hegemony rules

In today’s NYT ArtsBeat blog, Patty LuPone writes a letter defending her choice to chastise audience members who were using cell phones and flash photography during her performances. She writes:

Do we allow our rights to be violated (photography, filming and audio taping of performances is illegal) or tolerate rudeness by members of the audience who feel they have the right to sit in a dark theater, texting or checking their e-mail while the light from their screens distract both performers and the audience alike? Or, should I stand up for my rights as a performer as well as the audiences I perform for?

Reader comments generally supported Ms. LuPone’s position.  I especially liked this one:

Welcome to the club. College profs have been putting up with this BS for the better part of a decade.

Students often wonder why I have such stringent policies regarding technology use within the classroom.  I usually mention how it is distracting to lead class discussion and lecture when there are individuals surreptitiously writing text messages or e-mail on their phone.  In labs, I have students turn off their computer monitors - if I didn’t, most of them would spend the class period doing a combination of surfing the Web, IMing friends, and obsessively checking Facebook.  It’s not that no learning is taking place when students are doing this kind of multi-tasking, it’s that they’re paying continous partial attention to multiple tasks (what Linda Stone refers to as “semi-synch”).  This makes deep, reflective learning difficult.

Taking a cue from David Silver’s Digital Media Production class, I’m going to be separating out technology-focused days from theory-focused days in my Introduction to Communication and Technology class in the fall.  Fortunately, I’ll be teaching in a lab that has a large table with computers ringing the outside of the room - I think this structure will facilitate class discussion more readily and allow for a natural division between times we’re talking about technology and when we’re actually doing hands-on work.  Hopefully, this will also encourage students to become a bit more conscious about their use of technology in the classroom.

My presentation on the discursive construction of the “user” within information architecture has been posted on Slideshare (and below).  Please contact me (amassanari AT luc DOT edu) if you’d like the outline/crib sheet for this talk.

I just handed out the following assignment to students in my Introduction to Communication and Technology class (CMUN 240).  Interestingly, a couple of my students have already given up FB for Lent and are having a pretty hard time.

CMUN 240 - Assignment 2 (15% of final grade)
Due March 18 by 9:00am via e-mail

For this assignment, you will reflect on the role that communication technologies play in your everyday life.  Thompson (quoted in our text) suggests that “an everyday world external to the media is central to individuals’ experience of their lives and their self-formation” (Lister et. al., 2003, p. 253).   This assignment is designed to challenge that assumption.  There are two parts.

First, you need to take a two-day (48 hour) fast from unnecessary new media consumption. During your fast, you should abstain from all non-essential exposure to new media.  By “new media” I mean text messaging, Facebook and other web surfing, instant messaging, iPod listening, etc.  While I don’t expect that you will be able to refrain from all interactions with new media (after all, you do have to check your e-mail for classes, etc.), I do ask that you create a typed log the time you spend using it (and for what purpose) during the course of your two-day fast.  You will turn this log in with your completed assignment.

After completing your fast, I would like you to write a 4 to 5 page reflection on your experience. In your paper, you should focus on Thompson’s suggestion that an experience of life outside the media is critical to our identity and self-formation.  This can be done in several ways.  You might, for example, reflect on your sense of identity and how this is/is not changed by not having access to new media.  Or, you could discuss the ways in which your interactions with others changed (or remained the same) as a result of your lack of new media access.  Still another possibility is for you to write about the connection (or lack thereof) you felt towards the communities of which you’re a part.  The goal of this paper is for you to reflect on your experience in light of one or more of the recent course themes we’re discussing (identity, community, cyborgs/embodiment, etc.).

In your reflection, (1) make a clear argument (provide a thesis) as to the role technology/new media plays in your everyday life, (2) offer clear, specific examples from your fasting experience to support your thesis, and (3) draw upon the course texts to support your argument.  Your paper should include an introduction, good transitions between ideas, and a well-conceived conclusion.  Be sure to include your communication log when you turn in your paper.  Please be creative and have fun with this!

