Look at this! I think that the symbols on the blue banner, to the left of the word “Blogging”, may spell out my name. Or part of my name.
Does anyone read Korean? I can’t even figure out how to google to find out whether there’s a Korean webpage about the book. Silly illiterate Westerner.
I feel myself sinking into that inward nestingness that happens when you’re expecting a baby. Twitter holds less fascination for me, and I forget to blog or read blogs for weeks at a time (except for my “life, not research” category in Google Reader…) But the baby won’t actually come until early February, and I’m still at work until mid-January. A few things do catch my attention. Like Regine Stokke’s blog, which had me wiping away tears. She wrote in Norwegian, but Google translates it reasonably well. Regine was an eighteen year old Norwegian girls who died of cancer last week and had blogged about her illness for the last year. (I’m pretty sure this is real, unlike the Kaycee Nicole case). Or, on a completely different note, June Breivik’s post about privacy and school students (also in Norwegian/Google translated to English), which is an issue I’ve been far more aware of after reading Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother. June Breivik is the project leader of “Digital School” for our region in Norway, and links to a great website about privacy in schools, Personvernskolen (translated). I’m so glad this is actually being discussed - finally!
And then there’s this graphic of how big the internet is. I’m sure some will use this to fuss about how much bad quality nonsense there is on the internet. But I think I might use it anyway, in presentations or teaching somewhere.
Created by OnlineEducation.net
Here are the slides I’m speaking from today at the The Network as a Space and Medium for Collaborative Interdisciplinary Art Practice here in Bergen today. There’s already video up from the performances and readings last night, and some ongoing discussion on the Twitter hashtag #network09. A short summary of my talk follows the slides.
Literary narrative genres develop from personal narrative practices. The first novels were based on letters and diaries, though the genre developed into something independent in time. This presentation discusses contemporary personal media and narrative practices, such as those we see in social media. Some of these practices are constrained by corporations such as Facebook or Twitter, which steer our expression in specific ways. Others appear free, yet are heavily influenced by cultural templates, copying and voluntary rules. Often, corporations or organisations provide systems to automate some of these voluntary rules. We’re also beginning to see some examples of social media sites that take our contributions and create their own visualisations and representations of an aspect of our life. For instance, Dopplr.com generates reports on your travel, Flickr.com shows you your photos on a map or as a calendar, Trixietracker.com graphs your baby’s sleep patterns and Google Web History visualises your search activity in time. What happens, then, when our personal narratives and self-documentations aren’t hand-crafted as with diaries and scrapbooks, but are automatically generated? What would literary narratives following these personal but computationally assisted practices look like?
The talk builds upon and extends an essay to be published in the European Journal of Communications in December this year (Preprint available).
Today’s class is the second day of students presenting their projects. Two students can’t make it; they’re home sick with h1n1 / swine flu, the poor things.
Many students have worried about how to define a remix. The best article we’ve found that does this is probably Eduardo Navas’ The Three Basic Forms of Remix: A Point of Entry, published in Remix Theory on April 26, 2007. He starts by looking at defining it in music: “A music remix, in general, is a reinterpretation of a pre-existing song, meaning that the “aura”¯ of the original will be dominant in the remixed version” - so as remixes started, they were generally only remixing a single source. Navas then argues that there are three main kinds of remixes: extended, selective, or reflexive, where the remix “allegorizes and extends the aesthetic of sampling, where the remixed version challenges the aura of the original and claims autonomy even when it carries the name of the original; material is added or deleted, but the original tracks are largely left intact to be recognizable”. Extended or selective remixes might be similar to the homages we see on YouTube, where someone fawningly pastes in lots of images of their heros from a movie that are shown with a music track, while the reflexive remix would be the critical or parodic kind that’s common in political remixes. Other things than art can be remixed too - Neva found a discussion of how concepts and information can be remixed, and Elisabeth is writing about biological and genetic remixes.
[Elisabeth showed us another article with a further categorisation, which I can’t find now… will add later.]
Some students will have to discuss whether or not their examples are remixes at all - is the collaborative BlueSfear.com art worm that Neva’s writing about a remix? Is She’s the Man a remix of Twelfth Night, as Franziska wants to argue?
