3. The book The High Cost of Death, mentioned in the article, was coauthored but only one name appeared on the book cover to increase sales. What are your thoughts on this? [via Jen]

I think this suggests something about the way in which we view collaborative works, especially writing. For academic works, it seems ok (the quiz the book cites shows this). But even in music, we prefer one band name over a list of people, and in movies one main name to associate with it. For some reason or another, it is simply more marketable to have one name. Perhaps we have the idea that two people means it is not as 'good' of a work - they each had to put in less effort - or that there will be something disjointed about it.
As the chapter suggests, the concept of authorship is steadily changing, though. With the new media that are arising within the realm of published works, that often rely much more on collaboration, perhaps multiple citations on pop culture works will become more commonplace. Maybe we will go against Foucault's individualism.

Top Ten Things Noticed Over the Past Week

The ones that stood out the most...

1) there is a cupola-looking thing on top of the IUB
2) a beer bottle by the dumpster enclosure of the FLB that is still there... I first noticed it like 4 months ago
3) there is the engraved image of a monk on the necks of our espresso heads at work
4) I never signed my i-Card. huh.
5) the cherries on Cherry Coke Zero bottles are designed to resembled 0s
6) wait, Moonstruck closed?
7) there is this crazy room on the 3rd floor of the English building in which the walls do not reach up to the ceiling
8) Altgeld played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
9) the Business & Economics library study room has old fashioned outlets about 6ft up the wall
10) there are numbers on the doors at the entrance to the undergrad - 252

Ede & Lunsford Questions

1) This piece cites a 1985 article that talks about the future of 'groupware' - ie, networked computers. But ARPANET had existed long before this... what do you make of the discrepancy between the collaborative technology existing and actually being readily available, or even seeming feasible, for common usage, and what this implies for authorship?
2) Do you think media have become democratized, as the snippets suggest, or do you agree with Foucault?
3) We are doing one of these collaborative group projects using new media. Do you have any of the same concerns, or do you think we have grown more used to it over the years? What does this imply about using newer media?

Hampe Response

1. Stephen King once wrote: "To write is human, to edit is divine." How might this belief hold true for documentary-making? How might it apply differently for documentary films rather than novels? [via Eric A.]

As Hampe says. the editor of a documentary can only work with what is there, and what can be represented visually. While a novelist can edit AND rewrite, it is nigh impossible for a documentary filmmaker to refilm a scene. Not to say that this kind of film editing is more difficult, but it definitely presents its own set of challenges and constraints.
I would also argue that, when it comes to the documentary, editing is divine in a further sense than King's play on an old saying. Documentary editing is what builds the storyline. It is the creation of art out of raw material. It is, is this sense, divine - as in the filmmaker becomes the creator. And as opposed to the novel, what is left out still exists. Its exclusion is as important as the next piece's inclusion. The divine quality of the filmmaker is his/her power over the raw footage.

Questions for 21 October

1) The idea of 'showing' versus 'telling' goes across media. What makes it especially relevant and important to film? What special challenges (or impossibilities) arise?
2) Hempe notes that people's initial response to 'what did you see?' is to elaborate on the film rather than simply state its contents. What do you think this says about our reaction to this particular medium?
3) Why might a filmmaker bring contradictory images into play?

The Cultural Assimilation of my Youth, or, How I Became Italian

Initial Version

"Ah, Chicago! Bang-bang!"
That was the reaction I received upon telling some university students in Padova, Italy where I came from.

"No, that's a stereotype-" I was about to say, but then I reconsidered. After all, hadn't my neighbor...er... "committed suicide" not 6 months earlier? We never quite figured out how exactly he killed himself while tied to a chair in his garage, but there you go. And hadn't Joey the Clown just been caught, hiding approximately a block and a half from the police station?
So I began to consider what a truly strange place my hometown is, and how I grew to think it was normal. In short, how this Western European mutt by blood became Italian by, as my friend's dad used to jokingly put it, osmosis.

My family first figured out how strange Elmwood Park was soon after moving there in 1992. I think our first clue was being fully ignored at a neighbor's party, solely based upon the fact that someone had found out we weren't Italian. We had also come from Oak Park - basically, the worst kind of outsiders. After a while, we gained some social standing but were always looked upon warily, especially by those who were involved in the Catholic church and school we attended. We slowly figured out ways to be more acceptable - learning the foods, knowing the slang. Knowing what NOT to talk about was just as important. No one ever discussed how so many who claimed to work in construction could afford such big houses. Eventually, my family learned to pretend, go through the motions, associate with the right people after mass on Sunday, and be generally accepted.

But as for me, throughout grade school I remained somewhat on the outskirts in my class of 25. Some of that can be attributed to me being a nerd, but it was mostly due to me struggling to figure out how to survive in this clearly singular environment. When we had a "native american basket wearing project" in 3rd grade, I mentioned I was part Algonquin and was made to sit on the floor, Indian style, and weave my basket. In 5th grade half of the class stopped talking to me because they found out I was German. So I learned to not talk about my nationalities.
I also figured out how to fake priorities. Appearance is perhaps the most important thing in Elmwood Park - so I pretended to like those terrible velour tracksuits and joined cheerleading for a year. I changed my mode of speech in certain situations, and some girls even started calling me 'Lo' to fit in better among the Francescas, Sabellas, and Gabriellas. I loathed that name, but went along with it.

