Images Text and Comics

We have been discussing all semester, in nearly all of my classes, how text and images work together, how they represent each other, compliment each other, replace each other.  But, there is no better way to illustrate their dependency on each other than to read Scott McLoud’s Understanding Comics: the Invisible Art (1994). In Chapter Two, the Vocabulary of Comics.  His interpretation of how we view images and how our minds perceive those images is really interesting.  He talks about the icon and the fact that they are representational.  Words too are a representation and, are some times used in place of images as a representation of their meaning.  When McLoud talks about the reader identifying themselves in the images, I think this is an important factor in understanding the pull of this genre.  Who doesn’t want to be the hero? Who doesn’t want to be the one to discover the cure?  So when we identify with the image and identify with the words that go with that image, there is an interdependency that allows an understanding which depends on the interaction between image and text.  There is always such a hierarchy put on genres of writing.  When placing the intellectual at the top, it’s hard to see that something like a comic can relay as much of a message and appeal to an audience that may never be exposed to certain philosophies because they don’t consider themselves to be intellectuals.  Comics should not be confused with lack of content and should also not be discarded as meaningless unless fully explored by those it reaches as well as those it doesn’t.  Our world is filled with comic icons everywhere from the buttons on our toolbars to the crossing signs on our street corners.  We shouldn’t try to separate and alienate one genre from another.  No one really knows what will spark the imagination and attention in a another.

Video Games Are More than Hand Eye Coordination

Everyone, but the players that is, that talks about video games see them as pure entertainment and a waste of time. When I was a kid, my mother thought that watching TV and movies was a waste of time. But when I got older and started writing screenplays and studying film, she saw that it could possibly be a career that was sparked from watching all those movies when I was a kid. I think the same goes for video games, especially the games that James Gee, in his chapter on Semiotic Domains: Is Playing Video Games a “Waste of Time”? discusses. These role playing games are not your father’s Pong. To maneuver through these games, you have to think about your surroundings, where you are, where the other characters are and how to get from one place to another. There are often maps that have to be interpreted and followed in order to get from one place to another. The player must adapt themselves quickly to their surroundings in order to progress through the game. This is more than hand eye coordination. This is critical thinking and learning on the spot. This is watching where you are, where you are going, and many times where you have come from in order to continue through the game. I know adults that cannot master these games and I think that this dismissal of the games is partially a response to a feeling of intimidation and fear of the unknown. We have seen all through history critics negatively responding to something new that became a foundation for something brilliant in the future. Including the response and label of “outlandish” to statements such as the possibility that the world was not flat, or that the earth rotated around the sun, not the other way around. I agree with Gee that “If learning is to be active, it must involve experiencing the world in new ways.” We have entered a phase that incorporates electronic communication, on all sorts of levels, and that electronic basis is going to continue, because we cannot go backward. How do we equip children to be ready for what is coming next? How do we train them to be comfortable in an electronic age and prepare them for the next step? Can we equip them by simply putting a book in front of them and teach them the theory of the world around them without hands on experience? I think that in order to prepare them for what they will have to learn in ten years, we have to think of new ways to instruct. Ten years ago, Rowan was not the electronic transfer it is today. Most readings were handed out by the instructor in class, a trip to the library was exactly that and not a VPN connection from your home to available online databases, or, we go onto Blackboard and download reading assignments. Who knows the advances that Rowan will make in electronic communication in the next ten years? We owe it to our children to look at every possibility available to reach them and allow them to grow and be prepared for what they will encounter in ten years. Different types of personalities respond to different stimuli, we should allow our children the availability of every kind of teaching tool to spark that core of interest and response.

Response to Noah Takes a Picture of Himself for 6 Years

Morphing Michael Jackson

Plagiarism: Do We Need New Eyes?

In reading Rebecca Moore Howard’s Understanding “Internet Plagiarism” I couldn’t help but think that, although she raises some new and interesting viewpoints on how to handle and possibly control student plagiarism with the increasing availability to information in the form of Itext and online papers, that we still may be looking at this issue with old ideas. The expansive availability of information available to students does even more to blur the line further between plagiarism and information gathering. But if we look at this in another context, it may turn the idea of every student being a potential “criminal” out to steal every idea they get their hands on, which the present policies seem to say to us as students. We spend out entire semester, as a group, discussing themes and ideas presented by our instructors about certain authors relative to the courses we are studying. At some point, the line between what we have absorbed that is the authors words and the way we think we understand that authors words has to blur. Can we discuss, even Howard’s ideas on plagiarism, without absorbing it into our own thinking? And, doesn’t this create a sort of mini public domain within the discourse community that we have created in our classroom? Isn’t the whole idea behind the types of academic essays that our grades are based on, to simply tell the instructor that we have retained some of the ideas that we have covered? The present system of handing out plagiarism policies on the first day of every class that we take in college for four years, just reinforces to the student a mistrust that has developed between instructor and students. We feel that our instructors “assume” we are going to cheat and before we even hand in one assignment, we are going on the premise that our work is not going to be scrutinized for our absorption, but on the assumption that we have “cheated.” We have, in effect, already been accused and are trying to prove something that many students do not intentionally participate in. If we have, for instance, discussed David Jay Bolter’s ideas on writing spaces all semester, at one point, we have all agreed that this has become common knowledge within our classroom discourse community. Wouldn’t it make more sense, since we are writing papers for one reason alone, to get a grade, to worry about plagiarism if we publish? This would solve the whole “errors in citation” area that Howard discusses. Or, tack on a copywrite fee to our already ridiculous amount of student fees that would cover any misplaced or unaccounted for citations. These types of fees work for public use of music, play productions, movie theaters, etc. Why not find a system that allows our students to worry about the work instead of worrying about every thought they put onto paper? Why not create an environment that induces learning and a free exchange of ideas on all levels, including internet sources, without the mistrust and need for preemptive defensive maneuvers that the present system continues to reinforce?

