Digital Rhetorics - E2006

Digital Discourses lecture (1.12.06)

2006-12-06T11:23:00.000+01:00

Thanks everybody (not many, but still) for contributing to making the lecture on Digital Discourses interesting and lively. The slides can be found here. The movie that we watched can be found it all its glory here. Some of the "the future is here" discourse can be readily observed here...slipstream makers.

Slides from Lecture 12

2006-11-28T23:36:00.000+01:00

Thanx for the effort last time, with the arrows and all. Hope you enjoyed our little Yellow Arrow safari of ITU.

You can find the slides at citynova.org.

Regarding references - her are at least a few of them:

'Time of the Tribes' - Michel Maffesoli
'Community - Seeking safety in an Unsecure World' - Zygmunt Bauman
'Relational Aesthetics' - Nicolas Bourriaud
'Smart Mobs' - Howard Rheingold

In addition I (Rune) just came about an interesting account of 'online' mob mentality. Consider the consequences if mobile media had been applied also. Pretty good reminder that for all the potentials of wireless communities they certainly have their negative sides also...

Abstract - www.flickr.com

2006-11-21T14:51:00.000+01:00

Abstract – www.flickr.com

Digital Rhetorics, ITU, 21.11.2006
Line Bertholdt

I wish to examine the web function www.flickr.com and the digital rhetoric that is expressed in the relation between image and text.

I would like to consider Kjeldsen´s description of the rhetoric of the image and the relation between image and text in a short analysis of some selected images under the profile of some selected users. I would like to examine hypertext, fragmentation and narratives with the use of Landow and Walker´s texts. At the same time, I would like to take a broader view upon the term photoblog in the perspective of Cohen, Richardson, Nicholson and Rheingold and discuss the power relations that take place when web users are empowered. It might be relevant to consider Kress´ work on multimodality (2001) and his view upon genre in relation to social context. (2003) Furthermore, it might be useful to consider ethos in relation to the specific social software.

Keywords:
Photoblog, narratology, hypertext and fragmentation, social software, social context, power relations, ethos.

Focus:
An examination of www.Flickr.com with considerations of hypertext and fragmentation founded in an analysis of the relation between image and text and how this relation makes a story possible that may be broader than the single image/text and therefore can be seen as a photoblog. (If space for an analysis.) Moreover, a discussion of the power relations that takes place in a social software like Flickr when the users of the software is empowered and how the concept of ethos might be specifically relevant to the power of the individual user.

Machinima festival

2006-11-20T12:35:00.000+01:00

I just discovered that there was a Machinima Film Festival the 4-5th November held by the Museum of Moving Images. Amongst the categories was Best Direction, Best Voice Acting, Best Original Music, Best Sound Design, Best Writing and Best Commercial. On their web site you can see the nominees and winners.

Session 12: Wireless Communities

2006-11-20T09:05:00.000+01:00

We hope you are busy pondering wicked ways to use your Yellow Arrow - sticker in the coming week. Next time we will continue the general theme of 'Cross media rhetoric' by examining 'wireless communities'. Besides excerpts from "Smart Mobs" (K), we will also be discussing parts of the text "Flash! Mobs in the age of Mobile Connectivity- by Judith A. Nicholson". In case some of you have the time to read it, see: Flash! Mobs in the Age of Mobile Connectivity

If you think it went a bit to fast and want to have a more thorough look at the cases we showed friday, see below:

Simpletext, !Alerting Infrastructure!(Jonah Bruckner-Cohen)
Mogi (Newt games)
Uncle Roy All Around You (Blast theory)
Interactive Architecture (Graffiti Research Lab)
Txtual Healing (Paul Notzold)
Asphalt Games (Elizabeth Goodman, Michele Chang)
Milkproject (Esther Polak, Ieva Auzina and RIXC)
Yellow Arrow (Counts Media)

You can download the slides from last session 11 here:
http://www.citynova.org/ppt/Digital_Rhetorics/Digital_Aesthetics.ppt

If you have questions, comments i.e., you can mail us at: info@citynova.org

Abstract (late)

2006-11-17T00:12:00.000+01:00

Machinima Language

I was first introduced to machinima a year ago and it struck me to be a very strange and broad media genre. To use a media that is ment for one specific thing (gaming) and turn it in to your own narrative playground, no matter what story or anti-story you want to tell, seems to bring the online identity perspective into a third dimension. The online envorinment (the game) is suddenly complex enough that it makes sense to create abstract pictures and stories about it, and this fact can generate a lot of thoughts of just how much an avatar matters.

What I want to focus on in this very large theme, is the common language that is used to make people enjoy and understand machinimas. What common understanding do the most popular machinimas refer to, is it possible to draw lines to other narrative medias like literature and movies, or are the machinima only using ingame references and hints? The interesting thing is how "educated" in different media-genre languages you must be and in what rhetoric ways, to understand the jokes or the tale of a machinima movie. So my aim is to explore the machinima language and the creative rhetoric tools the machinima-makers uses.

Working groups for the papers

2006-11-15T09:00:00.000+01:00

Abstract ”Familien digitale repræsentationer” (Trine Kreiberg)

2006-11-10T10:10:00.000+01:00

Familien, dens nuværende betydning og dens fremtid, er emner, som i disse år er på dagsordenen i både politiske samt mere socialt og praktisk orienterede debatter. Med Internettets udbredelse er der opstået nye muligheder for at distribuere repræsentationer af familien og for gennem dette nye medie at give udtryk for holdninger til og forestillinger om familien. I denne opgave vil jeg diskutere den på Internettet anvendte retorik omkring familien. Jeg vil med hovedvægt på billeders retorik men set i et samspil med lingvistiske fremstillinger forsøge at belyse, hvordan retoriske principper anvendes til at skabe en historie om familien. For at gøre dette vil jeg analysere udvalgte forskelligartede websider, hvis indhold har omdrejningspunkt om netop dette emne og i forbindelse hermed se på de mere eller mindre eksplicitte sociale magtforhold, som siderne kan være udtryk for.

Websites jeg overvejer at inddrage:

http://www.familienstender
http://www.mollermadsen.dk/
http://www.erdmanns.dk/
http://www.kronprinsparret.dk/
http://www.minff.dk/ministeriet/familie/6/
http://www.cbaf.dk/
http://www.art-dept.com/artists/waplington/

Abstract (udkast) Sophie & Anne

2006-11-10T09:49:00.000+01:00

Siden 2004 er antallet af besøgende på de danske mediers websider vokset med godt 50%. Også antallet af redaktionelle medarbejdere er steget (på de ni største netmedier er der sket en fordobling siden nytår). Der er altså grund til at satse – og der bliver satset – på nettet, som et supplement til de øvrige medier mediekonvergens)

Med web 2.0 og de nye former for social software har brugerne fået en række af værktøjer (blogs, moblogs, wikis etc) til selv at deltage i udvælgelsen såvel som produktionen af historier/nyheder etc. (bl.a. citizen journalism) og på den måde skabe deres egen medievirkelighed.

Hvordan kan denne brugercentrerede ’trend’/bølge appliceres på (eller enddog integreres med!) de traditionelle massemedier? Medierne selv følger trenden ved at give plads til læser-blogs mv. – men det kan diskuteres, hvorvidt det reelt ændrer noget ved selve netjournalistikken. (Tendensen er, at der ’påklistres’ et ekstra bruger-univers-blog-modul skarpt adskilt fra ’den rigtige’ journalistik. (En teknisk tilføjelse! Der ændres altså ikke ved ’magtforholdet’). Og vil (+ hvordan) en sådan brugerinddragelse ændre den journalistiske genre + retorik? (Hvilken retorisk effekt har det?)

Der lægges op til at brugerne/læserne af netaviser skal have mulighed for selv at supplere med materiale (via blogs mv.), men der lægges ikke op til at journalisterne selv skal ændre ’taktik’. (Det diskuteres ikke hvorvidt der skal andre ting til ..)

Ved at sammenligne forskellige netmediers journalistiske materiale med materiale fra øvrige medier, vil vi diskutere hvorledes interaktionen indvirker/har betydning for det journalistiske materiale. Vi vil se på hvilke virkemidler (tekniske såvel som retoriske) der gøres brug af – og hvilken betydning dette har, for den historie der formidles.
Vi vil fokusere på …
Redegøre for nogle af de begrænsninger, der ligger i netjournalistikken – samt udforske (+udfordre!) mulighedsrummet. (inspiration fra hyperfiktionen!)

Nøgleord: netjournalistik, hypertext

Abstract: The God mode of social software (Agust)

2006-11-10T09:26:00.000+01:00

On social software sites such as Blogger, Flickr, mySpace and YouTube points can be scored when participating as an active member in these communities. These points are records of numbers that appear as statistics on the screen, such as the numbers of comments and the numbers of friends or connections that are displayed, and on YouTube, at least, there is honor system where the participants can win a honor icon, which will than be attached to their profile. In this paper I want to explore how these points may be gained on YouTube, and how gaining these points create an game-like experience, where participants play. I also argue that these points help the participants who play in the YouTube community to get attached to their account/identity (product) as well as helping other players to get an idea of what kind of an account they are scanning when visiting (ethos).

Keywords: Play, game, identity, simulation, YouTube, …

Abstract: Myspace as a link (Sidse)

2006-11-10T08:59:00.000+01:00

During the recent years social networking online has become more and more widespread. The Internet offers several possibilities for online networking. One of these services is Myspace.com which is a social networking website offering an interactive network providing a plethora of networking features.
Myspace.com has gained enormous popularity and has now more than 90 million users worldwide participating in this social network that most of all is characterised by being a parallel universe. A number of young people use this service as an
alternate-, parallel- or shared identity. However, the profiles expressing the identities only exist through the link to other profiles and a new form of fragmented narration emerges.
In this study I will discuss which properties of communication and distribution as well as modes of self-expression make this service unique. I will focus on which properties make this service interesting to its users, which I argue is primarily the link. My approach is online participant observation used on a selected number of profiles, which will then be analysed within the framework of Jill Walkers theory of distribution (muligvis også Aarseth og andre!!!).

Abstract: The Rhetorics of Machinima (Mille)

2006-11-10T08:40:00.000+01:00

Many computer games provide a replay function so players can indulge in highlights of their own and co-players performances. In the last 10 years, players have used this in game function to create short narratives. These narratives are uniformly known as machinima. Unlike other fan art products machinima seems to also appeal to audiences outside the gaming community. Despite its relatively short history machinima have already been used commercially. I will explore machinima in order to better understand the rhetorics. What are the unique characteristics of machinima? I intend to investigate and analyse the individual components of machinima (sound in particular) in order to understand what makes it machinima and not 3D animation or replay.

Keywords: machinima, fan art
Literature: will include Henry Lowood, Paul Marino and Henry Jenkins.

Abstract: Retorik på virksomhedsintranet – taler vi samme sprog inden for murene? (Lis)

2006-11-10T08:38:00.000+01:00

Mange virksomheder arbejder intens med at udarbejde corporate kommunikations-politikker og strategier, når det drejer sig om den kommunikation, der er målrettet mod papirbaserede medier så som brochuremateriale, posters, salgsbreve, aktionær-informationer, tv- og radioreklamer og til online medier såsom hjemmesider og extranet. Der anvendes således en bestemt retorik til den kommunikation, der foregår ud-af-til i forbindelse med ethos, patos og logos. Men hvad med den retorik, der anvendes internt i virksomheden? Er den anderledes på den del af internettet, der kun kan ses af medarbejderne på indersiden af firewallen dvs. på intranettet, end den, der anvendes udadtil? Er der forskel på top- og bundstyrede intranets set ud fra et retorisk synspunkt. Er det muligt at kontrollere retorikken på et intranet med mange bidragsydere? Hvilke faktorer kan støje i forbindelse med centralstyret corporate kommunikation og retorikbegreberne?
Denne artikel er skrevet på baggrund af de erfaringer, som jeg har erhvervet mig gennem de sidste 10 år i arbejdet med knowledge management, information sharing og kommunikation via intranet i 3 store virksomheder med hver sin kultur. Jeg vil med eksempler belyse, hvorledes digital retorik anvendes på intranets i dels den formelle corporate og den uformelle interne kommunikation, og hvordan disse kan modarbejde hinanden eller støtte hinanden med udgangspunkt i de retoriske begreber som ethos, patos og logos, samt belyse afsender/modtager og budskabsforholdet set ud fra et visuel kommunikationsmæssigt synpunkt.

