debbie maxwell

Turtle Joke

2010-01-11T19:48:00.000Z

Found this here and just had to post it!

One day a lion wakes up in a bad mood and summons the other animals in the jungle.

"I want each of you to tell a joke, but I warn you that if anyone of you fails to laugh, I'll kill the one who told it. Let's see, monkey, you will be first."

Shaking with fear the monkey begins, "Two men are in the street and..."

When he finishes, everyone bursts out laughing save the tortoise. "The tortoise didn't laugh!" roars the lion, pouncing on the monkey and ripping him to pieces. Then he orders, "Elephant, you're next."

Cursing through clenched teeth, the elephant begins, "A drunk walks into a bar and..."

When he finishes, all the animals split their sides laughing except the tortoise, who remains impassive. "The tortoise didn't think it was funny!" exclaimed the lion who, seeing that the furious elephant is about to step on the tortoise, kills the elephant with his claws.

By now, everyone wants to murder the tortoise, but nobody dares move. "Now it's your turn, tiger," orders the lion.

The scared tiger begins, "They say that Little Red Riding Hood..."

At that moment, the tortoise falls over laughing. "What's with you?" bellows the lion. "Tiger hasn't finished yet..."

To which the tortoise replies, "The monkey's joke is hilarious!"

Alternative Realities: A Storyscape

2010-01-03T17:18:00.001Z

What follows is an excerpt from my thesis, a description of a digitally enhanced storytelling experience.

The background noise dies down as Owen adjusts the dials on the speakers and laptop.

A soft, poignant melody washes over the studio and Owen’s voice comes out of the speakers. As his words begin to fill the room, I can see the form of a traveller, walking the roads with his bag of dreams, carefree, alone. The notes of his simple tune, slightly discordant, hint at the story to come. I am aware that the students sitting around me are still, and I hope that they too can see the traveller in front of them, now resting under a hawthorn tree.

The alternative reality is that of a top floor art college studio, painted white and filled with desks, swivel chairs, computers and the debris of student projects past and present. Cold January light seeps in through skylights. You may think it is perhaps not the best space from which to enter the land of stories but it does show that the doorway can be opened from anywhere. The third year design students sit gathered round the front half of the room, the lucky ones slouched on the black sofa. Owen’s storyscape comes near the end of a day-long workshop on practical storytelling techniques, part of the Re-Telling module I am running to explore how storytelling and digital technology can interact.

Owen watches the laptop screen intently, making small adjustments every so often.

The rich, verdant story landscape is untouched by town or traffic, devoid of even the incessant hum of electricity. The traveller man is running across the landscape, heavily, clumsily, but swiftly all the same. The green woman he chases runs just out of reach, leading him over hills and through trees, almost floating over the ground as she dances effortlessly in front of him. The timeless layers of harp notes weave through the landscape, shaping the contours as Owen’s voice shapes the story.

I met Owen through the Dundee storytelling group, Blether Tay-gither, and he was an obvious choice to run a guest workshop for a number of reasons, not least because I consider him to be an excellent storyteller. Blether is a predominantly female group, with a tendency for storytellers to be older rather than younger and, in general, not eager adopters of technology. Owen is younger than most of the group in Blether and his background in sculpture along with his experimental soundscape storytelling made him the ideal person to introduce the basic concepts of storytelling to the students. Owen’s style of telling is quite traditional, in that it is clear, understated and well paced, allowing time to watch the story unfold in your mind’s eye.

I smile to myself as I remember Owen telling me about Robin Williamson and how inspirational he was. ‘I listened to his work and I was blown away by it. He plays a harp and it’s quite bardic, you know. It sounds like it’s coming from a place back in time, beautiful stories, and I was really inspired by what he was doing.’

It was during this interview that Owen told me about the electronic soundscapes he had created. As he explained to the students, normally the soundscapes are put together live, with the story told live too. For the purposes of this workshop and because the piece was unfinished Owen used a pre-recorded version.

Days have now passed in the chase of man and woman. The man struggles on, slower now but not defeated. Yet the green lady is swifter than ever before and try as he might, it is all the traveller man can do to just keep up with her. And still the landscape rolls on relentlessly, dreamlike in its insubstantiality.

On reflection, I find myself surprised by the storyscape. It was not what I was expecting when I asked Owen if he would show the students an example of a story soundscape. Yet I struggle to know what I was expecting. The style matches Owen’s normal telling, but has a more detached edge to it; the story is more elusive, almost mythic in its ephemerality.

I think back to our conversation a few months earlier in the local arts centre.

‘One of the things that I’m interested in doing is using modern technology, especially sound and music, combining it with storytelling so that there’s something that people can access a bit more easily.’ Owen’s interest in combining electronic sounds and stories comes from a love of electronic music and a need to bridge the worlds of bardic-inspired storytelling and modern culture.

‘It’s a way of letting them know what storytelling is and then they can trace it back and hear what real, simple storytelling is if they want to. But I love electronic music and it’s a way for me to fit in with modern culture and what my friends are into, you know. And that’s electronic sounds and computers and iPods so it’s a way of bringing it to them.’

Owen pauses, taking a drink of tea. The café area is getting busy and tables are being set for the evening although it’s still only late afternoon.

‘There’s one particular festival that I go to called Solfest and you’ve got a big storytelling centre there, lots of storytellers and theatre groups come and do their thing. And then at night you’ve got a tent that’s playing full on electronic music and I like that balance. There’s people coming to the storytelling sessions who are going out at night to dance to the electronic music and I’d like to find that middle ground where you can bring the two together and make it work.’

Owen is the only storyteller I know, and am aware of, who actively seeks to incorporate elements of storytelling and digital media into live events or performances. However, I recall a piece of performance dance, Sensational knowledge, Sensational Ethnography, which explored the connections between digital and analogue. A collaboration between composer and programmer Curtis Bahn and dancer Tomie Hahn, it created electronic sounds from Tomie’s dance movements. Tomie embodied traditional elements through her experience of Japanese traditional dance whilst the sensors capturing her movements brought ‘a contemporary expressive moment.’

Owen continues, ‘There’s electronic music that I’ve heard that uses traditional folk music in it. And I know quite a few people who’ve learned a lot about folk music because they’ve heard this electronic music and heard that little folk tune and then traced it back and just discovered what folk music is all about. So I’d like to do the same with storytelling.’

‘Have you done that so far?’ I ask.

‘I’ve done a couple of stories where I’ve used my laptop with sound programs and I’ve mixed samples into my story live. I’ve done a storytelling live, you know, standing there telling it and used a laptop to bring in sounds at certain points in the story. It’s more been music based but I’m looking to make it more like combining storytelling and sound art, rather than just music. So that’s what I’m moving towards.’

