communities of practice

by Bill Posted on February 18, 2008

A student blogging at Care4Poor posted a link to this site as a humorous break from the all the technology frustrations she was having. Its an interesting video, however, to consider in terms of our reading for this week—Wenger’s (1998) Communities of Practice (interestingly, students have been blogging most about (read: complaining about) Wenger’s instructive style and also calling it "common sense"; more on that later)—and the below discussion of Siva Vaidhyanathan’s review essay "Naked in the ‘Nonopticon’" on the ubiquity of surveillance. Enjoy.

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(re)searching google

by Bill Posted on February 18, 2008

The March 2008 edition of Harper’s arrived today, and in it is a wonderful example of how internet technologies are not value neutral. Ginger Strand’s annotation "Keyword: Evil" (which Harper’s has made available for free online) spans two pages as she uses call-outs connected to an architectural schematic to dissect the energy-use implications of Google’s planned server farm site, The Dallas, which rests on the Columbia River in Oregon. Two screenshots of the article:

screen shot of the two page layout of Giner Stran's annotation Keyword: Evil, published in the March 2008 Harper's

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tagging identity

by Bill Posted on February 18, 2008

I was reading the latest issue of Smithsonian Magazine this morning and found an article called "Aerosol Art" which details a fascinating new exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery called RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture (runs through October 26, 2008). The exhibit includes portraits and paintings of Hip Hop artists, film, poetry, and the one medium that really caught my attention: the graffiti art of taggers Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp. Jobyl Boone, the exhibit’s guest curator, argues that

graffiti tags function as self-portraits. "We want to present the notion that individuality and portraiture might not be someone’s face or body," she says. Conlon agrees: "Graffiti is based on choosing a name and making it as prolific as possible."

Two of Conlon and Hupp’s tags:

CON/AREK Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, 2007 Montana spray paint on Sintra panel

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world press photo of the year

by Bill Posted on February 17, 2008

Via PhotographyBlog, World Press International has announced its photograph of the year for the year 2007, Tim Hetherington, UK, for Vanity Fair, of an American soldier resting at bunker, Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, 16 September. Jury chairman Gary Knight says that "This image represents the exhaustion of a man – and the exhaustion of a nation. We’re all connected to this. It’s a picture of a man at the end of a line."

photograph by Tim Hetherington of an American soldier, hand to his face, exhausted, in a bunker in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan

See World Press International for their official announcement and a complete list and gallery of winners. Some specular and gorgeous and horrifying images in the gallery—a gallery which is going to come in handy this week in my Writing, Research, and Technology course as we consider the stark, engrossing, and oddly beautiful photographs in Luc Sante’s Evidence: NYPD Crime Scene Photographs: 1914 – 1918.

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