Go Virtual!

September 24, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture, New Media Literacies, Second Life, Virtual Worlds Tags: academic life, avatars, conference talks, education, identity, publications 6 Comments

Thanks to the wonderful Jokay, I was invited to be a keynote speaker at the NSW Learnscope “Go Virtual” conference today. There were about 20 participants actually in Wollongong, where the conference was held physically, and another 30 or so participants attending from inside Second Life. Apart from a few technical issues (and these seem to be surprisingly minimal really – just tricky getting voice working and in synch with no delay or feedback) it went very well.

My talk was titled Play and Identity in Digital Spaces, and I combined the material from about three of my previous talks and four or five different papers. I want to especially thank Jazzydee and Achariya for dropping in and contributing stories about their avatars!

Later in the day, I was also involved in a panel discussion about leverages the affordances of Second Life for education. Panelists included:

Jo Kay, Freelance Design, Facilitation and Virtual Worlds Consultant

Sean FitzGerald, Independent Researcher, Consultant, Trainer and Presenter
Angela Thomas, University of Sydney
Alan Levine, Vice President, NMC Community and CTO, NMC: The New Media Consortium
Nick Noakes, Director, Center for Enhanced Learning & Teaching, Hong Kong

Here’s a nice shot of CDB and I after the panel discussion. CDB is coming to Australia next month!!! He’ll be doing a lecture tour and meeting up with people interested in using Second Life for education, so if anybody wants to meet up with him (and me!) in Sydney let me know

(Thanks to Jokay and Alan for images)

PS: I’ve been writing a paper the last couple of weeks, and preparing this conference talk, and doing a hundred other tasks, including some extra and unexpected teaching, so the blog has suffered!

My Digital Fiction Presentation for Futures in Literacy Conference

September 4, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture, digital fiction, personal, Second Life, Virtual Worlds Tags: academic life, adolescents, ARG, arts, avatars, blogging, children, children's literature, conference talks, cross-media storytelling, education, facebook, fanfiction, fans, gaming, identity, linguistics, literacy, machinima, media, new literacies, new video, personal, photography, popular culture, presentations, publications, role-playing, semiotics, twitter, visual literacy, youtube 4 Comments

Creative Conferencing – The “Unconference”

August 30, 2007 By Anya in Uncategorized Tags: academic life, blogging, conference talks, education 4 Comments

Today I was invited to be a discussion leader / facilitator at an “unconference” on blogging. Although I am unsure whether I can accept the invitation yet, I just loved the instructions for the facilitator and wanted to share, particularly in light of some of the critique of the traditional conference scene (poor Alan!). Here are the instructions:

This will be an unusual conference. We generally won’t have speakers, panels or an audience. We will have discussions and sessions, and each session will have a discussion leader.

The discussion leader
Think of the discussion leader as a reporter who is creating a story with quotes from the people in the room. So, instead of having a panel and an audience we just have contributors. We feel this more accurately reflects what’s going on. It’s not uncommon for the audience at a conference to have more expertise collectively than the people who are speaking.

The discussion leader is also the editor, so if he or she feels that a point has been made they must move on to the next point quickly. No droning, no filibusters, no repeating an idea over and over.

The discussion leader can also call on people.

Think of it as a weblog
Think of the conference as if it were a weblog. At the beginning of each session, the leader talks between five and fifteen minutes. He or she will introduce the idea and some of the people in the room.

Then he or she will facilitate the discussion among all the contributors in the room, inviting others to comment and asking questions of others. It is hoped that everyone who would like to contribute to the discussion will be able to do so in the allotted time.

We have a limited amount of time, and a group of participants whose time is valuable. The leader’s job is to make sure the show stays interesting, even captivating. If it gets boring people will leave the
room and schmooze, or read their email, or whatever. So the leader’s job is to keep it moving. Sometimes this may mean cutting people off.

How to prepare
Since every person in a session is considered an equal participant, everyone should prepare at least a little. Think about the subject, read the comments on the Conference site. Follow weblogs from other
people who are paticipating. Think about what you want to get out of the session, and what questions you wish to raise, and what information or points of view you’d like to get from the session.

Everyone is a journalist
This will be an unusual conference in that almost everyone participating writes publicly. So we assume that everyone present is a journalist.

