Task 10: Attention Economy

 

I chose Brian as my #2 linking project selection because I could not get over how much he appeared to enjoy this game. I found it boring, predictable and tedious, but he found it exploratory, revelatory and amusing. I shall likely put this game to my English students, and have them reflect on their experience.

I saw this gimmick long ago, and ones similar; I don’t usually explore them as I am aware (too much) of the ways media manipulates me online. I often use my left hand to do tasks, for example, to keep me alert to difference, look at things through a mirror or from a back view; I find perspective a rather fascinating thing to toy with, and probably why I don’t feel too strongly about too many things (except unsalted butter in baking; simply no discussion). So I use masks and filters for much of what I do online to preserve my autonomy and anonymity, and I delve into a lot of communities to see how people respond by rote and get lost in unconsciousness. I listen to myself making rote conversation, and try to guess when I hear people talking, exactly what they will say. I am surprised at how often I’m right. We don’t say/do/think much that is original . . . what did Shakespeare say? There are only two or three lives . . .

In any event, I found Brian’s entries thoughtful and reflective, and I have enjoyed spending time reading his experiences during this course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So this project might have some interesting possibilities. The first thing I did was look at the raw data and capture the choices from most popular to least:

Jaat Kahan Ho_M4                                                                               19

Morning Star Devil Bird                                                                      16

Fifth Symphony_M8                                                                            15

El Cascabel_M6                                                                                     14

Johnny B. Goode                                                                                    14

Percussion (Senegal)                                                                             13

Flowing Streams_M7                                                                             12

Melancholy Blues                                                                                   12

Tchakrulo_M2                                                                                         12

Wedding song_M1                                                                                  12

Night Chant_M3                                                                                       11

The Magic Flute                                                                                         9

Brandenburg Concerto                                                                            8

Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin_M5                                                                      7

Panpipes and Drum                                                                                  7

Tsuru No Sugomori                                                                                  7

Dark Was the Night                                                                                  6

Pygmy Girls’ Initiation Song                                                                    6

The Well-Tempered Clavier                                                                     6

Bagpipes (Azerbaijan)                                                                               5

Gavotte en rondeaux                                                                                4

MensHouseSong                                                                                        4

Rite of Spring                                                                                              4

The Fairie Round                                                                                        3

Kinds of Flowers                                                                                         2

Greetings from Earth_M10                                                                       1

Cranes in their nest_M9                                                                            1

String Quartet No. 13_NotonList                                                             2

One thing I noticed right away is that most of my entries were wrong; not sure what happened there. So when I captured all the above data, I added mine correctly. That showed that I had made 2 choices it seems no one else did, although I find that doubtful. First, it seems I chose the Greetings track and no one else did. As well, I seem to have been the sole chooser of the Cranes track; again, it seems doubtful. In any event, the above data has my numbered choices tagged as _M9 or _M2 to show where my own choices ended up.

I also lost a bunch of data because I wrote directly into Canvas, something I almost never do. Thus, when it crashed (and I had not saved for awhile, I lost observations).

Oh, right, other data I lost: Female: 13; Male: 11. These numbers could easily be wrong, as I designated male/female simply by an arbitrary decision around the first name.

So, after I had written another thousand words or so, I tried to upload palladio files. Turns out, we cannot. And, I lost all that I’d written. Still, the graphics were nifty:

I also put the data into another program that manipulates like Palladio.

This is from Voyant Tools.org. The placement and colors have no meaning, only the size of the letters. As you can see, Jaat Kahan Ho was the most popular choice followed by Morning star.

Where you see _m2 or _m8 shows my choices in the music. I was interested in seeing how I lined up. Not all that well, actually . . .

The Palladio files cannot tell me anything, really. They especially cannot tell me why a choice or correlation occurs. It can show me some limited relationships, such as clustering names according to top choices, but what does that tell us? Nothing, really. It might provide a starting point to ask questions of those who are clustered to see if choices are more than coincidence.