Keywords: intranet, portal, ethos, pathos, logos, visual kommunikation, implicit budskab, implicit afsender/modtager, kommunikationsstøj, push/pull strategier, virksomhedskultur

Kilder:

Ellerup Nielsen Rhetorical Features of the company website
Kompendiet

andre fra kompendiet sammen med:

The Semiotic landscape: Language and visual communiation Gunther Kress & theo van Leuween kompendiet Webdesign og webkommunikation (p15-42)

At tale til øjet Niels Heide

Ukendte selvfølgeligheder om maleri - Emmanual Ibsen

Ethos på hjemmesiden - Elisabeth Hoff-Clausen

Lisbeth Thorlacius - Model til analyse af visuel kommunikation på websides
http://www.kommunikationsforum.dk/Log/webmodel.pdf

Rogers? - Støj - kommunikationsmodel

Lis Skjold Pedersen

Abstract ”Pressefotoet under pres i en digital virkelighed?” (Flemming)

2006-11-10T07:25:00.000+01:00

Fotografiet indtager en central rolle i moderne kommunikation. Specielt inden for dokumentargenren har fotografiet, pressefotoet, en helt særlig sandhedsbærende funktion: Rent intuitivt opfatter vi fotografiet som et endegyldigt bevis for, at den situation billedet udtrykker, rent faktisk har fundet sted, - vi ser det nærmest som om, vi selv har oplevet situationen, uden at sætte spørgsmålstegn ved autenticiteten. På denne baggrund er det ikke underligt, at det gang på gang vækker betydelig opsigt, når fotografier anvendt i dokumentaristiske ærinder afsløres som værende manipulerede. ”Bedragerierne” afføder ophedede debatter, og ikke mindst anvendelsen af digitale teknikker giver anledning til bekymring over mulighederne for manipulation med billedmaterialet. Her er det umiddelbart opsigtvækkende, at f.eks. pressefotografforbundet ”blåstempler” billedmanipulation gennem fastsættelse af grænser for digital justering af billeder ved deltagelse i konkurrencen om Årets Pressefoto.
Med udgangspunkt i en kvalitativ analyse af argumentationen i debatten på pressefotografforbundets website om nye regler for Årets Pressefoto, sammenholdt med resultatet af en komparativ analyse af et udvalg af kendte manipulationer af analoge kontra digitale fotografier, vil jeg diskutere, hvorvidt der eksisterer et behov for etablering af et nyt etisk kodeks for håndtering af det digitale pressefoto. I diskussionen vil fokus være rettet mod, om de digitale fotografier og tilhørende værktøjer introducerer væsentlige nye muligheder for manipulation, og om de måske på samme tid giver os helt nye muligheder for kontrol af billedets autenticitet.

Abstract "Virksomhedsbloggens retorik" (Thomas L)

2006-11-10T02:35:00.000+01:00

Corporate blogging er ikke længere et nichefænomen. Også flere og flere danske virksomheder deltager i blogosfæren. Den kommercielle blog opfattes af virksomhederne som et mere interaktivt medium for en bedre dialog med forbrugerne. Forbrugerne er fortrolige med blogs, men især i form af den personlige, dagbogslignende journal.

Som ny kommunikationsplatform er bloggen, ligesom det var tilfældet med de tidlige firmawebsites, genstand for en tøvende interesse og afprøvning af mediets muligheder. Bloggen adskiller sig fra det 'traditionelle' website på en række områder, der har betydning for anvendelsen af de retoriske virkemidler: Struktureringen af informationen, indholdets semiprivate karakter og kommentarfunktionen, der muliggør dialog. Det betyder, at de retoriske virkemidler, pisteis kan fungere anderledes end på almindelige websites. Fx har bloggerens personlighed og ethos betydning for den virksomhed, der brandes - og står som afsender.

I denne artikel vil vi analysere to danske virksomhedsblogs og undersøge hvordan der visuelt og lingvistisk arbejdes med pathos/logos, hvilket fører frem til en diskussion af, hvorvidt bloggen i disse tilfælde bidrager til at etablere en troværdig og effektiv kommunikation med målgruppen.

Litteratur: Ellerup Nielsen (2002), Kress & Van Leeuwen (2001), Aarseth (2004)
Keywords: Blogging, Rhetorics, Website marketing

Abstract: "Websites as visual discourse" (Lasse)

2006-11-10T00:32:00.000+01:00

Following Gunther Kress’ points in the book, Multimodal Discourse – The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication (2001), I propose an expansion of his theory to cover the visual appearance of websites. That is, to analyse websites as visual discourse. In order to conceptualise my ideas I will take outset in the appearance of websites for art museums. I will claim that there is a tendency for the websites of Danish art museums to differ significantly in appearance from many of their international counterparts. This, I propose, shows that it is possible to identify different 'visual' discourses on the internet and that that they are connected to power relations which have very little to do with the digital properties of the media. The Internet provides us with a new range of potential discourse analysis which has barely been researched. This paper will mainly rely on Kress’ work but also draw on the methods of rhetorical image analysis presented by Jens E. Kjeldsen in Billeders Retorik (2006).

