This morning I was interviewed on ABC Gippsland Radio about Digital Literacy and Digital Fiction. This was a result of the following Melbourne Herald Sun newspaper article about my conference talk at AATE last week:
Here is the interview:
And this was the flyer from my presentation:
I am convening a conference on September 3 and 4 which I am very excited about – click below for the conference flyer.
UPDATE: Here is a tv news spot about our conference:
and here is some assorted media coverage from the conference:
The Royal Shakespeare Company just produced a new production of Romeo and Juliet… over twitter. It consisted of 4000 tweets over a period of several weeks. I have enjoyed going through the archives and piecing together this version, but wish I’d managed to see it all playing out in real time. I think it is a clever adaptation – fresh, cross-media (tweets, youtube videos, images) – yet it still retains a kind of beauty and poetic nature, with smatterings of the original thrown in, such as:
julietcap16 My wrists be the first to receive the deep red, yet pleasurably painless tattooed pattern from which the water of my veins be purged.
Juliet also had several videos on a youtube channel. In this adaptation Juliet was a wannabe song writer. Here is her song dedicated to romeo and his tweets:
Songwriting is another form of the poetic. I also really enjoyed viewing the images and captions, which were haunting and poignant in the way they captured a young girl’s thoughts and dreams:
One of my former honours students (in 2006 I think it was), did a study of text messaging and literacy and found that many English teachers were using text messages creatively in their classrooms, to explore literature, poetry, writing, and communication.
I really liked an article by David Crystal about the poetics of text messages (and I am making this connection because twitter is also about brevity and containment of a message within 140 characters):
The length constraint in text-poetry fosters economy of expression in much the same way as other tightly constrained forms of poetry do, such as the haiku or the Welsh englyn. To say a poem must be written within 160 characters at first seems just as pointless as to say that a poem must be written in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. But put such a discipline into the hands of a master, and the result can be poetic magic. Of course, SMS poetry has some way to go before it can match the haiku tradition; but then, haikus have had a head-start of several hundred years.
Crystal goes on further to claim the following:
An extraordinary number of doom-laden prophecies have been made about the supposed linguistic evils unleashed by texting. Sadly, its creative potential has been virtually ignored. But five years of research has at last begun to dispel the myths. The most important finding is that texting does not erode children’s ability to read and write. On the contrary, literacy improves. The latest studies (from a team at Coventry University) have found strong positive links between the use of text language and the skills underlying success in standard English in pre-teenage children. The more abbreviations in their messages, the higher they scored on tests of reading and vocabulary. The children who were better at spelling and writing used the most textisms. And the younger they received their first phone, the higher their scores.
So, I’m all for texting and tweeting in creative ways – and I’d like to see more use of it in classroom contexts.
For further information see:
As soon as I saw some stills from this movie I was enchanted. This movie comes from the imagination of Academy award winner Jan Svěrák, who also worked on the amazing online games of Samarost and Samarost 2. From kookythemovie.com, comes this description of the movie:
When asthmatic, six-year-old ONDRA is forced to throw away his scruffy, sawdust-stuffed old teddy bear, KOOKY, he prays for the safe return of his furry friend. Soon afterwards, across town, Kooky is about to be crushed in a rubbish dump when he suddenly comes to life, making his escape into a mysterious forest. The naïve, cuddly Kooky needs help to survive amongst the rough-and-ready creatures of the forest and he finds it when he meets the crotchety forest guardian HERGOT. Hergot is in charge of watching over the forest, but he has his enemies too – the malevolent NIGHTSHADE plans to take over the forest, by proving that the short-sighted but good-hearted Hergot is not up to the job of guardian.
Using puppetry and live action, Kooky is both an inventive, thrilling family adventure and a celebration of the childhood imagination.
Here is a trailer with English subtitles:
And also fun are some of the images from facebook:
Wonderful! I love all the behind the scenes shots, and the “making of” info on the website and on facebook. I wonder when we’ll get to see it here in Aus.
