ENGL 680M: New Media

i've been taking wendy's cue and finding the things that inspire me...this is one. i'm terribly interested in alberto giacometti, a fabulous sculptor. here's a link to a multimedia artpiece that i found really interesting. it links him to suu kyi...

http://www.locusnovus.com/lnprojects/suuandgiacometti/

i'd love for this blog space to be a place to share things that inspire us...one of the things i love the most about the field we're in is that the things we find inspirational can almost always become part of our scholarship....

because i'm a multimodal learner--i like to map things out and draw pictures and create using kinesthetic modes--i've always imagined that i'm adept in various modes. but as i've been trying to pin down a presentation format for this class project, i've realized how tied i am to language--how easy it is for me to imagine communicating my ideas in a paper that flows linearly from beginning to end.

munster, anna. (2006) materializing new media: embodiment in information aesthetics. hanover, nh: dartmouth university press.

i have lived my second life for long enough to know i don't want to live that way any longer. . so now i'm at the drawing board again. normally, i would go ahead with the project despite losing interest, but i'm determined to be jazzed by the projects i have to (get to?) work on. so...i'm thinking about a number of things. a lot of them revolving around music and whether or not music is considered (can be considered?) new media.

So I've started reserving a Laptop with the DLC to run Secondlife. Even that is proving a bit difficult. But Reisert is particularly helpful--and he knows Second Life. I'm going into this blindly without any expectations, and I'm looking forward to exploring (not playing--word to Mark Pepper) Second Life as a pedagogical/playspace.

i joined second life. i have a second life avatar. but my computer can't run the software. something about the latest video cards. or whatever. i'm not sure what i'm supposed to do about that. anyone have any clue?

my friend mandi and her husband raymond came to visit for the weekend--yay--and while they were here, we took the obligatory trip to our local gamestop. raymond owns a gaming business. while we were in there, a few nerdy looking boys were playing various games around the store, including a dude playing guitar hero like mad--with no sound!! first of all, is that cheating? second of all, i'm really intrigued by the sound element of video games. so i'd like to take a quick poll: is the sound on a video game essential to your success/enjoyment of the game?

okay, tonight i'm doing the "pretend-to-be-reading-while-actually-watching-television" game. I'm not sure what i'm watching, but this crime show just used this girl's Another Life experiences and avatar in order to track her whereabouts in a kidnapping.

last night was the premiere of grey's. it sucked. i mean, i'm still going to watch it b/c i love sandra oh and because it continues to be the only thing i look forward to every week. ok. so this season, the interns have all become residents, and they have little interns. at the opening of the show, the writers brought back the /exact/ speech that bailey gave them in the first episode (i know this b/c i own the first and second seasons, and watch them repeatedly whenever i get depressed or lonely, which lately has been--well--daily).

i realize we're supposed to be blogging as part of the class. as someone who doesn't blog--i've tried it, but i always lose interest--it's an odd act. i seriously write a blog entry every few days, but decide not to post it. this is primarily because 1)i'm not sure who my audience or why their reading and 2) i don't want to sound like a jackass. whereas when i ask my students to blog or talk with them about blogging, they seem completely unaware of the public nature of their blog, i'm hyperaware of it.