Portraits of Avatar Dancers http irez me…
Linkspam!
Portraits of Avatar Dancers!
http://irez.me/category/diaspora/365-dancers/
Updates from January, 2014 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Vanessa
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Vanessa
Interviews with Avatars on iRez http irez…
Linkspam!
Interviews with Avatars on iRez!
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Vanessa
Vanessa’s side of 13 Jan Hangout
Christa asked me to post my side of todays’ Google Hangout as a sort of rough notes on the conversation.
Here it is!
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xtaforster
Thank you for posting this, Vanessa. Interesting idea: the virtual world as an “identity factory.”
Stay tuned, everyone, for the 1850 Twitter Chat Invitation.
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Vanessa
Wouldn’t it be great if there were 1…
Wouldn’t it be great if there were 1 place to go to see 83 selfies all of Vanessa? Now there is!
http://selfie.vanessablaylock.com
Vanessa
xtaforster is discussing. -
xtaforster
That was so much fun, Vanessa! It’s been great working with you and learning something totally new at the same time. As I mentioned during our chat, I’ve gotten a lot of inspiration for the monologues that I’m creating from working on this project with you. Thank you, thank you.
Christa Forster
Reading this article I thought of Michael Masucci’s…
Reading this article, I thought of Michael Masucci’s worry that our technology could be creating a cultural vacuum. If the grid goes out, what happens to all the art that is stored there digitally?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/30/we-need-to-talk-about-ted
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mjmasucci
Interesting article, Christa. I liked how it clearly describes the “American Idolization” not only of science, but of thought in general. It has become far more important how many re-tweets an idea gets, than if the idea has specific merits for discourse. In such a paradigm, the flat earth theory would have won.
TED is infotainment, disguised as discourse. That’s not necessarily bad, but the model needs to mature, evolve, and become less like a sales pitch, and more like a discussion (hard to do with its one-way lecture format).
Vanessa
FACEBOOK AS BODY LANGUAGE You know that always…
FACEBOOK AS BODY LANGUAGE?
You know that always depressing stat that something like 70% of communication is non-verbal? As in what the hell you’re actually saying doesn’t really matter much? I’ve always wondered if the type of content mattered in that percentage? So “flirting” would be almost ALL body language, your actual “content” would be very minimal. But I can’t imagine that 2 astrophysicists talking at a white board is mostly body language! That must be mostly content, right?
So… a lot of Facebook discussion is “You’re cool,” “That’s great,” “I agree!” This builds connections and community, but it doesn’t really TELL us anything content wise. Could it be that Facebook is a sort of Virtual Body Language? Low on “content” but higher on feeling and connection?
Christa Forster
Building My Second Self
I have been pursuing my second self for the better part of the past 24 hours.
In my attempt to create my Second Life avatar, I have spent more than three hours getting my hair done, three hours trying to decide what to wear, and at least three more hours trying to figure out how to wear what I have decided to wear. It’s almost as confusing and frustrating and ridiculous as it sounds. I’m doing this because I hope to participate in Vanessa Blaylock’s Dance for Camera: The Planets. The deadline for making my avatar is, like, yesterday, becauseĀ Oceania Planetary Park (LEA 27) CLOSES on 1 January 2014. Alas, we thought we had more time — story of our lives (our first AND second lives).
The learning process has been tedious, riveting and downright funny. For example, it took me over two hours to go from this, to this, to this and FINALLY — after scouring forums — to this!
(More …)
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Christa Forster
FYI — Vanessa has been a most accommodating and generous teacher. Thank you, Vanessa!
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Vanessa
Go Xta! The way you Dance, Walk, Stand, Pose, Fly, or anything else is by animating the 21 joints of your avatar’s body. You can create your own animations with a free, easy program like QAvimator (unfortunately it may not run (or will freeze) on current Macs) Fine on PCs.
http://qavimator.org/The “how to” tutorial:
http://youtu.be/h_-3c_aC-O4You could also use Poser or any other body modeling software.
