This joyful experience is one of my favourite videos so far this the year. It combines music, attitude and techno history in one fell glamorous swoop. Moogs, Mellotrons and Vox Continentals, click Read More on the YouTube page to see the full list of of the instruments, (and musicians), as played by the greats of rock and pop, more details on most of these can be found on wikipedia e.g http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_Continental or on http://www.vintagesynth.com/
I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Diverse 2011 conference in Dublin last week, as part of a team including Kevin Burden, University of Hull; Kristen Snyder, Mid Sweden University; and Jeff Beaudry from the University of Southern Maine. We all met at last years conference in Portland, Maine, submitting a proposal of how we would create an international project designed to leverage digital storytelling and cross cultural understanding based around the theme of 'Global Crisis'. Our proposal was succesful and and we won the opportunity to present our first years work in Dublin. More details about that shortly on my other blog. Diverse brings together an international community of experts, researchers and practitioners in visual media and video for learning. I was privileged to be involved in presenting 3 papers and participating in a 'judging' panel for the MEDEA awards. As well as the workshops and parallel sessions there were some memorable Keynotes from Prof. Michael Wesch, Prof. Roy Pea, Prof Bridgid Barron. From Ireland, Dr Theo Lynn, Ciaran McCormack and Yvonne Crotty all gave excellent presentations Dublin was a great place to be, and the weather was kind. It was great to be able share the Irish music and culture in all its variations with our colleagues from the States. I think the video above gives a good flavour of Diverse. So many thanks to Yvonne and Margaret and the team at Dublin City University for a memorable event. I am already looking forward to next years conference in Lueven, and hopefully some of you reading this will be attending or submitting proposals.
NOT for Easy Listening As some of you might know I am a great fan of Spotify. There are a number of reasons for this, I like the fact I can ‘really’ discover new music of all genres, downloading ever changing and off the wall playlists to the iPhone to play in car @ 240 watts, not to mention the networking and sharing through Facebook etc. My only caveat is that Dylan withdrew his catalogue, but given his age and the fact it was all to do with audio quality rather than money, I suppose he can be excused, the Beatles I’m not too bothered about... they have never engaged with online.....all CDs ripped in iTunes anyway. So here we go: This list is what it claims...... grunge, discord, disturbing or unsettling lyrics sometimes all..... highlights include the late Don Van V’s syncopated slide guitars with a surreal lyrical stomp. “I saw cotton and I saw black, tall white mansions and little shacks” racism in the deep south followed by Nico and the Velvet Underground’s timeless All Tomorrows Parties; (Warhol's favourite says Wikipedia) plus one of Glasgow’s best ever bands; more Big Cities and crime from Pretty things and the Clash, wonder what Stones would have been like if Dick Taylor had agreed to join and Dylan’s in there somewhere.
Two from the Elvis songbook including the reggae masterpiece; ‘Watching the Detectives’; a screenplay within a screenplay .... every line a story. Unfortunately the drugs didn’t work n’ Guns N’ Roses sneaked in, not sure why? Enjoy or not.... more next week. Not got Spotify? Find out more here http://www.spotify.com/int/
A simple and clear statement about the creative process and the creations of 'art'. In addition to Shakespeare you could add Monet, Picasso, Warhol, Burns, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones plus thousand more...
The argument is so strange it is hard to know where to begin. The problem is not simply that Shakespeare flourished without copyright protection for his work. It is that he made liberal use of the work of others in his own plays in ways that would today almost certainly generate a lawsuit. Like many readers, I found myself wondering whether Shakespeare would have survived copyright, never mind the web. Certainly, the dense interplay of unidentified quotation, paraphrase and plot lifting that characterizes much of Elizabethan theatre would have been very different; imagine what jazz would sound like if musicians had to pay for every fragment of another tune they work into a solo.
I came across this short but awesome animation from the National Digital Library of Slovenia a few weeks ago and I haven't tired of watching it yet. As the cyclist pedals through a seamless narrative of ephemera and archived media, one begins to realise the potential of digitised historic materials. It doesn't really matter whether they are the throwaway everyday objects, that have survived, or the places of historic significance depicted, they have enormous potential for discussion and learning. The animation also illustrates how digital tools can help us revisit and re-interpret our history. This is of course, all made possible through the open digital access policy of the National Digital Library:
dLib.si is a web library available to everyone using a computer or a mobile phone at any time and wherever;
dLib.si can be freely accessed without any limitations;
dLib.si brings to homes, workplaces, schools or universities written Slovene cultural treasures, specimen kept in the National and University Library and other Slovene libraries. At the same time it enables access to entire current expert articles and other texts.
Whilst there are a number of museums, archives and collections in the UK adopting open policies, there are still far to many who see themselves as gatekeepers who are not in a position to; or worse still, unwilling, to make the leap to 'open'.
Google have made some important and welcome new improvements to Google Docs including
Real Time Collaborative Editing
Comment now appear clearly on margin outside doc area
Tabbed text
Better image alignment
New external Drawing editor
Movable columns in Spreadsheets
Autofill in Spreadsheets
The collaborative editing potential was put to the test the other night when at one point, alerted by Twitter, over 100 people were viewing or editing a Test Google Doc (set up by @courosa), simultaneously. It appears that the updated Google Docs includes much of the functionality of the Etherpad and it seems more than a co-incidence that when finally Etherpad closed, more or less simultaneously with the Google announcement of the new features.
When it was announced that Etherpad would close, I was one of those who was very vocal on the Etherpad Blog, I should have remembered my own thesis that negative reactions to technological change are often ill founded. Of course negative reactions to those who wish to limit to restrict our use of technology is a completely different matter.
This is all good stuff, what I would like next is facility to embed video into GDocs (including video from sources other than YouTube; e,g blip.tv) Below is a quick and dirty screencast of the document, (which is more than likely to change as folk revisit), showing how different users explored the potential. http://blip.tv/file/3488522
Did you forget to buy your loved one a valentines card? Or maybe you just think that its all just a crass commercial opportunity for purveyors of tat and chocolate. (thanks to @adamsutcliffe for the link). Well you have a printer, there is stll a chance to redeem yourself; visit riptheskulls photostream on Flickr, there are over 1000 vintage valentines postcards, (under a number of Creative Commons licences). All it will cost - some ink and some paper.... have fun. There's lost of such ephemera related to festivals, high days and holy days on Flickr, if you want to use it then do a search fort Creative Commons licenced stuff. I particularly like the image above, at first glance sugary sentimentalism, there is lots going on in there. Great for anyone studying symbolism.
One comes along and then another 30 Perhaps this may explain why it has been such a quiet mornning at BETT. Of course it has made it much easier to get a coffee......
Quite a few folks that know me, have mentioned that I haven't written a 'full' blog post for nearly 6 months, a fact of which I am painfully aware. Revisiting my back catalogue provides the evidence that I have never really a frequent blogger, although I am still quite pleased with some of the posts to be found there. Clearly the current situation is not really working, so now is probably as good a time as any to make a fresh start with my online presence in the back So for the time being I going to be posting at http://theok.posterous.com/ I think Posterous has more of the immediacy of Twitter, the space where I have been spending a lot of my online time.Also; now is probably as good a time as any 'cause:
BETT is always good for a few quick posts to get started
Good time to move away from Typepad's paid service, and use the money saved for other projects
More flexibility in type and range of posts and media
Widen readership and hopefully make it more useful and stimulating
The name itself; everythings digital now and we have a good idea of where we might be heading, so Digital Signposts probably outlived its usefuleness
So sitting here on the train to London for BETT, time for another new start, so come on over to The Continuum.....always open for discussion and comment, and a Happy New Year to all.
The BBC 2 series on British Family life, (iPlayer link), shown a few nights ago featured some fascinating insights on marriage and the role of the sexes, that made use of some excellent archive footage. Earlier in the day I had been looking at some old ads and discovered that many of the images that I found in the Gender category closely mirrored the themes highlighted in the broadcast....and more than likely helped and determine and maintain the prevailing culture.
It is interesting to note how the third pic relates to the cultural meme that is Rosie The Riveter (pics 4, 5) Although there is not very much metadata, The Vintage Ad Browser site http://www.vintageadbrowser.com is still a very rich site and the categories should be useful for all sorts of study and research. I have included the images under the fair use terms stated on the site, Rosie images from Library of Congress.
