Podcast topics

Three topics that are of interest to me are as follows:
-- Stories about misinformation we accumulate in our youths that cause us problems either then or later in life (similar to the segment of This American Life we listened to)
-- This year I'm teaching freshmen who have failed English 9 at least once. They are all affected in some way by gang violence (such as the killing this past weekend of the Zertuche boy). It would be interesting to hear some of their stories.
-- I have a collection of poems (and prose), called "Hunting Sacred," by an Acoma poet who recounts the ritual of hunting and seeking forgiveness of the prey. I also have several CDs of Native American drumming, chanting, and singing. Together, I think, these elements (along with others) could make an interesting multi-modal construction.

Podcasts

I grew up in what I now know was a magical time, although I then thought it was senseless cruelty. We were the only family in the neighborhood that did not own a television, and I was forced by default to get my media fixes by listening. I had an entire set of LPs (long-playing records) produced for radio by an organization named "Let's Pretend." These records, using only voice, Foley, and occasionally music, drew the listener actively into whatever story was being told. If the listener demanded a visual image of the story, he/she had to create it mentally. My father was a big radio fan, and whenever we drove anywhere with him, the family had to (or got to) listen to his favorite radio shows, Amos and Andy and Fibber McGee and Molly. Every episode of Fibber McGee and Molly (as far as I could tell) entailed one of them opening a closet in which, apparently, all of this couple's worldly goods were stored, followed by about five minutes of sound effects of stuff crashing, clanging, banging, plopping, and bouncing out of the closet. My father loved that moment and waited for it, and it never failed to disappoint him. I do not know if there was a name for this kind of humor -- perhaps sound gags -- what we now would call sight gags. These shows took full advantage of their auditory medium, as did the local radio of that day. For instance, a local radio station had a contest named something like 'name that sound' in which they would create some Foley effect such as slicing a watermelon or ripping wax paper and award cash prizes for identifying the sound.

Thus, it was a sort of poignant moment (well, two-plus hours) to sit and listen to these selections from This American Life. It was like being transported back in time to when people listened to (instead of watched) something -- and for a whole hour!! Although I enjoyed the two selections I chose, I realized I was able to sustain attention for an hour partly because each ("20 stories in 60 Minutes" and "A Little Bit of Knowledge") was broken up into smaller bits of stories told by various people with varying voices. However, I also listened to "Two Steps Back," because I had a great deal of inherent interest in it, as it was about a teacher who was thinking about quitting her job in frustration over meddling by bureaucrats. However, the production was too monotonous for me to sustain interest, having only two voices, a recorded news clip, and an occasional random jingle-like music bed.

Maybe it's because I am not from the northeast, but I find Ira Glass' voice curiously annoying. However, I found the segment "20 stories in 60 minutes" intriguing and amusing. It was interesting how some of the clips were designed intentionally to take advantage of the non-visual medium, such as Act Five, the sound of no hands clapping, in which all we hear are the sounds of scallops clapping. My nominations for best use of voices would have to be Act Six, the pee in the pudding clip by the two teenage boys and Act 11, etiquette, which has changed my image of unscrewing a jar lid indelibly forever.

In general, though, I felt that most of these bits did not use the full potential of the medium. Most used only voice when even a tiny punctuation, such as a few notes on a double bass or rattle of drum beats (such as in Act 19) could have made a huge difference. I felt similarly about "A Little Bit of Knowledge," but for some reason, I appreciated more the delivery of the presentations, as in the comedic pacing of, for instance, Modern Jackass. I really related to the theme of holding on to misinformation from the past, and I think I will propose something similar for the podcast I will be working on. The stories and the voices of this segment were great, but virtually bereft of, say, a music bed or any type of supporting sound effects. I remember a double bass line in Baked Chicken and a random Perry Como song after Tissue Box, but little else. On the clip And Daddy Makes three, the silence effectively underscored the gravity of the subject matter, but Sucker MC Squared could have benefited from at least some background sound. Maybe there was more audio support than I realized and it was so seamless I just missed it. Or maybe it's simply because I grew up with a wide array of purposeful sound effects.

