Maybe this is the future of digitally mediated “empathic teaching?”

http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/Eliza.htm

I also learned how to think differently. Not only think, but compose differently. This was a huge shift for me. I reflected earlier on feeling like I was a kid learning how to hold a pencil. This is because I am in the process of learning a new way of creating–using the Prezi and the mindmapping software to write was challenging, but useful. Sometimes I felt like different parts of my brain were tweaking–like I’ve been using certain neural connections and networks that have become routine over time. Whenever I felt a strong resistance to something I tried to push past it and sure enough, a new “tweak” would happen. It’s funny because at first I wanted to use these technologies to present my research and my argument(s). I’m thankful for our class discussion around weeks 10-11 because reading peoples’ experiences and watching their presentations made me realize I was going about this wrong. Once I tried composing with this software (if that’s even the right word) the Prezi, for example, clicked into place.

I had a hard time a few aspects of the class, however. While I tried my best to push past some resistances to digitally networked learning, I think they rumbled underneath the surface enough to encourage me to put off participating in discussion until the last-minute. I became very involved with presenting my research ideas to my union members and pretty invested in making sure I was prepared to “speak” to the readings on my blog. But I had a hard time wading through all the conversations–I would get lost and confused and run out of time. I eventually learned to manage my time a bit differently, but ultimately I was not satisfied with my participation in class. This was a shift for me, because in ftf environments I’m almost always participating. Here I would just read and read–kind of an equivalent of staying quiet! I’ve never been the quiet student in class! I would lurk and read, but always felt out of the loop or never quite a part of the conversation. I remember perking up when we talked about which games made an impact on our lives growing up. This was my favorite discussion thread.

I haven’t developed the skills to read quickly through this much text. I am a slow reader and get very distracted when I read. I find my eyes jump all over the text and somehow the printed page has helped slow me down and focus. I’ll be thinking of the strategies I stared developing in this class when I start reading for my preliminary exams. I think they’ll be helpful in that context.

I also like being challenged. When I started feeling wierd and resistant I tried to tune in to that discomfort. I’m rarely one to shut these moments down because I think they can be generative.

If I were to take this class over again, I’d do the following differently:

• I would take it in a semester where I had a lighter course and teaching load. I am on the fence whether there was too much work. I know some of our class discussions centered on this point of contention, but I feel once I figured out that I’d need to shift my learning strategies the workload felt easier to manage. Still, I didn’t have enough time to get everything done on time.
• I would work harder to balance reading and writing about the readings on my personal blog with reading other peoples’ work.
• I might try to experiment more with the presentations. While I feel I got a lot out of what I did, I would have liked to make the PK20X20 work.

I like that I now have a project with a future. As I mentioned in my paper, I’ve taken these ideas to my union and there’s a real possibility we’ll reconsider the role of art, technology, and “critical play” in how we organize. This is pretty exciting, and one of the first times I’ve actually used a seminar project to do something real in the world. Part of why I chose this project was because many of the readings encouraged us to rethink audience. When I write seminar papers it’s mainly for myself and my professor. With this project, however, the form of the Prezi or PK 20×020 forced me to think about audience. This made me want to address more than a couple people; I felt encouraged to get creative about the possibilities this project has for the future.

We’ll see if these technologies make it into my own classrooms. I am in love with teaching ftf, and many of my scholarly interests are centering on ways of teaching. The “ways” I’m interested in would not work online and I’m not interested in cultivating them in the online world, but I think I’ll have my eye out more for discussions, theories, and philosophies about ways of teaching in digital space.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dd55tqm7_14fjn5dd7

So I’ve been working on the PowerPoint and it’s going slowly. I decided to also do a mind map based on one of Anne’s suggestions on the Ning, and it’s been a huge help. I can’t seem to find a way to embed the XHTML version I exported to my computer (because it’s not server-side or something like that, right?). I used the Jing to take a screen shot and uploaded it here.

The mind map is helping me visualize my ideas for the paper. Version 1 of my project helped me figure out some of the gaps in my thinking. Version 2 is helping me organize those thoughts and think about which threads to take up in my final draft, what the order might eventually be, how much research I have left to do, and where I may wish to insert a visual appendix, or embed the pictures as color photos, or try and “publish” the paper through a digitally mediated technology. We’ll see–these are things I’m working on.

If anyone has any idea about how I can embed the mind map into my blog, I’d love to hear it!

