Literature in a Wired World

For the final blog vote of the semester we have a tie!

Like MAD and The Unprepared Critics

Congrats to both of the these crews! The last stretch of blogging is always tough. You guys rocked.

So, who will emerge victorious?

Who will be crowned with fame and glory and bonus points?

We’re leaving together,
But still it’s farewell
And maybe we’ll come back,
To earth, who can tell?
I guess there is no one to blame
We’re leaving ground
Will things ever be the same again?

It’s the final countdown…

They say that man is the ultimate predator… and prey.

In today’s blog vote, we will see which blog has risen to the top of the blog food chain, and which… hasn’t.

As usual, vote and give a GOOD reason for your vote.

May the best blog win!

As promised, I’ve revised the calendar. Here are the new deadlines and due dates:

• The Twenty-Six Lies Project is now due on November 18
• The Final Project Proposal is now due by 10am on November 20th

That’s it!

Here’s what you need to have done by Tuesday’s class:

• Read 26 Lies / 1 Truth M-end
• E-mail me your blog tally for Oct. 1-Oct. 17
• If you didn’t e-mail me your blog tally from Sept. 8-Sept. 31 (8 entries), do so now

As you may recall, the digital story also gets an analysis, courtesy of you.

Here’s what the syllabus says:

Digital Story & Analysis

You won’t merely by reading/watching/playing digital narratives in this course – you’ll also be creating your own. Our first digital narrative will be a digital story using images, text, and sound. We’ll compose these in class using iMovie on the classroom computers. You will need to assemble or create 10 or so meaningful images to use in your story. We’ll discuss this in more detail as we approach the project.

You will also write an analysis of your digital story that addresses the structure (how is it put together and sequenced?), rhetorical strategies (how does it try to affect its viewers?), and effectiveness (how well does it succeed at its goals?). Your analysis should be 4-5 pages long, double-spaced.

That analysis is due on Tuesday. You can e-mail it to me or bring it to class in hard copy. Your final draft of your digital story should be uploaded to your blog by that time.

We’re starting work today on our digital stories, which means now’s a good time for some help with materials!

First of all, we need to think about copyright. We talked about DRM in class. DRM measures are designed to prevent you from being able to infringe copyright. But say you’re able to circumvent those pesky DRM restrictions. Should you?

Short answer: for your digital story, No.

You want your digital story to be readable/watchable/listenable by anyone, anywhere. And you don’t want to get a C&D (cease and desist) letter from EMI instructing you to take Sigur Ros’ song “Staralfur” (sorry, Sigur Ros, I don’t do accents in blog posts) out of your story or they’ll sue you. And you don’t want them telling YouTube to take your video down in the meantime.

So, jeez. What do we do?

First, we learn about “fair use” guidelines for media. Fair Use says that, for educational and non-profit purposes, you can use, fairly, little bitty bits of copyrighted material without fear of infringing copyright. TechLearning has a great summary of this, and a really handy PDF chart of what counts as fair use. Download and print out the chart. It’s a keeper.

The biggest problem you’re going to run into is using music in your story. Most of the music you’re going to want to use is copyrighted, and you can’t use it, even if you bought the album. Seriously. Luckily, there are alternatives.

• Royalty-free Music has lots of free-to-use music
• Partners in Rhyme does too
• And here’s another R-F Music site

You can also check out the Creative Commons site for links to artists who don’t mind if you use their work (with some restrictions).

There is a lot of music out there that you can use in your story, but you’re going to have to look for it.

(And if you’re pissed off that you can’t use the songs you’ve legally paid for, why haven’t you started contacting your Congressfolk to agitate for change? Google “copyfight” for more info.)

To get us in the mood, we’re going to start the course with a little writing.

Compose a comment to this post in which you answer the question: What is “literature”? Your comment should only be about 1 paragraph long, so you’ll have to be brief.

Also, where the comment box asks for your name, just put your initials. We’ll talk about why I want you to do that later in the class.

Remixing the Assignment
Due: 3pm, Friday December 8th

I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone’s shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can’t take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
–Whitney Houston, “The Greatest Love of All”

Whitney’s “greatest love” is inside of herself. Your greatest ideas and passions are also inside of you. This revision will give you the chance to tap into that storehouse of thought and interest inside of yourself to remix one of the last two writing project topics from this semester.

I gave you the topics for Invention 2 and for the Dialog/Debate, and I tried to make them broad enough that you could find a way to make them relevant and interesting to yourself.

Invention 2: select one of the three worlds in which Edward Wozny is or has been immersed (books, games, or work), and discuss “the exercise of power, social roles, and intellectual practices” in it.

Dialog/Debate: for The Asylum, what is the most important aspect to explore first, and why is it the most important aspect?

This is key: the best papers you will write in your life will be the papers in whose topics you are most interested. Your interest, your love, in Whitney’s terms, will show. Conversely, when you are bored with a topic and uninterested in the work, that too will show.

Remember this as you go on to write many, many papers in college: find some way to make the topic personally relevant and interesting to yourself. Your grades will be better for it, and you will enjoy writing papers much, much more.

So, for this revision, revise the assignment of one of these two writing projects so that it represents a topic you care about, an issue you are interested in, one that you want to see completed because it addresses issues that you think are important.

Your remixed topic can be as brief as the ones I provided. The only restriction on you is that your remixed topic should, in some way, address Codex or The Asylum.

Your remixed topic should be followed by a 1-page (double-spaced) explanation of why your remix is the best topic for you.

Revision 1
Due: Thursday, December 7th

Turn in the following IN CLASS:

• Remixed Invention
• Original Invention 1 (with my comments)
• Exploration 8 (with my comments)
• Your Outline of your Remix
• Both Peer-Reviewed Drafts, with Comment Sheets