limit the pictures of suns to those found in the search "sunset," even though "sky" or "sun" would have yielded even more options. This may not be practical, but it is an exercise of control over the "collaborative" project. "Crying, while eating" falls into the same ability to control, given those who want to contribute have to send in their submission to the webmaster and get it put on that way.
Lind brings up something that is also pertinent to this discussion: collaboration versus cooperation. Collaboration involves "more than one participant," but cooperation "emphasizes the notion of working together and mutually benefiting from it." The artist also controls whether the artwork is merely collaborative (i.e. "Suns from Flickr") or has cooperation involved (i.e. "Crying, while eating"). Normally an artist has an idea of a target audience or message though it cannot strictly limit interpretation or control how things are perceived. To have control over the depth of partipation, however, truly creates a new dynamic in artwork.
The issue of control on the internet, with YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and other public venues, is then one of the most pertinent issues facing art and life currently and in the future. You may not be able to tell how things will play out once they are in the public sphere, but by controlling the participation and content of art, artists are playing with a great deal of the story involved.
Collaborative Art
Eco talks about the way Pousseur addresses the idea of openness of collaborative work as a positive aspect of the production, "recasting the work so as to expose it to the maximum possible 'opening'. This statement to me is extremely powerful. The notion that artists' works are their finished product and that by adding anymore elements or removing anymore elements is a matter of destruction is one rigid view of art production that we have been engineered to take as the truth. We also have learned to see art production as a controlled, meticulous process. Collaborative art is the rebel that intends to break down our stereotype and expectation of art.
Collaborative art is not laziness or meaningless chaos; it is not an open canvas that is a freebie for anyone who wants to participate. Collaborative art takes the inescapable element of art, which is openness, into its hand and utilizing it to the benefit of the art work. For example, the Jackson Pollack website is not an open, meaningless canvas, even though it may seem like so in the beginning. The amount of the black paint that is allowed to come off the mouse is calculated and controlled to achieve potential aesthetics and an experience that simulates Pollack paintings. Like real paint brush, there is not an unlimited amount of ink that will keep coming off the brush (or your mouse, in this case). Best of all, the participants can experience the effect of motion on paint.
Most importantly though, is that collaborative art uses the inescapable "limitless interpretation" into its benefit and the scope of the artistic intentions. The Sheep Market is an example of such change in artists' view of 'openness'. Instead of creating the one perfect "sheep with the muzzle facing left," Aaron Koblin expends the project to an open source of creativity, letting collaborators offer their interpretations at a reward of 2 cents. Although Koblin is later criticized for exploitation by selling the sheet drawings at a price of $20, and I do not applaud the commercial intentions behind collecting the drawings, Koblin was able to turn the frustrating aspect of art that people can interpret a piece in thousands of ways into an additional source of creativity for his project.
Collaborative art is not laziness or meaningless chaos; it is not an open canvas that is a freebie for anyone who wants to participate. Collaborative art takes the inescapable element of art, which is openness, into its hand and utilizing it to the benefit of the art work. For example, the Jackson Pollack website is not an open, meaningless canvas, even though it may seem like so in the beginning. The amount of the black paint that is allowed to come off the mouse is calculated and controlled to achieve potential aesthetics and an experience that simulates Pollack paintings. Like real paint brush, there is not an unlimited amount of ink that will keep coming off the brush (or your mouse, in this case). Best of all, the participants can experience the effect of motion on paint.
Most importantly though, is that collaborative art uses the inescapable "limitless interpretation" into its benefit and the scope of the artistic intentions. The Sheep Market is an example of such change in artists' view of 'openness'. Instead of creating the one perfect "sheep with the muzzle facing left," Aaron Koblin expends the project to an open source of creativity, letting collaborators offer their interpretations at a reward of 2 cents. Although Koblin is later criticized for exploitation by selling the sheet drawings at a price of $20, and I do not applaud the commercial intentions behind collecting the drawings, Koblin was able to turn the frustrating aspect of art that people can interpret a piece in thousands of ways into an additional source of creativity for his project.
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