Dr. Oblivion does not judge you

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Reverend

Tess as the Good Doctor

I happened to get this shot of Tess yesterday as we were recreating in the DTLT offices, and it made me nostalgic for the Summer of Oblivion. I’m coming fast up on seven years of blogging and almost 2000 posts here on the bava which has me thinking about all the stuff I’ve done over that time period. In my mind there is no question that the adopted film identity of Dr. Oblivion that led the 5-week ds106 course in the Summer of 2011 remains far and away the most intense, rewarding, and downright fun thing I’ve ever done professionally. Long live Oblivion!

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Give it Up for the GIF

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Reverend

Animated GIF from Criss Cross Burt Lancaster Animated Car
I come to this news late, I know, but I certainly would hate to pass up the chance to engage in some gratuitous GIF love. The word of the year, according to the Oxford University Press, is GIF. That has been the word of the last two years here at the bava thanks to ds106. The new breed of GIFs that broke on the web over the last two years deserve all the love they are getting right now, they’ve supplied me with countless hours of pure enjoyment.

This past year I had the opportunity to present on GIFs with Alan Levine just a month or so ago (see all the GIFs and here the audio on the GIFing it Up page). What’s more, back in April I delivered a presentation consisting solely of animated GIFs at the American Museum of the Moving Image for TedxNYED (in fact, the museum had an animated GIF installation running in the lobby, very surreal). GIF mania really has taken hold, and for me it has been nothing but fun. It’s good to see an image format rise from such sordid beginnings to the pinnacle of web aesthetics—it’s a truly amazing rags to riches narrative for a habitually disrespected technology.

I spent a few hours tonight sifting through the more than 100 GIFs I have published on the bava since January 2011. Looking at all the GIFs I made was very telling, a number of them suck, some of them are technically good but lack any soul, and a very few of them have soul and precision. But most of them just tell the story of my love affair with a variety of films. What’s great about that is there are still so many films I love that I have yet to GIF (I can officially say that now 🙂 ).

Bill the Butcher
Bill the Butcher (A scene from a film I actually don’t like all that much, but Bill the Butcher as a character is nothing short of brilliant.)

GIFs from the Alien
Alien GIFs. (I made 5 or 6 of these and they were actually all pretty inspired because that film is so damn beautiful.)

Image of Yvonne DiCarlo from Criss Cross
Criss Cross (This may be the best GIF I have made to date.)

Animated GIF of the Kraken from Clash of the Titans
The Kraken Rockin (the colors and the movement of the neck skin are hypnotizing)

Animated GIF from Videodrome
Videodrome (Televenous)

Animated GIF from Twin peaks: Fire Walk with Me
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

Animated GIF from Creepshow
Creepshow (I did a bunch of Creepshow GIFs I totally forgot about, this was my favorite)

Animated GIF from jason and the Argonauts
Talos from Jason and the Argonauts (Ray Harryhausen’s animations were my most frequent objects of desire—a did a ton of them. I love the blue grain on this one, as well as the crotch-cam angle 😉 )

Animated GIF of the Love Birds from the Birds
The Love Birds from The Birds. (This was one of my first experiments with playing back the original frames to create a perfect loop.)

Animated GIF of Bubo Clash of the Titans
Bubo from Clash of the Titans. (I include this because a master of the form, Tom Woodward, paid it some attention. He is one of the few in the field I still aspire to, him and IWDRM.)

Animated GIF from Caddy Shack Ted Knight
Ted Knight in Caddyshack. (Such a memorable scene of movement for me from the film caught in looping eternity.)

Animated GIF from Blood Simple
Dead fish and fan from Blood Simple.

Animated GIF from Dawn of the Dead
Not the best GIF, but love the way it captures the iconic image from the 1978 Dawn of the Dead—a truly brilliant film.

Animated GIF of Skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts
Endless Skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts

Image from Jason and the Argonauts
Hydra from Jason and the Argonauts (I think the Jason and the Argonauts GIFs are the most consistently good because the animations in that film are possibly the best ever.)

