Introducing On the Same Page (A Study in Language and Intersubjectivity)

This video introduces the "On the Same Page" (OtSP) project, a collaborative study in participatory sense making that includes clinical/neural psychology, language/narrative and performance art. It is a project initiative within the SITE initiative in the Department of Psychology at Umeå University, Sweden.

My component of the project involves the opportunity to theorise the expansion of language in the On the Same Page Project. Embodied communication and the semiotics of the three-dimensional are just two areas that are outside the realms of verbal language but that at the same time define and support the space we share when we communicate with each other with spoken and written language.

Symbolic modes that are bound up with the spatial -  for example clothing, body modification (such as tattooing) and gender play -  are examples that are common for negotiating the social today. These realms of communication can be seen as exemplified in the gesture. Sign language is perhaps the most developed mode for gestural communication, but we all use gesture to communicate. Gestures are shared as nodes in the cultural fabric of reality. In fact I would argue that gestures are a primary mode for expression and experimentation within the components of social identity today. New media, such as video games, exploit gesture as a mode of communication to both convey narrative and engage in play.

My contribution to OtSP is to take up the non-verbal elements that are aspects of communication and place them in broader communicative contexts. The spatial is perhaps the most obvious of these broader contexts. I look forward to experimenting with how performance can intersect with shared spatial codes to result in evidence of intersubjectivity in relation to communication and ultimately identity and meaning. My hope is that the results of these experiments will be in the direction of contemporary narrative studies.

Preserving Digital Literature: 'Alleph: A Self Portrait' by Sakab Bashir (2003)

'Alleph: A Self Portrait' won a BAFTA Interactive Arts Award in 2003 for its author Sakab Bashir. The work is no longer available online, but I include some screen shots here from a prolonged study I made of it as part of my graduate work for a earlier incarnation of my PhD thesis. 'Alleph' is a beautiful multimedia production in which links opened to audio and video loops. Seven spaces linked together to provide an allegory of the major stages of life. Material was lifted from the 12th Century Sufi poem The Conference of the Birds and intertwines with material sampled from popular films from the 20th Century, images of a school, a prison, a hospital, a workshop and a menhirs on a hill. There are adaptations of seven verse stories from The Conference of the Birds in Alleph; ‘A Pauper in Love’, ‘The Heron and the Sea’, ‘Rabe’eh and the Two Grains of Sand’, ‘The Ambiguous Courtesan’, ‘The Devil Complains’, ‘Joseph and the Well’ and ‘The Martyrdom of Hallaj’. Titles flowed across the screen and one manipulated and navigated the text of 'Alleph'. As one navigated further through the work the flowers opened around the main image, thus positioning the reader in the looping structure of 'Alleph' (it resumed again once the final image had been completed for links and media).

I present a few screen shots here to give an idea of what 'Alleph' looked.

Social Media as Academic Economy

A video of my presention at the Social Media Knowledge Exchange conference, Center for Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge 3 July 2013.

Abstract
Social media, or shared user generated content that is most often found on the Internet within large communities centered on a publishing platform, represents a part of an economy, or a system with values and rewards based on exchange. By engaging with their work via social media academics participate in a knowledge economy, at the center of which is a projected or extended self. By developing expertise in the use of social media value can be created in the knowledge economy related to strength of network, profile and branding, prestige, access to knowledge, dissemination and authority or expertise.

In this presentation I attempt to:

1. Construct a rational for using social media as an academic
2. Explore some of the principles for using social media
3. Suggest approaches to research on social media as objects of study or tools.

The companion site for this presentation is Transmedial Reality: A Toolkit for Working with Social Media for Researchers at http://transmedialreality.wordpress.com/

The slides from the presentation:

Social Media as Academic Economy from Jim Barrett

Dial-a-Poem Documentary BBC4

Brian Patten, one of the original Liverpool poets, explores how radical, subversive and occasionally risqué poetry - rooted in the counter-culture of the late 1960s - became available to a mass audience at the end of a phone line for the first time. 

