Mr. Smith's Perspective

Pedagogical Tool Review:

2010-06-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools
by Richard Beach, Chris Anson, Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, and Thom Swiss

As the unit I’d like to teach revolves around wikis and blogs, I wanted to find a resource that not only included overviews of these technologies, but also other digital tools that can be used powerfully in the classroom. I also was hoping to find a resource that included theoretical underpinnings that would warrant their use in education. Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools seemed to fit the bill though it required a closer look if I’d like to use it as the actual text for a workshop I’ll be teaching soon. In light of the length of the title of my chosen tool, and given that it was written by multiple authors (not just Richard Beach), I will refer to this tool as “Teaching Using Digital Tools” and the voice of the book as “Beach.” I hope his colleagues will forgive me.

Since “Teaching Using Digital Tools” was written by four authors who were compiling observations from other teachers using digital technologies in their classrooms with actual students, meant that this volume was truly a collaborative effort on multiple levels. Having just read Scott Warnock’s Teaching Writing Online, there was a similar resource to compare it to.

Whereas Warnock shares his own experiences with digital tools, Beach looks at the practices of many instructors. Warnock book’s strengths are in helping teachers shift their f2f techniques and traditional thinking to online delivery tools, providing teachers with chapter-by-chapter prepping heuristics and offering summative guidelines along the way. Beach’s book is probably a good resource to take Warnock’s foundation to another level. This is because Beach offers so many specifics and examples of tools and contexts that an instructor who has already made the shift in their thinking toward e-learning would probably be looking for.

Warnock examines the instructor’s core approach to teaching and suggests types of tools that might work within that approach (CMS, email, the internet, the phone—and “Fancier Options:” Audio/Visual, Virtual Worlds, Games, etc). Beach speak more specifically about the effective use of searches, digital, note-taking tools (and lists several on page 30), blogs, feed aggregators, delicious.com, Google Reader, how to locate and annotate images, online mind-mapping software (41), and storage tools—just in one chapter alone (25).

The introduction encapsulates some of the common strategies the authors have observed from other instructors in how effective digital writing pedagogy is used-- such as guiding students to seeing “the purposes for using digital writing tools,” their social use, and benefits to reflection and developing a voice. Chapter one answers “Why Use Digital Writing to Engage Students?” Beach makes a case that digital tools have the potential of engaging online students, which will lead to more effective learning: “We believe that one of the larger purposes of using digital writing tools is to encourage students to learn to voice their ideas on their own initiative” (13). An illustration diagrams four types or phases of writing-related tasks: teacher- vs. student-initiated writing, and writing for a classroom assignment vs. writing for students’ peers or even a global audience. Each subsequent chapter will connect how its content relates back to these four phases in this diagram, with a goal to shoot to encourage Phase IV or Self-Initiated Writing as Beach believes it leads to increased writing, which in turn leads to improved writing.

As I looked at diagram more closely, it bears an uncanny resemblance to a 2001 article I read for ENGL 820 by Coomey and Stevenson, who describe a similar diagramming of tasks.

The end of chapter one explains a code readers will see throughout the book: “( @ = ).” Whenever the reader sees this code, the topic that follows the “=” sign indicates a topic that is further explored on a “Resource Wiki Website” developed especially to support the book. Beach practices what he preaches by expanding the educational material into the digital realm and expanding the conversation—something that Cheryl Ball maybe should have tried when she wrote “Show, Not Tell.”

The book covers technologies such as blogs, digital audio and video productions,”Designing and Editing Digital Writing, “Using Digital Tools for Formative and Summative Evaluation of Writing,” and “Fostering Reflection through E-Portfolios,” but offers the reader many examples of each. Again comparing it with Warnock, Beach’s chapter six on blogging covers teachers’ discussions on their specific experiences with blogging in the classroom (good and bad) and gives the reader a sense of when it is more successful and when it’s not (117). Warnock’s chapter on conversation focuses on student interaction merely through discussion boards, yet makes a passing reference to blogging under the topic of “Journals and Notebooks Online” (103) and peer review (112).

Beach goes on to nuance the use of “Blogging as Social Conversation,” and move student conversations into Phase Two writing (from the diagram), the public arena. This section is quite detailed as it connects the dots of student writing to global conversation and how this can impact the tone and form of writing students employ in their work (121). Beach also covers other types of blogs such as fictional blogging (where the writers take on a character’s voice), micro-blogging (using tools such as Twitter), classroom vs. individual blogs, educator blogs and cover a host of alternative platforms and sites (124).

The last chapter models what the book has been suggesting—that these tools can be used to develop conversations outside of the classroom and develop reflective writing practices. Beach invites the reader to “Join Online Communities Devoted to Teaching Digital Writing,” and “View and create Online Teacher Cases.” Here is where the accompanying wiki takes on another role for the reader/user, continued professional development.

“Teaching Using Digital Tools” is well-structured and quite useful with so many specifics. Similar to Warnock, Beach has a summarizing paragraph at the end of each chapter, to assist in quick retrieval of information. However, the power of this tool is in the accompanying wiki and how it ties in with various points of the text. The authors have created a space for further discussion and elaboration and are modeling what they believe to be useful. If a person, who doesn’t have the book, stumbles onto the webpage, they can utilize this information without having to purchase the book.

One thing that struck me as odd or ironic is that in spite of the fact the authors are still adding content to this wiki, and inviting commentary, there are not very many comments from the visitors. This could be because the readers are instructors who are occupied with their own courses or because the content is clear and requires little more to be added. It may be because I haven’t seen the authors responding to the comments that are there. It’s a good question which may point out a flaw in the content or sense of audience.

Conclusion:
This book is useful because it really helps teachers think outside of the box, and gives them specific places to look for examples and resources. It is in no way a manual and does not provide step-by-step processes in implementing these tools—nor do I think it needs to. At times, some descriptions of examples seem lengthy, but they do help the reader delve more into what it feels like to implement a particular tool for a particular educational objective. I would recommend instructors who are either still not convinced of the benefits of digital tools or who are hesitant to use them to get a copy of this book as viewing the examples should spark some ideas.

I would use this book in the context of teacher training or personal professional development. However, for obvious reasons, I obviously wouldn’t use this in an English Studies course for writing, as it is a resource for the teacher. Granted, if the course were a graduate course in English Studies pedagogy, that’s another story.

The book is readily available at the usual online bookstores (Amazon, Barnes & Noble), or interested readers can go to the publisher’s website at christopher-gordon.com. The book retails for $32.95, and because it came out last year, I haven’t seen a lot of used copies surface yet. On Amazon, there are 5 used ones for sale at over $52 and new for over $70!

I saw one review on Amazon.com in which the reviewer hailed “how the book organizes its discussions of digital tools according to the thinking/writing processes they promote… In this sense the book is more than a ‘how to’ manual in that it gets at how these tools can be used to promote writing.” I agree and with the added feature of the online wiki, the book possesses the potential for an every-growing list of updated examples and resources as well as opportunities for further conversation.

Ball, Cheryl. “Show, Not Tell: The Value of New Media Scholarship.” Computers and Composition. 21. 2004. 403–425.

Beach, Richard and Chris Anson, Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, Thom Swiss. Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digitial Tools. Norwood, MA: Christopher Gordon Publishers, Inc., 2009.

