Manual Scripts & Potato Printing
In my work-life, I embody the new way of thinking, of advocating for digital solutions and bringing my department technologically forward. I am actively involved in a project towards digitization to facilitate a paperless environment and I am working on enhancing the accessibility of our digital information archive: I have a technologically savvy reputation. Yet throughout my experience in the MET program, I have learned that my knowledge, experience and penchant for analogue ways of creating is still a unique driving force. This was particularly evident during Task 4, where I happily took to making an illuminated manuscript and brought out my existing supplies to create my own lino type. To me, this wasn’t a novel activity, this is the kind of art-making I do all the time, it’s what I am comfortable with.
I have been in multiple classes with Anne Emberline, who like me, has a background in fine art. Yet unlike me, Anne works in the field of graphic design, and although I have interest in design from all angles (graphic, UX, interior, architectural and industrial) I do not share the same formal background and practice in this realm. After art school, I ended up working in public service, which perhaps honed my knowledge of provincial legislation, bureaucracy and social issues but left my art practice relatively sheltered and cut-off from further development.
Still, due to our overlapping backgrounds, I have been curious to see how Anne chooses to address the tasks each week. It was interesting to read about her personal struggle between analogue and digital in her manuscript and her reflection in Week 4’s task: Manual Scripts and Potato Printing.
In her manuscript, Anne talks about how although she prefers the finished product of analogue work, she finds the iterative process of digital illustration far more calming. Logically I understand what Anne is saying, but personally and emotionally I simply cannot agree. I can’t help but laugh to myself as I think about one of the first texts every student of fine art must read: Walter Benjamin’s 1936, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and realize I still can’t separate myself from the idea of the “aura” that a physical object created with physical materials and analogue processes holds.
“One might subsume the eliminated element in the term ‘aura’ and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art”(Benjamin, 1936).
This is ironic, since my major was in printmaking which is all about exploring the notion of the reproduction. To summarize a rabbit-hole’s worth of dialogue, it’s not as though I exactly share Benjamin’s idea of authenticity, probably because I was born 50 years after his text was written and I have, with ease, accepted objects created through mechanical reproduction to still hold a certain aura. But yet, my reverence for the physical object, has prevented me from accepting further iterations of technology as qualifiers of art. (I don’t even know how to talk about NFTs).
To me, it’s as simple as mixing paint and water on a palette and applying it to watch the translucent watercolour paint seep into the thick grain of a piece of rag paper – that’s real. The digital watercolour effect from a stylus that changes its output based on the user’s application of pressure on the tablet – that’s not real, it’s only a simulation. Someone should really write a sequel to Benjamin’s famous text and title it: The Human Experience and Everything in the Age of Digital Simulation.
Reference List:
Benjamin, W. (n.d.). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Retrieved March 21, 2021, from https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
Twine Task
I was initially nervous about the Twine task, because I am not one to tell a story. I like reading/watching/listening to a story, but I don’t like being the one to do the sharing. I do, however, enjoy creating imaginary worlds. It is more about the space and environment: what exists in the space, what the space is used for and what it feels like to be present in the environment.
I excitedly looked through my classmates’ Twine experiments and quickly learned through Jasmine’s food safety-theme and Anne’s day-in-the-life of a graphic designer theme that Twine could really be used for anything, including practical applications such as eLearning modules. Although perhaps not as imaginative as the strange world I created, I saw numerous ways that I could use Twine to create uncomplicated eLearning strategies at work to guide people through preliminary lesson plans before one-on-one training. It may not be evident from my task responses, but I actually do have a job where I am required to teach people things, adult people. It’s enlightening when I see my classmates use the tasks to explore how they may make use of the concepts in their workplaces, or in future teaching endeavours, when sometimes I feel like I address the task from a different perspective. In this scenario, perhaps I took on the role of a young student learning how use basic coding for the first time. Regardless, I am proud of my magical world, and making this was wildly more fun than making an eLearning module on how to make funeral arrangements (which is currently next on my work to-do list).
I really enjoyed exploring Lyon’s Twine – a sort of stream-of consciousness ‘meta’ experience of following Lyon through his own learning of the program, then on to other mundane tidbits about his day, (I particularly remember some details about bakery treats). His was the only Twine that made me laugh out loud, and really, finding a reason to laugh is my goal most of the time. (Hey Lyon: I too didn’t read the cheat sheet; I too couldn’t determine what exactly a ‘hook’ was, and I too created lots of code I couldn’t figure out how to make work!)
