Writing Across Media

I received an official offer today from the head of the Writing Studies program here at U of I to help develop a new class for next fall, entitled “Writing Across Media,” which I will also get to teach! This was very exciting news, as the alternative was for me to teach a section of Business and Technical Writing, which doesn’t quite align as well with my research interests. I’ll be meeting with a team of grad students and professors over the summer to develop the curriculum for the course which will involve composition in various digital and print media (writing, film, design, etc.).

Coupled with my Desktop Publishing course (which the head of the BTW program gave me free reign over for next semester), this means I will be teaching two multimedia composition/design courses in the fall!

Too bad I’ve got papers to write and assignments to grade, otherwise I’d go out and celebrate! Guess that’ll have to wait until after the semester is over

So I Was Meditating Outside of this Quaint Little Japanese-Style House, When Suddenly It All Made Sense!

…oh, and did I mention I was naked? And smoking a blunt the size of my head? (Image censored by the Committee for Family Values – click for NSFW version)

OK… you got me. I didn’t really do any of that – not in the physical world at least. All of those experiences were limited to my brief excursion (assigned by my New Media Theory class) into Second Life under the alias “Nokondi Mumfuzz.”

First, a technical criticism. Even though I was running the game on a fairly fast computer with plenty of memory, it still lagged like crazy. If I was in a crowded area, I would often have to wait for a minute or two before objects and people started to appear.

So, aside from technical difficulties, how did I spend my time in Second Life? Trying as hard as I could to get kicked out, of course! Almost as soon as I started exploring, a helpful fellow traveler sent me a message telling me that I was ugly, and that everyone would think I was ugly until I got some better clothes. With that thoughtful advice in mind, I began browsing for clothing options. I ended up finding “Neva’s XXX Emporium, freebies, clothing store, and orgy room” listed under clothing sales (after I turned off the adult filter, of course). It sounded interesting, so I decided to teleport there. Upon arrival, I quickly found the “freebies” area, where I outfitted myself with a killer dragon tattoo, various types of smoking paraphernalia, some “designer” clothes, and a penis. Rather than stick around to watch hordes of lonely people act out their fanatasies online, I decided to head back out to the more kosher areas of Second Life, with my newfound goodies in tow.

The first problem I encountered was learning how to wear the new things I had purchased. The first few times I attempted to do this, I ended up with a large box sticking out of my head! Finally, another helpful soul approached me and said “U gotta unpack it dumass [sic].” After figuring out how to do that, I was finally able to attach my penis, start smoking my blunt, and begin harassing people.

Which brings us back to the beginning of my story… So there I am: I’ve grown tired of pissing off random strangers. I’ve become weary of this “second life.” I take up my meditation pose (another “freebie” from Neva’s XXX Emporium) and sit for awhile to ponder the meaning of Second Life. That’s when it hit me: there is no essential meaning to this virtual world! It’s all what you make of it. You can be helpful, like the two kind strangers who reminded me of how ugly and stupid I was in the hopes that I would use their comments as impetus to better myself (I’m sure that if there was such a thing as Second Life reincarnation, they’d be coming back as cows!); you can be a total douchebag like me and waste an hour trying to offend people; or (I suppose) you could mind your own business, have a little fun, maybe meet some people… I don’t know… do what you do in your first life… or something different. It’s your call.

The second virtual world I visited for this week’s assignment was LambdaMOO, a fully text-based virtual world (referred to as a MUD, or “multi-user dungeon”). I found LambdaMOO to be a much more compelling world than Second Life, partially due to the fact that there were no technology issues. The text told me what to imagine, and I imagined it (i.e. “You are in a sewer surrounded by bugs and stinking refuse. There is an exit to the north”). Interacting with people in this world was interesting too. I had a brief chat with someone named Doom-something-or-other-I-can’t-rememer. I also gave a girl named Melki a severed arm that I found in a farm house. All of this was done by entering text commands into the interface.

After exploring for awhile, shortly before I decided to end my excursion into LambdaMOO, I read this quote on a sewer wall:

“It is said – it was a man from the far North who told me – it is said that, in certain parts of Scandinavia, there are cities within cities, just as there are circles within circles, existent yet invisible. And those cities are inhabited by creatures more terrible than imagintion can create; man-shaped but man-devouring, as black and silent as the night they prowl in.”

Shedding Some “Light” on Media

This is a short essay I just wrote for my New Media Theory class. I thought I should post it, since it relates to a lot of what I try to do with this space. The primary source is the book, Understanding Media, by Marshall McLuhan.

“…the content of any medium is always another medium.” (McLuhan 8 )

Consider the words on this page. Unless someone is reading this to you, or you are using an automatic text-to-speech translator, you must be looking at the words to understand them. If you are reading this essay on a printed page, you have a light source somewhere relatively close to you. By relatively, I mean anywhere from under a foot to approximately 150 million kilometers away from you (the average distance to the Sun). If you are reading this essay on a computer screen, the light source is the monitor itself.

For the purpose of argument, I would like to take the point that McLuhan makes about the electric light bulb being a “medium without a message” (McLuhan 8 ) and stress test it. In other words, I will be taking this concept to an extreme to see if it breaks down under pressure.

McLuhan was only half right when he stated that the electric light bulb is a medium. He neglected the obvious extension of that premise: light itself is a medium. If we approach this from the perspective of physics, everything that we see is the result of light photons colliding with and activating electrons. A simpler way of putting it is that different materials absorb, reflect, or emanate light to varying degrees. With this in mind, it could be said that every visual media is actually a manipulation of the properties of light. When we use black ink on white paper to write, the black ink absorbs light while the paper reflects it, causing us to see two different colors. Depending on what spectrums of light various materials reflect, absorb, or conduct, we can see a wide range of colors. With three dimensional objects such as buildings and sculptures, we see the effects of light being reflected in different directions.

This idea becomes further complicated when we consider light sources as a medium. The light bulb is a wonderful place to start. A single light bulb generates the light that we use to see the words in a book; therefore, the printed page is a medium within the medium of light. If we replace that light bulb with a neon tube, add some color filters, so that only certain light spectrums can escape, then twist the tube to spell a message, we end up with something like this:

Now the light source has a message of its own, while also maintaining the ability to contain other media, such as the aforementioned book.

To take this idea a step further, let’s get rid of the neon light and replace it with a television screen (McLuhan would probably be satisfied with this substitution). The television is also a source of light, but now its purpose is not to illuminate other media, but to communicate through its manipulation of the color spectrum and sound (for our purposes, we will focus on the light and disregard the sound). The television also has the ability to illuminate other media, much like the neon light and the light bulb. Along with the television, we can address similar media: the computer monitor, the cell phone display, the digital watch readout, the digital road sign, the iPod screen, etc. All of these media are examples of light sources being used to communicate.

Based on McLuhan’s premise, the concept of what we consider a communicative medium can be expanded radically. Taking the effects of light into account when discussing media (especially digital media, with its reliance on light-producing screens and monitors), allows us to “shed new light” on visual communication.

Holy Shit!!!

Seriously, this is amazing!  The gentleman featured develops hacks and mods using Nintendo’s Wii hardware in new and creative ways.  Watch the whole clip – it’s worth it!

If you want more info, go here or here.