English 149

Blog for my English 149 class, Networking & Multimodal Communication.

[carolinamatt]

This is what it looks like to put together 58 videos into a collaborative video project using Korsakow. Or, rather, what the planning kind of looks like. 

As the project comes to a close, it is very cool to watch the final product. We've been working on this for so long now that it's interesting to see how it has all come together. It's not perfect, but i don't believe that was the point of this experiment. A couple of my videos were not filmed the correct way with my phone and therefore have some strange orientation in the Korsakow player, but in our project's case, it somewhat fits the theme luckily. 

Overall I'm pleased with the final result and enjoyed working with and learning about this new video making tool.

[carolinamatt]

Inquiry iBook

My Inquiry Project's (re)Presentation is coming along very nicely. I was in a bit of a rut for about two weeks, somewhat confused as to the direction I wanted to take my project. But, after a minor epiphany this past week, I've been able to make some great progress and I am pleased with the way it is turning out. I believe that interaction was a nice choice of a keyword, as I was able to grab a very wide range of topics, footage and images and relate them all under the keyword through the discoveries that I've made over the last month or so. I'm excited to finish it up in the coming days and release the final project to be viewed.

[carolinamatt]

K Video Final Draft

After putting a whopping 58 SNU's into our Korsakow collaboration yesterday afternoon, our final draft is coming to a conclusion. A few more videos to be edited and a bit more text to be added and it will be done. It's a bit strange saying that it's nearly complete after two drafts and many hours of working on the vide, much less all the time we've been taking footage to use for the project. It's been a journey over the past couple months gathering the videos and images and sound bites, but an enjoyable one on the whole. It's made me think about documenting more of my life with a camera to have something to remember things by. I am not one to take many pictures and so I have to say that it is nice to have some video evidence of things I've been doing in my life over the past several weeks. Some of the clips are also great for a laugh, as you'll see in the final project. 

[carolinamatt]

Getting some serious Korsakow video work done today in the union. The TV's we can hook our computers up to are perfect for working on this project because it allows us to plan our interface in a more interactive way as well as see the videos easier. 

Our video as far as this rough draft is looking much much better than our first in every way. We almost completely got rid of pre-break videos, which are an important part of our story as a whole, but we wanted to put the main focus on this draft in the meat of our project which is spring break. So we've included a spring break-themed background image, new beer-can click sounds, an interesting interface, and many more break-related videos.

The direction of the project with this draft is feeling much better and I am looking forward to presenting on Friday to see what new comments Jason has for our group moving forward.

Hooray for improvement and progress and collaboration!

[carolinamatt]

Inquiry Project Update: The iBook continues to move along. Working at it so far in small chunks has been all I've had time to do, but I am hoping to be able to sit down with it once or twice this week and really put some time into this publication. I now have a solid outline for the book, and a tentative direction for where I want it to head and what I would like to accomplish with it. The foreword is done and the book's sections are all titled appropriately. I am going to take some video and audio clips from the pit this week to get some more samples of interactions in order to cover some ground I do not have footage for yet. 

This picture here is one which exemplifies some of nature's most beautiful interactions. I put it here not only because it is a great photo but to bring up the idea that this is indeed a type of interaction. As I will discuss in my iBook, interactions are much more than what we tend to immediately consider as such. We're surrounded by them in both our exchanges with other people of course, and animals as well, but also with nature, objects, and everything else we come across daily. Something not many people consider but that I've found through my inquiry is this kind of addition to the definition. Interaction is more than human to human experiences; interaction is everything going on in our world at any given moment. 

[carolinamatt]

(Re)Presentation Rough Draft #1

3/31/14 - Rough Draft #1 for RePresentation

My iBook so far is coming together. As far as content it has a long way to go, but I have plenty of content ready to add. Much of my time prior to this rough draft was spent formatting my iBook and learning the interface, figuring out exactly how I wanted everything to look and work. I am proud of the interface and general "look" I've achieved so far and now I will be moving forward with a focus on adding content in an interesting and informative way that reflects my research into my keyword.

Just download the file here on the link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx64gau1Awb_VThRWDRRQkVnWms/edit?usp=sharing

To do before next week: 

Continue adding to my Interaction in Nature page, possibly finish it. Discuss the implications of the interactions in nature, maybe add some of my video which relates to this.

Add a foreword. I would like to contextualize what the goal of this book is a bit more. I talked briefly about it in Chapter One: What is Interaction, but I would like to make it clear the background of this publication and what I am attempting to convey to the reader.

[carolinamatt]

A Flurry of Footage

Looking now at our collaborative Korsakow project, my group has returned from Spring Break with a massive amount of footage. Which, considering that our topic of interest is spring break, is a good problem to have, is still a bit of a challenge. It's going to be quite a project to sift through all of our short videos taken during and before the week. And by all of our videos, I'm referring to the 80-90-something short clips we are compiling into this Korsakow video.

Watching all of these clips alone is going to be quite time-consuming, not to mention figuring out how they all fit together into a web of in and out tags once we import them into Korsakow. 

That being said however, I think that our project has the potential to be a very diverse and interesting collaboration of video that will be an entertaining and possibly informative view into the ways college students treat spring break. Now to watch all of the footage..