I’m intrigued by how the audience would react to such a story, trying to imagine what the rest of the Blether Tay-gither tellers would think about it. Owen tells me of the positive response from listeners, but admits that they were festival performances.

‘I’d like to do the same thing to a traditional storytelling audience, people who are really into tradition, just to see how they react.’ Owen smiles. ‘But one festival I did it and somebody came up to me afterwards and he said, ‘You know, it’s really good just to see something different.’ And that was a great comment to me because that’s what I want. You know, I want them to hear something that is different, not been heard before. So, yeah, I’ve had a great reaction from it actually, really good.’

Owen illustrates the potential affinity of tradition and new media. He admires the bardic style of telling, with music accompanying the tale and Celtic myths, but he also wants to ground part of that tradition in contemporary contexts, distorting sounds of the harp through electronic effects and making full use of the two seemingly separate worlds.

Upon awakening beneath the original hawthorn tree, their journey come full circle, the traveller man offers a blossoming branch of hawthorn to the green-robed lady. Together, they walk into the green hills, their journey just beginning. As the last notes fade away, there is stillness in the darkening studio.

Journal extract - draft

2009-12-30T17:10:00.010Z

An extract from my PhD thesis. I'm peppering it with diary extracts to illustrate aspects of the storytelling culture I've part of for the last 3 years, and my journey as a fledgling teller. Hopefully this approach will make the thesis a more interesting document to read too!

Thursday 30th July 2009

My storytelling life seems to go in cycles of intensity and the last two weeks have been the intense kind. I feel completely ‘storied-out.’ Was at Festival at the Edge (FatE) the weekend before last, which was amazing but strangely exhausting. I never thought listening to stories could be tiring, but I understand now why people say listening is a skill. Two and a half days of non-stop stories is a lot to listen to. And of course conversations with storytellers at the festival all centred around stories too. It was unlike the storytelling environments I’m used to. Whilst nearly all of the tellers I heard were excellent, the delivery mechanism was quite different. The main marquee was large, and the stage was hooked up to a PA system. The sessions I found most memorable and engaging were the ones in the smaller tents, with informal telling styles and participative elements. But this is no doubt a personal preference. Nevertheless, it was incredible to see so many tellers I had only heard about before, and I hope to return to FatE next year.

Last weekend was the Big Tent Festival in Fife where Blether Tay-gither had our own storytelling yurt (courtesy of Owen) and ran a full programme of storytelling sessions and workshops for two days. This was surprisingly less draining than FatE, partly because there was a range of different type of events at the festival but mainly because there were eight of us involved with the storytelling yurt. I didn’t really do too much in the way of storytelling, but helped out with craft stuff at the workshops and handed out flyers to folk to encourage them to come along to the yurt.

I did do a little bit of storytelling though. Our closing session each day was dubbed ‘Fairtrade stories’ and involved all the Blether ‘rainbow’ tellers. (The Big Tent weekend was the first official launch of the Blether Tay-gither logo and was proudly emblazoned onto polo-shirts, each a different colour, so that between us we were a rainbow of tellers. I was yellow.)

On Saturday we had a guest teller, Judy, who told stories throughout the day. She hosted the final ‘Fairtrade’ slot and after an opening story opened the floor to other tellers. Well, I say that, but in actual fact she asked the audience to choose the next teller. We had been expecting a range of ages in the storytelling yurt, but ended up with an audience almost exclusively composed of children. So Judy asked the children which colour storyteller they’d like to hear from next (out of red, yellow, green, pale blue, navy blue and purple). And what did they say? The brightest colour they had to choose from. Yellow.

My mind went in panic-mode. This wasn’t supposed to happen yet! The story I’d prepared was for more of an adult audience and I didn’t think would work. I drew inspiration from Blether and FatE and off-the-cuff asked Sheila if she would mind if I told a story that I’d heard her tell a couple of times and had heard Jan Blake tell at FatE the previous weekend. Jan’s version had a few rhymes and actions in it and I thought that could work well if I blended the two versions. I hadn’t read the story anywhere, nor told it before, or practised it, but figured I knew it pretty well. (I had paid particular attention to Jan’s version as I knew Sheila’s and wanted to compare the two.)

So, I got up and sat on the wooden storyteller chest at the top of the yurt and began.

The story was the one about the old woman who goes to visit her daughter at the other side of the forest. On her way through the forest she meets three animals, one-by-one, who all want to eat her but she persuades them to eat her on her return journey when she will be more plump. On the way home she climbs inside a pumpkin and rolls through the forest, past the hungry animals, all the way home.

It started well enough. (I suppose I should add that this was the first time that I’d told a story to children.) Anyway, they seemed to be into it ok. I did the whole, ‘ricky-ticky-tick, ricky-ticky-tat, here I come with my walking stick’ thing which everyone joined in with. I asked them what kind of nice food the old woman ate at her daughter’s house and got lots of suggestions.

The problem began when the old woman climbed inside the pumpkin and left her daughter’s home, rolling along the forest path.

‘And as she rolled she sang–’ I said confidently before pausing. I knew there was a little song to go with the rolling. (‘Here I come, here I come, in my pumpkin here I come.’) I remembered the words but not the tune. My mind was blank. Completely, utterly empty. I looked around helplessly. Lindsey caught my eye and started singing ‘rolling, rolling, rolling’. Robbie joined in, making up the tune with Lindsey on the spot, and soon everyone else joined in too, the tune sounding suspiciously more and more like ‘Rawhide’ as it progressed. I can only imagine that the reference was too out of date for the children. The song occurs three times, as the woman meets the three forest animals one by one again. Each time, ‘rolling, rolling, rolling’ was dutifully sung. And so the story ground its way painfully to the end. I was, well, I was a bit mortified really. But once I’d resumed my seat at the edge of the yurt, I thought how it was actually an incredibly positive experience. If I’d been in a situation like that by myself, as the only teller, I would have panicked even more. It was great to have the support of the group there, especially for an inexperienced teller like myself.

