emergency compliment

A steady supply of emergency compliments to be used at times of great insecurity. They may come in handy sometimes. This one is for me. I always trip in front of everyone.

keep calm

I made these cards based on the now famous British World War poster “Keep Calm and Carry On”, which is in the public domain. You can read about the history here. Rip-offs have become something of a meme. Mail artist and brilliant typographer Keith Bates created the font, based on the original poster series.

keep calm and mail art

love respect and mail art

please do not ever feed trolls

 

 

The last one ‘please do not ever feed trolls’ may come in handy, when confronted with internet trolls appearing in internet forums. You are free to use it, whenever you feel the need.

rubber stamps and fonts by Keith Bates

Keith Bates – Rubber Stamp Mail Art. Keith Bates is a personal hero of mine. Not only is he a mail artist, but he makes beautiful fonts, including free ones, which I have been using. Check out the amazing type shop: http://www.k-type.com/

cat bounce

Do you crave some silly internet cats once in a while? Go to cat bounce for some instant cheer.

the world is an abstract comic

 

And many more on Andrei Molotius‘ s fun blog Abstract Comics. Go there to see them large.

phone camera and image search

Some things I love about digital culture:

1. Phone cameras are great. I use my phone camera more for taking pictures than talking to people. I am considering an upgrade, not because I need it, but because I heard the camera is even better. This funny picture with caption sums it up.

2. Google image search. I use it for lots of different purposes. I sometimes pluck images from the Internet, but forget to note down where they came from. Google image search helps me find the source. If I am lucky, though not in this case. The image has been reposted way over 50 times, so that it would take some serious detective work to find the original. I wish Google had a function where you can list results by publication date.

the thing about the internet

 

 

– not only that, I also could not find the source of the photograph.

charming poster ads

Here are some funny faux vintage ads from Maximidia Vintage Ads – Poster download.

teenage social media

Via Jana’s Blog post about nerds and more I found this image:

Apparently from: http://freepicturesforyou.net/4CHAN_vs_the_Internet.html

Brilliant. I might use it for a talk on digital media, which I am planning to give in a school this month.

IN, ON or OUT

This image I found on Geek Dad on Wired, I think.

Makes me wonder: in my younger years you had to be IN or you were OUT. It seems now you need to be ON in order not to be OUT. What would Lakoff/Johnson think about the use of these spatialization metaphors?

social media

There are different ways of figuring out, what goes on in the social web: drawing models, in developing categories and theories. This will keep academics in their jobs for many years to come. I like this illustration of the ten levels of intimacy in today’s communication. (cannot find the source right now, will update asap)

Via Guy’s blog I found this post by Matt Locke,  Channel 4’s Education and New Media Commissioner, on his six Social Media Spaces. Here is the list:

Secret Spaces
Behaviours: Private, intimate communication, normally with only one or two others, often using private references, slang or code
Expectations: Absolute privacy and control over the communication between users, and no unauthorised communication from third parties (eg spam)
Examples: SMS, IM

Group Spaces
Behaviours: Reinforcing the identity of a self-defined group, and your position within the group, eg ‘stroking‘ behaviour to let the group share a sense of belonging, or mild competitiveness to signal hierarchies within the group (eg who has the most friends, posts, tags, etc)
Expectations: A shared reference point for the group – eg a band, football club, school, workplace, region, etc. Rules about approving membership of the group, and icons for the group to signal their membership (badges, profiles, etc)
Examples: Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, etc

Publishing Spaces
Behaviours: Creating your own content or showcasing your talents to an audience outside of your usual social group
Expectations: The ability to control the context and presentation of your creative content. Ways to receive feedback, comments and advice from other users.
Examples: Flickr, Youtube, Revver, etc

Performing Spaces
Behaviours: Playing a defined role within a game structure. Experimenting through simulation, rehearsal and teamwork to achieve a goal. Iterative exploration or repetition of activities in order to perfect their performance
Expectations: A clear set of rules that is understood by all players. Clear rewards for success or failure. The ability to test the boundaries of the game structure, or to perform extravagantly to show off your talents
Examples: MMORPGs, Sports, Drama

Participation Spaces
Behaviours: Co-ordination of lots of small individual acts to achieve a common goal. Shared belief in the goal, and advocacy to encourage participation by others.
Expectations: Rules or structures that help co-ordinate activity towards the goal. The ability to create micro-communities within larger participation groups – eg a group of friends going on a political march together, or a workplace group created to train for a marathon
Examples: Meetup, Threadless, CambrianHouse.com, MySociety