Besides making your own, there are also a zillion animations for sale in SL. “Dances” of every kind from Ballet to Hip Hop and even a few Ninja moves. And lots of “stands” “walks” etc. If you look at SL Marketplace, down the left column of categories, you’ll see animations:
https://marketplace.secondlife.com/You could also search for any specific type of Dance or Walk you’d like. I’ll send you some In-World LM’s for shops where you can go stand on a base and try out lots of different animations.
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Christa Forster
Okay, so I went to a place:http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Thyris/254/60/24, and I created a dance, which I like! The dress works well with the moves. š
Before I could “take [the] dance,” the notecard told me that I needed to purchase a Dance HUD, so that I could attach the dance I made to it. So I did. Then I went back to my Dance Master Terminal and “took dance.”
Now, I have no idea what to do. I went to LEA 27 to see if I could dance it (my dance:), but I remembered that I can’t unpack stuff there. So I went to a public sandbox, but when I clicked on the Dance HUD, there was no option to “wear” or “do” the dance.
So now I’m stuck again.
Let’s meet tomorrow…I’ll be up available around 9:30 am CST. I’ll check in with you then.
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Vanessa
Xta I just learned that Oceania Planetary Park…
Xta! I just learned that Oceania Planetary Park CLOSES on 1 January 2014! I’m fine either way on this, so if you want to get something done there in a week, we can, or if it’s too much rush we can skip it.
With either choice on the physical site… I know you’ve written / recorded some voice on that. We can still do something with that. Where is that BTW? I saw/heard it from a PBR post and meant to comment on it but never had the chance.
LMK what your pleasure is.
Ho ho ho, Merry Christ[a]mas!
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xtaforster
Well! The nerve. I haven’t even gone in there yet. Gotta get in there. I wanna get something done in there — YES!
Here’s the link to the ccmixster snippet. There’s been one remix! So cool.
http://ccmixter.org/people/xtaforsterHugh McElveen mentioned that he might wanna remix it, so I will reach out to him to see if he’s still interested.
I’m with my family right now in CA, but I could probably get in on the 27th or the 29th or the 31st. Around 7:30 PST. Any of those dates work for you?
xo,
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Vanessa
Great Xta! All 3 can probably work, but 7:30 PST… AM or PM?
On the audio: so cool that you got remixed!
Your recording has a lot of “plosives” in it, which is your breath hitting directly on the microphone diaphragm. On a tiny speaker you might not even hear this, but on speakers with any low end, it tends to be very loud and moves a lot of air mass. The first person to remix it seems to have cleaned that out a little bit, but I think a different mixer could do better…
Perhaps you’d be up for trying another recording. Without the plosives we might inspire another remix or two. There are a few ways to cut the plosives out. Some microphones have a “low cut” switch which helps. Also, if you aim your breath to go OVER the microphone, and not AT it, that can help a lot. A tool that works great is a “pop filter” which is a hoop with fabric over it. This blocks the big air mass of your plosives, but lets the frequencies of your speech through. You can buy one at most music shops. You can also make one by stretching sheer tights (stockings, pantyhose) over an embroidery hoop and putting that between your mouth and the microphone. You can also try to control how you let your breath out generally and on consonants like “H” and “P”.
Even though you’d like to eliminate plosives, you still want to be as close to the microphone as you can be. If you back off the mic, you’ll get more and more room tone (it will sound like you’re speaking in a trash can) And a more “dead” room is better. So lots of furniture, sofas, books, fabric, etc will make you sound clearer. A room with lots of hard surfaces, bare walls, etc, will make you sound worse.
A clean, flat voice track is a gift to a remixer who then has the maximum creative options for their mix. Yay!
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xtaforster
All good ideas. I totally know what you mean by the plosives. It’s a miracle anything got up there at all. That was built for deadline, baby! I’m probably not going to get it rerecorded before the 1st (I can try, but I don’t have a mic out here in California, which is where I am until the 28). So how about we try to meet in SL tomorrow? Let’s shoot for 7:30 a.m. if that works for you.
