#I Have Media Literacy i promise i can comprehend it. i just think it's so unfair that they took a character who was so

[miami2k17]

i genuinely did enjoy ofmd in the end but killing izzy was so fucked up man. u cant spend 8 episodes giving someone that kind of beautiful character development and then just kill him with an offhand random gunshot. or at all. it's giving 15 seasons just to die on a rusty nail

[taleforquill]

As promised, here's my very belated April 2023 wrap-up. I originally posted this to my Instagram in early May, but I forgot I could post it to Tumblr too 😅.

I read 13 books in April. Quite a lot, but many of them were audiobooks and manga volumes (which I always get through faster).

In April I finally started my Hunger Games reread and I really, really enjoyed it. 13 year old me thought the first book was okay, and the rest sucked. But 13 year old me was also completely incapable of media literacy. 22 year old me thinks the books are mindblowingly good.

During April I also continued the Shatter Me series (which I still do not enjoy), and I decided to read some books I'd been hyping up in my mind. Mainly: The Turn of the Screw and Red, White and Royal Blue.

I'll start with Red, White and Royal Blue.

God... What a disappointment. I was a bit hesitant about it to begin with because it's a mlm story written by a non-man (as far as I'm aware). And while I do think that people can write about whatever they want, I prefer to read own-voices when it comes to queer books.

This book is disgustingly millenial. It centres 2 Gen Z kids who prefer to calls themselves millenials "because the press likes them better that way." Which is such bullshit (avocado toast, anyone?) that my brain can't even comprehend it.

It is also filled to the brim with H*rry P*tter references. This book came out in 2019! R*wling's TERF behaviour was well-known, even then. Millenials really need to let that series go. Get a fucking grip.

The author is projecting their own Millenial thoughts on Gen Z kids and it just doesn't work. It feels wrong. I'm reading about people in their early 20s, who think and act like they're in their mid-thirties.

No fucking self-respecting Gen Z would say "wow, you're definitely a Hufflepuff". Not even ironically. Yet it happens in this book. Multiple times.

They call a dog a Slytherin for fucks sake.

The way Alex interacted with his siblings also gave me the ick. Besides, he had no reason to hate Henry. And the press acted quite unrealistically and was only a problem for the characters when the plot demanded it. I'm also a bit too cynical to believe in a world where a divorced female US president with an interracial family could exist.

So yeah, rant over. But the Turn of the Screw was kind of disappointing too.

I expected to get the Haunting of Bly Manor in book form. And I kind of did? Even the lesbian tension was there. It just wasn't as good as the show. And I still highly prefer the show over this book.

I also finished the Attack On Titan manga, which I've been reading on and off for 10 years. I haven't liked it much since the Marley arc started and I still have very mixed feelings about it. I'll never forget how mindblowing the anime was when I was 13. And how much I enjoyed the first ±90 chapters.

But then it turned kind of meh and everything started dragging on for way too long. And the blatant imperialism and possible fascism and antisemitism came up. And just no.

So yeah, now that I've finished it, I'll let it go. Maybe I'll think about it once or twice but I definitely won't post about it (not in a positive context anyway).

ART: A Thorn amidst Roses by James Sant (1887)

Edit by me.

[jonigirard3]

How to get your brain to read?

How to get your brain to read?

