Category: AAD Students

Internship opportunity in North Carolina

This internship with Working Films was passed to me by Helen DeMichiel, co-director of NAMAC. Applications are due by April 1, and the internship appears to be somewhat flexible with regards to the specific project an intern would work on. An excerpt from the full post:

The exact fit of each Fellow to our ongoing work will be determined at the outset of the “Stoneyship.” We regard the Fellow as a staff person during the time spent with Working Films which means s/he will participate in the full activities of the staff of Working Films during the course of the summer. Regular responsibilities include sitting in as colleagues in development meetings between filmmakers, activists and other Working Films staff; participating in audience and community engagement efforts; and contributing to our blog and social networks. Poke around our website to learn more about the work we do.

They offer an hourly pay as stipend, and it looks like a great opportunity for someone wanting to be involved in many aspects of realizing a film project.

On networks, media, and learning

I rang in the new year, in part, by catching up on all the blog reading I managed to not do over the break. Two posts stood out, and connected in interesting ways re: the media management area of concentration in the Arts and Administration Program that I’ll more ‘officially’ launch this term by actually teaching a course!

Both posts are essentially about networks and the ways in which we use them—technically as well as socio-culturally. In reading these posts, I was struck by how they aligned with, overlapped, and adumbrated the primary concepts I’ve been articulating as constituting “media management”: media as communication tools (technology) on the one hand, and media as communication strategy or mechanism (culture) on the other hand. There are certainly other dimensions of “media management,” and I intend that course I’m teaching this term to help myself, students, and colleagues map it all out in a preliminary way. On to the posts…

The first one is a republishing of an essay by Mitchell Whitelaw on the art of HC Gilje. The full essay can be read here, but the main point that I took away from it had to do with the dynamic relations between “generalities” and “specificities” as manifest in the structural workings of networks. Whitelaw does a great job of drawing on Gilje’s work to illustrate how networks generalize points in space by not ‘caring’ where two nodes actually exist (eg. in transmitting an email from someone in Austrailia to someone in Norway), or, as he puts it, by “absorbing” specificities—those physical details such as what kind of computer someone is using, what chair they happen to be sitting in, or what kind of coffee they are drinking (or not). Whitelaw’s argument is not that specificities ultimately do not matter, but rather that they emerge through dynamic interaction with the logic of networks. In a way, I suppose, this is a rearticulation of the structure-agency problem (here for the Wikipedia overview) within the framework of the aesthetics of digital media/art.

The second posting is by Howard Rheingold, and can be found on the DMLCentral blog. Rheingold has been instrumental in highlighting how ‘network literacy‘ has become a crucial component of our 21st century social tool kit, and his relationship to online communities and discourse about them constitutes a significant contribution to the ongoing unfolding of digital media. His recent forays into teaching at Stanford and UC Berkely have led him to develop the Social Media Classoom, and the post on the DMLCentral blog is a reflection on the route he took in bringing his vision to fruition. Read against the post by Whitelaw, Rheingold’s observations bring theory of networks (generalities and specificities) into the realm of education—not just classroom-based education, but broader creation and social dissemination of knowledge in today’s networked worlds.

Ideas from both of these posts—if not the posts themselves—will certainly filter into my own teaching this term (and beyond), and the critical insights presented by each will inform my ongoing understanding of what “media management” means to work in the arts and cultural sectors. I highly recommend checking out the posts and bringing your own perpsectives to them.

Another facet of media management

A post on Henry Jenkins’ blog this morning pushed me toward thinking about media management in yet one more way (find the full post here). I’ve been concentrating on the relationship between two aspects of “management” as I move forward with establishing the media management area of concentration in the AAD program. On the one hand there is the technical and practical sense of the term, by which I refer to the administrative wrangling of media—the tech know-how, use skills, or savvy that we have about various media with which we are quite familiar. On the other hand, I’ve thought about “management” in relation to meaning and interpretation. That is, I’ve tried to focus on the ways in which people draw meaning from and invest identity in various mediated forms of culture. Running through both of these conceptualizations of “management,” I’ve emphasized a pluralistic sense of “media”: the term refers to technology as much as commuicative strategies, old or legacy forms as much as new and emergent forms.

The post on Jenkins’ blog—introduced by Jenkins himself, but largely penned by Anna Van Someren as an initial report on a new research project—focuses on what I’m thinking of as another facet of media management: the ways in which participation in media intersects with civic engagement. Van Someren briefly outlines two unrelated “flashmob” efforts: one ‘rewards’ business owners who attempt to incorporate ecologically-sound practices into their buisnesses (Carrotmob), the other sought to save the television show Chuck by having people buy Subway sandwiches (for more details on either of these, read the full post on Jenkins’ blog…). Van Someren says this about the two efforts:

These two projects have entirely different goals, and some might say Save Chuck is a far cry from civic engagement, but it’s interesting to note that the skills and strategies being used are so similar. We began to wonder if participants in campaigns like Save Chuck might stand to gain some of the skills and knowledge needed to become active citizens. With so many young people so engaged with popular culture, this potential is critical to understand. In Convergence Culture, Henry describes how popular culture can function as a civic playground, where lower stakes allow for a greater diversity of opinions than tolerated in political arenas. “One way that popular culture can enable a more engaged citizenry is by allowing people to play with power on a microlevel …popular culture may be preparing the way for a more meaningful public culture.”

As I read through the post a bit more, the idea crystallized that the socially-concerned components of media participation culminating in what Jenkins, Van Someran, and others look at as forms of civic engagement or citizenry might constitute another facet of media management. I’ll certainly be thinking more about this (especially as course prep kicks into high gear…) and am looking forward to sorting through these ideas with students in the winter term. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to read the post by Jenkins/Van Someran, take a look  at the examples they reference, and push ahead with thinking about the multiple roles media have in our lives.

Media Management Praxis course blog

I’ve started setting up the course blog through which I’ll run the Media Management Praxis course this winter term (2010). The blog can be found here. Please feel free to poke around in the blog, but I’ll warn you now that it is not fully populated. I’ll get more up as we move toward the beginning of the term, especially with regards to content related to the first few weeks of the class. For those of you enrolled in the course, be aware that there are some readings to do for the first meeting connected to our guest for that day, Richard Herskowitz. As of right now, I’ve set up a password-protected page for all readings (to maintain ‘fair use’ on copyrighted materials), but I’ll get a post up with links to the readings Richard has recommeded since they are all online articles anyway.

On qualitative research…

Sam Ladner is a sociologist/consultant working in Toronto who writes quite insightful and compelling posts at the intersection of qualitative research design, digital media, and society. One of her recent posts (here) succinctly addresses some of the key (though often overlooked) aspects of qualitative research that distinguish it from quantitative approaches.

She opens up with this:

“But how many people did you talk to?” If you’ve ever done qualitative research, you’ve heard that question at least once. And the first time? You were flummoxed. In 3 short minutes, you can be assured that will never happen again.

Folks, qualitative research does not worry about numbers of people; it worries about deep understanding. Weber called this “verstehen.” (Come to think of it, most German people call it that too. Coincidence?). Geertz called it “thick description.” It’s about knowing — really knowing — the phenomenon you’re researching. You’ve lived, breathed, and slept this thing, this social occurrence, this…this…part of everyday life. You know it inside and out.

The rest of the post is worth reading, as is most of her blog. Of special interest in these social media-frenzy times is this post.

digital "natives" and interactive design

I found this post today that focuses on a private museum in Korea dedicated to providing children with interactive experiences incorporating technology, art, architecture. The question in the title of the post—When is an art museum a workshop?—speaks to questions of convergence and participation that seem to be piling up all around us these days. At this point, I’m not sure answers are in order (i.e. not the goal) as the question (and others along similar lines) give rise to intellectual space for inquiry and the development of pedagogic & critical practice I can only hope will inspire all generations: from analog to digital ‘natives.’

The blog this post comes from—DMLcentral—is relatively new, emerging from a previous new media literacies project. There are some great thinkers writing on the blog, so I recommend checking it out.

The mobile factor…

A recent series of posts on the Technology In The Arts blog explores the question of mobile phones in arts audiences by pitching the “good or evil” debate as the core issue. Ultimately, the second post goes beyond “good or evil” and points toward other questions. First, is cellular telephone etiquette something arts programmers must navigate beyond the ‘on/off’ binary that has been the norm up until now. And, second, what sort of “responsibilities” come along with the rather marked increase in mobile computing & communicating power that has come to define (in many ways) the contemporary world (not for everyone, certainly, but it’s a dominant concept).

Here is the full second post in the series, the one that explores the “pros” of cellular telephone technology in the contexts of arts audiences.

I’m not sure where I stand on this, as I’m certainly guilty of employing my phone while in ‘audience’ settings. But, I’m also one to get irritated when someone is blabbing away on their phone while I (and presumably others) are trying to listen, appreciate, engage with whatever programming happens to be going on at the moment. And while not everyone has them, smart/powerful phones are steering cultural discourse at the moment and will likely continue to do so for the time being.