introduction to digital media studies

Did anyone happen to figure out a way to make the cursors disappear when they were working with Sophie? It’s not that important but they are kind of annoying.

Just wanted to say a few things about the class and my experienced throughout the course.  First of all I want to say I enjoyed all of the conversations we had over the past semester.  I had a really great time getting to know everyone and listening to everyone’s perspective.  I really felt like this was one of if not the best course I’ve ever taken.  All of the content was extremely interesting and got me thinking in ways I would never had of thought before this course.  I look forward to seeing everyones final projects and I hope everyone comes back to look at them even after the year has ended.

My favorite part about the course was viewing everyones projects and seeing a little bit more of what everyones about in a different way.  I feel you can learn a lot of things about someone through their art that you wouldn’t be able to see or learn otherwise.  Everyone seemed to put a little part of themselves into each of their projects which was really cool to see and I hope everyone continues staying as creative as you all are.

Lastly I would like to say that Professor Fitzpatrick was one of the most interesting and engaging professors I have ever had.  This class wouldn’t have been half the class it was without her teaching it in the way she did.  I hope everyone continues to take media classes because I definitely will be next semester.  See you guys next year,

Peace,

Bryan

Facebook has once again pulled a fast one on all of its members.

Today I signed on to FB, only to discover that I had two choices–link all of my silly interests to their FB pages, or have all of them disappear from my page. In other words, if I claim to like “crashing white house parties” in my activities section, FB is forcing me allow those words to link to the page of other people… who like crashing white house parties.

It seems that FB is working under the guise that anyone who likes the same band, or movie, or book must feel a need to be automatically connected to people who share those same interests through profile pages for everything–even crashing white house parties. But I honestly feel no need to know who else thinks The Iron Giant was a cool movie, or know how many FB users also think Lost is a cool TV show. This change doesn’t only seem unecessary–it seems kinda dumb.

By the way, there’s only one other person on FB who enjoys crashing white house parties. Do we really need to have a page dedicated to this silly, outdated joke?

Not Sophie. Sophie is not on the very long list of things I liked about this class. Just about everything else is. Every project we did gave me a little handle on a piece of internet production which is important to the digital world I interact with. Though, of course, I’ve listened to podcasts, seen HTML sites, and watched Youtube videos, the “making of” part of that experience was largely left out of my experience. I feel like that has been the most important function of this class, to fill in much of the backgrounding which is foundational to my use of the internet and digital media. The video project was my favorite because I felt like I was accomplishing the most during it, but had the HTML project been a little bit more guided and comprehensive, I think that I could easily have enjoyed it as much. The Sophie project was obviously my least favorite, followed distantly by the audio project, which I didn’t mind, but wasn’t particularly excited about either, though again I am happy to understand the work behind a podcast better. Overall, I felt like the projects required a little bit of uneven work, but were uniformly spaced and weighted which was a little bit weird, but they were all useful to my understanding of the class.

Thanks Professor Fitzpatrick!!!

It’s so strange that the semester is already over. This class was a really great experience for me. It was the first class at college I’ve taken with a lab, and I loved having time for hands-on projects. I didn’t have any experience with any of the technologies we used, and it was refreshing to start learning something completely from scratch. While the process could be frustrating or stressful, I was always really happy with the skills and familiarity I gained after the projects. My favorite two projects were probably HTML and Sophie (which I never thought I would ever say), although I’m really glad I got exposure to audio and video technologies.

My favorite readings/discussions were probably about cyber cultures (particularly Sherry Turkle’s articles) and the possibilities of hypertext in literature. My all time favorite reading was Agrippa, which I absolutely loved. I loved having a class that relied so heavily on multimedia, which was really engaging. I also gained more of an appreciation for what you can do with a computer; before taking this class I was fairly uncreative with my internet use. Overall, thank you all for a great semesters worth of discussion!

The end of class yesterday came in that weird rush that always happens when the course evaluations come out, so I wanted to quickly post here to say a more proper (and more appropriately digital, I guess) goodbye.

It’s been an absolutely amazing semester working with all of you; your projects have been inspiring and creative and fun, and your use of this blog has been energetic and engaging. I’ll miss talking with all of you, miss your updates on what’s going on out there in the world of the web.

But, as blitz noted yesterday, perhaps we might all get back together year after next, when I return to campus. I’d love that, if it happened.