Abstract: "Hoaxes – nettet har mistet sin uskyld" (Mikkel) - Opdateret

2006-11-10T00:26:00.000+01:00

På internettet testes vores naivitet, evne til at skelne og tillid til mediet jævnligt. Hoax er et meget udbredt fænomen som breder sig over falske virusadvarsler, tilbud om rigdom, iscenesatte tragiske teenage-historier, sammensværgelsesteorier m.m.

Disse hoaxes benytter sig af forskellige retoriske virkemidler for at skabe troværdighed og udfordrer vores opfattelse af, hvad et ’bevis’ kan være. Denne artikel diskuterer med udgangspunkt i tre cases hvorvidt en hoax kan fungerere konstruktivt/dannende eller om den i sin natur udelukkende er destruktiv. Og udgør hoaxen en fare for brugere af internettet?

Afsender – modtager forholdet undersøges endvidere med henblik på sammenhængen mellem afsenders intention og hoaxens effekt og der drages paralleller til vandrehistoriens historie. Et vigtigt parameter i en hoaxs ’succes’ er distribution som vil blive diskuteret. (her inddrages teorier om viral markedsføring.)

Keywords: Internet Hoaxes, Internet scams, Bonzai Kitten, urban legend

Late links :-S

2006-11-09T21:34:00.000+01:00

A bit late, I know, but I promised to post some links to some machinima films and I kept forgetting to do so. My apologies. Anyway...here goes:

First a commercial for the in game chat programme Xfire, made by a guy that is famous for his machinima films among the World of Warcraft players. The amazing thing is that thousands of people actually click in solely to spend several minutes watching a commercial.
"Oxhorn tells of Xfire"

A Monty Python inspired film

A parody of a parody: A machina version of Weird Al's parody 'Amish Paradise' (original: Gangsta's paradise by Coolio, I believe).

And lastly a parody of the documentary genre.

Abstract: ”Oxhorn tells of Xfire – advertising in machinima“ (Susanne)

2006-11-09T21:30:00.000+01:00

As the Internet has developed, digital advertising and branding have become more and more wide-spread. Banner adds, commercial websites, spam mails, and different types of story telling are all well known phenomena in online advertising. There is a continuously search for new and powerful ways to reach the consumers. A recent example of this is the company Xfire, a producer of a cross game chat program: Making use of the machinima film style used in the fan art connected with the games, they have made a short movie which is as much an advertisement for the company as well as a call for participation in a competition using in-game footage. In this paper I will examine why and how Xfire uses machinima as a tool for branding from a rhetorical point of view and briefly discuss the general possibilities for branding and advertising in this medium.

Keywords: Digital, advertising, branding, mmorpgs, gaming, machinima

Abstract "?", Camilla og Maj

2006-11-09T13:54:00.000+01:00

Flere undersøgelser har vist, at der er en tendens til, at man kun skimmer/skanner teksten, når man læser på internettet. Derfor har billeder en stor betydning for læsningen på nettet, idet man hurtig bliver fanget af det visuelle og de er forholdsvis let aflæselige. Ligesom billeder er gode til at understøtte en tekst, kan de også forvirre mere, end de gavner, hvis de ikke understøtter indholdet i den tilhørende tekst.
Med udgangspunkt i ovenstående har vi valgt at tage udgangspunkt i hjælpeorganisationer for her at analysere, hvilke appelformer de anvender, når de anvender tekstuelle og visuelle præsentationer af deres arbejdsområder. Vi har valgt at koncentrere os om hjælpeorganisationer, da de i kraft af ikke at have de samme ressourcer som mange kommercielle instanser, er meget afhængige af at have etableret troværdighed og forståelse hos deres målgruppe.
I vores analyse vil vi inddrage følgende tekster fra kompendiet: Kress (2001), Kjeldsen (2006), McCloud (1993), Walker, Ellerup Nielsen (2002)
Analysen skal føre frem til en beskrivelse af betydningen for, hvordan brug af visuelle elementer kan understøtte teksten og appellere til modtageren.

Homework for the second day of genres

2006-11-03T12:13:00.000+01:00

1. Read Ellerup Nielsen as an example of an in-depth examination of a genre. What elements does she consider and is it helpful to distinguish from other genres?
2. Describe a genre inspired by Kress approach as we did in class with the amazon website. YOu can begin by looking at the elements of the genre, then look for the sender-receiver relationship that the genre constructs, and finally try to get to the power relations the genre reveals. We chose a few genres in class but you can do another one if you have a better idea: commercial sites, machinima, communities, blogs, fan sites and political websites.
3. Think about your own digital genres list: what would be your criteria/axes to differentiate between digital objects? check that it works by thinking of some examples. You can be inspired by Fagerjord axes but you don´t need to use him explicitly.

exercises session 8 - machinima

2006-10-27T14:18:00.000+02:00

Here are some links to the interesting machinima we watched:
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=9718
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=1523
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=9786
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=3529
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4694084009352879490
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=1407

There is also an easy and entertaining introduction to machinima written in POlitiken, where they also introduce an epic machinima film created by a danish teenager, very interesting! http://politiken.dk/forbruger/spil/article171650.ece

Then I invited the students to upload their machinima suggestions for scripts to the S drive if they felt like trying it out, if I find something there on MOnday I will post some feedback. :-)

Electronic Zen

2006-10-26T13:58:00.000+02:00

In the Hypertext 2.0 text in the kompedie George Landow mentions a hypertext called Elecronic Zen created by Taro Ikai. I found it on the net - it's quite funny... very simple, old school and poetic :-)

http://scholars.nus.edu.sg/cpace/ht/ezen/intro.html

Narrative structures online

2006-10-24T12:38:00.000+02:00

For nogle år siden lavede instruktøren Flemming Lyngse en interaktiv dokumentar om Fremskridtsparti-formanden Mogens Glistrup. Jeg synes, produktionen stadig er et meget godt bud på, hvordan online-mediet kan være med til at opbygge/udfolde en historie - i dette tilfælde non-fiktion - og lade vinklingen være op til brugeren selv.