Beach, Richard and Chris Anson, Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, Thom Swiss. “Digital Writing Wiki.” PBWiki.com. Retrieved 11 June 2010. http://digitalwriting.pbwiki.com/.

Coomey, Marion and John Stephenson. “Online Learning: It Is All About Dialog, Involvement, support and control—According to the Research.” Stephenson, John, ed. Teaching and Learning Online: Pedagogies for New Technologies. London: Kogan Page. 2001. 37-52.

“Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digitial Tools.” Christopher Gordon Publishers Webpage. Retrieved 11 June 2010. http://www.christopher-gordon.com/Authors/beach.shtml.

Blog #5: "Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.'"

2010-06-05T20:07:00.000-07:00

Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” College English. 46.7. (1984) 635-652.

After reading Teaching Writing Online:How and Why, I was interested in looking at one of the sources Scott Warnock cited for his chapter on conversation (chapter 8). I was intrigued by Bruffee’s title and especially the notion of “The Conversation of Mankind,” as it seemed to expand the idea of writing to a more philosophical level and not just something required in the classroom and other contexts such as “everyday life, in business, government, and the professions” (642). Although, this article was published in 1984, it seemed to under gird some of the rationale behind using collaborative writing tools in the digital age these twenty-six years later.

The most notable concept to me is the idea that one’s thoughts are actually internalized conversations from the social sphere; what one thinks is based entirely on what one has heard or read—from what is in the social discourse (639). This reminded me of a concept from Peter Morville’s 2005 book Ambient Findability: “What we find changes what we become.” What we hear/read/see/experience influences our worldview and how we process subsequent new information after that.

Bruffee is not writing about how to find texts in a crowded society, rather the cyclical process of our expanding human knowledge. Humans encounter concepts in the social sphere, internalize them, turn them around and write them back out into the public sphere again, thus perpetuating the conversation: “Our feelings and intuitions are as much the product of social relations as our knowledge” (641) and “in every instance writing is an act, however much displaced, of conversational exchange” (642).

As an introvert, I at first felt a knee-jerk reaction against this idea, as I like to think of myself as someone who isn’t swayed by peer pressure and that any new information I encounter is sifted through my worldview and readjusted as a decisive act on my part. However, Bruffee isn’t talking about mindlessly being swayed by our peers. We all readjust because of what is external to ourselves, as I am adjusting to this new idea, but how I adjust may be different from someone else.

How does this all fit with wikis and blogs? Bruffee’s goal is to encourage teachers to “try collaborative learning and to help them use collaborative learning appropriately and effectively.” (636). Though he doesn’t really define “appropriate” or “effective,” perhaps, the strength of this article is that it doesn’t offer a set protocol on collaborative techniques or tools. Teachers just need to keep in mind that the greater conversation and indeed knowledge of mankind comes from communities of knowledge and they are disseminated from the language of those communities of knowledge (646).

As Kevin DePew mentioned the Burkean Parlour in one of our class sessions, the conversation is endless. Any way we can get our students to converse with one-another and to re-externalize those conversations through writing can be a boon to the greater body of knowledge and not just those of the individual students--something to think about.

Blog #4: Blended Learning Approach in Teacher Education: Combining Face-to-Face Instruction, Multimedia Viewing and Online Discussion

2010-05-23T17:25:00.001-07:00

Khine, Myint Swe and Atputhasamy Lourdusamy. “Blended Learning Approach in Teacher Education: Combining Face-to-Face Instruction, Multimedia viewing and Online Discussion.” British Journal of Educational Technology. 34.5. (2003) 671-675.

Having looked at wikis and blogs, I thought I’d step back to look at a more general study of blended learning, especially in context of teacher training. Khine and Lourdusamy’s article is also of interest as it deals with the National Institute of Education, “the sole teacher training institute in Singapore” (671). I had also been inspired by Oravec’s comment that “Because the weblog genre is simple in structure, it may lend itself easily to cross-cultural educational initiatives” (Oravec 618). So, it made sense to look at blended learning in other cultures.

The article looks at a 13-week course called “Teaching and Classroom Management,” which incorporates a multimodal approach to teacher training using a textbook along with content delivered on a CD-Rom, 6 weeks of face-to-face tutorial sessions, in-classroom practice teaching, along with online peer-to-peer interaction via a discussion board. Granted, the use of wikis and blogs was not specifically addressed, but the concept of peer-to-peer asynchronous interaction seemed to overlap.

Whereas content of this class had been traditionally communicated via traditional face-two-face lectures, this time around, the content would be found on a CD-Rom with “relevant classroom episodes, interviews with teachers, policy documents, reports and newspaper clippings on disciplinary problems in Singapore schools” (672).

Having taken Kathie Gossett’s New Media courses, I applaud the multimodal delivery of this content. However, it was never fully explained as to what “relevant classroom episodes” meant, or in what format was the interview content (video or audio only?). I still think the article is of interest because of this approach to teacher training. However, the summarization of the results seems to leave out a lot of potential links between causes and results.

The team doesn’t really mention the power of the first 6-weeks of face-to-face training. The class of roughly 20 students watched the CD-Rom module, and then participated in group activities and discussion time. The fact that the face-to-face sessions were scheduled in the first 6-weeks might have set up a strong camaraderie among the students, and yet that is never really pointed out.

“92% of the trainees agreed that the module was enhanced by the use of materials found on the CD-ROM” (674) and that “what seems to have been valued most in this exercise is the benefit of learning from peers” (675). But exactly how was this concluded? Are Khine and Lourdusamy merely going by survey results or was there a way they were able to measure these results via other instruments?

The authors claim the “appropriate use of technologies can make learning more interesting and enriching for students” (671), but again, how are they defining “interesting” and “enriching?” The students in this course are adult teachers, but could this approach be used in other learning contexts with younger pupils? This article leaves me with more questions than answers, and yet that really doesn’t bother me. The article (probably unintentionally) prompts me to think about possible methods in which further study could attempt to answer these questions.

Post #3: Posting now because of my trip

2010-05-23T17:20:00.000-07:00

Oravec, Jo Ann. “Bookmarking the World: Weblog Applications in Education.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 45.7. (2002): 616-621.

As the first two articles I mention in this course’s posts cited this article, I decided it might be interesting to see if Jo Ann Oravec said anything that could be useful for my purposes. Oravec immediately makes the case for two important and distinct uses of blogs in education: 1- (the use most-often cited) blogs can be used as a venue for students to create and post their own content and reflections, and 2- (the use I haven’t really seen mentioned in other articles), blogs can be a source of “useful information” and “high quality relevant material” (616).

Considering its brevity, this article does manage to cover many applications, benefits and drawbacks of blogs in the classroom. A couple of particularly appropriate applications of student blogging include strong supplementary journalistic and marketing/business training. These applications are strong because of a couple benefits of the blog format: its immediacy and potential for direct contact with the world (620). Although Oravec believes in blogging, she cautions against many drawbacks of blogs: potential for abuses with plagiarism, their constantly changing content, and possible movement to another URL, or even complete disappearance (618).