I think what I tried to think through with the Prezi is that the labor movement in the U.S. has a long relationship to art in the printed form. Because printed text is cheap and easy to produce, portable, and connected to one of the earliest union shops in New York in the late 1800s, I think labor has been reticent to transition to other forms of artistic expression. Also, there is a deep suspicion of the historical and present-day connections high (and I might argue, conceptual) art has to bourgeoise ideology. If art doesn’t work, that is, labor in the service of the revolution, art thus exists for its own sake.  Art prints (banners, fliers, union labels, sidewalk imprints, posters) work–they take art seriously as a means to communicate, educate, agitate, and empower. I think the movement is reluctant to interact with digital art as agitation because the message is often disorganized. This runs counter to the movement’s goals to organize, organize, organize. Rhizomatic forms of experiential, spontaneous, flash-mob (dis)organization like the message in the video seem to go against the grain of labor’s work. I want to argue with Raley, Flanagan, and Wark however, that  “critical play,” through “tactical media” is serious work–work the movement better take seriously to stay relevant.

Whew. That was helpful to work out. Thanks.

The idea came from Katt Blackwell-Starnes , and I’m thankful for her inspiration. This site is modeled after her own preliminary exams site. I didn’t mean for mine to look so similar, but it turns out we have similar taste in WordPress template designs.

Behold: (dis)Organize Now!

Version 1

Paper Proposal: This paper seeks to explore the intersections of digital technology and activist organizing through the history and current practices of the U.S. Labor movement. Rita Raley recently argued that modes of revolutionary dissent have changed since the days when “storming the barricades” was the dominant means of protest. Citing the Critical Art Ensemble’s declaration that “the streets are dead captial,” Raley suggests that the nature of power has shifted from the streets and become nomadic. Activism and dissent, she believes, must do the same and “enter the network,” as many political engaged new media art projects have begun to do. Rather than continue to ineffectively operate at the macro-level of “the Revolution,” she notes, activist movements must engage dissent at the micropolitical level of disruption and education (1).

What can a critically informed and radically engaged digital art movement bring to the U.S. Labor movement? I argue the Labor movement is in crisis and would benefit from “entering the network,” and Raley suggests. This paper will explore the history of the Labor movement in the U.S. to situate why there might exist a tension between art-based political organizing and the work Labor activists value as “real work.” I will think this tension through the thinking of Rita Raley, McKenzie Wark, Mary Flanagan, Galloway and Thacker, and Robert Harriman to suggest that the Labor movement must shift its strategies to think horizontally, rhizomatically, and artistically in order to stay relevant in the 21^st century and beyond.

Project Proposal: I would like to propose that the Milwaukee Graduate Assistants Association create a new position for the 2010-2011 school year. The organization should think about creating a “Vice President of Strategic Disorganization” position on the Executive Committee. This officer would chair the “Ministry of Strategic Disorganization” committee, which would be a group made up of people interested in creating multimodal, artistic responses to labor issues at UW-Milwaukee and in the community at large. After surveying many graduate labor organizations’ websites, I can say this position would be innovative in that appears it would be the first of its kind in the nation.

Here is some loose thinking based on experience. In my experience, labor unions do not encourage fun. There is always work to be done—the Revolution is on the horizon and if we just work long and hard enough, we can change the world. I perceive a tension between “play,” and “work.” I think Flanagan’s idea of critical play in conjunction with Raley’s work on “tactical media” would be a useful way to think of radically shifting the way labor organizing thinks of activism. I think these theories would be a way for labor organizing to connect with younger activists and to explore new and creative ways of serious play. I can imagine this “Ministry of Strategic Disorganizing” working with other artistic laborers to create an arcade video game like Molleindustria’s TuboFlex to put in the student union. They may work with graduate students in the music department to organize a street band that could organize “flashmob” style and disrupt public spaces or accompany marchers during rallies.

I am thinking of setting up a digital network for people interested in “Strategic Disorganizing” in the U.S. Labor movement. I like http://rhizome.org/. Stay tuned.

“Art has long been intertwined with politics; the twentieth century has witnessed
provocative materials produced during the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the
Constructivist political design used in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the theatrical
protests in World War I and in, the 1968 student postering campaigns, and the
U.S. civil rights campaigns that used mixed media. The book’s arrival is well timed, for this is a significant era in which to learn how to play in ways that break the mold and open up ,what play can be, and at the same time possibly benefit someone or something.”

Chapter 2:

“In the West, play became organized and structured around objects at the onset of industrialization. Henri Lefebvre (1901- 1991), noted twentieth-century Marxist critic and philosopher, whose influential writings connect social systcms to space, noted that the construction of the concept of “leisure” was key to contemporary notions of the everyday and that it took the development of a bourgeois culture to create the idea of leisure for all”

“While the ruling class enjoyed free time, changing class relations and a growing desire for leisure combined among the masses, creating a “culture of the consumcr.” In turn, the commodities and goods developed to satisfy the masses’ desires for leisure time came to reflect the power structure of a developing elite. Play cannot erase these distinctions, but play may often reinforce established power or challenge il. ‘~ In many cases, the activities of play carry nostalgic and class-informed notions of free time, leisure, and access-a tendency still inadequately addressed by most theorists of play” (24). This might be helpful to think about Labor’s resistance to play–deep historical “nostalgias” related to class-informed notions of free time.