On the record
All conversations, whether to the entire room or one-to-one, unless otherwise stated, clearly and up front, are on the record and for attribution. You do not need to ask permission to quote something you hear at the conference. Of course you may ask for permission to quote, and you may choose not to quote things you hear.

It’s a user’s conference
Most technology conferences are centered around the vendors. This is not like those conferences. Here, vendors are welcome, and we hope they will help by sponsoring in some way, but they participate mainly by listening.

Most of the people who will be talking are users. These are the revolutionaries. Vendors make a living by creating tools that these people use to change the world. So much attention is focused on technology.

At this conference we turn it around and focus on what people are doing with the technology.

Internet access
Wireless internet access will be available. Each session will also be hopefully be podcast, audio only. You are welcome to bring your own recording equipment and cameras are allowed. You are free to record it and broadcast it any way you like as long as you don’t interfere with the sessions in any way.

That’s pretty exciting.

I like this: It’s not uncommon for the audience at a conference to have more expertise collectively than the people who are speaking.

But this quite true fact is kind of intimidating: If it gets boring people will leave the room and schmooze, or read their email, or whatever.

Sometimes I get very tired when colleagues IN AN EDUCATION FACULTY lecture to students that we should not consider children to be “empty vessels to be filled up” and yet that is the very paradigm they use themselves when lecturing. Its also very very frustrating when the worst offenders of being lame and uncreative and masters of boring dot point powerpoint shows are lecturers from an education faculty, or speakers in an education strand. HELLO!!! We are supposed to be EXPERTS in pedagogy!!!

Anyway I am really hoping I get to go to this “unconference” as it sounds fabulous, and provides a creative model for sharing, collaborating and communicating with colleagues.

Creativity in Second Life: Educator’s Panel

August 22, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture, Second Life, Virtual Worlds Tags: avatars, conference talks, education, identity, NMC, presentations, slcreativity 4 Comments

The final panel session for the NMC’s Symposium on Creativity in Second Life was wonderful! Chaired by Alan Levine (CDB Barkley), it involved a diverse range of educators involved in Second Life, reflecting about the week’s sessions and creativity in SL in general. Educators included:

Lori Bell (aka Lorelei Junot), Alliance Library System
Jo Kay (aka Jokay Wollongong), Illawarra Institute TAFE, New South Wales
Hilary Mason (aka Ann Enigma), Johnson & Wales University
Troy McConaghy (aka Troy McLuhan), ISM Corporation
Nick Noakes (aka Corwin Carillon), Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
Beth Ritter-Guth (aka Desideria Stockton), Lehigh Carbon Community College
Angela Thomas (aka Anya Ixchel), University of Sydney

Despite issues with sound, we managed to combine both text and sound to do this reflection. Alan blogged details of the session here, including a podcast and a chat transcript. I had to do my bit by text instead of voice (luckily I was last so I hastily converted the speaking notes I had into close to proper sentences while other people were talking). Some of the comments seem to have been truncated in the transcript though, so, for anybody interested, I am including my notes (and they’re a bit messy!) under the fold.
Continue reading →

Our NMC Session – Teaching On the Second Life Stage: Playful Educational Strategies for Serious Purposes

August 18, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture Tags: conference talks, new literacies, NMC, role-playing, secondlife, slcreativity 4 Comments

(Note: Thanks to Jokay for taking these snapshots!)

Kim Flintoff and I did our NMC Symposium on Creativity in Second Life session this morning. Our session introduced the concept of educational drama and involved setting up a context and doing some role-playing. Here is the abstract again for anybody who missed it:

Teaching On the Second Life Stage: Playful Educational Strategies for Serious Purposes

Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Conference%20Center/64/193/22

Angela Thomas (aka Anya Ixchel), University of Sydney

Kim Flintoff (Kim Pasternak), Edith Cowan University

Theatrical spaces have historically been places used to teach, purge and shape culture. For over a decade, virtual reality has offered a new kind of theatrical space; now, with the rise of social networking spaces, many more people are using the potential of the web to perform, critique and comment on cultural issues. Second Life provides a new and exciting space where students can explore issues that are both personal and global in significance. Teaching strategies which incorporate dramatic and theatrical components are perfectly suited in the Second Life environment for engaging students in playful but meaningful reflection on such issues. This session will involve participants in role-playing, reflection and discussion. Participants will also be encouraged to brainstorm the possibilities of incorporating such strategies into their own educational programs.

