i-Anya

Time for an identity makeover…. this blog … well… this “blogger” has now moved to:

http://angelaathomas.com

It is still under construction while I try and learn just enough css to edit some of the colours etc… and find somebody to help me make a dazzling banner.

So far the comments box is all empty. So come over and say hi, its lonely there right now

(Seen on Jo’s blog; Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.)

For Rebecca, I have hunted out the original version of the Sesame Street song, “Mah Nah Mah Nah”, with the much nicer “par tip a tippy” words instead of the “do do dos” words which have clearly dumbed the song down considerably. As an impressionable young child, I was much influenced by the power of the evil but silent glare and have used it wisely in my later years. I think you will agree that this is a far superior version! Enjoy

Larry Johnson from the New Media Consortium has invited me to participate in an online conference in March. I am thrilled that I will be presenting in any context with prolific writer and expert on all new media and culture phenomena, Henry Jenkins!

Here’s my title and abstract - comments welcome while I construct my talk over the next couple of weeks!

TITLE

DESCRIPTION

I will begin this talk with a discussion of how youtube and video blogging have become a mediating space for what Sherry Turkle calls “evocative objects”: objects, or in this case spaces, that we use to think about ourselves. I argue that the act of viewing ones-self in public performances, and acknowledging public commentary on those acts, provides dual reflective lenses which serve to reconstruct, reinvent and redefine one’s identity. To demonstrate I discuss a number of examples in which the nature of the autobiographical is countered and transformed through the performance of self for the public.

Next I will draw on Senft’s notion of “the aesthetic of the grab” - a way of re-articulating the dynamics of spectatorship and participation in new video communities. I will discuss the notion of commodity fetishism and the ways in which “grabbing” bits and pieces of other people’s video performances is then being reconstituted into one’s own performances of identity. This includes but goes beyond one’s amusement at memes, desire for a shared cultural context and networked solidarity, in that it presents a “shopping for truth” about one’s place in the world. It also includes the notion that what is public and telepresent can be owned and manipulated for one’s own desires.

Finally I will raise the question about what it might mean for the millions of youth participants in youtube and videoblogging with respect to ethics, consequences and reputation management in an age where the personal is political.

Remember last year that I mentioned this conference, associated with the National Council of Teachers of English Assembly for Research :
What Counts as Literacy? Living Literacies of the Body and Image,
and I said it would be absolutely the most perfect conference for me to attend and I wished I could go..

Anyway just look at Jay Lemke’s talk about research directions into New Literacies, I think he might well have been reading my blog *laugh* -

New Media & New Learning Communities: Critical, Creative, and Independent
Jay Lemke, Educational Studies, University of Michigan

Today’s students are teaching themselves to be media producers as well as media consumers. As they learn to blur the boundaries between consumer culture and user-made media, will we learn to cross the divide between school curricula and the rest of students’ multi-literate lives? How can we help them remain critical as well as creative outside of school and for the long term? Research on students’ literacies needs to focus on their networked media: from fan-fiction sites, blogs, and MySpace identities, to online gameworlds, home-made podcasts, and SecondLife machinema. Research towards innovative, improved educational systems for the future needs to look beyond schooling to how professional educators can participate in learning communities whose goals are set by their members. I will describe a new research agenda that looks at learning across media, across sites, real and virtual, and across timescales.

Well, I am going!!! See, here I am on the schedule, presenting with Professor Charles Kinzer in a 2 hour workshop session!!

But in reality, I will be sitting at home in my nightgown and slippers clasping a hot cup of coffee at 6 am in front of my computer, particpating through Second Life! Luckily my avatar won’t have bags under her eyes, and can look perfectly glamorous

We’ll be talking about Second Life, avatars and the usual… Stay tuned for more!

Wanna watch an old movie that is now in the public domain? Here’s a film noir from the 40s! I knew there were sites you could register at to access movies online but I didn’t know you could go get them from google!!

I arrived back from Tasmania on the weekend and one of the 1000 emails awaiting me was from the popular Daughters of Freya author, Michael Betcherman, announcing his new email narrative, Suzanne. I signed up immediately and have started reading the first instalments over the past 3 days - forget the 999 other emails I am still wading through, these are the most fun emails to receive every day. Here’s a little synopsis:

Suzanne
by Michael Betcherman

“A delightful farce … Jane Austen meets Carrie Bradshaw, or maybe Woody Allen meets Shakespeare.” - Jake Onrot, Vancouver BC.

Opening your email will never be the same again!

Suzanne Braun has been invited to a cottage on Lake Joseph, the summer playground for Toronto’s rich - and very rich. She heads north with one goal in mind, to return home with a wealthy fiance in tow. And she won’t let anything stand in her way.

The story is told through emails exchanged among the characters. But instead of reading the emails in a book, they’re delivered straight to your inbox in “real time”, 2-3 emails a day over the three weeks it takes for the story to unfold.

You can’t turn a page to find out what happens next … you have to wait for the next email to arrive.

I just love what I am reading so far - it *is* delightful and makes me laugh and smile and … I would love to chat to others about it - is anybody else reading it and want to share your thoughts with me?

Last year when I was in Tasmania for the Summer I went trekking through some of the Wilderness areas and took lots of photographs of the gorgeous forests and waterfalls. This was one of them! And I am veeerrrryyyy happy to say that tomorrow I am off again for my annual jaunt to the most beautiful, peaceful place in the world. Not only that, but I will have no Internet access!! So… festive greetings and kind wishes to all - I’ll be back in 3 weeks or so!

Story of my life searching for the right but it keeps avoiding me
sorrow in my soul because it seams that wrong he really loves my company
he’s more than a man and this is more than love th reason that the sky is
blue the clouds are roll’n in because I’m gone again an to him a just can’t be true.

And I know that he knows I’m unfaithful and it kills him inside to know that I am Happy
with some other guy I can see him dying. I don’t wanna do this anymore I don’t wanna
be the reason why and everytime I walk out the door I see him die a little more inside
and I don’t wanna hurt him anymore I don’t wanna take away his life I don’t wanna be a murder.

I feel in the air as I’m doing my hair preparing for another date.A kiss upon my cheek as he relactenly
asked if I’m gonna be out late I say I won’t long just hanging with the girls a lie I didn’t have to tell
because we both know where I’m about to go and we know very well

And I know that he knows I’m unfaithful and it kills him inside to know that I’m happy with some other guy
I can see him dying. I don’t wanna do this anymore I don’t wanna be the reason why and everytime I walk out the
door I see him die a little more inside and I don’t wanna hurt him anymore I don’t wanna take a his life I don’t wanna be a murder.

Our love, his trust, I might as well take a gun and put it to his head get it over with I don’t wanna do this anymore . whoa oh.. anymore

I don’t wanna do this anymore I don’t wanna be the reason why and everytime I walk out the door I see him die a little more inside and I don’t wanna
hurt him anymore I don’t wanna take away his life I don’t wanna be a murder.

A murder …

No,no,no,no,yeah, yeah,

Everywhere I looked today I was reading about this, and it made me laugh, so in the spirit of fun, let me share with you this site here. What is particularly amusing is the clever play on the euphemisms for body parts that polite society has been using for generations. I think “down there” is a universal term - but now we’ll have a generation of women referring to their vaginas as their “Bettys”!!