Animated GIF from the Breakfast Club Two Months Bender
Two Months Bender from Breakfast Club (My most popular GIF by far, gets tons of traffic every month.)

Animated GIF of Uli from The Big Lebowski
Uli the Nihilist from The Big Lebowski. (A less than perfect GIF that I keep promising myself I will return to, but nonetheless I still love it.)

Animated GIF from The Wild Bunch
Love this GIF of the children from the beginning of The Wild Bunch, still one of my favorite scenes in all cinema.

Animated GIF from The Wild Bunch
Another from The Wild Bunch, it might not be clear just how dark and comical this GIF is unless you know the scene from the film. “I kill ’em now?”

Animated GIF from Blade Runner eye
The Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner

Animated GIF from Strangers on a Train
Strangers on a Train. This is a recent GIF, and it proves it’s all about knowing your shots and scenes. GIFs are criticism!

Animated GIF from 400 Blows
400 Blows. (One of my favorite GIFs because the film/scene is so perfect for it. In fact, I am convinced Truffaut was thinking about how this carousel ride is a visual metaphor for cinema.  He may have even been thinking this would make a perfect GIF.)

And then there are the Animated magazine covers and comic books 🙂

Animated GIF The Big Lebowski Man of the Year

Animated GIF of the Cyclops from Harryhausens Sinbad

Animated GIF of magazine cover filmland harryhausen

Animated GIF of the Hulk

Posted in digital storytelling, fun | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Open Dialogue – Domain of One’s Own

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Reverend

We recently sent out the following call to all Teaching and Administrative faculty to get the Domain of One’s Own pilot in the hands of as many faculty ans staff as possible. What’s more, we are partnering with Mary Kayler of the Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation to incentivize the work in order to build a space to showcase research and pedagogy, while exploring the possibilities of their own digital domain for teaching, research, and design.

The more I think about it, the more I would like to frame the experience for all interested faculty and staff as a kind of ds106, aggregated experience that embeds them within an experience of interrogating digital identity, exploring their discipline through social media, creating through various media (images, video, audio), ripping various media (images, video, audio), basic coding, and a more specific look at the space they’re taking control over makes the most sense in my mind.  What’s more, they would all the while be narrating their work and sharing it out through their own space. The possibility of getting more of the faculty sharing their work, getting incentivized to do as much, and hopefully realizing the rich professional possibilities as a result makes me very happy.  We’ve only just begun!

Anyway, below is the announcement for the Open Dialogue around the Domain of One’s Own we’ll be having this Thursday, November 15th, and again two weeks from Thursday on November 29th..

_______________________________________________________________
Attend Open Dialogue – Domain of One’s Own to learn about a groundbreaking UMW digital initiative sponsored by the Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation (CTE & I) and the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies (DTLT). President Hurley recently provided support so that a number of new domains and hosting can be established along with funding to provide technical support for this new initiative. There are now over 200 UMW students who have established their own domain names and bound their personal learning spaces to them. What’s more, there are ten professors who have piloted the initiative this semester by integrating it into their curriculum to varying degrees. Martha Burtis and Alan Levine have their students creating multimedia notebooks/portfolios of their work that they can then archive. Zach Whalen has his students creating their own web spaces that helps them take control and re-conceptualize digital identity. Rosemary Jesionowski is experimenting with art portfolios with her students, and several faculty in History are exploring the implications of their students managing and sharing their research as majors. Tying Domain of One’s Own into spaces that students own and take with them further reinforces teaching and learning doesn’t end at the university’s border. And when these students graduate their sites do not evaporate like discarded blue books. They live on as part of the students’ own personal clouds.

Open Dialogue panel members Jim Groom, Tim Owens, Mary Kayler, Zach Whalen, and Haley Campbell will give you an overview of the initiative designed to provide resources and support for faculty to develop a domain of one’s own. Building and designing your own professional and/or class spaces allows you to experiment, document, and innovate in the space of digital pedagogy and scholarship.