We set the drama in a fictional Second Life future, one in which the company of Linden Lab had outlawed anything M rated and above. Setting the drama in a fictional place, space or time allows people to reflect on significant cultural issues from the safety of that fictional distance. Learning can take place somewhere in the space between the fictional and the real.

We provided an open letter to the Lindens set in 2009 for participants to read. Here’s a copy of our letter:

Open Letter to Linden Lab Staff

February 20, 2009

We, the undersigned, are concerned about way Second Life has moved away from its grassroots principles of freedom of expression and participatory culture into a sanitized Disneyland state. We recall in 2004 when Phillip Linden proudly, enthusiastically and energetically espoused his philosophical stance about Second Life:

“So SL poses a new question… what if the online environment offered you MORE freedoms than the real world, in just about every way. I assert … that we might therefore actually behave better in such a place. We might learn faster, interact more deeply, and therefore become better people, at least on some levels. Little has been written about this. I am asserting that this will only occur in an environment in which the freedoms are not a laundry list of experiences, a-la-Disneyland, but instead a fundamental ability to express yourself; these are the real freedoms. I am saying that if you have more freedoms, in an expressive sense, you might have better or at least more complex behavior.” (Philip Linden, Second Life Herald Interview, June 21, 2004)

Indeed, during the first three to four years of Second Life, citizenship grew to several million users precisely because of the liberties and creativities found in such an “infinite possibilities” standpoint. People entered Second Life for a multiplicity of purposes, and its success today is directly related to the opportunities provided by user created content. Collaborative creativity on a global scale was never so exciting and exhilarating, and you might even recall that in 2007, the ground-breaking educational innovators at the New Media Consortium held a symposium on creativity in Second Life.

Yet since early 2007, there has been a steady decline in the freedoms enjoyed by and afforded to our citizens. First of all, advertising and signage related to certain sexual practices was outlawed. Soon thereafter, all casinos and houses of gambling were removed. In early 2008, there was crackdown on all explicit sexual practices – the furry avatar was removed as an option at log-in, and all Gorean sims were shut down. By the end of 2008, all known sims and clubs that offered simulated sexual practices were removed without warning.

But by far we, the undersigned, believe that the most debilitating move on Linden Lab’s part is the new TOS policy issued in January of this year, 2009, to remove all M rated sims and M rated content, even in citizen’s private homes. With 30 million users, all over 18 and adult, we cannot understand this move to reduce Second Life to Disneyland, which serves only to stifle the creativity and personal freedom of expression out of each and very one of us. Second Life is no longer a deeply compelling place for us to live, to work, and to do our business. We therefore call for an immediate return to the terms of service as set out at the beginning of 2007.

(NOTE: THIS LETTER IS FICTIONAL AND DESIGNED FOR ROLE-PLAYING PURPOSES)

Then we gave out role badges (student, teacher, parent, admin) and participants worked in small groups to research a position they would take in response to the letter.

Then we held a TV press conference – the poster advertising the TV press conference had the title: “Disneyland or Jurassic Park: What kind of Second Life do YOU want?” This involved the presenter (Kim) speaking to representatives of each group, while the roving reporter (me!) took commentary from the streets and questions from our studio audience.

At the end people had to submit votes for whether or not they would also sign the open letter to the Lindens.

These are the strategies we used:

Text as starting point
Group in-role research and discussion
Role-play (teacher in role, questioning, mantle of the expert)
Decision / Conscience alley

If we had time, we could have also done the following:

Teacher in role as the “expert” – the teacher could hold a town hall meeting where Philip Linden (the teacher or a brave student) comes to hear what people have said and talk to their concerns
Writing in role / photography in role – students could write a fictional blog post about the press conference – either collectively, or individually, and include a snapshot they took
In groups, students create a still image of themselves in the future, to depict what the outcome of their letter was by 2010

The 50 minutes to an hour was nowhere enough to do the subject justice, but hopefully it was sufficient for people to get a taste of how easily and effectively drama and role-playing can be employed to stimulate research, discussion and enthusiasm about a topic. And it was fun – I was laughing a lot and had to toggle my voice off, especially when Corwin Carillon, that rebellious chain smoking anarchist, came to do his “vox pop” soundbyte Thanks to everybody who made this session such a pleasure!