Have you watched Sufferrosa yet? From the site:
Sufferrosa is a non-linear, interactive web-based movie made by Dawid Marcinkowski (screenwriter, director, editor and designer) with help from an international group of filmmakers, musicians and artists. It is an experimental storytelling project combining cinema and the web. Sufferrosa is a homage to Jean Luc Godard’s movie ‘Alphaville’ (1965), W.J.Has’s cult-movie ’Manuscript found in Saragossa’, American film noir and the French writer Vernon Sullivan. The movie is a NON-COMMERCIAL artistic project. Sufferrosa is a satire of cult of beauty and youthin the present-day world. Do you remember the film ‘Logan’s Run’ (1976), where everybody who is older than 30 gets exterminated? Probably our generation is not endangered by such experiments. But there is a chance that, in 40 years time we will all have transformed into frustrated woopies (Well-Off Older People) who spend their life savings on plastic surgery. And when it happens that the scalpel is not enough, we will probably head directly to the clinic of Carlos von Braun. As Mae West once said ”You are never too old to become younger”.
I found this discussed at Jawbone TV – “The good, the bad, and the bad-ass of story in the digital age”.
(image copyright The Bradfield Company)
Readers of this blog will know I’ve had a long interest in the wonderful digital fiction series Inanimate Alice. Recently the producer of the series, Ian Harper, wrote an editorial for Publishing Perspectives, about the transmedia storytelling business. It is definitely worth a read, and I especially like the way he concluded:
I believe that Inanimate Alice is a breakthrough project demonstrating a new kind of reading-from-the-screen experience. Is it a billion-dollar story? Perhaps…Our vision, a package that addresses movie, game, on-line and print outcomes from the outset, is designed with this in mind. It sets out objectives and addresses issues from the beginning. It would have to be successful, but not on the scale of a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings to achieve that.
The team’s commitment to this project far exceeds the six-figure sum that has been spent thus far. Completion of the series will take the budget north of a million dollars, a considerable sum for a digital novel. But then, as CTV reporter Kris Abel succinctly put it, “there is nothing else like it on the Net.”
Alice has become a bridge with the ability to connect technologies, languages, generations and curricula.
I’m looking forward to the next episode 
I just started a storybird! This is an exciting new way to create stories and illustrate them using a library of artwork. What is fun is that other people can now collaborate with me on the story. Click here to read and add to my story beginning!
Today I worked with my class to explore genre using the harrowing true story of Chrissie Venn. I started by offering some background about the real life murder of the little 13 year old girl, Chrissie, in the Tasmanian town of North Motton, in 1921. The murder case was so poorly handled that nobody was ever convicted, and it remains an unsolved case to this day. A book was published in 2000 which explored elements of the case and told Chrissie’s story. That book only had a small print run, and my sister Fiona managed to get a copy through advertising in the paper, after her curiosity was piqued when hearing all about the tale. Indeed, there are many myths, legends, rumours and innuendos that have circulated throughout Tasmania about the death, the court case, and the suicide of the man who was originally accused but then acquitted. I read my students the following summary I wrote of the tale:
On Saturday the 26th February 1921, Chrissie Clare Venn was cruelly and brutally murdered at the once quiet and peaceful hamlet of North Motton.
The body was found on Allison Road, by the farm of John Hearps Sr. The appearance of the body showed unmistakable signs that a violent murder had been committed. The bodice of her white muslin dress had been ripped and shoved into her throat. Dr Ferris, who made the post-mortem, gave evidence that Chrissie suffocated from the gag in her mouth, placed there by her attacker, when she had uttered the piercing scream which was heard by the two young Hearps boys while ploughing in the farm some distance away. The scream not being repeated, no aid came to the unfortunate girl, who met with dishonour and then death after which the body was hauled into a gigantic hollowed out stump in the lonely and secluded site of the crime.
No one has ever been found guilty of the crime.
Hostility surrounds this murder and for over 80 years since the trial, nobody has spoken “on the record” of her murder.
Mr King, a pig farmer who had originally been convicted of the murder, was acquitted, but was said to have committed suicide some years later.
It turned out that one student in the class had actually been to the murder site, as it is customary for young people to engage in a ritual of visiting the site at night, t0 do a lap of the hollow stump in which she Chrissie’s dismembered body was buried. This has led, as the book attests, to “a fascinating mixture of legend, mythology, ghostly tales and eerie sightings”. My sister tells the tale of her own daughter who engaged in this practice, and how she was scared so much during the visit she became hysterical. My student said that her car stalled when she visited, and this is a common report by many. Others claim to have seen apparitions of axes appearing on the road. I think this story would make a fabulous movie!