This graphic shows clusters according to group connectivity:

Again, the visual shows people whose choices are similar, but this is a correlation and not causation. We cannot know why these choices coincide as they do. In fact, from my own close examination of the textual/numerical data, I learned that I have been miscategorized; thus, this representation is misleading. Still, it’d be a fun thing to do at a party, or ahead of time, especially to guests who might not know each other. Then, you could cluster people according to music choices. And, you don’t have to be limited to music; you could do anything . . .

Here’s a mandala representation of the songs, again from Voyant.com:

The blurriness results because I have to scale up the graphic to make it visible. Here’s another one, this time in Termsberry:

So  I did not scale this one, just to see how it turned out. You can see how much time ca be wasted playing around. But it is interesting to have your perspective turned upside down.

I have used other data capturing devices, particularly ones that analyse the presence and relative associations of adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and nouns. These are useful to identify the level of emotion in a text, and have even been used in court cases.

Another popular text analysis tool is readability. I have written plain English documents and these tools can be revealing. I also usually have my students do a few exercises using these tools to help them improve their writing. I put this paragraph and the previous one through a free app at https://app.readable.com/text/?demo

The site also comments on adverbs and so on. The biggest errors in my text, above, include sentences that are too long and words that are too complex, like, complex. Still, it’s expected that 84% of readers could understand what is written.

I love playing with words this way, and I find that I see so much more than when I simply review the words, even when I give a close read.

Generally, this exercise added another tool for me to use in my classes.

So after I tweaked a few sentences of the above paragraphs:

So I did not scale this one. I just wanted to see how it would turn out. You can see how much time can be wasted playing around. But it is interesting to have things turned upside down.
I have used other data capturing devices. I have used ones that analyse the presence and relative associations of adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and nouns. These are useful to identify the level of emotion in a text. This has even been used in court cases.
Another popular text analysis tool is readability. I have written plain English documents. These tools can be revealing. I also usually have my students do a few exercises using these tools. It helps them improve their writing. I put this paragraph and the previous one through a free app at https://app.readable.com/text/?demo

I ran it again through the readability app. The scores improved more than I had anticipated:

So, it is intriguing to see how words can mean . . .  and Alice was perhaps more insightful than she realized in her comments to Humpty Dumpty:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the looking-glass

https://texttech.weebly.com/weekly-tasks

Tanya’s site is a pleasure to experience, filled with artistic and technical endeavors that show, explore and explain her play with various aspects of this course. I love my opportunities to peek into someone else’s experience and see how it differs from my own. I also appreciate her technical skills, and took away any number of valuable lessons about design, web applications, software and so on.

I disagreed with some of her theoretical discussions; e.g. Marshall McLuhan said the medium was the message, a dramatically different statement than the medium “changes the language and the message.” I also struggled with other statements such as Shakespeare, when read, “falls flat” because it was intended to be performed (not true) or that moving to written words from orality results in a “loss of intonation and feeling” . . . not necessarily, at all! I have lost my breath over sentences, poetry and stories, wept over them, tossed books across rooms because their content has so enraged me . . . but I would agree that my favorite experience is face-to-face performance–song, theatre, talks, readings–all of these things hold a special appeal for me. In the same way, I much prefer classes face-to-face, real life chatter (how can I hear laughter any way but aurally . . . and even as I write Beethoven’s 9th is calling to me, my heart is pounding to the Chicago Symphony and I can feel myself growing powerful to the Beethoven’s 9th, and now the barotone’s voice comes up from the deep . . . ) . . .

