Response 1 — AndrewG

Response 1B

Team members: Bruce Wilson

Issue: Class not being canceled during stormy weather forced thousands of drivers into hazardous driving conditions.

Proposed intervention: Attending a lecture shouldn’t put any aspect of well being in danger. Students should have access to lectures online and have a word in whether or not school gets canceled.

Top strategies:

• Students should have access to all content covered in lecture online in case of illness or dangerous weather.
  • Possible live streaming of lectures (lectures can be left on Blackboard for up to 24 hours, or left on Blackboard as study material.)
  • Anticipated snow day homework or research resources.
•   Student input and reflection on class cancelations.
  • Poll students on how dangerous the commute is.
  • Allow students to contact the officials if there is an accident
• Optional classes during hazardous weather that allows students to choose if it’s worth the drive. Classes can meet on social media such as google hangout.

Audience and Appeal:

To reach the target audience: students and faculty, one could create a slideshow of hazardous conditions and send it to as many UMaine groups that will forward the idea to a larger audience. The more people that get involved, the more the idea spreads. Fliers can be printed and posted on all the billboards on campus. There should be a student representative that is in contact with the UMaine officials that make the decision about whether or not classes are delayed or canceled. That representative should be in contact with the student body and be the voices of everyone combined.

What is New Media?

New Media is a technology dependent means of communication. This new medium enhances both ends of the conversation by allowing potentially infinite consumers to have individually tailored content instantaneously. Another medium of communication such as interpersonal communication allows two individuals to communicate with equal control of the content that is shared. However, individual communication becomes inefficient for certain users such as politicians due to the rate at which their word is delivered. This is a downside of the interpersonal medium and a strength of the mass medium. A mass medium can be anything from a sermon, play, or even a book. This medium of communication allows for many more people to interact with the information, however, the content is completely out of the consumers’ control, and therefore individual needs of the individual consumer are overlooked.

The individual and mass mediums are aided by technology, but both can exist without the aid of technology. The New medium requires technology to exist. This technology allows for individualized content for infinite users. The New Medium has the advantages of interpersonal and mass communication, with neither of their disadvantages. While newspaper was the main source of media a dozen years ago, publishers and broadcasters had control of the media and what the public eye could see, and could potentially “define reality” for all of the consumers who regularly consumed that specific media and nothing else. Now with New Media, consumers are able to interact with much more and edit any form of content that we consume on demand. This interaction between publishers and consumers transforms all the content we see to be specific to our interests and is more likely to be interacted with and allows infinite people to “define reality”. This is not to say that New Media is the newest smartphone or a fancy new computer connected to the fastest wifi, for these are just the vehicles we use to interact with each other from virtually anywhere we can connect.

New Media Strategies

Exercise 1

PROBLEM: A DISAPPEARING LANGUAGE

Ian Larson wanted to help preserve the Passamaquoddy language from extinction.

• Solution A  Create a taskforce from a select group of Native American language experts, and ask them to write down a dictionary of words and their definitions. Enter these definitions into a database and build a Web site that allows anyone to search for terms and hear their pronunciation. Hire a high-profile Web designer and marketing firm to ensure that as many people as possible learn about this resource.
• Solution B  Distribute laptops with video cameras to schoolkids in the Passamaquoddy community, and ask them to record their grandparents telling stories in Passamaquoddy. Upload these to a Web site along with the grandparents’ definitions of particular words used in the story, and make these words searchable via a tag cloud.
• Response Solution B allows the community to directly share stories from the experiences of the tellers directly, which adds a dimension of personal history in addition to the language being captured and therefore preserved. In addition to capturing and preserving the language, Solution B allows the grandchildren to get involved and participate in this data collection, and getting children involved will spark an interest in Passamaquoddy and the preservation it requires, making it the many-to-many solution. Solution A would have a one-sided output of information from a select few amount of people, broadcasted to many people. This method would be a one-to-many solution, however, some words of the Passamaquoddy language could be unknown by the experts that only Passamaquoddy grandparents would know from experience.

PROBLEM: NEGLECTED RUINS

Evan Habeeb wanted to make people aware of the beauty of abandoned buildings.

• Solution A  Assemble a film crew and visit abandoned homes, factories, and other buildings. Bring lights to illuminate these spaces dramatically, and record ambient sounds like dripping water. Edit the footage onto a DVD to create a compelling account that documents these relics for posterity, and distribute copies to historical societies across the state for their collections.
• Solution B  Build a Web site that allows adventurers to print stickers they can leave behind in abandoned buildings they explore. Create the stickers so they can be scanned by a mobile phone to reveal a Web site built to feature photographs taken by those explorers.
• Response While solution B is a many-to-many solution, it would seem that the only way to see these stickers would be if you were already aware of the abandoned buildings, therefore people who are unaware of the beauty of abandoned buildings would overlook these stickers and the purpose is lost. However, imagine that the stickers attracted new people. Now the ‘beauty’ of these abandoned buildings is replaced with an eyesore of stickers. As these stickers rise in popularity, more will appear. The consequence of solution B succeeding would be all abandoned buildings covered in stickers with QR codes. Solution A is a one-to-many approach but is arguably the better option. Documenting what you see allows you to preserve the history, which in my opinion is always the better option.

