About Homework Assignments

The assignments that are listed on this page are to be completed before class starts the day they are due. The latest assignment will be placed at the top to reduce scrolling.

for Thursday, April 1

In addition of to readings from Visual Culture: A Reader, please read the essay by Edwards and Tryon, the essay from Tryon, and the selections from Tryon’s book that can be found on the Readings page of the course web site. The readings ask us to consider the implications and meaning-making potential of online video creation, remixes, and mashups.

Locate one or two topic areas you might be interested in exploring for the Remix #2 project. Go through the videos in your area and locate videos that speak to, inform, and contradict traditional notions of that topic. Think about how older videos evoke different reactions from the viewers, and how animations and animals have a different impact than non-animations and humans. How can we exploit those differences? How can we engage them to help make our point? Think about how the theories you have read help inform/explain your readings of the videos that you’ve found.

Compose a synopsis blog post in which you discuss the topic area you have chosen, why it is important to you and in general for our society/culture. Discuss the kind of point you want to make about this topic and why you think that point is important. Discuss some of the videos that you watched that you think you might want to mash-up and how you might bring those videos together to make your point. Talk a little about the sequence, the music, the kind of cutting you might do, and so on. In general, start talking about the kind of video you want to create, what you are going to use, how you are going to use it, and why the statement you are going to make is important.

for Thursday, March 11

Please watch the following videos. The first two are explorations of the implications of YouTube. The second two are on Creative Commons licensing and copyright. The fifth is about fair use. The 6th is a full-length film, running just under an hour and a half.

“An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube,” by Michael Wesch (55.33 minutes):

“A Crisis of Significance” by a student in one of Wesch’s classes:

“Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity”

“A Shared Culture”

“Wanna Work Together”

“Remix Culture: Fair Use is Your Friend”

RIP: A Remix Manefesto, directed by Brett Gaylor

And if you have a few minutes, check out the full version (16 minutes) of the Oscar winner for best animated short film, Logorama, which remixes logos:

for Thursday, Feb 11

To get to know your blogs a bit more, please see WordPress.com’s new (and, unfortunately, now rather difficult) support page. By classtime on Thursday, I would like you to learn how to do the following using the support page linked-to above, and the create a post that contains all three of the below listed items (try to make the post related to the course). Use the Topics keywords (also known as ‘tags’) to get you started. I suggest using the search box if the lists are unhelpful. The subject of this post should be on a subject that is related to your professional, and/or educational interests, but employing the following activities:

• add / write a link
• add an image
• emded / post a YouTube video

As you know, we will be discussing William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. As a compliment to that discussion I would like you to spend some time exploring the William Blake Archive, especially The Marriage of Heaven and Hell section. The archive contains reproductions of original Blake engravings and is a fascinating collection of the variety of texts he created. Note that you can blow up the plates to see the images better and view a complete description of the images by using a pull-down menu on the lower left.