The kairos of rap and other musings

[Edit posted at 7 a.m. Monday, September 22: Oops. I missed the "brief" in our instructions. For the brief part, skip down to the last paragraph. Sorry!]

I found these two articles to be the most engaging I have read this semester. Being sleep deprived, I hope I am able to link all my disparate thoughts about this information coherently.

Both the Selfe and Tagg articles advocate the recognition of sounds as "modes of knowledge" (Tagg) and urge the re-valuation of "aurality" (Selfe) as means of restoring power to disaffected or marginalized peoples. Selfe explores aurality in multiple forms, ranging from lecturing to story-telling and chanting, and relates the de-valuation of aurality during the 19th and 20th century to several socio-economic developments of the times. Whites were privileged, she says, by this emphasis on written composition, and marginalized groups were relegated to maintaining a more oral tradition. In speaking of Native Americans, Selfe compares the primacy of writing (as valued by Whites) to a type of colonialization.

In reading this, I was reminded of my stint as a journalist in the heart of Native American country. To the west was the Navajo Nation; to the south, the Zunis; and to the east were the Acoma, Laguna, and Cebolleta Pueblos. At the time, a group of Christian missionaries was working -- toiling, you might say, since they had been at it for many years -- on converting the Zuni language from a strictly oral to a written language. The coordinator of the program was clearly frustrated at the Zuni's resistance to her group's noble efforts. It has taken a long time to gain their trust, she said of the Zunis. I remember thinking, first, why would the white missionaries feel the need to encode someone else's language, and, second, what made them think the Zunis would want to cooperate with them in doing so? (As if the Zunis were going to hand over the last vestige of their culture to these outsiders...) The Native Americans I knew were sort of merry trickster characters who loved to put one over on Whitey. I could not help but think the Zunis were feeding them gibberish and having a big laugh about it over dinner that night. I believe the Native American oral tradition and the uniqueness of their spoken language affords them significant power (witness the importance of Navajo code talkers during WWII) that I can't imagine them relinquishing.

Through the Tagg article, I finally understand the enduring appeal of rap. Extending Tagg's argument about emergence of rock music, rap may be thought of as this generations' "appropriation of the seemingly uncontrollable forces of the environment" or "strategy for survival."

Nietzsche says, "Who defeats the power of semblance and reduces it to the status of a symbol? This power is music" (in The Dionsyiac World View). If music is "symbolized feelings," as Tagg says, rap -- even more than rock -- represents this generation's sense of "clock slavery and constant noise." Indeed, is not rap metronomic rhythm? Even the vocalists rock sideways in a metronomic fashion.

Concerning the link to the various sound sites, I was annoyed that so many of them were text-based. What's the point in that? I looked for sites that recorded Native American chanting but couldn't find one. However, I enjoyed Marcus Coates Dawn Chorus and would have liked to hear/see the entire video. I believe the Ocean Conservation Research Sound Laboratory site material related most closely to our readings. The recordings of the humpback whale and bearded seal, for instance, appear to be symbolized aurality, as Selfe might say. In the recording of the humpback whale and the LFAS sonar, I couldn't distinguish which sounds were organic and which were electronic; it seemed one cohesive symphony. The recorded cacophony of the merchant ship made me wonder if sea creatures would soon be faced with intrusive "acoustic horizons" that might influence their strategies for survival.
Cheers, Judy

politiblogs

The article/blog selections for the 9/17 post demonstrate the potential usage -- good and not so good -- for blogging in the political realm. They also demonstrate the incursion of advertising and its minion, public relations, into the field (genre?). Of course, it would seem naive not to believe that in a capitalist country advertising and PR would somehow not invade this fertile ground. The Walmart use of bloggers that Barbaro appears to be appalled about is simply a variation on an old PR practice and seems, well, inevitable. After all, Walmart knows a good, cheap deal when it sees one.

After viewing the political blogs, I would have to say that, regardless of the quality or content of the blog, we are going to seek out the political philosophy that coincides with that which is already ingrained in us, rather than approach a topic with our minds as a blank slate. Thus, the potential of blogs for political purposes would now appear to be reinforcement of existing thinking ("preaching to the choir") rather than creating converts to another way of thinking.

