Thursday, December 11, 2008

Project Five Final with Metatext


LOL WUT is an Alternate Reality Game that uses  writing and multimedia to create a zombie attack on Morgantown (We've all hoped it would happen, I just brought it to life). First, everyone was invited to the Facebook Event that contained the details of the game, then they were invited to create their version of the events in Morgantown. Not everyone responded, and sometimes the responses came from unexpected places. Anyway, without further ado, I present, LOL WUT.


Thursday, December 4, 2008

Project Five

For Project Five I created a Facebook event in order to try and make a Alternate Reality game that people can submit ideas to.

The link is Facebook event and it has another link on it to a scenario that I invented and posted onto my blog.

I started thinking about this idea when Sandy mentioned Lost in class. The thing that always amazed me about the TV show Lost was that even though there are hundreds of hours of the show, the writers never actually reveal very much about what is happening "on the island," they leave what is happening up to the imagination of the viewers. My friends who are addicted to the show spend countless hours a week on the message boards about Lost looking up theories for what is happening and trying to find trusty spoilers for future episodes so they can know "what is happening" ahead of time. This is the type of universe I wanted to create, a universe so vague and confusing (although on a much smaller scale than Lost) that it is open to any number of different interpretations. I encourage people to use multimedia in their project, and to make it as off the wall and insane as they want. I already know several people who are working on it, and I'm hoping it turns out really well.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

A Morgantown Mystery?

It was a cold, September night. Early September, when it should have been warm--BUT IT WAS COLD. I ventured outside to consume some delicious Burger King in short sleeves, only to find the blast of wintry air was too much for my frail frame to endure. To combat the frostbite slowly seeping it's way up my torso I decided to dance on my way to the Mountainlair. As I was dancing down the street, I noticed several people running by me at breakneck speeds, with a fearful look in their eyes. I quickly stopped my warming dance (for the novices out there, that's like a rain dance, only with heat) and stopped to figure out what was happening.

The moment I stopped dancing everything went to hell.

A giant tremor shook the earth and I hit the ground along with the twenty or thirty others who were out and about. A great shadow rose up from the direction of University Avenue, and I felt my blood run with an ice that had nothing to do with the ice collecting between my toes. Everyone was screaming and the shadow rose up, high enough to blot out the moon and the stars. I wasn't waiting to find out what was happening, I turned my head and ran back towards trusty Stalnaker Hall. As I reached the top of the stairs I ventured a look back, but a heavy fog had rolled in and was obscuring the majority of the city from view. A faint green glow was emenating from the fog, and as I could still hear screaming, I quickly entered the friendly confines of Stalnaker Hall.




The scene inside Stalnaker was completely different from the one outside: basically, it was calm. The worker at the front desk was calmly reading Faulkner, the piano lounge was bustling with some form of student organization, and there was a smattering of students studying for various science classes. As I turned the corner to enter the staircase, I noticed a light was glinting off the windows of the Honor's Office. I thought about asking them for help, but I decided that the light was probably indicitive of a late night for someone, and they were likely to be in a grumpy mood. Thinking that I might stop back by at a later date, I proceeded up the stairs and to my room.


So here I am, with my window open, I can still distantly here the screams fliting through the screen. My room mate is missing, I can't find any of my other friends, and I havn't seen anyone else for a while. What did it all mean? The giant shadow from Stewart Hall, the green light, the mist? What was happening. What IS happening? I'm worried because there's no one on this floor.

A knock at my door.

I'm rolling the camera. Things are getting fishy.....



