introduction to digital media studies

Before I start, I just want to say that I actually liked Sophie. Say what you will, I rarely had a problem with it because I went to ITS where the computers seem able to handle a program as demanding as Sophie. If you guys have time over reading days, I would suggest heading over there and making a digital book! Okay:

The most interesting thing I took away from this course was the way that structure is invariably tied to function. This concept exists in the real world–we expect our architecture to reflect its utility–but it seems all the more evident in the digital one. The way that a website or social network is set up determines the types of interaction that take place on it. The hyperlink allows for two-way communication between an endless number of entities. Before this class, I never realized so clearly that the uses for something are defined by the way it’s set up.

I think it’s interesting to note how much a sense of community the class developed. This wasn’t simply because the people in the class were great, which they were. I think a lot of it had to do with the way in which technology facilitated our interaction. In no other class have I ever been able to learn about so many others’ interests. Also, I believe that we were able to bond as a community over our use of new media, like Google Wave and Sophie. Our shared experiences of these technologies brought us closer, as the projects we created using these new media.

Ever since my final project, it’s occurred to me how much digitial media incorporates the characteristics of autopoiesis: self-creation. Our discussions in class revolve around the technological works that others have created, which then leads to our own creations based off of them, and discussions based off these creations, and more creations as a result of these discussions. There really is something to be said for the way that technology can facilitate an incredible amount of, what is all at its very core, communication–whether it’s through writing, art, music or video.

Here it is:

http://pages.pomona.edu/~gnf02008/onlinenewsfinal.pack.s2

Have fun!

Click here to see our final project!

Hey, guys!  For our final project Amaru and I decided to tackle the history, evolution, and endless possibilities of that wonderful invention we all know as The World Wide Web.  As you saw in our presentation, we stroll through the history of the Web’s beginnings with Berners-Lee at CERN all the way to the present day with Long Tail marketing strategies and social networking sites.  We ended with the rather open-ended topic of the possible future of the Web, and where we imagine it might go in the future based off of Vannevar Bush’s idea of the memex from As We May Think.

We apologize for the lateness, but Amaru’s computer decided to completely eat the content he’d worked so hard on writing for one of his pages, and he had to start over from scratch.  Technology can be evil sometimes, can’t it?  Nonetheless, feel free to poke around our site, and we hope you enjoy!

— Annie & Amaru

Well, here we are.  I’m sad to be writing my last post, but it’s been an absolute joy this entire semester.  Our Introduction to Digital Media Studies class has been interesting, funny, and informative in so many different ways.  I loved all of our intense discussions, especially towards the end of the semester, when we were all comfortable sharing our opinions and thoughts with the group as a whole.  I learned a lot of things just by listening to you guys – so many of you follow a lot of blogs I don’t, so we were our own little hub of information regarding the news, debates, and funny happenings of the Web.  It was great.

Regarding the projects, I share a lot of the same sentiments as you guys.  I really enjoyed the website project, as it forced me to polish up on my HTML and CSS knowledge – never a bad thing.  The podcast project was fun in the sense that it made me step out of my comfort zone and work with audio, which proved to be easier (at least recording speech and adding in music…nothing too fancy!) than I thought it would be.  I was a little more familiar with video projects since I’ve done them before for other classes, but planning out a meaningful message and analytical spin of our video was a bit harder.  The Sophie project was surprisingly enjoyable for me, until I packaged the darn thing, uploaded it, and posted it up here on the blog.  I had pretty much zero problems with the program itself outside of general slow processing, but Sophie pretty much ate my entire book (even the saved files on a USB drive were corrupted).  So sad.

Overall, this class has been fantastic, and one of the best I’ve ever taken, college or otherwise.  I was always excited about coming to class (and that’s quite the rare thing, mind you) and listening to discussion that day, or learning something new and hands-on in lab.  I’ll give a shout-out to Professor Fitzpatrick, too – you’re one of the best teachers I’ve had and completely made this class.  Can we convince you to not go on sabbatical?  At least until we leave? Please?!  I definitely agree with others, in any case…we should all meet whenever Professor Fitzpatrick returns from NYC.  Hopefully I’ll see you all in the future, in another media studies class or around the campuses.  Keep in touch, everyone!  And if I don’t talk to you soon, have a fantastic summer.

— Annie

Here’s Allison and Jackie’s final project: We ♥ Video Games!

Each person drew themselves and wrote review(s) for their own games. Jackie created the site, and Allison did most of the reviews (her characters are in pink, while Jackie’s characters are in purple).

Hope you enjoy it!

Here’s our final project: The League
Youtube is still doing weird things to the movie so we’ve got a download link on the website. It’s very large but once Youtube is done processing I’ll embed it as well.
We hope you enjoy it!
– Hannah (and Brennen)

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=nmoserful#p/u/0/vD5-16E-JvY

sorry it wouldn’t show up…cut and paste the link? thanks for everything everyone!

Here is our final project.

The third page (more info) is very media-heavy, and might take a little while to load completely. Be patient. Also, we looked at this in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox and all the formatting seemed to work out fine there. No guarantee on how it will look in other browsers or on very small screens though…. And yes, I know the tabs are slightly off-center. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to fix that. Anyways, hope you enjoy the mashups and the project!

~Drew and Nick

Here is the link to our final project!

Please use the navigation bar to the left of the video for clarification of our baking/new media metaphor.

First and foremost, I want to give a HUGE ‘Thank You!’ to Professor Fitzpatrick! This class has been absolutely my favorite during my (admittedly short) college career. I loved the way the class was taught with focus on discussion that was very open, but just guided enough. Some readings were better than others, and I personally enjoyed the ones during the last half of the class (dealing with more contemporary, relevant issues such as copyright and machinima) than those in the first half (dealing more with the history of how digital media came to be). On the whole though, the readings were very well chosen. The ones about Friendster might be reconsidered though…. 😛

As for the technologies, I would say pretty much the same thing: generally excellent with some frustrations. I greatly enjoyed working with CSS and HTML, and I have been inspired to possibly try to pursue these further as hobbies. Audio and video were both fun, and of course Sophie was…well it was Sophie. As has been said a million times before, perhaps don’t use Sophie until it has been improved, but other than that all the projects were great. I also like that the final project was very open ended an allowed us to pursue what we liked best from the course.

The way I see it though, those are only half of the technologies we made use of. The other half were things like the lab computers, google wave, the blog, etc. The lab computers were frustratingly slow on the few days I had to use them, but of course that’s got nothing to do with the class. I think that google wave was a great way to do note taking, and I would encourage you to keep using that in the future. It allows for everyone to be editing it, for stuff to be embedded, etc. It makes the whole class feel more interactive and connected. Same goes for the blog. While I admittedly did not sink my teeth into blogging with as much zeal as some (or maybe most) I did genuinely enjoy the blog. Being able to read other people’s thoughts on things (readings or otherwise) was great. A number of things people mentioned in random blog posts led me to things I now use regularly or enjoyed a lot, and I would have missed them without the blog.

All in all, I would certainly say that, a few minor flaws aside, this class was fantastic! I will definitely be recommending it to all my friends once you get back. Once again, Thank You Professor Fitzpatrick!