Some random thoughts about the political blogs we saw... McCain's blog was all about himself, compared to Obama's "here is what Obama people are doing" approach. As much as I love him, Tom Udall could use some help on his blog and on his photo in particular (he looks like he just ate a Bertie Botts booger jelly bean). I really liked David Maas' Swing State of Mind blog as a dynamic filter-type blog (I hope this designation is correct...).

blogging and community

As a regenerate blogging nay-sayer, I am discovering that blogging is (or certainly has the potential to be) much more than a forum for ranting. These five articles suggests a variety of uses of blogs for information management, self-expression, an alternative to traditional news-gathering and news-dissemination media, and community building, and social action. Of course, as in any genre the potential for the trivial also exists, as when blog celebrity Clancy Ratliff discusses her use of the Sweet Valley Twins for her masthead. Nevertheless, the potential for authentic, purposeful usage is immense.

Synthesizing (accurately or not...) the material in several of the articles, I decided the greatest potential offered by the blog is as a forum for dialectic, where two equally authoritative and informed individuals can engage in conversation (question and answer) to arrive at the "truth" or highest probability of the truth. This has important implications for both journalism and academia. In journalism, persons interested in a specific topic or issue can access entire text of speeches, position papers, or online interviews without the filter of the reporter's perceptions and biases. The ostensible result could be a better informed public (although this conclusion rests on the assumption that the public is motivated enough to actually seek out the material). Incidentally, I found it interesting that Walt Rubel, a LC Sun-News reporter, tacitly acknowledges the limitations of conventional journalism in his article in the Sunday paper (p. 1C), "Getting beyond the campaign distractions," when he steers readers to websites (albeit not blogs) for McCain, Obama, and independent views.

In addition, academic blogging seems to have huge potential for raising general awareness and understanding of critical issues. As Farrell notes, the constraints of conventional journalism have clouded the evolution/creationism ("intelligent design") debate to the point where scientists began expounding their views unmediated in blogs "that weave back and forth between the specialized language of academe and the vernacular of public debate." Such discourse cannot help, it seems, but leaven public understanding of critical issues. As Farrell states, blogging "democratizes the function of the public intellectual." Indeed, why should academic knowledge appear in papers written solely for a (relatively) tiny, elite group of scholars?

A common theme of most of these articles seems to be democratization, especially of information access and dissemination. As Farrell suggests, the time of the privileged discourse of the Forum has been replaced by the wider discourse of the Carnival (even with its potential for error and misuse).

Blog mates, what did you think about the Herring (et al.) article? Did anyone else besides me wish the guy from "Numbers" (the television show) could have been available to interpret? Also, I apologize for several typos in previous postings. I suppose I am too used to automatic spell checkers. See you Monday.

blogging readings

After reading the selections from Blogging for Dummies, I feel compelled to state for the benefit of Las Cruces Public Schools, which claims (to) the (couldn't figure out how to make strike-throughs) right to monitor my computer activity, that I am blogging as a requirement of an NMSU class, Media Theory English 543.

Okay, what struck me the most from these readings were the expectations that bloggers will display ethos and support their arguments stylistically with a sense of humor. In terms of ethos, I was surprised how very like the unofficial journalistic code of ethics are the expectations of blogging ethos. I say unofficial because journalists do not swear to anything but are loosely expected to adhere to tenets of fairness, truth, accuracy, impartiality. Just as journalists rely on attribution to avoid getting into legal trouble, bloggers are expected to cite their sources through links, real or metaphorical, in order to avoid unethical appropriation of others' work. Unlike journalists, though, bloggers are expected to correct their errors in such a way that rectifies the error and demonstrates and preserves the trail of the error in the same "space" that it occurred. Print journalists "clarify" their misstatements in buried spaces on inside pages. Another difference between journalism and blogging is the amount of factual self-policing that bloggers do. In my experience as a print journalist, news articles were reviewed for conventions (spelling and grammar) and "journalistic style" (summary lead, continuity, attribution etc.) but rarely for accuracy.

The blogging glossary best demonstrated a blogging sense of humor -- wry, mocking, witty and well-informed. And I never would have guessed that the blogosphere has created an entire "new" or hybridized (such as "blogorrhea") language of its own.

Blog mates, can you explain to me what an RSS is? How does one "syndicate" WEB content?

blog glossary and other stuff

I loved the blog glossary, especially, as you allude to, Jen B., the barking moonbats. I have a friend who got sucked into responding to a troll who writes for the LC Sun-News as a guest columnist but who apparently is a full-time blogger. I sent my friend the definition of troll, which suits him so perfectly in so many ways.

Okay, so this posting is not especially scholarly, but I want to try to keep in touch with everyone.
Judy

new media

As I read these articles, I kept returning to Aristotle's definition of rhetoric: "the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion." Indeed, Kress and Van Leeuwen seem to recall Aristotle when they state: "discourses appear in very many modes...[A]ll the semiotic modes which are available as means of realization in a particular culture are drawn on in that culture as means of the articulation of discourses." Thus, my definition of New Media would be something such as "New Media is the faculty of discovering and using in any particular case all the available semiotic modes and appropriate media to create meaning through signs or ideography, ideally to facilitate discourse."

Blogmates, what do you think about having to read Kress and Van Leeuwen upside down? Interesting modality. I loved the Sorapure article as a testament to the effectiveness of multimedia in either teaching or conveying meaning.

Week two response

I found the least theoretical and, thus, most potentially relevant of these four articles to be "Writing with Video" by Lovett, et al. "Least theoretical," however, does not translate directly to most relevant professionally because of the limitations of funding and technology access. Teaching unmotivated "retrieval" (failed) freshmen for the first time in my career, I can see tremendous potential application of the concepts and practices outlined in this article. These students, having quite low reading levels, have a natural disinclination to commit their poor writing skills and damaged egos to the written page yet they are rather adept at manipulating various technologies, such as texting devices, the internet, and MP3 players. They also have a strong awareness of social issues that affect them. Given access to the technology, I would happily design similar assignments for these students with a fair expectation of their success, or at least ability to complete the assignments with some competence.

Having taught broadcast journalism, I know how powerfully engaging are the camcorder and editing deck. I never experienced the students' enthusiasm for writing that this article describes, possibly because broadcast journalism is so product-driven. In a course such as Writing with Video, I predict the results would be different.

Having said all this, however, I still believe that in an indirect way, this article is still more relevant professionally to me than the other three. Even without the advantage of the advanced technology in a lab environment, modifications of some of these ideas could be implemented in various ways. For instance, my retrieval students are working on an argument about a social issue, in which they must interview three primary sources and produce a letter to an authentic audience to attempt to effect change. Using Kress's terms, these students will be engaging in discourse, design, production, and distribution. Only the medium of production will differ from the visual argument described in this chapter. In short I think that on a practical level, we must look for the most engaging way to achieve similar results, given the resources we have. In a comment that could apply to teachers as designers as well as other designers of communication, Kress notes that what we need to consider is what is the design that best meets requirements of the social and cultural environment, with these demands for communication of these materials, for that audience, with these resources, and "these interests of mine" (as quoted in Wysocki 2 ).

Although I found the Kress and Leeuewen article incredibly tedious, their model of close "reading" of the children's bedroom design demonstrates that one may read anything for meaning. I may add something similar to my visual rhetoric/media literacy units.
I appreciated Wysocki's clarifying notes on the term "affordances," which I had interpreted as possibly connotations or peripheral meanings while reading Kress. As an educator whose autonomy is threatened by increasingly more prescriptive dictums on teaching, I also was struck by Kress's statement "...when design and production separate, design becomes a means for controlling the action of others, the potential for a unity between discourse, design and production diminishes, and there is no longer room for the 'producers' to make the design 'their own', to add their own accent" (9). I suppose if push came to shove as a result of NCLB and my school's "failing" status, I could refer critics to this article.

Group partners, what do you think about Wysocki's assertions (roughly paraphrased) that Kress's usage of dichotomies (writing/page, image/screen) is incompatible with the concept of multi-modalities and, essentially, perpetuates the us/them, male/female, etc. limitations inherent in dichotomies? See you on Wednesday. Cheers!