English in the Snow

Baby trashes bar

Are puppets considered new media? Maybe not, but this video is so funny! I think I may be procrastinating.

From Sketches to the Big Screen

This probably qualifies as more of an Art for New Media, but Guillermo Del Toro is also a writer so I've decided to post the following video. It features drawings from one of my favorite movies "Pan's Labyrinth." Daniel Zalewski from the New Yorker talks about Del Toro's drawings and writings from his notebook being transformed to 3D on screen.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/01/zalewski-guillermo-del-toro.html

Argus Leader Print vs NYTimes online

One article in the Argus Leader talks about an e-cigarette. There's an icon of a video camera with a mouse arrow icon over it telling you to go to argusleader.com to check out the demonstration of how these e-cigarettes work. I am kind of curious to see these in action, and would most likely click on the video if I were reading this article online, but I wouldn't get online after reading this article on paper.

I love the smell and feel of the paper and I romanticize the idea of reading newspapers and books from paper sources, but I find the paper format somewhat cumbersome. From a visual perspective, the online newspaper is laid out neatly on one page with convenient links that with a push of a button will lead you to the article you want to read. The paper format is easier on the eyes - the print on paper is easier to read, but handling it is awkward. Opened up, the paper usually blocks out the light source, and pages are always falling out of it. Also, using your nose to push the paper back at the crease so you can turn the page is not the most sophisticated gesture. The ads are huge in print and smaller online. There are more photos online and news can be up to the minute; the print photos are a bit hazy and the news can never be as current as online.

I feel bad for the struggling newspaper, but I believe it is a dying industry and it will be extinct soon.

Newspapers in my life

I've never been one for reading the newspaper. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of newspapers and my youth is reading the comics in the Sunday paper. I really got interested in reading the paper for the 2008 election and have been reading online ever since. I read the NYTimes daily during this exciting time. Also, checked the Huffington Post daily and a couple of blogs that I can't remember the names of that I'm sure were non partisan. After the first uneventful year in politics, I stopped following them closely because it was too depressing. I continue to read the NYTimes - usually the 10 most popular articles or anything that I see on the front page that may catch my eye. I like the columnists for the times - Maureen Dowd, Gail Collins, Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman sometimes and Bob Herbert. That's about it for newspapers. I started checking out The New Yorker magazine online after being exposed to it in Creative Writing. I have always wanted to subscribe to the magazine and maybe now I will because I know I'll be in one place for a while.

Catholics confess through iphone app

I came across this article from BBC News looking through Dave Barry's blog. Apparently, the Catholic church is now embracing digital technology. Catholics can now confess their sins to their iphone using an app recently approved by the Catholic church.

Read the full story here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12391129

Underbelly

After getting stuck on the story at dreaming method, I gave up out of frustration and went to another site. I chose "Underbelly" by Christine Wilks from her site crissxross.net.It's made in flash and the main story is about a sculptor being commissioned to create a sculpture at the site of a closed colliery in England and is overlapped with snippets of different voices and computer graphics/drawings.

It begins with a timeline of mining in the UK dating back to the 19th century. Blocks of text appear clockwise around an image of a mine.

The reader then moves the cursor over the blinking flashlights and a video comes up of a woman tapping on a statue talking, "you start with a block and you cut away to reveal the finished form."

You can roll over the different images or text to hear real accounts of women's lives as miners or phrases of poetry. If you move over all, they overlap.

primitive creatures between rocks pressed. bad timing. it's all a matter of timing. smothered. smothered. this passion is prehistoric. let time and pressure fossilize - fuse.

Voice of woman talking about getting beaten, chain tied to belt around waist, pulling cart uphill.

Talk turns to babies and the women's yearning for them.

Then you have to decide the sculpturer's fate by choosing to have a baby, letting it be fate, or not choosing to have a baby by clicking on one of the images below.

You're taken to this wheel of babies.

Then depending on what you choose and how you spin, there are several different outcomes:

Thoughts on Interactive Books

I looked at several different stories on the website DreamingMethods.com. Out of the few that I checked out, the most memorable one was Nighingale's Playground. I think this is because it was the least surreal/random/vague - less stream of consciousness. It was easier to retain my interest longer because there was an actual narrative or story. I appreciate these alternative forms of virtual literature, but believe that user generated stories aren't as good as reading a book. Reading a story, you are gripped by a narrative, a story, a plot and characters, where these are more of a collaborative process with the reader. I think the reader really has to be in the mood for this sort of thing. There's work involved in interactive stories. In this virtual world today, society has become lazy and wants entertainment provided for them as easy as possible.

StopMo ENM