Robinsonfilmcenter.org has launched!

I've been busy moving back across the country to Louisiana, but in the process, the brand new Robinson Film Center site launched, after much hard work and fun with Joomla! Many of you know I have a soft spot in my heart for the film center because of its ambitious media education program and brave programming in the deep south. They've been a blast to work with, and I highly recommend the popcorn salt that they use and keep at the concession stand for patrons like me.

Musings for Memorial Day

I was away in the mountains for my first time for this year's memorial day. I had a hard day reconciling going out and having fun on a day that I should have been remembering the veterans that have fallen protecting and serving our country. Many of you who know me personally, know that I am not extremely patriotic, but that my research deals with America and how we grieve. I am patriotic in the sense that I love everything the United States stands for, but I am not proud of of the current state of government (which to me, makes me even more patriotic).

On Memorial Day, one of my favorite radio shows, To The Point, dedicated their show to a critical look at how memorial day came about, what memorial day means and how that meaning is shaped due to the current war. It is a very moving, smart and fair look at what Memorial Day means for us, a public torn between political views on the Iraq war and the value of human life.

One of the commentators (from Shreveport, ironically), Michael Sledge, mentions that in America we have lost national grieving, that is public grieving. I disagree slightly, as I believe we miss regular, healthy, productive and active public grieving. As I discussed in my master's thesis, spontaneous shrines for example, are very public methods of grieving that respond to public tragedy by becoming an amalgamation of private meanings. Immediately after a tragedy, the public creates these metatexts, but often these sites and tragedies don't retain their monumentality long term. The solution I think, is to build memorials that can reflect current collective memory of tragedies and can be responsive to the public needs. Unfortunately, our typical methods of materializations don't foster healthy remembrance, much like how Memorial Day has become a day for barbeques, and in my case, escapism to the mountains.

I could probably go on and on about why dedicating days to the memory of public tragedies and public figures doesn't work, but for the sake of brevity, please listen to the Memorial Day edition of To The Point.

Japan proposes a pay once royalty structure for mp3 players

Japan is considering levying a fee on manufacturers of mp3 players and HDD recorders. Such a fee already exists for devices with hard drives or other storage methods such as mini-disc recorders, DVD recorders and other digital devices:

While digital portable music players and HDD recorders face new levies, personal computers and mobile phone handsets designed for general purposes will be exempted, even if they contain recording functions, according to the plan.

The specific rates for the royalties will be determined through deliberations between the agency, copyright management groups and the manufacturers.

They are expected to be several hundred yen for each device, totaling several billion yen a year for the makers.

At Thursday's meeting, representatives of the manufacturers are expected to voice opposition to the plan because they do not think they can pass on the additional costs to consumers.

More about the proposal. Thanks _akira_

Doesn't seem like a bad idea, although its kind of like putting a big band-aid on a larger issue. While it would frustrate me to see these devices get even more expensive, it would be glad to know that no one's going to knock on my door and try to sue me.

I has a master's thesis

I haven't been blogging much because I've been completing my master's thesis, Digital Memorialization: Collective Memory, Tragedy, and Participatory Spaces. I'm defending it next week on the 7th at 2pm in Sturm 434 at DU. I know pretty much anyone who reads this probably knows that already, but feel free to come by if you're a stranger looking for some knowledge.

Keep an eye on this space for more information. I'll also be continuing my research here.

Are you a racist?

This game was meant to test reaction times to suspects who might be carrying a gun. I apparently am a racist accord to the test, as my reaction time to white people holding guns was longer than my reaction time to black people holding guns. I'd like to note that "black" also appeared to include Latinos and possibly other "dark skinned" minorities. I could be wrong because I was too busy trying to tell if these guys were holding guns or not. The other thing was it wasn't really controlled at all, there were many backgrounds used in the game, and I don't know if the researcher is collecting information on this, but on some backgrounds it was harder to see a gun than others. Oddly enough, there's lots of images from Denver, so I was also a bit distracted by that. Anyway, my armed reaction times reverse it: I spent a longer time checking to see if Blacks were unarmed rather than whites. Pretty interesting study! I wish I could compare myself to other people. Feel free to post your scores in the comments.

Try it out here: http://backhand.uchicago.edu/Center/ShooterEffect/

Via Poplicks

Hurricane Katrina video tribute - with Anime!

While doing some research on a YouTube user that commented on one of the videos I'm examining in my thesis, I came across this video posted by a user that makes anime music videos. The producer created this as a tribute to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. This one uses images from Naruto, which I haven't seen so I'm not sure if there's some meta-textual story telling going on. Anyone familiar with the series?




Compare it to the one I'm looking at that uses the same song by U2 and Green Day:


They both use methods of production that are hot topics among scholars studying fan-created media - but they're both dedicated to the memory of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and not about extending the fan-object's narrative.

(ps. Just a side note, but I'll be anxious to be done with this chapter and listening to music that I don't associate with Katrina. I treat myself to other tunes when I can right now, but man, I'm anxious to listen to a wider range! I think I could recite the lyrics to nearly every song in the videos I'm examining.)

Maya Lin's last memorial is a piece of activist art.

Maya Lin, the architect of the highly influential Vietnam Veterans Memorial is producing only one more memorial during her career. This time it'll be to the growing number of endangered and extinct species with the purpose of educating and motivating the public to take action:

Lin would like her new memorial to have global reach. She wants to use the Internet, interactive media and a book to tell people specific steps they can take to spare the environment, like avoiding plastic bags, insisting on shade-grown coffee or joining a program to "adopt" an endangered species and help protect it. She wants to unveil donated corporate billboards in locations such as Times Square, with 20-minute videos with images of endangered species and places.

Does this mean she is crossing the line from artist to advocate?

Lin paused for a thoughtful moment. As a child, the burning of toxic contaminants on Lake Erie did spur her to environmental activism. She petitioned the Kroger Co., owner of Ralphs and Food4Less, to ban animal traps and advocated for Greenpeace.

"I've always said I present history. I don't dictate what people think," she began carefully. "I don't try to preach. This one, like the others, makes you aware of it: 'Did you know the sound of the songbirds, as we knew it when we were little, are gone?' But yeah," she added with a shrug, "Definitely, I will be giving groups and people things they can do in their everyday lives."

While I believe that most of Maya Lin's work is activist media in the way challenges the public's normal engagement with memorials; her reshaping of the memorial landscape into spaces of activist art will be very overt in this memorial. I'm anxious to see it come fruition and what sort of new media applications she'll be using.

Read more at the LA Times.

PS. This really just makes me justified in what I'm studying - Hopefully one day I'll be able to incorporate Lin's final memorial into an extended essay on how the public used networked on-line spaces to memorialize and as activist media and how the memorial institutions have incorporated this behavior. Exciting!