Identity:

link to eCulture Blog

Week 6: Identity and Digital Culture

We'll begin the second module of our study of Electronic Culture by raising the issue of identity, especially the similarities and differences between identity-forming activities in physical and in digital environments. We'll frame our discussion of indentity through a cultural-historical model which takes into account the role of culture as a mediating aspect of human activity. The key question raised is whether consciousness and identity can be summed up by the saying: "You are what you do." (Bonnie Nardi)

Readings & Media:

"FM Interviews: Bonnie Nardi" (1996)First Monday, Vol.1, No.1 May 6th. 1996, at www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue1/nardi/, Retrieved October 12, 2005

Abel, A. (2005). 2045: The End of Identity. Macleans, October 10, 2005, p. 107-111.

Miller, P. (2004) Rhythm Science. Cambridge: MIT, p. 4-53

Hardt, D. (2005). Identity 2.0. OSCON 2005, Keynote address, presentation available at http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/

Week 7: Self-reflection in practice

The topic of "reflective practice" is a key area of discussion in art and design communities, but this discussion is often heated. We will consider what it means to reflect upon what you're doing in the world and the relationship that communicating these reflections has on your identity (i.e. how you see yourself and how others see you). Building off of the mediation model presented in Week 6, we will consider how mediating artifacts in analog and digital environments are involved in reflective systems.

Film viewing:

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control by Errol Morris, homepage found at http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/fastcheap/

Related Media/Readings:

Designer Ze Frank's homepage, found at: http://www.zefrank.com or try Who is Ze Frank? at Google.

Duchamp, M. (1957) The Creative Act, http://www.humboldt.edu/~cs7005/article3.html

REQUIRED*: Gover, M. (1996) The Narrative Emergence of Identity, Paper presented at the Fifth International Conference on Narrative. Lexicon, Kentucky, October 18-20, retrieved October 14, 2005 at http://www.msu.edu/user/govermar/narrate.htm

*note: the schemas displayed in Monday's lecture are available through links embeded in the paper.

Week 8: Biography vs. blogography

Having considered digital media and digital environments in the formation of identity, in Week 8 we will look at a particularly phenomenon of this process that has reached "critical mass" in popular culture: blogs. We will perform a cultural-historical analysis of the blogging phenomenon using Vygotsky's social constructivist framework and core idea of a "zone of proximal development."

Readings:

Stone, B. (2004) Who Let the Blogs Out?: A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs, St. Martins Griffin

Ojala, M. (2004) "Weaving Weblogs into Knowledge Sharing and Dissemination", Nord I&D Knowledge & Change, retrieved October 15, 2005 at http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://www2.db.dk/NIOD/ojala.pdf

Rosenberg, S. (1999) "Fear of links: While professional journalists turn up their noses, weblog pioneers invent a new, personal way to organize the Web's chaos.", Salon Magazine, May 28, 1999, retrieved October 15, 2005 http://www.salon.com/tech/col/rose/1999/05/28/weblogs/index.html

Sullivan, S. (2002) "The Blogging Revolution: Weblogs are to Words what Napster was to Music", Wired Magazine, Issue 10.5, May 2002, retrieved October 15, 2005 http://www. wired.com/wired/archive/10.05/mustread.html?pg=2

Garfield, S. (2004) "New Kids on the Blog", The Observer, April 4, 2004, retrieved October 15, 2005 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1185061,00.html

Video Media

Lessig, L. (2004, December 11). Free Culture. Keynote presentation presented at the Scholarship in the Digital Age public symposium, Annenberg School for Communication (USC), Los Angeles, CA. [video web stream]

Blogging Resources (and their advertising "tag" lines):

B2evolution, a "multilingual multiuser multi-blog engine": http://b2evolution.net/about/license.html

bBlog, where "blogging never felt so good": http://www.bblog.com/

Blog:CMS, "the most advanced personal content management system": http://blogcms.com

Blogger, [hey they don't even have a tag line!]: http://www.blogger.com/start

blosxom, "the zen of blogging": http://www.blosxom.com/

PMachine's Expression Engine, where you can "publish your universe": http://www.pmachine.com/

Six Apart's Moveable Type, "the premier weblog publishing platform for businesses, organizations, developers, and web designers": http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/

Nucleus, "Ligth. Flexible. Secure. Pure Publishing.": http://www.nucleuscms.org

Pivot, a "self-contained logtool": http://www.pivotlog.net/

Serendipity, "a PHP Weblog/Blog software": http://www.s9y.org/

SPIP, "système de publication pour l’internet": english documentation at http://www.spip.net/en

.text by Workspaces, "online collaborative development": http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?ID=E99FCCB3-1A8C-42B5-90EE-348F6B77C407

Textpattern, "A free, flexible, elegant, easy-to-use content management system for all kinds of websites, even weblogs": http://www.textpattern.com/

Wordpress, "a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. What a mouthful. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.": http://wordpress.org/

[above links found at http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm, retrieved October 12, 2005]

Week 9: Multiplex Consciousness, Experience, and Performance

While the term "multiplex" is used mostly to describe the technical process of taking multiple streams of digital information and "muxing" it into a single stream, electronic performer Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) uses the same term to describe the multifaceted consciousness and identity we face in electronic culture. We'll be exploring this key idea through Paul's work while citing several examples in electronic culture of such networked identities emerging through practical activities. We'll also tie these ideas into Mark C. Taylor's discussion on "Strange Loops" of self-reflective and self-referential systems by picking up from the discusson of closed systems (where we left off in Week 5) and moving into Taylor's ideas relating to open systems, living organisms, and autopoeisis.

Readings:

Miller, P. (2004) Rhythm Science. Cambridge: MIT, p. 60-112

Jacucci, G., Isomursu, M., (in press) Facilitated and Performed "Happenings" as resources in ubiquitous computing design. To appear in Digital Creativity Journal. [ATTACHED BELOW]

Jacucci, G., Interaction as Performance. Cases of configuring physical interfaces in mixed media. Doctoral Thesis, University of Oulu, Acta Universitatis Ouluensis. 2004. available at http://users.tkk.fi/~giulio/isbn9514276051.pdf [READ ONLY THE PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION]

Taylor, M. C. (2001). The moment of complexity: emerging network culture. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. "Chapter 4: Strange Loops"

Audio/Video Clips

Miller, P. (2005, September). Sound Unbound. Mainstage presentation presented at the AIGA Design Conference 2005, Boston, MA. [video web stream]

Miller, P. (2005, September). Rhythm Science. Focused Session presentation presented at the AIGA Design Conference 2005, Boston, MA. [video web stream]

Miller, P. (Producer). (2005). Twisted Science [Shared in class]. New York, NY.

Deane, E. (Executive Producert), Thompson, H. (Series Producer), Espar, D. (Senior Producer), Palmer, R. (Chief Consultant), & Schrieber, L. (Narrator). (1995, September) Rock & Roll, PBS and WGBH television [video recording from 1998]

Peisch, J. (Series Producer) & Benz, O. (Director). (1995) The History of Rock n' Roll: Up from the Underground, Vol. 10 of 10, PBS [excerpt, video web stream]

Week 10: Submit Individual Project

• NO LECTURE OR WORKSHOPS as it is Techweek
• Submit 2 individual weblogs (you can link the second one from your original blog) [Assigment info document attached, see below]
• Submit team discussion summary, posted in 402 team discussion folder.
• All are due Thursday, November 10 by 11:59 pm (Friday is a holiday remember?)