Thursday, November 20, 2008

More Project Five Ideas

For my fifth project I'm still thinking about doing a zombie/thriller spoof similar to Cloverfield. "Surviving Morgantown The Night of the Zombie Attack." As the story unfolds, I'm hoping it will involve a bunch of elements of parody etc, and as the night continues, you begin to find out more and more about the shady happenings around morgantown and the conspiracy the university is complicant in. Likely I'll start a facebook group and get people to email their email addresses to me, and I'll start sending them details, or I might just get them to email me stories and then post them on the blog, being explicit about each story continuing the narrative. It's all deadly.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Project 5 ideas

Basically, my ideas for project five revolve around a zombie-conspiracy story involving WVU officials. I'm not totally sure the direction I want to go on it, I might make it sort of collaborative, and also try to incorporate some kind of shooting element where you blow up zombies. I've got some friends in Computer Engineering who might be able to swing that (if they haven't already written their own zombie shoot 'em up game). Not totally sure, although looking at the alternative reality games today helped me to think of some ideas. I'd like to make it a person by person account of one night when a scandal goes down in the honors college dorm (where I live) because it would be the University's main base of operations for the zombie project. Either way, zombies, WVU and a lot of silly videos. Should be pretty gooooood; I'm excited.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Project Four Final with Metatext


Steph Alex Brittney Nadia Marci Andrea
Amy Paige Hannah Laura Amanda



For this project I had several people in the dorm where I live (Stalnaker Hall, as the picture indicates) make a list of the items that they had in their desk. I'm trying to use very boring, mundane things to create a sort of story in this project. The idea came to me when I was filling out a sheet in Chemistry Lab about the items in my desk. The university's goal in doing this was to make sure I hadn't broken or stolen any of their expensive equipment, but what actually happened was this idea was formed. I wanted this project to sort of play with the idea about how we are big into measuring and counting things, and how the things that we are counting, are obtaining throughout our lives come to define us. I didn't have these people create any kind of narrative, or tell me anything about themselves (in fact, some people failed to even write their name on their list), all that defines them in this project is the collection of pens, papers, and paperclips located in their drab, unexciting brown desk.

The trick on this project was that it was collaborative, and so people would constantly ask me what they should put on the list, how they should do it, etc. I told them again and again, "do whatever you want; if I tell you what to write, it will be my writing, not yours." This was frustrating, but the collaborative nature of the project turned out to suprise me--it worked far better than I thought. People's personalities really began to shine through their lists. For example, one girl wrote her name in an exciting pattern with a star symbol turning it into a fantastic design. This fits this person's personality perfectly, and turns my project almost against me, for I was attempting to make everyone look silly by summing up their existance through a list of school supplies. I guess that's the beauty of collaborative writing, because they showed that people have so much depth that even when they do something incredibly mundane, their individuality shines through.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Project 4 "Drafts"

For project four I'm feeling very optimistic. I want it to basically be about Identity; to consider that perhaps everyone's Identity is not what they think and is maybe too caught up in objects. I'm a tutor/mentor in Stalnaker Hall this year, and every single student who lives there has an arbitrary desk full of their school things. The idea of this project is to get them to list everything that is in their desk, along with pictures if they like, and then one large picture of them. I'm then going to link everything to my blog and tie it all together, starting with a picture of the person that links to a "personal description," only this personal description is nothing more than a list of items in a desk.

It's coming pretty well, I have four or five people's already, I just havn't compiled them online yet.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Project 4 Ideas

For my fourth project I want to do something with the idea of lists and quantities trivializing our lives. I want to go around to several people in my dorm and have them list things that they own (Maybe the contents of their desk or their bookbag) then take a few pictures, one of themselves, and several of the things. Then I'm going to link it all together to where when you click on the description of the person, all that comes up is a list of meaningless items that they own. I might also fashion a story around the characters, I'm also contemplating having each person write a short personal description to go along with their list, but somehow skewing it in some way on the final project.

I also want to do something along the lines of mashing the personal description and list together in order to make a "personal" description of the person in the story. After class today I'm pretty sure I want to write a story, some kind of mystery (I like mysteries) involving Stalnaker Hall, since all the people will be coming from there. The story might deal with a renegade janitor planning to overthrow the honors office, and then some kind of conspiracy involving Mike Garrision, John Kerry, and zombies, because I think there should be something funny in there, while also using politically charged topics from around WVU to make it scandalous. Right now there are just some free floating ideas bouncing around in my head, but I have a basis of ideas right now.

