The Assignment
Pick three online sites or activities for the class to immerse
themselves in or otherwise play with. Then find one critical reading
for each activity that helps us go "meta" -- to think about the meaning
of the activity -- for the class to read. (You might try JStor or
Project Muse, databases that can be reached via the library website
[http://libraries.colorado.edu/screens/findarticles.html].)The reading
should make the activity more meaningful in some way.
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Activity #1
In the same vein as the 90s internet craze of e-cards, sites such as Elf Yourself and JibJab allow users to insert themselves and their friends into popular frames of reference, such as in movie spoofs, as dancers and as athletes. Around holiday time (the site is down until then) Facebook newsfeeds are full of videos of Buddy the Elf suits with friends’ faces, singing merry Christmas tunes. And the ever-popular Star Wars "remake" also allows one to put photos of friends in place of Luke, Princess Leia and more. This type of site is significant not only because it allows for escapism of the viewer, but it also blurs the line between audience and performer, since the performer is also the person watching. The creator and people the videos are sent to have the freedom of identity in this space, to be both who they are and someone they are not. It is easy and even funny to place one’s face on the body of a character of the opposite sex, for instance. In the essay “All the World Wide Web’s a Stage,” Erika Pearson highlights the ways in which individuals perform identity in social spaces on the web. These sendable meta-videos reflect the idea of self-conscious re-personification of the self in the other, as well as the fantasy illusions of theatricality that the internet allows us to pursue.
Pearson's "All the World Wide Web's a Stage"
Activity #2
As a free video podcast airing on iTunes from March 2006 to 2007, The Show by Ze Frank was a short daily clip on news and general blather that gained quite an internet following. Once again blurring the line between audience and performer, watchers sent in their own filmed intros for the show so they can watch themselves, and often Ze’s video responses deal with followers emails. In this way, The Show fostered a sense of inclusion, even globally, though most of the followers never met. Though The Show is no longer airing, popular episodes are still available for watching (I suggest “Scrabble”). Beyond The Show the website itself, zefrank.com, expands far beyond the video confines of the podcast, displaying all manner of self- and community created online absurdity: games, doodlers, parody dance lessons, examinations of his cat Annie, etc. Ze Frank calls his website and projects “online play spaces.” While the website is difficult to navigate and the links seem to be hardly more than ridiculous time wasters, Ze Frank offers up a greater sense of online community and pleasure-filled escapism. To connect Ze Frank’s exploits to a more academic sphere, reading Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy” seems appropriate in that the Dionysiac experience, one of pleasure and absolute chaos, brings forth a sense of order, contentment, and connectedness within a community much likes Ze Frank’s work.
e-text on Nietzsche's “The Birth of Tragedy”
Activity #3
In this internet era, sites such as StumbleUpon continually encourage a decrease in attention span as one focuses on material. StumbleUpon gives users the opportunity to curtail the information to their interests, potentially censoring more important or interesting websites. Then they click a “Stumble” icon, view the randomly generated site (which can deal with everything from high art to cute puppy pictures to motorcycles and world news) and click “Stumble” again when they are ready to view another website. The idea is a sort of internet lotto, filtering through sites with the ability to “like” and “dislike” articles and items in a potentially streamlined and fast space. In this way, the internet turns us (as said in the following BBC News article) into “digital goldfish,” always forgetting the last items we viewed and only moving onto the next.
BBC News: “Turning Into Digital Goldfish”