I found the article helpful and would recommend it to anyone who is still ambivalent about blogging’s academic usefulness. I would echo Oravec’s point that we’re so used to asking students to post to blogs, that often we don’t value the resource that they can be for finding information. However, Oravec doesn’t address what to do with the fact that blogs do not carry the same amount of weight or clout in academic discourse. Granted, this may be due to two more drawbacks she does mention—the issues regarding verification of information and potential problems with intellectual property and copyright. Some content may be created by published and highly-regarded scholars, yet blog content is often regarded as personal, anecdotal and it often lacks verification through the peer review process. However, I agree that blog content isn’t entirely useless.

One caveat about this article: whereas Oravec cites academic contributions in her article, these quotes mainly stated generalizations about blogs in higher education and really didn’t offer grounding to the claims made by Oravec. Although I believe the content is sound, I think Oravec should have included examples or results of studies to substantiate her claims. Definitely there should be more study on the praxis of blogging in the classroom.

Post #2: Use of Wikis in Graduate Course Work

2010-05-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

Bold, Mary. “Use of Wikis in Graduate Course Work.” Journal of Interactive Learning Research. 17:1. (2006): 5-14.

In the “Use of Wikis in Graduate Course Work,” Mary Bold of Texas Woman’s University, looks at wikis as a viable tool for collaborative work. As Williams and Jacobs discuss the development and use of blogs in their article mentioned in my entry of May 16, Mary Bold looks at the development of wiki technology in 1995 and its desirability in academic settings.

Defining a wiki as “a set of related webpages that can be authored collectively, typically without a special log-on or password entry” (5), Bold cites benefits of wikis:
1. “A collaborative workspace that can display documents immediately, with a minimal working knowledge of HTML tags” (6).

2. Collaborative changes can be made “live” whereas “by contrast, a collectively authored document in a CMS [content management system-DC] setting requires saving, uploading, and other transfer of the file among student-authors” (6).

3. Due to their ease of use and open-source code, wikis require little to no institutional support, financial or technical (6).

4. Bold claims “they are not usually vandalized,” but acknowledges that users can create misinformation and “unwanted changes” (6).

5. Conversely, if there are any issues, because multiple users have access, there can be multiple users assisting in page rebuilding if necessary (6).

6. Wiki instructions are relatively simple and therefore require few demands on teachers to assist their “lost” students. (7).

7. Wikis can allow instructors to delegate tasks to their students who are held responsible for posting, managing and maintaining their work instead of requiring the teacher at each step of the process (10).

8. Wikis can be used as part of group collaborative work or as part of individual submissions (8).

9. Wikis can be used in both informal and personal contexts as well as “formal and science-based” (11).

10. Bold claims that students like wikis (10).

Unlike Williams and Jacobs, Bold had not yet surveyed students specifically about using wikis, but has found past responses to indicate “the loss of interaction as a disadvantage in the online setting” (11) and students’ desire for fostering community. As the Williams/Jacobs article pushes for LMS’s to include blogs as part of the LMS package, Bold states that wikis should also be part of the features or plug-ins offered in CMS products.

Overall, Bold believes wikis don’t just help the student learn the curriculum better, but they help the student learn how to improve their skills in online interaction.

Bold cites very few drawbacks. One drawback has to do with the accuracy of the content added by the users or with the lack of experience many students have in creating content in the wiki format. Bold didn’t cite the emphasis on text-based content as being a drawback and only marginally showed an example of a wiki that contained any imagery.

I found the article handy however, as I wish to encourage new faculty to consider the benefits of wikis (and blogs) in their online and/or hybrid courses as they provide additional opportunities for peer-to-peer interaction.

Post #1: Exploring the Use of Blogs as Learning Spaces in the Higher Education Sector

2010-05-16T16:46:00.000-07:00

Williams, Jeremy B. and Joanne Jacobs. “Exploring the Use of Blogs as Learning Spaces in the Higher Education Sector.” Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. 20.2. (2004): 232-247.

In this article, Jeremy Williams and Joanne Jacobs cover a brief historic overview of the development of blog and blog technology, their use in the corporate sphere and ultimate expansion into the academic world. The article also includes the results of a survey they gave to their MBA students at the Brisbane Graduate School of Business at Queensland University of Technology. Written in 2004, their somewhat simple conclusion is “that blogging has the potential to be a transformational technology for teaching and learning” (232) but the article is useful for other reasons.

When initially including the use of blogs in an MBA course, Williams and Jacobs didn’t really tell their students what their goals or rationale were for having this blogging option in their curriculum. In hindsight, they viewed this as a mistake for only about half the class participated “actively” in contributing to the blog. The instructors were surprised to find that the students who “lurked” considered their lurking a valid form of participation, even though they didn’t contribute to the content. These are important things to consider when setting up blogs as an assessment tool in any higher education course.

Williams and Jacobs declare that “universities ought to give strong consideration to the setting up blog facilities within their learning management system (LMS).” The fact that blogging tools have now been added to Blackboard’s more recent versions indicates that other people and indeed the creators of LMS’s have agreed.

Granted, the article may be a little out of date, since some LMS’s have already adopted blogs into their tools and features. However, the survey questions reveal in what ways the blog can best contribute to the learning experiences in higher ed courses: in facilitating learning, facilitating reflection, increasing peer-to-peer student interaction and functioning as a learning tool. Any instructor who is considering using blogs in their courses should review this article to see the ways in which Williams and Jacobs believe they can improve using blogs in future courses. Instructors can then design their courses to use blogs to their best advantage.

New Course, New Types of Entries

2010-05-12T18:58:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog for ENGL 895, Teaching Writing from a Distance. In this course I hope to develop a brief workshop on the use of wikis and blogs in higher learning with the purpose of passing this information onto higher ed instructors.

I’ve been asked by my employers to create a workshop on the Use of Blogs and Wikis to present to our new faculty at the end of the summer, I thought I’d take advantage of this course to look into theoretical and practical issues and considerations of blogs and wikis in higher education.

Over the course of the next few weeks I will be posting reviews of articles that examine issues of digital tools in higher ed and teaching the teacher.

I guess it’s appropriate that I’ll be presenting some of my findings via blog entries.

Hope you find something useful.

D.

Authors-- They're Important IF You Want Them to Be??

2008-04-21T06:22:00.000-07:00

Although I agree that audiences can create their own meanings out of texts, the grand declaration of "The Death of the Author" is the pinnacle of hypocracy and hubris. It does seem that for someone to declare the death of anything, they're assuming a right to pronounce this moratorium over the views of all others.

As mentioned in the Maire ni Fhlathuin reading this week, a construction of the author can be made through his/her texts. I agree with this assertion and so it doesn't come to any surprise to me that marginalized groups are saying "HEY! Not so fast! Let US decide what's dead or not!"

However, whenever we start discussing texts in terms of Black Studies, Women's Studies, Queer Studies, I find myself bristling as it feels to me that the only way for some people to have their work discussed at all is if they place their work within the context of other texts whose authors share a limited commonality. That to me, isn't a well-informed way to categorize texts.

As stated in our assignment this week: "There is often the added assumption that readers can glimpse more than just the 'creative genius' at work, but that they can also read larger categories such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality etc as emanating from these works." Maybe so, but I don't think that's necessarily true.

