RESPONSE 1

I. WHAT IS NEW MEDIA?

New media is a means of communication that incorporates technology and is based on the principle of “many-to-many”; allowing a dialogue to exist concurrently between many individuals in a community. For that reason, it is a mode of expression unlike any other before it. New media, unlike other static forms before it, is kinetic and changes as it travels. It gives everyone a voice. The tools to create and express are now easier to come by and are accessible to the masses. An apt example of this would be to compare women’s communication in Western culture at any time in the past and compare it to the present.

Less than 60 years ago, women were commonly expected to fulfill the role of housewife and mother. Men were almost always at the top and always dictating how people saw the world. Popular filmmakers, novelists, and thinkers were predominantly white males. Although resilient tendrils of misogyny still uproot the voice of many women today, fields within academia are becoming ever more populated with women. This, of course, has more to do with the Women’s Rights movements than with new media, but new media has, today, bolstered women’s independence of thought. Not only do women have the resources through the internet to learn whatever they please, but they also find in that space a vast community of other women and men who are fighting for their rights. Whether it is sharing stories or contributing to growing hashtag campaigns, women are demanding attention with new media.

II. NEW MEDIA STRATEGIES

EXERCISE 1: WHICH IS THE NEW MEDIA SOLUTION?

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.

Here, Solution B is driven by the many-to-many principle given that it promotes communication amongst the Passamaquoddy and creates a living preservation of their language. The language is actually in the hands of the people who use it, not outsiders wishing to tell their story. I don’t mean to suggest that language experts, web designers, and marketers would be doing anything close to a “bad” thing by being involved in such a project; their assistance can make projects like this more accessible and profitable when needed. What I am suggesting, however, is that the Passamaquoddy themselves should provide direction to this project.

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.

Solution B, again, embodies the principle of many-to-many by building a culture and a movement around the concept at hand. What grounds this concept in the realm of New Media is that it is continuously active, fluid, and changing. Solution A simply creates a static medium with which no individual watching can change or actively participate in. Although I can imagine the film being interesting and likely entice people to explore themselves, it doesn’t require anything of the audience besides their passive attention.

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.

I’m unsure if Solution A fully embodies a many-to-many principle, but it does constitute a new media interpretation of the project at hand given its interactivity. One aspect of it that could be considered many-to-many would be the fact that the progress of the rubbing could be saved from user to user such that one person can rub away more of or add on top of what the person before them did. In this way, it allows for communication not only between the artist and the user, but also between users. Solution B doesn’t enable that kind of communication and, just like many of the other non-many-to-many solutions, doesn’t promote active participation in the medium.

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.

This question is actually sort of tricky and I actually answered it incorrectly the first time I read it. Although Solution B screams New Media, Solution A is the solution that follows the “many-to-many” principle. It would cause community interaction at the site and promote collaboration amongst students. The planting and harvesting of these fruits, vegetables, and herbs would be like a dialogue communicated through physical labor. Solution B falters in creating a dialogue due to the fact that the images projected are all procured by organizations; not the people seeing the fountain. To make it a proper “many-to-many” solution, images and video could be taken from tagged and moderated Instagram posts made by students on campus.

EXERCISE 2: INVENT YOUR OWN MANY-TO-MANY SOLUTIONS

VISUAL ART IS TOO STATIC

How can you create a mural that responds to individual viewers?

This actually has some similar attributes to a project I’m working on. A digital art piece would be projected on an expansive mural. Upon viewing the mural, one would notice that its colors keep changing. A low-profile webcam would be present in front of the mural constantly capturing visual data from the viewer, processing the RGB values from it, and then using those values to alter the “paint” of the mural. In this way, the viewer and their own tastes are incorporated into the living work.

It would also be possible to have some elements of the mural move in accordance to the movement of the viewer. This could be accomplished by using an Xbox Kinect depth and IR sensor to register motion and map it to different visual cues in the mural. Say, for instance, you were to move your hand left and trigger animated wind moving throughout the piece. Both of these examples would be feasible with Processing, using libraries like LibFreenect.

III. THEATER OF THE OPPRESSED

How does media oppress people in this article, and how does Boal try to give that power back to people? How does he use humor to do this? (2-3 paragraphs)

All in all, I think this article intends to point out that media is, more often than not, a one-directional dialogue. There is an invisible but firm barrier between the content and the audience taking in that content. In this way, the audience finds themselves oppressed by a media they can’t have much of a say in. This system renders the audience passive observers in the media instead of active participants.

Boal gives power back to the people by allowing them to respond to, recreate, and become a part of the media at hand. The exercises in his theatre don’t force any viewpoints upon the audience, but instead allow the audience to build the media out of their own personal experiences. Many of his exercises use humor to involve the audience; casting a satirical eye at the clichés of the media and the mythos of our everyday lives.

How can New Media accomplish similar goal?  give a few examples. You can add projects we review in class, but you might want to start by trying to think of some yourself. (2 paragraphs)

Although I think that Boal’s idea is still relevant today, I feel that media has shifted to accommodate audience input. In some ways, I think the media favors it. If you watch the news today, there are times when the audience is the media. The news stations cast user tweets related to the topic at hand. Whether or not I think that’s a valuable source of information is a different story, but I think it’s important to note that the media is much more perceptive of the audience today.

New Media can accomplish a similar goal by giving the audience a role in augmenting and contributing to the project. A few examples of this would be having an art exhibit where people can text in captions that display underneath the pieces. It will only display the last one sent in, but you can look through the library of captions stored on the exhibit’s site and vote on the best one. This gives people a chance to share their interpretations and consequently alter the piece. Another example of this would be to have a soundproof booth in the middle of a city park. Users walk in one at a time and they can scream as loud as they like. The screams are then pitch shifted to a given musical key and stored in a database of screams. Once they are finished recording, a low, powerful choir of pitch-shifted screams fades in and encompasses the room. The idea is that it takes the strained voice of one and turns it into a powerful voice of many.

RESPONSE 1B

Another strategy that I’ve come up with is to offer “trial periods,” such that the user can choose how much of a commitment they are willing to make. You can set the block to any length you’d like, however once you finalize your decision, you are locked in.

I’d also consider having a place in the app where you can share how much time you’ve blocked with friends of your choosing.

Whenever I go on Facebook, I often leave with the feeling that I should stop using it so much. Even if I see some content that I enjoy, I’m often overwhelmed by the feeling of just how insignificant much of my experience on the site / in the app was. For that reason, I’d consider marketing my app on social media sites almost as an escape. I’d want the app to be simple, clean, and speak directly to the thoughts of the user. Upon loading, it would contain words of motivation as well as statistics about social media use; hopefully making the user’s decision a little easier. With this sort of playfulness, I want to build a relationship and a trust with the user. This app is a valuable tool that they can rely on and I would want them to feel that every time they open it.

If the app were to incorporate some social aspect itself (like showing how much time your friend has blocked social media) then I would think that it would promote a sense that this is a united effort to be more present.