A closing reflection and opening farewell

As the curtain falls on the DMA summer-edition --and after having reviewed the results of a survey about various aspects of the course-- I now feel ready to gather my final thoughts and lessons-learned.

For starters I want to thank the participants in this course. What a cool and centered group you have been to work with! Kudos to y'all on taking on this challenge, and on meeting it with such positive attitudes, intentions, camaraderie, creative intellect, and results. For me it's been a phenomenally interesting and insight-generating conversational and compositional exchange we've had over the past five weeks. I have learned a lot from you and have appreciated your efforts and insights all along the line. I have also appreciated your willingness to venture outside of your comfort zones to try new things and put yourself out there.

Meanwhile, the survey data confirmed a constant feeling I had during the course of the term that the basic composition as we were enacting it this summer (including its online delivery format) was  working. It was indeed enabling a balanced learning ecology to emerge in the interactions of student-to-student, student-to-content, and student-to-instructor. That's the ticket. Hooray!

More specifically --remember the lament I began my summer composing challenge with?

"I confess. In many instances in my teaching I fall prey to being an absolute idiot, a complete knucklehead. I spend time worrying about keeping things in order, or thinking about grading, or thinking about [insert some other form of approved and officially-recommended craziness here], and I let this overwhelm the far more important need to think about, provide a space for, and tend to the quality of a conversation. I absolutely believe that all learning takes place in conversation, and that conversation is beautifully and wonderfully creative. To me, conversation is like a cognitive-emotional form of dance. So why would I allow myself to find ways to ignore or limit conversation in my teaching?" (this was from my first post on this blog, way back on May 22)

So the heart of the experiment or intervention we enacted this summer was the use of Facebook-based conversation as a key element in the course composition. This didn't come out of nowhere, because I knew from past experiences that online conversation can be rich and mighty in its potential to knit life and learning together (where they belong :) and I have for some time felt strongly that all learning takes place in conversation (with the self, with nature, with each other, and so forth). But I had no idea how well Facebook would work in this regard, nor whether students would take to the idea. Given my predilection to build on what learners already know, the choice made sense, but it was a gamble in terms of academic course design. I was delighted with the way the platform worked, and students took to it well, so we won this particular gamble!

From what I could gather from a cursory web search, most instructors who use online conversation in their teaching use Blackboard or other learning-management system discussion forum. But for me this wouldn't have captured the blending of learning and life that I think is pretty much a sign of the times. From what Mimi Ito and other stellar research-performers are finding, young folks are involved in learning all the time, so why isolate formal education from the 'natural' education students are already engaged in? Why not just add to the already rich mix of information and perspective sharing going on?

So, these above things were tried, and in the summer-edition it seems clear that Facebook-based conversation served us well. As part of this, I thought the group provision created an appropriate sense of membership and enclosure. And I also thought it was great that we got profile pix and windows on each others lives as people as part and parcel of using Facebook for discussion (and the pix sometimes changed, which added yet another interesting layer). To me these kinds of things all matter in an online environment. If we had we used Blackboard for discussion my sense is that we would have gotten too much separation, and too little integration and synergy with our everyday lives. And, the conversation was consistently good --just plain good, and also good in the sense of being full of learning. So, with your help I got some major deliverance from my above lament!

I now want to share a few final observations about the content of the course and what I learned. Not to rehash things, but to create markers that I can return to in the fall and beyond, and also to tell you a thing or two about things I think I know, which I may not have already told you :)

Thing #1 

I think the general description of a contemporary context defined in many ways by boundary-blending, as initially outlined by Marshall McLuhan, is pretty accurate and worth contemplating further. I posted this description initially in the Facebook group conversation, and have re-posted it in this blog as a different,  separate post so as not to clutter this post or make it overly long.

Thing #2

In conditions of boundary-blending --characterized by constant shiftings, continuous cycles or loops of dissolution and novel coalescence-- the concept of emergent-order (and/or self-organization), derived from chaos-theory and complexity-theory, provides a very useful structuring principle. As mirrored in conversational interaction, the new order is dynamic rather than static --and balances the dissolution of familiar boundaries with the generation of new (yet familiar) boundaries. There are non-random elements, in other words, but these are dynamic. They are verbs rather than nouns! This is what is truly new about the current age, and it is something that we haven't quite gotten our hearts and minds around just yet: the "fixed points" in contemporary life are in fact dynamic, not fixed. This may be important for us new-media composers to ponder.