New Media Attributes

2009-11-20T23:20:00.003Z

Disclaimer: This is lifted almost directly from my draft PhD thesis. It is posted here for interest, but recognise that concepts are explained in detail in the full version of thesis. (I thought I would spare the Web the need to post it in all its 5000 word glory.)
*********
‘New Media’ is a commonly used phrase, along with other apparent synonyms ‘digital media’ and ‘interactive media’. On closer inspection however, new media embodies a whole set of arguments and connotations. It is therefore important to set out clearly what the term means in this context.
Whilst new media understandably embraces a wide range of technologies (for example, the Internet and hypertext, mobile phones and physical computer games like Nintendo’s Wii) there are several defining characteristics which can be drawn out. Although these traits are not necessarily all present in each example of new media, there exists enough of a correlation between media objects to render the attributes meaningful and indeed invaluable for future discussions on the relationship between new media and storytelling.
Synthesising several sets of characteristics results in the following list of new media traits:

Digitality: the underlying technological structures which enable new media objects to be easily accessed, manipulated and remoulded.
Multimodality: the range of modes in which users can interact, impact and experience new media.
Immediacy: the twin goals of new media to provide such an immersive experience that it renders the medium invisible and to make media so pervasive that its incongruity becomes unnoticeable.
Dispersal: the distribution of new media objects across networks, accessible media creation tools and the geographical dispersal of increasingly mobile physical devices all enable dispersed production and consumption of new media.
Co-creativity: the experience and social dynamics of co-creating new media objects with other users as a bricoleur, contributing to revisions through feedback, interacting within and out-with predefined parameters.
Ephemerality: the transient nature of new media objects, as shown by the finite lifespan of their physical existence (e.g. mobile phones superseded by newer models), current accepted formats (e.g. file types/protocols) and the ever changing, mutable content they embody.

A final note on interactivity
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, interactivity was not adopted as a characteristic of new media in the definition for this thesis. Interactivity is a fundamental of new media in the same way that digitality is. However, as was mentioned at the start of this section, to explicitly include interactivity as an attribute in its own right is in many ways stating the obvious. Digitality was included because the direct consequences it affords of modularity and replicability were considered to be facets of digitality. The consequences of interactivity are particularly enmeshed in co-creativity and ephemerality but to some degree impact on every attribute. Therefore it was not deemed necessary to forcibly delineate interactivity into a distinct characteristic.

Comparison between Twitter and real life conversation

2009-08-03T14:15:00.003+01:00

Reading Schank's 'Tell Me a Story', got me thinking about interactions on Twitter and how conversations start. To me, Twitter resonates with real-world face-to-face conversations by its fleeting, short time-limit tendency.

Generally, to start a conversation on Twitter requires seeing a tweet in more or less real-time. Tweets are found by either following the person tweeting or through a search for keyword. If too much time passes then the tweet slips down the list of latest postings to be unnoticed. Granted, if it's a particularly obscure keyword then a reply may be some days/weeks after the original tweet was posted, but in the main I would say conversations are instigated within 24 hours of posting.

Schank suggested that intelligence is intimately connected with story knowledge. Conversation is the exchange of stories. The more stories you know, the better you can select an appropriate story to tell next.

Schank says;

We are satisfied, as observers of actions, when the stories we hear match our own stories. When the match is very similar, we tell our version of the story. When the match is hardly a match at all, when we have a contradictory story, we tell it. Actually, the middle cases are the most interesting - when we have no story to tell. What do we do then? We look for one.

How does this translate to Twitter? Well, I'm not sure. But my own experience of Twitter conversations suggests that for the middle cases Schank suggests I simply do not tweet back.

Unlike real-life conversations, which require some form of mutual acknowledgement and interaction to maintain, Tweets are easy to ignore. A reply is not expected from each tweet. And I think this is what happens in the middle cases.

However, for dissimilar or similar matches, I think Twitter conforms quite closely to Schank's observations on conversation.

Storytelling Traits

2009-08-01T21:49:00.006+01:00

I've been thinking a lot about how to characterise and define storytelling. I know it's always going to be a contentious issue and a lot depends on what your personal idea of storytelling is, but I've listed what I think below.

Please let me know if you agree or disagree with them. Perhaps I have missed something out, or one of the characteristics shouldn't be there?

N.B. A word of context first - this list was created on the basis of observing storytelling in Scotland (mainly through storytelling clubs). I'm hesitant to use the term 'traditional storytelling' as it is a continuing contemporary art form.

Here goes:

Diversity of stories and storytelling styles
Collective memory - shared memory of stories throughout storytelling communities
Performance - formalised event (different from normal conversation, even if it is impromptu)
Liveness - real-time event, not generally recorded
Physical presence of teller, eye-contact
Voice - as a tool for characters, emotion, suspense etc
Gesture and body language
Engagement of imagination - of both listener and teller
Connection between story, teller and listener - emotional, personal, group
Desire by teller and group to share stories

All thoughts welcome!

Hurray for TwitterSheep!

2009-03-09T14:56:00.002Z

Here's my cloud of Twittersheep followers. (Check out the website if you're confused.)

Twitter tweeple tweet

2009-03-03T22:45:00.002Z

Seems like everything I hear, read and see now is connected to Twitter. So I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and post my tuppence worth.

It was inspired by The Art of the Tweet and the mixed reactions to that blog posting. Rands describes his seeminlgy painstaking thought process that accompanies each of his tweets. Initial drafts get written on a 'canvas' (not quite a physical painting canvas but not your bog-standard web twitter interface, or any of the multitude of twitter apps). Each tweet is then crafted and edited down into a succinct form as possible.

I was going to say as clear a form as possible, but I don't think that's necessarily the case. Reading some of the comments to his post seems to echo my feelings. By stripping away too much of the descriptive text you run the risk of stripping out all context.

BEFORE: If it’s 4am, I know how stressed I am.
AFTER: Stress is how well I know 4am.

Human communication is all about social context and awareness. Striving for elegance and brevity is admirable but if a story can't be adequated told in 6 words, then consider adding a few more.

Final thought, Ernest Hemingway's short story of 6 words:

For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn

Nice video from Microsoft

2009-03-01T18:00:00.003Z

Just been reading Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences, and then came across this blog on TechCast Network with a video showing Microsoft's future concepts.

It's a perfect example of how sketching or Wizard of Oz style experiences can extend to polished videos as well as more traditional paper prototypes.

Re the future vision though, I can't quite tell if I'm excited or scared. Microsoft's video seems to epitomise ubiquity - the 'screens' are everywhere. (And I want to try them out!)

So on the one hand, fantastic! You need never be out of reach or be unable to identify a plant. But yet everything seems technologically mediated and all the interfaces look the same. Obviously it's just a vision and no doubt future technology will not resemble the video in many ways, yet it seems another step towards homogeneity.

Perhaps more attention needs to be spent on devices such as LadyAda's Design Noir prototypes...

writing a thesis is a painful process

2009-02-28T14:28:00.004Z

Writing a thesis, I have discovered, is a painful process, so to inspire me in my writing and to let me see an overview of my research topics, thought I'd make use of Wordle and create image clouds of each chapter as it progresses.
Here's chapter 1:

Finally, although it's not writing a novel, I can take some comfort from the words of one of my favourite authors, George Orwell, who said that;

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.- Why I Write

May the illness end soon.

Writing update

2008-10-07T23:38:00.002+01:00

Well, I've been using Buzzword on and off for the past few weeks. I've been switching between Word and Buzzword (and the archaic use of pencil and paper too) in a random and sporadic manner. In actual fact I've been tending to use Word to draft some rough paragraphs and then copy them into Buzzword to compile it.