In this radio documentary I speak about the role Giorno Poetry Systems played in my formative years and how we can today critically relate Dial-a-Poem to so much of the media ecology we have around us. Right click on the image and save link to hear an archived version of the production.

Dial-a-Poem changed the public face of poetry for generations.

Producer: Llinos Jones
A Terrier production for BBC Radio 4.

Virtual Worlds, Machinima and Cooperation over Borders (Published in 'Sans Public')

Image of the avatars of Isabelle Arvers and Jenna Ng from the upcoming publication Understanding Machinima

Cooperation over borders between individuals and groups is possible using online three-dimensional virtual worlds. This cooperation occurs in the production of art, research, teaching and learning, and performance as well as in building social, professional and personal contexts. The borders that are crossed can be geopolitical, generational, spatial and embodied. In order to maintain coherence for people to meet, talk, build, write, perform and exchange in virtual worlds, a sense and understanding of place is required. Such human activities as meeting are reliant on a shared space and place. This chapter integrates the idea of sharing places in examples of how virtual worlds can provide common spaces and places from a series of projects involving art, documentation, teaching and communication. By using examples of one artist’s project and several machinima – videos made using screen-capture software on computers, to film places and avatar actors in virtual worlds – I argue these virtual worlds can enable cooperation over a variety of borders through sharing.

FULL ARTICLE AVAILABLE HERE

The Immersive Internet: Reflections on the Entangling of the Virtual with Society, Politics and the Economy

"The Immersive Internet provides the first omnibus account of the emerging world-view of people who spend most of their quality time mediated by computer-based technologies. It should be taken seriously by anyone trying to design a liberal arts curriculum for Humanity 2.0." – Steve Fuller, University of Warwick, UK

The Immersive Internet Reflections on the Entangling of the Virtual with Society, Politics and the Economy will be released by Palgrave Macmillan on Friday 29th March 2013. The internet has begun to develop into a much more immersive and multi-dimensional space. Three dimensional spaces and sites of interaction have not just gripped our attention but have begun to weave or be woven into the fabric of our professional and social lives. The Immersive Internet – including social media, augmented reality, virtual worlds, online games, 3D internet and beyond – is still nascent, but is moving towards a future where communications technologies and virtual spaces offer immersive experiences persuasive enough to blur the lines between the virtual and the physical. It is this emerging Immersive Internet that is the focus of this book of short thought pieces – postcards from the metaverse – by some of the leading thinkers in the field. The book questions what a more immersive and intimate internet might mean for society and for each of us.

Contents

1. Postcards from the Metaverse: An Introduction to the Immersive Internet; Dominic Power and Robin Teigland
2. Niggling Inequality: A Second Introduction to the Immersive Internet; Edward Castronova
3. The Distributed Self: Virtual Worlds and the Future of Human Identity; Richard Gilbert and Andrew Forney
4. Meta-dreaming: Entangling the Virtual and the Physical; Denise Doyle
5. Individually Social: Approaching the Merging of Virtual Worlds, the Semantic Web, and Social Networks; Francisco Gerardo Toledo Ramírez
6. Virtual Worlds as Radical Theater: Extending the Proscenium; Anthony M. Townsend and Brian E. Mennecke
7. Virtual Worlds and Indigenous Narratives; James Barrett
8. The Immersive Hand: Nonverbal Communication in Virtual Environments; Smiljana Antonijević
9. Discovering the 'I' in Avatar: Performance and Self-Therapy; Alicia B. Corts
10. Reflections and Projections: Enabling the Social Enterprise; Steve Mahaley, Chuck Hamilton and Tony O'Driscoll
11. Added Value of Teaching in a Virtual World; Inger-Marie Falgren Christensen, Andrew Marunchak and Cristina Stefanelli
12. Play & Fun Politics to Increase the Pervasiveness of Social Community: The Experience of Angels 4 Travellers; Maria Laura Toraldo, Gianluigi Mangia, Stefano Consiglio and Riccardo Mercurio
13. Framing Online Games Positively: Entertaining and Engagement through 'Mindful Loss' of Flow; Müberra Yüksel
14. Inhabitants of Virtual Worlds, Players of Online Games - Beware!; Antti Ainamo and Tuukka Tammi
15. Relationships, Community, and Networked Individuals; Rhonda McEwen and Barry Wellman
16. Gemeinschaft Identity in a Gesellschaft Metaverse; Cynthia Calongne, Peggy Sheehy and Andrew Stricker
Sorting out the Metaverse and How the Metaverse is Sorting Us Out; Isto Huvila
17. On the Shoulders of Giants: Understanding Internet-based Generative Platforms; Jonny Holmström
18. Social Norms, Regulatory Policies, and Virtual Behavior; Andrew Harrison, Brian E. Mennecke and William N. Dilla
19. Self-organising Virtuality; Rick Oller
20. Making Currency Personal: The Salutory Tale of the Downfall of the DomDrachma; Matthew Zook
Afterword; Tom Boellstorff