Basics:

• Word file (.doc or .docx)
• 4-5 pages using 12 pt. font (Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, etc.) double-spaced with 1” margins
• Citations should use APA 5th edition guidelines
• Send your paper by 9:00am on 3/18 to me (amassanari@luc.edu)

You can use the grading rubric included in the syllabus as a guide as to how your work will be assessed.

This is new.  Today, I got a comment on a screenshot posted to my Flickr account.  It seems to be, from what I can tell, very targeted spam.  Well, targeted more to me as a person (it mentions a dissertation resource site) rather than having anything to do at all with the actual image.

very targeted comment spam on flickr

Has anyone else had this happen?

I’m teaching a special topics this semester at Loyola about guerilla/alternative media.  Here’s the course description from the syllabus:

Guerrilla Media covers the history and theory of alternative forms of journalism, film, art, and digital media production, and explores how the term guerrilla has been appropriated for various methods of distribution, promotion and audience participation. Some topics we will consider include:  the rise of DIY (do-it-yourself) culture, guerrilla/indie news media, citizen journalism, zines, music and film mashups/remixes, viral ad campaigns, and Web memes.  We will see how the “independent” classification shifts according to appropriations of avant-garde techniques and how similar guerrilla media tactics are employed by union activists, artists, bloggers, citizen journalists, and advertisers.  Students will have the opportunity to create their own media artifacts that reflect DIY/guerrilla media sensibilities.

The course is roughly divided into three parts.  During the first part of the course, we will focus on some of the foundational issues that shape the production and consumption of alternative/guerrilla media.  The second portion of the course will be dedicated to further understanding some of the expressions/forms of alternative/guerrilla media (zines, machinima, mashups/remixes, citizen journalism, etc.).  The third part of the course will be dedicated to understanding some of the political, social, and legal implications of alternative media artifacts.

Students are blogging regularly and will be creating some sort of guerrilla/alternative media (or campaign) for their final project.  In the spirit of the class, last week I offered students extra credit if they:  (1) found a DIY craft/technology project they liked (like those posted on Craftster or Instructables or Make), (2) made the project, (3) wrote back to the communities from which they found the project with additional suggestions/ideas/improvements, and (4) blogged about their creations (with pictures!).  They have until the end of the semester to post their projects, and I’m very excited to see what they make.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of my favorite actors.  As Scotty J. in Boogie Nights, Allen in Happiness, Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, and Truman Capote in Capote, Hoffman delivers some of the most honest and unflinchingly human portrayals in contemporary American cinema.  Apparently, the NYT agrees with me (or, I agree with them).  Their profile of PSH appears in today’s NYT magazine, and it’s clear that the man behind these characters is equally complex:

Caden Cotard [PSH's character in Synedoche] seems to echo many of Hoffman’s own internal debates and anxieties. “I took ‘Synecdoche’ on because I was turning 40, and I had two kids, and I was thinking about this stuff — death and loss — all the time,” Hoffman continued. “The workload was hard, but what made it really difficult was playing a character who is trying to incorporate the inevitable pull of death into his art. Somewhere, Philip Roth writes: ‘Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.’ And Charlie, like Roth, is quite aware of the fact that we’re all going to die.” Hoffman looked around the theater. The stage manager was arranging furniture; the actors were lolling on a sofa; Andrew Upton was chatting with an assistant. “In 80 years,” Hoffman went on, “no one I’m seeing now will be alive. Hopefully, the art will remain.”

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the creative process.  There’s something about creativity that requires an intensity of focus - a drive to be sure - inspired by the intense realization that we are mortal and fallible and when we die we leave so little behind.  Art, then, is driven by this need to make our lives meaningful and important.  But I wonder if this same drive can become overwhelming.  If we’re constantly having this metadialogue about the relative permanence of what we’re creating, does this allow us the freedom to make mistakes?  To create “bad” art?  When I’m having difficulty writing, I think it’s because I’m spending too much time thinking like an editor rather than as a writer.  Words don’t hit the page because I’ve already decided they’re not quite right.  This means it’s harder for me to enter a flow state and actually get to the business of writing.

(All this musing is no doubt inspired by the fact that I’m supposed to be writing right now and am procrastinating a bit.  Oh, the irony!).

One of my new favorite quotes also comes from this article:

“Sometimes when I see a great movie or a great play I think, ‘Being human means you’re really alone…’”

Read the complete article.

Michael Wesch, a professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State, authored a compelling piece about education and what has happened recently in the classroom.  On the first day of his large lecture class, he realized the entire notion of engagement has changed.  As students played their iPods, surfed Facebook, and IM’d, Wesch aptly notes,”the students were undoubtedly engaged, just not with me.”  He continues:

My teaching assistants consoled me by noting that students have learned that they can “get by” without paying attention in their classes. Perhaps feeling a bit encouraged by my look of incredulity, my TA’s continued with a long list of other activities students have learned that they can “get by” without doing. Studying, taking notes, reading the textbook, and coming to class topped the list. It wasn’t the list that impressed me. It was the unquestioned assumption that “getting by” is the name of the game. Our students are so alienated by education that they are trying to sneak right past it.

The solution, he argues, is to stop seeing technology as a distracting force that impinges upon the walls of the classroom, but to expand the walls of the classroom to include these technologies.

We don’t have to tear the walls down. We just have to stop pretending that the walls separate us from the world, and begin working with students in the pursuit of answers to real and relevant questions.

When we do that we can stop denying the fact that we are enveloped in a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where the nature and dynamics of knowledge have shifted. We can acknowledge that most of our students have powerful devices on them that give them instant and constant access to this cloud (including almost any answer to almost any multiple choice question you can imagine). We can welcome laptops, cell phones, and iPods into our classrooms, not as distractions, but as powerful learning technologies. We can use them in ways that empower and engage students in real world problems and activities, leveraging the enormous potentials of the digital media environment that now surrounds us. In the process, we allow students to develop much-needed skills in navigating and harnessing this new media environment, including the wisdom to know when to turn it off. When students are engaged in projects that are meaningful and important to them, and that make them feel meaningful and important, they will enthusiastically turn off their cellphones and laptops to grapple with the most difficult texts and take on the most rigorous tasks.

The complete article is posted on Britannica.com.

I agree with Wesch’s perspective re: expanding the walls of the classroom to encourage engagement with the world (including all of the “distracting” new media surrounding us).  I especially like that he suggests that as teachers we must help students develop critical thinking skills in/around new media, and when they might learn the most by turning off their laptops and iPods. In my Communication and Technology course, I’ve asked students to take a 48 hour fast from non-essential new media consumption and reflect on the impact these technologies have on their sense of identity, community, and/or embodiment.  Most, I think, have hated the experience (and, that’s kind of the point, really), but I’m very curious to read their reflections.

What’s been interesting this semester is how many times I’ve assumed (wrongly, of course) that my students understood what appropriate use of new technology in the classroom entailed.  After watching several students repeatedly texting in class, asking them to stop, and then watching as they continue to text using their books to “hide” their cell phones as they continue to text (as if I won’t notice), I’ve become convinced that it’s incumbent upon educators to start talking (again) about the notion of a classroom community - and how iPods, laptops, cell phones, etc. can both add to and distract from the learning environment.

Rushkoff sums up much of what I’ve been feeling lately - that the Republicans seem to think that war really does give us meaning.

I usually don’t feel uneasy when I put those filters on, but last night - during the Guiliani speech - I realized I was no longer filtering a speechwriter’s intentional manipulation; I was trying to look beyond real hate. These folks were gritting their teeth, shaking their fists, and smiling the way gladiators do when going into combat against barbarians. And this is the incumbent party. The ones currently in power.

What is it they hate? Guiliani and Palin both made it pretty clear: community organizing. Community organizing is energized from below. From the periphery. It is the direction and facilitation of mass energy towards productive and cooperative ends. It is about replacing conflict with collaboration. It is the opposite of war; it is peace.

Last night, the Republican Convention made it clear they prefer war. They see the world as a dangerous and terrible place. Like the fascist leaders satirized in Starship Troopers, they say they believe it is better to be on the offensive, taking the war to the people who might wish us harm than playing defense. It is better to be an international aggressor - a bulldog with lipstick - than led by the misguided notion that attacking people itself makes the world a more dangerous place.

Read his full post.  (via BoingBoing)