I will conclude with a return to my initial interest of building a space for exploration, which is in line with the topography of hypertextual language that Bolter (2001) refers to when he writes, “electronic writing can be both a visual and verbal description. It is not the writing of a place, but rather a writing with places as spatially realized topics” (p.36). It was exciting to see that Binal also thought about her Twine in the form of a physical space and utilized gaming elements to create a virtual escape room – I felt like she addressed the task in a way that was similar to myself, but then took it in a totally different direction, by incorporating gaming. It’s clear through exploring my classmates’ various uses of Twine that the application provides a wide array of creative and useful opportunities that align with hypertext, the once novel, but now commonplace way of relaying and perceiving information.
Reference List:
Bolter, J.D. (2001). Writing Space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
An Emoji Story
I initially thought the Emoji Story task was going to be lame (no offence), however, I found it surprisingly engaging, and ended up looking at almost everyone’s results in both streams of the course. I still don’t know what movie Ian’s was, but I for some reason I keep trying to morph it into Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, but it can’t be, there’s no final scene with a blonde emoji calmly welcoming the end of humankind. Also, It wasn’t a comet coming at Earth, I think it was just another planet. I Googled “movies with comets” and perhaps it’s Greenland, I wouldn’t know though as I haven’t seen it. I find with people’s emoji stories, I regularly tried to force the initial plot I thought of, even if it became obvious after the first couple icons that I was completely wrong.
In my own response, I explained how I struggled with the difficulty of being specific in meaning when using pictorial forms of communication. Within that week’s corresponding text, Bolter (2001) explains, “By the standard of phonetic writing, however, picture writing lacks narrative power. The picture elements extend over a broad range of verbal meanings: each element means too much rather than too little” (p. 59). In Ian’s response he states, “the use of the sand timer is intended to communicate diminishing time; but another audience may interpret it as a death as the sand runs out”. Ironically, this is exactly what I used the hourglass (or sand timer) emoji for. I had thought about using a skull, but that image is far too spooky, the character in my movie just had a normal everyday kind of death, the kind where your time is simply up. Yet I like Ian’s use of the hourglass better, it represents something more subtle, just time passing, but if you think about it, that’s what death is too, just time passing, until there isn’t any more left.
(Is it Armageddon? Is the old man emoji Bruce Willis?!)
Another aspect that became painfully clear in viewing other’s emoji stories, was that there really wasn’t a need for me to relay the story scene by scene. I don’t think I explained this in my response, but on the Saturday night before this task was due, there was a power outage in my neighbourhood. I thankfully had candles, a fully charged computer and only one movie pre-downloaded. So, I watched it and literally figured out the emojis scene by scene – I had nothing else to do! But many of my peers’ responses were much more succinct. Such as Ben’s, which is obviously Happy Gilmore (I cannot remember the plot, but a 90s movie about golf, and the simple emoji title says it all), and Katrina’s, which I am pretty sure is Crazy Rich Asians, based on the title emojis, though I’ve yet to see it. Ben and Katrina just got right to the vibe of their movies, picking out key emojis and also choosing films with strong, immediately understood symbolism. In Ben’s response, he explains that this is in fact what he was going for, “My aim was to produce as literal a 1:1 representation of the title and plot as I could muster, not to interpret language unless it became necessary.” Although Ben ends his response on a similar note as I did: ultimately, emojis (on their own) are vague and insufficient for meaningful or complete communication, he was still able to relay the movie in – really – a set of 3 emojis.
Reference List:
Bolter, J. D. (2001). The breakout of the visual. Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed., pp. 47-76). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. DOI:10.4324/9781410600110
Lee, I. (2021, February 22). Task 6 – An Emoji Story. ETEC540 – Ian Lee. Retrieved April 6, 2021, from https://blogs.ubc.ca/bk540/2021/02/26/task-7-mode-bending/
Zaporozan, B. (2021, April 2). Task 06: A 90s emoji story. ETEC 540: Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing. Retrieved April 6, 2021, from https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec54056abzaporozan/2021/04/02/task-06-a-90s-emoji-story/
Mode-Bending
I was surprised to see that a number of the responses to Task 7 were video-based, and arguably still predominantly relied on the visual, rather than the audio. The task instructions specified, “this task has to be delivered in audio form or, at least, not exclusively visual”. That final allowance for the visual choked me and I wished it had been excluded; there is something exciting about enforcing restrictions on creativity, to see how people explore within (or break through) the constraints. With some of the video responses, I practiced listening with my eyes closed to get an idea of how much weight the audio carried.
Melissa created a TikTok-eque video, that was thematically on point, but again relied heavily on the visual. With my eyes closed, I heard a vague listing of items, as well as words about items, yet without the visuals I could not have guessed what some of these objects were. E.g., “hydration,” “technology,” “more technology,”. Some of the objects were clearly specified though: “Toque,” “Wallet,” “Band-Aids”. Listening to Melissa’s video led me to wonder: if the idea of using general/vague language for objects, such as “hydration” for a bottle of water was pushed further the result could be very clever: I imagine lengthy, descriptive, poetic, but non-specific prose that brings the listener in, but leaves them each with their own unique ideas of the objects, self-constructed and built on the listeners’ own culturally acquired signifiers. Ironically, rather than revealing details about Melissa, this re-imagination of Melissa’s project would result in the listener discovering an intimate reflection of their own self.
Binal’s video was interesting in that without the visual, the audio created an interesting soundscape that seemed to signify quotidian modern life in Vancouver: rain pouring, telephone dialling, hands sanitizing each other, a MacBook powering up. Yet the sound effects on their own provide a general feeling, rather than point to specific and unique signifiers about Binal – instead of learning more about Binal through this exercise I feel as though I know less. Interestingly, this ties into Binal’s intention, she wrote within her response, “I chose the sound effects specifically to evoke memories and lived experiences, and also find something relatable in the everyday and mundane (2021)” Binal referenced The New London Group, (1996) to provide context to her use of sound: “infinite variability of different forms of meaning-making in relation to the cultures, the subcultures, or the layers of an individual’s identity that these forms serve” (p. 88). This reminds me of my re-imagination of Melissa’s piece, and also helps me to better understand Binal’s goal for this task. However, I am not sure if the soundscape succeeded in evoking “memories and lived experiences”. It’s almost as though there wasn’t enough space provided for personal reflection, or perhaps the sounds themselves lacked emotional quality. Emotive sounds make me think of music (both intentional or unintentional), a faltering voice, a soft sigh, the breath, a stutter, the space between sounds, subtle movements, time drawn out. I am thinking about Brian Eno too.
Collecting my thoughts brought up all kinds of personally emotive examples that I wish I could share in audio form: crickets chirping at dusk on a humid Floridian evening, the rising melody of the tool sharpening truck turning onto the street, the chickadees and crunch of feet on gravel during childhood walks in the botanical gardens, the sound of summer wind reverberating through my grandma’s chime collection on her back porch. Of course, these memories are mine, and not authentically reproducible, but I can share additional examples found in songs accessible on the internet. These songs aren’t my memories but they sure evoke something in me:
This collection of notes has always dug deep into that personal pain that I associate with nostalgia. It’s hard to describe, because for me the feeling is so strong, it’s ineffable. It’s not about a specific memory, simply that primal pain that comes with living. I think that ‘nostalgia’ is the best word to point to the feeling or talk around it, but at the same time, that word barely comes close.
There are so many good tracks created by this band. The Books’ whole concept was to create sound collages mixed with melodies and beats. Each song is beautiful, and many are overwhelmingly emotive.
Reference List:
Khakharia, B. (2021, February 26). Task 7: mode bending. Text technologies. Retrieved March 21, 2021, from https://blogs.ubc.ca/bk540/2021/02/26/task-7-mode-bending/
Phillips, M. (2021, February 27). Multiliteracies, multimodal design, and TikTok. Tasks and reflections ETEC 540. Retrieved March 21, 2021, from https://blogs.ubc.ca/melissaphillipstuckeretec540/2021/02/27/task-7-multiliteracies-and-tiktok/
The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.
Speculative Futures
In reading Carlo’s short story, I am not sure why the idea to write a narrative didn’t jump out at me. For me, ideas of objects formed in my brain first, and by objects I mean “speculative designs.” The narrative aspect came after I attempted to provide context to the futuristic objects.
Digression 1: Last year, a co-worker of mine made a joke that maybe I was one of those creative people that didn’t know how to visualize. I laughed, until a minute later, I asked, “wait, what do you mean, ‘visualize’?” She said, “you know, ‘visualize,’ like when you see images in your mind’s eye, or you close your eyes to imagine something.” After much back and forth, and me being in disbelief that the concept of visualizing wasn’t only metaphoric, I realized that I was in fact one of those creative people who can’t visualize. So the idea of imagining a scenario and weaving it into a narrative in my brain to relay with words on a screen seems… really hard. Not impossible, but as though I’d need to start with drawing pictures. I think in amorphous colours and geometric shapes (but I don’t visualize them, I just think about them). If you ask me to recall an object, I think of a clipart version of that object, not of one from my memory, though those are there too if I try harder.