Also I think I might do a narrative from different points of view. Something like that. Lots of ideas to sort through.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

List Response

The things in my chemistry lab drawer:

10mL Beaker
50mL Beaker
Syringe w/ needle
Spin vane
Air condenser
Water Condenser
Round Bottom Flask
Conical Vial
Drying Tube
Craig Tube
10 Micro pipettes
4 Glass stirring rods
Erlenmeyer Flask
Cloth wipe
Strange chemicals.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Project Four ideas

Project four really makes me think. So far we've talked about Multimedia through images, sequences, even the underlying code behind all text, but this is almost looking at the human element of writing. Yes, there is an underlying code to all writing, but there is also a human, unpredictable element, and this is very interesting to me. An idea I have for the project is just to have a journal, and to get people to write in it when they're feeling the most emotional, then link the stories together to make some form of story. Something like that. The idea of a story written by multiple people really appeals to me, in one way because of what it makes us think about the author, and what it really means to be an author since we're kind of borrowing other's ideas when we write anyway.

Project 3 Final with Metatext

Couch Burning in Morgantown Reduced as Compared to Past Years


MBA Scandal Shocks Graduate Students


Bob Huggins Return to WVU Exemplifies the Mountaineer Spirit


Below are the translated texts after they've been passed through the "Joyce Algorithm"

Couch Burners Anonymous


Free MBAs


Huggstown


For this project I wanted to take three normal journalist-y texts and pass them through my invented "James Joyce Algorithm" (posted above). I did this for several reasons. Number one I thought that this project needed a way to be interconnected while also using some of the ideas we've used on earlier projects. Number two is that when I studied Joyce last semester (that's "English 272: Modern Lit" in case you all are wondering) his writing style seemed incredibly good to me, but I thought that his ideas were askew as to my view of the world. The main goal of the Joyce Algorithm (although this is not a bulleted point in the algorithm) is to take the neutral, tone of apathy he uses in Dubliners and spin a positive story with THAT voice. The three journalism stories are stereotypical and happy in tone and content, all leading to a very tidy conclusion (like any good news story). The Joyce translations, however, all are much more personal, and leave the reader to come to his own conclusions about the characters and the events in the story. This is in sharp contrast to the news story, where the author (me, of course, but with a very different voice) just tells the reader what to think.

A major portion of the Algorithm is devoted to the idea about an "epiphany," an idea I also sampled from Dubliners. The characters in the Joyce Translations all come to their epiphanies, and in many cases these epiphanies are just as negative as the epiphanies in Dubliners, but my characters all convienently forget their ephiphanies, because I don't believe epihpanies are important. In reality we all come to an epiphany almost every second of every day, it's how we respond to these realizations that seperate the people who live in a beautiful college town full or spirit, or a grey, dimly light city in Northern Ireland where the even the living are really the dead.

I also tried to contrast Joyce's style in my own writing by attempting to inject a theme of passion at the end of the story. An image of fire or flames ends all my stories, and I use this image to represent not the fires of hell, but the fire that burns inside all of us, pushing us to break out of the decay that can sometimes come into our hearts. The fire in my story doesn't destory, but instead tempers the characters' spirits, allowing them to face the sometimes cruel and unfair world.

In conclusion, the main point of the algorithm was to translate something initially positive into a slightly cynical or depressing voice, and then allow the reader to realize that the outcome of this story doesn't have to be negative. Although the voice changes, and the reader knows more details than the newspaper articles give, the characters can still be living in a positive place- A Morgantown where the fire in everyone represents everything good about human nature.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Project 3 Ideas/Draft

For my project 3 I'm spoofing Dubliners by James Joyce, using three shorts stories that take place in morgantown. I'm likely going to photocopy handwritten pages to put into the internet. For this I'm designing my own algortithm using "winter" "twilight" and a lot of epiphanies. (Like in Joyce). I will also make it a point to mention Ireland or politics in Ireland in every story, even though the stories won't be about Ireland at all--part of the "Joyce Algorithim"

