[multimodal narratives :: nonfiction]

Enjoying some downtime over the holidays and catching up on fun reading. While doing so I came across a variety of new media narratives. This one, Storm Stories, uses photos and videos with a focus on user-generated content.

Also have a look at the Wisconsin State Journal's Down to a Whisper on the loss of Native languages. There are images, video and the most interesting bit is the option to listen to Native languages; choose paragraphs, sayings or even just vowel sounds.


Time's person of the year, Barack Obama. Are you connected?

[transdisciplinarity and knowledge cartographies]

As I discuss research projects, aims and future developments with IOCT researchers and affiliates, I'm realising more and more that we're often talking about the same (or at least similar) things though we're using a different language to describe our systems and processes. A recent paper by Josianne Basque, Gilbert Paquette, Beatrice Pudelko and Michel Leonard on "Collaborative Knowledge" suggests the use of a mapping tool as a way of tracing where knowledges crossover and supports the "externalising" of knowledge. Although this tool (MOT) is primarly discussed in terms of sharing knowledge between experts and novices, something like this visual mapping would be useful in the sharing of knowledges between disicplines too.



There are loads more interesting papers in the edited collection Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques including ones that focus on knowledge mapping and curriculum development.

[transliteracy workshop today]

Today is the day!

Following on from last year's transliteracy unconference we're holding a transliteracy workshop. Last year the vote was to have a day where we could put into practise our ideas of transliteracy in order to *make* transliterate objects.

We have piles of string, coloured papers, digital cameras, computers, scanners, robot lego, old answering machines, playstation and more.

As a reminder, the definition of transliteracy (so far) that we're using is:

"The ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks."

The aim of making transliterate objects will help us understand *why* something is transliterate as right now we seem to have an innate idea of what transliteracy is but how to we begin to describe it in words, images, sounds etc...?

more on the PART blog.

[new media art and and and]

I've just been reading Oliver Grau's "Integrating Media Art into our Culture" published in the most recent issue (22) of a minima magazine. He begins his article with reference to something that seems (to me) to be a kind of new media and culture/theory/concept/history etc... tag cloud (though the information/keywords seem to be based on analyses of Ars Electronica rather than *new media* at large):

"Hundreds of names of artists, thousands of artworks, art trends, theory of media art in keywords, presented in an enormous huge circle (please visit http://www.asa.de/research/kontext). (1) Thirty-two slices are offered as a subdivision into themes, like representation, emotion and synaesthesia, the material issue in art, atmosphere, games, therapy, mission, art as spatial experience we find glimpses of a history of media art."

Gerhard Dirmoser and ASA-European are the creators behind this map and they've made accessible "ca. 32 views in context of live, social relations, society, arts of humanities, philosophical relations, personal identities, body examinations, and so on;90 definitions of performance art and performing arts, hundred of names from artists and literature, titles from exemplary books in this 32 views."

The ASA site's own poster let's users click on various parts which lead to zoomed in sections of information. A *map* like this would be interesting in terms of transliteracy; to track its contexts and relations, developments...

[Google eyes Canada rollout of discreet Street View]

From Reuters UK

"Google Inc is considering a Canadian launch of its Street View map feature, which offers street-level close-ups of city centers, but would blur people's faces and vehicle license plates to respect tougher Canadian privacy laws, the Web search firm said on Monday.

Canada's privacy commissioner told Google in August that the feature -- which offers a series of panoramic, 360-degree images of nine U.S. cities -- could violate Canadian laws if it were introduced without alterations.

Some of the pictures feature people who can clearly be identified, which contravenes Canadian legislation on privacy.

"We are thinking about launching it outside the United States, including Canada, and we're looking at how it would have to be different in Canada compared to its U.S. version," said Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel.

"We would launch Street View in Canada in keeping with the principles and requirements of Canadian law ... that means we know we'll have to focus on finding ways to make sure that individual's faces are not identifiable in pictures taken in Canada and that license plate numbers are not identifiable in Canada," he told Reuters in an interview.

Google had been approached by a number of Canadian cities seeking to be featured, he said."

Read the rest of the article here.

[the transliterate world]

Bruce recently blogged about this over at PaRT; a take on the digital world: