. Spinning .

This is an excerpt from a post I just entered on Learning to Spin, but wanted to load it in here as LTS is a class journal that will bite the dust soon:

And, we played with paper.  In the New Media class I was happy for days fiddling with the handed-out Mobius strip.  In this class, we folded a plain piece of paper in such a way that corner flaps were created and various writing surfaces were then made available.  The professor had us write a story, a sentence at a time in separate areas, then hand it to a classmate and read the story.  Obviously, the narrative structure is affected by what is opened and read first.  The sequence, and thus the story, is completely in the control of the reader. 

This was a visual introduction to hypertext fiction, and the added necessity of the writer to consider this unusual form to, while not maintain control–that will always be up to the reader–but to insure that wherever the reader goes, the story flows.  The point was easily made, and while it puts additional work on the writer or planner of a story, it is in fact more controlling, given certain facts about readers.  Most readers will read a book from left to right.  Some might skip a few pages.  But there’s always that one in a million who whether out of curiousity or for titillation or I guess we might include research, refuses to follow the established pattern and skips around to his heart’s delight.

Oh, oh, oh and next week?  We’re gonna see how this works on a computer software program!  A real New Media Moment!

Not just rewriting, as they say, but changing it physically through new media methods.  Honest.

We viewed a most interesting BBC documentary on World War I in class tonight that consisted of some original film footage interspersed with the usual still photography and footage of the narrator filling in the background story.  We were offered two warnings by our professor, and watching him watch the film was a lesson in zeal and dedication to history as factual information.  What upset him was 1) the voiceover during original footage that was, for example, badly done Germanized English–to the point of Hogan’s Heroes’ Schultz; and 2) the new media addition of sound to the original early 1900’s film clips (to the point of Monty Python’s coconuts for clopping horses).

You saw and heard the bombs.  You saw and heard the people cheering the European troops as they paraded off to war.  You saw and heard World War I.  All this, in a time of silent film only. 

Enhanced for interest and entertainment, drawing the audience in, and it works.  Unless you happen to be a history professor who loves history.  Then, it must be an affront to your senses and intellect.  It is changing history–the film being shown is then not true.  Doesn’t sound (no pun meant) like a big deal to most people, probably sounds like the greatest thing going to newmediaheads and techies, but it does have an impact on the future as to how history is being presented.  Interesting arguments from both sides here, to be sure.

But for our knowledgeable and devoted professor, it made him more intense than ever, and I can well see and sympathize with his frustration.  I am just very glad that this particular film was not colorized as well.

In my never ending thirst for learning, I have today ordered  "Still Life" from Amazon.  Yes, it’s a game, but mostly it’s a narrative structure to be analyzed for its new media format of sound, visual and interactive elements.

Or so I’ve learned to say.