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Rebecca
What a great topic to be discussing! Never having been much of an online girl, the power and opportunities available through the online medium is something I have come to realize more and more within the past couple years. In realizing this I have attempted to make more of an effort to be present online and connect via the web but I have personally found it very difficult to feel connected when only communicating online, and struggle to get myself committed to such mediums when I find myself more drawn to the physical world in front of me–and I’m of the younger generation.
I would argue some of it is because, as you both spoke to, many communication sites on the internet can seem so surface level with nothing that enriching coming out of them. But as you both speak about other websites with more intellectual and substantial material I am left to think it is not that the web itself is that banal but the sites that are most known, most frequented and for this reason tend to be the sites people (including myself) gravitate towards unconsciously and easily when online–making people intern want to delete their FB as they don’t want to gravitate towards these cites. The internet has such a wide array of possibilities, and people use it for mindless past-time as well as a way to develop their ideas but it’s all a matter of choice.
But perhaps one of the benefits, and also the disadvantages, is when online you have the choice of what “watering holes” you will enter. Depending on what you read and where you voice your opinions you are choosing the people you most influence and are influenced by. This can be beneficial because you can be selective to what your needs or desires are, but can’t it also be somewhat dangerous by turning a blind eye to other parts of society that you may not identify with, but are still very much present. Of course this can be done in real life as well but when facing what’s directly in front of you, you don’t have as much of a choice for what comes at you or what “sites”, opinions, or visual imagery you get. The online world seems like a good reactionary and processing place to the real world for me. But I still find it somewhat limited on what you can really learn here and think perhaps your less likely to be surprised as you would in real life experiences. I think. Like you mentioned Michael, people need to be reached off-line as well as online but I think it extends beyond the friends who find such social media websites boring. The thing that makes me, perhaps the best word here is, nervous about this online movement is the amount that it has moved people away from direct contact and interaction. Which I think takes away a lot of little things to be learned, experienced, etc.
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Vanessa
Great Rebecca! On the Physical::Virtual mix, I think that varies a lot by personal taste. I think the wide distribution of preferences on what that mix is, is great. One way that people try to do both, is with Mobile Apps and Augmented Reality. Like an AR app to hold up your phone and see Yelp ratings superimposed on all the food places down the street. That’s definitely useful, but in a way also banal for me. With something like SnapChat, it likely isn’t high-value intellectual content, but it is a personal connection. In a way the radical idea of SnapChat is that it’s a lot about being an “old fashioned” phone conversation.
I think you’re right about where to go for whatever part of your time you’re going to spend gazing into a flat-screen. Be that a little or a lot of time. Facebook does serve a purpose, but I think a lot of us seem to feel the less FB the better. My real hope is that we can interact here on .Re/act, .Re/search, etc, and build a Conversational Community. I think having a self-selected group who read/react to each other in a space like this can be the best. Our feedback will sometimes be insightful, but even if it isn’t, we’re getting go know a “place” and a group of people and I hope over time that can come to be substantive.
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Michael Masucci
Building multi-generational communities
One aspect of my project/practice that has been difficult/interesting to navigate so far, is maintaining the older arts communities that I have worked with over the decades, ( many of whom only occasionally utilize social media) with the younger more social media-centric communities. Such integration will be a challenge, and as with most challenges, a creative opportunity as well.
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Vanessa
Hey Michael, this is a really interesting space. As a new media dweeb, I’m always amazed by how many artists have very minimal online footprints: some don’t have websites at all, others do but aren’t present on many of the spaces that are “basic” to me.
What I’ve learned is that we all have the place or places that “feel like home” to us. If you want to have a conversation and you really like F2F over coffee or beer, then you gravitate to the places and people who facilitate that. If you do or don’t like Facebook or blogs or Vimeo or any other on/offline space, that becomes your community.
If you’re someone with a message you want heard, then you can’t expect them to come to you, you have to take that message to all relevant media where publics you want to reach can be found. That can be a lot of work, but at least conceptually it’s easy.
What’s a little more conceptually complex for me is the idea that if I do or do not frequent a particular type of watering hole, that’s going to influence the people that are part of my sphere. Katrina told us at the last hangout that she deleted her Facebook because it took too much time / attention / focus. I’m probably too much of a media whore to actually delete FB, but I don’t spend much time there. For me FB is the place where even smart people say banal things. vs, eg, “The Well” (which is actually before my time, but “so I hear…”) was a place where you took time to craft a really compelling response. On FB even smart people become banal. On The Well you sounded smarter than you were IRL.