The titles of the three short stories are:

1) "Couch Burners Anonymous"

2) "Coming Home: The Story of Bob Huggins"

3) "My Quest for an MBA"


The Joyce Algorithim will be dealing with the concept of the paragraph, and through that, the whole story.

so A) A set of rules apply to each story as a whole (for example, every story contains 3 epiphanies)

and B) Each paragraph will undergo a specific translation (every first paragraph will introduce the story as happening at twilight)

These two main points will work together to form two, normal, basically journalistic (word?) articles into comments about the "Modern City" similar to James Joyce.

I'm also planning on hand writing the TRANSLATED text and posting it as a scanned image, just because it's another form of translation that I feel works very well to try and represent some of the same ideas about decay and such as is seen in Dubliners.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

"Heroes" Googlism

heroes is packaged for cooker by pascal rigaux

heroes is a more accessible album

heroes is the second theatrical movie that diane keaton has directed

heroes is the realization of a creative endeavor manifested by five individuals from southeast Michigan

heroes is just another dud fighter available for the n64 joining all the other fighters that are on the discount rack for under $19

heroes is the story of winkler

heroes is actually a concept album

heroes is an affiliate of children first

heroes is over apple fans demand nothing less than "insanely great"

-These aren't all of them (there were around five hundred), these were just the ones I liked, also some of them contradict each other, thought that was amusing.

Word picked in honor of return of NBC TV show "Heroes" that has stolen an hour from my life on every Monday night this year....oh, and my soul.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Translational Text

"There's no question about it. Wall Street got drunk -- that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras -- it got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments."

English--Lithuanian--Finnish--Catalan--Vietnamese--English

No doubt about it." Wall Street s'emborratxen - is one of the reasons why I asked to turn off the TV cameras - was a drunk, and now have a hangover. The question is how long is sober and not try to do all the tools of financial sophistication.


These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:--feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,--
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

English--Hindi--Sweedish--English


These beautiful forms,
Through a long absence, we are not
As the title scene of the blind:
But only one of many in the room, and the 'mid-religion
Locations and cities, and because
Hours fatigue, sweet sensation,
Blood, and felt with the heart;
Purer for my mind traffic,
With the restoration of peace: - Osecaj also
Unremembered happily: This, perhaps, is
Besides the impact, or less trivial
This is a good man to live the best part is,
She is, the name, unremembered and small did not work
Saosećanja of love. No, and the less I am convinced,
I present to them the other, dugovala can be
Jews of more than one aspect, that blessed mood,
Burthen ambiguity,
The tired and heavy tegova
The world did not understand that,
To easy - Dounloads was peaceful and blessed,
I love that leads us slowly --
The content of breathing
Blood of our human resources
Almost suspended, and we put them to sleep
In the body, and became a living soul:
Although the eye with quiet authority
Harmony, happiness and the power of deep,
We believe in the life of others.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Algorithm Response

This weekend the ballgame was a huge dissapointment. My friends and I planned a tailgate in the green lot, chock full of fried potatoes, cookies, and homemade pancakes on the grill. We were waking up very early to get there, so there would be plenty of time to go into the game. Early on our troubles started when we were unable to come up with sufficient funds to purchase the potatoes for frying, but we decided that it wasn't a huge deal; we still had the pancakes. Unfortunately, the griddle we had obtained was unable to function through the AC/DC adapter that we planning on using. No potatoes, no pancakes, and hardly any fun. Everyone that showed up was dissapointed, and we grudgingly headed to the game. The game, however, was almost as much of a letdown as the tailgate. Our team started well, but was unable to keep up the same level of play, and horrible coaching decisions near the end of the game left us relying on our inexperienced defence to secure the win. They were able to hold the Rutger's offence on four consecutive plays, but although we had won the game, everyone left feeling disgusted. A poor tailgate and a poor game (and Pat White with a concussion). One can only hope next week will be better.


Order 5 Travesty

This weekend the end of time to keep up the game, everyone left us relying
on our troubles started when we were unable to function the Rutger's offence
to function the Rutger's offence to come up was almost as much of a letdown
as the pancakes.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Project Two Final With Metatext


View Larger Map



My second project is a cross between a comedy and a mystery. I tell a narrative through the character of my WVU hat, although he never refers to himself as a hat, as far as the reader is concerned he is just a totally normal guy searching for his parents. This is important because the only clues the reader has to knowing the identity of the narrator are the multimedia elements of the project—the pictures and the video. This works to explode the conventional idea of the narrator and show that as writing progresses technologically, the need for these technological advances also increases. You wouldn’t want to read a whole mystery without knowing the main character was a hat, but without the integration of the video and images with the text (all in first person) it would be impossible to determine the identity of the narrator.
My project also emphasizes the idea of a sequence when writing, and it does this in several ways. First of all, it is a mystery narrative, so it progresses logically from beginning to end, although the reader does not know all the details of the story as he is hearing it, because the speaker in fact does not know all the details. The story is written as a sequence of journal entries, and each journal entry has a place on a map along with a date and a story specific map marker. Each journal entry then has links within it to give broader details on the story—pictures, videos, emails, and search results are linked unobtrusively from here. I wanted to emphasize the map, so instead of each journal entry linking to the next one, there is a link at the bottom to “return to table of contents,” symbolizing the need for the reader to understand that the story progresses in a specific order, even when details about the story are unclear.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Project Numba Two, playa.

Second project is not coming so well for me. I've got the ideas and most of the media that I want to use, but I'm struggling mightily with the software to get it to work. Google maps is not letting me upload my pictures to it, so I'm thinking of abandoning that idea all together and just linking Google maps straight to my "Second Project Blog." Basically, the idea is that there will be several points on the map and each one will represent a "journal entry" for a specific day, and each journal entry brings my character closer to his goal about discovering his origins. I have a lot of video uploaded that I'd like to use, cataloging my character's journey around Morgantown. I also have the idea for a fake "phone call" recorded on audacity that I can post into the blog to further the idea about sound. The whole mystery about the origins is supposed to have a comical undertone, as I'm trying to make fun of the idea of the conventional "Charles Dickens Style" narrative. My narrator is a hat, but he is totally cool with being a hat, only, the rest of the world thinks it's weird (trust me, walking down high street on Saturday night with a hat and a camera gets you some funny looks). Anyway, the mystery will not really be resolved, but will have a climax where the mysterious antagonist "Mike King" will enter the story, leading to my character realizing certain things about himself.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Sound Poem Response

My sound poem is a sort of precurser too my second project about sequence. The "poem" serves as an introduction to the narrative going to be told by my hat traveling around the world on a journey to discover much about his origins. Part of the goal of this project is to explode (at least partially) the conventions about point of view, as my narrative will be reflectively critiqued during it's delivery by myself (that is, the hat). I attempt to show this in today's sound poem as my voice frequently breaks in over top of the original narrative (which for my main project, would most likely be a different voice entirely) to attempt to show how flimsyness of the narrative. I used some white noise in my poem to highlight where the originial narrative is broken off for my "impartial" comments on myself, and I also underly the whole thing with a techno song entitled "Zombie Nation" to try and bring up some more ideas about the narrator (a zombie narrator would be awesome--or perhaps we're all zombies and that's why the hat is telling the story). Plus, I like the techno song. Lack of a rhyme scheme indicates that the narrator, like the poem, is very unconventional--because a hat speaking in rhymes is just TOO ridiculous.

src= "http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_gray.swf" quality="high" width="300" height="52" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars= "valid_sample_rate=true&external_url=">http://www.clc.wvu.edu:8080/clc/Members/center/Sound%20Poem.mp3/download" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Thoughts on Project 2