Still, I spent time on many of her pages to help me to think about delivering (what am I delivering? Am I delivering? What am I doing in a classroom at all? )  . . . stuff . . . to my own students. I am considering how to integrate technology to teach a number of things: 1. I want students to recognize that technology has political, social, philosophical and pedagogical implications; it is not neutral, it can shape who they are and how they receive the world if they are not alert to its embrace; 2. I see technology as an opportunity to teach students that the way they see and know the world is constructed, learned, taught; it is not universal or transparent and I think technology can offer a new way of seeing, but don’t want students to begin to think this technological world is not also being manipulated to seduce them; e.g. the extraordinary pseudo-personal advertising that targets particular world-wide demographics (a la Nickelodeon) and is so dangerous to true democracy (a whole new kind of panopticon–wouldn’t Foucault be proud?) . . . I want students to understand in their use of technology how knowledge is constructed and that they, too, can construct knowledge

I am deeply struggling to think about what it means to teach; I don’t know that I know any more (laugh) . . .

I was fascinated by Tanya’s handbag, and all the fantastic things she carried, and how much meaning they hold for her. I feel, by stark contrast, empty, without the anchors that define, describe and shape her life.

Tanya comments that she teaches both coding and design . . . funny, I feel like I do the same thing in English.

I was particularly interested in Tanya’s exploration of twinery.org. I love that application, too, and am playing with it and trying to decide how I can integrate it to help my students in English. Curiously, Tanya does her preliminary thinking on paper. So do I. I have never found anything as useful as a table serviette (Tanya is much more organized and carries a book and special pencil) to scratch out ideas . . . I don’t usually forget much, so I don’t worry about cataloguing or retaining creative thoughts and ideas . . .

So Tanya’s site is my #3 pick for my links, and her site reminds me that I’ll have to move all this material to my new website soon, if I don’t want to lose it when the course ends.

Keating_540_Voyager Play List

I listened for humanity, things that spoke to me about the joys, sorrows, loves and losses of being human. I wanted each piece to offer a distinct joy and story, an intelligence of what it meant to be human and gifted with a soul. I was distraught that I would not be able to curate the 27 choices down to 10, but they came together perfectly for me, without angst. It is an unusual experience for me to not be tormented by choice; decision-making is not something I enjoy. It invariably suggests to me that I am losing out on one thing in order to enjoy some thing else. I am always deeply aware of opportunity costs, and no matter the pleasure, I wonder, what if I’d wandered the other road?

This unwillingness to choose reflects even in my foods where I love elaborate configurations of food rather than a single choice. I grew up on turkey dinners complete with 8 or 10 accompanying dishes, but much prefer turducken with at least 3 stuffings and then 8 or 10 accompaniments and several sauces . . . but I digress . . . although now I am desperate for Sailor’s Duff and Foamy Stuff, a fabulously rich steamed dessert I make for very special occasions . . . and yes, with both a salted caramel and cream-based sauce. To be fair, I learned that strategy when I visited New Orleans, where every dish comes with at least 2 sauces . . . and is, hands down, the place of the world’s best food . . . but I’m wandering again . . .

I listened for beauty and diversity—I wanted a cacophony of male, female, string, wind, solo, choral, east and west. I think I got it. I loved that my choices naturally worked out by beginning with the virginal tune of a sweet girl and ended with the solitary cry of the Japanese flute. What a beautiful assignment.

1. Wedding Song – Peru

This piece is so simple. A young girl’s wedding song, the female’s voice speaks of longing, loss, fear and the hope. She is apparently only known as the young girl of Huancavelica. I love that she is not a famous singer, and is apparently just a young girl of about 13 years old. It’s also the shortest piece in the entire collection. Her voice, so young and innocent, still harbours echoes of pain and loss yet to come.

2. Tchakrulo Choir, Georgia

I loved loved loved the a cappella male voices, voices used to hold the pedal drone were magnificent, the harmonies—I held my breath as they sang; the sense of the call that is being made; tapering to the solitary voice at end—sad, longing (I understand it is a drinking song in preparation for battle)—the musical motifs were full of beauty.