BTW the presenter in the video below talks about how the interaction among just a few simple elements can result in immense and beautiful complexity --again in much the same way that just a few people in conversation can generate all kinds of insight and knowledge.

Along these lines it needs to be said that the conversational dynamic in this course generated several mentions of dynamic forms of order, and unerringly led to these two main/concluding "Things." :)

Something else I learned --and still related to the concepts of boundary-blending and emergent-order-- goes like this...

Seurat's masterpiece The Side Show

French impressionism and pointillism can be seen as harbingers or prescient forms of the current dynamism. Much as the paint becomes particulate or granular in impressionism and pointillism, everything in the new-media era becomes particulate and pixelated --including things like creativity and intellect. These things flow and coalesce, and ultimately know no boundaries until they form them on their own.  Again much as what one sees in an impressionist or pointillist painting is constantly shifting as well because it is constantly being assembled, disassembled, and reassembled in the viewers' eyea.

A detail from The Side Show

This 'particulate matter' approach resonates with the principled approach we've taken to new-media composing. For example Manovich's principles become can be explicitly coalesced in particular ways, as can the exemplars we have considered. These things can be seen as particles.

Working collaboratively can be seen in the same framework. For example the famous collaboration of Rauschenberg (artist) plus Billy Kluver (engineer) --or the more recent Laura Randall (scientist) and Hector Parra (music composer) collaboration-- arguably treat individuals as particles that flow and coalesce in marvelous ways.

Collaboration also provides a good example of how boundaries dissolve and also re-emerge. It's interesting to see things like an engineer or a scientist working alongside a visual artist or a music composer, and to see the boundaries between these domains dissolve. Yet new ones emerge. For example it's pretty easy to see that Billy Kluver was not your average engineer with a pocket protector with several different mechanical pencils stuck into it. He was apparently a creative dude who happened to do engineering for his day job.  So in the meltdown of boundaries between science and art for example, what may emerge is a new focus on finding "the creatives" in whatever discipline or field they happen to be toiling in, and work with them. Instead of looking in a particular 'bin' as it were, this is more like a cross-sectional approach that moves between and amongst many 'bins' if that makes sense. So one set of categories (artist, scientist, engineer, music composer) dissolves to some extent, and another forms up or comes into being that consists of categories like creativity, intellect, spirit, or science as rooted human dispositions and/or ways of knowing or WOKs (more on this below).

This sort of describes the ethos or organizing principle of Black Mountain College --a joint that has been mentioned quite a few times over the past five weeks-- and is also the ethos that informs the ongoing existence of places like the U.C. Santa Barbara College of Creative Studies, a college-with-a-college that admits folks to major in art, biology, chemistry and biochemistry, literature, mathematics, music composition, and physics. Note that social networks across disciplinary boundaries exist throughout history, but it's likely the structural or disposition-based commonalities --creatives flowing and coalescing together for example-- would be a persistent feature.

Thing #3

(Okay, yeah, now I'm taking serious liberties). In a boundary-blended context, with emergent-orderings serving as constant yet dynamic "fixed points" if you will, artists may need to proactively invent new genres, not just new artworks. If boundary-blending applies to new-media composing as well as all other types, this means that as soon as new boundaries are set up, as soon as new genres come into being, these too will have their boundaries messed with. This is closely aligned with one of the key points in French deconstructionism; namely, it is relentless. The deconstructive process (which sounds negative but it's not) is informed by the dissolution, or progressive granulation, of old, tired categories. This process is relentless and also constant/incessant, like change itself, but --and folks often miss this-- the dynamic of deconstruction does not preclude order, it just refuses to prescribe order. It welcomes ongoing flow-and-coalesce movements, and it welcomes emergent order.