Whenever I've had a man ask me "Why do women do that? " (whatever "that" is), I usually can't answer the question because "that" is usually something not all women do. I've had a British friend tell me that "The British do A and don't do B." Well, I've got a lot of British friends and I know from experience that her statements don't fit the behaviors of all and so I conclude she can't possibly speak for all British citizens. Her comments usually mean that "SHE does A and doesn't do B."

A writer who happens to be an African-American male may write a particular text not primarily because he's a person of color, but maybe because he's a particular individual. Does Bill Cosby speak for all Afr-Am people? Does Al Sharpton? Jesse Jackson? Chris Rock?

To infer that a reason an author writes a particular work in a particular way is because they are x, y or z leaves me with a feeling of claustrophobia. To delineate the merit or study of work by the background, sexuality or race of its author I think further marginalizes people, since it would appear we're not studying the work within a more centralized discourse.

To think that the reason I write any particular type of text is merely because of my race, nationality, gender, or sexual preference only tells part of the story. I write what I write because I am who I am-- which is all of the above AND more!

I say, forget the delineations! All authors are individuals with individual backgrounds, individual perspectives and individual experiences and their work should be read from that perspective and with that assumption.

Me? Write something like that?!

2008-04-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

For class this week, we were tasked with reading some samples of and ultimately writing a piece of slash fan fiction ourselves.

Now whereas, I think having us author work is a great touch to this course, I'm not exactly sure why we were forced to pick slash as opposed to any other choice. If the idea was to get us to try something new, posting any type of fan fiction would have been a new experience to me, but alas we had to write SLASH fiction (a term that sounds a little disturbing)-- which incorporates a "queering" (to whatever degree) of established characters.

According to Michel de Certeau (in Jenkins' accounting of "Textual Poachers"), there is an "ongoing struggle for possession of the text and for control over its meanings." The struggle is between the textual producers, "instituionally sanctioned interpreters" and those "multiple voices of fandom, who produce and share meanings from their own perspectives.

This exercise was to get us to participate in this struggle over text and possibly to get us to identify more closely to the "fandom" that wishes to not sit passively with a text, but to become active participants in the creativity surrounding that text.

I think writers of slash fan fiction have a reason or at least an inner desire to do it, but I'm just doing it because of this class assignment. It doesn't feel comfortable to me as I don't like altering others' characters. So to make this easier, I decided to choose characters from "This is Spinal Tap," as I think the "queering" idea already exists within the original story.

So, I came up with the beginning of what could become a longer piece, but due to time constraints and other commitments (and most importantly, becuase I didn't think it was necessary), I've stopped at two pages. Approaching this with some scriptwriting experience, I think it reads more like a script (without the proper formatting) and I'm not really a fiction writer in the long-form prose sense.

I think what I found to be even odder than writing and posting this piece was that within 24 hours, I had received a comment from someone saying they were looking forward to the next installment.

I feel really strange.

Wikipedia and the Collective Intelligence

2008-03-31T19:49:00.000-07:00

Henry Jenkins’ article “Interactive Audiences?” makes a good point when he discusses how fans found each other prior to the web. I can boast a former membership with the Original Beatles’ Fan Club back in the late 60’s, which was suddenly ended in 1970 when they split up. I still bear the scars.

Yet during the 70’s, the fans lived on and found Rick Rann’s memorabilia and Joe Pope’s fanzine “Strawberry Fields Forever” (SFF) and the numerous Beatlefests in various places (although I never went). Yes, we fans found each other, and as Jenkins also points out, we were self-organized and connected by affinities, not localities (137). But in those days, correspondence was notoriously slow. You’d send Rick a check in the mail and a couple weeks later, a small package would arrive at your doorstep, often long after you forgot what you had ordered.

Enter the Internet. Not only can fans interact on an immediate basis, but just everything feels faster, tighter and the world, smaller. Information can get to the bands more easily through the Internet--- as yesworld.com clearly shows: each year that the progressive rock back Yes goes on tour, they have a survey of the fans as to what “little known” fan favorite would we like to hear this tour. And they always listen.

Thanks to the Web, bands who haven’t played together in ages have found that they actually have a fan base, and after literally decades, artists like the Bonzo Dog Band, The Rutles, Roky Erikson and The Moon have gone on the road, much to the small number of loyal fans’ delight who held the lonely torch all those decades. Yet ironically, this has met with the demise of many hardcopy fan artifacts such as fanzines. The Moody Blues’ “Higher and Higher” and The Beatles' “Strawberry Fields Forever” are gone now—although I’m not sure, about SFF, as I’ve stepped away from the heavy fan base of the Beatles, believe it or not.

Jenkins talks about the jammers--the sniping of cultural signs (149)-- and the bloggers, stating that these new technologies have made grassroots networks possible.

This moves us to Wikipedia, as Stacy Schiff discusses the development of Wikipedia by ex-PhD candidate Jimmy Wales and the resistance of Encyclopedia Britannica to this collaborative archiving of all knowledge. The 17th most popular website on the planet, Schiff says that the argument is that collaboration doesn’t mean accuracy; it’s whoever outlasts opposing views regarding content. As the site continues to grow, there have been some triumphs for Wikipedia. If Britannica has 3 errors, Wikipedia has 4. I do think that’s a triumph, especially since Britannica “never claimed to be error-free.”

A long time reader of Wikipedia, today I became an account holder and actually added some content to the Authorship page in Wikipedia (thanks to the requirements of this course). I felt strange adding to someone else’s work, but decided to create my own subcategory on the “Auteur Theory and the Mantle of Authorship” as a springboard to someone else’s page on The Auteur Theory.

I wasn’t sure how this would be viewed, as Schiff mentions that Wikipedia now has over 1000 people policing content and someone else may not view my tie-in to Sarris as belonging to notions of authorship. A few hours later, when I came back to the site, my hesitation apparently had been well-founded. My entry was gone!

Since I thought it should at least stay up until the discussion for next class, I went back and added it again. According to Schiff, I can revert my comments a total of 3 times before being kicked off for 24 hours. We’ll see if my new authoring relationship with Wikipedia was only to last a day. One man’s “collaboration” is another man’s bullying. Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be outlasting my opposition.

Hypertextuality and Transmedia Storytelling

2008-03-23T20:12:00.000-07:00

Reading about the hypertextual and transmedial authorship of characters such as Batman and James Bond this week, I started thinking about the further decentralization of the role of the initiating author. As I’m not a big fan of fiction or graphic novel reading, I’ve never really considered the development of and purveyance of the iconic fictional characters we read about this week—James Bond and Batman specifically. I’ve seen Batman the television show and a few of the movies, but never immersed myself into other incarnations of the story. I’ve seen the first Matrix movie, but within 10 minutes of walking out of the theatre had unraveled the entire premise of the movie so much so that I wasn’t tempted in the least to sit through two sequels, let alone one. And now I see that what was on the screen was only a part of the story and I should have been searching for further information via their websites and short subjects.

