Last post

I have been thinking about my last post and how I called my recent use of GIMP something I'd "devolved" to. OK. I did want to draw attention to my use of digital tools--specifically, how these tools augment what it is possible for me to do and be; how I can legally take someone else's creative commons image of Napoleon's hat and put it on an official image of myself (this is the one my employer uses, and frankly, I think it's one of the nicer portraits of me out there--which has everything to do with its excellent photographer whom I will leave here unnamed in the interest of privacy). I can wear this priceless hat in Paris in Plattsburgh without getting arrested. In fact, because this image's photographer chose to license this image in such a way that derivations are allowed--which is very generous--the invitation for other uses of this photograph and what it contains exist. What I have done is explored one of these uses.

Now, when I made this picture, I definitely was thinking about how I think it's funny. I have always thought these hats look great, yet I think I might never have the opportunity to actually put one on. They do sell souvenir versions of these and similar hats at places and events that re-enact earlier periods; I know, for example, that they do at colonial Williamsburg. A friend of mine once was videotaped wearing one of these in a shop there--and I can say that because his face is so expressive, and it's live, it's the funniest thing. There he is in summer vacation clothes, in a shop filled with kitsch, wearing kitsch, performing a version of himself-as-colonist. It's wonderful, and it was a moment of comic genius that in my mind will never--as an instance of wearing a hat for comic effect--be surpassed. (Or that's what I'm betting on.) My point, though, here, is that they do sell hats like this and that I've been inspired by that moment ever since I saw it on film.

Now, I wasn't there when they shot that footage. I know it only as a text, but because of that video, it's a memory for me--a memory of watching my friend wearing that hat. A possibility that wouldn't have existed had it not been for digital video--an aperture, thousands of images of him standing in that store, sequenced, passing before my eye at a blisteringly fast speed, creating an object that is a source of joy for me forever. It's a living thing. This is making me think of Marshall McLuhan on what the change from literacy to "electracy" (I think he says that, but I mean, communication enabled and mediated by digital tools) and how electracy recreates the now-ness of orality. And it does. I have never been to Williamsburg, but I have been there--at that moment of watching my friend wearing that hat--many, many times, and as a part of my memory, I always will be at that moment. It's a part of my expanding present, particularly now as I write this.

OK.

So I was as I said working on using GIMP to cut and paste images on images. And I was thinking of how digital tools don't make art in and of themselves. And I was thinking of how my image wasn't art but just me playing around.

I started to think of this: Could I convert this from light play into serious play? Could it actually come to mean something more? Could I manipulate the image further--with text, perhaps, by using "paths" (the tool one uses to create "from the ground up" images to embed into pre-existing ones)--to invite viewers to look for more in this thing?

Well, by itself, with the bicorne hat on my head, it'd be hard for me to have them see anything beyond "oh, he cut and pasted the hat onto his picture." So, at best, this brings up the idea of one function that a photoshopping program has. That's a valuable thing.

But I was interested in meaning something more than that, too. I became interested in a few things. These included

1. troping on some serious art from the past (as new media art often does this--taking something old and remixing it for a new purpose, while maintaining fidelity to some aspect of what it meant in its original context)--I started thinking about Rene Magritte's painting of a pipe that reads "Ce n'est pas un pipe").
2. playing with how an image can be used as a background for text.
3. in the dual reality of being a flesh-and-bone person and being augmented by digital tools--having a digital identity (digital identities--serious, comic, worker, traveler, pragmatic, dreamer of time-travel). (This is something I wanted to get at by showing myself "wearing" this hat that is in a highly guarded glass box. Am I wearing it? Who am I, a digital or flesh-and-bone self? Of course, I am both, but these are not the same and exist in some tension with one another. And I wanted to draw attention to that fact.)
4. how a digital identity is a specific thing and therefore somehow unlike my flesh-and-bone identities--and drawing attention to this fact.
5. playing with what seems trivial so that it's almost impossible to think of it as trivial anymore, yet remembering that I am wearing a hat that looks strange and makes me look starved for attention, vain, etc. at worst or funny at best.
6. showing that a difference between traditional US art and new media art is the possibility of making infinite copies (of a hat, of segments of text).