Thing #4 

I learned that my very own ways-of-knowing or WOK framework may be an emergent form in this regard. In the dissolution of the boundaries between 'disciplines' or even 'professions' a new set of boundaries, a new categorical scheme, may be emerging that features the aesthetic, intellectual, spiritual, and scientific dispositions or ways-of-knowing. One of my sons asked me about the WOK thing, saying (in the typically direct fashion of a fifteen year old), "Dad, did you just sort of make that one up on your own?" And I had to say, "Why, yes, I did..." --but then I also told him that I gave a guest presentation in the spring semester in a philosophy of art course taught by Rick Miller, and afterwards he said my view of art as as a way-of-knowing was somewhat in line with the view of G.W. Hegel --so maybe I get to borrow some respectability from this association. So anyway, I didn't talk about the WOK deal much this summer term, but I think it's a fairly sturdy framework. The basic idea is that each WOK represents a unique way in which humans pose questions to, or probe, reality. And each WOK delivers unique responses or answers not covered by the others. And each has its own signature methods. Again what I've learned this summer is that the WOK framework may be emerging in the wake of the collapse of categorical systems based on disciplines, professions, and so forth.

A few quick remainders and reminders follow...

1. I learned that dividing new-media composers into folks who expand on new-media concepts, processes, or technologies makes everything easier to understand. I hadn't really thought about this prior to talking about it with y'all this summer. For me it helps explain how composers like JR can seem so cutting-edge and 21st century while not being involved much with the technological aspects of new-media.
2. I learned from all of you that all I can really need to do as a teacher is try to inspire via putting content and tasks before you that may be worthwhile for you to consider or engage creatively and intellectually with. I of course need to try to provide a coherent structure, and a decent learning environment or ecology that includes good materials, but the materials need to be compelling enough to drive the process. I can't reach everyone, but everyone needs to be able to reach the content, and everyone needs to find at least some it worthwhile when they do.
3. I've learned include the role inspiration plays in decisions about having something to say. Its role is really one of replacement. It is not so much that young composers need to have something to say, it is rather that they are looking for inspiration --things that move them. These can come from internal passions (a passionate interest in dance, filmmaking, or what have you --which is kind of a given at UNCSA) or from external sources (stories that are inspiring on a basic human level, for example, stories about overcoming obstacles, and so forth). In this same regard I noted a connection here between the importance of inspiration and the rise of inspiring-content venues including TED, and the PBS program area called "Off Book." I am also reminded of a distinction I developed over many years of visiting museums of art, that some art inspired me to want to make art myself, and other art sort of awed me as a passive recipient. I always preferred the former (when I look at Rauschenberg's work for example, it makes me want to make art, not look at it).
4. In this regard, part of the role of the liberal arts in the BFA degree/training of young artists is simply that of introducing additional sources or types of inspiration. In DMA I hope one of those additional sources is the idea of being one's own new-media composer, and I hope another is that of being able to see composing in broad as well as specific terms. I also hope at least some of the exemplars of new-media composing shared in the class might be inspiring. An autobiographical+biographical approach continues to make sense to me in the age of social networking that is, again, keyed to inspiration and rooted in principles that include a fundamental dynamism.
5. A couple of practical matters. I learned that a "question of the week" format works well if the question is good. So I need to be ever on the lookout for good or better ways to frame questions.
6. I also learned that it might be good to have a daily, regularly scheduled 'helpline' time in the fall (and along these same lines I think I will also have an official face-to-face 'helpday' in the f2f media lab classroom in the fall since everyone will be on campus).
7. So, all in all, I think my summer composition, my own challenge, yielded some progress towards reshaping DMA in positive ways. I initially reframed the DMA course as a composition course, and I am seriously contemplating submitting a name change from DMA to NMC (New-media Composing).  I then talked with colleagues and students about this framing. Following that I gathered clues for how to do this from my many travels in curricular and pedagogical design, and teaching experience that includes a kind of incurable  love of education as a creative medium to compose in. Then I created the course itself --composing it of Facebook-based communications, Google Sites + Google Docs content delivery, blog-based portfolio assessment, conversation-based pedagogy, mixed-reality ecological design, and so forth. And I am now reflecting on my efforts. So I've "walked my talk" in these regards. I've used the learning cycle myself. And it worked!
8. I also mirrored what I was teaching by attempting to balance concepts (having something to say), processes (saying it creatively and intelligently), and technologies (selecting materials, and orienting assignments, towards variety in media-type).
9. Given that I treat course design as a compositional arena, it's inevitable that I do some things in a very process-oriented, improvisational way. My hope is that some of what students learn is felt --on the level of David Boehm's "implicate order" of things. I would like to think that people get more of a feel for new-media composing through my use of creativity in designing the course itself, and I would imagine these affective aspects may, assuming they occur, be just as important as things like teaching and learning the basic principles of new-media as articulated by Manovich, McLuhan, and others.
10. Along these lines, though, I also attempted to integrate and 'walk the talk' of the new-media principles that were introduced. I attempted to design-in these principles, such that the course has elements of numerical representation, modularity, variability, automation, transcoding, dynamism, simultaneity, multiplicity, ubiquity, and reflexivity.
11. The reflexivity principle came around full circle in fact, in the above way, and may be something I'll continue to think about. It may be the case that other instructors, in other content areas, could benefit from using content-related principles derived from their subject matter as design principles in much that same way that I've ended up doing (again some of this has been the result of a creative process, not the result of pre-planning, although there was some of that as well).
12. What have I learned? That I am hooked on process :) I will maybe want to move back in the direction of doing  a couple of discreet bodies of work in the upcoming year, maybe one in digital imagery, and another in sumi-e painting, and maybe another that combines these two.
13. I also learned that I very much like the idea of replacing 'studying' with 'composing'. This too seems to me a warranted streamlining of the BFA degree that would make the liberal arts component much more meaningful and relevant to what students are learning in their arts areas.
14. And, finally, I stumbled on a new metaphor:
    