Thanks to the readings this week, I am looking at these titles in a different light, but not to the extent that I wish to immerse myself in the back stories, participate in fan fiction or take the time to play a video game based in those worlds. Quoting Fiona Marrow (quoted in Jenkins’ article): “You can call me old-fashioned—what matters to me is the film and only the film. I don’t want to ‘enhance’ the cinematic experience by overloading on souped-up flim flam.” In this day of media bombardment, who has the time? I can’t even get into the long defunct television show Black Adder because I’ve never seen episode one! I have seen episode one of Red Dwarf, so that’s a show I can slip more easily in and out of… But am I writing stories with their characters? No. Am I playing video games based on their world? No. If I didn’t have a mortgage, full time job, adjunct teaching or a degree program to worry about, would I? No.

Yet, we’ve been asked to consider a favorite “multi-mediated on-going text in terms of our reading for this week,” and so I tried to think about how these ideas fit into the music world—(that’s where my fiction worlds are build) and decided to think about these ideas in terms of the Beatles. They are based on real people, with real lives, real talents, real birth certificates, but have been remediated across many texts in many media forms—one of the first was “Hard Day’s Night,” in 1964, while they were riding high on worldwide adulation. This is a film they actually appear in as themselves, but follow a fictionalized script of a typical day-in-the-life written by someone else. Later, not long after that and their second film Help (where they are depicted as living all together in an eccentric ultra-modern conjoined rowhouse--with four separate entrances all attached to the same sub-divided living area), they became animated caricatures by an American company with animation actors attempting bad English, let alone bad Liverpudlian accents, targeting child-fans of the group from 1965 to 1969 (I was one of them).

In 1968, the characters were adapted for older audiences in “Yellow Submarine,” but as the real Beatles were not too keen on how they had been depicted in the television show, wanted no part in the film—until they saw it. They enjoyed it so much, that they quickly threw together a tag on film of themselves recapping aspects of the film and asking the audience to join in for a round of “All Together Now” to sing themselves out of the theatres.

Forty years later, I figured the legend of the Beatles was probably just existing in the hearts and minds of Boomers who had been there but I was wrong. The Beatles and their songs have moved into Cyberspace with their own official website with their own sanctioned video games on the site. And to my astonishment have even been the subjects of younger fan fiction. If you Google “Beatles fan fic” up come 298,000 sites, although the amount of fan fic that has appeared seems to have been created during the first 10 years of the Internet and is no where near as pervasive as that of more recent characters or stories. Perhaps I didn't know where to look.

Obviously I wasn’t originally thinking about how Beatles producer George Martin and son Giles have recently created sort of “mash-ups” (if you will) of Beatles songs—having access to all the extant tracks of recordings and lifting melody lines from one song and blending them into the backing tracks of other songs, ultimately teaming up with Cirque du Soleil to create a choreographed visual experience of the songs in their Las Vegas acrobatics show, “Love.” Granted, George Martin IS the fifth Beatle and most say he has a right to do this. But even so, what happens to a Beatles song when only Paul McCartney or only Ringo Starr performs it? I’ve seen both on recent tours and whereas they were there too, it’s not the same.

And if you really want to get away from the original texts, throw in the veritable plethora of Beatles tribute bands such as 1964, the Eggmen, Rain, Me And My Monkey, The Fabfour, The Liverpool Legends... And throw in Broadway's tribute show "Beatlemania."

At the core of these performances I believe is an audience desire to hear that music performed live and perhaps to pretend what it might have felt like to feel the energy and the presence of the musicians performing them. Heck, if you had seen the real thing, you wouldn't have even gotten to hear the music for the screaming.

Ideas of interest from the latest readings included the idea of hypertextual characters who might have been created within one cultural context (such as James Bond) have to evolve and change with the times to stay popular. The idea that Hollywood is motivated to create transmediated titles if nothing more than for merchandising purposes kind of opened my eyes a little more. I know I’ve realized that when a title can be a board game and a t-shirt and a toy, that means more money is to be made, but having not delved into any particular title to that extent, I didn’t realize how pervasive and expected it has become for audiences to expand the experience. This is why “building worlds” is really how new movies are developed, for if you know the world the characters come from and exist in, then you can create as many sequels and offshoots as you wish and can afford to pay for.

I was definitely wondering about the Wachowski brothers and their willingness to take probably more credit for creating the world of The Matrix than they probably deserved. In fact, in his book Japanamerica, author Roland Kelts says that the world of the Matrix was “directly and openly indebted to several anime films in particular and to the style in general.” So, was The Matrix a further widening of an earlier myth rather than a creation of its own world?

"Authorless" Authorship and a Suggested Model for the Digital Age

2008-03-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

We've talked a lot about the producer/consumer continuum in this class, and all the people in between the two extreme points of that line. Are there some things that shouldn't have an author?

I guess that depends on how you are defining "author." I still maintain that if the basic alphabet of the created work is wholly comprised of and dependent upon the copyrightable, trademarked work of others, I should at least expect a sharing of authorship.

In my work experience, the companies I've worked for have deemed my graphics work as not really my authorship, and I've been fine with that. For me to create graphics for electrical distribution, paper production or on-the-job safety, I needed the input of others' work and had to comply with the requests of the producer and the script, which in turn relied upon standard practices in the field as well as requests from clients that certain content be included.

I don't have any problem that my name didn't feature somewhere in the videos, web products, CD-Roms or DVDs my work appeared in, as the entire existence of these products was for training purposes, with pragmatic goals, specific procedures to follow and cited outcomes for the learners. Granted, now and again the companies I worked for might have hired a director who added a great deal of originality or distinctness to the vision of the script, but again, the directors were "work for hire," and this "distinctness" or originality wasn't a necessary ingredient to the product so much as the procedures and information the products were sold to convey.

Toys and generally household appliances don't seem to have authors with household names, although James Dyson and Dave Oreck might be attempting to change this climate. I'm not sure what makes vaccuum cleaners rising over the rest of the world of appliances, but perhaps this is the beginning of things to come.

And speaking of changing climates, since much of my studies revolve around the music industry, there is much that has changed in the ideas around authorship and ownership within the music industry since the introduction of digital files. A new model is definitely needed as consumers no longer feel a responsibility to pay for the recorded music they listen to. I think the best model that was suggested has been by Bob Lefsetz, a former entertainment lawyer who has worked for years in the old model of the industry. He maintains in his blog "The Lefsetz Letter" (and for the most part I agree) that if the music is strong enough to attract an audience, the musician now needs to get closer to his/her audience-- through concerts, a web presence and direct contact (e-newsletters, blogs, personal videos, etc.)-- in order to communicate to their audience.

If musicians wish to maintain some sort of control or pass on intentionality to their listeners, this is more possible with a closer relationship. They need to stay in the industry for the long haul (this is to help maintain and develop their audience) and offer the sale of bodies of their work at concerts. Otherwise, the song will become a disembodied, decontextualized file that floats on its own or is shared from listener to listener and no connection is established. Of course, is it a disaster if the song be removed from its author or cohesive body of work? That's not for me to decide. Maybe it isn't...

I'm just speaking to those artists who might want to keep some of the control, intentionality and connection that was possible with the pre-digital model of musical authorship and distribution. If that's important to you, then you can no longer hide behind your distributor and expect the same compensation, because your distributor now may be 100's or 1000's of young people copying and sharing your work with their friends.