Next week, Maria Engberg is coming from Sweden to talk about appropriation in avantegarde art of the twentieth century and how it relates to current digital culture. I’ve posted some readings she’ll be using in Studentportalen/My Space. The following week is the conference which you’re all welcome to attend (if you want lunch and/or dinner, there’s a fee), then we’ll be looking at your videos on November 12 and November 17. Your final paper and video are due on November 20, and we’ll have a premiere party in the evening of November 20, with a screening of all the videos!
I just gave a talk for Forskning.no’s seminar about research dissemination/popularisation, Fra forskning til forside v3.0. Here are the slides:
I had to leave right after my talk, because my Remix Culture students are presentating their research projects at noon, but I was able to hear Ove Dalen’s talk before mine about how to write online. He gave an engaging presentation with some interesting points: did you know that we now read more of an article presented online than we would if it were presented on paper? Also, while Jacob Nielsen in 1997 found that 80% of us scan online texts rather than reading them, that number’s dropped to around 50% according to a study by Poynter in 2009 (I’ll have to ask Ove Dalen for a more complete source for that: luckily he’s on Twitter so that’ll be easy!). Oh, and the first thing we notice on a website? The text, not the images. Ove Dalen has written a couple of books on writing for the web, and gives classes frequently, so I’ve seen his work online regularly over the last years, but this is the first time I’ve heard him speak in person.
A couple of students are writing about how remix videos work as memes, and how they spread, and have asked whether Richard Brodie’s Virus of the Mind is an acceptable academic source to use in their essays. I haven’t read Virus of the Mind yet, but from its presentation, it’s pitched as popular science. You can certainly use it as a source, but obviously not as your only source. It seems that Virus of the Mind has a fairly extreme argument, if the first line of the Amazon.com editorial review is accurate:
If you’ve ever wondered how and why people become robotically enslaved by advertising, religion, sexual fantasy, and cults, wonder no more. It’s all because of “mind viruses,” or “memes,” and those who understand how to plant them into other’s minds.
“Robotically enslaved”? My goodness. That’s even stronger than the metaphors Henry Jenkins, Xiaochang Li, and Ana Domb Krauskopf argued against in their report on Spreadable Media. Jenkins et.al. argue that biological metaphors such as “meme” (based on evolution and genetical replication) and “virus” cast the people who enjoy and pass on cool stuff they find as having no agency at all. I disagree with the way Dawkins’ original article about memes is portrayed here, but certainly think that thinking of regular people who enjoy cute cat videos as being “robotically enslaved” is a little over the top. Perhaps the reviewer is not describing the full argument in Virus of the Mind very well, though.
Even Dawkins, who invented the term meme, wouldn’t go with the “robotically enslaved” argument, I think. He finishes his chapter proposing the idea of memes by pointing out that humans have conscious foresight and rational minds, and are actually able to choose according to long term goals rather than just going with the short term gratification of genes and memes that, for instance, may tend not to encourage altruism and peace:
One unique feature of man, which may or may not have evolved memically, is his capacity for conscious foresight. Selfish genes (and, if you alllow the speculation of this chapter, memes too) have no foresight. They are unconscious, blind, replicators. (..) We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. (..) We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our own creators.
So sure, go ahead and use Virus of the Mind in your papers, but think critically about it, and for goodness sakes, discuss the assertions made in it, using the skepticism of Jenkins et.al. and of Dawkins and perhaps others as well. You may end up agreeing with Brodie, but you have to show that you’re doing so because you’ve thought carefully about it, and that you understand the counter-arguments and possible problems with his thesis. Also make sure you present Brodie appropriately - what are his credentials? I only quickly googled him but it looks like he developed Microsoft Word (!), is a professional poker player and has written self-help books - so he’s not exactly a scientist or researcher? If you’re going to argue strongly for Brodie you may need to find more supporting sources. He may well refer to some good ones in his book.
The semester is more than half-done and there’s only a little over a month until research papers and videos are due. So Thursday’s class will be about figuring out where we’re up to, making sure everyone has drafted their literature review and that everyone has a plan for how to structure their paper. Students who complete their literature reviews and indicate a clear direction for their further research - and post this to their blogs before midnight on October 18 - will receive individual written feedback from me as well.
Looking at the schedule ahead this is really our only chance to work together on our projects before the presentations on Oct 27 and 29. I’ll ask students to sign up for presentation slots today. Here’s what I want you to do in these presentations:
After each presentation, we’ll have time for a little discussion and feedback.