By the age of 15 I was fully assimilated. Working at my church, I didn't flinch when the old Italian men who served as ushers called me "bella" in a terrible accent and kissed my hand. It was normal when the mother of one of my brother's friends only stopped acting cooly towards my mom when she found out I was her daughter. Flattery and social graces were second nature.
It's around then I learned how far the sphere of Elmwood Park extends. While at a high school friend's house on the southside of Chicago, I was able to talk two young men who preferred the moniker "Italian Stallions" out of beating up a mutual friend by citing my hometown - they lived a few miles away, in a town with close ties to ours. Later in the night, another friend would comment, "Man. I knew you could pull rank on someone, yeah. I didn't know you could pull residency."

Going away to college at the age of 18 was somewhat of a godsend for me in terms of being exposed to something other than this little world; among other things, I found out that 'wife-beaters' are those shirts I had always called 'dego tees'. But, like the family that calls it home, you can never quite escape Elmwood Park. I still sound more like Roseanne Rosannadanna when I get angry than I'd like to admit. My cooking and hostess mannerisms are invariably those of an Italian grandmother. I listen to way too much Sinatra and Dean Martin than someone my age rightly should. A coworker of mine in Urbana, who I hadn't known beforehand, grew up two blocks away from me.
And on that trip to Italy, I found out one of the people one the trip with me was dating my grade school best friend's cousin, who still lives in town. It's inescapable.
But even with all the oddities and just plain scary things about my town, I don't think it's necessarily bad. It's given me an adopted culture, not to mention some great stories. By the way, my dad still swears that that mobster who was caught a few blocks away - Joey the Clown Lombardo - is "good people". He's wanted for 17 murders, yes, but he's the uncle of a family friend!
That's what gave me pause when trying to refute that stereotype the Italian students mentioned. It's a strange town, but it's my town, and I feel this bizarre sense of pride about it. So on the other side of the world, sitting in a piazza on the outskirts of Venice, I had to consider my roots and say, "No... well, yes, ok, that is pretty true."
My answer was met with laughter and a kiss on the cheek. I didn't flinch.

This assignment was one of the most difficult so far. The writing process was much more intensive, and the audio aspect definitely presented its own challenges. Initially I had no idea what to do, but eventually settled on talking about my hometown, which, as I elaborate upon, is pretty much a world unto itself. Then I had to decide how to structure a narrative around it, and decided upon telling somewhat of a story about how my town required me to assimilate into the Italian culture over the years. It ended up being pretty cursory due to the time limit, but in the narrative methods I used I tried to retain some sort of structure.
I had some difficultly keeping it to five minutes and still making it conversational. In my practice runs it came in somewhere around 4 minutes - definitely time to spare - but I ended up having to chop some stuff out in editing in order to get it under and still keep the tone. (It shows up as 5:03 on the mp3 for some reason, although it's under 5 minutes in garage band. Ah well.) I had to be very aware of my voice as well as of my surroundings... not to fidget and make any extraneous noise, to avoid filler words and sounds. The spoken word in this medium seems to be a practice of economy and self-restraint. You have to say a lot in a short amount of time, but you certainly don't want to babble. It also brings up issues of spoken language versus written language, and how we tend to write more formally than we speak.
I certainly had to consider the language I was using. I kind of balked at using the word 'dego,' because I have met so many people who find it offensive rather than as a term for a certain kind of Italian as I learned it, but I hope people are able to take it in context. I definitely changed some things in my reading of my piece to make it sound more spontaneous, but since I tried to write for the spoken word, I found myself playing around more with the cadence of my voice than anything else.
I knew from the beginning that I would probably use Sinatra as my background music, but I wasn't quite sure where to put it. I had a part in there originally talking about how you can tell a party in my town because you can hear the Sinatra from 3 blocks away, but ended up cutting that and was left without a place to put the music. So I admittedly kind of copped out and just put it as a fade out at the end. However, I did splice together the beginning and end of the song, as well as putting in a little riff where I actually talk about Sinatra. I wish I would have found a better way to segue into the beginning, but music didn't quite seem to fit there. The entire thing didn't turn out quite as I had hoped, but I've found out throughout this class that that happens alot when working with media.

14 October Answer

3) Does equipment make a difference? (if the picture is clearer or easier to hear, are you more likely to gravitate toward a 'professionally' made one compared to a lesser quality one?) [via Nicole]

I really think it depends on context; if it's a nature documentary, yes. However, grainy wartime footage or something of the like can lend it a sense of being 'in the moment' and less likely to be staged. For example, in the class directly before this one we just watched a PETA film called 'Meet Your Meat'. Although probably more a video persuasive essay than a documentary, it used hidden camera footage to show the tactics used on animals in factory farms. In this case, the unsteady filming and somewhat poor quality was excusable and actually made it seem more believable.
But in terms of watching a documentary for leisure - yes, I'm more likely to lean towards Meerkat Manor than something less professionally filmed and edited.

Hampe Reading Questions

1) What would you make of "mockumentaries" (such as The Office)? What features of the genre would make a writer/filmmaker who is actually filming a fiction choose the deceit of a documentary?

2) Have you actually seen any documentaries outside of class time? What drew you to them?

3) What aspects of remediation come into play in terms of the documentary?

audio manipulation c. 1968

Just when I thought I couldn't come up with any examples of audio layering they put on the White Album at Cafe Kopi.

Shipka answer

What did Val do instead of making a physical prototype of the museum? [via Andrew]


She instead created a prototype of the audio for the museum, since her museum was largely composed of a tour through audio-based components that explored her idea of American greed and the stereotypes surrounding that. Therefore instead of a physical mockup she was able to make a CD that created for the listener the illusion of a physical space by indicator words in her tour.

Shipka questions

1) What makes something "soundly engineered" rather than just, well, noise?

2) What expectations of sound are now arising in multimodal environments and works?

3) How do you feel about Shipka's assignment?