Still very happy with Buzzword, although there was one rather frustrating day when it was being upgraded or offline for some reason. So, I reverted to my mac's trusty TextEdit for the day instead!

I've just shared two files with my supervisors for comments, so we'll see what happens and how Buzzword, and my supervisors, cope with that.

As an aside, I'm currently half considering the use of InDesign at the end to format all the copy and convert to pdf (I hope to turn my thesis into a set of Lulu books). Only trouble is I don't know how to use InDesign yet, but that seems like a minor point!

Buzzword - Am I being as stupid as I think I may be?

2008-09-11T16:42:00.005+01:00

So the title says it all really. I've decided to take what I think may be a somewhat unusual step on my road to PhD thesis writing. I'm using Adobe's Buzzword.

Yes, I know it's pretty simplistic, but if I'm honest that what appeals. An online, accessible-from-anywhere, intuitive, and, frankly, elegant design for creating documents just screams 'use me'.

It could be dangerous (it's still in Beta afterall). What if I lose files, want to add TOC (table of contents), and other exciting MS Word features? Hmmm, well I've thought about it and my concession is this - I don't think it's going to be completely realistic for me to use Buzzword as my one and only word processor and I'm going to be printing off lots of draft versions as back up (which I do when using Word anyway). So I'll be switching between Buzzword for creating drafts and Word for 'fine-tuning' the drafts.

I feel like I can write quicker and create smaller (read as 'concise'!), more modular documents in Buzzword's simple, uncluttered interface (with half a mind somehow aware of the hellish task awaiting me in collating these multitude of docs with only Word).

Yet it seems appropriate to use an online tool to tell my thesis story - after all my research is all about how technology is changing the way we communicate. Why not extend that to the way we create and distribute?

Any comments from anyone who has used Buzzword would be welcome...

GuiMags

2008-09-07T22:38:00.002+01:00

So it's been a while since my last blog (understatement of the year) but I just came across this website and felt compelled to blog about it.

I'm becoming increasingly technophobic whilst still maintaining an aspect of geekiness (it takes skill I tell you) so when I found this suggestion on a website I was thrilled:

"Could designing software without a computer save you roughly 80% of your time...?" - GuiMags

They've created GuiMags - magnets of, you've guessed it, GUI elements like drop-down menus, radio buttons, labels etc, designed for use on a whiteboard. Much quicker than the use of paper prototyping and, I think, would offer a much more collaborative, interactive workflow.

is it wrong that I skim read an article on literacy?

2008-06-22T22:11:00.003+01:00

Is Google making us stupid?

Nicholas Carr writes;

"My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

The Importance of Being er, Truthful?

2008-04-28T21:55:00.007+01:00

Well, like many I've been following the We Tell Stories Penguin 6 week special (for those of you who haven't heard of it it's well worth a look).

So, I haven't found any of it mind-blowing literature but I did find one story thought-provoking, although it's the medium rather than the text.

I'm talking about Slice.
Slice is told through two fictitious blogs by the main character (Slice) and Slice's parents. Now these are real blogs (whatever 'real' may mean in this context) hosted on recognised blogging sites and, as would be expected, the entries have attracted followers and so comments. Some of the commenters (is that a word?) are other fictitious friends of Slice from home but some of them are avid readers of the blog.

Now my question (hypothetical I hope) is, what if someone stumbled across these blogs through the ether and was unaware of the Penguin Six Stories connection? Would they fear for this girl's life? In essence, would it matter to them if the girl was real or not for all the difference they could make?

Truth and authenticity is a subject much debated in the realm of traditional oral storytelling but I fear it is less contentious an issue there than in the virtual world. I firmly believe that all stories contain truth, whether it be a true tale, or culturally accurate, or resonates with the human soul. (To clarify, my definition of 'truth' in this context is similar to 'believability' - if the story doesn't ring true on some level then it simply cannot function as a story.)

And I suppose that this blurring of reality/fantasy or fiction/non-fiction can occur on many other planes (e.g.'The Man Who Planted Trees') but is 'truth' (as in the events actual occurring) important here? If you can identify with or be inspired by a character in fiction (or popular media culture) then is the emotional reaction less valid for its fictitious underpinning? If so, try telling that to the thousands of girls who broke their hearts crying over the break up of Take That. (Which btw I wasn't one of.:-))

wii-fit

2008-04-27T23:31:00.002+01:00

Came across this video a while back but with the recent launch of wii-fit in the UK I am reminded of this every time I see an ad for it.

Is this the new storytelling?

2008-04-25T20:34:00.004+01:00

'Traditional Tales with a triple twist' - sounds a bit like an alcopop to me... Is this the future of storytelling?

"Incorporating Greek myths and Russian folktales this unique fusion of a capella harmonies, poetic storytelling and an interactive physical style guarantees a spine-tingling energy through sound and song." Annamation

Well, I don't know anything about this production but I would be slightly wary of the claim of 'storytelling'. I don't doubt that traditional tales are used but, at the risk of sounding like a decrepit stuck-in-the-mud, it strikes me that it's more like a show, a theatre production.
I saw Xanthe perform Aphrodite and the Real Red Shoes a few months ago, and whilst fascinating and sometime engaging I would never have thought to label it 'storytelling'.

To me (and I'm well aware that this is just a personal definition) there are some qualities that characterise a storytelling experience. Time, location and atmosphere are key.

Time - by that I mean pace. Because the ~~audience~~ listeners are seeing the story in their mind, the storyteller can afford to take time. Pauses are natural in traditional storytelling, they allow the listener to savour the moment and build or release tension.
Location - the most effective storytelling I've been privileged to hear haven't been near a stage. Part of the charm of storytelling is the lack of stage and the small intimate settings of a pub or cafe. The listener is drawn into the storyteller's world, as the storyteller is physically sharing the same space. Boundaries between teller and listener are blurred.
Atmosphere - goes hand in hand with some of the location comments. A participative, collaborative atmosphere is conducive to story sharing.

So, to sum up, I think it's a lot more than the stories which characterise oral 'storytelling'. I suppose Annamation are claiming to be something different than traditional storytelling but there is a lot of emphasis on 'storytelling' in their website.

Finally, if there was a performance near me I would be going to see the show!

Storytelling & Authenticity - Overview

2008-04-20T23:34:00.002+01:00

So last month (18-19 March) I attended a symposium on Storytelling and Authenticity at the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at the University of Glamorgan hosted by Mike Wilson and Hamish Fyfe (co-directors of the Centre).
The belated notes below are selective and naturally are skewed towards my own research interests, so apologies to any speakers who feel I haven't reflected their work adequately.
(In case of inaccuracies please let me know.)