Ego-Maniacs, Griefers and Attention Seekers at Conferences

July 2, 2007 By Anya in Uncategorized Tags: academic life, conference talks 5 Comments

‘media should help communicate a message, not interfere with it for the sake of the media’

I’ve waited a while to write this because I thought time might temper my opinion but it hasn’t and so here it is. How do you cope when you are a presenter at a professional conference and some ego-maniac in the audience persistently interrupts, offers his own opinion and criticises the speaker’s comments?

Without naming names, here is what happened. Continue reading →

CFP: Discourses and Cultural Practices Conference

June 27, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture Tags: conference talks 1 Comment

Later this year I will speaking at the Discourses and Cultural Practices Conference (in the discourses and pop culture strand) and here is the CFP. Look at the list of invited speakers:

Professor Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley
Professor Ruth Wodak, Lancaster University
Professor Frances Christie, University of Sydney and University of Melbourne
Professor Theo van Leeuwen, University of Technology, Sydney
Professor Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology, Sydney

What a fantastic line-up! I am tossing up whether to speak about Second Life (been done to death?) or lolcats (much more fun). I guess Second Life is what everybody wants to hear about but culturally and linguistically and as a new cyber-social-pop-culture phenomenon… who else thinks lolcats would be a fascinating study?

Pleasure, Play, Participation and Promise: the audio to my conference talk

June 9, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture, digital fiction, Second Life, Virtual Worlds Tags: academic life, adolescents, art, avatars, conference talks, education, feminism, gaming, identity, linguistics, literacy, machinima, media, new literacies, new video, NMC, nmc2007, presentations, semiotics, the body, video games, visual literacy, youtube 5 Comments

Thanks to the wonderful Alan Levine, I now have the audio recording to go with my NMC talk, here:

Alan’s write-up of my talk is on the NMC blog here – thanks so much!

Tasks for May

May 4, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture, Second Life Tags: academic life, conference talks, education, new literacies, publications Leave a comment

Here’s a litte list, just so readers will realise why I am blogging infrequently or even not at all these past few months:

1) Finish writing a book chapter for the book “Multimodal Semiotics” – now we have the contract all signed, sealed and delivered this one should be quickly and painlessly written over the next few days.

2) This leads to 2) the conference paper Julia and I are sharing to produce a “teacher-focussed” paper for the New Literacies strand of the September Future of Literacy conference.

3) Following these I have a big chapter of Second Life Education to write for the edited volume I will be editing with my colleaguess, see info:

Identity, Learning and Support in Virtual Worlds

A Proposal for an Edited Volume
Co-editors: Sharon Tettegah, Craig A. Cunningham & Angela Thomas.

This book explores the educational use and implications of various virtual environments. We focus on the use of chat spaces, Web 2.0, 3D Web or object oriented web (Web 3.0), and virtual environment applications.

Introduction

The World Wide Web, Internet and other technologies continue to evolve. Emerging most recently are so-called “multi-user virtual environments” (MUVEs) such as virtual worlds, which transcend the static Web pages of Web 1.0 as well as the predetermined applications of Web 2.0 to provide e-ecologies with the capacity to immerse the user in a “place” that cuts across time and space and affords opportunities for communication, exploration, collaboration, shared inquiry, and both formal and informal learning. Through its chapters and tightly integrated Introduction and Conclusion, this book introduces the reader to these spaces, and the myriad possibilities they represent for the further evolution of education at the prek-12, post-secondary, and lifelong learning levels.

Our approach to this book involves reflecting on, “what does it mean to teach and learn within and with virtual environments? It means that we as learners are no longer engaged in one way interactions. Virtual environments have enabled us to be highly immersed in spaces that yield high social presence, constructivist learning, interactive problem solving, and surprisingly are still enjoyable. This book will be divided into three sections: Section 1 on identity, section 2 on learning and section 3 on community development and support.

4) An article for E-Learning I promised Sharon, who is editing this special edition with a focus on SL.

5) Preparation for the two key conference talks I’m delivering in May, and prep for numerous meetings with colleagues (some planned, some hoped for) with a view to consider possiple future joint project work with colleagues from the NMC and beyond.