I'm wondering where record labels or distribution houses will be in a few years, as musicians can create recording studios with desktop software on their laptops with ever-increasing quality. Lefsetz suggests that gone are the days when stadiums are filled with a new act (I don't think he's looking at Hannah Montana as a serious musician but rather a corporate commodity or theatrical production), but he maintains those artists who can stay in the game and keep their audiences engaged across years stand the greatest chance of expanding their audiences and keeping them loyal.

My guess is that in a few short years, those who have been to a Hannah Montana concert may only sheepishly admit that they did so.

Authorship, Ownership and The Law

2008-03-02T20:38:00.000-08:00

I think anything that an artist, musician, writer creates should give him/her privileges of ownership, if all components are created by scratch. Privileges of copyright should be for a more limited amount of time than is currently allowed in my opinion.

Lawrence Lessig is a lawyer who will happily go to court over matters of public domain and believes that the current propensity for copyright to be extended to 95 years beyond the life of the creator is unconstitutional, as it locks up so much information that should be freed for others to use after a certain time period. Just as patents allow inventors to profit from their newly created technologies for a time (17 years), and then opening them up to the public fosters greater creativity in society, so should copyrightable material.

I’m not sure why it’s even up for debate that if someone creates a work and it was inspired by someone else’s work (because face it, who’s work isn’t to some degree?), the creator should be compensated for his/her efforts. I feel the exception is when a work is entirely comprised of splicing together elements of other people’s work.

For instance, if someone on Youtube creates a tribute to Hugh Laurie using images from his television shows, and using “I’m Too Sexy” as a music bed for the images, I personally don’t think that warrants the title of “author” or creator on the part of the one who put the video together. Perhaps those creators could be called “compilers” of some sort.

To me those that create mash-ups don’t fully fall into the same category as photographers because even though mash-up-makers are picking music from one source and visuals from several other sources, and making selections as to when each clip stops and starts and in which order it will be placed in the final piece, the “creator” didn’t really use any crayons of his own beyond his editing software. By that I mean, the creator made no active decision about lighting, direction, costuming, sound mixing, etc. He only used other people’s work (Right Said Fred’s music and the cuts of “A Bit of Fry and Laurie,” “House,” or production Laurie’s been in) to compile this “tribute.” The image of Hugh Laurie is something the mashup editor didn’t create and to some degree should be left within Laurie’s control.

I can hear Gaines discussing the tensions concerning “originality” and how the creator always invests something of himself (his mind expressed) in a work. That tugs at the original feelings of the French and later Time Incorporated v. Geis concerning the Super 8mm footage of the Kennedy assassination, concluding that if the author has put some originality into a work, it’s considered original; if he hasn’t, it’s not. “Originality does not imply novelty; it only implies that the copyright claimant did not copy from someone else (Gaines, I believe is quoting Sarony’s suit, 58).” I say, here, here!

Corporate Authorship

2008-02-25T06:15:00.001-08:00

Corporate authorship hires artists, musicians, writers (etc.) to create projects in keeping with an overarching corporate agenda. In the past, it could be said that the Roman Catholic Church participated in corporate authorship by hiring architects and artists to design, construct and adorn its houses of worship, echoing and supporting the church’s values and image. During the Hollywood studio system, individual studios would hire individuals on every tier of film production to create movies which were hopefully going to turn a profit for the studio, in keeping with its overall image and ethos.

How corporate authorship is similar to traditional concepts of authorship is that the products can still be purchased and enjoyed by many, many people. How it is different is that virtually all of the decisions made are by committee and maintain an eye on the over all corporate goal at all times.

One way cultural authorship can differ from cultural intermediaries discussed last week is that sometimes intermediaries stumble upon a product that’s already created outside of its existence, yet try to adapt to it in order to benefit from it. The work of David Mamet, for instance was what it was outside of the marketer’s hands, but they had to work with each of Mamet’s financial successes or failures in order to market the next piece. The Beatles already was an act before manager Brian Epstein came along and worked on their image. Epstein didn’t have a corporate entity originally set up before he managed The Beatles; the group’s basic talent was already there, their goals were in place yet Brian Epstein approached them to change their image from more rough-and-tumble to suits. Once however, Epstein had achieved success through The Beatles, subsequent acts he booked followed “suit.”

Sammond’s book about the corporate manufacturing of the ideal American child is a very interesting idea, as I think these notions feed directly into the era that I am most interested in--the 60’s. I really think that a lot of adult Americans were broadsided by what happened during the mid to late 60s because they must have believed this image of the ideal child and didn’t expect a rebellion from it. Social conformity was so important at this time because the atomic bomb and communism were looming on the horizon and superficial conformity made it easier for patriotic Americans to spot those who didn’t agree.

I think that corporate authorship is found everywhere-- in academic settings, scientific communities, religious denominations, political parties, private corporations and anywhere unity is needed for furthering of power and/or sustainability.

Week 4- part 2

2008-02-11T20:54:00.000-08:00

I should have included a segment of the play... Here are the first 7 pages:
Please forgive that the formatting didn't carry over. This week's assignment can be found below it. Yes, it's long, but I don't have a link where I could have placed the content.
Mr. Smith

SEMI-DETACHED
a play in three acts
by D. Cooke
April 25, 2007
Copyright © 2007 by D. Cooke
XXXX XXXXX XXXXX XX
Virginia Beach, VA 23464
757.XXX.XXXX
WGA No. VLCA1D090EBD