So in small groups, I gave each person in the group a different character from the story and a few pieces of real information about the character. I explained that they had to write a recount of the day’s events as the police were collecting witness and testimony from all who were involved in sighting Chrissie on the day of her murder. This writing in role technique is one I use frequently, as giving them the role of “expert witness” provides both a motivation to write and also frames their language use in particular ways that can lead to elevated language use. We then spent time reflecting on structure and grammatical features typical of this kind of recount.
Next I gave the students the task, in their groups, to write a newspaper article about the event, for a range of differing purposes, using Wei Wang’s description of the micro genres of news commentary:
(Wang, 2007, based on Martin & Peters, 1985; Hoey, 1983; and White, 2002)
Again, we spent some time sharing and then reflecting on the way the language changes according to context and purpose.
Finally, since the story of Chriss Venn is the stuff of legends, I asked the students to create a poem, a nursery rhyme, a song lyric or cautionary tale about her. If I get permission, I’ll share some of the writing later, as it was amusing, clever, poignant, and “hair-on-your-neck-stand-up” spooky!
UPDATE:
Here is a poem by one of my very talented students:
The Lament of Chrissie Venn
The stump lies
Silent,
Shrieks unheard
Secrets untold
Ghosts unbound
A dress undone
Fabric unravelled
This is the dead
Eye stare of
A close knit
Community.
(c) Chris Rattray 2010
There is more to come!
“Living Libraries is a national strategy for connecting and strengthening communities through conversation” (Living Libraries Australia)
My friends Edward and Noel Broomhall are part of the committee who run the Launceston branch of the Living Library. Ever since they told me about it over Christmas I’ve been fascinated and curious to read a “living book”. A living book is a person who has a story to tell, and who has volunteered to be part of a living library, where visitors can come in, check them out for 30 minutes, and engage in a conversation with them about that story. Its an initiative to bring communities together, to capture an oral history, and to offer people opportunities to talk about potentially difficult subjects in a safe environment. Its aims include: to recognise and celebrate diversity and to inform and educate community members. The book titles and descriptions are inviting and intriguing:
LIVING A VIBRANT OLD AGE - Former teacher, principal and administrator; an active 74 year old heavily involved in a voluntary retiree group; a bee-keeper (a productive hobby) … definitely not just killing time.
STOP! POLICE! - Being a cop is not just about busting down doors and locking up the crooks, eating donuts and drinking coffee. Being a police officer is challenging, weird, demanding, confusing, stressful, funny, sad, easy, hard and occasionally rewarding. And that’s on a good day! Most of the time nobody wants anything to do with you, that is until something goes wrong …
NOT THE ONLY GAY IN THE VILLAGE - Can a bloke who has a beard down to his chest, drives a 4WD, smokes cigars & chops his own wood be gay? This is my world folks, in fact it’s the world of many men in the villages of Tasmania, & though ya wouldn’t want to pick a fight with me … sometimes, I don’t feel safe in the village.
MY LIFE AS AN OUTSIDER - Many people struggle, and do things that they normally wouldn’t do to be accepted into the in-crowd, while others don’t seem to mind at all and are perfectly happy with their social status.
WHAT DO POETS DO? – Poets do not live in garrets. They do not suffer for their art, wear wide brimmed floppy hats or black capes. They simply see things that others may miss.
LIVING A MONASTICAL LIFE - How does it feel to be a Coptic priest, living a monastical life in Launceston?
Isn’t this a wonderful example of community literacy practices that redefines or reimagines the concept of libraries, books, and reading. I love it, and I can’t wait to go and “read” Edward!
I bet you didn’t know the wild things had names!
The ancient Greek fishing village of Eleusis suffers since the Goddess Demeter cursed the land.
Graveyards are filled with freshly dug graves for the weak and the young who could not struggle any longer, their poor bodies giving up all heat after experiencing the first Winter known to mankind.
Graveside vigils are kept to protect the souls of loved ones until it is time to meet Charon, who ferrys them across the river and to the entrance of the Underworld. Safe passage requires a coin, but with the village in crisis, all coins have gone to the temple as offerings to Hera and Demeter, to remove the curse.
But some are too spent to pray, they simply lie on the grave with misguided notions that their body warmth can be exchanges. The epitaphs they’ve written a verbal reminder of how Demeter directly caused her young child’s life to expire.
How can these people’s dire grief be lifted? Perhaps never. But perhaps you – you YOU – would like to enter the world with me and try to help?