On the other hand, I have a few really smart friends who, for reasons I don’t entirely get, pretty much only communicate on FB. So if you want to interact with them, you have to go to FB.
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Michael Masucci
Yes, you are so right. When The Well (which was not before my time) was in its heyday, for the most part, only ‘tech savy’ people had it. Professors types, scientists and artists associated with tech/art groups such as SIGGRAPH. Just having a thewel.coml email address gave the pretention that you were ‘smart’. Thos days are behind us.
Your comment that, for example Katrina stopping FB (as for the most part I have well), is another cultural trend to take note of. You so correctly point out that not ustilzing one of the numerous spaces that are in cyberspace, means you basically do not exist to that community. That has always been the case even in proto-digital communities ( i.e. BBS, web 1.0, etc) and especially before that, in the world of print media. If the ‘recognized’ art press did not write about you, then you did not exist, at least not in the so-calledc ‘art world” ( a term I find offensive, art is not a world but more like a series of unrealted feudal states). So, as you said, if you want to communicate with some people, who for whatever reason only communicate on FB, then that;s the platform you must take.
With so many of these emerging and declining platforms out there, the decentralization of the past reasserts itself, in some ways. I realize that through search engines and multiple feeds to your Twitter, FB, Pinterist, Youtube, etc., etc., etc, distribution channels does automate the need to repost, over and over again, but marginalization does seem to be trending forward for more analyitcal and critical discourse.
I’m not being pessimintsic, only observations. In general I think the trends are very, very positive. But those friends of mine, who, smart as they may (or may not) be,find FB, Twitter, etc, boring still need to be raeched in more tradional off-line ways (yse, I like meetinf F2F over beer, coffee, but more becuase I like beer and coffee and prefer to be talking to someone interesting wjhile I’m partaking).
But, like you, most of the people I know are living more and more online, and I also must adapt my daily routines to find more time each day to interact this way. For decades email has done this quite effectively, but the change that was brought about by people like ( among many others) Dave Winer is now ubiquitous, and if that is the way that information will essentially be distributed, everyone I know must also accept this simple truth and must adjust accordingly.
Thanks so much for your thoughts, they are always very helpful and appreciated.
Vanessa
Hey Molly did you see Adelina’s post She…
Hey Molly, did you see Adelina’s post? She also took both PBR & Site Dance!
http://practicebased.re/search/hello-adelina/
Vanessa
Ciara, and -
Christa Forster
congrats, Van! š
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Vanessa
of course we do it for love & knowledge, not virtual papyrus, but if you’re into such extrinsic motivators, one nice thing about the Coursera papyrus is that they’re connected to LinkedIn, so you can add them to your LI Profile.
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Ciara
Lovely! Congratulations, Vanessa!
Christa Forster
Open Culture
Today I referenced Open CultureĀ while hanging out with the Blueberries. My recommendation is that Michael promote the EZTV archives by tweeting out links to different content, the way Open Culture promotes its content.
Ā Ā 
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Vanessa
Gravatars are tied to email accounts. So if the email associated with a site is different than the email for your gravatar, you might get a “waveatar” instead.
You potentially could have a different email address on your own WP blog, and here on .Re/act and you could even have a different email over on .Re/search. If you wanted to, you could change the email on address on any or all of those sites, and then the corresponding gravatar would show up on comments.
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Michael Masucci
Thanks Christa,
I will definitely start looking into this and the other flavors of social media that you, Vanessa and others are suggesting. They are all really great ideas. Around Jan 18th, we plan to announce the formal press release, not just about the EZTV Museum projects, but some related events, including several exhibitions and performances (including one that Van will be virtually participating in). We will attempt to distribute ti through both existing social media channels, but also through more traditional press outlets. This will be in conjunction with USC, as well as through the email lists of about half a dozen art organizations here in LA.
