listening to repeating

I’m happy to announce that during the next academic year (2010-11), I’ll be designing and teaching courses in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (IAS) at the University of Washington, Bothell.

The first course I’m teaching, “Technologies of Expression: Sound Reproduction Studies,” is a 200-level course scheduled for Autumn 2010.  It’s part of the new Media and Communication Studies emphasis in IAS.  More below.

Course Description

Since the 1850s, sound reproduction technologies have changed over time.  As some were rendered obsolete, others became cutting edge.  In one sense, this course is an opportunity for students to trace the history of those technological shifts by attending to everything from the phonograph and magnetic tape to the turntable and the computer.  Yet in another sense, the course is a chance to explore how those technologies are culturally embedded.  For example, how have artists and writers integrated sound reproduction technologies into their work, and to what effects on other media, such as print?  Through advertisements and film, how were certain technologies marketed, to whom, and for what purposes?  And when, where, and for whom does a sound seem pleasant, a recording appear high fidelity, or an environment feel noisy?

Read the rest of this entry →

I just want to send a quick thank you to Bryden McGrath and Catherine O’Donnell for chatting with me about things related to technology, teaching, literature, and the AAC&U.

Bryden’s written a piece for the UW’s Daily, and Catherine’s done the same for the Graduate School.

I like that both of the conversations focused primarily on the material histories of technologies, rather than becoming preoccupied with cutting edge digital tools and gadgets.  These experiences make me want to drag my typewriters, rotary phones, cassette tapes, and record players into the classroom.

Today, during the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, I had the pleasure of participating in a panel entitled, “Faculty of the Future: Voices from the Next Generation,” with Netta Avineri (UCLA), Shauna Carlisle (UW), Judith Flores Carmona (U. of Utah), Elizabeth Hoover (Brown), Ilana Kramer (Long Island U.), Jonathan Rossing (Indiana U.), Wendy Wagner (U. of Maryland), and Holly West (NYU).  (Learn more about each of them.)

The panel was particularly refreshing because it consisted of a Q&A-style conversation with the audience about teaching at the undergraduate level, the role of community-based learning in various disciplines, the views of today’s college students, how to retain new faculty members, and people’s perspectives on the changing American academy.  I learned a lot from each of the panelists, not to mention the audience; and since our conversation this morning, I’ve been ruminating on a few things:

Read the rest of this entry →

The class site for my University of Washington, Bothell, course is now live.  The class is BIS 213, Art Techniques: New Media Production, and the course theme is “Making Animated Objects.”   (As I was writing the syllabus, I was thinking how cool it would be, in the near future, to have a new media class with a “Shaping Things” theme.  Of course, students would be making spime instead of Flash animations.  Hmmm… writing the modules and prompts in my head right now.)

This class is most certainly assuming a workshop format.  I’m relying far less on lecture, literary criticism, or media theory than I am in, say, “Mapping the Digital Humanities.” We’ll be looking at a few examples of new media and electronic literature composed in Flash, and I’m using Lev Manovich’s work for terms and concepts.  Other than those pedagogical moves, the workshops will consist of modules on how to use Flash and, to a lesser extent, Audacity, in order to refashion a print text (e.g., a poem, an excerpt from a novel, or the like) and “make it move.”

Critically, the focus will be on how refashioning is an act of interpretation and how it necessarily alters how audiences perceive and navigate literature.

Technically, I’m reducing Flash to a software for animating text.  I’m not teaching Flash for web design, for instance.  (For one, I’m not really a fan of Flash-based web design.)

The class is portfolio-driven and project-based, and each student is completing six short stages in the process.  While I’ve drafted the modules and prompts for the stages, I’ll be posting them on the web as the quarter progresses.  Given it’s a workshop, I don’t want to have a set structure for learning until I’m more familiar with the learning climate and student expectations.  In short, while teaching students the basics in Flash, Audacity, and refashioning, I want to be as flexible as possible and see what emerges.

One thing I’m particularly excited about: One module includes an excercise where students “swap” Flash files, modify each other’s work, reanimate it, and share the changes.  It will be like peer review, but not at all.  Funny thing is: I would be reluctant to do such an exercise with an academic paper or essay.  I’d instead ask for margin or end comments.  Why is that?  Is it just me?  Or what is it about textual practices in academic writing that seems more . . . proprietary than with the modularity and variability of new media?  I need to flesh the answer to these questions out.   For one, I’ve been thinking more and more about how to use new media IN and AS my academic work.

Should I?

I’m tempted, but just barely.  I could call it research? Loopt: Your gateway into the scholarship of learning.

Honestly, is staying in touch with friends really that “tough”?

I’m teaching a course at University of Washington, Bothell (in Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences) this coming spring.  I’m quite excited about it. Here’s the description.

BIS 213, Art Techniques: “New Media Production”

New media, but how to make it?

This course’s primary aim is for students to have the time, space, and materials to acquire some basic technical skills in “new media” production. According to Lev Manovich (in The Language of New Media), new media are (1) composed of digital code, (2) modular collections of discrete elements, (3) highly automated, (4) variable, and (5) a blend of a “cultural layer” and a “computer layer.”

With this definition in mind, the course will be concerned less with conceptualizing new media and more with making, manipulating, and circulating it. Our meetings will be conducted in a computer-integrated classroom and will be module-driven. That is, the majority of class time will be spent working hands-on with new media instead of relying heavily on lecture. Since the course meets only once per week, for a little over two hours per meeting, we will narrow new media production to two domains: Adobe Flash (object-based animation software) and Audacity (an open-source sound editor). Given the vast array of possibilities that each domain affords, the course modules focus on animating print texts by taking an excerpt from an existing poem, novel, or short fiction, digitizing it, and making it move.

By the end of the quarter, students should be able to produce their own, text-based Flash work, add sound to that work (using Audacity for sound editing), and assess (in writing) how effectively their work refashions a print text through a digital medium. To this end, students will develop their own Flash projects over the course of the quarter, offer written and verbal feedback on the work of their peers, and circulate their projects for others to modify.

There is no text book for the course. The course modules on new media production will be circulated via a class website and examples of new media (e.g., Flash poetry) will be engaged in class.

Both Flash and Audacity are available on the computers in the classroom and elsewhere on campus, and no technical skills in Flash or Audacity are required for the course. However, those who are curious about the course content, especially Flash poetry, are encouraged to peruse the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume One, as well as the work of Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries.