DIGITAL MEDIA PRINCIPLES, TOOLS, AND STRATEGIES

Vicki Callahan, University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Division of Media Arts + Practice vcallahan@cinema.usc.edu

The Possibilities of Digital Media For Scholarship and Teaching

• Digital Humanities: http://manifesto.humanities.ucla.edu/2009/05/29/the-digital-humanities-manifesto-20/

• Multimedia Scholarship

http://cinema.usc.edu/imap/honorsInMultimediaScholarship.cfm

• “Electracy” (Gregory Ulmer)

https://heuretics.wordpress.com/electracy/

• “Print +” writing and culture (Peter Lunenfeld)

http://www.peterlunenfeld.com

Digital Media Facilitates/Enhances, but Does not Guarantee

• Interdisiplinarity (Alan Liu, not an approach, but a method, “a line of flight away” from established and rigid systems of knowledge)

• Praxis, fluency across languages (Johanna Drucker, practice not tools are key, new skills across expressive, critical, informational registers) brings new knowledge

• Collaboration (Roy Ascott’s Telematics) we know more together than individually

• Storytelling and Storyworlds, new narrative forms

UW-Milwaukee Partnership with “Kids Matter” 2008-2009 (hybrid class)

Collaborative Video

https://vimeo.com/75921699

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2&v=kd2f-um25T0

Hacking Narratives

Collaborative Storytelling

History as a Possible World: Ethno-fictions and Ethno-Performatives

Counter Narratives and Alternative Voices

The Benefits of Serious Play

Mapping South Los Angeles’s Past, Present, Future:

Stories for Connection and Community

USC Spring 2014: New Media For Social Change

Audio-Visions of Time: The Past, Present, Future of South LA

Core Texts: • Theresa Gaye Johnson, Spaces of

Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity • bell hooks, “White Privilege” and

“Active Listening” in Writing Beyond Race

• Ytasha L. Womack Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Core Concepts from Johnson • “spatial displacement” • “spatial entitlement” (creating

new spaces through the arts)

Project 1: Sleepy Lagoon Murder, Jun Gi Min

The Project: http://newmedia4socialchange.org/

• The Map • 3 Projects + Past, through Posters and Zines + Present: Active Listening Audio-Visual Essay + Future – Speculative Fictions across media

Work done in collaboration with West Adams

City of Four Angels, Thalia Ertman and Jennifer

Project 1: Poster and Zine History

Project 2: “Sonic Spatial Imaginaries”: Audio-Visual Essays of Place Based on Active-Listening

• Begin by interviewing West Adams students

• Project could then develop further that interview or could interview someone in community

• Icebreaker questions: 1. What is your favorite part

about living in the neighborhood?

2. What would you most like to see changed in the community?

“Tony B. Conscious,” Haley Madigan,

in collaboration with Jennifer M. and Darwin G. http://newmedia4socialchange.org/?page_id=707

Project #3: Future Media Texts: Team Projects with West Adams Prep

Project Prompt: • Create a counter history,

alternative future, parallel universe for critical look at social issues or historical forces and provide pathway to an egalitarian future.

• Using Afrofuturist experimentation as an aesthetic point of inspiration, imagine a future employing the media platform of your choice (video, zine, game, or interactive experience).

http://newmedia4socialchange.org/?page_id=1038 Daniella Seguera and Jennifer M.

Storytelling: Classroom and Community Ethics,

A first principle of well-being for all – an ongoing process*

Working with Students

• Decide where material will be viewed, can be private/public or mix

• Teachable moment on public/academic divides, how do they want to participate?

• Suggest Avatars

• Always offer privacy option for work even if you or class decide on public context

Working with Community • Provide context for engagement for

both students + community • Active Listening exercise (connect

to context, history, issues of diversity)

• Documentary Release Forms are essential (parental signatures as needed); informed choice on sharing story

• Protect Privacy (Names, Images) • Encourage

Collaboration/Participatory Projects

• Story Center Site: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55368c08e4b0d419e1c011f7/t/55e92424e4b0e50993544719/1441342500305/Ethics.pdf

SCALAR: Online Publishing Platform http://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/vicki-callahan/index

The Digital and Public Scholarship

• Engaged and Public Scholarship has long tradition from Hannah Arendt, Howard Zinn, Judith Butler, Cornell West, bell hooks.

• What would it mean to have digital scholarship that is not public?

• Does Digital Scholarship drift to engaged scholarship?

• Ethical Responsibility of Public Scholarship

• Censorship (institutional and self) of work from public/engaged scholars

Media Commons

http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org

Other Publications

• The New Everyday

• [in]Transition

• #Alt-Academy

• Media Commons Press

Tools for Public Scholarship

Examples of Scalar Possibilities on Index Page

• http://scalar.usc.edu/works/genevieve-carpio-pedagogical-portfolio/index

• http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/arrested-gesture/index • http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/art-and-healing/capoeira • http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/MEinMedia/index • http://scalar.usc.edu/works/the-youtube-

economy/index • http://scalar.usc.edu/works/material_philosophy/index • http://scalar.usc.edu/works/university-safe-

spaces/concrete-safe-spaces • http://scalar.usc.edu/works/bacall-star-image/index

Scalar examples graduate students

More Tools

• We Video – free (or almost, without watermark) online video, for one or collaborative video, materials stored in cloud

Zotero Citation Tool: https://www.zotero.org/

• Collect and Store sources in cloud. You can also manually enter print materials

• Add Word plug in for greater use with documents!

RealTime Board: online collaborative multimedia whiteboard

LIMITED FREE ACCOUNT or Free Educator Account with unlimited collaborators/Premium

Other Essential Tools – all free

• Google Drive – great for storing text and media files, docs. Have real time writing and communication

• Slack – messaging designed for group work, links with other apps like google drive and google hangout

• Skype -- up to 10 people on video call, screen sharing

• Storify – find, collect, share materials on web, can arrange into story

Works Cited • Ascott, Roy, and Edward A. Shanken. Telematic Embrace: Visionary

Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness by Roy Ascott. 1 edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Print.

• Drucker, Johanna. “Games and the Market in Digital Futures.” Criticism 47.2 (2005): 241–247. Print.

• Liu, Alan. Local Transcendence: Essays on Postmodern Historicism and the Database. Chicago: University OfChicago Press, 2008. Print.

• Lunenfeld, Peter. The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine. The MIT Press, 2011. Print.

• Ulmer, Gregory. Electronic Monuments. 1 edition. Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2005. Print.