Good luck finishing up your semesters, enjoy your summers, and please keep in touch…

One of the most interesting readings for me in this class was the one about games. All the way from the forming of the game goals to implementing them into a visually pleasing software, games were a pleasure to learn about. Interestingly enough, I don’t play games and I am still not hooked up enough to start now. Nevertheless, I am fascinated by the story behind of each and every one of them. On one hand, I am curious about the social implementations different games have–why they were created, what kind of game audience they attract, how is the game played and how that affects the players’ real life. On the other hand, I am simply mesmerized by the advanced methods used to create such life-like environments and characters. I think a big part of attracting audience has to do with how a game “looks”, not just how it “feels”. I feel like this is what makes games nowadays different from games of the past–it is not so much the content that has changed but rather the visual representation. Why are interactive games that involve violence, fast cars, zombies or popular characters more popular than brain-twisting games that require logical, strategical thinking and planning? Are gamers looking for more fun and easy rather than slow and difficult? It seems like games have been engulfed by the entertainment industry and their purpose is only to blow brains out rather than blow minds out (intellectually, that is). Of course this is a very general overview coming from an inexperienced “gamer” but I tend to make this observation based on the video games that I have seen and that are most popular from my point of view. What is really cool, however, is that even in times like that creativity finds its way out of the cage. Even if strategic games are not so popular, some people explore their imagination by creating machinima videos from their favorite games. Thus, those players are now actively participating in the game– not blindly following a mission but creating their own goals within the limitations of the game. The task remains for all the passive viewers as well as gamers to ask themselves the question of why they are playing and of whether it is worth the time.
When it comes to evaluating technology used in our projects, my favorite by far was the video project. I enjoyed the long quiet hours of trial-and-error xhtml programming, the audio experiments and the multimedia dimension of Sophie but I think one of the most effective ways of conveying a certain idea is through a visual presentation, preferably a motion picture. My opinion is definitely biased though since the area of media studies that I am focusing on for my major is digital/film production/editing. Overall, I found all of our projects very educational and interesting and I “secretly” wish I could be a super-duper awesome xhtml programmer.

So.  My final post.  Most of us would agree that we’ve had a lot of fun with the blog this semester.  It’s been one of my favorite aspects of the class.  It’s enabled us to augment in-class discussions with references we remembered after we separated, draw each other’s attention to various internet oddities, and enrich our understandings of the class’ texts through reading others’ thoughts and analyses.  I would’ve liked it if, occasionally, we had been more critical of each other’s ideas, specifically each other’s reading responses.  For the most part, though, we sustained an intriguing dialogue.  In fact, the blog is the first icon on my bookmarks menu, which I click on nearly as often as my Gmail and Reader tabs.  Absentmindedly accessing the blog is almost as automatic as typing in ‘facebook.com’ after opening my browser window.  Seeing no new updates will feel pretty weird for awhile.

I’ve learned more in this class than in any other this semester.  I’m pleased to report that I’m now familiar with HTML coding, the history of online communities, and copyright law, all of which I will be of great use to me in the future.  By the end of my first day of class (others’ third or fourth class, if I remember correctly—I came in late), I could define ‘the Internet’ and ‘the World Wide Web’ without any external aid (perhaps this sounds insignificant, but it’s not—I had attempted to distinguish the difference between the two terms multiple times before, and, each instance, left the webpage or encyclopedia entry I had accessed without a definitive answer and slightly more confused than before.)

Class discussions continually excited me. I especially appreciated viewing YouTube videos and Internet memes as a group, then thinking critically about them.  Out-of-class work was engaging, too.  I thoroughly enjoyed many of our readings.  My favorites were those regarding online social networking.  Many of my daily activities, from checking Twitter to sharing links with friends, are conducted differently thanks to our studies.  Clive Thompson’s explanation of ‘ambient awareness’ and propositions on close versus weak ties stuck with me, and I’m now much more conscious of how online engagement affects my relationships.

Most significantly, perhaps, our labs have been challenging and fun.  Not only did they foster a deeper understanding of our readings, but, for me, they allowed for a much-needed creative release.  The web and video projects, especially, I loved.

Thanks for an awesome semester, everyone.  Perhaps we’ll come together again after Professor Fitzpatrick returns from her sabbatical!

Project 1: Basic Web Design

Despite having difficulty at first, I really enjoyed this project and I think knowing how to program html and css in the future will be really important.  I’m actually planning on designing a site for my sister and brother’s surf site this summer!

Project 2: Web Audio/Podcasting

I understood why we did this project and I can see how it could be a good form to comment on media, but I think the end product was definitely not worth the trouble.  I mean it was a good exercise and I really liked what last year’s class did with their commentary on mashups, but I think theirs was the only really successful project I viewed.

Project 3: Web Video

This was definitely a challenging project in terms of time commitment and coordinating with a partner. I really liked how everyone’s came out. And I feel like there was a lot of artistic wiggle room in this media form.

Project 4: Sophie

After the website, this was probably my favorite project. I am a visual person and like to write, so this medium for commentary worked really well.  Yes Sophie was slow and stubborn, but I was happy with how my project turned out.

Final Project

I used Sophie for my final project. I liked that we didn’t have to stick to the article text like we did in our previous project.  It felt more like a commentary.  Yes, it took longer to flesh out my ideas, but I feel more attached to this project because it is my voice.

In general, I think this was a great class.  The readings were for the most part very interesting and although the projects were challenging, I think I learned a lot.  I felt out of my element for most of the semester, most times not understanding the social references, but I really enjoyed the perspectives I was exposed to. Class discussions were definitely the most intriguing part of this course for me.  And I thought the supplementation of the google wave and class blog really furthered our dynamic.

Thanks for this semester professor !

My take on Gamer Theory