Your suggestions have been great, and much appreciated, so never hesitate to give your thoughts, criticisms, etc. as we move forward.
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Vanessa
.Re/ad? (virtual book club)
Christa mentioned Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried in today’s hangout because of his use of Metafiction, or a blend of fact & fiction that promises to be more real than real. Of course you could argue that great fiction has always been a blend of fact & fiction… and perhaps that’s true of “non-fiction” as well. Poor James Frey could have avoided such a scandal if his publisher had just called his memoir A Million Little Pieces, “metafiction.”
The idea of an online book club was floated briefly and a few heads nodded. If we did one, would we want it to be like an F2F book club: go read for a month and then meetup in a Hangout and discuss the book? Or use the asynchronous web to have a .Re/ad site like this .Re/act site where peeps could chime in and interact as they read along. Any preferences?
And do we want to read The Things They Carried? Or any other nominations?
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xtaforster
I would prefer F2F if possible. Depending on the size of the group reading the book, we could make it work in a variety of ways.
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xtaforster
Here are a couple other books that I’ll throw into the suggestion: The Anxiety of Influence: a Theory of Poetry, by Harold Bloom (inspired by Vanessa’s comments on Michael’s “Chain Reaction” post in Practicebased.Re/search); it was published in 1973.
Pirates and Farmers, Dave Hickey’s new book. I’ve read parts of it, and it’s quintessential Hickey, parts unreadable and parts brilliant. So far, I’ve loved the essay on So Cal artists, “Coping with Paradise” the best, but the essay on biennales is pretty funny and good, too.
Christa Forster
Nutritious Blueberry Experience
Team Blueberry hangs out and discusses our PBRA mooc experience. We agree that
1) we’re missing a formal “farewell” video from our Professors Leslie Hill and Helen Paris,
and
2) we love each other.
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Vanessa
Aww, yay, thanks Christa! Thanks everyone!
PS: you should drop by
http://en.gravatar.com/& paste an image there, so your posts here can have your smiling face instead of your “waveatar”! š
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Christa Forster
I have a gravatar, but why is it not showing up here?!
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Christa Forster
Ah. I see it now.
Molly Ross
Public Art Has Rules–who knew?
I knew there was sets of standards by which the people with money, land and power pick art they want in the public space. Work is chosen that communicates an agenda, an aesthetic or a certain version of history that those with money, power or land want showcased.Ā In the last few decades the definitions of art has changed and this is affecting what is considered Public Art–Yeah!Ā Today this came across my social media.Ā UK organization, Situations, is proposing new rules for contemporary public art–some of them are great!
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Vanessa
It seems that we have moved decisively beyond the idea of public art as a large steel sculpture in a public plaza. Nothing against Mark di Suvero, but the emphasis has shifted from what Critical Art Ensemble called the āsedentary modelā of public art toward practices that involve participation, performance, and other process that unfold over time.
Mark Tribe
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Vanessa
Rebecca & Christa have started to think about how we might use the .Re/cipes site, and “lists of rules” or “rulebooks” seem to fit right in with Algorithmic or Generative things like .Re/cipes
Vanessa
I’ve just done a quick browse of Udacity…
I’ve just done a quick browse of Udacity, Iversity, NovoED, and Coursera, and Coursera definitely seems to be the Arts MOOC leader. Or perhaps they’re just the biggest and have the most of everything…
https://www.coursera.org/courses?orderby=upcoming&cats=arts
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Vanessa
They all sound pretty cool, but 5 weeks of Warhol starting 21 April has to be the winner for me. Which one would you take?
https://www.coursera.org/course/warhol
Molly Ross
Tangents: Online Professional Development (MOOCs and more)
Check out this site from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA–where I used to teach). This project evolved out of the training MICA did for the faculty on Hybrid Learning. The faculty (me included) were very concerned about how you share the tactile knowledge of a visual arts program–this is one solution. SKILLSHARE
Vanessa
Hangout with Molly!
Molly and I did a Google Hangout today! We talked about each other’s cool PBR projects, realized that Avatars and Puppets have something in common, and solved all the issues in MOOCs which will be much better after today. Not bad for an hour’s work.