Tale-enders: Gathering the Narrative Heritage of Welsh Cricket
This presentation was the launch of the Tale-enders project to produce narrative reminiscence content to form part of the Museum of Welsh Cricket. Read more...
Capture Wales - Lisa Heledd
Lisa defined a digital story as a 'short personal multimedia film'. For me, the key word here is 'personal' (i.e. autobiographical) in so much that it differs from traditional tale telling. Read more...
Susie Pratt - digital stories and social media
Susie gave a history of the background to Digital Stories and the current context of social media. Read more...
Joseph Sobol - The Razor's Edge: The American Storytelling Movement in 2008
Joseph's reference to the razor in the title was multi-layered, talking about the edge as that between amateur and professional. Read more...
Richard Bauman - The Remediation of Storytelling: Narrative Performance on Early Commercial Sound Recording. Read more...
Dick Leith - 'Authenticity' & 'Ownership: How to Shut People Up'. Read more...
Neil Lanham - In the oral tradition, the singer is more important than the song. Read more...

Storytelling & Authenticity VII - Neil Lanham

2008-04-20T21:55:00.016+01:00

Neil Lanham - 'Who is the truly educated man: The one who can grow onions or the man who can spell them?' (George Ewart Evans - The Horse in the Furrow)

In the oral tradition, the singer is more important than the song. Similarly, the story was important - the music was only an instrument or medium. Neil gave a fascinating insight into the last remaining remnants of oral tradition in Suffolk, through personal anecdotes and audio clips.

Neil referred to Walter Ong's Literacy and Orality heavily and produced the following list defining the differences between literate cultures and oral cultures.

Orality

Spoken word
Freedom of thought & language
Learning by oral transmission observation and experience
Traditional history seeking mindset
Metaphorical truth
Illustrative language of wit
Seeking principles of understanding
Seeking wisdom
Social status through character largely created by the ability to handle everyday narrative
Personal identity, community identity, locating self in community, time and place
A love of home
Inherited traditional oral culture in song, story, formulaic sayings
An internal perception

Literacy

Written word
Language restricted by the parameters of standard english
Learning by academic study mainly from dominance of print
Belief in modernism - 'the now'
Romantic movement influence
Contrived language
Seeking information
Seeking entertainment
Social status through academic awards in the world of the written word
Techno-literate mindset strong
Media influences
Delusions of grandeur in relocation and travel
'Colonial/civilsed' misconception of indigenous culture
External perception

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My thoughts
Well I don't really agree 100% with everything Neil said, but his enthusiasm for the singers and genuine affection for the agricultural tradition cannot be doubted. As Dick Leith commented, the divide between literate and oral doesn't have to be seen as a divide or opposition. They can be viewed as a continuum.
Is this mirrored through traditional storytelling and digital storytelling or is it all part of the same continuum?
What evidence is there of a new oral tradition? How are texts moving from oral-written-spoken again? Most stories tellers learn are from written sources, will this be the case in the future or do the texts remain in oral memory? Or, as is possibly more likely, will they be transmitted digitally (and so not neccessarily through text or visual media)?
Final note, a lovely phrase during the discussion afterwards:
"Tales do not recognise boundaries" - this reminded me of diffusionism and the power that stories have to transcend cultural lenses.

Storytelling & Authenticity VI - Dick Leith

2008-04-20T20:56:00.003+01:00

Dick Leith - 'Authenticity' and 'Ownership: How to Shut People Up'

Dick sees storytelling as enjoyment (as a teller) and connects authenticity with struggle and suffering. That is, experience with folk tales illustrates own life. Famous singers like Jeanie Robertson & Harry Cox epitomise struggle and, consequently, authenticity. And so, Dick didn't feel entitled to sing songs by people like Jeanie and Harry.

Scottish travellers embody continuity in folkmusic and storytelling. How much/to what extent is authenticity imposed on by outside world/forces? Can we talk about authenticity as the relationship between the performer and their material?

I think this comes back to making the story or song your own, and only choosing material that

speaks to you, and
suits your style of performance

As Jess Smith told me, it's all about believability, if you don't believe in your characters then no-one else will.

Storytelling & Authenticity V - Richard Bauman

2008-04-20T20:41:00.007+01:00

The Remediation of Storytelling: Narrative Performance on Early Commercial Sound Recording
Ok, so here's where it started to get a bit less relevant to me. (Well, it was at the end of the day).
I like the terminology 'remediation' - the 'transformation of oral storytelling into other media'.
But the general gist of the talk was around 3 recordings (with transcriptions provided) of early gramophone recordings in American (which to my tired ears were virtually unintelligible). Richard then spoke in great depth about the nuances of the performances.
As I said, it's not really my research interest so I found it hard to understand.

For pre-presentation intro you can find more info here.

Storytelling & Authenticity IV - Joseph Sobol

2008-04-20T17:56:00.004+01:00

Joseph Sobol - The Razor's Edge: The American Storytelling Movement in 2008
(reading from article published in Storytelling, Self, Society journal.)

Joseph's reference to the razor in the title was multi-layered, talking about the edge as that between amateur and professional, and storytelling both as an artform and as a social agent - in a utilitarian form.

It always seems a bit strange to me that (from what I've heard) traditional tales aren't really told by storytellers but have been sidelined in favour of autobiographical stories. Everything that Joseph said seemed to corroborate this, ie personal tales have superseded traditional folktales in USA. One of the issues upholding this is the idea of ownership - who owns the traditional tale? Can anyone tell it? I don't think that we have this kind of problem in Scotland, at least not on anything like that scale. All the storytellers I've met are keen to share stories and are all linked by their common love of stories.

From what Joseph was saying it seemed like the audience drove this trend from traditional to anecdotal, and he cited Donald Davis as an example, moving from traditional Appalachian folk tales, began telling autobiographical instead. I think my question here is - how important is the audience's request? Is it still storytelling or does it cross the line into stand-up? And, how important are the stories themselves? I think that one of the key roles of storytellers' is the ability to maintain and preserve a culture and heritage, whether that be Celtic myths or folk tales from around the world. I think that folk tales embody nuggets of culture, and even if they are taken out of context they provide a means for opening minds about alternative life values.

Storytelling & Authenticity III - Susie Pratt & Cats

2008-04-20T17:10:00.005+01:00

Susie Pratt - Digital Stories & Social Media

Now, I have to apologize for my increasingly sketchy notes, but Susie gave a history of the background to Digital Stories and the current context of social media.
Inspired by project such as the Mass Observation social research organisation, Capture Wales started up before the UGC (User Generated Content) phenomenon. UGC is characterised by giving power back to the individual through easily accessible technology (democratising technology).