Don’t start working on your videos until you’ve done a lot of work on your research paper. We’ll view drafts of videos in our last class, on November 12.
There are some great events coming up in Bergen in the next couple of weeks:
I think that’s it for the next couple of weeks - and then November 8-10 is the conference Scott is organising, The Network as a Space and Medium for Collaborative Interdisciplinary Art Practice, which I think will be very inspiring, there are some great people coming.
The only sad thing about all these exciting things happening right in my own back yard is that I’m not going to be able to attend them all - pregnant mums of very small children simply don’t have the time it would take, or at least I don’t, especially as my main pregnancy symptom (apart from a rapidly growing belly) is extreme sleepiness. Have you ever tried needing 10-11 hours sleep a day? I actually felt more rested when I had sleepless nights with a newborn than pregnant last time round. I’ll squeeze in some of these events, for sure, though!
This spring, I recorded a short video lecture on how to use blogs in teaching for the Virtual Book online course on E-Pedagogy for Teachers in Higher Education, which is produced by Hųgskolen in Bergen and planned and edited by Anne Karin Larsen and Grete Oline Hole. My short talk summarises the main advantages of blogging as a learner (or researcher!) and gives concrete suggestions on how to help support students as they move from writing for just themselves and their teacher towards writing in a network of other learners, using blogs.
There are some other interesting-looking video lectures on e-learning in the same course, along with a suggested curriculum and list of assignments, so that teachers wishing to use the same material can do so. It’s not specified on the website yet, but the editors are planning to submit the material to the Medea Awards, which will involve licencing it all as Creative Commons, non-commercial. But I don’t think that’s happened quite yet.
At the Digital Culture program, we’re pleased to announce the launch of the Nordic Digital Culture Network, a Nordplus Higher Education network which we have been working to develop for the past year. Linking together digital culture programs from the Nordic and Baltic region, the Digital Culture Network facilitates curriculum development, student and faculty exchanges, and innovative teaching ideas and best practices. Students studying in the programs in the network will benefit from increased student and teacher mobility and enhanced opportunities for study. All the programs in the network — the University of Bergen in Norway, Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden, IT University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland — are leaders in the field of digital culture in their respective countries. Network participants will facilitate student and faculty exchange ranging from express visits to semester or yearlong exchanges, joint programs and master’s degrees. We are launching network activities this activities this fall and spring with faculty exchanges between the institutions, and will add programs, such as student exchanges and a summer school for digital culture, in coming years. I also encourage students from other countries in Europe, North America, and elsewhere to explore the exchange and M.A. program opportunities detailed on the site. For instance, both Bergen and Jyväskylä welcome applications to our M.A. programs in digital culture from well qualified international students. While international students are responsible for their own living expenses, they are not required to pay tuition.
I’m enjoying this Flickr set by Mike Licht of old portraits and posters that have been updated so the people in them are blogging. This is “Young Woman Blogging, after Marie-Denise Villers”. They’re all CC licenced, though who knows whether the original art work was used legally, strictly speaking.
Neva’s post about Foucault’s “What is an Author” raises an interesting question. She notes that Foucault writes that “an anonymous text posted on a wall probably has a writer - but not an author”. How does that fit with remix and collaborative art, Neva asks. Most artists in projects she has explored so far use nicknames or are completely anonymous. Neva asks: “Does that mean we should be sceptical about anonymous pieces of art? Can we trust their ‘makers’? And, can we even call this ‘art’?”
This will be our main topic today. We’ll discuss Barthes’ declaration that the author is dead, look at Chatman’s communication model and think about whether this divorces the author from the text/work or not, and use Foucault to think about possible alternatives to the author function - ways that a work/the text/fiction/remixes can be “limited”.
[there’ll be an image of Chatman’s communication model here later; for now I’ll use the one in my PhD thesis]
I also want to talk a little about hoaxes/fictions online - when a pseudonymous video, blog or similar gets really popular, people always figure out who’s really behind it - i.e. who is the author. Some examples: Karen26, lonelygirl15 (see also my post on why this upset people so much), the Vote Different ad by ParkRidge47.
Can we identify author functions in remix works?
We’ll split up in groups to discuss this:
Choose one of the works you’ve looked at this semester – a remix video or website or image.
Today’s Remix Culture class is about the Gutenberg Parenthesis:
a cultural realm where it is felt that cultural products (including stage plays and student essays) should be original, independent, autonomous compositions — the individual achievement and the individual property of those who create them.
