[credit crunch craft]

I've heard of re-purposing record album covers as wall art. I suppose you could also use the smaller cardboard covers that come with cassettes (if anyone still has these kicking around). But what do with the actual tapes that remain?

Well, Mary over at the Audiobooker Blog links to an interesting idea by iri5. iri5 has a set of "ghost in the machine" flickr photos which show some excellent examples of eco-craft. I feel some creativity coming on....

[transliteracy and digital art]

In the recently published Digital Artists' handbook, Kristina Anderson talks about making and modding technology. At the end of her chapter she makes an interesting point:

"Maybe we can say, we are making technology in order to understand it, and understanding technology in order to make our own."

This resonates (for me) with the concept of transliteracy. We've named transliteracy in order to understand it and in beginning to understand (conceptualise, interpret etc...) transliteracy perhaps we are making it our own, as a symbol of a 21st century literacy?

[now...on to making something]

For my ph.d thesis I spent the whole time thinking about, interacting with, writing about, and reading web works. Now I'd like to start making something. Of course, I'm no writer and I don't consider myself creative but I have an idea...I'm going to *try* to create a hypertext version of a published essay (I won't say which yet but the author of the essay has agreed to the project)...I'd love to do something as visual as Adriene Jenik Mauve Desert: A CD-ROM Translation of Nicole Brossard's Le Désert Mauve.

There is so much more to learn...about manipulating images and sounds and video. Wow. If anyone has any tips on what I should be looking at and where...do lemme know (or e-mail if you prefer). I would like to become more adept with Flash...but suggestions are welcome.