Susie talked about the 'Cute cat' theory of the internet and having googled it since this is what I found:

"The Web was invented so physicists could share research papers. Web 2.0 was invented so we could share cute pictures of our cats. The tools of Web 2.0, while designed for mundane uses, can be extremely powerful in the hands of digital activists, especially those in environments where free speech is limited."
ETech blurb for Ethan Zuckerman's presentation.

And there's more info about the cute cat theory talk on Ethan's theory at his blog (where the image below can be found).

Continuing on the furry animal theme, Susie went on talk about the Long Tail, which, again through surreptitious background digging courtesy of Google, I take to refer to Anderson's theory 'The Long Tail' referring to the shift from a hits-based marketplace where limited merchandise (e.g. books, CDs, DVDs) takes physical shelf space (and corresponding shelf cost) to a niche marketplace with unlimited stock lists (think Amazon & iTunes). The Long Tail itself refers to the graph of stocked items against quantity of items sold. The graph tails off pretty quickly. This tail represents the more unusual items which perhaps sell only 3 or 4 copies a year, but putting all these sales together, according to Anderson, amounts to a substantial chunk of profits.
Interestingly though, there seems to be a few parallels between this marketing or economics observation and our shift towards digital storytelling. The Long Tail principle requires that the infrastructure to support virtual shelf space exists (the Internet, postal services) and that people can find the content they want (recommendations, reviews - ie UGC).
And finally, this shift towards niche markets (is it a form of backlash to globalisation?*) is reminiscent of traditional low-technology small communities, defined this time by mutual interests, not geography.
--
*Or is it just another marketing ploy? Hmmm...

Storytelling & Authenticity II - Capture Wales

2008-04-20T16:02:00.000+01:00

Capture Wales - Lisa Heledd

Lisa defined a digital story as a 'short personal multimedia film'. For me, the key word here is 'personal' (i.e. autobiographical) in so much that it differs from traditional tale telling. In this definition of digital stories the teller uses their own material to illustrate, and is narrated or spoken through the teller's voice.

Digital storytelling has been heavily influenced by the work of American artist Dana Winslow Atchley III who wanted to trigger memories and tried to find a way to bring new media forms and people together. Similarly, photographer Daniel Meadows tries to show that technology can break down barriers and facilitate the sharing of stories. Karen (BBC) & Daniel created a workshop approach and pilot to creating digital stories (Capture Wales) and the 3 year scheme is now almost finished.

Lisa claimed digital stories can have power to affect you emotionally and certainly the examples she played support this (e.g. My two nains and Samiya). She also noted the opportunities digital storytelling gives you to say things that you couldn’t say to family/friends in any other way – normally the things which are most important. This is turn triggers discussion within families/groups (e.g. Lisa sent copies of My Two Nains to her family).

Natural themes emerged in the stories from the Capture Wales workshops, and this let the team direct the story creation process to fit these themes and aided the development of:

portfolio of technology (cameras, equipment)
portfolio of story seeds (e.g. genealogy, questions, photographs)

The technology element is important, helping people to engage with technology. Most people who attended the Capture Wales workshops would describe themselves as compute illiterate and this potential fear of technology was addressed through sympathetic facilitation - making people feel comfortable about stories and technology through jokes and anecdotes.

A good digital storytelling experience needs 3 things:

Strong story - that is, best version of the story that author can possibly produce
Transferable skills – normally 2 days spent on learning technology, gaining the knowledge of what is possible
Ownership - storyteller is owner.

One specific project Lisa talked about was working with streetkids - working with groups where the technology was deliberately lo-tech, through using disposable cameras. To me, digital cameras are still a relatively recent phenomenon and I remember (and maybe actually preferred) getting physical photos through the post or picking them up at Boots and the fun of sitting in the local square with friends looking for the one decent photo in 24. But children nowadays don't get to do this and so in terms of this project it was a novelty value. The delayed time it takes to see what the photograph is heightens the excitement and surprise and allows reminiscence of actually making the image.

And finally, last comment on technology, Capture Wales started using video, mobile phone video to be precise. They used mobile phones because they saw the benefit of building on the familiarity of using mobiles. (Although, if you actually think about it, a mobile video phone is actually a lot more complex interface than a camcorder.)

My Thoughts
Following on from discussions after this talk (along the lines of 'but is this really storytelling? Who does it appeal to for an audience?') I think an important thing to keep in mind is the aim of digital storytelling. I mean, what is it's purpose?
It is the process or the output which is more important? I would suggest that for traditional oral storytellers the output is more important. Pleasure in telling the tale comes from a love of the story and engaging the audience directly.
In digital storytelling it seems to me that the process can be more important to the teller than the output - to create a piece that they can be proud of. An achievement in technological competence, creating a rendition of personal feeling/anecdote. It seems a cathartic experience, primarily meaningful to the creator, and of interest to their immediate circle of friends and family in articulating how they feel. A niche product, symptomatic of Web 2.0...
This isn't to say that either traditional or digital storytelling is better or worse than the other in either of these contexts, just that they are different and answer different needs in society.

Storytelling and Authenticity I - Tale Enders

2008-04-19T21:33:00.000+01:00

Tale-enders: Gathering the Narrative Heritage of Welsh Cricket
This presentation was the launch of the Tale-enders project to produce narrative reminiscence content to form part of the Museum of Welsh Cricket.
The group are compiling an oral history of cricket in Wales and showed a promo video asking people to donate stories to the project, through various media including recorded stories (video/audio), photographs, letter writing, text messages and email.
They want personal stories; the heritage of the cricketing community; a redefinition of itself through story. Just as Capture Wales is capturing Welsh culture as it is, not stereotypes of what being 'Welsh' is and isn't, so too Tale-enders are trying to re-appropriate heritage in a shift away from museum-led static interpretation panels to real people's stories. This re-appropriation utilises the democratising ability of internet technology to allow people to become storytellers of their own lives.
It was suggested that there is a parallel between the cricket community and storytelling. (Now I don't know about this - I know nothing about cricket:-)) The time quality of cricket was cited; people come and watch, i.e. there is time to watch - it becomes a whole day's outing.

Main Post

modern multimodalities

2007-10-18T15:49:00.000+01:00

The other day I saw a student walking past me, listening to an ipod, while reading a book.
Impressed as I was by his multi-tasking I felt a bit sad that he couldn't appreciate the environment without cocooning himself in another worlds.
It comes back to the soundscape/soundwalk idea - how can we become aware of our surroundings (even if it is only a dingy campus path) if we are visually entranced by a book, and aurally by music?

Perhaps this partly explains our increasingly weak relationship with landscape....

sense of place

2007-07-19T21:36:00.000+01:00

How do we interpret the world around us? Does where we come from define who we are and our sense of identity? How is a 'sense of place' incorporated into the internet? Do we still need to relate to others online by where they are geographically located?
It seems to me that location is important - whether on Second Life(SL) or through geographical networks on Facebook (e.g. London, Manchester). But does this imbue us a with a sense of community with others that are co-located or simply allow us to form preconceived notions of others based on where they are?