3. Navajo Night Chant

What is there to say to the wild, visceral call of the Navajo into the night? This song so brilliantly visualizes these people speaking to the earth and their home, calling to Gaia for wisdom and healing. It reminded me of when I drove through Montana and Wyoming a few years ago and listened to the native radio channels the whole time. I barely slept. The music awakened parts of me that had been sleeping a long time and I was alert and alive in ways that are difficult to describe.

4. Jaat Kahan Ho; Surshi; India

India will soon be the most populous country in world. This male singer creates an ancient call to the heart and the heat. The song shimmers just as that hot country sea shimmers and ripples. The music is haunting, heart wrenching, uniquely theirs and filled with a wild grief and voices from the past. Its oft-changing rhythms and beats call out its ancient mysteries. Beautiful.

5. Iziel je Delyo Hagdutin – Bulgaria

This piece begins as a feral instrumental from the bowels of the earth before a female voice, Valya Mladenova Balkanska, calls back. Her voice sent shivers down my spine, and the play between her vocals and the instrument was spectacular. This piece beat out the Azerbaijan bag pipes—soft sultry sound—quite sorrowful; ancient music—but straight instrumental and not quite as moving. This singer commands you to listen. You can see her high in the mountains calling to her people; spell binding. I find it hard to articulate how a human voice and musical instrument can cry out and call to some deep inner place of my being; I could hardly breathe during this piece, it held me, gripped me . . . took me to my knees . . .

6. El Cascabel-Lorenzo Barcelata & the Mari

You can smell the tequila and hear the raucous laughter and you must stand and stomp your feet and clap your hands to this music . . . its rich Mexican horns fill you with the love of life and the thrill of a sweaty night dancing on the streets of Mexico city, click your heels and howl to the moon. This song took me right back to time I spent in Costa Rica. Of course.

Night by the river                                                                                                                                           It was a full moon, one of those where men proposition and paramours do not say no but must withdraw their limp betrayals later under stale sunlight, a Samson defeat, a night where the moist heat hot music beat of summer takes you down to the river and secret rites of moon beam shot cunts sneak riot, wet cool now slippery the soccer player dreams breasts gently dripping drooping swaying light now dark sensuous succulents he reaches now falls reaches now falls his strength unmatched to the luscious bush under the moonlight by the water rippling sighing sweating wanting punctuation to pause the pleasure but Virginia Woolf plays semi-colons not periods the danger of a room of one’s own                                                              M. Keating

7. Flowing Streams – China

The zither is such a spectacular instrument and so quintessentially Chinese . . . equally proud, noble, austere, subtle, complex . . . also, as the only Chinese excerpt, it had to be included; again, the second most populous people on the planet deserved representation. At about 4:40 you can hear the stream rippling over shallows; spectacular, and the scaling that begins with a single note and builds to a blur is sensational.

8. Beethoven’s 5^{th– for the west}

It is the raw power of this piece that earns it a place beyond the stars. Its energy and relentless attack keep the listener plastered in place; the triumph of the ending fairly screams to our alien listeners: “How Glorious! WE! WERE!” But I am torn, still: should it have been the 9th? I am listening to it now, Chicago Orchestra, spine tingling . . .

9. Cranes in their nest-Japan (Shakuhachi)—

I had to include this piece. It was the call of a crane, a deceptively simple instrumental; its singular grace and beauty, so pure, its stillness was perfectly positioned, following Beethoven’s overwhelming power, this subtle, clear call straight to the soul, of sorrow, loss, flight, and the inner peace that Buddhism represents, the eternal loneliness of the maitri warrior . . .

10. Greetings from Earth

After nine musical pieces, it seemed an appropriate ending to this fabulous collection of sound. Our music showed them our hearts; our words give them our names. To the other lonely wanderers a billion years in the future: This was us.

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And if you were wondering what the odds really are of other intelligent life out there, it looks like 36 is the number in our galaxy . . . https://getpocket.com/explore/item/scientists-say-most-likely-number-of-contactable-alien-civilisations-is-36?utm_source=pocket-newtab