How to Get Your Mind to Read ((article by Daniel T. Willingham (@DTWillingham) is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and the author, most recently, of “The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads.” Republished from the New York Times Photo: Credit Lilli Carré)) Americans are not good readers. Many blame the ubiquity of digital media. We’re too busy on Snapchat to read, or perhaps internet skimming has made us incapable of reading serious prose. But Americans’ trouble with reading predates digital technologies. The problem is not bad reading habits engendered by smartphones, but bad education habits engendered by a misunderstanding of how the mind reads. Just how bad is our reading problem? The last National Assessment of Adult Literacy from 2003 is a bit dated, but it offers a picture of Americans’ ability to read in everyday situations: using an almanac to find a particular fact, for example, or explaining the meaning of a metaphor used in a story. Of those who finished high school but did not continue their education, 13 percent could not perform simple tasks like these. When things got more complex — in comparing two newspaper editorials with different interpretations of scientific evidence or examining a table to evaluate credit card offers �� 95 percent failed. There’s no reason to think things have gotten better. Scores for high school seniors on the National Assessment of Education Progress reading test haven’t improved in 30 years. Many of these poor readers can sound out words from print, so in that sense, they can read. Yet they are functionally illiterate — they comprehend very little of what they can sound out. So what does comprehension require? Broad vocabulary, obviously. Equally important, but more subtle, is the role played by factual knowledge. All prose has factual gaps that must be filled by the reader. Consider “I promised not to play with it, but Mom still wouldn’t let me bring my Rubik’s Cube to the library.” The author has omitted three facts vital to comprehension: you must be quiet in a library; Rubik’s Cubes make noise; kids don’t resist tempting toys very well. If you don’t know these facts, you might understand the literal meaning of the sentence, but you’ll miss why Mom forbade the toy in the library. Knowledge also provides context. For example, the literal meaning of last year’s celebrated fake-news headline, “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President,” is unambiguous — no gap-filling is needed. But the sentence carries a different implication if you know anything about the public (and private) positions of the men involved, or you’re aware that no pope has ever endorsed a presidential candidate. You might think, then, that authors should include all the information needed to understand what they write. Just tell us that libraries are quiet. But those details would make prose long and tedious for readers who already know

http://bit.ly/2Ah53WD The Empath's guide to getting well and raising your vibration

[digitalcontext1]

Week 3

Creating Trans-media Experience: Not just a story

Introduction to the 5 act structure 

The Hero’s journey/Character Archetypes 

Why do we need technology to tell a story?  What is a story and when was the first one told?  How have story-telling mediums developed through history

We need mediums to give stories and meaning over. Using both visual experiences and interactive designs can draw the user in to pay attention to stories or a story. 

How to generate great visual ideas 

http://view.ceros.com/ceros-marketing/how-to-generate-great-visual-ideas/p/3?submissionGuid=9995b828-cb93-4836-ae95-07507ed16899

People swap devices 21 times an hour says OMD

http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/people-swap-devices-21-times-hour-says-omd/1225960?src_site=brandrepublic

https://youtu.be/WC6NePIkpx4

https://www.ceros.com/blog/interactive-story-apps-and-narrative-technique/?ivh=XRhPhQ2APtk-

Even the simplest and most static of human cultures is an engine of inventive mutual influence and change. Furthermore, at least orally, human cultures preserve historical record, imaginative or real, couched in a human language. The past pervades human consciousness to some degree even in the simplest societies, and discussions of past events—narrating, sometimes dramatically, commenting on the narration, challenging points of fact or logic, and co-constructing a suite of stories—occupied many an evening for perhaps 300,000 years, but not for millions of years before that. 

And while our ancestors were arguing, many ape communities not far away in the forest were making their—yes, traditional—nests and drifting off to sleep. The only modern apes that have learned language learned it from human teachers, and none of their wild counterparts has anything like it. Even if their individual minds preserve some private history, it is difficult to see how they could have a collective one without being able to tell it to each other and to their young. All human cultures can, do, and probably must. 

Melvin Konner, The Evolution of Childhood (2010)

Given the dialogic nature of language and how we use it to form narratives that inform us, Frank’s basic premises are these: 

1. Stories do not belong to storytellers and story listeners because all stories are “reassemblies of fragments on loan” and “depend on shared narrative sources.” 

2. Stories not only contribute to the making of our narrative selves but also weave the threads of social relationships and make life social. 3. Stories have certain distinct capacities that enable them to do what they do best and can be understood as narrative types or genres. 

Though distinct, genres of stories depend on one another, for there is no such thing as a pure genre, and all tale types have a symbiotic relationship to one another. 

4. Socio-narratology encourages a dialogic mode of interpretation so that all voices can be heard, and open up a story for various interpretations and possible uses. 

5. “Socio-narratology, although always relational in recognizing that all parties act, pays most attention to stories acting. It analyses how stories breathe as they animate, assemble, entertain, and enlighten, and also deceive and divide people.”