PROBLEM: MISUNDERSTANDING COMPUTER ANIMATION

Ryan Schaller and Jason Walker wanted to help people understand the many layers required to create a computer-animated film, including wireframe, textures, and light effects. As a case study, they created an animation depicting a cartoon archeologist digging for ancient artifacts.

• Solution A Design and build a touch-screen interface that allows viewers to “rub” away layers of the film with their hands to reveal previous stages of the animation as it plays.
• Solution B  Create an iPad application that documents each stage of the animation process, using stills from the archeologist film as illustrations. Explain techniques such as ray tracing, motion capture, and morphing. Include links to companies that create animation software such as Autodesk.
• Response While both options are acceptable to introduce others into the layers of computer animation, I’m going to insist that with the information provided, Solution B seems to be the many-to-many approach. Publishing an application to the app store opens you up to an infinite amount of critique, which you can then grow your idea from. Your product inspires feedback from consumers, and everyone involved creates the final product. For solution A, If by designing a touchscreen interface, you mean that you create a physical touchscreen interface on a unique device with its own unique features, then you would be restricted to that one device that you created that very few people would get the option to interact with. No feedback, no progress. It would make a nice piece in a museum though.

PROBLEM: A BROKEN FOUNTAIN

Danielle Gagner wanted to renovate the waterfall fountain under the skylight in the middle of the University Union, which had fallen into disrepair.

• Solution A  Repurpose the existing plumbing to irrigate a garden planted in the former fountain. Research the types of plants that would grow well together at different levels of the fountain, and meet with dining hall staff to find out what herbs or vegetables they might add to salads and other offerings. Then plant these in collaboration with the sustainable agriculture club on campus, and invite students to pick the resulting parsley, strawberries, and other fare from the garden for their lunch.
• Solution B  Use Google Image Search to download photographs of natural bodies of water such as streams, rivers, and the ocean. Combine these with nature footage from sources like National Geographic and the Discovery Channel to create a multichannel video installation that projects images of flowing water and rippling waves onto the fountain, which has been covered with theatrical screening. Supplement the moving images with the sound of a babbling brook emanating from surround-sound speakers mounted on the ceiling.
• Response Solution A is the many-to-many solution because interacting with dining hall staff and the sustainable agriculture club allows for interaction between consumers and producers, plus having fresh vegetables from the garden go straight to dining would be a smart, easy way to eat healthily. Solution B creates an art piece, and not something interactive. With only having pictures and sounds, it would make an interesting installment, but once it is in place, there’s no room for growth from critique. Having a physical garden could be modified and enhanced by everyone.

How can you make an audio installation that makes listeners more aware of their 3D sonic environment?

Exercise 2

PROBLEM: THE SPATIAL DIMENSIONS OF SOUND ARE UNDERAPPRECIATED

How can you make an audio installation that makes listeners more aware of their 3D sonic environment?

• Solution: Host an open house at the IMRC. In the sound design room, have people one at a time stand in the center, then cycle out one after the other. While people are cycling through the acoustic sweet spot, play an assortment of songs that are audibly perfect, and throw in a few with errors that wouldn’t be audible unless you were in the sweet spot. Inform the user of what he or she is hearing and why these small details can mean so much for an audio producer. Demonstrate how to fix these small errors for the crowd, and allow people to try and fix/create errors.
• Description: This room is designed to bring out every tone in a song and is ideal for finalizing a track because the acoustics of this space help pick out every small tone that if played elsewhere on, for example, a car stereo, certain errors would be inaudible. Likewise, people with extravagant sound systems would hear that error and not enjoy the song as much as other people would.

Theater of the Oppressed

Boal used humor to make his audience more comfortable and therefore more willing to participate with the actors and honestly speak their minds. The audience controlled the plays by shouting out responses and situations, these actors acted out the thoughts and ideas of the audience to allow them perspective on their oppression and possible ways to overcome it.

New Media accomplishes goals like this every day. With the many-to-many medium on my side, anytime I have any question that relates to Arduino programming, Laptop repair, or an interest in sedimentary rocks, all I have to do is reach out to people online. If I ask a question on a discussion board, chances are it will be seen, answered, challenged, discussed, and resolved with the help of several other people. I communicated instantly with hundreds of people, and now anytime anyone needs that specific information, they can look it up and see my question and its answer.