Vanessa
MOOC Data
HCI MOOC Stats / Scott Klemmer / UC San Diego / Coursera
Molly and I were wondering how many people enrolled in our PBR MOOC and other stats we haven’t heard about. I don’t think Site Dance shared numbers either. I do know that the Future of Storytelling MOOC from Postdam / Iversity has 83,000 peeps “enrolled” yet only 120 submitted “Creative Task of the Week #4” (More …)
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Molly Ross
That is so great to see! Obviously for his content (human computer interaction) he’s interested in how many humans are interacting. I wonder why the other courses or platforms don’t just automatically include this information? Is there a reason for it?
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Vanessa
My guess is that itās simply who bothers to share the numbers. Scott Klemmer shared his Coursera stats, but Steve Koplowitz didnāt (that I know of) share his Coursera stats. Our PBR team hasnāt shared our NovoED stats (that I know of) but Christina Maria Schollerer has shared the numbers I posted above for her Iversity āFuture of Storytellingā MOOC.
Overall though, Iām with you. Why donāt the platforms themselves just share data all over the place, just as you see ā72 Facebook likesā on a blog post. Or as the forums DO show the Post / Comment / Read counts.
Open Data. Open Web. Open Knowledge. Itās all about Open!
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Molly Ross
Twitterification (in the best way) for academic writing.
Over at the PBR MOOC, we’ve entered the final week! In a Vlog, Leslie Hill planted the seed for publishing some of the “findings” from this class. Great idea but I’d like to see it reflect this experience. Vanessa Blaylock said it best in a note to our team “The Internet is not a “thing” but a “place” and our experiences there are not “nouns” but “verbs.” LOVE THAT!
I imagine short form essays–the twitterification (in the best way) of academic writing. Writing that is concise, concrete and contemporary to reflect the place and actions of a MOOC.
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Vanessa
What a wonderful idea Molly! It would be interesting to try to literally do it in Twitter – though I think that might be pretty hard, not sure.
But I wonder if a space like .Re/act which sort of encourages 1 or 2 paragraph interactions, would work? (for any tech dweebs, .Re/act is the “Houston” child theme of the WordPress “P2” theme)
Or maybe do it in 4:53 videos? Or 4:33? (haha, Leslie went 20 seconds long!) Or embrace mobile? Video apps like the 15 seconds of Tout, the 30 seconds of Viddy or the 36 seconds of Keek…
Leslie’s video:
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Vanessa
kk, let’s try a couple more… (adapting from Kevin Kelly)
Creativity is a tendency, not an entity; a process, not an artifact.
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Michael Masucci
Molly,
I’m still adopting to the ‘less is more’ style of communicating using as you put it Twitterfication.
My resistance is that is results is going straight to the conclusion, with little room for analysis. This has been problematic throughout history. Think of the U.S.’s 2nd Amendment. It means two entirely different things to different people, Example: for the NRA-types, it says absolutely no regulation of guns. I read the exact same words and get an opposite impression ( the word ‘regulated’ is actually in it). To me it says we can have a National Guard. Very different conclusions. With a shortened approach, it seems there is much more chance of misunderstanding, not a good thing for scholarship.
But it is more efficient, to be certain. But I’m not sure that’s what scholars should care about. But their may be no other viable choice with a MOOC.
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Vanessa
Hey Michael, I wonder if you’re comparing “one long monologue” (an academic paper) to a Single Tweet. The thing that I think critiques of Twitter sometimes don’t think too much about is that it can be a dialog between 2 or more participants. It doesn’t have to be one vague paragraph, it can have lots of detail and specificity, but instead of being in the form of a monologue or tablets coming down from the mountain, it’s in interactive dialog form. It’s a tapestry being woven live, and each participant part of the Global Loom has an impact on the evolving tapestry. You might choose a particular color or material of fiber to contribute, but you can’t know what the tapestry will be without the actual process experience of the collaborative weaving.
I really like the form of interactive dialog in that they’re a key aspect of the realness I feel on The Net or in Virtual Worlds. With a monologue it’s kind of me dumping content on whatever journal or audience that’s willing to take it. Although I may not have read the journal yet, what I will eventually read there is already fixed. My reading it doesn’t really impact it. But in an online dialog, in a vaguely Heisenbergish way I suppose, my reading it becomes part of the dialog and the resulting trajectory couldn’t be obtained without the set of participants that chose to engage in it. The Net is alive.
Maybe this is why I go on such tirades when peeps post PDFs. PDFs are dead. I like content on the open, interactive web.
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Molly Ross
Great points! And I am by no means advocating any major shifts just opening up the conversation for myself and asking how can publication communicate effectively the experience of Practice Based Research in digital realms (like our PBR mooc)? Is there a way the short form essay can be a “portal” to deeper analysis of a topic? What webs can be explored (tangents-my favorite concept this week) and how is the possible for the reader? I’m also questioning as you are “what scholar’s should care about?”
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Michael Masucci
Yes, Molly & Vanessa, interactive dialogue is of course useful, perhaps even vital. But there are areas of investigations that are complex, and easy to mis-interpret without exhaustive verbiage, often coming from one voice.
I suspect that we all three like both approaches, and see value, in differing contexts for both.
Think of how some of the critics of Obamacare used the number of pages of the law ( over 1,000) as a criticism of it. When its length really showed a realistic approach, it showed that the multiple authors had operationally defined and then stipulated every possible contingency they could imagine ( and even so left out a few variants). The critics complained that they actually had to do some work, and read the entire thing (actually, usually its their assistants that end up reading it). But isn’t that their jobs? I think the same for scholars, not just ‘opinionators’ (who of course have their significant place and value).
I don’t argue that short-form is one form of communication, but I just hope that the option of deep, structured analysis, does not become rare. Not a down ‘from the mountain” approach as you mentioned Van ( in fact those tablets constituted short-form edicts) but a full explanation of ideas or opinions, with the space to make the case in specific, detailed ways.
But I’m taking too long to make my point, so should stop š
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Molly Ross
Critiki! rubrics and the ways of the MOOC.
This week in the PBR MOOC weāve been tasked to create a rubric to evaluate our work. Framing your evaluation was a trick and a skill that I worked hard at in Grad School. I found that if you did not set up the right parameters your crit would veer off into strange unhelpful territories. In a MOOC we are faced with extreme parameters in which our work is viewed– The anonymous reviewer looking at our work digitally for a brief amount of time. How can we use these parameters to benefit our critiques? What does this experience offer us that other forms of critique do not? Itās always a question of how do we connect with our listeners/audiences/readers in the most clear and concrete way possible–maybe even more so within the format of the MOOC evaluation.
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Vanessa
Smart questions Molly! Maybe it’s year-end fatigue or something but we (I) havn’t totally run with the Bespoke Rubrics too much yet, but you’re absolutely right! This is a really important and valuable opportunity!
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xtaforster
It’s totally November-into-December fatigue for me. Just getting started on this now. Thanks, Van and Molly for helping orient me toward the task!
Vanessa
Hangout w/ Xta!
In the weekly Blueberry Google Hangout this week I met up with Christa Forster. We had a great chat about our Practice Based Research MOOC, making the most of the resources, continuing the conversation after it wraps up, etc. And we also talked about her participation in The Planets virtual dance for camera project I launched for both the PBR & Site Dance MOOCs. She’s creating a poem / monologue that she’ll record and put up on CCMixter / SoundCloud and see who uses it in a music track, and then we’ll take that work and use it as the score for her Mars “dance.”
Vanessa
Surprisingly I found the Site Dance Final Projects…
Surprisingly, I found the Site Dance Final Projects a bit less exciting to read (peer review) than the Project 2 “Designing & Structuring Your Work” projects. I found the P2’s especially compelling! Maybe just the luck of the draw, IDK.
Vanessa
I’ve never heard how many students enrolled in…
I’ve never heard how many students enrolled in Practice Based Research in the Arts or Creating Site Specific Dance & Performance Works, but The Future of Storytelling from Potsdam / Iversity is now up to 80,000. I’m sure PBR & Site Dance are vastly smaller, still in all cases it’s thousands at least.