Filmen hedder "Forestillinger", og inviterer brugeren på besøg i Mogens Glistrup og hans kones hjem. Man må selv finde vej gennem labyrinten af 15 timers videooptagelser og arkivmateriale fra tv og dermed skabe sin egen fortælling og sandhed om Fremskridtspartiets stifter.

Flemming Lyngse skriver selv, hvordan filmen online fik helt andre udfoldelsesmuligheder, end som almindelig film:

"Der var det problem med denne her mand, at simple ombytninger af to scener kunne forvandle ham fra at være en rar gammel hyggeonkel til en rablende racist. Der er jo virkelig forskel på, hvordan man oplever et menneske, hvis man starter med at høre ham sige: 'Muhamedanerne skal bare smides ud af landet', og at 'de vil stable vores lig langs Roskildevejen.' Det er jo én type menneske. Fremfor hvis du starter med at høre samme mand sige: 'Det første jeg hørte om muhamedanerne var i min barndom, hvor min far og min historielærer, da jeg var ni år gammel, fortalte mig, at de var vores fjender.' Så er det jo allerede en anden mand. Jeg stødte ind i det, jeg oplever som fortællingens problem: At jeg skal fortælle noget bestemt."

Filmen kan ses på http://filmwork.dk/index.php

OBS OBS!! Da det er en ældre sag, virker den ikke i alle nyere styresystemer/browsere som fx Windows XP/mozilla til PC. Jeg har selv fået den til at virke i Mozilla på Mac, og i explorer på PC - men ellers må man lige prøve sig frem. Desuden skal man huske at være lidt tålmodig - ind imellem (især i starten) er der perioder, hvor der er sort skærm i lidt flere øjeblikke end man normalt ville vente på. Men den er værd at vente på - og vældig interessant :)

Exercise Session 7 - Storytelling: using pathos

2006-10-13T14:11:00.000+02:00

The groups sat for 1 hour and discussed different proposals for stories and how to exploit them online.

GROUP 1: A.P. MØLLER
They had different ideas; they changed focus from storytelling to online and then lost the connection. They wanted to make A.P. Møller more human, for the company to get a better reputation. Family values: boy in the kindergarten playing with a ship and then you would cut to the father doing the actual work. The digital version still had the container idea, they thought of making it an online computer game where people could play roles and "work" in the ships. Children could send teddybears that then would be photographied around the world. A bit educational as well, for example learning about geography. Target group: children, but you could also play "adult roles" like machine man or pilot. Prizes for those who could do their job. The current website for the company doesnt really explicit any values, others than the slogan "constant care" (conservative and hard working people).
To change image about the values. There seems to be a gap between the real company and this campaign, but it wouldn´t probably be successful while the old man is at the wheel because he has a hard image of someone who gets what he wants, maybe has too much influence. Good businessman but not so much about compassion. Critique from the others, worried about the kindergarden idea because it could confirm the roles (you will become the same at your father), if you could become something else it could mean that the company gives opportunities. The teddy bear idea is probably the one giving more pathos, because the computer game could work a bit generic.

GROUP 2- ITUs logo
The logo looks like a chicken and the acronym should then be: Intelligent tjickens unite! A lot of students see ITU as a boring big system, the student vs the system. Their concept is the chicken vs. the institution, to give ITU some self-irony. The chicken would be the hero: the rebel, target group: the students. There is not so much you can do about our main site, so an "anti-site" should be made where it wouldn´t be obvious it is made by us. The page could have a computer game or quest where you have to solve some challenges like delivering your exam paper in a certain date or hour, then you might have to persuade administrators to give in later etc. Another mission: all the printers are down but one and there is a huge one, you have to print your paper, what do you do? Another: a pac-man game where the dots you eat are courses and if you dont eat them all you are hit on the head by Mads Tofte. There could be some links to this page from the official site or the mit.itu, discreet signs that would get you to the other one. It shouldn´t be obvious that ITU is the sender.
End of story, Mads Tofte with a lot of roasted chickens dancing behind his flute and then one of them would go up to the logo and blink.
Critique from the others: the ideas are funny, but it might be sending a not so positive message. Many of the things are a critique to ITU (specially because we know it is true, as target group). It wouldnt work as branding of ITU, unless people can perceive the self-irony. Another critique is that it would work better if it was made from the students to the students, but it is a bit difficult to see ITU as the sender. Even if the students were the senders it would have a positive effect on the "brand" anyway. Response is that the students wouldn´t be motivated to help ITU brand itself this way. Irony is usually dangerous for pathos as it opens so much for meaning, we are also unsure about how the sender-receiver equation works here. The groups says that if its enough of a caricature it would work.

GROUP 3- ITU as cool?
It needs some re-branding, but they didnt really find a story to tell. Main problem: the prejudices about people working with IT are nerds writing code, only. When you go to the ITU side you dont get a different impression. They wanted to make the creative students a part of the brand, the site should show the personal stories and demonstrate the diversity of the place, we are nerds in different nerds. The targets of this campaign would be external people. They thought of an abstract game concept: in order to solve a problem you would need a "character" or "profession" of each speciality, the people at ITU, for example you cannot solve it just with a code guy, you need also people from the other areas, for example a humanist. The point being that IT projects are much more than code and ITU has it all. The game would be integrated in the site itself, kind of treasure hunt for example haunting through different departments... Also maybe a streamer running on the top of the site.
It could be fun to play a game, but if it is very complex you would quit because what would be the motivation to search the site so much? There has to be more motivation factors, like a prize. Group says that maybe you dont have to read the whole thing, things easy to find. Critique says that the idea is good but it should be possible to solve it "in-game" instead of browsing a lot of the current structure. Group likes this idea if some links could be made out to the site.