I would say numbers 5 and 6 are the most important ones for me.

So, with this preamble, let me amble along and post the again modified image of this picture:

Putting GIMP to good use

GIMP is, as many of you I am sure know, is an open source photoshopping program. It's something that for years I used just to crop images I downloaded to serve as wallpapers. As my earlier jockey's encouragement animation shows, I have been working on colorizing, painting similarly colored regions, and more. Lately my uses have devolved into manipulating pictures of myself for comic effect. So I started thinking about hats I'd like to wear, and I started thinking Napoleon. I found out that his hat is called a bicorne hat. (It may have other names.) In any event, I am going to post a photoshopped image of myself wearing a creative commons image of a bicorne hat.

A little check-in

OK. Not much of interest here to most, and in fact, it is a completely extemporaneous posting. Well, today was a good one for a couple of reasons. First, I know my students in my New Media course got very good practice in recognizing and theorizing the meaning of their own stories of being new media producers-consumers today. That was great to see. Specifically, it a was an important time for voicing perspectives, for overhearing from one another--a time where discussion showed its epistemic power. Second, I had time to work on my writing centers article on tutors' choices in sessions. And I can say that the text is still supple to me--that is, although I haven't spent time with it since late this summer, its problems and possibilities are still very much present to me. I don't feel like I have to get out the jumper cables and discover what new beast the old one has turned into. And that is a good feeling.

Fall is coming. It will leave us in upstate NY on Saturday, which may prove to be a fun break, but I'm guessing it won't for me. For some reason, I am looking forward to the cold with some anticipation. I am sure that in uttering something like this I really asking for it.

So I better stop.

All over the place? Maybe, maybe not.

I am fumbling toward learning what to and not to say on a public blog. I am, in the end, a highly private person. But I am also a person who realizes that continued existence requires use of interactive information technologies to promote the enhancement of social freedom. I am, in truth, not sure if I will ever be as true as I could be to the title of this blog--which, for any who do not know, refers to my position as a Writing Program Administrator in a university English department--because, frankly, it may weaken what I can do as an advocate for students and our program. If this makes me seem unethical to you, then that is what it makes me seem. What I assure you is that I am trying to promote the enhancement of social freedom, and I am aware that this is a complex, collective, time-consuming, perhaps unsustainable task, but an infinitely worthy one.

OK. That said, I have been thinking about NY state and SUNY as a system, given that the economic situation of both has been--needless to say--in a tough spot lately. A question I have kicked around for two years is this:

I realize that NY state has powerful corporate interests and a powerful bureaucracy. I do not expect the corporate interests to advocate on behalf of the poor. I do expect the bureaucracy to. How well, though, does the bureaucracy advocate on behalf of the poor in NY state? I ask this question self-identifying as a bureaucrat, as a state university faculty member.

I know that my university is on a mission to celebrate itself as advocating on behalf of the poor in its "The Power of SUNY" strategic planning campaign. One of the guiding assumptions of this campaign is that SUNY must accept and participate in what is to be the "entrepreneurial century." In theory, this refers to empowering local communities, businesses, people to use whatever resources they have in enterprising ways--to build knowledge, wealth, etc.

I also want to say that while we know the US, by pretty much all accepted indexes, has among developed nations a wide rich-poor gap (on this linked page on global income inequality, click on the image of the world at the top right hand corner of the page; note how the US's "peer" nations are doing a lot better than we are--and how, say, there is more equitable wealth distribution in petroleum-rich Russia and Nigeria than in the US), the same is true for NY state itself.