To incentivize this process, we are also having an Open Call for faculty to partner with DTLT and CTE & I in the development of a professional online presence. You will get your own domain, web hosting, and a stipend (not to mention support) to develop a professional online identity, ranging anywhere from an online CV/ E-Portfolio, to a developmental space to an alternative class space online. We are accepting all levels of technology proficiency. What’s more, we also encourage those who already have sites to apply in order to continue to develop out their online presence. Please go here to apply for this initiative by no later than December 2nd, 2012 (11:55pm).

Additionally, becoming part of this initiative will enable you to be considered for CTE & I’s new Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship Fellowship to be awarded Spring, 2012. The details surrounding the Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship Fellowship will be formally announced on November 16th on the Center’s website (http://academics.umw.edu/teach), but be sure to come on the 15th to get a sense of the initiative and how you might be able to participate.

This is an Open Call; everyone is welcome and invited to engage in this new initiative. Faculty who have limited technology expertise or faculty who have a well established website are encouraged to participate in this initiative. This is an opportunity to provide you with support (collegial, monetary, and resources) to engage in this important work.

Domain of One’s Own Co-sponsored Initiative includes:
a. Successful completion of application (located on CTE & I and DTLE websites).
Due: December 2, 2012 by 11:55pm.
b. Agreement and participation in bi-monthly workshops that are designed to
support your domain development and creation
c. Construct a digital e-portfolio (aligned with Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship
Fellowship criteria)
d. Upon successful completion faculty will receive a stipend.

Digital Pedagogy and Scholarship Fellowship. CTE & I will award 2-5 Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship Fellowship this spring semester. Award winners will receive $1,000.00 for the first year and $1,000.00 for professional development the following academic year. You can self-nominate or be peer nominated. You do not need to participate in the Domain of One’s Own initiative to be considered. However, you will need to have an e-portfolio that clearly meets the Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship Fellowship criteria.

Kind regards,
CTE & I and DTLT

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Hardboiled Week 12: WIkipedia Project Updates and Indemnity Only (Part 1)

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Reverend

Indemnity Only Part 1 11-13-2012

Tonight was a very fun class, #emoboiled (my new moniker for the class thanks to Dr. Garcia) always makes me happy. We spent a most fo the first forty minutes talking smack (I was in rare form tonight, as were they) and revieweing the progress of the Wikipedia research projects, more on them in another post. The last 40 minutes were spent discussing Sara Paretsky’s first novel Indemnity Only (1980) —special thanks to Joe Ugoretz for recommending it—we’re loving it.

What I can’t get over about Indemnity Only is how much it frames the shifting cultural sensibility over the course of the semester. Over the first eleven weeks we’ve read Hemingway, Hammett, Fante, Cain, Chandler (well, we did watch Double Indemnity and Strangers on a Train), Highsmith, and Himes—each framing some part of the decade they were writing within. This worked well for contextualizing each of the novels, but they all seemed somewhat of a piece and gradually giving way to another historically. That is not the case with Indemnity Only at all. Moving from [[Chester Himes]’s Cotton Comes to Harlem to Indemnity Only feels like we crossed into a whole new universe of hardboiled—and I personally love it.

Paretsky’s attention to life’s details when it comes to V.I. Wasrshawski is really compelling.I still have to finish the novel, but the ways in which this book ushers in the post-Union era, the Reagan 80s, and Jane Fonda’s Workout video franchise. It is startling how much this book seems a product of its moment, and for that reason is in many ways that much more resonant today. I also have to recognize that this is the first novel I was alive and had memory when it was written —which may impact my reading. But rather than just say all this, let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean.