6. Analysis demands that we learn from storytellers. “The primary lesson from storytellers is that they learn to work with stories that are not the normal

4 screen 

Interactive Short story 

https://youtu.be/AURVxvIZrmU

http://www.fiveminutes.gs/

Journalism in the Digital Age

https://futureofstorytelling.org/video/melissa-bell-lindsay-nelson-journalism-in-the-digital-age

“You” - Auteur 

Trans-media storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience 

Transmedia storytelling 

In today’s literacy-rich world, I identified 7 different literacies that you’ll find within good transmedia storytelling projects (Inanimate Alice is an exemplary form, and includes all these literacies):

Multimodal literacy.  Multimodal literacy is meaning-making across multiple modes of communication. Transmedia storytelling facilitates the practice of multimodal literacy because you must make meaning across all the elements in the story to fully understand it. The sound, images, narrative, movie and gaming elements all play a unique role in unraveling the story.

Critical literacy. Critical literacy is essentially ‘destructuring’ and ‘restructuring’ a text in order to develop a critical understanding of its plot and purpose. Transmedia storytelling requires the ‘destructuring’ and ‘restructuring’ of multiple modes of text, a complex task to say the least.

Digital literacy. Digital literacy typically refers to the navigation, evaluation and creation of information using digital technologies. Transmedia storytelling requires navigation of the story, and evaluation of the digital elements in the story. And transmedia storytelling provides an inspirational platform for the creation of new digital stories (like fan fiction).

Media literacy. Media literacy is about evaluating and creating media messages. Because transmedia storytelling exists across multiple forms of media, each media element must be evaluated separately before multimodal meaning-making can take place. New media messages can be created through digital storytelling.

Visual literacy. Visual literacy is the interpretation of images in a way that enhances other forms of literacy. Transmedia storytelling is a visually rich experience, and the images play a significant role in the narrative.

Information literacy. The interactivity of transmedia storytelling enhances information literacy skills. Actions drive the story and require information seeking to solve problems and make decisions.

Game literacy.  Game literacy is the literacy of problem solving, and the gaming elements in transmedia storytelling require the use of logical and strategic thinking.

Australian researchers have developed a new type of nanoscale device that is able to manipulate light to filter out specific colours – a material that could one day be used to produce smart contact lenses that automatically filter out dangerous optical radiation.

Researchers from the RMIT University and the University of Adelaide have developed a new stretchable nano device that can manipulate light, while remaining transparent, using tiny artificial crystals known as dielectric resonators, which are just 100-200 nanometres in size.

http://discovermagazine.com/2015/jan-feb/55-futuristic-contact-lens-in-sight

Smart technology makes tracking personal health metrics — from posture to sleep quality — easier than ever. But one new device could be more medically useful than any yet on the market: a smart contact lens.

Developed by Google’s secretive Google X arm, the initial prototype is designed to monitor glucose for diabetics. It sports a tiny sensor that measures glucose in tears and an antenna that wirelessly transmits the data to a connected device.

Google’s clinical research studies demonstrate the device can take one reading per second, promising a constant, noninvasive alternative to diabetics’ routine finger pricks throughout the day. The lens could also immediately alert patients, doctors or caregivers to abnormal glucose levels. 

https://www.cnet.com/special-reports/vr101/

An immersive experience we went through in class today with Umran:

https://company.helloeko.com/

https://helloeko.com/v/possibilia?publisherID=fb1

Henry Jenkins

Transmedia Storytelling 101

1. Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story. So, for example, in The Matrix franchise, key bits of information are conveyed through three live action films, a series of animated shorts, two collections of comic book stories, and several video games. There is no one single source or ur-text where one can turn to gain all of the information needed to comprehend the Matrix universe.

2. Transmedia storytelling reflects the economics of media consolidation or what industry observers call “synergy.” Modern media companies are horizontally integrated – that is, they hold interests across a range of what were once distinct media industries. A media conglomerate has an incentive to spread its brand or expand its franchises across as many different media platforms as possible. Consider, for example, the comic books published in advance of the release of such films as Batman Begins and Superman Returns by DC ( owned by Warner Brothers, the studio that released these films). These comics provided back-story which enhanced the viewer’s experience of the film even as they also help to publicize the forthcoming release (thus blurring the line between marketing and entertainment). The current configuration of the entertainment industry makes transmedia expansion an economic imperative, yet the most gifted transmedia artists also surf these marketplace pressures to create a more expansive and immersive story than would have been possible otherwise.

3. Most often, transmedia stories are based not on individual characters or specific plots but rather complex fictional worlds which can sustain multiple interrelated characters and their stories. This process of world-building encourages an encyclopedic impulse in both readers and writers. We are drawn to master what can be known about a world which always expands beyond our grasp. This is a very different pleasure than we associate with the closure found in most classically constructed narratives, where we expect to leave the theatre knowing everything that is required to make sense of a particular story.

4. Extensions may serve a variety of different functions. For example, the BBC used radio dramas to maintain audience interest in Doctor Who during almost a decade during which no new television episodes were produced. The extension may provide insight into the characters and their motivations (as in the case of websites surrounding Dawson’s Creek and Veronica Mars which reproduced the imaginary correspondence or journals of their feature characters), may flesh out aspects of the fictional world (as in the web version of the Daily Planet published each week by DC comics during the run of its 52 series to “report” on the events occurring across its superhero universe), or may bridge between events depicted in a series of sequels (as in the animated series – The Clone Wars – which was aired on the Cartoon Network to bridge over a lapse in time between Star Wars II and III). The extension may add a greater sense of realism to the fiction as a whole (as occurs when fake documents and time lines were produced for the website associated with The Blair Witch Project or in a different sense, the documentary films and cd-roms produced by James Cameron to provide historical context for Titanic).

5. Transmedia storytelling practices may expand the potential market for a property by creating different points of entry for different audience segments. So, for example, Marvel produces comic books which tell the Spider-man story in ways that they think will be particularly attractive to female (a romance comic, Mary Jane Loves Spiderman) or younger readers (coloring book or picture book versions of the classic comicbook stories ). Similarly, the strategy may work to draw viewers who are comfortable in a particular medium to experiment with alternative media platforms (as in the development of a Desperate Housewives game designed to attract older female consumers into gaming).

6. Ideally, each individual episode must be accessible on its own terms even as it makes a unique contribution to the narrative system as a whole. Game designer Neil Young coined the term, “additive comprehension,” to refer to the ways that each new texts adds a new piece of information which forces us to revise our understanding of the fiction as a whole. His example was the addition of an image of an origami unicorn to the director’s cut edition of Bladerunner, an element which raised questions about whether the protagonist might be a replicant. Transmedia producers have found it difficult to achieve the delicate balance between creating stories which make sense to first time viewers and building in elements which enhance the experience of people reading across multiple media.

 Transmedia storytelling is the ideal aesthetic form for an era of collective intelligence. Pierre Levy coined the term, collective intelligence, to refer to new social structures that enable the production and circulation of knowledge within a networked society. Participants pool information and tap each others expertise as they work together to solve problems. Levy argues that art in an age of collective intelligence functions as a cultural attractor, drawing together like-minded individuals to form new knowledge communities.

 Transmedia narratives also function as textual activators – setting into motion the production, assessment, and archiving information. The ABC television drama, Lost, for example, flashed a dense map in the midst of one second season episode: fans digitized a freeze-frame of the image and put it on the web where together they extrapolated about what it might reveal regarding the Hanso Corporation and its activities on the island. 

Transmedia storytelling expands what can be known about a particular fictional world while dispersing that information, insuring that no one consumer knows everything and insure that they must talk about the series with others (see, for example, the hundreds of different species featured in Pokemon or Yu-Gi-O). Consumers become hunters and gatherers moving back across the various narratives trying to stitch together a coherent picture from the dispersed information.

https://futureofstorytelling.org/

Immersion - completely surrounded, you are immersed in the experience. Hitting the reader or audience from multiple angles using different senses.