Machinima as Multimodal Digital Storytelling

April 20, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture, digital fiction, Second Life, Virtual Worlds Tags: conference talks, education, machinima, new literacies, presentations, semiotics, visual literacy 2 Comments

Finally, the wordpress.com management have enabled the embedding of slideshare slideshows!! Yay!!! I’ve been hanging out for this. So here is *drum roll* the slideshow from my talk about machinima. If you attended my keynote last year or came along to the seminar presentation earlier this week, then the slides will hopefully make sense I never make slideshows that stand alone as I like to waffle on and ad lib a lot and hate having too much text on the slides. So without the audio, you’ll just have to wait til the book chapter based on this talk is published.

My June Plans

April 20, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture, digital fiction, Second Life, Virtual Worlds Tags: academic life, avatars, conference talks, education, identity, new literacies, NMC Leave a comment

I have quite a busy schedule planned for June, with talks, presentations, panel discussions, and research network meetings.

I will first be arriving in San Francisco where I’ll be meting up with colleagues to discuss some joint research project plans (and going to the Ghiradelli chocolate factory, let’s not forget!)

Then its a very busy week in Indianapolis at the New Media Consortium Summer Conference. At this conference I’ll be speaking about my favourite subject:

Pleasure, Play, Participation and Promise: Socio-emotional dimensions of digital culture which are transforming the shape of new media literacies.

Drawing on several inter-related ethnographic studies of multimodal virtual worlds, this session will examine the significance of affect on transformative moments in people’s online lives. These moments, whether filled with great joy and hilarity or laden with angst and sorrow, are all moments which crystallize experience, provide a privileged locus for the creation of knowledge, and have a significant impact upon identity. From younger adolescents who embrace online communities as part of their normal socialization, to the silver surfers, the older generation of converts to digital culture, I will explore the motivations and emotions of a range of individual cases in order to illuminate the key factors which are driving the changing dimensions of new media literacies.

I hope to see a lot of colleagues at the NMC conference that until now I’ve only met in Second Life or via online conferences. It is sure to be the highlight of my year Oh and I will get to hear Edward Castronova give a keynote!

Next is a panel discussion I’ll be on at the ECAR (EDUCAUSE Centre for applied research) Summer conference in Boulder, Colorado.

At this conference I’ll be speaking about teaching in Second Life. Here are the details:

This ain’t your daddy’s classroom, that’s for sure! Serious(ly fun) living and learning in the virtual world of Second Life

Is serious learning possible in a virtual world? The panelists in this session have each mounted significant and sustained efforts in the virtual world of Second Life™ to explore that question first hand across a variety of disciplines and settings. Collectively they have amassed years of experience in such settings, and clearly measurable successes. Join them as they discuss their projects, the challenges they’ve faced, the insights they have gained along the way, and their recommendations for institutions and faculty considering a virtual world presence.

Larry Johnson, aka Larry Pixel, The New Media Consortium
Phillip Long, aka Radar Radio, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sarah Robbins, aka Intelligirl, Ball State University
Angela Thomas, aka Anya Ixchel, University of Sydney

Then I head back to San Francisco for a little R&R for a few days before the long flight back to Sydney. The minute I get back I’ll be heading up north to Armidale for a two day mega session with teachers, talking about machinima, digital fiction, and virtual worlds. And then June will be over. Phew! If you are at any of these conferences do come and say hello!

NMC Online Conference: Convergence of Video and Web Culture

March 23, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture, digital fiction, Virtual Worlds Tags: Bakhtin, conference talks, identity, linguistics, literacy, new literacies, new video, NMC, youtube 2 Comments

Well, the NMC online conference is over and what an interesting experience it was to present in a new way. I’ve really enjoyed the conference talks and guest lectures I’ve given in Second Life, so I wasn’t certain how a java platform would go, but actually it worked great! Here’s a screenshot of me in action:

It’s very interesting really – using the Elluminate platform, which a very nice guy named Mike gave me training to use at midnight one night during the week (it’s all a blur now) – and the shot above shows its capabilities.

The powerpoint slides are shown in the main panel, as were the videos I showed, the audio streamed through simply by pressing the microphone button at the bottom left, and the list of live audience members at top left. Most interesting is the middle left panel of live discussion which scrolls through during the presentation – a side channel of conversation around the talk, and responses and questions along the way.