Does the internet form its own 'sense of place'? As in, "where do you come from/meet? MySpace, Bebo." Some sites are trying explicitly to form places - Nuzizo is one example of this, with neighbourhoods inside an overall city complex and SL is another obvious example. Yet on SL I don't feel any affinity for a particular island or district, although maybe I've just not found 'home' there yet.

Does mobile technology infringe on our sense of where we come from? Personally, when people ask where I come from I feel partially at a loss. I normally claim Perth as that's where I currently live, but I don't consider myself to be from Perth and I normally qualify my answer with something to that effect. But in essence I don't know where I've come from, as I've probably only lived in any one place for a maximum of about 4 years at a time. I wonder if our increasing mobility leads us to a lack of roots. I've noticed that quite a lot of the Scottish travellers' stories are set quite precisely in location but not necessarily time. I'm not sure why that is, perhaps to give a common set of reference points to the audience or to authenticate the tale.

Final thought, I heard an interesting phrase yesterday whilst half-watching 'Building Britain' on BBC1:
"London does not belong to the people, people belong to London" - how true is this of social technologies?

can a soundwalk ever be simply sound?

2007-07-05T20:16:00.000+01:00

I took part in a 'soundwalk' from the main conference building to the Whitworth Art Gallery at the Beyond Text? Conference last weekend.
A large group of us took the walk through the campus in the steady rain. We were advised to walk in silence and told that a true soundwalk should be taken in isolation, such that you should be unable to hear other people's footsteps. Alas in this case it was not to be, one of the female members of the group had clip-clop high heels on which resonated in the empty corridors between buildings.
It was an interesting experience, perhaps more so as I became aware, not of sound, but of the haptic nature of the environment. Apart from the clip-clop of shoes the most distinct sounds to me was the gentle insistent patter of the rain and the fading in and out of road traffic as we walked closer and further from the main road.

However, as we walked my bag (containing my impractically heavy laptop, 3 books, notebook, brick of a phone, wallet etc) became heavier with each step, digging into my shoulder. I could feel the rain hitting my waterproof jacket and my hair and face. I felt the texture of the road beneath my (also impractical) thin soled boots and, once we reached the muted peace of the park, the squelchy soft mud underfoot.

Back in the conference, a interminably long closing session speech noted that someone (I didn't catch who) suggested that there is only one sense - touch. I.e. sound physically hits eardrums. It was only then that I realised that I had failed to listen after the first couple of minutes of the soundwalk and simply noted what was important to me. I query whether sound means much in isolation - in our Western culture anyway. Does anyone go to hear a band nowadays? Whenever I go to a gig it's a case of 'going to see a band'. After all I can hear them much better on CD and mp3. To me, sound is only one element - without the visual I lose interest.

In fact, I have to confess I fell asleep at one of Steven Feld's talks. He was playing a recording of water and sleigh bells. The concert hall was dark and the sounds so relaxing...

But maybe that's just me.

Beyond Text? Not that I could see...

2007-07-03T19:26:00.000+01:00

I'm just back from Manchester, having attended 'Beyond Text? Image:Voice::Sound:Object Synaesthetic and Sensory Practices in Anthropology' conference, part of the 10^th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film.
I was intrigued and amazed to note how reliant all the speakers were on text. Bar a couple of examples, I was stunned to hear entire academic papers read verbatim. As a result, I found them impossible to follow (and not simply because of the jargon-packed language). Many of the papers overran their time slot, and the ones that did manage it only accomplished the time keeping due to their ability to rattle off in excess of 250 words per minute, rendering their speech virtually unintelligible.
This text dominance seemed particularly ironic considering the conference's focus on visual anthropology and its apparent affection towards the visual arts.
The most refreshing presentation I saw was Tomie Hahn and Curtis Bahn's Sensational knowledge, Sensational Ethnography. They presented a live performance of 'Streams' which seemed to me to epitomise 'Beyond Text'.
In more conventional but less text-based presenations David MacDougall presented visual clips expressing non-visual sensory attributes and Steven Feld spoke about Honk Horn Music in Accra, Ghana.

Massively Multi-Learner Workshop

2007-03-28T22:17:00.000+01:00

This workshop was one I attended last week (22nd March 07) at the University of Paisley and centred virtually (no pun intended) exclusively around SecondLife. I thought it covered some fascinating projects and ideas and so decided to write up my notes here on my blog rather than condemning them to my handwritten, archaic paper journal.
NB. A lot of these relate to Second Life spaces and are predominately for my own benefit.

If any of the speakers/organisers ever happen to read this and feel misrepresented then please feel free to contact me and I will happily edit my interpretation of events :-)
The overall themes centred around education and the role of learning in virtual environments. Unfortunately, the first scheduled speaker Carl Potts was unable to attend which was disappointing as the presentation was about World of Warcraft. So the first speaker was actually Dave Taylor from NPL, presenting Knowledge Transfer & Public Engagement in Second Life, where Knowledge Transfer means a knowledge that will cause receiving party to change or alter their behaviour. Dave's blog describes NPL's presence and work in SL much more eloquently than I can so I will not try and replicate it here. Suffice to say that my eyes were beginning to be opened to the possibilities of SL at this point, in terms of the Info islands and the New Media Consortium, Space Island Cluster - most of which I have still to explore! An interesting development with potential for my research is the current beta testing of spatialised sound and speech in SL, where stereo sound and volume is varied depending on the virtual source and distance from your avatar. One of the potential uses for this Dave cited is in learning languages where your tutor accompanies you to shops, restaurants etc., so you can practice your language skills. Final news flash - other species may be in SL in the near future... some form of primates I think.
Finally, I see the benefit of posting online - the ability to link! Aleks Krotoski (Social networking in Virtual Worlds) was the next speaker and you can even see her presentation slides online at SlideShare. She cunningly reminds me that the presentations were filmed and should be posted online shortly. However, here's a couple of notes from her talk that I scribbled down. Firstly, virtual communities can be places of ritual - soon after the July bombings in London a virtual memorial appeared on SL. Secondly, I found the sheer scale of her (phd) research staggering. Aleks has surveyed over 10,000 SL members and mapped their social networks. Even the small scale, localised versions she showed us onscreen were a tangled web of complexity. Just thinking about the wealth of data scared me! I suppose it depends on the depth of collected info from each member...
Schome from Peter Twining was the next presentation. Schome proposes a lifelong learning environment. Conventional style research (e.g. focus groups, interviews) with students and educators on improvements on education revealed little. So, how do you 'break free' and generate 'out of box' thinking? One solution is to use SL and provide lived experiences, where virtually anything is possible. How will these new forms of representation and information change us and the way we communicate? Part of the benefit to me of attending the workshop was discovering new (to me) web technologies - like a bliki (it's a blog with wiki features).
Laz Allen from TPLD presented Games in the Classroom. This was the only non-SL based presentation. An overall theme of the talk was that graphics (essentially 3D) don't matter to the users - the game play is what is important. Bad 3D graphics are more likely to turn players off than good 2D graphics.
Jeremy Kemp presented Sloodle - really interesting but not that relevant to my research I think. Slides online available here. I think it's like a SL version of Moodle...
Mike Hobbs discussed the possible use of SL in teaching programming skills to students. This seemed to be slightly constrained by the limited type of scripting available in SL (LSL - Linden Scripting Language). The aim in this project now is to teach programming design not how to code.
The most interesting and intriguing presentation to me was by Annabeth Robinson, entitled Integrating Second Life into Design for Digital Media. As AngryBeth Shortbread (SL) she makes virtual interactive art installations as seen on blip.tv and obviously in SL. Apart from this, what I found exciting was the way that she uses SL to teach students video production and animation skills. Animation skills can be taught through either using SL to produce machinima as a finished product or as an animatic, where custom animations can be created externally using Poser or something similar and creating the animation rigs too. Video skills can be learnt through scripting and storyboarding, shot composition & camera movement, sound design, production design (in terms of textures, objects etc) & directing skills (other avatars). Obviously one of the huge benefits of SL is the ability to create shots that would impossible in a real-world student film project sense (e.g. huge sets, stunts etc).
The final speaker of the day was Mike Reddy - Putting the Real in to Surreal. To be honest, by this point in the day my mind was a bit frazzled so my memories of this talk are hazy. I think it was quite AI and scientific - one of the PhD students is working on creating plants/flowers that mutate once copied and recreated.
All in all, interesting day - makes me want to use SL a lot more!! Now I just have to get a laptop so I can...