This research helps situate my theories historically. For my project I am interested in taking up some of the thinking about digital activism around claims that “the streets are dead avenues for activism.” I am inclined to agree with this claim(s) because the state, especially in the U.S., but also internationally, has clamped down on public protest so tightly as to make it very difficult for people to organize and protest in public spaces. I believe the decline in public activism since 2000 is knotted at three points: the rise and proliferation of digital culture, the G.W. Bush presidency and consolidation of media ownership by six mega corporations in the U.S.

This might be worth taking up in my paper rather than here. How I see Flanagan’s project informing my own is because I’m curious whether my local (Union local) would consider creating a “Ministry of Disorganization” position or committee. I suspect not, though this group could engage in “critical play” in ways Flanagan suggests can be something powerful, subversive, and fun. Unions across the country are aging out–they are having a hard time staying relevant. I wonder whether taking up some tactics deployed by the Critical Art Ensemble, for example, would help revive the Union movement in the States. Flanagan’s article, however, points to a history that would inform why this is unlikely. I find her use of Lefebvre helpful to think about “leisure,” and how organized labor constructs its identity in opposition to leisure, while at the same time works to maintain a 5-day working week so people have leisure time. Anyway, this is just some process thinking for now.

I believe Flanagan, Sicart and Castronova all argue the most influential aspects of digital gaming are how the game is designed, and that computer games must be considered in accord with economic, moral, historical, and social values. Of the three authors, Flanagan spends the most time (or at least, I think so, though I’m not sure because all three are excerpts of larger projects) exploring the radical potential of “critical play,” which involves thinking of designing games as part of an overarching art experience centered on “artistic, political, and social critique or intervention” (1). In other words, Flanagan sees play as a critical part of not only entertainment, but also creative, conceptual and political work.

She notes that critical play can operate subversively, allowing participants to challenge dominant cultural patterns that are often slow to change in real-time societies. For example Flanagan examines The Sims, explaining the potential for world-creation that, while is at the same time inextricably connected to the historical situation of the suburbs in post-World War II America, can challenge the gendered, raced, and classed dimensions of suburban living (61). Flanagan is careful to remind us throughout this excerpt that game designers are unable to extract themselves from the social systems in which they exist, and that these systems end up recreated in the game play itself. “Therefore,” she notes, ” if game makes wish to encourage critical play, they must work like a virus from within to infect and radically change what is expected and what is possible when players play” (62).

But as Miguel Sicart notes, designing computer games is a difficult task, especially if game design is a “moral activity.” Sicart opens chapter 7 by asking, “If the goal of game design is, generally speaking, to create compelling gameplay–how can we create interesting ethical gameplay?” (208). Sicart aruges that the game experience is a moral one because the values a player brings to the gaming experience, as well as his choices in gameplay, make him an ethical agent (212). When a game design knits a players’ moral decisions into gameplay, Sicart argues this kind of ethical simulation fails because “they alienate ethical capacities of players [and] turn gameplay into a statistical contest between causal chains” (212-13). Instead, game designers should make games according to the fact that real life moral agents play them, and thus, should not include predetermined moral systems embedded in the play, but rather, must get the player to experience the game where she can invent the values that guide her gaming experience (213).

Sicart worries that game designers do not actually care about the ethics of their products. His project seeks to articulate a framework that can “inspire and challenge” game designers (208). He also admits the onus isn’t completely on the designers, however. “All nodes in the network are guilt of something,” he remarks. From the academics who highlight the industry’s sins (yet “make educational programs that seem to require the seal of approval of the same industry”) to the media and marketing professionals who promote games that are unethical–the entire system needs to shift its relationship to video gaming. Specifically, he notes, we must start remembering that complex moral beings play these games, and thus design games in accord with encouraging people to behave ethically in the world (230-31).

Edward Castronova, in spite of his claim that his is not a “book of hype,” conveys a sense of urgency about the future that is palpable in his prose. Castronova, an economic theorist, urges us to think ahead to a future where human consciousness may increasingly be mapped into/onto a synthetic universe that will in turn influence the economic, political, social, and cultural experiences “outside” that virtual world (11).  “The coding authority who owns and controls a synthetic world could pave the streets with diamonds if it desired. The coding authority could also order the world to make gems that are more beautiful than diamonds…All of these coding decisions would affect the price of diamonds and the happiness of the people wearing them…If the coding authority messes around with its virtual diamonds, it will affect some aspects of the love relationships between living, breathing humans” (8).

In this context,  “coding authority” is a bit ambiguous. “Authority” implies a larger organization with vested power, while at the same time, a “coding authority” could be an individual player who creates skins (or appliances, or other goods for The Sims). Primarily, however, “coding authority” most importantly represents a faction I see interpolated by Flanagan and Sicart’s projects as well. Those who have the power, drive, and ability to create have an ethical obligation to pay attention to how their efforts impact not only the material conditions of the here and now, but future worlds earthly and digital.