Call for Literary Works for ELMCIP anthology of European Electronic Literature

Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP), a collaborative research project funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) JRP for Creativity and Innovation, seeks submissions of electronic literature from European writers and practitioners for its upcoming anthology. We are looking for innovative literary works by European authors that take advantage of digital media and computation.

Submissions will be accepted to September 30, 2011.

The anthology will provide a sample of Europe’s diverse electronic-literature practices. It will include around thirty works along with teaching materials from educators interested in electronic-literary practices. The anthology will be published online and on a cross-platform DVD.

All content will be offered under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 3.0 License allowing the disc to be installed, duplicated, and shared by individuals, libraries, and educational institutions. The intent is to provide educators, students and the general public with a free curricular resource containing a variety of examples of electronic literary works.

Works will be selected based on the following criteria:

• European diversity: to represent a broad cross-section of authors and artists from different European cultures.
• Formal diversity: to represent a broad sampling of approaches to electronic literature demonstrating the influence of multiple modes of practice and different types of interdisciplinary art practice.
• Pedagogical relevance: the committee will attempt to select a range of works appropriate for teaching in secondary and university classroom settings

Submission Guidelines:

• Authors may submit two works.
• Works may be in any European language.
• At least one author should have been a resident of a European country at the time the work was created.
• Previously published works will be accepted for submission.

Submissions will only be accepted via the ELMCIP Knowledge Base: http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase.

See detailed information: http://elmcip.net/story/call-works-elmcip-anthology

On behalf of the Anthology editors:

Talan Memmott, Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH)

Maria Engberg, Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH)

David Prater, Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH)

Virtual Identities

Part of a series of interviews we made for a film that was presented at Educa 2010 today.

Observing Three Learning Situations

As part of the Environments for Teaching and Learning course I observed the work of three educational practitioners in learning and teaching situations. In choosing the settings for the sessions I attempted to diversify the spaces. The first of the three I chose was a traditional classroom with a centre ‘stage’ at the ‘front’ with equipment and a desk. In the classroom the learners were well defined as an audience and sat in rows separate from the leader of the session. The second space I observed for teaching was a large lecture theatre with seating for around one hundred people. Once again the audience sat in rows and the educator took up a position behind lectern at the front of the amphitheatre style space. The third location I observed for teaching was a computer lab where a workshop was conducted in physical computing. I commenced this study with the idea that a space defines the interactions that occur in it. This idea seemed to be fulfilled by my observations, but the focus for this report is the style and strategies of those leading the learning and teaching sessions I observed.