Susana says that it is more difficult to brand a university than a product, but students think it is a company, so it needs to brand itself in the same way, we "sell" courses, we are not a real university. The A.P Møller exercise was also difficult because they tried to brand it in a way oppossite to the common understanding of the brand in the world.

Exercises Session 6- Sound

2006-10-13T14:04:00.000+02:00

There were only 3 exercises (2 in the S drive and one here) this time, probably my fault because I wasn´t very specific with how it should be done and it is actually quite hard to be creative without constraints, specially if you only have 1 hour!!! Anyway, mea culpa and lets say something about the exercises.
- Look below this post for Mikkels Muzart emotions video, I have commented on it there.
- Then we got a sound add-on proposal for rejseplanen, that you can read about in the S drive. Everytime there are traffic problems for example with the train it is very hard to find out what it is, so the students propose adding a "loudspeaker" system that just like in stations would announce what the problems were. I think it is a brilliant idea and a great way to use sound to enhace information transmission, as the visual is so unclear here. My only worry was that if there are too many wrong things the messages might be many, but if it is tied to after you have made your search, then it is great. If people knew they wouldn´t close their speakers as they usually do... The only critique that can be said to this exercise is that it doesnt really play with emotions, it is information.
-And the third was a game-like application to place the right head on the right body, where we got audio clues as to what we had to do. It was very funny and playful, see for yourself, it creates a lot of humour and good vibes, and I am not saying this because my head was one of them! :-)
So well done all around, thanks for trying and interpreting the vague instructions in a satisfactory way. :-)

Experimenting with Muzart

2006-10-09T12:13:00.000+02:00

Here is a small 'work of art' created in Muzart. The webservice is fun to use, but also have a lot of limitations which can lead to some frustration (especially for a musician when the different sound tracks are not in sync) It's a shame for the kids - they also deserve things that work well.

'Space is the Place'

2 different digital recipes for pancakes

2006-10-06T13:13:00.000+02:00

Go to pictograph source

Examples session 6: Sound

2006-10-05T15:39:00.000+02:00

- Links from Henriette Moos course on sound for digital productions (maybe some links broken as 3 years old). Lots of good inspiration. (Susana)

- Info about et arrangement på KUA this friday i forbindelse med at DR har doneret sit lydarkiv til KUA. Blandt andre taler både Stephen Schwartz og Klaus Bruhn Jensen. (Camilla)

- Læsehæmmede og svagtseende kan via dette link få læst teksten på en web side op. (Lis)

- Muzart: online musik(+video)-værktøj - målrettet børn. Det er let tilgængeligt og har et stort bibliotek af gode lyde (musikbidder fra danske komponister) at vælge imellem. Principperne er ligesom flash. They also have a tool to make ringtones. (Sophie)

- Bad vibes. The page about the bad sounds and why they are horrible. (Susana)

Please add more in the comments!!!!!

Exercises Session 5- Visual Rhetorics

2006-10-04T21:48:00.000+02:00

There was input from 4 groups/people in the S drive. You all chose the topic of the poster/plakat instead of the illustration for a newspaper, which makes sense give the little time. A point of the exercise was to play with the meaning in between, the meaning that springs from combining an image and text in surprising ways, and I think all the examples were really good doing that. Most of them played with humor and managed to create some good paradoxes that stimulated the viewer. They are varyingly successful I think in their use of contextualization and of course graphic ability (but it wasnt the point to evaluate that, more the rhetoric power).

I am being vague in this review on purpose, because I have decided that we will start the next session by doing a quick evaluation of your work (it is a pity it remains invisible for the class) and so bring into play some of the points from last session that also tie in very well with our new multimodal topic. So you will get a "questionnaire" that uses some of the ideas in Kjeldsen and Heie in order to make full use of your own work as class material. :-)

Examples Session 5 - visual rhetorics online

2006-09-28T16:00:00.000+02:00

Here we should all post our example of interesting visual rhetorics for inspiration to the class. You can do it as comments to this post if you didnt mail me some instead of making another blog entry, so that everything is thematically grouped.

- Scott McClouds online comics, an example of an "improvisation" and how the sequential art can be taken to the computer with some funny effects between panels (susana)
- Magnum Photos composition about 11 September, a graphic essay with voice. (susana)
- The New Commercials for Apple (Ida) "The two actors represent the computers and speak for them, in that way being rhetorical, but their appearence and behaviour plays an even bigger role. The visual part in the commercial seems to be the most important message to the aimed audience and what the actors say seems to more complimentory. But have a look yourself, they are also a bit amusing....."

Exercise session 4 - Social Software

2006-09-26T14:51:00.000+02:00

Thanks to people for running the session independently without me. :-) I am glad there was some discussion and controversy about social software. There wasnt so much about literacy, even though one group specifically addressed the topic. Part of what I wanted with this topic was to see if social software was really so new a wave (web 2.0) as the hype grants it, and the groups dismounted some of that hype, so I am happy about your insight, that is: some of it is really about the same that the web has always been, some of the problems are also the same (trust, leaving the context outside...), and the connection to real life is still key. I am myself very much in doubt as to the future impact of the phenomenon, I was a bit disappointed that none of the groups explicitly engaged with Brian Alexander´s article where he questions the rhetoric operation involved in the chosing of the term Web 2: "The term is audacious: Web 2.0. It assumes a certain interpretation of Web history, including enough progress in certain directions to trigger a succession". After he looks extensively (and critically) at a lot of different web 2 software, he nevertheless concludes that something has changed in the way we think and process information. As a related topic one could take up for discussion in connection to our course he also writes about "Web 2.0 ethos of sharing content across services".