[carolinamatt]

Moving into the Inquiry Project

As we return from Spring Break and realize that there are only 5 weeks of class left, it now becomes time to get into the meat and potatoes of our big projects. That means putting our K-video footage together and getting started on that project as well as moving forward in our Inquiry projects. We've had a bit of time to consider our options for the mode of re-presenting our "research," and I've decided to go with the iBook as Jason had thrown out as an idea a while back. 

The idea struck me by complete surprise but I was immediately intrigued. The thought of being able to create a multimedia compilation in the form of an iBook really struck a chord with me. I'm a computer geek, so being able to learn a new tool and create something with it was an immediate green light. So, I have downloaded an application I will use to create my book. iBooks Author at first glance appears to be a great program with a well-done user interface and plenty of customization options.

I am looking forward to working with it over the next few weeks and creating a re-presentation that I can proudly present to the class while also learning a new tool. 2x the fun!

[carolinamatt]

Thoughts on the "noticing" mini-project:

This week we've been asked to collect 15 minutes of raw video footage keeping in mind the idea of "noticing." At the start, as with most things in this class, it was a very very confusing idea with so much ambiguity that we were all left a bit clueless. But after giving it a bit of time to settle and definitely after a little more explanation and a video by Jason with the water bottle, the idea became much more clear to me. 

So far I've got about 10 minutes of raw footage. I haven't edited these videos at all yet, and I plan to start that editing/compilation process later today. About 5 minutes of that raw footage is simply my walk back from this class to my dorm room. This was my first shoot of the week, and I was still lacking a bit in inspiration and ideas. As soon as I began really keeping in mind this theme of noticing, though, I immediately found myself getting video of all kinds of things as I walked around campus. I discovered that if I'm actively looking at the environment around me I can see amazing things that I would have walked right past or not thought anything about previously. For me, it's been about keeping an eye out for noticing the more fantastic things about the ordinary; and this has led to a few really cool video clips of things I'm noticing on my walks. I feel as though this challenge to notice, as I've taken it to heart, has pushed me to open my mind and eyes to everyday things around me. And I like this new mindset. Noticing beautiful aspects of the ordinary is a very cool experience and I can appreciate everything around me so much more.

This video here is a rough short I took while walking with a friend up to Franklin street. It was around sunset, and the sun was shining gloriously over a building, just barely illuminating the Old Well. It was an amazing visual and I'm happy I was able to get a shot of it. I don't know that I would have realized the beauty of this scene before I undertook this project.

[carolinamatt]

K-Video Ideas

So my group's decided to do a compilation/documentary of our spring breaks. I think it's a really interesting idea that will look really cool at the end. We are all doing different things for break, some exciting plans and some with no plans at all right now. It will be very cool to capture what we're getting into by ourselves, with friends/family, anyone. Seeing spring break through the lens of real college students as opposed to a movie is something I am very excited about. 

In order to make this a compilation of sufficient length, we're capturing some footage over the next week and got a few clips last week as well. This (we're hoping) can capture some of the essence of the time leading up to break; the excitement or the run-down students or the weather. All the things that point towards the week break we're all looking forward to. Then we'll get the bulk of our video during break, with each of us taking 3-4 short clips a day. Finally, we can capture a few videos the week or two after returning, to show the transition back to reality following the relaxing (or not so relaxing) break. 

I think this project has a lot of potential in regards to offering a very real insight to what the college spring break looks like for a large portion of the student population. Between the four of us in the group, we should exhibit a wide array of what college students will be doing over the course of the break. 

[carolinamatt]

Thoughts on Korsakow

After working with Korsakow for this most recent English 149 project, I have some thoughts to share about the program. Firstly, the idea of Korsakow is to make a non-timeline based video. At first this concept was completely alien because we are constantly around timeline-based videos; we've never been exposed to anything else. But after watching some of the productions made with Korsakow, one begins to gain a bit of an understanding for how this non-linear video will work. It's a unique style of video production that I think is very interesting.

Secondly, the program itself is quite primitive. The interface looks like 90's Windows programs and is a bit of an eyesore to look at. As far as working with the program, it is not too difficult once the user understands what must be done to make the video. The creator of Korsakow has a nice crash-course video on youtube which is helpful in using the program for the first time. The keyword and SNU format can be somewhat confusing/hard to use. It takes some practice to get the videos to line up in the way you are desiring, but then again, isn't that the point of a non-linear video?

It forces you as the video's producer to think about all the ways your clips are connected, which can lead to some cool connections or realizations. 

All in all, I think the program has a very promising and interesting idea with a program that needs work in order for the videos to reach their full potential. If the Korsakow interface were better organized/put together, the resulting videos could be really cool.

[carolinamatt]

Making is Connecting: Ch. 2 Commentary

In the second chapter of his book, David Gauntlett brings up the idea of craft vs art, discussing how society today has an unfortunate viewpoint in which art is an elitist form of making. He argues that people see crafts as a low-class product of creativity, whereas we should be seeing art and craft meld together into a supermass of creative ingenuity. He makes the point that the difference between art and craft is that art now has a very elitist set of hoops to jump through in order for it to be even appreciated. He finishes by bringing up that the web is beginning to catalyze the molding of art and craft by breaking down some of the barriers previously necessary for art to be distributed and appreciated. Now people can put their creations online and a wide audience will be exposed to their work, which is bringing art and craft together into the shared creations they were intended to be.

[carolinamatt]

Some light reading for my English 149 class