Technology

A common thread through each of the sessions I observed was the use and misuse of technology. In the traditional classroom setting an overhead projector was used, as well as a white board and reading aloud from primary texts. References were made to websites during the session by the educator but these sites where not shown to the class, despite their being a computer and projector in the room. These were never turned on during the session, although they working perfectly. The educator read from several texts during the session, while standing behind the desk at the front of the room. At one point a question was put to the class in general for anyone to answer but there was no response. The line between the educator’s space and the learners was crossed when hand outs were distributed but no discussion was made about the handouts only a single reference to what they described. Similarly in the lecture hall session I observed the line between the leader of the session and the audience was never crossed. In regards to the technology used in the lecture hall the educator set up a video camera to film the lecture to be put out on the web later. The projector the educator was planning to show slides on did not work. As a result the lecture is only verbal with no visual materials. The educator stated the slides will be put on the course website later. In contrast to the classroom and the lecture hall, the computer lab workshop had a technician in attendance during the entire session. As a result there were no technical problems that lasted more than a few minutes and the use of technology was extensive. I conclude from these observations regarding the use of technology in the learning situation, that technical support is an essential element in learning.

Participation and Engagement

In my limited experience of teaching I have found the active participation of learners in learning to be an effective measure of understanding and contextualisation. In the three learning sessions I observed I noticed several techniques used by the education practitioners for drawing out the learners into speaking, making a decision or seeking an opinion or confirmation regarding what was being dealt with. In the classroom questions were put to the group but of the three questions put to the class none were answered. Towards the end of the session a learner asked an impromptu question. After a short break in the middle of the classroom lecture, the educator entered the room to begin the second half of the session eating an apple. The eating of the apple seemed to disengage the leader of the session from making contact with the learners. In the lecture hall the educational practitioner leading the session opened the session with a question, “How is it going with the reading?” which led to a short discussion on the readings for the course. Later in the session the educator said “You can speak up and break in at anytime. It is so boring when I just talk”. This statement was met almost immediately with a question. Finally the educator wrote on the whiteboard several keywords and then asked for definitions from the group. It was not until definitions had been given that the next topic in the session was taken up. This forced several of the learners to speak up during the class which in turn led to short discussions. These strategies can be contrasted to the use of the whiteboard in the traditional classroom session where the educator read out from the text. There was no discussion around anything that was projected or written by the educator in the classroom setting.

The use of objects for teaching was a part of the computer lab workshop and facilitated participation and engagement from the group. While the genre of the subject area (computer science) made the use of objects in learning more self-evident, I can see that it could be possible to use objects in learning for any discipline. There was no central space defined in the computer lab workshop and the leader of the session was forced to move around the learners and speak from different parts of the space. The learner’s attention was drawn around the space rather than just fixed on a single point. While the educational practitioner moved between the four computers shared by ten learners it was the objects that brought the groups into discussion. The objects provided the educator with a focus for questions and statements to each of the learners individually. All statements that the educator made during the workshop session were inquiring or questioning and were directed towards the learners. These included “It works well, but tell me what it does.” Or “is it what I wanted?” and “It turns the motor on but is that all it should do?” The use of rhetorical questions becomes much easier and feels more natural when there is a subject for the question that is not a learner (i.e. “What do you think about it?”). The focus for questions from the workshop was not the learners, but on the objects they were dealing with. In a more humanistic subject setting, as was the case with both the classroom and lecture hall contexts, the objects of discussion could be supplied by technology. Working with objects to explain concepts I think has great possibilities in learning. Visual images, primary texts and even artefacts could be used to provoke discussion and the involvement and engagement of learners.

Performance

The performance of the educational practitioner created the situations for learning in each of the sessions observed. In the classroom session the educator seemed to have planned very well, but the contact made with the learners suffered from a number of performance issues. By standing in one position in the room or sitting on the ‘educator’s desk’ at the front of the room the educator did not move into the learner’s space at any point in the classroom session. The physical position adopted by the educator was reinforced by the use of language and the failure to take advantage of the technology. By reading out from printed material contact was lost with the learners. Eye contact and speech directed towards a present addressee is more likely to be excluded from educator’s performance if it includes reading from a printed primary text. Finally, by eating during part of the session, the educator distorted the focus, removing it from the subject of the session and from the learners. These examples are each elements within the performance of the educator. In the lecture hall session, the educator also remained in a single area of the space, but the design of the amphitheater prevents any real movement between the two defined spaces. Instead, the educator attempted at several times to project out into the learners portion of the space. By addressing questions to the group and asking for questions (“It is so boring when I just talk”), the performance of the educator attempts to break down the barriers created by the physical space and cross over into the learner’s area. The crossing over into the space and attention of the learners was not really achieved in either the classroom or the lecture hall sessions. At the centre of this failure was the performance of the educator in each.