For project two, I was thinking about telling the story of my first few weeks in Morgantown (an invented fantasy, full of dragons, Clark Hall of Chemistry wreathed in flame, etc) through the point of view of a hat I obtained early on the first day of school. Mystery will surround the hat and its origin, but the sequence will proceed towards knowing where it has come from almost as if the mystery of the hat is what is really important--and since the point of view is from the hat, it will almost be an amnesia type situation. I'm thinking of using a lot of Chicago as background music and the hat will have an audible voice most likely with a girl and a guy speaking at once so the gender of the hat cannot be determined until nearer the end. The details I'm not quite sure about because I haven't started playing with the software yet, but I think I'll probably use a combination of several options, including Google Maps (which might serve as my base?), the GIMP, and luckily, my roommate has Acid Pro, so I'll likely use that to edit my sound.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Blogz number dos.

I've created a second blog in order to do my 2nd project which has to do with sequences and an unfolding narrative.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Project One FINAL (With metatext, YES.)


The title of my project one is "Down the Rabbit Hole", and it is adapting a text by Lewis Carroll "The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland." I chose three small passages from the fairly long children's book and mashed them up with the WVU school colors and a distorted image of the "Flying WV." The primary goal of the way the text is notated is to attempt and compare Alice's Wonderland to the wonderland we all emmerse ourselves in when we enter college. As one reads the main passage, his eye travels down the image, climbing over the many impediments placed in the image--the color blocks, the designs and the other passages. It is an attempt to allow the kinesthetics of the image to let the reader travel down the image into their own "Mini wonderland" just as Alice follows the rabbit into her strange adventure. Unfortunately, as the reader's eye travels down the words they begin to become increasingly less clear and harder to read, much like reality begins to degrade for Alice as increasingly strange things happen to her. The text "I had such a curious dream" is located in the top right hand corner to suggest to the reader that maybe what they're reading isn't actually real. This is an important part of the image as the main point of the image is that reality is not as "real" as one may initally believe it to be. The flying WV may not be as clear cut as one believes, life may not be as simple as just "being a Mountaineer," and maybe hitting the clubs on Friday night is just our version of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.


The main notations I tried to use were the use of motion of the eye (as mentioned above), the the use of integrated pictures and dissolving text, and different styles of the text appearing in the image. The main text is written in fairly normal font just using the text box, but the words in the upper right hand corner are written with a paintbrush, almost as if they were added as an afterthought--that maybe, just maybe, it WASN'T all a dream, and Wonderland, "reality," and WVU are all the same place.

One more try.

Project one that actually fits.

Project one that actually fits.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dc3ncx7m_0h434jxfd

Project one

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Project one "Ideas"

For my project (as beforementioned) I'm thinking about adapting some sections of Alice in Wonderland. More specifically, I'm trying to show the dissolution of reality through the visualization of sections of the book. I'm thinking of using the very first lines in the book,

" Down the Rabbit Hole"

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "Without pictures or conversations?"

"In another moment down went Alice after the rabbit, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again"

I think this is the main text I'm going to work with, although I may add some more later depending on how I make the text visual. I"m thinking of making the later section of text progressively more tranparent, as if it's fading out of reality (and into wonderland), and also making the text spiral down, as if it is the text itself is spinning into wonderland. I also want to set the background as a picture of something iconic from the campus of WVU, attempting to show that wonderland and reality are really the same place. Another option is a swath of different colors for the text, making it appear surreal.

1st Project Introduction


For the first project I'm thinking about adapting parts of Alice in Wonderland into a visual text, maybe trying to show the way that reality can easily dissolve into fantasy as Alice discovers Wonderland. I like this project because it's so different from most other English projects that tell us to "write 4-5 pages on how reality dissolves into fantasy in Alice in Wonderland." The end result will have similar ideas, but the ways that one goes about writing them are totally different. This process of creating a visual text should be interesting and fun, but I'm a little confused about how to go about the actual "notation" of Carrol's text since I can't work with any kind of animations or picture editing. This is the only drawback to the project, otherwise I feel pretty confident about my ability to create a visual text that meshes the visual and the written.