    "Starting with a metaphorical flat sheet of paper --thinking and talking about composing in general-- in week one, we then proceeded in a principled, project-based way to fold the sheet into a specific shape --new-media composing-- in weeks two and three.
    
    By the end of the third week we had identified and explored concepts, processes, principles, genres, tools, and exemplars of new-media composing. The sheet of paper had taken on a definite shape.
    
    In week four we then unfolded one side of one new-media principle --namely the hyper-individual side of new-media dynamism-- by framing and enacting self-directed projects.
    
    In week five we unfolded the other side of the new-media dynamism principle --its hyper-social side-- by composing something of a collaborative nature with a particular social purpose."
    
    
15. And I stumbled on one other metaphor I like a lot as well --  'composing en plein air.' 

Well, it's time to fold up the tents now, I guess. It's been great camping, conversing, and composing with all of you, way up here online, en plein air. And this would be my last totally uninformed inclusion of a German phrase --"Auf wiedersehen" y'all-- which I gather is one way to say "until we meet again." Meanwhile I'll be assembling, posting, and sharing my cut of an "Intro to DMA" movie tomorrow, fully expecting I will like your versions much better! So I guess this is just my opening farewell.

Boundary-blending revisited

In some ways the new-media era is characterized by a merging of categories that, at least in Western cultures, had previously been kept separate. Mechanical and organic, art and science, mathematicians and artists, natural and man-made, mind and body, and so on --all of these previously understood and firmly in place boundaries are now in question and flux. There is a lot of categorical mixing, boundary-blending, and remixing going on! Why?

Marshall McLuhan traces this general boundary-blending to the properties of electricity, noting that electricity more or less operates as a solvent: whenever it encounters a boundary, electricity in one way or another dissolves it. For example, It is obviously old news to modern-humans, but the introduction of electric light in its day dissolved the boundary between night and day! 

So McLuhan noted early-on that new-media is essentially a distribution system for the 'solvent' that is electricity. He saw this prior to the advent of the internet, BTW. His was the era of television, and he saw for example how it dissolved the boundary between the family and the society at large. He also saw and commented on the role television played in dissolving the boundary between war and everyday citizenship by 'bringing the war in Vietnam into American living rooms.' 