I contrast the classroom and lecture hall sessions with the workshop in the computer lab in the performance of the educator. A sense of enthusiasm, which is not excessive but is evident, was a strong element in the performance of the educator in the computer lab session. The session was divided into five stages:

1. Learners sit in rows and listen to a short presentation by educator

2. Learners move to the computer stations in small groups. Begin planning

3. Learners move to work table were materials are needed to complete tasks set in stage

4. Learners return to stations complete programming of artefacts assembled in stage

5. Learners demonstrate projects

The variation of formats represented by each of these five stages provided a shift in focus for the learners that had continuity but sufficient variation to be interesting. Between stages 2 and 3 coffee and cookies were made available to the learners and the educator joined them in chatting. The social pause for the group provides a contrast to the educator eating the apple alone in front of the group while continuing with the learning session from the classroom situation. The experience is shared in the workshop situation, while in the classroom it becomes a barrier to communication.

Conclusions

I draw a number of conclusions from my observations of three learning sessions. The use of technology has great potential in learning, but it is necessary for it to be well integrated into the experience to be useful. Technical support should accessible at all times when technology is used in the learning space. The technology should also be integrated into the learning experience rather than simply added on. If a piece of machinery or a printed hand out is to be used in the session it should serve a purpose other than being an object. It should be referred to in the broader contexts of the session. Any item of technology that is mechanical should be tested before it is used in the session. Related to technology are the levels of participation and engagement generated in the learning experience. The learners are not the only ones who should be sharing in a participative and engaged environment. It is necessary for the educator to show signs of engagement and enthusiasm in the experience. If the spaces for each of the learning sessions I observed are to be thought of as broken up into particular zones, where a single definition of use dominates a single area, then the position of the educator and the learners become influential. I think the educator should use the ways portions of the space are defined by the design and layout of the site of learning. Each educator I observed made attempts to breach the space between themselves and the learners, but not all attempts were successful. In the workshop example which I observed, the division of the session into five separate zones, where activities were combined with themes in their own areas, with their own objects, forced a total integration of the educator and the learners in the space. Once the space has been defined by the educator it should be the source of strategies for integration of learners and educators into a single space. Accompanying such strategies is the use of verbal techniques for addressing learners in direct ways, encouraging conversation and questions. A break and the sharing of food with the learners in the workshop situation created a shared space with the educator. By doing so hierarchies can be resisted and more effective channels opened in learning.

--------------------------------*--------------------------------------

Religion In 'New' Places

Religion In New Places

View more OpenOffice presentations from Jim Barrett.

(There is a link from the image in slide 10 to a short video)

This presentation discusses a selection of examples of what I term ‘rhetorical holiness’ created using Second Life (SL), a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) on the internet. Second Life is a three dimensional persistent space made up of thousands of islands (called sims). In SL a person is represented by an avatar, a body which they manipulate in the environment. The avatar can travel around the huge space of SL in real time visiting themed sites, buying and selling virtual commodities and participating in social and cultural events with others. The shared online three dimensional spaces of SL include religiously themed sites where the holy is one of the main defining criteria of interaction. The sites in SL that I have examined are the Buddhist island of “Bodhi Sim: Land of Buddhadharma - a Second Life fansite” and two mosques built in SL; the Sultan Ahmed Mosque and the Cordoba Mosque. Finally the Koinonia Congregational Church of Second Life is a Christian church which operates entirely in SL. For the purposes of this presentation, these sites are examined for the use of symbols from three established religious contexts that have been re-deployed in the virtual environment. The purpose of such an exercise is to identify a system of rhetoric within a larger literacy for such three dimensional virtual environments.

My First Academic Publication

A chapter I wrote with Stefan Gelfgren has been published in a compendium of texts entitled Learning and Teaching in the Virtual World of Second Life. Our chapter goes over the last two years of research and development we have put into the virtual online world Second Life in regards to learning and teaching in HUMlab.