Questions would be:

Can we play with some animations if we want for our visual text, or just pictures and rearrangement of words?

If I choose to adapt a work do I have to use every word of it.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Notation and the Art of Reading

Karl Young explores the all the possibilities of writing in his essay "Notation and the Art of Reading" by looking back at different culture's use of different forms of media in writing. He examines the ancient Chinese art of Calligraphy, the poems sung after dinners in Old English Mead Halls, and many, many others. He attempts to show through numerous examples that writing is best when it is expressed in more than just the boring eye roving over the boring, plain typeface that is boringly passing information to the brain. My three favorite examples of this 'multimedia' writing are: Chinese calligraphy, the intentional misspelling of words, and the use of music to song lyrics (or poetry).

I believe that the Chinese calligraphy is one of the best examples of multimedia notation in Young's essay, for it is getting at the most basic points of writing--the printing. All writing has to (even if it's eventually meant to be read aloud) be written down at some point, and Chinese Calligraphy takes great care into how it transcribes its writing, making each pen stroke a work of art in itself, even employing a special cursive version of calligraphy; a type of writing that is totally unique to the person writing, as he adapts each letter to suit his artistic purpose. This form of writing is so markedly different from normal, printed Chinese (an intricate language in itself) that in most cases it is almost impossible to translate precisely what the writer was attempting to convey with his words, for what the words say is no longer the most important part of his work.

The second notation that I was particularly impressed with was the North American practice of intentional misspelling in poetry. One of the most ridgedly defined constructs in writing is that of spelling; we see punctuation violated, we have Faulkner running one sentence into two pages, but many of the most experimental Modern authors mostly follow the conventional rules of spelling. To break these rules is not just for shock value, it is to bring attention to the value of not just what a word means, but how it sounds. If a word is misspelled wrong, a reader will have to go back and mull over how to say the word, and will most likely end up saying the word out loud if it sounds like he expects. This emphasis on sound is an important form of notation because many readers may miss the phonetic value of their reading if the reader constantly adheres to the conventional methods of spelling.

The final notation I'm going to discuss is the relationship between words and music that some writers exploit to bring further emphasis on certain aspects of their writing. This is my favorite because of my personal love to sing out loud (heedless of my non-talented voice, much to the dismay of my neighbors), but this desire to sing out loud highlights why using music with poetry is so effective. If you can inspire people to sing your words out loud, you've gotten them to successfully focus on how your words sound when said together, and not just the way they ring in your head while speeding through the nightly assigned poem. It also affords the writer (musician?) the opportunity to play with the beat and rhythm of the music, perhaps further emphasizing certain words or sounds in their writing.

Karl Young introduces many affective forms of notation in his essay, far more than can be examined in this short entry, but the most important message from the essay is that writing CAN use notation, and can experiment in multimedia ways that only make the art or writing that much more engrossing and provocative.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Online Autobiography

Let me start by saying that I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an experienced technological genius. Growing up in small town, southern West Virginia where the institution of Broadband internet in the past year is a technological leap doesn't afford one many opportunities to become technologically adept. That being said, I am a typical kid of this generation, I'm on Facebook constantly, checking my notifications ten seconds after arriving back home from class, and I can even sometimes be seen texting and walking simultaneously, although the latter usually results in stepping out in front of moving traffic--something I don't recommend; even in Morgantown. I've managed to find a suitable place for myself in this fast moving, quickly evolving world of technology by learning what I can while I go through my life, but it is not by any means a perfect relationship. Technology and I fight frequently (thank you Microsoft Word, I would LOVE IT if you crash and delete my Final Essay Exam when I click "print") but some of my happiest memories with technology come through the world wide web. I use the web for communication, my AIM instant messanger runs 24 hours a day, usually with the volume turned up so I can be alerted if someone messages me. I check my email 40 times a day, and respond to sent email usually within the hour. Thank to the ability the web gives me to communicate with others (once I learned how to use it, that is), I'd like to consider myself, while maybe not a great, a happy technology user.