I first encountered the concept at Tom Pettitt’s plenary keynote at Media in Transition 5 conference in 2005. Here’s a PDF of his talk, or you can watch a video of his actual presentation. Pettitt starts speaking at 36:50 minutes into the video, and his talk lasts for about ten minutes. Here’s his diagram of characteristics of art and culture before, during and after the parenthesis:
And for a little more, you could see my presentation discussing the concept with librarians, which emphasises the meaning of silent reading and such - and the post includes some interesting objections from the librarians.
Having just read Mark Sample’s useful post about teaching electronic literature to students who experience it as a totally foreign culture, I’m thinking that his idea that we need to help guide students through the different stages from denial to integration might apply just as well to the Gutenberg Parenthesis. If there is a vast cultural difference between someone entrenched in the parenthesis and someone who has not yet entered it or has moved beyond it - well, perhaps we really need to think about how to communicate between these very different mindsets.
Mark Sample explains the stages thus:
In the early ethnocentric stages of Bennett’s model, individuals begin by first denying that cultural difference exists in the first place, either because of their own isolation or because of willful ignorance. Greater exposure to cultural difference next prompts a defensive posture, an us-versus-them mentality in which existing cognitive categories are reinforced and any comment directed toward one’s own culture is perceived as an attack. The last ethnocentric stage is characterized by a minimization of difference. Individuals tell themselves that “people are the same everywhere,” a superficially benign attitude that in fact masks uniqueness and still evaluates other cultures from a reference point within one’s own culture. The final three stages are marked by an understanding that behaviors, norms, beliefs and so on are all relative. The first ethnorelative stage is acceptance, genuinely acknowledging cultural difference and seeing that difference within its own cultural context. Next comes adaptation, when individuals change their own attitudes, behaviors, and even language to match their surroundings in an attempt to communicate and empathize. Finally, integration occurs when individuals move freely between cultures, practicing what Bennett calls “constructive marginality,” that is, seeing identity construction as an ongoing process that is always marginal to any specific social group.
Mark Sample goes on to argue that we need to construct assignments that help students move from denial to integration, or from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativism, for instance having students argue against the value of electronic literature and then for its value.
I wonder if this way of thinking could help us understand why issues of copyright, for instance, or filesharing or plagiarism, are so complicated and why people have such different ideas about them?
(Links for teaching:
Reading Reflections:
Remix Culture students are finishing up their 250 word project descriptions and their video previews, so today’s class is mostly going to be a workshop were we can all get on with it and raise any issues that have come up.
I do want to show everyone the Kuleshov effect, which I think is particularly relevant to the people working on the manipulation of reality and on remixes of videos. Lev Kuleshov was an early Soviet filmmaker who set up a simple experiment: he showed an audience a film that showed the same footage of a man’s face three times - but each time followed by a different image: a bowl of soup, a dead body and a half-naked woman.
Each time, the audience interpreted the man’s expression differently, showing that the meaning of an image or sequence of images is as much in the images it is surrounded by as in the image itself.
You can read about the Kuleshov effect in pretty much any book called something like An Introduction to Film Studies, and if you’re writing about remix video in any sense you should definitely read a little more about this and other theories of video montage.
(I wonder whether we should all study cinema montage theory a bit more? After all, film editing is always a form of remixing, I suppose?)
Here’s a brief video of Hitchcock explaining (and demonstrating) the Kuleshov effect, without mentioning Kuleshov.
Montage was a major part of 1920s and 1930s Soviet film theory. The Odessa Stairs scene in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, where images “collide” and create new meanings is probably the most famous example:
If there’s interest, we can talk more about film montage in the upcoming weeks.
Here’s the plan for today’s Remix Culture class:
That should be plenty :)
I'm Jill Walker Rettberg, an associate professor at the University of Bergen, and I do research on how people tell stories online. I'm affiliated with the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies. I've been a research blogger since October 2000.
I'm usually best contacted by email.
earlier archives: 2003 february : january
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June 2008: Blogging, a book by Jill Walker Rettberg, published by Polity Press. (Table of Contents)
May 2008: Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader, co-edited by yours truly and Hilde G. Corneliussen, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.
Browse my other publications on electronic literature, electronic art and weblogs. I also enjoy speaking in public, for general and specialised audiences, and I've posted summaries of many of my talks and presentations to the blog.
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