But to go back to the reports of the groups, a general agreement was that the term covers very different things. Here I have picked the highlights from the 3 reports about what you discussed in the session (you can go to the S drive and read more):

- a definition of social software from wikipedia: SS enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form online communities.
- the groups look into different kinds of social software and summarize their characteristics, so it can be interesting for you to read about the ones you don´t know to get a "teaser" and find out if you would like to investigate more.
- Strangers interact between one another on these sites, they are however of different genre. Someone who writes in myspace.com doesn’t necessarily write in Wikipedia. A different language is used for each genre. We can be really good at blogging or putting up pictures up of ourselves on myspace, but may be literately incompetent to go on wikipedia and vice versa.
- Another group points to the importance of context, that is not always present in this kind of fora. Social software er et godt supplement til nuværende kommunikationsfora. Det er nemmere at kommunikere og overføre kommunikationen til andre kommunikationskanaler. Social software kan gøre det sjovere at lære. Men på den anden side isolerer det dele af kommunikationen – ansigtsmimik og- udtryk etc.
Social software gør det sværere at afkode kommunikationsformen – formel/uformel (ethos), men det kan være et hjælperedskab til at vidensdele også for undervisere.
- Why do people "waste" their time with social software? SS er en tidsrøver, og vi diskuterede, hvorfor der bruges så lang tid på at pleje relationer i cyberspace frem for IRL. Bud herpå er bl.a. vores fortravlede hverdag, hvor SS's asynkrone tidsaspekt bliver en fordel. Så kan man orientere sig og pleje venskaber og interesser, når det passer én. Et andet bud på hvorfor, der bruges så lang tid i Cyberspace, er at man kan skabe relationer, men samtidig opretholde en distance, der ikke er mulig IRL. Bliver man træt af situationen, kan man blot trykke på off-knappen og forbindelsen er afbrudt.

Everybody welcome to comment on the discussion any further, this could be an interesting topic for your final papers, both as a "genre" but also if you pick one of the individual objects.

Podcasts banned in connection with Election in Singapore

2006-09-25T14:06:00.000+02:00

During our talks about Political Blogging I mentioned that blogging had been banned in Singapore during the recent election, however it was podcasting. I managed to locate the news.

As far as I could read about the election - seems that the government had forgot to ban blogging :-)

Test

2006-09-15T20:57:00.000+02:00

Just for fun: A test of todays subject about morality: How Machiavellian are you?

Notes exercise Session 3 – Political blogging and persuasion

2006-09-15T15:11:00.000+02:00

For the exercises we will work with digital persuasion. The topic is political blogs. Check out http://www.klastrup.dk/walgblog/ and read about the project. Follow also some of the links to politicians blogs or find your own political blogs. You need to come to the exercise session with an idea about it, take some notes as to how they relate to the three pisteis.

There were four groups in the classroom that had a lively closed discussion in the first part of the class, and then we put it in common. Here are some notes:

GROUP 1
- Mette Frederiksens weblog, not updated, but a very personal weblog. Combining the political life with the personal life, very emotional. Usually on TV you only see them talking about politics and this is a kind of contrast. The medium leads people to be more personal. Very exclusively pathos.
- Other blogs (like one from the radikale venstre, Morten Helveg Petersen) were different, more political, but still include personal information like about his favourite football team winning. He made it possible for people to comment on his posts and he also answered. As if people went into the blog to start a conversation, looked very real. Used the blog to build up his ethos but there is a lot of pathos as well (personal comments, pathos)
- Some companies are also blogging and it is impersonal, it is another genre of blog. A political party blog can be “allowed” to be more general and “impersonal”.

GROUP 2
- Blogs where you cannot comment seem more like diaries on the web, as it they were not used fully. They can talk but they don´t want to hear. (maybe want to be modern but don´t know how?). It might be because anyone can say anything and disturb the blog, you exercise some control. Maybe they don´t have the time to write all the time and follow the comments, it is like opening your office 24 hours a day and then it backfires. He can´t open up as much as other bloggers because he is a public persona and cannot contaminate his ethos, for example he cannot really answer to provocations.
- Klaus Bondam had the comments section open and sometimes he answers. The others ask if you are obliged to answer, it is not good for your ethos.
- Sometimes there is a mistanke om ghostwriters, if Anders Fogh could write it himself at the same time as he was at a conference. Bertel Haarder quotes himself, which sounds a bit weird. In a blog you expect it to be the real person, even though you know that many politicians don´t have time to write their own speeches. It is very disappointing if they don´t do it, the medium is personal, so if you can´t be there, use another medium (parallel with art world)

GROUP 3
- Found 3 different genres of political blogs, inspired by the pisteis: the whole election campaign is about building a good ethos with the voters and there are different ways of doing that:
Klaus Bondam: v. descriptive in his language, v. much the politician, a lot of facts and logos appeal. Doesn´t talk about himself
Elizabeth Arnold: looks like a “normal” blog but then she has adverts for her mechanics, wondering if she was trying to be more personal without knowing really how… Pathos appeal gone wrong, bc the information is not relevant and serves no purpose.
Yildiz Akdogan: very good blog, only run through the election. She appeals to the logos but also to the pathos. Ex. Taking a taxi and talking to the driver about political issues, so you can see the real person behind but it is well balanced. Comments spoiled by spam.
- Blog could be misused as a political tool. If you could get people to vote for you just based on how nice you are instead on your political views then the manipulation would be dangerous. Hiding the political agenda. It is not like the news where the focus is different.

GROUP 4
- Some English blogs with a mix of personal life and politics. Also looked at blogs covering the Irak war from a right-wing view, very pathos oriented (ex. Polemiken.net contains no logos at all, it is all very “creative” pathos with collages etc.)
- Sandmonkey.org mixing the personal and political and stating his ethos through the fact of being an egyptian living in the middle east, he plays the imperialist references
- Little green football, totally logos and very political, famous for discovering some tricks with photographs.
- They all share the same premise: the media is leftist and so they have to give another version of the truth

Interesting topic: milblogs (written by soldiers in wars, specially americans and specially conservatives).