CHARACTERS
JENNIFER MITCHELL, 45
THOMAS PAXTON, 59
JONATHAN PAXTON, 55, THOMAS' BROTHER
KATHRYN BELILES-PAXTON, 40-50, JONATHAN'S WIFE
ANNIE DALRYMPLE/FAN, 40, ESTATE AGENT
BRIAN BEARSDLEY/FAN, 40, JENNIFER'S FIANC…
IRENE WOLFORD/FAN, 70, A NEIGHBOR
CAMERON, 40s, A FAN WITH A CAMERA AND A WEBSITE
TIME
May 2002
PLACE
A Victorian semidetached home (aka duplex) in Egham, England.
The exterior is a standard middle-class English neighborhood.
SYNOPSIS OF SCENES
Act 1
Scene 1- front of duplex - late morning
Scene 2- Jennifer's kitchen - 4 hours later
Scene 3- Jennifer's living room - continuing
Scene 4- front of duplex - continuing
Scene 5- front of duplex - continuing
Scene 6- front of duplex - continuing
Scene 7- front of duplex - 2 hours later
Scene 8- Thomas' living room evening (6:30-ish) - continuing
Scene 9- Thomas' living room - (noonish) - the next day
Act 2
Scene 1- Thomas' living room- morning - a few days later
Scene 2- Front of duplex- Thomas' side - morning - a few days later
Scene 3- Jennifer's living room - morning - a few days later
Scene 4- Back of duplex - evening - later that day
Scene 5- Front of duplex - afternoon - one day later
Scene 6- Thomas' living room - continuing
Scene 7- Thomas' living room - a few days later
Scene 8- Park (Thomas) - 10 minutes later
Act 3
Scene 1- Thomas' living room- 10 minutes later
ACT ONE
SCENE 1
(Lights come up on a duplex [semidetached]. The two mirroring flats are built on a single platform which turns in the center stage. The front and back have exterior walls, the sides are open, revealing the interiors of both flats. The set starts with both front doors facing the audience. There is a low stone wall which can pull away from center stage as needed. CAMERON, a fan, holds a CAMERA and sits on the wall as THOMAS PAXTON shuffles to his flat with a couple of plastic GROCERY BAGS.
Thomas, in his 50's, is good looking, but is disheveled. His hands and old clothes have splatters of different colored paint on them. If he hadn't pulled out his keys, we might have mistaken him for a homeless man. He walks with difficulty. His flat has no number on it. The stage-left flat has a 34 on the door.
Cameron jumps up to take a picture. Fumbling with his keys, Thomas rushes up the stage-right walkway and into the house, dropping one of the bags midway up the walkway to his flat. Cameron hesitates. He decides to retrieve the bag. JENNIFER MITCHELL carries a ROLLING SUITCASE and a small piece of PAPER, obviously tired and looking for the right house. She shuffles up the path to the door of the other flat. Cameron stiffens and turns around to leave without the bag. Jennifer smiles at Cameron)
JENNIFER
(cheerfully)
Hello.
(Cameron doesn't acknowledge her and quickly leaves. Jennifer frowns and looks at her paper. She looks at the house and sees 34 on her door. She fumbles for her KEYS and notices the bag of groceries in Thomas' yard. She looks around and puts the suitcase down and cautiously approaches the divide of the yard. She deliberates what to do. Hesitantly and still with her keys in one hand, she goes and picks up the bag and looks at its contents. Thomas opens his door just as she's looking through it. Jennifer stops)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
Oh, h-hi! I'm sorry to... I know this looks really bad.
(She stops looking and walks to him. Thomas comes out. Jennifer holds the bag to him, accidentally dropping her keys in the bag)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
I'm not being nosey, honest. I just saw the bag in your yard. I didn't know if someone forgot it or what.
(Thomas grabs the bag from her)
THOMAS
(slowly and cold)
You may get off my lawn.
JENNIFER
(nods)
Sorry.
(She walks back over to her side of the yard. Thomas makes a beeline for his door and slams it behind him)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
(sighs)
Great.
Jennifer picks up suitcase and fumbles for keys. They are nowhere)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
Oh no.
(She sets the suitcase back down and feels through her purse, her pockets and looks around on the ground. No luck)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
I just had them!
(She retraces her steps in her mind to when she had the bag. She freezes and slowly looks up to Thomas' front door. She shakes her head and mumbles to herself as she approaches Thomas' door)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
(mumbling)
Great. Hi. I just gave you my keys!
(She pauses and taps on Thomas' door. Nothing happens)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
Hello?
(She taps again)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
Hello?!...
(She gets on her knees and speaks through the mail drop in the door)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
Look I hate to trouble you, but... I'm afraid I can't leave as I've just given you my keys!...
(She looks into the mail drop and alternately talks)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
Please check the bag I just handed you? I think they're in there. Please? Can you hear me?
(She gets up and walks over to a window next to his front door. Thomas quietly opens the door and stands silently in the doorway. His eyes are steel. Jennifer taps on the window)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
Look, I just arrived in England and I have nowhere to go... without my keys!
(Jennifer turns back to Thomas' front door and gasps)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
I'm sorry, I didn't know you were there. Were they in the bag?
THOMAS
Very clever...
(He reveals keys to her and throws them onto his front walk)
THOMAS (CONT'D)
(livid)
Get out!
(Thomas slams door. Jennifer hesitates and storms up to his door, stooping in front of his mail drop)
JENNIFER
(yells loudly into mail drop)
Nice to meet you too!
(She tries to slam the mail drop. She pinches her finger in the drop)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
Ow! Dang it!
(She starts back to her door, stops, then remembers to go pick up the keys)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
Off to a great start! I need food. And a shower. And a nap.
(She goes up to her front door. She puts key in lock and pulls and pulls. The door won't budge. Finally she pushes and it gracefully opens)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
(mumbles)
D'oh.
(She disappears inside. We hear her yell)
JENNIFER (CONT'D)
Brian Beardsley! You are so dead meat!
(She slams the door as the lights go out. The duplex turns clockwise to reveal her side of the structure)
End of Scene 1.

Week 4- Corporate Gatekeepers

2008-02-11T19:52:00.001-08:00

This week we read about those corporate gatekeepers in the various arts “fields” (to use Bourdieu’s term)—literary editors, social networks, traditions which would be appropriately termed “industrial auteurship.”

Edwards knocks down the auteur theory stating that it was primarily devised to give an academic framework of discussion, then proceeds to discuss the decisions surrounding David O Selznick’s acquisition and adaptation of “Rebecca” as being firmly grounded in creating a brand for SIP and differentiating its products from other studios.

Schatz too looks at the entire picture surrounding film production and marvels how well-oiled it was for so long. He maintains the executives were what made the system great and what made it work.

Curran too discusses the commerce surrounding artistic decisions but his article should have been called "Why, Oh Why Can't More Scientific Books Get Reviewed: My Friends and I Would Sell a Lot More!"

In this vein of logistical and commercial consideration, I would like to play the part of a theatrical producer who has been handed a script by a little-known playwright named D. Cooke who is hoping the producer's small reparatory theatre would be able to produce her play entitled “Semi-detached.”

Dear Ms. Cooke-

We would like to thank you for your recent submission. However, there are several concerns our company’s production staff has with the current draft of your script, “Semi-detatched.”

1- We are confused by the logistical structure of the set as you have suggested it in your script. We feel that to fully produce the two apartments as being able to move together and apart may prove expensive for the budget of our company. Also, we are a theatre in-the-round and the ideas for your set do not lend themselves to a surrounding audience.
2- We notice that one character, Mrs. Wolford appears only in one scene in the first act, but that Brian only appears in the last scene of Act 2. May we suggest that Mrs. Wolford be changed to her nephew, so that the same actor could portray both characters?
3- We were wondering if you’ve already created the necessary peripheral musical pieces as you did not include them with the script? Do you have recordings of these already, as our staff does not have the resources to replicate the type of music you’ve suggested for Thomas’ character.

Until we can come to an agreement about these logistical concerns, we will not be able to proceed in a production of this piece, although we would like to further discuss ways we could reach a win-win situation.

The general tone and attitude fit well with our company and as you pointed out, we do have actors on hand who fit your characters descriptions and would do well with the material. We would love to see another draft of your work upon further discussion with you.

Thank you again for this submission.

Mr. Smith of
Mr. Smith’s Reparatory Theatre Company

Week 3-- Humanism vs. Structuralism?

2008-02-04T06:37:00.000-08:00

It’s difficult to say where I fall on the spectrum of humanism vs. materialism, author and subject (etc.), because whereas the artist in me says that an artist’s/author’s work is valid no matter if she’s commissioned, subsidized, appreciated or ignored, the pragmatist in me says that many artists are motivated by the money offered them via corporate entities and must be driven by the rules in which they operate. Whenever corporate institutions are involved, the purity of the author’s voice is diminished and can even be silenced.

The optimist in me prefers to focus on the artist/author and the way her background influences the types of projects she‘ll take on. I’d like to believe most of the time, an author wouldn’t be involved in a project unless there was some sort of value in it—even if it’s a project they don’t agree with. Even if a friend of theirs asked for their participation… Or perhaps money was tight and they just plain needed the money.

I know that what influences me when I like a piece (usually musical), is a sense of the biography of the one who created it. If I like a piece, I often try to find out something of the creator’s background either in biographical information or if given the opportunity, in person. I really haven’t been surprised by their actual personalities when I’ve met them, as I’ve felt that the work did a good job of revealing the sort of personality behind it.

Because of my experience with artists/musicians, I do believe one’s biography is communicated through one’s work and doesn’t fully ever separate from the originator. To a good extent, I feel that trying to separate the author from the work is a futile and confusing activity. I can see where if when someone is first acquainting themselves with a work, and they don’t know the artist/author at all, then they have to fixate more on the mere text itself. However once the reader begins to assemble meaning out of the work, as sense of the artist begins to form as well.

If I don’t like a piece, I have no interest to find out more about the one who created it.

This week’s readings step slightly away from the complete death and disregard of the author in Foucault’s “What is an Author?” He may side to a degree with the audience as creating the meaning, but at least he posits that the by-line of a work does provide an “author-function” and that going back to the originator of a practice often means having to go back and look at the original author.

Kompare’s essay complicates matters when examining the author in the collaborative setting of television production, which by no means allows pure creation inside a bubble. Kompare definitely echoes Becker, and the necessity of standards and audience expectations.

Glass’ book discusses the somewhat new phenomenon of often introverted authors as mass media celebrities and the different ways in which the author becomes situated within the worlds of intellectual property, mass production, image, changing political and legal ideologies and so on.

In this day and age, it would appear that the author cannot entirely remain a mere faceless name on a book, as publishers have expectations of using the author as a co-promoter of his/her book. Another aspect points to the public, which cannot be told what to buy simply because a publisher puts a book out there or the author show up for a book-selling.

Musings over Art and Technology

2008-01-27T17:03:00.001-08:00

How does technology determine what we imagine Art to be?

I think technologies such as photography and mass production has definitely changed what the privileged classes once considered Art. In the old days, the most accurate representation of a nobleman—or the most accurate depiction of how he wished to be seen—was the goal of the artist. However, with the development of cameras which could readily and precisely reproduce an image of the subject, art was then viewed as more expressive than photographic. This lead to a sort of playing with the medium of paint itself, such as in the impressionist, cubist and modern art movements which followed the invention of the camera. The upper classes were now not the only ones who could have an image hanging in their homes, however, they were the only ones who could afford an original.

Technology influences how Art is prepared, depending on how it will be displayed-- from the first magic lantern shows, phenakistoscopes (drawings arranged on a circular wheel and viewed through slits behind the wheel into a mirror), zoetropes (on short strips of paper, put into a cylinder and viewed through slits in the side as it turns), thaumatropes (bird in cage—only part of one image on one side of a card, with the other part on the other attached to a string), to silent film, sound film, filmic “improvements” such as Technicolor and cinemascope, television, on to computer screens, and the newest digital displays with greater detail than ever before.

The Internet has allowed massive distribution of Artistic work within seconds of its uploading. Access to digital replications of Art is immediate and global. The fact that Art can become a digital file which can then be copied and disseminated with no generational loss has affected our understanding of not only what original art is but what ownership is.

Did tools change what Art is?

Not to digress, but I think of “2001: A Space Odyssey” when asked a question like this, because my title for Kubrick’s masterpiece is “Tools and Turf.” In the film we watch cavemen fighting over meat with bones used as tools, which when thrown into the air dissolves into a spaceship floating gracefully through the universe (new tools; new turf).

In one sense, Art started with the cavemen blowing pigments around their hands and leaving the outlines of their hands on cave walls, or depicting animals in motion, possibly assisting them in “the hunt.” Art would remain irreproducible for centuries until people like Gutenberg, Dore’ and Blake developed techniques in printing and learned how to create plates of artwork which could be printed and mass produced. Further improvements of production followed with screen printing and the prepping of prep of materials within digital computer applications. Originally, art would be displayed hanging often framed on a wall, but now it can turn up literally almost anywhere—on a t-shirt, postcard, television broadcast or youtube viral film.

How did institutions of the 19th and 20th centuries (corporate, academic, creative) shape authorship and complicate the lone wolf/creative genius?

Institutions influence and shape the standards of “craft:” a creator of a written (or other type of) text has certain hoops he/she must jump through to be considered up to standard. In American film studios, the development of screenplay formats as well as structures (3-acts and a denouement, etc) must be achieved for a script considered a “serious” submission.

Academic testing standards as well shape if a student can continue on or must relearn the current standards for each grade level. As Howard Becker said in an essay last week, standards make things easier not only for the institutions that are going to display or promote certain work, but it’s also easier for the audiences to know what to expect.

My First Blog Entry

2007-10-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my first blog entry!

Pardon me while the title of this blog plays with a notion of Authorship as it used to relate to women writers. Before the 20th Century, women were not to become writers, so really motivated, privileged women chose to create a masculine pen name, and thus my obvious cliched choice of "Smith."

This echoes another question of "Can a writer truly depict his/her inner soul, or will it to some degree always be veiled behind not only a nome de plume, but a different personality?" Generally, I tend to feel free enough to disclose a good chunk of my personality in my writing, and yet... (insert ominous music here)... there is that which I feel it is my right to keep to myself, so full disclosure is not promised nor expected here.

I do promise to be the person who puts the words together on this page, but full authorship I cannot claim, as I am allowing the designer from Blogspot to fashion the look and layout of the page. Furthermore, isn't it the audience who takes what they wish from any given work?

Regarding favorite authors: there are a paltry couple in the written sense (Fiction: Bradbury, Motivational: Covey). The "authors" that have most inspired me though have been musical-- Pete Townshend, John Lennon, Ray Davies. Interesting to consider about these inspirational lyric writers is that they didn't go to university to learn how to express themselves, yet they spoke directly into the way I was processing the world.

"Are they true authors?" comes the question oft-asked in last night's discussion. According to my own definition of author, the answer is an enthusiastic "Of course!" My view is that anyone who can create something from nothing is an author of sorts-- whether he/she was paid to do it, whether or not she/he needed the money, or if anyone academic recognizes their effort.

Again, the next question of "But what if they suck?" bounces around the inside of my head. Quality, as beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and for me to tell someone else to dismiss an author simply because I think "they suck" is implying I'm in a position of authority to tell others what to think. I am not. To me, those that "suck," are still creative people, and often they can still make a lot of money (although not from me).

The "outsider artist," Henry Darger spent decades creating a massive (over 15,000 pages!) illuminated manuscript entitled "In the Realms of the Unreal." Did this work dent the New York Times best seller list? No. Did it deserve to? Hmmm... My opinion sides with "No." Do Darger's emotional and mental issues factor into my view of Darger as a writer? Possibly, but then this moves us into issues of what does it mean to be educated? What does it mean to be "properly trained?" Darger stopped attending school very early on.

Is it possible for a person whom society would regard as educationally or mentally deficient (not in keeping with generally recognized standards of performance) to be an author?

Hmm... More complications.

Mr. Smith