I really liked the idea of the side channel but when speaking it was a little difficult to follow. So I went back to the recording of the talk and watched the conversation later! It was great that they did a screen recording of each keynote because it meant I didn’t have to get up at 4am to attend! I listened to Cynthia Calongne give a wonderful talk about machinima, and Henry Jenkins speaking about participatory culture and YouTube. Here’s a shot from Henry’s talk:

It was wonderful! I also have to say that I found it very exciting to speak to a new and quite different audience than I usually do (Literacy / English / Linguistics). When I was first invited I felt rather intimidated at the thought of addressing the NMC audience because these people are all at the leading edge of new media studies (and therefore would have extremely high expectations and would know so much more than me!). But actually I think it was very rewarding and it made me spend twice as much time as usual in my thinking / reading / preparation for the presentation.

Evocative Spaces and Aesthetic Grabs (My YouTube Talk)

March 21, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture, digital fiction, Virtual Worlds Tags: academic life, arts, Bakhtin, conference talks, fanfiction, identity, linguistics, literacy, machinima, new literacies, new video, youtube Leave a comment

Click the image to go to the slides for my talk at the NMC’s Online Conference on the Convergence of Web Culture and Video

A complete list of all videos mentioned in the talk are included “under the fold”.

Continue reading →

Fashion and Identity

March 8, 2007 By Anya in Uncategorized Tags: arts, beauty, conference talks, fashion, identity, the body Leave a comment

There’s a fabulous line early on in The Devil Wears Prada:

“Fashion is not about utility. An accessory is merely a piece of iconography used to express individual identity.”

I’ve been thinking of analysing this film (along with the TV series “Desperate Housewives”) to add to some workI did in 2005 – “Discourses of Desire in Sex and the City” – about gender, discourse, textuality, feminine identities and the body, in preparation for a conference about semiotics at the end of the year. Well, that is my excuse for watching the movie and all the DVD extras several times over anyway

The Convergence of Web Culture and Video Conference

March 1, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture, digital fiction Tags: academic life, adolescents, avatars, blogging, conference talks, education, fanfiction, identity, machinima, new literacies, new video, secondlife, youtube Leave a comment

Hey… this looks like a FAB conference!!!

Embodiment in Virtual Environments: Exploring Literacies, Identity, Research, and Community

February 24, 2007 By Anya in Uncategorized Tags: academic life, conference talks Leave a comment

Welcome to those of you coming to my blog from the National Council of Teachers of English Assembly for Research Conference. And a special hello to my co-presenter Charles Kinzer, conference organiser Kevin Leander and one of the participants I actually knew, Dana Cammack!!

So here is a link to the slides I used in the flip book,

Here is a link to the podcast of an earlier version of the talk if you want to listen to it again,

and below is another look at the wonderful machinima, “Lip Flap”, which I must have blogged about 20 times by now *laugh*.

There’s a director’s explanation about some of the technical issues related to creating the machinima here for anybody interested by the way.

So leave a comment or send me a message if you have any questions!

The Avatar as a New Literacy

February 23, 2007 By Anya in cyberculture, Second Life Tags: academic life, avatars, conference talks, identity, linguistics, new literacies, the body Leave a comment

As mentioned previously, I will be presenting at this conference on Friday/Saturday (who can remember what day it is when you live half the time in US time zones these days?). Here’s a reminder of the details:

“Embodiment in Virtual Environments: Exploring Literacies, Identity, Research, and Community”
Charles Kinzer, Teachers College, Columbia University
Angela Thomas, University of Sydney

I’ll be giving an updated version of a talk I gave last year for the NMC symposium about the avatar and new literacies within the 2 hour session, and we’ll be taking the participants on a little tour of SL, showing machinima, and generally having fun I hope!

This talk is an updated version of one I gave last year for the NMC. The slides to my previous talk are here:
www.slideshare.net/anya/the-avatar-as-communication
and the podcast to go with them is here:
media.nmc.org/sl/audio/symposium-anya-avatar.mp3

NMC Online Conference Keynote

February 8, 2007 By Anya in Uncategorized Tags: conference talks, identity, new video Leave a comment

Larry Johnson from the New Media Consortium has invited me to participate in an online conference in March. I am thrilled that I will be presenting in any context with prolific writer and expert on all new media and culture phenomena, Henry Jenkins!

Here’s my title and abstract – comments welcome while I construct my talk over the next couple of weeks!