Most people know that these are not rosy times for US, or global, higher education in general--and US, or global, public higher education in particular. These are the times of the privatization of the public sphere. Now, if I may digress, I do not want to connect dots so much with this blog. I want to present related snippets of information. And I want to say I want to look into specifically how these are not rosy times for global public higher education--and what the trends are anticipated to be by experts on this subject. So, today, I did some looking around and found what I think is an interesting document presented by an ethical organization. It is, by name and identifying authors, as follows:

Trends in Global Higher Education: Tracking an Academic Revolution

A Report Prepared for the

UNESCO 2009 World Conference on Higher Education

Philip G. Altbach

Liz Reisberg

Laura E. Rumbley

What I am linking to my blog is the executive summary of this report, which I find fascinating.

OK. That's all for now.

Tom

Remixing on Family Guy

When composing is seen as a social, multimodal activity, we can and do call it remixing. While Family Guy, as a television show, does not satisfy the definition that some use for new media (which involves the use of linked "Web 2.0" technologies for distribution), it is a fun example of a multimodal remix. I often think about how the plotlines of the show are basically irrelevant, a thing noted in the South Park episode where the writing staff for FG is a bunch of manatees in a tank filled with "idea" balls. When I remember Family Guy, then, I do not remember entire episodes. I remember moments when I laugh or am embarrassed for being a part of the audience--like when Stewie and Peter drive Lois into the ocean (embarrassed), when Brian enters the family room with his girlfriend in sunglasses addicted to cocaine (both), whenever Stewie is in drag, etc. They are, most of them, moments and not episodes. Perhaps this is the case with many sitcoms; I guess they wouldn't be funny if we didn't recognize ourselves in them, so they are pretty much always ripped from other sources.

But, with FG and remix, we are forced to admit whether or not we find remixing a thing that requires talent, that is as creative as more "original" storytelling.

I guess I am interested in this because it is only recently that I have really been thinking about interactivity, that narrowing of the roles of producer and consumer, within popular texts. And with FG, it's completely in your face.

Do I like FG? Yes, I love FG. All writing is remixing, and the richest remixes are the best writing of all.

A tiny animation

OK, so I've been working on learning how to use Windows Movie Maker. Just a few minutes ago, I tried to save a little animation to this blog, and then I got antsy, pressing "publish" before the file had actually been uploaded. Sadly, it had some interesting material in it that I don't now have the energy to re-enter. So, I'm just going to post this animation. If anyone is interested at looking at a very basic, three second long animation of a jockey's whip in a re-touched lithograph, then this is for you.

(But this is mostly for me, an experiment in seeing whether or not I could do this.)

The image and sound are both free and legal to use for personal reasons, which is certainly what this is. The image's license can be found here. The sound's publisher requests that no one link to the site. So, I include a citation at the end of this post.

I've been thinking about NY state, and I've been thinking about Saratoga. These two thoughts led me to be thinking jockeys. I did a search for a lithographs, thinking these could be re-touched nicely with the use of GIMP, an open-source photoshopping program. So, with that, I end this entry here.

Tom

A 1 Free Sound Effects. Horses Running. A 1 Free Sound Effects, 2009. MP3.

Never before

OK, so I am working on becoming a more regular blogger. That is not an easy thing for me. I think it may be because I value my privacy a great deal. It may be my hoarding sensibility, too. It may be that I'm old. It may be a lot of things.

But in teaching a class on new media, which I would identify as the use of immersive, interactive, computer-based, communicative tools, I am becoming more and more interested in this thing. This blog that is. And, also, how technology is less likely to be used to manipulate me or anyone else against our own best interests if I actively engage with it.

Some technologies--like mechanical pencils, for instance--I have an undeniable attraction to, one I can't remember not having. Others I am more skeptical of. And blogs are one technology that I am skeptical of, given that it's not always been clear to me whether I can use it to enhance popular freedom or if, in using it, I will be undermining those efforts more than promoting them.

Anyway, I realize these reflections are quickly becoming boring.

[There was some other stuff here. I realized that a post I thought hadn't gone up actually had, leaving me with essentially duplicate content.]