Warshawski is a Private Detective, but most of her cases are industrial cases that deal with businesses and involve corporate clients. What struck me about this is the moment when she talks about trying to round up a printer for the $1500 he owes her because she had “saved his firm from being muscled out by a national chain last spring” (2). This idea of saving an independent business from a corporate chain seems like an all too appropriate reflection of private investigator work in the late 1970s, early 1980s. For the case that starts the frame for the book, she was “hired to find a person so her boyfriend would go to business school” (6). Business school? Really? That is such a phenomenon of the 1980s, right? Risky Business was all about this!

Warshawski is a PI that actually exercises at least four days a week. Chapter 2 opens up with ehr taking a 5 miles run around lake Michigan and commenting that her lack of discipline “makes it easier to exercise than to diet.” At this point I am waiting for the Weight Watchers calorie count book to get pulled out.

She drives a Chevy Monza. There is no limit to the awesome of that detail.
Chevy Monza Image from Wikipedia

Another thing I found odd, but compelling, was when Warshawski throws out crazy demographic stats about college and income when walking around the University of Chicago campus:

Supposedly a fifth of the student body came from homes with an annual income of fifty thousand dollars or more, but I’d hate to use looks to decide which fifth. (12)

And on just the next page she talks about “the Wimpy’s I remembered in the nearby shopping center had been replaced by a cool, attractive, and quasi-Greek restaurant” (13). Strip malls, with quasi-ethnic food dotting the landscape of this novel? I am really struck by how of the 1980s moment this book is.  She references Edward G. Robinson in the first part of the novel (and Philip Marlowe a bit later), and these are just a few examples from the first thirteen pages of both pop culture and a hardboiled nostalgia for the tradition. There are many, many more. In many ways it is not dissimilar from the joy and satisfaction I get from reading another master of this kind of pop cultural detail emerging as a writer at this moment, Stephen King.

P.S. — On page 14 she describes a stereo system setup with a Kenwood turntable and JBL speakers to indicate someone has money. I don’t even know if I can begin to describe for you how 1980s that is unless you lived the 80s. Warshawski #4life.

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Black Capitalism Comes to Harlem

Posted on November 10, 2012 by Reverend

Cotton Comes to Harlem: Black Capitalism from Jim Groom on Vimeo.

This week in hardboiled we read Chester Himes’s 1964 novel Cotton Comes to Harlem as well as watched the 1970 proto-blaxploitation film adaptation by Ossie Davis. One of the elements that struck me about the film is captured in the clip above that deals with the idea of black capitalism. Rather than aligning with the “bolshevism” of the Back-to-Africa movement, as it’s characterized by the Colonel in the novel—a character who is all but absent in the film—Ossie Davis introduces another alternative. At the very end of the film Davis has Gravedigger and Coffin Ed meet with the kingpin of the drug syndicate to ask for $87,000 so they can repay the Harlem citizens who lost their money in the Back-to-Africa scam. If he doesn’t play along, they threaten him with “black capitalism” (a term that comes up again in Blaxploitation films, in particular Friday Foster (1975) though in a very different context). This is a pretty radical departure from the book that has the Colonel giving Gravedigger and Coffin Ed the $87,000 to save his ass for an extra 24 hours. Unlike the book, in this scene we see a championing of black-owned businesses that Davis injects at the end of the film in reference to an idea that was popularized in the 1960s to cultivate and support black owned businesses as an economic solution to the deep-rooted, institutionalized realities of racism.

This idea re-emerges in Hollywood during the 90s in John Singleton’s Boyz in the Hood (1991). Laurence Fishburne’s character Jason “Furious” Styles is an interesting hybrid of the hopes and dreams of the era of Blaxploitation films and the frustration of the de facto segregation still alive and well in 1990s Los Angeles. All of which leads to the following, brilliant dissertation about gentrification in South Central L>A.