Of course there are push-back sequels to this story --for example in the more recent creation of cable networks and internet search engines that reassert various types of viewer-bias boundaries. Or in the recent examples of 'media managed' wars (i.e., very few images or voices of Iraqi or Afghan civilians get seen or heard on mainstream TV media). Or war (of a different sort) being waged against new-media or indie journalists. 



So, in our own era, we see selective types of push-back, and yet we also distribute the solvent of electricity not only via television, but also in our phones, tablets, laptops, etc. --and we then further distribute it ourselves by calling, texting, skyping, messaging, posting, etc. In this overall, almost overwhelming inter-connectivity, boundaries such as the ones noted at the top of this message --man-made vs. natural, and so forth-- at very least end up being rearranged and renegotiated and remixed.



Okay so if the above, or something like it, represents a fairly accurate description of how we now live, artists in part work within genres like generative-art in order to help us make sense (including aesthetic sense) of the actual state of contemporary life. But again, as I've said on other occasions, this particular type of new-media composing again only represents one of its three major strands: the first strand selectively builds on the ideas and concepts of the present (JR et al), the second builds mainly on the process-potentials of the present (Kensington et al), and the third builds more on the tools/technologies of the present (which is where folks Like Pearson and Reas arguably fit in). But, in keeping with the above narrative, these categories, too, tend to dissolve! :)

Translating summer into fall

So here's the deal. I like a lot of things about the summer-edition of DMA. To be honest, my review is almost entirely positive. I feel better about the summer-edition than any of the other versions I've tried over my six years working on it. So mainly what I write below are issues related to translating the summer goods into an extended-edition in the fall!

In this post I first describe my main plan or 'rough translation' as it currently stands. Then I describe more specific and detailed things I'm planning on doing in the areas of communications, workflow, and assessment.

A rough translation

The very basic or rough translation program I am currently running involves composing a three-module extended-edition of the summer-edition of NMC for the regular term. The five-week summer-edition materials and activities would basically be ported into the extended-edition as the first of the three modules (see diagram and descriptions below).

Proposed three-module structure for the fall term

• Each of the three modules would span five weeks of the term, which leaves room for a one-week orientation at the beginning of the term and a one-week wrap-up at the end. So, the basic regular-term structure would be comprised of three five-week modules and two one-week bookends.
• What we did in the first three weeks of the summer-edition --getting our hearts and minds around 'composing' in general (week one), and then identifying and exploring concepts, processes, principles, genres, tools, and exemplars of new-media composing in particular (weeks two and three)-- would form the core of the first five-week module of the extended-edition.
• What we did in weeks four and five of the summer-edition --exploring both sides of the dynamism principle of new media, the hyper-individual and the hyper-social-- would become part of the second, self-focused module in the extended-edition. This module would naturally include projects that are practical and discipline-oriented (i.e., self-promotional websites, video auditions, and so forth),  autobiographically-oriented (i.e., personal Digital Stories), and personal creativity-oriented (i.e., self-selected projects involving creative experimentation/learning).
• The third module in the extended-edition would be society-and-service-oriented rather than individual-and-career oriented. There are several projects currently going on at UNCSA that warrant, and would benefit from, the involvement of skilled new-media composers. There is for example the 21st Century Student project, the ART\Islam project, the Music Academy of the American South project, and the Student Health project. 
• The basic idea of the third module is that empowered students, and the world, can benefit from power-sharing. Students would have an opportunity to look outwards, and apply the skills and dispositions learned in the first two modules to relevant larger-than-self projects. Students might, within any of the above options for involvement, compose documentaries, engage in citizen-journalist reportage, do ethnographic research, create marketing materials, build research databanks, and so forth.

In terms of staffing, I plan to subdivide the overall enrollment of one hundred twenty students into twelve sections of ten students each, and run it as a fully-online offering (in essence, creating twelve sections of what we did this summer). Sounds daunting, right? It certainly does to me! But it's an interesting compositional problem so I'm down for it.

For starters I can make the content and assignments available on a central course website. Then, I can also create a Facebook "page" to serve as a kind of central communications hub. Blackboard can continue to serve as a distribution point for copyright-protected content and streaming-media content. Then, as the final piece, I can create one Facebook "group" for each discussion section. This is all pretty do-able stuff.