To-do for Session 4 next week

2006-09-15T14:28:00.000+02:00

•You need to begin thinking about the academic writing genre from now on and relate it to your own processes, the lecture will be about this, to get ready you can read:

-”This is Not an Article - Just Some Food for Thought on How to Write One”, by Carsten Soerensen

-Introduction about Research Papers at http://www.writing.ku.edu/students/docs/research.shtml

•For the exercises we will work with Social Software. Is it a new kind of literacy? Read Bryan Alexander´s article (http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm06/erm0621.asp?bhcp=1 cp=1 ) and get familiar with some social software if you aren´t already (i.e. make and account and browse for a few days in flickr, myspace, Albino Gorilla, etc.)

Notes exercise session 2- Powerpoint

2006-09-12T11:51:00.000+02:00

The exercise was about making a powerpoint in the genre described as "self-standing" presentation, then show it round to the others in groups and then having a discussion where we tried to dissect what this genre was about rhetorically. We talked about what can the medium do and not do, what kinds of pisteis does it lend itself to more easily (ethos, logos, pathos), etc. Below are some notes from the discussion, I am afraid they dont show the richness of the dialogue, but just as an example to those who were not there. If you want to see the ppts you can find them in our folder in the S drive, where I asked people to put them.

GROUP 1
- Presentations were v. different from each other (had one that was only pictures, picture taking the weight of the information)
- The powers of powerpoint also reflect its weaknesses: ex. of a professor that put too much animation on a powerpoint and it took all the ethos away from his presentation
- Sometimes you are taken in a “slide-trip” and then cannot agree on the last point, a lot of powerpoints like this seem to end with a punch line.
- How to exploit the medium? It is easy to overdo it with the pictures (pictures are not always that good), words can stand alone. In a lecture it is sometimes a help because you can see the structure of the lecture, but there is a danger of putting to many things in it and tip the balance between form and content.
- Actually, what might have caused our humoristic take on this is that we were asked to do a persuasive powerpoint, to convince people of something. But if you do that seriously you are exposed, so it is more safe to do humour. Serious topics in ppt could find too much resistance (there was a heated discussion about this)

GROUP 2
- Pictures were supporting the text, you shouldn´t have too much text information
- Different if you are alone watching it or in a group
- You can use it for e-learning and then use a lot of text, but you can use other media for that
- Only alternative for presenting something for a group.
- The possible seriousness is difficult to see because we are used to the humoristic twist of this genre

GROUP 3
- Important to distinguish between the genres of ppts: like the one where someone is presenting at the same time, and this we are discussing today which is stand-alone
- In the stand-alone genre you can have a lot of text
- You can have a serious topic, we had a good example! But too many effects can take some of the seriousness away
- The medium is clumsy, the effects look silly, so when you use them it takes some of the seriousness away. It works well when you have to make people laugh
- What ppt can do: you can time the words and the effects so you can underline the point
- What this genre does: there seems to be a twist in the end of the ppts
- Ethos could be very difficult to establish in the powerpoint, unless you had a logo for a company or an institution.
- Pathos being very important in this form, it needs pathos because it is so image dependant. That is very characteristic of the genre. The non-serious one can entertain.
- The context is important, who is the sender and how is the ethos established. Ex. If you are constantly getting “funny” ppts from friends at some point you stop opening them, losing credibility.

Related discussion:
- Powerpoint vs blackboard, ppt very static, blackboard is more interactive, you feel like a part of the process. It feels like it is presented to you. PPt lets you be very precise if you have to present a model for example. Some teachers have very difficult handwriting.
- As I result of this discussion I think I will try to use ppt a bit less in my lectures and more the blackboard, see what the medium can do. :-)
- Thomas Lønbæk sent an excellent link about why Powerpoint Is Evil.

Our folder to upload documents

2006-09-08T13:50:00.000+02:00

We have gotten our own folder in drive S so that we can upload our exercises etc. Please everybody who had a powerpoint for the first sesion, go in and load it up (I will make folders for each exercise session starting next week, right now I cannot access the drive from the wireless, just dump all the ppts there, I will make order later) :-)

The folder is:
S:\DDRT
/import/stud/share/DDRT

and bookmark it for later use. Everybody who is oficially tilmedt kurset should be able to upload stuff, as it is coordinated with the list of students. If you have problems to upload stuff, check in your mit.itu if you are tilmedt the course. If you are, and still cannot use the folder, please email to sysadm and explain your problem, as I cannot do anything myself because I don´t have administrator rights in the drive.

To-do for Session 3 next week

2006-09-08T12:21:00.000+02:00

•Read the two texts (a copy was given in class):

– Lanham. excerpt from The Electronic Word (XXXX will present it)
- Zappen. “Digital Rhetoric: Toward an Integrated Theory” (Maj Wissing will present it)

•For the exercises we will work with digital persuasion. The topic is political blogs. Check out http://www.klastrup.dk/walgblog/ and read about the project. Follow also some of the links to politicians blogs or find your own political blogs. You need to come to the exercise session with an idea about this genre, take some notes as to how they relate to the three pisteis (ethos, pathos and logos). It can also be other countries political blogs, or blogs of political parties, political interest groups etc.

2006-09-06T12:34:00.000+02:00

It works... I hope

Yes Miss Daisy - I´ma bloggin´

2006-09-06T12:09:00.000+02:00

Hello everyone, just cheking the features. Nothing important.

welcome to digital rhetorics!

2006-09-01T15:03:00.000+02:00

We had our first session this morning and I think it looks like a great group of students, who had a lot of input about what this course can be. I am really looking forward to teaching this, I think that we together can make a really exciting course! The slides from the course introduction are up (look to the right side). If you couldn´t be at the intro, the slides should be self-explanatory, otherwise email me and don´t miss the next teaching day! :-)

I got our teaching room changed to a bigger one called 3A14! Yes! I know some of the people who came today are not in the course list as they just were "shopping" for courses, but still the classroom felt really small and uncomfortable, so let us move to the bigger one.