The book, if you are interested, can be purchased here.

I am in Print (Soon)

Virtual Learning and Teaching in Second Life by Judith Molka-Danielsen and Mats Deutschmann (eds.)

Price: Price not currently set
Availability: Coming

About the book

Coming January 2009

Virtual worlds are increasingly incorporated into modern universities and teaching pedagogy. Over 190 higher education institutions worldwide have done teaching in the virtual world of Second Life (SL). This book is based on the first Scandinavian project to experiment with the design and testing of teaching platforms for life long learning in SL. In 2007 it created a virtual island or “sim” in SL called Kamimo Education Island. The project generated a number of courses taught in Second Life, and instructed educators in the use of SL. This book disseminates the experiences and lessons learned in that project and from other educational projects in SL. This book identifies the gaps in traditional forms of education. It provides a roadmap on issues of: instructional design, learner modeling, building simulations, exploring alternatives to design and integrating tools in education with other learning systems.

Revision: 1. edition
Published:
Case type: Paperback
Number of pages:
ISBN: 9788251923538

Talan Memmott in HUMlab

The Topic of the Seminar: In[ter]venting Multi-Modal Rhetoric(s)/(a) Poetics of Emergence


A Portrait of Selves

Yesterday I attended two seminars in HUMlab, one on fan fiction, which was very interesting but primarily focusing on pedagogy and younger authors (not really my scene), and one on digital poetics. The second of these (which was actually the first in the order of the day) has been making me think since I attended it. Talan Memmott presented a word and image performance with a basis in critical theory, art and design (although he is no fan of the last term). When I was actually listening to the seminar I found some of it difficult to follow, dense and intense at the same time. But then afterwards we adjourned to the pub with a chance for chat I (drank very little and) went back over the talk and began to realize how close much of it was to the area I am working with in my own research. As a result, today I have felt a renewed sense of focus in my thesis writing (I managed a page today, not bad considering I only started working on it a 16:00..a long story, single parenthood continues for another 24 hours).
I have spent the last few days in a bit of a confused state about how to finish a chapter I have been (re)working on for a month now. Talan's wild imagery and persistent questioning of the possibilities helped me see what it is I am trying to say.
If you want to see the seminar here is the link to it.

Voloshinov: A Philosopher Who Anticipated Simulative Media Environments

"Any consumer good can likewise be made into an ideological sign. For instance, bread and wine become religious symbols in the Christian sacrament of communion.. But the consumer good, as such, is not at all a sign. Consumer goods, just as tools, may be combined with ideological signs, but the distinct conceptual dividing line between them is not erased by the combination. Bread is made in some particular shape; this shape is not warranted solely by the bread’s function as a consumer good; it also has a certain, if primitive, value as an ideological sign (e.g., bread in the shape of a figure eight (krendel) or a rosette).

Thus, side by side with the natural phenomena, with the equipment of technology, and with articles for consumption, there exists a special world – the world of signs."
Valentin Nikolaevich Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (1929)

Too True

My First Cafe Session

I am sitting in a cafe doing some work with a drink and wireless Internet. A band is getting ready to do a sound check. I have some colleagues who rejoice in the cafe environment for working. I have always been skeptical as I have found peace and quiet helpful. But it appears I was mistaken. While there is quite a bit going on around me, I feel actually quite centered and the action in cafe is sort of soothing. As I will be in Paris next week, I may take up cafes in a professional sense there, and continue with it as a working environment. Maybe not a thesis writing space (I need a big desk with lots of books and articles scattered around on it) but the cafe is good for writing an abstract (what I am doing at the moment), blogging, articles, mail, and the sort of smaller scale stuff.
Another drink I think.

Resistance Studies Magazine

The second issue of the Resistance Studies Magazine is out now (Direct link to pdf). It contains five highly relevant articles discussing and defining what Resistance Studies is all about and one review contributing to the critical debate on the concept of resistance. The magazine has doubled in length since the first issue came out in January, and through online publication this of course renders no problems.