Digression 2: Perhaps it’s my inability to visualize, or perhaps just my ongoing interest in all things unexplainable/ineffable/absurd, but my favourite sci-fi films are those that try to relay something that cannot be visually comprehended by the human eye. For example, the space/time travel in Christopher Nolan’s Intersteller, just thinking about it gets me excited. When I first watched it, I didn’t know where the plot was going, but when it got there, I knew, almost in my heart and in a way that I couldn’t entirely understand, exactly what was being conveyed. Or also, Carl Sagan’s Contact, where the extraterrestrials communicate with Jodi Foster through her deceased father. Or 2001: A Space Odyssey, where, at the end… who knows what happens, time and space and personal perception all folding in on each other… or something (it does make much more sense if you go against Kubrick’s wishes and read Arthur C. Clarke’s book). Realizing the intangible is a theme I was aiming at in my narratives (accurate data of people’s intentions; physical, yet ironically abstract manifestations of people’s thoughts).
Anyway, back to Carlo and his wonderful ability to write a story! Carlo took a very different direction as me, and that’s what captured my interest. I wondered, would the characters in my story, Eli, Jules, Kay and Jamie be, Paragons or The People? Probably Paragons. They not only have the ability to access new leisure-focused technological inventions, but also have the luxury to dabble in old text technologies, such as ‘reading books,’ almost like an ignorant and accidental mockery of The People they left behind. Carlo explains that The People “were relegated to “the old ways”, using the land in some capacity to survive,” survival literally being at the opposite end of the spectrum (or pyramid) from leisure.
Jennifer took a similar approach as me: find a problem, invent a solution and fit in into a futuristic social context. I very much enjoyed the multimodal approach, using text, imagery and audio, and laughed at the idea that the botched algorithmic concert was the fault of Siouxsie and the Banshees. But then I thought – wait, what if algorithmic music is really cool? Like the Kraftwerk or Daft Punk of the future, or something weirder and more incomprehensible. This provoked me to Google ‘algorithmic music’ and I came across this gem – I could listen to this all day! And get this, YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN ALGORITHMIC MUSIC HERE!
For Jennifer I propose an additional narrative including protests by the ‘new new-wave futuropunx’ fighting against the use of the Blocker Bracelet: Don’t take the algorithms away! Computer DJs are here to stay!
Reference List:
. (2021, April 3). Speculative Futures. Tech, Text & Thoughts Regarding An ETEC540 Initiative by Carlo Trentadue. Retrieved April 5, 2021, from https://blogs.ubc.ca/melissaphillipstuckeretec540/2021/02/27/task-7-multiliteracies-and-tiktok/
Full Circle: What’s in Your Bag
For my last entry in the Linking Assignment, I thought it could be fun to come back to the very first task, What’s in Your Bag. I remember that I didn’t stray far from the example and spread the contents of my bag out in a neat and orderly fashion on the floor. Ironically, the Tumblr, Things Organized Neatly was on the forefront of my mind – who would have thought Tumblr would come back full circle for the Final Project! I didn’t, but also, I am not one to do much reading ahead in courses, and usually learn about the assignments as they come – I should work on my strategy.
Rather than sift through my classmate’s blogs, I thought I would specifically jot down the blog photos I remember, then go back to each of them for another look.
I remembered seeing Olga in our first video meeting, and thought she looked fun. I learned that she is a relatively new mom by seeing the items in her bag and reading her response. Turns out her purse is a stroller caddy, as opposed to a baby bag (same thing right?) Besides also being of the general age of many new moms, and owning the exact same hand sanitizer, there are no other obvious connections between us. I mean, we also both have short hair and are in the MET program, so there’s that! Throughout the course, it was always heartening to read Olga’s thoughtful and poignant posts.
Oh. Lyon’s bag of meat was basically the best thing I’ve seen in the MET program so far. I’m exaggerating, but I did seriously love it. There was an air of a modernized Jeff Wall or other Vancouver School-esque photograph.
Also, Lyon, I am embarrassed to admit it, but I too am a gold card member. I think I get a pass though, since I worked at Starbucks for 3 years in my younger days, and still have dreams of getting to work the bar for a short shift, just for fun. Hey – my Starbucks was unionized and we still had a manual La Marzocco espresso machine – I worked at a cool Starbucks. (It no longer exists).
Megan – Items similar to things I might have stashed somewhere, and something to do with diabetes.
There was something about Megan’s items that both reminded me of myself, and Stacey from The Babysitter’s Club book series. (Stacey mostly because of the diabetes connection, but also because of her focused writing of her library card). I appreciated Megan’s informative and personal reflection of being diabetic. There is something very calm and reassuring about the way she communicates, which was also apparent in the mode-bending version of this task.
The items that most resonated with me were Megan’s Fjallraven bag (I also displayed a Fjallraven bag), her granola bar (I also eat granola bars), and the stylish cloth mask (I’ve recently switched to using non-medical KN95s, but only due to my ever-increasing anxiety).