Watching Spaces
Behaviours: Passive viewing of a linear event as part of a large group. Organising a group to attend an event, and sharing experiences afterwards
Expectations: Spectacle, entertainment, a feeling of thrill or joy. A shared sense of occasion, or of being taking out of your everyday existence for the duration of the event. Mementos or relics of the event (eg programmes, tickets, recordings, photos, etc)
Examples: Television, Cinema, Sports, Theatre, etc.

fairy tales 2.0

You can create your own Google search stories now with the Google Search Stories Video Creator made by Korean designer Ji Lee. I just made this one.

digital storytelling

Parisian Love is a promotional video by Google. Made in the vein of Michael Wesch’s videos I cannot help liking it. It is is really well made.

superman’s secret

from Fighting Crime one Post at a Time

I love this image with the WordPress Logo on Superman’s chest. And here is a hello to Richard and Sheela (approaching 70!) who have recently bought a computer and logged on to the net for the first time. Welcome to the wonderful world wide web!

die uni brennt (university burning)

What started as a small student protest in one of Vienna’s Art Academy a week ago, has spread like wildfire (sic!) through Austrian unversities, with up to a thousand students squatting in lecture halls, organizing work groups and task forces, and their own learning. There was a large protest march with 10.000-40.000 (depending on the sources) people marching through the streets of Vienna last week. The hub of action is Austria’s largest lecture hall, the Audimax in the Univerits of Vienna, the very place where fourty years ago student protests and subsequent political and cultural changes originated. Now the grandchildren of the bearded 1968 generation, a generation of young people habitually accused for not being interested in politics is taking action.

Every day there is a full programme of talks, discussions, plenary sessions, music concerts and occasional flashmobs organized by the students, and after a full week it looks like they are here to stay for a while, unless the state will intervene with police force.

Not surprisingly the movement is using Web 2.0 technologies in organizing themselves and in gathering external support. They have set up wikis for the organisation, blogs, a press office. You can read their first press release in English here. Photos are posted on unibrennt pool on Flickr and there is a life stream were you can follow the daily plenary sessions. Last night there were 1700-1800 people watching online, when the people in the hall issued a call for university students in Gemany to join the movement. The faceegroup support group has accumulated over 23.000 fans, and it is all over twitter #unibrennt or #unsereuni #audimax. Comparisons with the grassroots campaign for Obama are being drawn in mainstream papers.

If its on the interweb it must be true

Museumsquartier by loungerie on Flickr

On July 7 20o9 the “Internet Research Group” from the University of Vienna presented YouTube Cinema with a programme called “Fake!” at the Museumsquartier in Vienna. Everybody had ten minutes to show and talk about  some favourites. It was a fun evening with some lively discussions. Here is our playlist:
YouTube Kino: Fake!

What Kind of Tech User Are You?

What Kind of Tech User Are You?
from Pew Internet

Apparently I am a Digital Collaborator.

If you are a Digital Collaborator, you use information technology to work with and share your creations with others. You are enthusiastic about how ICTs help you connect with others and confident in your ability to manage digital devices and information. For you, the digital commons can be a camp, a lab, or a theater group – places to gather with others to develop something new.

blackboard

Currently thinking about old and new media practices, and teaching digital literacy to teachers in training I came across these images by David Silver’s photostream on Flickr.

These photos sum it all up nicely. Here is his blog with some interesting stuff including 5 ways my students use twitter

I like the way photography changes the use of the good old blackboard as it allows to fix something that is so  transient as chalk on board.

blogging and education

image by stylespion 

Here is a list of interesting quotes about blogging, which I compiled a few years ago and I re-discovered on a dead class blog, which I am going to delete now. While, of course these bit of information are not exactly hot news to most  of my discerning readers, they may be still useful for somebody who is new to blogging, or using blogs in an educational context. So I am posting them here.  Sorry, I have not got the time to directly link to surces right now, but the references are given at the end.