Communications-related details

The extended-edition will inevitably --due to the multiple sections and single instructor-- need a slightly different communications dynamic than existed in the summer edition. In the summer I am able have a relatively high level of direct conversational involvement in the Facebook group discussion, but it will not be possible for me to read and respond to twelve different discussions in the same way or at the same level that I am able to do when there is only one section. So here's my plan in this area:

• I will need to recruit one person from each ten-person section to take on Facebook discussion group leader status in exchange for points/credit. 
• With that provision, I can work out a system for myself whereby I read and take part in the group discussions on a rotating basis --for example I might check-in on four discussions each week, or something like that.
• I can also set and maintain a routine for sending out email and notices to everyone --sort of like all-points-bulletins. In a distributed online environment this can serve as an important convergent element, it can provide needed non-random structure, and it can also provide me with an avenue to establish and maintain 'instructor presence' in the learning environment.
• Routine yet relevant communications can also establish and maintain the presence of the course itself in the consciousnesses of students. This is a key point: part of the overall goal is to have the course exist in the thoughts and conversations of students.
• Here's the main/whammy point. Online courses ultimately exist in the hearts and minds of students, not in wires, computers, and websites. We're talking neural design, or designing with quantum materials here! So I will want to give significant attention to finding out what works best in terms of the channel(s) for communication and conversation. 
• The media-studio in Workplace West III will also be open --during times when students would have had to attend the DMA class F2F-- so conversation and tutoring on a Newtonian scale will also be an option for students who have enrolled in the course.
  
  Okay, so weekly emails to kick off new weeks of work/play, preview-the-week texts included on the course website, end-of-week reflections posted on this blog, answering questions posted to the Facebook "page" --coupled with rotating participation in the Facebook groups-- may be adequate. Yet the discussion leaders will be crucial, so I will likely need to meet with that group of twelve once per week to check-in and make suggestions. And F2F interaction will be part of the menu of options. I think this should make for a well balanced and effective communications context.

Workflow-related details

Unless I hear otherwise from the summer students in their feedback on the summer term, I will assume that the learning-cycle structure is a keeper, and I will continue to use it in the fall.

• Each week will start with talking in Facebook about an essential  --and, initially anyway, pre-framed question-- and the work-week will proceed through the remaining phases on a five-day cycle.
• Gathering will take place each week on Tuesday, in order to allow a full three-day window in which students can schedule the time they need to create the required composition(s) for the week, and reflect on the process.
• In part for the reason mentioned above --namely the need for a regular kind of beat or rhythm as a structuring principle-- I want to stay with a five-day work-week, so that each week will feature one trip through the learning-cycle, with projects due at midnight on Friday. I want to stay away from assigning weekend work!
• Some editing and tightening-up of assignments on my part will be needed to optimize this. For example in the first five-week module I will probably stipulate that for each week there will be a required "project brief" blog post, such as the one we did in the summer for week four, organized in subheadings that match learning-cycle phases. (This is the type of procedural detail by the way that can will need to be taught in the orientation week of the course.)
• Also for my part, I will revise and edit the assignments to make sure they mirror the learning-cycle phases. For example, "In this week's talking phase, discuss the question for the week in your Facebook group, and copy-and-paste your contribution --along with any other messages composed by others that you found interesting-- under the talking subheading in your blog post for the week. This is due on Monday no later than midnight." Etc.

Asssessment-related details

Grading has the potential to make fools of us all. What matters of course is the person's learning, and feedback is part of the learning process in formal education settings. But the needed feedback can be implemented in a variety of ways, and by various people in the learning environment.

• One of the aspects of the summer-term that I thought worked well was the explicit allowance of time for  students to look at and comment on each other's work. This is a meaningful form of assessment. It involves comparing another's persons choices and work-products to one's own. On my part this means I will have to incorporate this into the assigned work for the week --i.e., it might be the "reading" for the week to check-in on and read groups members' blogs.
• I will enlist the help of discussion-section leaders to let me know how the Facebook group discussions are going. This can occur in the weekly meetings mentioned above.
• I will basically be the person responsible for critiquing the blog post compositions, and also critiquing the entire blog as a composition unto itself. This is manageable.