Failed YouTube Video Stunt

Two Peoria teens were injured when they crashed a 2002 Mitsubishi Eclipse while attempting to shoot a car stunt for posting on the You Tube video-sharing site.

A Rape is a Rape is a Rape

In A Rape in Cyberspace; or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society (Dibbell, Village Voice, 1993) the thing that jumps out at me is the human need for order. I kept being reminded of the children in William Golding’s 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies and thinking of how they wanted to run free without any laws and that without any laws, everything is anarchy. Maybe it is just human nature to want order and civility, even in cyberspace. The fact that these images were taken so seriously and the group convened just as they would if this happened in their own neighborhood, says something about ourselves as humans. Maybe the only thing that does separate us from the animals is the ability to control our base urges. I think we are starting to see evidence that these abilities to control even cyberspace speak to our humanity. The one thing that really jumped out at me, was not the hierarchy that ultimately ensued, but the fact that one of the conclusions reached by the author is that rape must be “classed as a crime against the mind – more intimately and deeply hurtful…and virtual rape, but undeniably located on the same conceptual continuum.” The information concerning rape has been trying to get to this point all along. It’s not the physical repercussions but the emotional and psychological that are far more damaging in cases of rape. It is a violent attempt at control that denigrates the person or maybe even the avatar, because this case shows that the difference between cyberspace and reality may not be that far apart after all.

No More Textbooks?

Virtual Reality Can Be Creepy

In an article in Wired Magazine (Copyright 1994-2003 Wired Digital, Inc.) entitled Who Am We? the exploration of moving from a “modernist calculation toward postmodernist simulation” by studying various people and their views on the virtual reality of several types of programs including online MUDs is interesting and kind of creepy. Not being a MUDder myself, I always wondered if there was a point where the virtual reality became the reality and caused severe psychological problems. Specifically discussed in the article was Stewart, MUD name Achilles, who describes himself as reclusive, is logged onto “one MUD or another for at least 40 hours a week.”  According to author Sherry Turkle, Stewart “spends his time constructing a life that is more expansive than the one he lives in physical reality.” Since early childhood he suffered from a heart problem that also kept him reclusive. In reading Stewart’s story, I could understand how utilizing virtual reality might be helpful for someone who would otherwise not be able to connect with other people. But again, I wondered if this would not blur the line of reality and cyberspace to the point of being more harmful. Steward has dated and become engaged to a woman he met MUDding. When the online engagement party was thrown, several members gathered together and toasted the couple. Stewart, of course, participated from his computer. Stewart has admitted that even though he was able to participate in social interaction that he otherwise would not have been exposed, “MUDs have stripped away some of his defenses but have given him nothing in return.” He also feels that “MUDs now make him feel sick. He feels addicted to MUDs.” And admits that MUDding has not helped to “bring these good experiences inside himself or integrate them into his self-image.”

I am still left wondering if the anonymity of these virtual worlds can really give us the guiltless escape we think they can. And when does virtual reality become part of your psychological reality and the line blur? Is it really safe for our psyche’s to explore gender role playing, rape, murder and various other so-called harmless acts in cyberspace? I guess time will tell because this virtual reality that we have created is not going away any time soon. As a matter of fact, I wonder how long it will be before we can actually physically step into this virtual world and act it out instead of just typing directions to our persona into our computers from the safety and privacy of our homes.

Images That Need No Words…Except Maybe…STOP

We work so hard to find the right words, to describe things so clearly. And then an image like this comes along and we need nothing more. I have included the caption (below) from the picture and the link to The National Geographic website as well if you are interested in viewing in the entire video from the seal hunt.

Cape Breton Island, Canada, March 31, 2008—A trail of blood remains as sealers load harp seal carcasses following a hunt off the coast of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
Canada’s 2008 harvest limit is set at 275,000 harp seals, 5,000 more than in 2007, according to the AFP news agency. About 800 seals were killed on March 28 alone.