What is a weblog?
„Weblogs, or blogs as they are affectionately termed, are frequently updated websites, usually personal, with commentary and links. Link lists are as old as home pages, but a blog is far from a static link list or home page. A blog consists of many relatively short posts, usually time-stamped, and organised in reverse chronology so that a reader will always see the most recent post first. The first weblogs were seen as filters to the Internet; interesting links to sites the reader might not have seen, often with commentary from the blogger.“ (Mortensen/Walker 2002)

„A weblogger filters a mass of information, choosing the items that interest her or that are relevant to her chosen topic, commenting upon them, demonstrating connections between them and analysing them.“
(Mortensen/Walker 2002)

“Weblogs combine two oppositional principles: monologue and dialogue. A reaction to a statement is not only directed to the sender but also to unknown readers. Very often the weblogger gets feedback from unexpected sources: new relations and contexts emerge. This (assumed) undirected communication develops to an open and involving activity.” “Weblogs not only enable interaction with other webloggers, they offer a way to engage in a discursive exchange with the author’s self (intrapersonal conversation). A weblog becomes an active partner in communication, because it demands consistent criteria for what will be posted to a weblog (and how). This “indirect monologic dialog” of weblogs allows us to conduct communicative acts that otherwise would only be possible in very particular circumstances.” (Marcus O’Donnell 2005)

Reading
“Blogging is about, first, reading. But more important, it is about reading what is of interest to you: your culture, your community, your ideas. And it is about engaging with the content and with the authors of what you have read—reflecting, criticizing, questioning, reacting. If a student has nothing to blog about, it is not because he or she has nothing to write about or has a boring life. It is because the student has not yet stretched out to the larger world, has not yet learned to meaningfully engage in a community. For blogging in education to be a success, this first must be embraced and encouraged.” (Stephen Downes 2004)

analog social networking

paperbeatsinternet is an ‘analog’ take on social networking, developed by folks at the New Directions in Pictorial Design Class at the Otario College of Art and Design. Most messages are a combination of drawings and hand written text. I like these combinations of old fashioned chalk board and photography. That could be a fun school project.

via drawn!

taking video literal

White Wedding: Literal Video Version – watch more funny videos

This literal video version of White Wedding by Billy Idol made me laugh out loud. I guess you had to be there in the eighties, when some of your friends were Gothic, some of your friends were New Wave and some of your friends were Straight Edge, and you had a little brother tapping his feet in black leather pants, to really appreciate this wry comment on eighties pop culture.

via boing boing

On a more serious note, this video illustrates well how words and images work best together in juxtaposition. I am just reading Perry Nodelman, Words about Pictures. The Narrative Art of Childrens Picture Books, and here is a quote which fits perfectly: 

“In a discussion of the semiology of film, Christian Metz suggests that films demand from their viewer knowledge of at least five different systems of signification, most of which can also befound in slightly different ways in picture books: culturebound patterns of visual and auditory perception (such as knowing how to understand a perspectve drawing), recognition of the objects shown on screen (labeling), knowledge of their cultural significance (such as knowing that blackclothes stand for mourning), narrative structures (types of stories and how they usually work out) and purely cinematic means of implying significance, such as music and montage.

Metz suggests that each complete film “relying on all these codes, plays them one against the other, eventually arriving at its own individual system, its ultimate (or first?) principle of unification and intelligibility”. In other words, filmmakers make the use of differencees between various means of communication in the knowledge that each medium they bring into play will finally merely be part of the whole along with all the others; consequently, they deberately (or sometimes, given the varying narrative capabilities of different media, inevitably) make each incomplete so that it can indeed be part of a whole and so that the meaning will be communicated by the whole and not any specific part of the whole.

What the clothing and gesture do not reveal to us, the music or the narrative structure might; and what the clothing and music communicate separately is different from what they communicate together. So each medium that filmmakers use always communicates different information, and all of them express their fullest meaning in terms of the ironies inherent in their differencees from each other. Irony occurs in literature when we know something more and different from what we are being told.” (222-3)

Music videos play with visual codes and popular narratives adressing the viewers’s contextual, (sub) cultural knowledge and in contrasting, juxtaposing, contradicting and amplifying music and lyrics add to the overall meaning. In the case of this Billy Idol video spoof, the irony lies in the breaking of these film making and music video conventions, which we all know so well. The lyrics are a literal translation of what is seen, merely labeling the objects and actions on the screen (candelabra! black leather pants!) and the cinematic means of implying significance (letting in the fog, blowing up stuff, going outside) but ignoring their cultural significance. Taking language conventions literal is stand up comedy stuff, here it is applied to film. The new lyrics attempt to undermine the “subversive” interplay of original lyrics (about white weddings) and video narrative  drawing on a different kind of cultural knowledge by calling it what it plainly is in the eyes of a contemporary viewer – a goth wedding, an eighties pop video.