The titles and authors are:

* Claims to Globalization: Thailand’s Assembly of the Poor and the Multilevel Resistance o Capitalist Development, by Pei Palmgren, New York University
* Becoming Power Through Dance, by Duygun Erim, The Open University
* Changing the system from the outside – an evaluative analysis of social movements opposing the 2007 G8 summit, by Patrick T. Hiller, Nova Southeastern University
* Multinational Corporations and Human Rights Abuses: A case study of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People and Ijaw Youth Council of Nigeria, by Victor Ojakorotu (Monash University) and Ayo Whetho ( University of KwaZulu-Natal)
* School's Out: strategies of resistance in colonial Sierra Leone, by Christine H. Whyte, London School of Economics
* Review; “Conceptualizing Resistance”, by Jocelyn A. Hollander and Rachel L. Einwohner, by Johan Johansson, University of Gothenburg, Museion

Please spread the word, and if you run a website or a blog, you are welcome to link to the magazine page!

Also the second issue has been produced with a zero budget, relying solely on the work of dedicated researchers and intellectuals. All of you who have contributed, even with the smallest things; Thank you so much!

Christopher Kullenberg (editor and publisher)
Jakob Lehne (assistant editor)

2007 NMC Conference Proceedings

The 2007 NMC Conference Proceedings features sixteen papers on topics from virtual worlds and gaming to streaming media technologies, digital storytelling, and more. The topics were ones nominated by attendees at the 2007 NMC Summer Conference held in June at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis.

The Proceedings include these papers:

The Arts Metaverse in Open Croquet: Exploring an Open Source 3-D Online Digital World Ulrich Rauch and Tim Wang | University of British Columbia
Beyond World of Warcraft: the Universe of MMOGs Ruben R. Puentedura | Hippasus
ClevelandPlus in Second Life Wendy Shapiro, Lev Gonick, and Sue Shick | Case Western Reserve University
Out of the Cave or Further In? The Realities of Second Life Gregory Reihman | Lehigh University
Pleasure, Play, Participation and Promise: Socio-emotional Dimensions of Digital Culture Which Are Transforming the Shape of New Media Literacies Angela Thomas | University of Sydney
Teaching Field Research in a Virtual World Ed Lamoureux | Bradley University
A View from Second Life’s Trenches: Are You a Pioneer or a Settler? Cynthia Calongne | Colorado Technical University

Download (2.6Mb, 133 pp)

Google + Alleph

Here's a tricky textual situation.
I have gone back to close reading the texts that make up my thesis corpus. I have played/read the texts many times, but this time I am being merciless. Every pixel is being accounted for and it will probably be how I am going to spend my Christmas break. I have been having a major problem with Alleph by Sakab Bashir. Using Google to find the text I have been unable to get passed this Macromedia Flash Update page:



No matter what I did I was getting a continual demand to upgrade my Flash plug-in. I called our Tech dude and he also struggled with it. While he was doing this we were having a chat about the vagaries of the Google browser. After trying several alternatives it emerged what the problem was. Tech Dude noted the URL and it was the Google browser prioritizing the Flash Update page over the actual Splash Page:



So, this all leaves me with the thought that the Google search engine has entered into dialogue with the text, Alleph. The texture of response that is projected by Alleph is infected, so to speak, with the texture of the Google search engine. It has slowed me down a bit today, but I image it would be preventing many from responding to Alleph at all. An interesting example of network texture as related to implied response within a digital work. It is also an example of sloppy authorship, or lack of consideration for evolving connections in the networks of the text.

Call for Papers

Interaction Design in Pedagogical Practice
in
Digital Kompetanse/Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy

Call for papers
The Research platform M3 [man medium machine]/the School of Communication, Technology and Design, Södertörn university college & ITU, Oslo university hereby invite you to a workshop on the theme Interaction Design in Pedagogical Practice, November 1-2 2007. Based on the workshop we will produce a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Digital Kompetanse/Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy based on the workshop.