Canned Goods

The Writing New Media workshop ended last Friday. I packed up camp and headed home. And I’m still tired (3 daze later), yet energized at the same time. I learned a lot, especially the use of Flash — those scripts are the hardest part; they make everything happen. But what does learning a new program really mean?

The initial difficulty for me was having done digital video editing with Adobe Premiere back in the mid-90s. There is only one time line, and everything goes there — with effects added there. Flash is different. In creating a button, for instance, I can make an animation (a movie clip) and add that to my library. Then I have to make a button symbol (it comes with states of appearance/action similar to an internet link: up, over, down). You can see this at the UW Visual Culture site: plain square @ up state; animation for over state; and new location for down state. The “up” is simply a shape (graphic) drawn on the screen in the “up” tab. The animation is a separate moive clip dragged into the “over state.” This layers of action concept is what’s tricky. 1) Create Movie clip 2) Create button symbol. 3) Drag movie into button 4) drag button onto the stage of your project. Abracadabra! You have a cool button on your webpage.

Why try to explain all this? It all goes to the idea that the technology used shapes not only the creation but also our thinking — but only so far as how culture implements the technology, I think (Isn’t this what Scribner and Cole, Royster, and Heath are saying with their work?). Someone help me out here. It feels like a chicken and the egg dilemma. Am I Flash-thinking now compared to Premiere-thinking in my film and video production days? Is this what we mean when we say someone “thinks like a scientist”? Does becoming immersed in a specific culture of knowledge shape the way a person thinks about the world, and is that the same as (similar to) saying that different technologies shape the way we think?

Any one have some suggested reading concerning this?

Okay. I missed posting for the last couple days, but we’ve mainly been working on our final projects. Mine, as mentioned before is a homepage for the course I’m teaching in the fall, UW’s Comm B course, English 201. So I finished the page just minutes ago (it doesn’t have all the links because I still need to make the site). It’s been designed for a 1024x768 screen, so, hopefully, it looks alright. Take a look and let me know what you think: EN 201 Homepage

I finally settled on developing my website for my Fall section of English 201. At first, since we were talking about technology and new media, I had planned on something techie, although not quite Matrix-themed. But it’s important to me to communicate that this use of technology is simply allowing us to do something that has always been done, except it was expensive an time consuming to do so: work with images rather than (and in conjunction with) alphabetic print. So here’s the first draft of the homepage. It still needs some items (like post-it notes and a wall outlet), and eventually, this will be moved into Flash for some animations and sounds.
(edit: this is the finished image file I will animate in Flash . . . with sound, hopefully).

Today was the Copper Country Tour. I skipped the mine tour, although I was told it was impressive (I needed to catch up on some Zs).

Our first stop was the Snow Meter:

Next, we had lunch in Copper Harbor. Here’s a shot from in town (notice that Highway 26 goes all the way to FL) and one from above:

We headed back down to Calumet and hit a cool bar (from 1894), Shute’s (Shooties). It’s an old mining town, built on mining money, and now that the mining isn’t happening, there’s all these interesting buildings from that era left to rot.

We had a nice, slow paced day in which we began with discussing interactivity (coming up with definitions; and, boy, there were many) and looking at sites. Later, Johndan came in and talked about usability, showing us some great, bad sites. Don’t those people who make you watch their Flash animation (before allowing you to get to the content) ever sit down and look for info? It’s callled role-play, folks; put yourselves in the user’s shoes.

We also began storyboarding our projects during the afternoon. I struggled with mine because there are several projects I’d like to work on, but I finally decided to work on my site for the course I’m teaching in the Fall (a new media course, of course).

We focused on how the visual structure of pictures create meaning. We looked at Molly Bang’s book, Picture This and a chapter from Kress and van Leeuwun’s Reading Images. Much of this was familiar territory from my days as an Art & Design major, but it was fascinating to hear people’s reactions and interpretations to the images we looked at in class.

Here’s one we looked at: Raphael’s The Nymph Galatea.

We couldn’t figure out, definitively, what figure in the scene is Galatea. We seemed to disagree with a art historian after reading the Wikipedia entry on the myth. What’s important is considering the use of color and contrast and the positioning (and angles) of objects on the canvas.

Yesterday, we showed our first attempts at using Flash to construct a visual argument, but before that we discussed whether you could have a visual argument, an idea that no one seemed to have a problem with. What did spark a bit of debate concerned a producer’s intention and the meaning a viewer might take from the image. I think was more of an issue of us not communicating all that clearly verbally (ironic, considering the topic of the day: does alphabetic print communicate make arguments more clearly than images?). Some said everything is an argument, but my point was more about the context of reception. Do I know enough about what happening in the image to get what the “author” intended? My visual representation of The Three Little Pigs may make sense to me but not to others. So, a successful visual argument would, seemingly, need the producer and consumer to be on the same page; and the same holds true from print.

This is the gist of the conversation, so my apologies for reducing an entire day of the workshop to a paragraph.

Also, it’s been just a bit rainy, off and on (Monday and Tuesday), so Wednesday was the first day I could ride my bike to class without getting soaked. And this weekend is Bridge Fest, so I thought you’d like to see a shot of the bridge.

We unveiled our photoshop projects built from appropriations. Our task was to come up with a visual argument. I’ve done quite a bit of work in PS and with Fireworks, and wanted to do something “flashy,” but my argument (and the short amount of time we had) didn’t call for a whole lot of flash. Frankly, it’s awful , but here it is.

For the afternoon, Anne walked us through Flash to get us to the point where we could make a simple, interactive slide show (similar to PowerPoint, but with a button to push). This was to be a visual argument, also, using a sequence of images. I got a little ambitious and started to work with motion tweens and movie clips, but it works for the most part. Wednesday, we’ll be incorporating text. Once I have it all together, I’ll post it here after I finish and figure out how to post it.

I’ll have to keep these entries as brief as possible because there isn’t a lot of time available for none workshop related activities during the day, unless, of course, heading down for some local brew is involved.

Yesterday, we started off with a cool activity that led us into a discussion on materialty (i.e. how it constrains production). We made name plates, a standard practice on the first day of class, but Anne had set us up with all those supplies we were familiar with in childhood (and a few new ones): construction paper, crayons, pipe cleaners, etc., (and some glitter glue).

Anyway, here’s my mechano-organic construction:

I got spam blocked on my own blog. AND I’M LOGGED IN! Damn Blogsome! Damn you to hell! I may have to make that TypePad leap myself.

Now to my response to Scot: Nope. No connection at the camp, but it’s light until after 10pm, so I can get my reading done for the next day’s class.

But there is a coffee shop here with free wireless, Cyberia, and I’ve been told the Keweenaw Brewing Company also does. I’ll be sure to bring back some beer, but I don’t think I’ll be able to find any clay tablets or inscription tools for the transaction.