Response #1: Keegan

Response 1B:

The New Media curriculum is poorly structured, communicated about, and executed.

There needs to be student intervention in the creation process of said curriculum. There is no way for UMaine faculty to obtain an absolute understanding on what sort of impacts their individual agendas have on each student, because they cannot see how each agenda stacks on top of the student like the student can.

Top 3 Strategies

Tap Into Local Networks

To tap into local networks means to engage the nearby people or environment to solve a problem, whether it is social, technological, or ecological.

The UMO student body is a resource to be used for this project. Students are more often than not waiting for the next opportunity to join some sort of movement.

Distribute and Connect Information

To distribute and connect is to break up a problem into parts that can be solved by decentralized people or computers and then connect their results to piece together a solution, whether evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence or a cure for AIDS.

We need to use communication in order to solve this problem. The lack of communication is the problem in the first place, and this is a wide-scale problem, that affects a wide-scale amount of people, and there needs to be a connection.

Mobilize People

To mobilize is to energize people on the streets or other public spaces, especially using mobile devices such as smartphones or tablet computers like iPads.

Taking advantage of technology to spark an interest and compassion in people to solve this problem should be fairly easy.

As for reaching our audience… we’re at an advantage because there are a lot of students in the New Media department who have experienced the strife that comes with it, so making our audience understand and develop a passion for the problem should be mostly done already. The real challenge will be organizing this energy into something that means something and can accomplish something.

WHAT IS NEW MEDIA?

I disagree so heavily with that article. I found just reading through it difficult because it felt like the author was simply trying way too hard. He was trying hard to sound smart and use big (and unnecessary) words, trying so hard to pad out the essay and make it pointlessly longer, and it even felt he was trying too hard just to pull his “thesis” out of thin air. I came away not really understanding what point he was trying to deliver aside from, “Here’s this big technical opinion I’ve formulated on what new media is.”And I simply disagree with that opinion.

I would argue that “New Media” is inherently a colloquial term as it’s ever-changing,  New Media does not simply apply to this ecosystem we’ve developed with the internet as whoever wrote this believes, it is whatever is the newest form of media at the time, what’s “new” now will certainly not be in a few years. I also have problem with how strictly the author wants to define Media and Medium. To whose advantage is using these terms as you propose? As they used to be used and with incredible narrow and specific meaning. Language evolves for a reason and the fact that the paper opens asking you to forget that, to just ignore the past couple decades, under the guise of “DISCARD(ing) PRECONCEPTIONS AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING” was so annoying right away.

But let’s just back up for a second and say that I agree the term medium shouldn’t refer the method of which you get your info, as in a magazine or podcast, but rather the category in which that system of information delivery falls. Because unless I misunderstand, that the basic point, that the various mediums (that they feel there are only 3 of) are defined by how and to how many people any given information is delivered. Even if I believed that, I haven’t been convinced that the “New Medium” the author speaks about really is just that. They claim this new Medium fits the following and thusly is a unique, third category

”

1. •Uniquely individualized information can simultaneously be delivered or displayed to a potentially infinite number of people.
2. •Each of the people involved — whether publisher, broadcasters, or consumer — shares equal and reciprocal control over that content.

”

I actually want to look at number 2 first as I can’t see how any sane human would consider the alleged “New Medium” of the internet and technological interconnectedness to fit this hallmark. Id say now more than ever this is untrue, we are becoming less and less in control of the media presented to us every day, no matter how you look at it. Advertisers are getting more and more info on us while we are just the blind recipient of those ads, we didnt ask for them, and we have little control over them. Film and TV is becoming more and more monopolized and corporate meaning films are actually falling farther and farther from our control as corporate giants like Disney make non-artistic, but rather business and even politically based decisions about the content they provide us. Newspapers and news agencies often have an agenda, and have no legal obligation to report anything to us, so where’s the equal reciprocal control there? We’ve just kinda come to accept that we have to pick from a few different sources of media, and we usually pick the one that fits us best, never perfectly. Because those sources rarely care about us, whether its CNN, Disney, a large publisher, or the New York Times, the fact is the introduction of what the author claims is new media (the internet and such) has NOT done anything to put us any closer to having reciprocal control over the content we’re presented with. I do think there’s and argument to be made that it gives us a false sense of being able to participate and influence, but thats for another day.

So now, quickly, I’ll come back to the first hallmark. I would say the only part i agree with is the “potentially infinite” amount of people. In my eyes, that is the one thing that the internet has brought us that is truly new. But as for “Uniquely individualized information,” i would say the internet is just a new tool to aid in that, but its certainly nothing that was impossible before. To say this is new is to say that in the old forms of media, we were never specifically targeted when there were coupons in the mail for things we’re interested in. It’s to say commercial makers never made multiple versions for various demographics. All the information age has done is make it significantly easier to obtain personal info, and as such, yes, make uniquely personal information more prominent, but that’s all it did, was make it easier. I just dont see how, given what the author wrote here, you can make the classifications he does that it basically invented the cocncept of individualized info.

I’m in agreement with a lot of the articles overall points, such as that technology has absolutely revolutionized our system of information delivery and communication. It’s just the classification that I feel the author is forcing. I dont see the clear cut 3 categories of media or mediums as they do. Take for example the claim that the many-to-many model is a new thing, I don’t understand that. Isn’t many to many just giving the power of one-to-many to everyone? And if not, if rather its supposed to mean groups of people can now converse ideas as one to other groups of people, I in no way see how thats new either?What I see,  is an ever-evolving information industry that will always have something new and at the forefront, and whatever that is at any given time is “New Media.” This doesnt just apply to new emerging arts, such as projection mapping, but also to any medium (the colloquial definition of the word) that is still innovating and pushing the boundaries. For exmaple, just because VR is much newer than film, doesnt mean film as an industry and art is no longer considered “New Media,” because so long as directors and camera and software manufacturers are innovating and creating tools, it’s a new a form of media as any other.

At least, thats my opinion.

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.

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.

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.

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.