Composing en plein air: a review, a preview, and a ramble

An introduction

We are at this very moment perched on the DMA version of the continental divide.

In the first three weeks (or part one) of the course we became acquainted with concepts, processes, and tools that are part of the new-media composer's toolbox or palette. In effect we set the new-media composition stage, primed the new-media composition canvas, and did some good composing as well.

A John Singer Sargent painting of Claude Monet painting en plein air

In the next two weeks (or part two) of the course we will be plying our new-media knowledge and skills to the framing and implementation of self-directed projects; in other words we will be taking up our composer's palettes and heading out into the world to paint (so to speak) en plein air. (For us this "open air" will consist of self-selected and self-directed projects.)

Plein air has additional relevance as well, in that the new-media remix ethos --which we've been exploring in projects, readings, viewings, and exemplars this week-- involves using life itself as the raw materials for composing. Contemporary life of course includes a veritable ocean of representations (billboards, magazines, the internet, TV, on and on and on) so to prevent contemporary composers from using these materials as they work directly from life would arguably be comparable to preventing plein air painters in 1880's from setting up their easels outside and painting directly from life --unless they had permission from whoever owned the views! 

A 'mobile tech' box-easel

So IMO it's interesting to ponder and compare the acoustic echo of current new-media 'street art' or 'social interventionist art' or 'remix art' (i.e., the work JR, Banksy, Gregg Gillis, and others) to the 'plein air painting' that became all the rage in France in the 1870's.

Interestingly enough, the plein air movement in France was given a boost by the new 'mobile technologies' of paint tubes and the box easel!  If we then play this echo of mobile-tech out a bit it gets pretty interesting. The advent of portable new-media (fancy fones and tablets in combination with wifi or cellnet access) may be what ultimately changes the ratio of time spent making art indoors versus time spent making art outdoors, in the open or en plein air. New-media mobile technology may the equivalent of the box-easel. The new-media ethos and tools have perhaps already unleashed a new generation of plein air artists, again including folks like JR.

BTW this type of change is by and large what Marshall McLuhan meant when  he said "The Medium is the Message." The external properties of mediums end up being more important than their internal ones. Mobile technologies (whether box-easels or mobile computing devices) change the ratios of daily and artistic life --meaning they change basic things like time spent indoors vs. outdoors-- and this ends up being much more important than the programs that run on the fancy fones and tablets. Does that make sense? If it does then you are well on your way to understanding Marshall McLuhan, new-media, and the role of media in general in human life.

A quick review

Week one: a focus on composing, what it is in general, variations in artistic/creative composing, uniqueness and principles of new-media composing. [Need to add multiplicity to the list of principles!]

Week two: a focus on ourselves as composers, influences and so forth, what we are composed of.

Week three: a zoom-in on new-media composing, review principles, add method to principles to form a stochastic filter of new-media composing, then see how the stochastic filter is self-similarly reflected and holistically embodied in genres like remix, and note issues that arise when new-media structures intersect or collide with existing laws and norms.

A Frank Gehry building addition

In some ways the intersection and collision of the old and the new noted here has been given the name 'postmodern' --and in architecture this intersection or collision is made palpable and visible in the work of Frank Gehry. In many of his architectural works, one type of form literally seems to collide and ultimately mesh with another (see image on right).
 

A quick preview

Week four: a zoom-in on the self as composer, self as medium, via self-directed projects (practical projects are a possibility here) or digital-storytelling (an established and very intriguing genre of telling a story of one's own or assisting someone else in telling their story). 

Week five: a zoom-in on further exploration of the creative-side of new-media composing, framing and working/playing on compositions that focus on the world as stage or canvas. 