What’s even more interesting is how the racial tensions in L.A. during the 1990s overflow much like those in Harlem during the 1960s that Sarah LeRoyer refers to in her post on the 1964 riots in Harlem—or even the Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles in 1965. The 1992 L.A. Riots were a violent reaction to the exoneration of all the police officers accused of using excessive force on Rodney King—all of which was videotaped (an early example of how the omnipresence of video technology would impact our culture for the decades to come). Fifty five people were killed and more than 200 buildings destroyed in the L.A. Riots, it was the scene of an angry uprising in which part of the frustration was taken out in the massive looting of local businesses, some black owned but many Korean owned. The image of South Korean store owners on their rooftops protecting their businesses with guns in hand is probably the most lasting image of the Riots for me (I was in L.A. for both the Riots and OJ), and mark an interesting struggle around the question of black-owned business and defending what you worked for by another minority population (a complex, charged question Spike Lee also explores in his 1989 masterpiece Do The Right Thing with Sal’s Pizzeria—“why ain’t there no brothers on the wall, Sal?”).

Do the RIght Thing-Korean Storeowner

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Hardboiled Week 11: Wikipedia Research Project & Sundry (Election Night)

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Reverend


Tuesday, Nov 6, 2012 Hardboiled Course Discussion of Wikipedia Research Project

Above is the audio from Tuesday night’s Hardboiled class. We spent most of the session discussing the Wikipedia research project, and started to frame the scope of that over the last four or five weeks. I have been alluding to it since week 8, but we had been so caught up in the readings and discussions I was letting it lapse. I corrected that in Tuesday night’s class. The Wikipedia project is going to prove interesting, and as we immerse ourselves in it over the next 5 weeks I will try and report back regularly here because it isn’t easy to organize—but I think it might be pretty interesting Each Monday from here on out the four groups will present the status of their work for 10 minutes. This coming Monday we will look at the Plot Summary and research for critical reception, publication history, legacy, and writing style for each of the books article we are creating or brining from stub to life. As of right now the initial articles are being framed out in Google Docs, we will work on the transition to Wikipedia over the next two weeks, but given our article pages have little to no community as of yet we should be in relatively good shape.

In addition to the group researched article, each student will be exploring further some of the initial research they did on a particular book and morphing that into a research paper, video, radio show, etc. focusing on an element of the novel they are interested in exploring further (or some other element you came across in your research). We will be meeting about this individually in Week 12.

Also, a reminder that we talked about the fact that there will be a Final Exam on Thursday, December 13th from 7-9:30 PM covering all the material we have covered over the course of the semester.

On a final housekeeping note, I updated both the course calendar to reflect the expectations and reading for the reamining week as well as the syllabus.

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Domain of One’s Own has been funded!

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Reverend

Man, when I think about how much blogging I haven’t yet done tonight that I need to, I begin to realize just how awesome a moment it is at UMW right now. Not only are we part of the visioning committee for a statewide conference for thinking how Virginia’s educational resources might be shared more effectively, we are also working on developing an online learning initiative designed from values (which also has been been funded for next year); we’re rocking the makerspace; we’re making kickass videos about how awesome we are; we’ve had a hand in this little thing called ds106; and more generally we are swaggering like Mick Jagger….

But in addition to all that we got news earlier this week that the Domain of One’s Own will be fully funded moving forward! This is huge for our group on a few counts: 1) it includes a half-time position that can help us get fully staffed again, 2) it illustrates the administration at UMW is fully committed to supporting the work we are doing (all the way up to president Hurley), and 3) we don’t have to beg, steal and borrow to make Domain of One’s Own happen. We’ve been so used to doing things on a shoestring budget that it’s bizarre that we actually have the funding to run Domain of One’s Own for the next five years, with some space for custom development, a half-time position, etc.  But the more I think about it the more I believe I can get used to the whole idea of institutional support and funding pretty quick 🙂

Additionally, if all the planets align we’ll be running a blitz at the end of this semester and into next semester that will get any interested faculty of all experience levels up and running with their own domain and web host to start building out their online portfolios, imagining what it would mean to host their own course sites, etc. And if they already have a domain/web hosting/site, we’ll help them imagine what they might do to step up their game another level—at least for those that we can even help, a few will need to help us! The idea is to fund as many faculty as we can with stipends to do as much as they can in this regard.  And to reinforce the process we’ll run awards during Spring to highlight and promote the best online portfolios, course design, etc., amongst faculty. If this plan comes together it will be thanks to UMW’s Teaching Center director Mary Kayler who has been an awesome addition to Mary Washington and a great friend to DTLT.