(More …)
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Vanessa
Also, only NovoED even has the feature of messaging classmates. On both Coursera & Iversity your only hope of communicating with colleagues outside of the closed, soon to be shut down, forums, is if you can find them out on the web. Some students put URLs in their profiles, but shockingly many do not.
Again, in a “massive” course, of course you can’t expect 1-to-1 contact with faculty or TA’s, so it is very much peers & colleagues that we need to form relationships with. Otherwise a MOOC is just a lecture class, and that’s a lot less.
- We need student-2-student messaging
- We need profiles that prompt (optionally) for your website
- We need groups & group messaging
- We need Peer Review with the option to not be anonymous
- We need Peer Review structured like Coursera so it’s easy, fast, fun, and useful. Not like the peer reviewing a whole transcript of discussion on NovoED that requires aspirin just to get through doing a lousy job that will help no one anyway.
Vanessa
Amazing statement from one of the Spatula &…
Amazing statement from one of the Spatula & Barcode relational projects I peer reviewed:
I decided that for my part of our group relational art project I would buy some nice chocolates to offer to other passengers on the train. When I got on the train, there were two women seated near me and I offered them chocolate. One declined, but the other took a chocolate and remarked that it was the first time in 7 years of riding the train that anyone had offered her anything.
Vanessa
Hangout with Katrina
As part of this week’s Gretchen Schiller activity Katrina and I did a Google Hangout today. We had a really great conversation. Like last week’s Spatula & Barcode activity, Gretchen’s activity was so wonderfully engaging and inclusive. More on it later, but I wanted to drop a quick note. Yay! We decided our team should do these every week!
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Ciara
This is delightful š Katrina looks both charmed and bemused – the image certainly supports the idea that you are sharing a great conversation!
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Vanessa
Totally! One topic was Street Art / Youth Culture / Culture Studies — we have a cool classmate, Adelina Ong, who’s doing interesting work there. Here’s my mini-profile:
http://blog.virtualpublicart.com/post/68002078650/adelina-ong
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kschaag
yay, ’twas so fun! š
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Vanessa
Yay! BTW, one of the nicest experiences you can have online is filling out Katrinaās ācontactā form! Everyone should go try it!
http://katrinaschaag.wordpress.com/contact/
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Vanessa
Coursera from CrunchBase Mountain View based online education…
Coursera – from CrunchBase
Mountain View-based online education startup Coursera has added another $20 million to its previously $43 million Series B round, adding three unnamed university partners as well as additional funding from GSV Capital and Learn Capital. Coursera aims to provide an Ivy League-caliber education online for free and currently serves 5.5 million students enrolled in classes from 100 institutions. Founded in 2012, Coursera has raised $85 million in funding to date.
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themollyross
FROM NEW YORK TIMES
Online Courses Attract Degree Holders, Survey Finds
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: November 20, 2013About 80 percent of people who enrolled in a massive open online course, or MOOC, from the University of Pennsylvania had already earned a bachelorās degree, according to a survey of 34,000 students who had at least started one of the 24 courses the university offered on the Coursera platform. Although Courseraās founders have presented their MOOCs as a way to democratize higher education by making it available online, free, to anyone in the world, the Penn survey found that in the United States and developing countries alike, most Coursera students were well educated, employed, young and male. Pennās courses account for 20 percent of Courseraās enrollment.
Vanessa
NovoED wants us to write a SIX paragraph…
NovoED wants us to write a SIX paragraph review of our classmates ONE paragraph submission on Hickson & Goulish? Gawd!
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Ciara
Cometh…THE GRID!!! Argh!!! I think it was supposed to make the process easier for us but I fear it is rather counterproductive…
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Molly Ross
I appreciated The Grid’s attempt to add structure to an otherwise vague guide line for reviews on NovoEd. Constructive feedback is one of the challenges in both online and offline critiques. More work needs to be done in MOOCs and hybrid learning to explore better options for feedback for artwork. Good, Fair, Excellent are not constructive feedback.
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Vanessa
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Vanessa
Hi, just testing comment notification. TY!
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