Social presence & Sherlock

2007-03-12T20:38:00.000Z

I was re-reading an article yesterday by Rogers & Lea (2005) on 'Social Presence in Distributed Group Environments: the role of Social Identity' and I got to thinking (somewhat convolutedly) about ubiquitous computing and interactivity. And, bizarrely, Sherlock Holmes.

My train of thought (I think) ran something like this:
Rogers & Lea discuss social presence as key to developing meaningful relationships and group dynamics, whether this is virtual or real life. Presence is either social or physical, where social 'refers to being and communicating with the implication that the medium appears to be transformed into a social entity' and physical presence is the 'sense of being physically located somewhere and implies that the medium appears to be invisible.' So, equally, the physical presence can exist in online and offline situations, where the degree of immersion renders the medium transparent.

In 'real' face to face conversation both the social and physical presence exist, in the form of socially learnt context and geographical location. Rogers & Lea claim that this can exist in online situations where the social presence (through our socially constructed identities) is carried as a personal cognitive representation. It is social presence that bonds members of a group together, working for a common cause/set of principles and, paradoxically, 'environments rich in interpersonal information may, in fact, undermine group identity and result in process losses for the collaborating group.'

This links to the uses of storytelling (where the stories are not your own) as a means of revealing aspects of yourself and your personality, and similarly, I think the multiplicity of identity through different media.

So this ties in with ubicomp quite nicely in terms of physical presence and the 'invisible computer'. For me, reading can provide the invisible medium, more so than any other (which may explain my addiction to buying books) but there is a school of thought which suggests that this a dying hobby. Technology changes the way we write. I used to compose essays in their entirety on paper, only using a computer to type up. Now, I switch between the two, using my pc to compose and edit as I write. But I still print them off to re-draft.

Where are the multimedia essays technologists have promised? Combining text, visuals, audio and video? Is it because creating high quality of each compromises the whole? Each media requires a different skill set.

And so, anyone who has managed to keep reading this blog might be asking - where's Sherlock? It was related to lateral thinking and thought processes. I was reminded of Sherlock following Watson's silent thinking, similarly, Poe's character Dupin is able to interrupt a thought conversation at the right point by reflecting on external stimuli. Admittedly, I did say at the start that it was a convoluted link, which mirrors the final thought processes quite neatly. I suppose Joyce's stream of consciousness extends this.

Ears that open mouths

2007-02-19T16:25:00.000Z

"There are ears that have the power to open mouths" - I'm not sure who said that...

I heard the above quote just last Saturday at a storytelling workshop "Looking for Peace" led by Angela Knowles. I think it was only then that I realised the importance of listening.

Storytelling fascinates me. I think it's because it's similar to reading a novel. There are different styles of storytellers, different types of stories, yet the same stories are told uniquely. I'm not sure what it is that I find so compelling - it may be because, unlike a film, where you don't have to use imagination, a story can be more vivid because you do. Maybe it's the slower pace, the concentration on one thing as opposed to 101 things.

We had to split into groups at the workshop and each learn and tell a story to the rest of the group. I saw a fantastic bird which had 'flown through a rainbow' and smelt freshly baked bread and cinnamon buns.

I suppose the importance of the initial quote is for me the crux of storytelling. As a 'listener' I find it absorbing - a collective experience which wouldn't happen if the audience didn't listen or participate.

Perhaps one day an audience will 'participate' and be immersed in a story I tell...

What constitutes ethnography?

2007-02-06T15:27:00.000Z

I'm writing up my transfer report at the moment and I've hit the 'methods' chapter. Originally I intended using ethnography to explore information seeking in oral cultures, however due to difficulties in accessing study groups and my evolving research themes, I decided that ethnography was not the best method for me.

Still I got to thinking, what actually is ethnography? Today, in the modern, electronic world? Ethnography seems to be a buzz word at the moment adopted by non-anthropological fields, such as HCI. Denzin talks about the stages of ethnography, its evolution from imperial roots looking at 'primitive' cultures to reflecting on our own culture and society.

Perhaps the terminology is too sweeping, the meaning of ethnography seems to have changed, comparatively experimental writing styles such as poetry and auto-ethnography strive to establish validity.

Renee Hopkins Callahan's group called the work in a 1-week data gathering section of a project ethnography and subsequently found complaints about it published on a blog.

For my research, I would like to cherry-pick some of the ethnographic ideas whilst realising that an ethnographic study in a traditional sense is beyond my scope and indeed, may not give the best results. Dourish's concerns that ethnography does not lead usefully into 'implications for design' seem well founded to me. Ethnography should be able to stand in its own right.

So hopefully, my ethnographesque style combined with other qualitative research methods will give me a varied, rich set of data.

new site

2006-11-26T00:28:00.000Z

Finally, I have got around to creating some pages for my research. I say that, actually I haven't written the content yet but at least I've created the structure and set up some skeleton pages.

I'm sure I'll get around to writing them soon...