raise your hand if you're tired of seeing this image at my webspace. i. am. not.
i recall the moment of my discovery in the bathroom at the MoMA and the intense affective registers vibrating pleasurably on the skin of this robot (little shoutout to Beck).
so, i’ll be submitting my most recent film - remove to dispense - which was inspired by this cardboard scrap, to Kairos for publication as my “manifesto.” i guess i’m some kind of New Media scholar now? it’s weird to take the label. a friend called me “the queen of New Media,” which is beyond absurd (although i blushed to hear it). what i don’t know about New Media is legion (like, why do we capitalize it? it feels somehow wrong to me), but i do *work* as a digital filmmaker, and i work in Composition, in Rhetoric, and that’s where we find ”New Media.” so i’ll go w/ it, my new label. it’s fine, although in the spirit of my film/manifesto, it’s probably best to continue to evade it, if possible. i am a “digital filmmaker” - that is easy and clear and doesn’t exert as much pressure as does “New Media Scholar,” especially as i’m really more a “practitioner,” but then we have, again, some nasty theory/practice issues, and i do have some theory . . . and it functions within my practice . . . and now i’m rambling. maybe labels identity should be easier. maybe i should simply accept it.
9 comments:
but weren't you already "new media" long ago? though you may not have been formally theorizing about NM via published "scholarship," as a film maker (i.e. practitioner) - and a digital one at that, haven't you always already been an NMQ (new media queen)?
i know there's a dif b/n theorist/practitioner. i'm jus sayin.
i don't know, Chris. i mean, yes, i worked w/ Todd Taylor and Janice Walker at USF back when we were all starting in w/ "CAI," i've designed MOO parlors on Big Themes w/ Big Scholar Participants, and I've worked w/ webpage design for myself and my students, been active on listservs, and generally know my way around teaching in a "smart" classroom, but i don't publish in NM, don't go to Comptuers & Writing . . . you know, don't know soooo many tech-type things.
so, now i'm making little films and screening them and doing my little blog and hopefully soon working w/ the local online museum (the Temporary Museum of Permanent Change), and . . . but . . . i don't know. it's maybe more about feeling a little hemmed in by the term, because i work in a variety of Comp "areas" (this, a high profile colleague who recently reviewed my c.v. when i asked for guidance, is actually HURTING . . . she said; i need to *be*, more clearly, *something*).
either way, i was/am flattered by my friend's comment :)
and, like i said, it does pretty accurately describe what i'm into, although because of my more *general* interest in film and the visual, i don't know. as classroom work, it *is* pretty much easier now --via the digital -- to do that work, to share my interests, to make *production* more possible and more available for classroom collaboration, investigation, etc.
honestly, it's really pretty cool and i'm just stunned by it.
if you need to "be something", be what you enjoy and love and are going to be doing anyway. even if it's fun, it can still count as "work," right? we academes are such masochists.
dude, embrace it!
sorry. i had to say "dude." i hadn't said it in a while, and it was just stirring inside me. brewing.
i'm curious about why you're resisting the NM label? seems to me like a good fit. i mean, don't we *all* have "other" interests? even within the field?
i think it has something to do with the massive amounts of tech skill i have yet to develop. also, reading. tons of reading i have yet to do.
that said, i do feel pretty good working in this area. in many ways, it accommodates and creates greater potential for the kinds of things that have always interested me (the self, personal essay, social networking, image, film, design, chaos).
seriously, Chris, you need to switch from reffing to coaching :)
HA! coaching! literacy coaching, you mean?
there are too many ethical and moral pit-falls in coaching. i've seen it from a number of POVs - minus actually having been a coach, of course. or maybe i'm just weak! [that's not universally true, btw; there are some really good exceptions that i've seen, too.]
when i was younger i always thought i'd be a coach - it would have been the easiest course to take. but i never really planned on being a coach. yaknowhat i mean? w/o doing the name-dropping thing, there were some well-known coaches who encouraged me to go that direction. thought i'd be good at it. but coaching just never appealed to me.
yeah, there's ALWAYS going to be tons of reading to do. helps keep us humble, i guess. and i know i need to continue to develop my tech skills, too (note my recent CV post and low-tech CV link).
oh, lordy, my web page is so sorry right now . . . so many updates to do! if you've got an up to date c.v. that makes sense, good for you ;)
i'd better get to revising that thing.
name drop! name drop!
Eddie Sutton, Bruce Weber and my father.
cool.
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