TITLE

Evocative Spaces and Aesthetic Grabs: How youtube and video blogging are redefining self expression
DESCRIPTION

I will begin this talk with a discussion of how youtube and video blogging have become a mediating space for what Sherry Turkle calls “evocative objects”: objects, or in this case spaces, that we use to think about ourselves. I argue that the act of viewing ones-self in public performances, and acknowledging public commentary on those acts, provides dual reflective lenses which serve to reconstruct, reinvent and redefine one’s identity. To demonstrate I discuss a number of examples in which the nature of the autobiographical is countered and transformed through the performance of self for the public.

Next I will draw on Senft’s notion of “the aesthetic of the grab” – a way of re-articulating the dynamics of spectatorship and participation in new video communities. I will discuss the notion of commodity fetishism and the ways in which “grabbing” bits and pieces of other people’s video performances is then being reconstituted into one’s own performances of identity. This includes but goes beyond one’s amusement at memes, desire for a shared cultural context and networked solidarity, in that it presents a “shopping for truth” about one’s place in the world. It also includes the notion that what is public and telepresent can be owned and manipulated for one’s own desires.

Finally I will raise the question about what it might mean for the millions of youth participants in youtube and videoblogging with respect to ethics, consequences and reputation management in an age where the personal is political.

Here is the Call for Proposals:

Call for Proposals: NMC Online Conference on the Convergence of Web Culture and Video

March 21-22, 2007

Proposals for presentations for the NMC Online Conference on the Convergence of Web Culture and Video, a special 2-day, live, online event to be held March 21-22, 2007 entirely via the Internet, are being solicited through February 23.

See http://www.nmc.org/events/2007spring_online_conf/proposals.shtml for full details.

Video as we know it, produced by experts and consumed by viewers, is metamorphosing into a different genre altogether, blurring the lines between producers and audiences. New video-based forms of self-expression are emerging, with notable examples like video mashups, jumpcuts, and video blogging. Nonlinear narratives abound in this format, in which stories unfold across a series of 1 to 3-minute clips and web viewers are drawn into mysteries such as the story of Lonelygirl15. Brand-new forms like machinima are emerging that bridge virtual worlds, gaming, and storytelling, all through the medium of the small video.

We are seeing the emergence of a production culture, one where, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than 48% of American adults have published content on the Internet. For this generation, video is becoming the medium of choice for content and expression, and as the video shrinks in both program length and physical size, the way we think about video is changing significantly. The 100 million-plus examples on YouTube (and the company’s $1.65 billion price tag) and the nearly 1 million videos on Ourmedia are, for the most part, nowhere near the quality of professional video, but the sheer numbers of viewers who watch them is clear evidence of the compelling nature of the form.

A key factor in the rise of the new video is that production, access and distribution are easier than ever before. A variety of new viewing devices, including Internet-enabled mobile phones, easily record digital video, and posting those videos to the web has become a trivial matter. The explosion of new content is enabled by cheap and easy- to- use equipment as well as new web-based editing and production software.

Join keynoters Henry Jenkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Angela Thomas, University of Sydney, and Cynthia Calongne, Colorado Technical University, for this 2-day examination of the convergence of web culture and video.

The singular focus of this gathering is to consider how these developments are impacting our lives, and how they are affecting the ways we work, learn, collaborate, and even socialize. The conference is designed to spark an examination that explores both the positive and negative aspects of this phenomenon on learning, social interaction, self-expression, and more.

The conference will be conducted entirely online. Sessions, which will be conducted live, can incorporate a variety of visuals and rich media, and are generally about 45 minutes in length, with about half that time devoted to dialog with participants using voice over IP.

Proposals are encouraged on the topic in any of the following areas, but this list is not exhaustive and selections will not be limited to these categories:

* Cultural impacts and trends
* Reflections on identity, self-image and new forms of expression
* Tools and techniques
* Learning applications
* Student-produced content
* Pedagogical potentials and implications

Proposals may be submitted online at http://www.nmc.org/events/2007spring_online_conf/proposals.shtml

This event is the ninth in the ongoing series of specially focused online gatherings that explore new ideas and issues related to technology and learning. The NMC Series of Online Conferences is itself an exploration of emerging forms of collaboration and tools, and this particular conference will focus on ways in which the conference sessions can each be highly interactive, in real time.

Additional information about the conference can be found at http://www.nmc.org/events/2007spring_online_conf/

Posts will be made here when the registration period opens on March 1.

Please circulate this announcement to any and all areas on campus that may be interested in participating.

Angela A Thomas

Tag Archives: conference talks