So we've staged a dialogue or conversation in a way between ourselves and composing (with an emphasis on its new-media variant) and in the final two weeks of the term it shifts back to an emphasis on ourselves as composers --we get the last word or the last speech (or rant, or diatribe, or ramble :)

A closing ramble

To some extent I've composed a piece of 'wetware' (aka a conceptual framework) as my part in the summer edition of DMA. The wetware program has a method (the learning cycle), a set of principles (derived from Manovich, McLuhan, and me --and others of course), a set of exemplars (Laura Karpman, Matthew Herbert, et al), and a signature genre (remix, broadly considered). The role of genres --since genre is this week's focus I'll add this-- is IMO to create workable, usable, microcosmic forms of larger 'cosmic' forms like zeitgeists.  So in my wetware program, remix (if considered broadly enough) captures the new-media zeitgeist very well.

So at this point in the term I am in effect doing a 'wetware distribution'. I am more or less saying 'here is the program, here is the conceptual framework, go test it, try to break it, see if it works!' In some ways I guess that makes you guys, all of us really, beta testers :)

A Frank Gehry dwelling on the Venice Beach CA boardwalk

This is a point worth dwelling and elaborating on since this is a media studies course. Wetware --once it reaches a certain level of organization-- can potentially be developed into software. If I were a software designer, I would have the beginnings of a piece of software, or an app, or perhaps even a game called "New-Media Composer" or something like that. That's part of the wonder of software: it materializes concepts and dematerializes material things. There is now something --arguably a dominant-something-- in-between the strictly-material and strictly-immaterial. It's become a liminal world perhaps.

As we move into and through the next two weeks I will continue to share readings and things like that with you, and we will continue to have conversation and sharing on Facebook, but your blog posts will all be related to framing, talking, gathering, creating, and reflecting in relation to your own projects.

In regard to additional themes and topics I want to introduce or elaborate on, here are a few examples:

1. We gave somewhat short shrift to the topic of processes so I'll share some materials I have, and a perspective I've developed, on the creative process in particular and its relationship to processes found in other ways-of-knowing or WOKs. This will amount to a short exploration of theory of creativity.
2. There is a history of worries about new-media --worries about it ruining our ability to concentrate, destroying our social life, making us into addicts, etc. These tend to come in waves, and their history is only mildly interesting IMO, but it probably needs to be introduced just so you will know a bit of it.
   
   Implicit in what we do in DMA is the idea that it makes sense to optimize the internet by adding creative-intellectual-work/play to your internet rounds, and editing out stuff that wastes time or distracts from substantive work/play. My main advice is to exercise common sense, and if you can't do that, at very least don't blame the medium! Knitting can be a dangerous distraction, as can TV and a whole host of other things. You can probably tell from my tone that I have been round and round with various worries about new media since 1993, and IMO they all pretty much resolve to human factors that can be managed with balance and minimal resolve. Walter Ong reminds us that the ancient Greeks worried in the same way about the introduction of writing. This kind of history lesson helps us keep it real I think!
3.  I'm very interested in where education will end up in the wake of its great intersection or collision with new-media, so I'll share some of the resources I have on this topic with you (for those who are interested in these types of things). As you know the DMA summer edition is a kind of educational-composing prototype for the revised class that I plan to roll forward into the regular term (with adjustments as needed for the different circumstances). I will continue to ask for and rely on your perceptions to help me shape and roll the prototype forward.
4. I will also do a short introduction to programming since this is one of the places creativity is moving. Likely programming will get easier and easier to do as more graphical models are developed, but it will likely always be a good thing to know how the code works behind the graphic interfaces. I learned basic good 'ole HTML coding in 1993 and while lots of tools have come on board to do the coding for us, I have never stopped using plain old code for some things. So we'll do a quick introduction to HTML and also a quick intro to a current programming language called Processing.
5. Finally there are IMO interesting parallels to be speculated on between and among: 1) our immersion in externalized electrical circuitry via regular use of innumerable electronic devices, coupled with immeasurable time spent with electronically-mediated representations, 2) our brain synapses, and 3) quantum phenomena. For example the brain could come to be understood as a sensory organ --honed for sensing the quantum realm. We tend to frame 'thinking' as opposed to 'sensing'. But what if thinking turns out to be a form of sensing? So we can share some speculative ideas and meanderings and gleanings on this topic if a good occasion arises and if some of you are interested.  

None of the above five topics are in the wheelhouse of the DMA course, but they are worth noting, and worthy of further exploration IMO.