If you are interested in online role-play for educational purposes, please let me know! I’ll be organising some workshops in the second half of the year if I can find SL educators who are interested in taking part.
Today I gave a tour of Macbeth for the HUMlab in Sweden! Click here if you’d like to view the video stream of the tour. It goes for about an hour. It was a bit of an experiment for us to do the live streaming, but it mostly worked well, except an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction in which I lost my hair! Thanks to Jim Barrett for the invitation to speak and for doing all the camera work.
For those occasions when I have a presentation about Virtual Macbeth where Second Life is not accessible for a live demonstration, I’ve resorted to using these slides. I’ll record an audio version or maybe there will be a machinima version coming soon.
Artiste extraordinaire Beth (Stella Costello) created this statue to symbolise the sense of loss experienced by the people inside this story. Why is she broken? Whose loss? Which people are torn apart?
Stay tuned…. it gets worse!
And on the 10th day, Chris (CJ Carnot) created a whole new world. Can you guess what world it is?
Part of my Greek myth build is completed now! Here’s an image of the graveyard, where participants will tell and write stories in role. I’m going to also ask experienced students to make personifications of grief – I did a rather non-metaphorical example of a person expressing grief here:
I have to confess I bought a “basic mannequins prim” set online and just positioned each prim to make this statue. I think the set is a great bridge for non builders (like me!) to start using the tools more creatively. It only took me an hour, and I have zero building skills. There was a full permissions set available so that means I can give copies of the set to all my students and send them off on a task. It really focusses attention on the body, and is a reminder that the body can be and is present in an online drama and role-playing session in all sorts of ways.
For my Swedish colleagues at HUMlab, Umea University, I am giving a seminar on May 8th! See details below:
Seminarium om Macbeth och virtuella världar – i HUMlab och i Second Life
Angela Thomas från University of Sydney kommer den 8 maj kl 11 att tala om “Inside the mind of Macbeth: Understanding and interpreting literary worlds in a virtual environment” i HUMlab. Tillsammans med studenter har hon arbetat med en omfattande gestaltning av Macbeth i en virtuell värld inom ramen för det uppmärksammade Virtual Macbeth-projektet.
Thomas genomför seminariet i Second Life (ifrån Australien) och kommer där att visa upp det virtuella Macbeth. Allt detta visas på stor skärm i HUMlab inför seminariedeltagarna i labbet. Angela Thomas är bland annat känd för sin bok Youth Online: Identity and Literacy in the Digital Age (Peter Lang, 2007).
This week in my children’s literature class we finished a drama we started last week using Shaun Tan’s “The Arrival”. My purpose when doing drama with students is to showcase as many drama and theatre techniques as possible that teachers can use to investigate a literary text, whilst maintaining the integrity of the literary context of course. In this week’s session we were engaged in improvised roleplay, teacher in role, writing in role, gestural experimentation, storytelling, drawing in role and suitcase theatre. It involved creating a narrative arc within the drama elements using context-building, poetic, reflective and narrative action elements. After years of research both in my MEd and PhD and beyond, I am genuinely convinced that role-play is one of the most effective teaching strategies ever to have been developed. Unfortunately it is still underused a lot by teachers! Hopefully my students are the kind who will step outside their comfort zone and be creative with their own classes.
And so the 3D sketch starts becoming transformed – atmosphere, details, effects, poses… the wonderful creation here of Stella Costello. This is truly exciting. Each step in making a new world and a new experience is fascinating – and of course seeing students and visitors enjoy the world is very rewarding, but this stage – is just magical!
Thanks to Achariya, there’s a lovely post about Macbeth on Rezzable that offers a thoughtful and favourable review of Macbeth (whilst at the same time blending in a fashion shoot and links to commercial vendors for clothing and avatar items). Here are my favourite quotes from her review:
The sim transported me into a world that went beyond a stage play and into the text itself, sending me alone into an imagined Macbeth, pacing through the fields, approaching the castle on the cliff…
I found myself thinking about Macbeth in a much more creative and visceral way after watching it grow around me in sound and vision — a clear reminder that plays are not static texts to be read, but springboards for the imagination.
Thank you so much Achariya! If you haven’t seen Achariya’s fashion blog, it’s definitely worth a look – she cleverly blends in theories about identity, literacy, the body and digital culture to her fashion discussions.