I’ll be writing about the Domain of One’s Own project in more detail in terms of money, cost breakdowns, staffing, etc., once we’ve worked all those details out. But what has been really encouraging to me is that Emory University has been in contact with us last week about this pilot because they’re considering exploring this themselves as soon as next semester. Even cooler, Mark Bousquet is working with E. David Morgen at Emory to make this a reality there. Tim Owens and I have had two conversations with them already, and it’s pretty exciting to see other schools express interest in this idea so soon, and for me that’s the real trick. Being first isn;t all that important because this isn’t some some bogus PR-grabbing iPad initiative, but rather the true value is in the possibility to work alongside other institutions and thinkers to start re-imagining teaching, learning, and IT from the individual out. Having Mark Bousquet interested in this makes it that much more gratifying given I ‘ve been followed his scholarship as well as his politic on the Chronicle with keen interest over the last five or six years—not to mention he closes the CUNY circle quite nicely 😉 Anyway, I’m not sure if you could tell, but I am starting to get excited  by what the future holds down this particular road.

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Virginia’s Open Digital Resources Conference

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Reverend

Image credit: “Virginia is for Lovers” by Mandipidy (click image for source)

Last Thursday we (the Open & Digital Learning Resources Conference Committee) had another meeting at UMW to prepare for the upcoming statewide conference on Open & Digital Learning Resources to be held at Mary Washington in March. There’s a lot of energy and excitement in this planning group, what’s more the conversations continually rise to a level of thoughtful nuance around the larger questions impacting public education at our moment. That fact makes these get togethers a real pleasure to take part in, something I don’t say freely about committees as a rule. I really enjoy how the group has become intent on making sure this conference provides the framework that will help Virginia’s educational institutions start sharing expertise and resources more effectively—a simple but powerful idea that is really exciting for me.

One of the shortcomings of the endeavor thus far has been the absence of  K12 in these discussions. As Tom Woodward noted, this is an egregious oversight that I’m glad we started to attend to in last week’s meeting. It’s extremely important that we don’t continue to pretend that K12 and higher education can act as independent, distinct agents given how much the two rely upon one another for a well educated public. The dialogue between the two should be ongoing from the beginning, and we’re going to do everything possible to make sure of that.

Finally, after the jump below you’ll find the full text of the Call for Proposals—-a document I’m proud to have been a part of. (Please let me know in the comments below if you find it confusing.) Now all we need is the great professors, teachers, administrators, and edtech folk from around Virginia to start submitting proposals as soon as possible. The deadline for proposals is November 30th, so get on it doggoneit. Continue reading →

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A tennis star plays a match with murder!

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Reverend

title="Strangers
I have been dying to make this GIF from Hitchcock’s adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel Strangers on a Train for a for a while now. I finally found some time to make it this evening, and as usual making a GIF is the best kind of therapy for me. It’s way too big at full speed (more than 5 MBs) but I like the decadence of the size. What’s more, the movement is perfectly hypnotic.

And just in case you think I am getting lazy, I tried to making this GIF smaller but even at 2.4 MBs it moves way too fast and loses most of its charm as you can see below. The search for the perfect GIF continues.

Posted in Hardboiled, movies | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Hardboiled: Strangers on a Train Discussions

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Reverend


Almost two weeks ago we discussed Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith at length. I’ve been to crazy to post the discussions here, so let me fix that now and I will come back and blog about the book when i catch my breath.

Here is the discussion from Tuesday October 23rd, 2012:
Strangers on a Train discussion, Pt 1

And here is the discussion from Thursday October 25rd, 2012:
Strangers on a Train discussion, Pt 2

Posted in audio, Hardboiled | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments